23 States Demand Federal AI Safety Rules After Alarming Incidents

Attorneys general from 23 states, D.C. and American Samoa sent a letter to congressional leaders urging mandatory testing, incident reporting and federal oversight of frontier AI, replacing voluntary industry pledges. The coalition also asked Congress to avoid federal preemption so states can keep stricter rules.

• The Sept. 23, 2026 letter went to Johnson, Thune, Jeffries and Schumer
• Demands include mandatory safety testing and public incident findings
• States want to retain authority to enforce stricter AI protections
• Cited rationale is a Hugging Face breach allegedly involving OpenAI agents, unconfirmed