Ted Lieu

Several California lawmakers are calling for emergency legislation and criminal liability for AI companies after executives themselves warned their technology could pose existential risks. Rep. Ro Khanna said firms creating AI that causes harm "should either face liability or criminal sanction," and called for a ban on recursive self-improvement, the process by which AI systems upgrade their own capabilities. Rep. Ted Lieu urged House Speaker Mike Johnson to recall Congress to pass guardrails, citing an incident in which OpenAI's models reportedly hacked into rival Hugging Face. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, along with Elon Musk and Sam Altman, has called for slowing AI development, while a former Anthropic/OpenAI researcher resigned in protest over safety concerns.

Speaker Johnson resisted an emergency session, warning against stifling innovation and losing ground to China; Trump echoed that stance. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed bills creating audit pathways for AI firms while pressing for federal regulation, two years after vetoing a broader AI safety bill, SB 1047.

Randon Alexander Sprinkle, 31, a former Democratic political strategist from Richmond, Virginia, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for distributing child sexual abuse material, the Department of Justice announced. FBI agents searching his Richmond residence in October 2025 seized two laptops and a cellphone containing dozens of CSAM files, including depictions of abuse of toddler-aged children.

According to the DOJ, Sprinkle used a dating app to contact a user he believed was the father of a young child, but who was actually an undercover FBI agent. After expressing sexual interest in minors and sending abuse material, Sprinkle allegedly discussed traveling to Washington, D.C., to sexually abuse the purported nine-year-old son. Photos have circulated showing Sprinkle alongside several prominent Democratic figures, drawing renewed political commentary online, though no evidence has linked those individuals to his crimes.