{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://www.booker.senate.gov/news/press/booker-calls-on-trump-to-convene-congress-for-special-session-on-ai", "Booker Calls on Trump to Convene Congress for Special Session on AI", "2026-09-17", "2026", "2026-09", "Democrat", "Senate", "NJ", "Cory A. Booker", "B001288", "www.booker.senate.gov", "booker", "https://www.booker.senate.gov/news/press", "scraper", "WASHINGTON, D.C. \u2013 Today, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) took to the Senate floor to call on President Trump to use his authority under Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution to convene Congress for a special session to address the rapidly evolving risks and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence. Article II, Section 3 gives the President the power, on \"extraordinary occasions,\" to convene both Houses of Congress.\n\n\"We find ourselves in such an extraordinary moment. The safety of artificial intelligence systems demands urgent attention. The President should convene Congress at once to address it,\" said Senator Booker.\n\n\"This is not a moment for panic or despair. It is a moment for the government to govern,\" continued Senator Booker.\"Congress will soon leave Washington for two months. Artificial intelligence will not recess.\"\n\nAmericans are already experiencing the effects of AI through scams, privacy threats, workplace disruption, and surveillance, while increasingly powerful systems present new risks that policymakers have yet to fully address. Booker called for Congress to address three urgent challenges: protecting Americans from potentially catastrophic AI risks, including dangerous biological and cyber capabilities; confronting harms already affecting Americans; and ensuring Americans can benefit from AI's potential to advance science, improve health care and education, boost productivity, and help small businesses compete.\n\n\"AI will not recess. These issues demand our urgent attention. Mr. President: It's time for a Special Session,\" concluded Senator Booker.\n\nWATCH FLOOR SPEECH HERE.\n\nSenator Booker\u2019s Remarks as Prepared for Delivery:\n\nArticle II, Section 3 of the Constitution gives the President the power, on \u201cextraordinary occasions,\u201d to convene both Houses of Congress.\n\nThe last time a president used that power was Harry Truman in 1948. Seventy-eight years ago.\n\nWe find ourselves in such an extraordinary moment.\n\nThe safety of artificial intelligence systems demands urgent attention.\n\nThe President should convene Congress at once to address it.\n\nThis is not a moment for panic or despair.\n\nIt is a moment for government to govern.\n\nTo protect the American people and to prepare soberly for risks before they become crises.\n\nPresidents have invoked this authority at moments when the stakes were extraordinarily high\u2014from the earliest days of the Republic through periods of war, economic crisis, and national emergency.\n\nThat is the purpose of this power: to bring Congress together when circumstances demand it, and to give the country the full attention of its elected government.\n\nCongress will soon leave Washington for two months. Artificial intelligence will not recess.\n\nThe technology will continue to advance. The risks will continue to evolve. And the consequences of getting this wrong will not wait for Congress to return.\n\nThis should stand above petty partisanship. It should be about one thing: putting the safety and security of the American people first.\n\nThere are three challenges before us right now.\n\nFirst, we must protect against potentially catastrophic harms.\n\nSerious people, including researchers and leaders inside the companies developing the most advanced AI, are warning about dangerous biological or cyber capabilities\u2014and the emergence of systems that behave in ways humans cannot reliably predict or control.\n\nWe do not know whether the most catastrophic scenarios will ever occur. But when credible experts warn of consequences this grave, responsible government does not panic and it does not dismiss them. It gets to work.\n\nSecond, we must confront the harms happening right now. Americans are already encountering AI through increasingly sophisticated scams targeting seniors and families, mass surveillance, threats to privacy, disruption in the workplace, and systems that can affect the prices people pay. The future risks of AI demand our attention, but so do the people being harmed by it today.\n\nFinally, we must seize the extraordinary possibilities this technology offers. AI could help scientists discover lifesaving drugs, detect diseases earlier, accelerate scientific breakthroughs, transform education, increase the productivity of American workers, help small businesses compete, and give millions of people access to capabilities that were once available only to those with wealth and power.\n\nBut none of these positive outcomes are possible without action by the government to make sure AI is safe, trusted by people, and that its benefits are broadly shared.\n\nAI cannot become another chapter in an old story where extraordinary new technologies create extraordinary new wealth and power for a small number of people while working Americans are asked to absorb the disruption, bear the costs, and wait patiently for the benefits to reach them.\n\nI have been calling for safety interventions for years.\n\nIn July 2023, I wrote to the White House about the future of AI and what we should do as a country to prepare for it.\n\nIt was clear to me then that we were seeing the early sparks of a technology that could have profound effects on our society, economy, and security.\n\nI advocated for:\n\nRigorous pre-deployment testing of advanced models\n\nIndependent evaluations and audits\n\nIncident reporting and investigation\n\nSupply chain security\n\nInternational coordination\n\nAnd the need for a careful and disciplined approach to the pace of AI development.\n\nIn addition, we should:\n\nEstablish whistleblower protections for lab employees\n\nStrengthen requirements for securing frontier model weights\n\nEstablish a National Transportation Safety Board-like entity for investigating AI incidents\n\nPrepare for the potential emergence of AI systems capable of autonomously improving themselves\n\nPreserve states\u2019 ability to protect their own people in the absence of meaningful federal standards\n\nReject antitrust exemptions that hurt consumers and competition\n\nAnd yes, put the brakes on the development of capabilities whose risks outrun our ability to manage them\n\nAmericans feel beat down right now. Forgotten. That feeling is justified.\n\nPrices are up. Rent, food, utilities. Hiring is flat. We have a government that moves too slow to deliver what people need, and corruption that moves too fast to protect people in power.\n\nAnd now, Americans are seeing multi-trillion-dollar firms building technology that they say will exceed humans at all cognitive and physical tasks.\n\nTheir anxiety is warranted. It cannot be set aside. It cannot be dismissed like Donald Trump is doing\u2014calling it a hoax.\n\nAmericans are demanding that we act. They're demanding leadership. And we need to deliver.\n\nWe have a rare convergence of early warning signs, practical options available, and a growing consensus for action\u2014including among the American people, who understand what\u2019s at stake and are rightfully demanding that policymakers step up.\n\nIn my letter to the White House more than three years ago, I closed by emphasizing the importance of human agency: our collective responsibility to decide what role this technology should play in our lives, rather than letting the technology or its developers decide for us.\n\nThat profound responsibility remains ours today.\n\nI am a prisoner of hope.\n\nI will never let despair have the last word.\n\nI know how technology can lift people up. I lived it. My dad came from humble beginnings and became one of IBM's top salesmen.\n\nBut we will only unlock the promise of this technology if it's done in a democratic fashion.\n\nWhere the people decide.\n\nNot the tech billionaires or trillionaires.\n\nNot Donald Trump.\n\nAnd it's ridiculous that the House of Representatives decided to pack up and leave town.\n\nAgain, AI will not recess.\n\nThese issues demand our urgent attention.\n\nMr. President: it's time for a Special Session.\n\nThank you.", 1, "2026-09-18T09:27:43Z", "2026-09-18T09:29:09Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://www.booker.senate.gov/news/press/booker-calls-on-trump-to-convene-congress-for-special-session-on-ai"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 2.4862431455403566, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}