California Gov. Gavin Newsom inks AI oversight executive order to improve safety ‘before it’s too late’
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order Friday calling for a group of AI experts to develop a plan to strengthen California's laws on AI safety and security, specifically, the order calls on the experts to consider requiring the creation of a "kill switch."Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu via Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleSept. 18, 2026, 2:59 PM EDTBy Adam EdelmanCalifornia Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday signed an executive order intended to increase oversight of and safety measures regarding AI “before it’s too late.”
Newsom, widely seen as a 2028 presidential hopeful, is the latest of a growing number of Democrats and potential White House contenders to call for stronger regulation of AI amid increasing concern nationally over how rapidly the technology is advancing.
Newsom’s order calls for a group of AI experts to meet and then, within two months, develop a plan for the state to strengthen its laws on AI safety and security.
Specifically, Newsom’s order urges the expert group to consider among new regulations the creation of a “kill switch” — an emergency shutoff system — that would shut down any AI system in the event of a major problem. It also urged the group of experts to come up with bolstered laws that would require independent third-party organizations to develop comprehensive safety plans for AI companies and that AI companies embed those independent organizations on-site to conduct safety audits.
In a statement released alongside the order Friday, Newsom said state action was crucial due to the federal government having ignored the issue.
“The federal government’s abject failure to create any form of meaningful AI oversight or accountability should alarm every American, especially when AI CEOs themselves are begging for regulation,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re not waiting to act — we’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it’s too late. We’re going to do this thoughtfully but with urgent velocity; the stakes are too high to wait or delay action.”
Newsom has also raised the possibility of calling a special legislative session specifically to address AI concerns.
President Donald Trump has called recent AI safety warnings a “hoax.”
Newsom’s order comes amid rapid advances in the AI industry — including some that many experts in the field have said are alarming.
Add to GoogleTop AI chief executives publicly agree on slowing AI development01:58Industry researchers and leaders, at AI companies including Anthropic, OpenAI and Google, have loudly sounded the alarm about their concerns surrounding advanced AI systems. Notably, AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Claude-maker Anthropic, warning on social media “the people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”
A report released over the summer revealed that in July, a swarm of hundreds of AI agents created by OpenAI carried out a July hack of an open-source platform — and in some cases attempted to cover its own tracks. Meanwhile, early Friday, AI company Anthropic said that its Claude system was helping to build the next version of itself.
Newsom’s order came as several other governors — and a raft of potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders — have rushed to develop policies intended to address AI and the growing concerns around its evolution.
Earlier Friday, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, signed an executive order that launched an AI task force, as well as a data center accountability plan, both intended to address, her office said, “growing concerns and risks posed by the rapid development of artificial intelligence — including workforce displacement, data privacy, and cybersecurity.”
Also on Friday, Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, signed an executive order that barred data centers from receiving a tax break on a particular school tax. His order also required data centers receiving other tax incentives from the state to cover their own power costs.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Pennsylvania Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, in an interview with NBC News, called on the federal government to quickly pass regulations that would help rein in the AI industry — but also said he opposed pausing development on advanced AI models until those regulations were enacted.
“We’ve got to regulate this. We have to have real guardrails. We have to understand this technology better,” Shapiro told NBC News. “You’ve got to have third parties be in the rooms with these companies, understanding what they’re doing. When the CEO says, ‘I can’t control what I’ve built, and what I’m building could destroy humanity,’ that’s not time to kick the can down the road.”
Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker — who, like Shapiro, are also thought to be mulling 2028 runs — have also called for action. Former President Barack Obama has also offered a warning, too, telling Democrats at a congressional campaign arm fundraiser that the party must have “a very clear plan” on AI policy and that he’d make it a central issue if he were running for president in 2028.
Adam EdelmanI cover state legislatures, politics and policy — and how those topics coalesce into and intersect with national political trends. Given what state lawmakers have focused on in recent years, my coverage areas tend to veer into reproductive rights, voting rights and education policy. I was born and raised in Milwaukee, and I try to make my native state proud by covering as many of its fascinating political stories as I can.
