California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order on Friday to speed up two AI laws he recently signed and explore proposals like requiring that AI companies develop a “kill switch” for their most advanced models.

The order comes after he told POLITICO this week he was to take further action on AI safety, including a possible special legislative session to address recent safety concerns set off by AI researchers’ warnings that the technology could pose an existential risk to humanity and prominent autonomous hacking incidents.

Newsom said his executive action was also driven by federal inaction, after President Donald Trump by dismissing them as a “hoax” and saying the only guardrails AI needs are his presidency. On Friday, Newsom urged Trump and Congress to adopt California’s AI framework or use the state’s existing regulations as a floor for federal rules.

“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 his press release.

The order moves up by a year the implementation of two California laws that Newsom signed this month, SB 813 and AB 1405, regulating how outside groups evaluate AI programs for safety. The legislation had been endorsed by Anthropic and OpenAI.

It also convenes experts to, within two months, provide California with recommendations on how the state could strengthen existing AI safety and security laws.

Among the ideas they would consider is updating bill definitions of critical safety events to include incidents where models lose control, such as one where OpenAI’s model hacked into Hugging Face.

Another is the kill switch mandate for frontier AI models, a version of which has been in Congress but got blocked on the Senate floor. The idea also garnered support from LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman this week at a POLITICO event. Some others in the tech industry still oppose kill switches, arguing it is not technically feasible.

OpenAI praised the order on Friday and highlighted updates that the company has proposed to the state’s AI transparency law, SB 53, such as outside third-party safety audits.

“We welcome Governor Newsom’s continued interest in strengthening the state’s approach,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement. “We look forward to working with Governor Newsom on his proposals — and with the California Legislature and the state’s next governor — on broader AI policy next year, advancing strong, adaptable safeguards that can contribute to a consistent national framework.”

Anthropic, Google, Meta and Amazon did not immediately comment on the order.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who called for a slowdown in AI development amid existential risk concerns, that while a kill switch “could be a good idea,” it was no “panacea.” Anthropic said Thursday in response to POLITICO’s report that it supported the governor’s decision to take further action and looked forward to working with his administration on the details.

Lawmakers on Friday were generally supportive of Newsom’s plan and showed signs of coalescing around the kill switch idea, which was stripped out of legislation proposed two years ago. Rep. Ted Lieu, who introduced bipartisan kill switch legislation in the House, for Congress to mirror California’s approach.

“I expect to see some action from the Legislature on that front,” state Sen. Josh Becker told POLITICO. “With the breakouts we’ve already seen, we have to have the ability to shut down these systems when they’re behaving in ways we don’t want them to behave.”

The executive order is somewhat of a told-you-so moment for state Sen. Scott Wiener. In 2024, Newsom that proposed pre-release safety testing and a kill switch emergency shutdown mechanism for certain large AI models in the event the systems were misused or went rogue.

Wiener commended Newsom for the suggestion Friday, urging the Legislature to follow up with strong guardrails when it’s back in session next year.

“We must act with all possible haste to address the serious risks of AI-driven catastrophe,” Wiener said. “He [Newsom] has my full support. Requiring emergency shutdown procedures, or kill switches, provides tangible guardrails to the public to prevent these disasters.”

Following the veto of SB 1047, Newsom instead tasked an expert panel with recommending a solution. The resulting law, SB 53, approved by Newsom last year, positioned California as a national leader without as badly antagonizing the Silicon Valley interests that rallied against the vetoed measure.

Seve Christian, Wiener’s former legislative director and now director of California policy at the AI safety group Encode, said it will be engaging with Newsom’s office and legislators in the coming weeks to ensure the protections he enacts are “up to the scale of serious risks on the horizon.”

Both Christian and California Labor Federation President Lorena Gonzalez, who has made AI a major priority for her unions, showed interest in Newsom still convening a special legislative session to address the technology’s risks.

Christian said legislation is needed to impose real guardrails, adding that “an EO is not incompatible with a special session.”

“He could still call one … I don’t trust that Congress will,” Gonzalez said of a special session. “Let’s have a kill switch on every AI company. Any development of AI should have a kill switch. Period.”

It’s a rare endorsement for Gonzalez, who criticized several of Newsom’s past AI executive orders and policy moves. She and fellow labor leaders have demanded that Newsom to regulate AI for workers ahead of a likely 2028 presidential campaign, or risk losing their political support.

Newsom did not say if the order rules out the other options he told POLITICO he was mulling, like a special session. “Generally, all options are always on the table,” a spokesperson for him told POLITICO on Friday.

Meanwhile, multiple lawmakers indicated to POLITICO they will take up the governor’s recommendations — and Newsom has already made some progress on his goal of setting an example for the rest of the country. Outgoing New York Assemblymember Alex Bores encouraged his state to hold a special session for AI on Friday.

California state Sen. Christopher Cabaldon said that the report Newsom ordered will be a “useful contribution” as lawmakers construct AI safety legislation for next session. He came out in support of a kill switch provision this week, as POLITICO first reported.

Cabaldon and Becker are part of a group of senators working together to figure out next steps. Becker said his office is keeping in touch with groups including the Secure AI Project, Encode and the Omidyar Network about “the current state of AI safety.”

And State Sen. Jerry McNerney, who authored one of the AI auditing bills that Newsom’s order moves up, said in a statement Friday that he “plan[s] to introduce legislation in December to implement the governor’s recommendations on establishing AI safety standards, mandatory safety assessments, and more.”

With Newsom’s final year as governor underway, the task of turning those recommendations into law will largely fall to his successor, likely Democratic frontrunner Xavier Becerra.

Becerra signaled Friday that he would pick up the effort, “We need real guardrails on companies racing toward superintelligence before anyone’s proven they can control it.”

Lindsey Holden and Gabby Miller contributed to this report.