U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson rejected a moratorium on artificial intelligence development, warning that slowing the industry could allow China to gain an advantage and create serious national security risks. At the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., Senator Bernie Sanders and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon jointly called for slower development and stronger safeguards, while former Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged policymakers to take AI leaders’ safety warnings seriously. Stanford’s 2026 AI Index said the performance gap between leading U.S. and Chinese models narrowed to 2.7% as of March. Sanders plans legislation to pause advanced AI development, ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI, and create a federal regulator; Bannon favors executive action and cutting China off from the AI ecosystem; and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has proposed slowing capability gains until safety measures catch up. President Donald Trump has rejected a slowdown, calling existential AI concerns a hoax and arguing that reduced U.S. development would help China. NIST’s voluntary AI Risk Management Framework remains in place and is being revised under the White House AI Action Plan.