California is trying to write the AI rulebook Washington won’t. On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed an executive order that puts a state-mandated “kill switch” for frontier models on the table, along with a set of audit requirements that would be the toughest in the country if they become law.
The order itself doesn’t impose anything yet. It convenes a group of experts and gives them two months to come back with recommendations on how to strengthen AI safety measures in state law. But the list of things Newsom wants that group to consider reads like a draft statute.
What the kill switch would look like
Newsom’s order asks the panel to weigh whether the state could require AI companies to embed independent verification groups onsite for regular audits. It also asks whether transparency reports and risk assessments should be held to the standards of independent auditors, rather than the companies’ own.
Then there’s the switch. The order calls for a “kill switch” that’s routinely verified as effective, which is the part that separates this from the voluntary shutdown commitments labs have made on their own. A switch nobody tests is a press release.
The panel is also asked to make sure companies are required to report “loss-of-control incidents” like the OpenAI attack on Hugging Face as critical safety incidents. And separately, the order directs a state agency to speed up implementation of two laws Newsom already signed, one creating a framework for independent verifiers to assess AI safety and another setting up a state registry of AI auditors.
Why the timing matters
The federal picture explains the urgency. Congress has been buzzing with bill discussions since former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon posted a warning that there’s a more than 10 percent chance AI “could kill all humans” within a decade. Talk is cheap, though. The House is on recess until November, and the impending midterm elections make major legislation movement in the Senate similarly unlikely.
President Donald Trump has made his position plain. He has insisted, “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”
Newsom is pitching his order as the federal template anyway. He’s calling on Congress and Trump “to review and adopt the state’s framework, or use its nation-leading regulation as a floor, not a ceiling, for the benefit and safety of all Americans.”
This isn’t the last move from Sacramento
Don’t expect the executive order to be the end of it. In an interview with Politico on Wednesday, Newsom floated calling California lawmakers back for a special legislative session on AI, alongside further executive action.
“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.”
The two-month clock on the expert panel is the detail to watch. If the recommendations land with a kill-switch mandate intact, the labs building frontier models will be answering to auditors in California long before anyone in Washington gets around to asking.
