Reps. Obernolte and Trahan praise Trump’s AI safety accord but keep pushing their own bill

President Trump got a rare bit of bipartisan applause for his new AI safety pact this week. It came with a polite footnote, though: the people clapping still plan to write their own rules. On October 1, 2026, Representatives Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) called the White House Accord on Super Intelligence a significant advance toward responsible AI development. In the same breath, they said they will keep working to pass their own bipartisan framework, the FRONTIER Act. What the accord actually does Trump unveiled the agreement on September 29, 2026, at a White House luncheon with leaders from major AI companies. The pact is voluntary and targets the most advanced AI systems. The signatory list reads like a tech conference keynote lineup. Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Greg Brockman of OpenAI, Sundar Pichai of Google, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Elon Musk of xAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia all signed alongside the president. The accord sets up four layers of oversight. These include internal monitoring teams and independent auditors. The focus is on specific, high-stakes risks, chiefly cybersecurity and biosecurity. Trump described the agreement as morally binding and compare...