SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed laws Wednesday aimed at protecting workers from the threats of artificial intelligence, including potential job losses and workplace surveillance.
The laws ban employers from using the technology to predict a worker's emotional state by using their biometric data, require employers to send written notices to workers if AI is responsible for mass layoffs and ban employers from relying on AI to decide to fire someone.
The Democratic governor also signed an executive order to require state agencies to continue to refer to the technology as “artificial intelligence” instead of the term “ super intelligence ” President Donald Trump recently ordered U.S. diplomats to use.
“AI should expand opportunity — not come at the expense of workers and families,” Newsom said in a statement. “As this technology reshapes the workplace, California is putting people at the center.”
He sharply criticized Trump at an hourlong event with reporters Wednesday for not passing comprehensive federal AI regulations at a time when industry leaders are warning about the technology’s risks. Trump said Tuesday that top tech leaders signed a voluntary accord to “self-police” AI development.
The governor signed a law this month requiring operators of AI chatbots to perform risk assessments before rolling them out and an executive order requiring the state to consult with experts to further improve oversight over the industry.
“We have to do a lot more in the absence of federal leadership,” Newsom said, leaving the door open for the possibility of calling lawmakers back for a special session to further tackle the issue.
The news conference came on Newsom's last day to sign or veto bills before he terms out in January. He started the event by signing a law creating a tax credit program aimed at helping local news organizations — including newspapers, digital outlets and TV stations — hire and retain journalists. Newsom criticized what he called Trump's assault on a free press, pointing to the president's barring of news organizations from the White House.
Newsom also spoke about the upcoming midterms, which will decide control of Congress. He involved himself early in that fight by leading Democrats last year in a redistricting battle to improve their chances of winning more House seats. He's said repeatedly that the stakes are high if his party doesn't succeed in November.
“There will not be a free and fair election in 2028 unless we take back the House of Representatives,” he said Wednesday.
Asked if he's set a deadline for himself to decide whether he'll run for president in 2028, Newsom hedged, saying “that moment will arrive when it arrives.”
Former Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who, like Newsom, hails from the San Francisco Bay Area, has also said she’s considering running for the job in 2028. Newsom told CNN recently that he wouldn’t run for president if she entered the race. He said the two haven't spoken since that interview aired.
Newsom weighed in on a proposal to temporarily raise taxes on billionaires that will be on the ballot in November, which he's consistently opposed. He said he respects supporters of the measure, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who are committed to addressing income inequality in the country.
“He's spot on about the balance between the rich and the poor,” Newsom said. “On this issue, we fundamentally disagree.”
Newsom's remarks came hours before a gubernatorial debate between Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton.
“You're going to ask me, ‘Are you going to watch the debate?’” he said. “No.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom pauses while discussing environmental issues in San Francisco, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Tennessee may proceed with the execution of Christa Gail Pike, overturning a last-minute stay that was issued by an appeals court hours earlier.
Pike, 50, was scheduled to die by lethal injection in the morning for the 1995 stabbing and beating of a classmate, and witnesses had already gathered at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville when the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals voted 2-1 to issue a stay. That court said a delay was needed to consider whether Pike’s allegations of childhood sexual abuse were fully considered at her sentencing.
The Supreme Court's three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, dissented from the ruling, with Sotomayor writing that it clears the way for the execution to happen “before her still-pending legal challenges to her conviction can be properly considered.”
A Tennessee Department of Correction spokesperson said after the high court's decision became known that the execution would proceed Wednesday night.
Pike, who was 18 at the time, and her boyfriend were convicted of the stabbing and beating of 19-year-old Colleen Slemmer, their classmate at a job training facility in Knoxville.
The case garnered widespread attention back then in part because a pentagram that was carved on Slemmer’s body and other elements of the crime stoked fears of Satan worship during the “satanic panic” of the 1980s and 1990s.
The state’s execution order expires at midnight, according to Kelley Henry, a Nashville-based attorney experienced with Tennessee death penalty law. If time runs out, the state Supreme Court would need to set a new date.
After the stay was issued, Tennessee’s attorney general immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Witnesses and media remained at the prison while the high court considered the case.
The attorney general's office wrote in the appeal that halting the execution at the last moment traumatized Slemmer’s family and rewarded “abusive delay tactics” by Pike’s attorneys.
Pike does not deny committing the killing, but her supporters argue the state should consider her age at the time, her mental illness and her allegations of severe sexual abuse that included being raped from the time she was a toddler.
“It is inconceivable that in the 21st century, the criminal justice system is poised to execute a survivor of rape and child sexual abuse whose jury never had the opportunity to consider those facts in weighing the defendant’s moral culpability,” her attorneys wrote in a filing.
As the execution date drew near, Pike's case renewed debate over the death penalty for young offenders.
Assistant Federal Defender Stephen Ferrell said Pike’s death sentence is an outlier because other 18-year-olds in Tennessee have had such sentences vacated.
After the killing, Pike was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder. In her clemency petition, she said she only wanted to fight Slemmer but killed her in a frenzied attack when she couldn’t “put the brakes on.”
“I was a mentally ill 18-year-old kid. It took me numerous years to even realize the gravity of what I’d done. Even more to accept how many lives I affected. I took the life of someone’s child, sister, friend. It sickens me now to think I had the ability to commit such a crime,” Pike said in a statement.
Slemmer’s mother wants the lethal injection to go forward, saying she has waited decades to see Pike’s sentence carried out.
“Every time I think about it, I think about Colleen feeling that pain and trying to get up and run,” May Martinez told The Associated Press in a telephone interview on Saturday.
Martinez said a group helped raise money so she and her husband could travel from Florida to witness the execution. She didn't respond to a message Wednesday after the execution was halted.
Martinez said her daughter's age also should matter in deciding Pike's fate.
“Not a day goes by, or a minute goes by that I do not think about Colleen. Holidays are the worst,” she said, noting that her daughter would have turned 51 earlier in September.
The killing rocked the city of Knoxville. Prosecutors said Pike, fearing Slemmer was trying to steal her boyfriend, lured her to a wooded area on Jan. 12, 1995. Pike cut Slemmer with a box cutter and beat her with a large chunk of asphalt. Shipp, Pike’s boyfriend, has admitted that he was the one who carved a pentagram, a star-shaped symbol associated with Satan, into her body.
Shipp was 17 when the crime happened and received a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. Pike was the only one sentenced to death.
Tennessee has not executed a woman for at least 200 years, according to Robin M. Maher, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. Older records can be spotty, though, so it is difficult to know precise details about the last woman who was put to death there.
Since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976, 18 women have been put to death, representing about 1% of all executions, according to the center.
Most recently, in 2023, Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin for a 2003 killing, in what is believed to be the first execution of a transgender woman in the U.S. In 2021 the federal government executed Lisa Montgomery, marking the first time in nearly seven decades that it put a female inmate to death.
Pike would be the 30th person executed in the U.S. this year after Florida carried out an execution on Tuesday.
Associated Press writers Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, Ed White in Detroit and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
May Martinez, left, mother of murder victim Colleen Slemmer, walks out of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution during a stay of the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Leslie Brown, right, stands with others in the area reserved for people in favor to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Kathleen Walter prays in the area reserved for people opposed to the death penalty outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution before the planned execution of Christa Pike, Wednesday, Sept. 30, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Abraham Bonowitz speaks during a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
Alonzo Hughes participates in a March 4 Mercy protest against the death penalty at the Tennessee State Capitol, Sunday, Sept. 27, 2026, in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of the Sept. 30th scheduled execution of Christa Pike. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
In this image from video provided by WBIR-TV, Christa Pike cries after being sentenced to death on March 30, 1996 in Knoxville, Tenn. (WBIR-TV via AP)
This photo provided by the Tennessee Department of Correction shows Christa Pike on Jan. 12, 2023. (TDOC via AP)
