US senators strip proposed ban on states regulating AI from Donald Trump's megabill
By 99 votes to one lawmakers agreed with critic of the deeply controversial measure
WHAT’S HAPPENED?
US SENATORS have scrapped a deeply controversial move to ban US states from regulating AI. By 99 votes to one they decisively backed Republican senator Marsha Blackburn’s new amendment to strike the proposed moratorium from Donald Trump’s sweeping tax-cut and spending megabill.
Earlier Blackburn tore up a deal she’d reached with Senate commerce committee chair Ted Cruz. Under that short-lived pact the original 10-year ban would have been reduced to five and only apply to states accessing a $500 million AI infrastructure fund.
That amendment to the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) — other provisions are now being decided in a marathon voting session in the Senate — said states would still be able to regulate “child online safety, child sexual abuse material, rights of publicity, protection of a person’s name, image, voice, or likeness”.
However, as we reported in yesterday’s Quick Take, the revised wording said the carve-outs would only apply if state laws didn’t impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI models and systems. That prompted legal experts to point out that several existing and proposed state AI laws would be considered to have such a burden and so wouldn’t be exempt.
In a statement last night Blackburn said that while she appreciated Cruz’s “efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI” the wording was “not acceptable to those who need these protections the most”. “Until Congress passes federally pre-emptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens,” she added.
Blackburn then signed on to Democratic senator Maria Cantwell’s amendment to remove the AI ban altogether from the OBBB while Cantwell co-sponsored Blackburn’s amendment which was also backed by senators Susan Collins (Republican) and Ed Markey (Democrat). Earlier, Cantwell, the seniormost Democrat on the Senate committee, said the Cruz compromise was “just another giveaway to tech companies” which gave AI and social media “a brand-new shield against litigation and state regulation”.
Commenting on the 99-1 vote to strip the ban from the OBBB Cantwell said on X that the Senate had come together “to say that we can’t just run over good state consumer protection laws”. “States can fight robocalls, deepfakes and provide safe autonomous vehicle laws. This also allows us to work together nationally to provide a new federal framework on AI that accelerates US leadership in Al while still protecting consumers.”
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
✨By voting overwhelmingly to remove the proposed AI ban senators defied the demands of Big Tech and the White House. AI developers argued they wanted to prevent an unworkable hotchpotch of 50 different AI laws across the US, a scenario they said would both stifle innovation and hand AI supremacy to China. Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick yesterday said he backed Cruz’s compromise with Blackburn. In a highly politicised post on X he claimed the ban would help counter attempts by California governor Gavin Newsom to “impose a divisive, race-based AI agenda nationwide”. “If we’re serious about winning the AI race, we must prioritise investment and innovation — not DEI ideology,” he said. By ignoring Lutnick’s urging, senators showed they are serious about AI regulation. They would be wise to now act on Cantwell’s call for a “new federal framework on AI”.
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