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A plan backed by Donald Trump to restrict US states from regulating AI companies has provoked a backlash from prominent Republicans and Maga supporters, and accusations that he has caved to Big Tech donors.
The US president on Tuesday called for “one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes” to support the sector’s growth, despite vehement opposition from some Republican senators and governors.
The White House is even considering an executive order that would potentially withhold federal funds from states who attempt to pass AI laws, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Trump’s backing of a federal framework — a priority for Silicon Valley lobbyists who fear restrictions on AI from some states — came two weeks after a group backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and an OpenAI co-founder was formed in Washington in part to fight state-led legislation.
Build American AI’s leader Nathan Leamer visited the White House just hours before Trump announced his decision to back the move that had already ignited outrage among some Republicans.
“Shows what money can do,” US Senator Josh Hawley, who helped derail an effort to restrict state-led AI regulation earlier this year, wrote of the similar proposal’s revival earlier this week.
The criticism from within Trump’s own party comes amid disquiet in the Maga movement about his handling of an affordability crisis in the US and over his relationship to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the plan supported by Trump was “an insult to voters”. The proposal would “prevent states from protecting against online censorship of political speech, predatory applications that target children, violations of intellectual property rights and data centre intrusions on power/water resources”.
An attempt to stop states from making their own AI rules for a decade failed in the summer after a revolt from Republicans in Congress, Trump allies such as Steve Bannon and child safety campaigners. The measure to restrict the state was defeated by 99 votes to one in the Senate.
Anxiety over AI tools has sharpened in recent months amid reports of users dying by suicide following interactions with chatbots and the proliferation of AI-generated pornography. The industry’s own leaders have warned that the technology will herald widespread job losses, while some analysts fret that a boom in AI investment is creating a bubble in financial markets.
But pressure from Big Tech bosses, Trump’s AI tsar David Sacks and a $100mn fund to help promote pro-AI congressional candidates has helped revive a similar proposal to restrict state AI laws, winning the president’s support.
A tech official with knowledge of negotiations on Capitol Hill said they were confident the new proposals would meet less resistance, as they could include child safety rules and safeguards around mental health.
But senior Republicans have remained critical.
Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as Trump’s White House press secretary in his first term, came out strongly against the move. “Now isn’t the time to backtrack,” she wrote. “Drop the pre-emption plan now and protect our kids and communities.”
Conservative lawyer Mike Davis, who led the backlash against the moratorium in the summer, claimed the industry wanted a “licence to steal and profit from copyright owners across America”. He said the move would “harm conservatives, children, communities and creators”.
Build American AI’s Leamer told the Financial Times that while “there are real consternations from a number of different constituencies”, the measure could now get through with support from Democrats.
“It’s based on the [coalitional] way we did crypto . . . it’s truly about having a balanced policy,” Leamer added. “You need the accelerationists and the people who are concerned about protecting consumers to work together, to make sure they are putting this framework together.”
Some Republicans in Congress have warned that Trump’s embrace of lighter-touch AI regulation could hurt them electorally, according to a person close to the party leadership, amid concerns about job losses, high energy prices or child safety due to AI.
A survey carried out by YouGov in June for the Institute for Family Studies, which campaigns for tighter AI regulations, found that just 18 per cent of voters supported the effort to stop states regulating the tech.
Research by Pew in September found that about half of Americans feared AI would be detrimental to forming relationships.
“It’s hard to understand how, in any conceivable way, this is beneficial for the Republican party,” Michael Toscano of the Institute for Family Studies said of the pre-emption proposals backed by Trump.
“You can just imagine the presidential debate in 2028. Your party shoved through an AI pre-emption when voters were overwhelmingly opposed to it. Now, this boy has committed suicide. Now, these workers are out of work. Now the voices of these religious communities are being drowned out.”
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