A Republican plan in Congress to ban states from regulating AI is once again in limbo.
President Donald Trump last month renewed efforts to enact a moratorium on AI regulation at the state level, saying in a social media post: “We must have one federal standard, not a patchwork of 50 state regulatory systems.”
But there is little sign that Republican lawmakers will rally together anytime soon to include the bill in the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass annual defense spending bill.
An earlier attempt to include a ban on state-level AI regulation was dropped from Republicans’ so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” after pushback from hardline conservatives and AI companies like Anthropic. The Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly voted to remove the bill from the sweeping tax and spending bill that was ultimately passed on July 4.
The latest ban failed to even pass the House of Representatives, as it had in the past. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the NDAA “wasn’t the right place for this.” He added: “There is still interest, so we are considering other locations.”
This development was met with cheers from the opposition. “Good. This is a terrible provision and should be banned,” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said in an X post.
Other critics included Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who advocated for not putting up fences on the federal government’s authority to enact state laws. “States must retain the right to regulate and legislate AI and anything else in their national interest,” he said in a social media post on Nov. 20.
The White House remains committed to accelerating AI development and may reconsider the National Development Moratorium in 2026, given the strong interest in the issue from President Trump and leading AI companies such as OpenAI. Last month, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at paving the way for Department of Energy laboratories to work with technology companies to leverage AI to advance medical research.
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