ARI president Brad Carson said, “lawmakers from every state in the country are sending a clear message that the proposed ban on state AI laws would freeze a whole range of common-sense laws that voters depend on.”

There is, he said, “room for a debate on pre-emption of a targeted set of state AI laws with the passage of a federal framework for AI governance. But this proposal fails on all counts, with an overbroad scope and nothing to offer when it comes to federal governance.”

Moratorium would be ‘a historic mistake’

On Thursday, lawmakers from Utah, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Montana held a press conference organized by the ARI to ask Congress to remove the moratorium. There has also been a major new twist since Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill moved to the Senate for final approval, in that Senator Ted Cruz, chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, inserted a clause that would preclude any state receiving funding under the Broadband, Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program if they refused to introduce an AI law moratorium.