If you thought Republicans were done arguing among themselves about AI, think again.
President Donald Trump is revisiting efforts to restrict states’ ability to regulate artificial intelligence, and it’s drawing significant pushback from members of his own party.
In a Tuesday Truth Social post, Trump said that “overregulation by the States is threatening to undermine” the AI industry, calling for “one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes.”
The Trump administration is also reportedly drafting an executive order that would allow the Department of Justice to sue states over their AI regulations, though a White House official told BI that until an official announcement, “discussion about potential executive orders is speculation.”
It’s shaping up to be a repeat of a fight Republicans had over the summer, when lawmakers tried to include a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation into the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
“States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on X on Thursday morning. “Federalism must be preserved.”
The AI provision was ultimately struck from the megabill in a 99-1 vote in the Senate in July, after a series of revisions and a contentious debate among Republicans.
The Trump administration later released an AI Action Plan that called for withholding federal funding from states with strict AI regulations.
Now, Republicans may try to do it again via a must-pass defense bill. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told Punchbowl News on Monday that Republicans were looking at attaching a version of the provision to the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, and Trump indicated that he would support such a move.
“Put it in the NDAA, or pass a separate Bill, and nobody will ever be able to compete with America,” Trump wrote on Tuesday.
Proponents of the idea have argued that it’s important for both the development of the AI industry and competition with China to prevent the emergence of a “patchwork” of different AI laws across 50 states.
Opponents charge that states should have the right to enact AI safety laws, and that those laws are filling an important gap in the absence of federal regulation.
“If it gets in the NDAA, it’ll be a huge problem,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a proponent of AI regulation, told reporters on Wednesday.
Among those pushing back are Republican governors, including Ron DeSantis of Florida and Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas.
“Stripping states of jurisdiction to regulate AI is a subsidy to Big Tech,” DeSantis wrote on X, saying that the provision would “prevent states from protecting against online censorship of political speech, predatory applications that target children, violations of intellectual property rights and data center intrusions on power/water resources.”
“Drop the preemption plan now and protect our kids and communities,” wrote Sanders, who led a group of 20 states in opposing the AI moratorium in the “Big Beautiful Bill” over the summer.
