Ted Cruz's AI Regulation Ban Removed at the Last Minute from the 'Major Legislation'

Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” is packed with all sorts of problematic policies, but the Senate did manage to successfully strip it of one: the 10-year ban on state-level artificial intelligence laws. During the Senate’s “vote-a-rama,” it voted 99 to 1 to adopt an amendment that will strike the restrictions on state-level regulations from the spending bill.

The provision, which received a considerable amount of support from Big Tech firms and was championed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz, would have prevented any state that takes funding from a federal broadband fund from passing any legislation that would regulate AI within their borders. The amendment to strip that language out of the bill was proposed by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn and received near-unanimous support, with Republican Thom Tillis standing as the lone “nay” vote.

According to Reuters, Ted Cruz lamented the decision to kill the restrictions entirely, as he had proposed a compromise that would have resulted in a five-year ban and allowed states to regulate a narrow band of issues related to AI, like combating deepfakes of artists, but ultimately voted in favor of striking it entirely. But hey, everyone laments Ted Cruz so, call it even.

It’s unclear if Trump really cares about this particular provision personally (he opted not to weigh in on the issue publicly), but the folks he keeps around him seem pretty disappointed that the provision was killed. According to Bloomberg, White House technology advisers Michael Kratsios and David Sacks both supported the ban. Sacks, speaking recently at an AWS Summit event, warned that regulating AI now would be akin to “killing this thing in the cradle.”

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick also backed the measure that initially appeared in the bill, claiming that it was important for national security to prevent states from passing their own AI legislation. He’s called for a national-level, comprehensive AI regulation, but that is notably a thing that has not happened yet.

Ditching the provision is a win for states, which are moving much faster on regulating AI than their federal counterparts. A total of 47 states have already proposed some form of AI-related legislation, and nearly 1 in 5 have already enacted those proposals into law—including several red states, which flies against the Republican narrative that it’s the Californias of the world that are cramping AI’s style. This also means states won’t be held hostage if they access Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funding, which is designed to expand broadband internet access.