When the One Big Beautiful Bill was passed by the House, a provision to void and block all state regulation of AI for a decade was tucked quietly inside of it. One prominent Republican representative admitted that she “did not know” it was even there.
For many Republican senators, it seemed far-fetched that the original provision would pass the Byrd Rule, a parliamentary procedure that blocks anything unrelated to the federal budget from being included in the final reconciliation package. But, despite the general confidence that the Senate Parliamentarian would weed it out, it surprisingly passed and now has a very good chance of becoming law.
But as the moratorium’s momentum grew, so did its opposition. Republican Senators Marsha Blackburn, Josh Hawley, and Rand Paul sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune requesting that the AI moratorium be removed from the reconciliation bill. Others like Rep. Marjorie Tailor Green and Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders have also come out in opposition to the moratorium. Now, its fate is suddenly uncertain, as it might be defeated by a bipartisan vote for an amendment to kill it.
We have previously called upon Republican senators to say no to the moratorium, arguing that it is possible to promote “AI innovation without sacrificing other human goods.” Still, the pressure upon Republican senators to support the provision is immense. The GOP’s desire to accelerate AI innovation is understandable as an effort to outpace national security threats and economic competition from China. It also, proponents argue, promises to immunize a critical industry from being smothered by the imperious regulatory spirit of blue states like California, Colorado, and New York.
The senate version of the bill has been changed multiple times to satisfy the Senate Parliamentarian and rally floundering support for the provision. Instead of a universal 10-year moratorium in the states, Congress is now threatening to withhold federal broadband funding from states that regulate AI. If a state takes a single new dollar of so-called BEAD funds, the moratorium kicks in. The odd thing about this maneuver—as scholars at the Heritage Foundation have argued—is that it will most likely punish poorer red states who rely on federal dollars for their broadband infrastructure, and will leave blue states with huge annual budgets, like New York and California, unphased and primed to continue to regulate AI. The spirit of the provision remains the same, however: block states from governing how AI affects the lives of their citizens.
The Republican senators who oppose the moratorium simply don’t believe that these national security goals should require legislators to sacrifice American families to unbridled corporate and technological power. For them, it is a matter of moral duty to protect a law in Utah, for instance, that regulates therapy bots from exploiting their suffering users with product advertising from being voided. Marsha Blackburn, who is leading the opposition to the moratorium alongside Josh Hawley, has cited her desire to preserve Tennessee’s ELVIS Act, which penalizes the unauthorized use of one’s likeness and appearance, as motivation for her stance.
These Senators are not alone in their opposition. In a new survey with YouGov, we found that voting Americans oppose the moratorium by a margin of 3 to 1. Only 18% of Americans support it, with a strong majority (55%) opposed.
Opposition to the moratorium is bipartisan, transcends income brackets, and unites all age groups, our poll found. But none are so overwhelmingly against it as people from age 18 to 34, who oppose the moratorium by an incredible margin of 7 to 1, with 70 percent against it and a mere 10 percent in support.
Their strong position should come as no surprise. As young Americans try to establish themselves in the workforce, and seek a spouse and consider starting a family, now is the most precious time of all. Today, however, they face one of the toughest job markets in years. According to research from the Federal Reserve, degree holders aged 22 to 27 are experiencing the highest unemployment rates in more than a decade (with the exclusion of the pandemic). And, given that AI is already eroding access to entry-level white collar jobs, it’s no wonder that this demographic doesn’t want Congress tying states’ hands when it comes to regulating AI.
Young Americans also know firsthand the devastation that comes from the premature deregulation of new technologies. Take Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was passed more than a decade before either the iPhone or Facebook was invented. The legislation’s sweeping protections for online service providers shielded app stores and social media platforms from any liability whatsoever for the harms they facilitated. Millennials and Gen Z’ers know to their core the damage that can be perpetrated by these platforms—from cyber bullying, sextortion, addiction, depression, body image issues, and sleep deprivation—and practically all of it was facilitated by a deregulatory politics that allowed Big Tech to profit from exploitation without so much as a slap on the wrist.
Quite clearly, young Americans do not want this to happen again. For them, the future will be the most consequential. They—and their kids—have the most to lose and the most to gain. Naturally, they want those they elect to Congress and the state house to protect them and their families from exploitative uses of what may be one of the most powerful technologies in human history.
Will Congress listen to the American people and allow their representatives to protect them and their families? Or will it enable American technology and business to exploit them for another ten years? The time for choosing is now.