Republican plan to overhaul AI rules is hitting a wall

A Republican Party plan in Congress to ban states from regulating AI fails again.

President Donald Trump revived efforts to enact a state-level moratorium on AI regulation last month, declaring in a social media post that “we MUST have one federal standard instead of a patchwork of 50 state regulatory regimes.”

But there is no indication that Republican lawmakers will come together in the near future to include the measure in the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense spending bill that must pass.

An earlier attempt to include a ban on AI regulation at the state level failed in the Republican Party’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill” after blowback from hardline conservatives and AI companies like Anthropic. The Republican-controlled Senate voted overwhelmingly to remove it from broader tax and spending legislation, which ultimately became law on July 4.

This time, the ban didn’t even wipe out the lower house like it once did. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the NDAA “is not the best place for this to fit in.” He added: “We are still looking at other locations, because there is always interest.”

This development sparked cheers from opponents of the measure. “Good. This is a terrible provision and should stay OUT,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said in an X post.

Other critics included Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who argued for maintaining a fence on the federal government’s authority over state legislation. “States must retain the right to regulate and legislate on AI and anything else in the interest of their state,” she said in a November 20 social media post.

The White House remains steadfastly committed to promoting AI development and may revisit the state moratorium in 2026, given the intense interest that Trump – and AI heavyweights such as OpenAI – have shown in the subject. Last month, Trump signed an executive order aimed at paving the way for collaboration between laboratories associated with the Department of Energy and technology companies on using AI to advance medical research.