The Senate strikes a proposed 10-year moratorium on state AI laws by 99 to 1
The US administration's attempt to embed a 10-year freeze on state AI laws into a federal budget bill was stripped out by a 99-to-1 Senate vote — a near-unanimous rejection that leaves the growing patchwork of state AI regulation firmly in place, and federal preemption further away than ever.
The margin is the message. A 99-to-1 vote is not a close call to be relitigated; it is a bipartisan repudiation of the idea that states should be barred from regulating AI while Congress fails to act. Whatever the merits of a single national standard, the Senate signalled that a decade-long freeze imposed through a budget rider is not the path there.
The practical consequence is that the patchwork hardens. Texas's Responsible AI Governance Act took effect on 1 January, Utah requires disclosure of generative-AI interactions, and Connecticut, Washington, Oregon, and others have enacted their own laws. With preemption dead for now, companies deploying AI across the US face a growing thicket of divergent state rules rather than one federal floor.
The contrast with Europe is sharp. As the EU's AI Office begins enforcing a single continental regime this week, the US is moving the opposite direction — toward fragmentation, with fifty potential regulators instead of one. For multi-state deployers, that fragmentation is itself a compliance cost, and the 99-to-1 vote just guaranteed it persists.
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