Senate Scraps AI Moratorium
Senators voted 99-1 to scrap the language from Republicans' budget bill Tuesday morning.
WASHINGTON, July 1, 2025 – Senators widely rejected a controversial provision of Republicans’ budget bill that would have barred states from regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years, voting 99-1 to scrap the language early Tuesday morning.
“The Senate came together tonight to say that we can't just run over good state consumer protection laws,” Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., who introduced the amendment with Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement. “States can fight robocalls, deepfakes and provide safe autonomous vehicle laws.”
The provision would have tied funding under the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program to complying with the moratorium, an effort to get the measure past a rule requiring budget reconciliation bills to deal only with spending and revenue.
FROM SPEEDING BEAD SUMMIT
Panel 1: How Are States Thinking About Reasonable Costs Now?
Panel 2: Finding the State Versus Federal Balance in BEAD
Panel 3: Reacting to the New BEAD NOFO Guidance
Panel 4: Building, Maintaining and Adopting Digital Workforce Skills
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, maintained states would only have to comply if they had chosen to accept a portion of the $500 million the provision would have set aside for AI development. Cantwell consistently disputed this, saying the language would have empowered the Commerce Department to claw back already obligated BEAD money if states regulated AI.
Cruz, the main sponsor of the AI moratorium, was unable to generate support among his Senate colleagues and ultimately voted against his own language on Tuesday morning.
An array of state attorneys general and governors, as well as advocacy groups across the political spectrum, had opposed the moratorium. Big tech companies, which are pouring capital into developing AI models, were on board with preempting state regulations and had pushed for the ban.
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., was the only vote against the amendment stripping out the ban. The Senate was still not done with its marathon vote on amendments Tuesday morning.
The House passed its budget bill in May with a version of the 10-year moratorium, and will have to greenlight changes from the Senate before sending the legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk.
Cruz had reached a deal with Blackburn, an opponent of the ban, on a Monday amendment that would have allowed some kinds of state laws to pass muster. Blackburn later withdrew her support from that deal Monday night.
“While I appreciate Chairman Cruz’s efforts to find acceptable language that allows states to protect their citizens from the abuses of AI, the current language is not acceptable to those who need these protections the most,” she said of her and Cruz’s amendment. “Until Congress passes federally preemptive legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act and an online privacy framework, we can’t block states from making laws that protect their citizens.”
Cruz said on the Senate floor Tuesday that the deal with Blackburn would have passed “easily,” if Blackburn hadn't back out. Blackburn then forced a vote on the amendment scrapping the moratorium, succeeding 99-1.
