"Defeat of a 10-Year Ban on State A.I. Laws Is a Blow to Tech Industry" 1 July 2025

The defeat early Tuesday of a ban on state laws for artificial intelligence dealt a major blow to the tech industry on the verge of a policy victory.

In a 99-1 vote, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to strike an amendment to the Republican economic policy package that would have imposed a decadelong moratorium on attempts to regulate A.I. by the states.

The before-sunrise vote was a win for consumer groups and Democrats, who had argued for weeks against the provision that they feared would remove any threat of oversight for the powerful A.I. industry...

...The Silicon Valley venture capital powerhouse Andreessen Horowitz and A.I. startups OpenAI and Anduril, a defense tech company, lobbied fiercely in favor of the amendment. They said it was too difficult for startups to comply with dozens of different state A.I. laws...

...“The Senate did the right thing today for kids, for families and for our future by voting to strip out the dangerous 10-year ban on state A.I. laws, which had no business being in a budget bill in the first place,” said Jim Steyer, chief executive of the child safety group, Common Sense Media, in a statement....