'Reject this': State lawmakers beg Congress to ditch key megabill​ provision

State lawmakers are calling on Congress to abandon a moratorium on regulating artificial intelligence that's included in President Donald Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act."

The moratorium would prevent states from regulating AI for a decade. Tech companies have lobbied for the moratorium to give them room to continue developing advanced AI models.

The Senate parliamentarian recently allowed the provision to be included in the sweeping tax and spending bill because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) changed the language to prevent states from regulating AI if they want access to federal broadband funding.

A bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers pushed back against this idea in a letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).

Signatories to the letter include Wayne Harper, Utah's Republican Senate President, Marcus Evans, a Democrat in the Illinois House of Representatives, Barry Usher, a Republican senator in Montana, and Brian Patrick Kennedy, a Democrat in the Rhode Island state legislature.

"The provision represents a clear overreach that undermines cooperative federalism, jeopardizes children’s privacy and safety and risks disrupting critical infrastructure investments in communities and small businesses across the country," the letter reads in part.

"We urge all senators to reject this misguided provision and instead work collaboratively with state leaders to promote thoughtful AI governance—without coercion or federal overreach," it continues.

The letter was sent at a time when numerous provisions of Trump's tax and spending bill appear to be at risk. The Senate parliamentarian recently disallowed provisions related to offshore drilling, cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and judicial powers from being included in the bill because they violated the Byrd Rule, which requires every item in the bill to have a direct correlation to spending or taxes.