$1.1 Billion in Big Tech Political Spending Fuels Attacks on State AI Laws
WASHINGTON, D.C. – President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress are trying to delete state laws that protect the public from harms caused by artificial intelligence (AI), fueled by more than $1.1 billion in Big Tech political spending, according to a new report from Public Citizen released today.
At Trump’s behest, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to completely preempt state AI laws with a provision they hope to add to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the White House is preparing an executive order that aims to undermine state AI regulation.
“The same Donald Trump who postures as an enemy of Big Tech is in fact the industry’s water boy,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “Cozying up to the Trump White House with donations for his garish ballroom, dumping money on elections, hiring armies of lobbyists, and inserting tech executives in top administration positions, Big Tech is getting a massive return on investment. Trump proposes to take care of his Big Tech friends by overriding the bipartisan efforts of states to impose modest restraints on the Big Tech companies that are recklessly pushing dangerous AI technologies on America.”
Big Tech executives and investors spent at least $764.5 million during the 2024 election cycle and over the course of 2025 so far, according to the Public Citizen report. Nearly three-quarters of this sum favored Republicans and nearly half of which was donated by Elon Musk.
The report also documents hundreds of millions of dollars worth of tech industry lobbying, surpassed only by the pharmaceutical industry, as well as tens of millions of dollars given away to Trump’s inauguration, the “Golden Ballroom” replacing the East Wing of the White House, and as lawsuit settlements.
Federal lawmakers have so far failed to adopt nationwide standards to protect Americans from becoming Big Tech’s guinea pigs. But state lawmakers and governors have led the charge to advance and enact laws against AI-generated child exploitation material, predatory deepfakes, algorithmic workplace surveillance and discrimination, and more. Innovative state laws like these are already protecting Americans and demonstrating that supporting technological advancement does not require sacrificing the public’s rights and safety.
A proposed congressional moratorium on state AI rules and an executive order the Trump administration is reportedly preparing to sign aim to erase this progress by stomping on states’ authority with the boot of federal preemption. The order would block or undermine states’ power to protect their own citizens from dangerous AI technologies.
“Nobody voted to hand over our country to Big Tech billionaires like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, X’s Elon Musk, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Palantir’s Peter Thiel, or a16z’s Marc Andreessen,” said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the report. “It’s time for the White House to stop prioritizing the profits of Trump’s biggest Big Tech backers over protecting the American people.”