Bipartisan Opposition to Cruz’s AI Moratorium Gains Momentum
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Republican resistance to Sen. Cruz’s reckless 10-year AI moratorium, which was quietly inserted into the Senate’s budget reconciliation package, is growing rapidly.
What was once a little-noticed provision has now become a lightning rod for debate, as senators and representatives from both parties sound the alarm over the provision’s threat to state-level AI protections and vital broadband funding.
Momentum has turned sharply against the moratorium in recent days, with opposition coming from:
- Governors like Arkansas’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders;
- 260 bipartisan state lawmakers;
- The vast majority of state attorneys general (40 on this bipartisan letter);
- Evangelical and other religious organizations;
- A growing number of Republican senators.
Similarly, public polling shows that banning state regulation is massively unpopular across the country, on a cross-partisan basis. Strong bipartisan majorities agree that AI harms are escalating — and that in the absence of federal action, states must be able to respond to protect people.
Senator Cruz’s provision would block states from enforcing nearly all AI and automated decision-making laws for the next decade. It also puts states’ share of $42.5 billion in Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) funds at risk. Despite Cruz’s hollow assurances that the provision only impacts new funding, the prevailing legal interpretation — shared by tech policy experts and legal scholars — is that the entire $42.5 billion in BEAD funding is on the line. To Cruz’s disappointment, the Senate Parliamentarian has requested he rewrite the section again.
“Big Tech was able to block even modest regulation of social media, causing severe harm to kids and undermining public trust in basic facts. Now, even as AI harms mount, those same Big Tech companies want to pass a stealth measure to block sensible state regulation of AI,” said J.B. Branch, a technology advocate with Public Citizen. “But lawmakers, regulators, and the American public know better than to trust an industry that has harmed them time and again. Every day, more of Senator Cruz’s colleagues are coming out against this reckless provision because they recognize just how dangerous and wildly unpopular it really is.”