Obernolte-Trahan Bill Strips States Authority to Protect Consumers, Workers, and Children
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, a draft bill circulated by Representatives Jay Obernolte and Lori Trahan entitled, “The Great American Artificial Intelligence Act of 2026,” was released. The proposed bill would prohibit states and local governments from enacting or enforcing laws specifically regulating the development of artificial intelligence models while leaving oversight largely to a federal government that has repeatedly failed to pass meaningful AI protections.
J.B. Branch, AI governance and technology policy counsel at Public Citizen, issued the following statement condemning the bill:
“This is a disastrous proposal that Big Tech is celebrating. This bill strips states of their authority to respond to real harms consumers are experiencing. Meanwhile it says that Congress will come up with safeguards…eventually. Congress has been unable to pass meaningful protections for children online, consumer data privacy, or many of the other harms posed by AI. Yet the authors of this draft bill want the American people to believe Congress will somehow get its act together to create federal safeguards for AI.
“The bill does not address algorithmic discrimination, housing discrimination, employment discrimination, consumer fraud, youth mental health harms, AI companions, deepfake exploitation, and growing market concentration among a handful of powerful technology companies. At a time when states have led efforts to address AI-generated harms, Congress is proposing to take those tools away. Rather than establishing strong federal safeguards, the bill would preempt state action and defer to future federal testing, evaluation, and oversight frameworks that do not yet exist and will likely be impossible to pass in a divided Congress. The proposal would effectively freeze the most active source of AI accountability in the United States while offering no guarantee that Congress or federal agencies will pass serious AI safeguards.
“The American people will quickly see this bill is not about protecting the public. It is about one thing and one thing only: protecting the profits of tech oligarchs and shielding Big Tech from any accountability.”