Trump's Trials - What's at stake in GOP fight over AI regulation

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

The House version of Trump's budget bill, which is now before the Senate, includes a provision that would ban state regulation of AI or 10 years. Republicans are divided over the provision. NPR's Deepa Shivaram reports. Support NPR and hear every episode of Trump's Terms sponsor-free with NPR+. Sign up at plus.npr.org.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Scott Detro and this is Trump's terms from NPR. We're going to be doing all sorts of things nobody ever thought was even possible. President Trump has brought back strength to the White House. We can't just ignore the president's desires. This will be an entirely different country in a short period of time. Every episode we bring you one of NPR's latest stories about the 47th president and how he is trying to remake the federal government. Today's story starts right after this.

I'm Tanya Mosley, co-host of Fresh Air. At a time of sound bites and short attention spans, our show is all about the deep dive. We do long-form interviews with people behind the best in film, books, TV, music, and journalism. Here our guests open up about their process and their lives in ways you've never heard before. Listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY. Keeping up with the news can feel like a 24-hour job. Luckily, it is our job. Every hour on the NPR News Now podcast, we take the latest most important stories happening and we package them into five minute episodes. So you can easily squeeze

them in between meetings and on your way to that thing, listen to the NPR News Now podcast now. I'm Steve Inskeep. Republicans are not done debating the budget bill they're trying to pass through Congress. Some senators say this bill adds too much to the federal deficit. It increases rather than reduces federal borrowing. Others worry about cuts to Medicaid, among other things. Some lawmakers have raised concerns about other provisions, including one touching the regulation of artificial intelligence. NPR-YDS correspondent Deepa Sivaram is covering that. Good morning.

Hey, good morning. Okay. So in theory, this is a budget bill. It's about spending rates, but there's this provision about AI. What does it say? Yeah, it's kind of tucked away in this really big bill. And it says that most laws that states have passed in regards to AI protections, the federal government would step in and pause enforcement on those laws for 10 years. When I first heard this, I just wondered, is there any chance that, you know, a chatbot got in there and just kind of made that change to the legislation?

I don't think so, because I think it did pass the House, Steve. It got approved. So it's real. Got it. Well, what are some of the laws that would be paused for an entire decade? There's an example that's pretty prominent in Tennessee. They passed what's called the Elvis Act, which protects people like musicians against AI recreations of their voice.

Another interesting one is in Utah. There's a law that protects consumers when it comes to chatting with AI mental health chat bots and half the states in the U S have laws that protect against deep fakes in election materials. And there's a ton of other examples, but the thing to keep in mind is that states have really had to step in and take it upon themselves to pass their own AI laws because Congress hasn't passed

any federal regulation when it comes to AI, despite working on it for years. So that's why states have stepped in on their own and created this patchwork, right? And that's one of the main reasons many Republicans want to intervene here. They say that state laws aren't uniform and that inconsistency hurts businesses and tech companies. Okay. So that's their explanation. Can't do it patchwork state by state. They are, in this case, unlike some others, not in favor of a state by state sort of laboratory of

ideas. What does the White House think of this provision? So I reached out to the Office of Science and Technology at the White House. They declined to comment, but remember that this is a White House that has a lot of players who are close to or have long worked in the tech sector. President Trump has been really clear

that he wants there to be very few roadblocks for AI companies, and that's in line with what some Republicans are arguing here. They don't want anything to hamper AI innovation because they say the US is trying to compete with China. But JB Branch, who works at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, I talked to him and he says consumers need some protections. This is just appeasement to big tech with a giant bow on it. Whatever Congress comes out with isn't going to be perfect.

Not everyone's going to love it. That's how it works. But to say that we're going to rip away any protections while we kind of try to get our act together is recklessly irresponsible. And Branch says that AI innovation in the US is already happening, right? And cutting out state protections would mean

that there'd be no rules curbing these tech companies. Okay, you said this already passed the House. How likely is it to also pass the Senate? It gets a little bit wonky here, so stick with me. For Republicans to be able to pass this big bill on their own, there's a special Senate rule that says that all provisions have to be directly tied to the budget. And this provision on AI isn't budget-related, it's policy-related. And, you know, there's some really vocal Republicans who are opposed. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, Tennessee Senator Marcia Blackburn.

Just yesterday, Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said she didn't know that the provision was in the bill when she voted for it, but she won't support the final version. But keep in mind, Steve, even if this gets scrapped from this bill, that doesn't mean that the idea of stripping away states' AI laws is completely dead because Texas Senator Ted Cruz has said that he would

put it forward in a new package. Deepa Shivaram, thanks so much. Thank you. Before we wrap up, a reminder, you can find more coverage of the Trump administration on the NPR Politics Podcast, where you can hear NPR's political reporters break down the day's biggest political news with new episodes every weekday afternoon. And thanks as always to our NPR Plus supporters who hear every episode of the show without sponsor messages. You can learn more at plus.npr.org. I'm Scott Detrow. Thanks for listening to

Trump's terms from NPR. It all starts with listening. To the person in front of you and the person you'll never meet. To the person living a story and the journalist who helps you see it in a new light. The NPR network is built on listening with microphones in every region so where there any time a voice or sound demands to be heard. Hear stories in the first person, hear the bigger picture on NPR. A lot of short daily news podcasts focus on just one story. But right now, you probably need more.

On Up First from NPR, we bring you three of the world's top headlines every day in under 15 minutes because no one story can capture all that's happening in this big, crazy world of ours on any given morning. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR.