June 17, 2026, 19:16 GMT | Insight
The specifics of a “Trump America AI Act” could emerge as soon as next week, and would allow for states to continue to regulate artificial intelligence in many areas, US Senator Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday. However, Blackburn said the states under the "light touch" regulatory proposal will not be able to regulate children's online safety, intellectual property protection for content creators, protecting communities from high electric rates and job loss, and looking at censorship and bias in the training of AI system. Whether states will be willing to accept that more limited role remains to be seen.
The specifics of a “Trump America AI Act” that could emerge as soon as next week will include a limited preemption of state laws and will hand lead enforcement authority to the
US Federal Trade Commission, US Senator Marsha Blackburn said Wednesday.
Blackburn, a Tennessee Republican who is helping lead the effort in Congress to flesh out a regulatory framework President Donald Trump released in March (see
here) to lightly regulate artificial intelligence and preempt certain state AI laws, said at an AI conference* in Washington that the bill would focus on key areas she calls the “four Cs” — children’s online safety, content creators, protecting communities from high electric rates and job loss, and looking at censorship and bias in the training of AI systems.
Blackburn said she has been working with White House AI tech policy leaders including David Sacks** and Michael Kratsios on the legislation, and she said it will include the text of the Kids Online Safety Act (see
here), and the No Fakes Act (see
here), which is intended to allow creators to protect, control and license the use of their voice and appearance in AI outputs.
“There is no blanket preemption in this — it only covers what is in the bill. States will not be able to legislate on these areas, and then you're going to see the enforcement of much of this go to the FTC,” Blackburn said. She did not take questions after her remarks.
States are going to retain their ability to regulate AI on consumer protection and other issues outside those four key areas through their attorneys general, she said. “We've struck a good balance on that” level of preemption, said Blackburn, who helped lead the move in Congress last year to defeat the Trump administration’s proposal for a blanket 10-year moratorium on state AI regulation (see
here).
Whether blocking states from regulating in those four areas will be viewed at the state level as “limited” preemption remains to be seen. Two state lawmakers active in AI policy who listened to Blackburn’s remarks at the AI conference suggested, however, that the states may not be satisfied with being shut out of areas like protecting children online and regulating AI data centers.
“I will say to the good senator from Tennessee this morning, from my perspective, there's no such thing as a light touch for preemption,” said Maine state Representative Melanie Sachs, who led the effort to pass a bill to pause data center construction in her state. That bill was vetoed by Maine Governor Janet Mills in April.
“What we might have just accepted as, ‘AI is coming, so there’s really nothing you can do about it,’ versus ‘there are things that we can do about it,’ and we are energized . . . is what has changed in Maine even over the last year,” Sachs said. “What's changed is we are now having people in Maine at a local, select-board level, being asked about data centers. And that did not happen before.”
Concerns about data center construction, data privacy and the impacts of chatbots and other aspects of AI on children and teens, said Sachs and a prominent New York state lawmaker.
“If current law was sufficient, we would not see cases of, for example, large language models helping young people self-harm or execute school shootings. We would not see cases or class action lawsuits of mass algorithmic bias in hiring processes with certain companies, like Workday,” said New York state Senator Kristen Gonzalez, chair of the state Senate’s Internet and Technology Committee & Elections Committee.
“So it is clear that there are everyday impacts that come from not having clear governance frameworks and guardrails for regulating newer technologies that we are certainly trying to catch up with.” Gonzalez, who represents parts of New York City, said states must continue to be “idea beds for a good national standard, and we want to continue doing that, because that has been a model that has actually worked for democracy.”
Blackburn said that the outcomes of the social media trials against
Meta Platforms and
Google earlier this year have made tech companies more willing to work with Washington on AI legislation. "I do think that the lawsuits out of New Mexico and California were helpful in showing Big Tech they have a responsibility to consumers," she said.
But while states will continue to have a role on AI regulation, it is a critical national security issue to not allow regulation to hamper the US in leading the world in the development of AI technology, she said.
“This is a race we have to win. We cannot let China win,” Blackburn said. “We don't need to be legislating to a technology, because you will have a new generation of technology before the ink is dry on the bill. So you will see light touch regulation, and we are looking forward to getting this before you very soon.”
*The USA AI Summit 26,” presented by ForumGlobal, Washington DC, June 17, 2026.
**Corrected on June 22, 2026 at 19:40 GMT: A previous version of this item misspelled Sacks' last name.
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