Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) released a 269-page discussion draft of the Great American AI Act on June 4, proposing a three-year federal preemption of state AI development laws and codifying a Center for AI Standards and Innovation inside the Commerce Department. The bill arrived with four cosponsors, Reps. Scott Franklin (R-Fla.), Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), and Scott Peters (D-Calif.), and a 24-hour blast radius of opposition.

The preemption is the part everyone read first. Trahan’s office identified California’s AB 2013 training-data disclosure law and portions of SB 942’s watermarking regime as casualties, and Roll Call reported that frontier safety laws in California, New York, and Illinois would be effectively federalized for the duration. Use and deployment laws are untouched. It’s the development stage, where the safety-pilled wing of the policy world has spent two years building leverage, that gets frozen.

The framework itself isn’t shy. Large frontier developers, defined as those clearing $500 million in prior-year gross revenue, would be required to publish safety frameworks and report critical incidents. The new Commerce center is authorized at $100 million a year for FY2027 through FY2029.

The reaction was instant and unsubtle. Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, called preemption a “generational mistake.” The House Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy said the draft “does not meet the enormity of the moment” and can’t serve as a basis for productive dialogue. Alliance for Secure AI CEO Brendan Steinhauser praised the bipartisan structure while opposing the preemption core. NetChoice’s Patrick Hedger called the federal-standard approach “commendable” before flagging industry reservations on audit and safety-testing scope.

The draft landed two days after Trump’s executive order establishing voluntary frontier model reviews, which means Washington now has parallel statutory and executive tracks running on the same question, with the states cast as the obstacle in both. That framing, more than any single provision, is what the next round of comment will be fighting over.

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