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 laws that “specifically regulate the development” of AI models. Use and deployment laws are untouched. Frontier-developer statutes already on the books in California, New York, and Illinois would be displaced, including California’s AB 2013 training-data disclosure law and parts of SB 942 on watermarking.

The structural move is familiar from earlier technology fights: convert a floor into a ceiling. State experimentation, which has been the substrate of US AI regulation for two years, gets paused while Washington builds out a federal regime. The draft funds a Center for AI Standards and Innovation at Commerce at $100 million per year across FY2027–2029, and imposes a safety framework and incident-reporting obligations on frontier developers with prior-year revenue above $500 million.

Reaction was immediate and ungentle. The House Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, the Democratic caucus’s own AI body, said the draft “does not meet the enormity of the moment” and “cannot serve as the basis for productive dialogue.” Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation, called preemption a “generational mistake”; ARI had already run Massachusetts ads pressuring Trahan before the rollout. Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI, framed the test plainly: “A national AI standard should protect at least as much as it preempts.”

Cosponsors Scott Franklin (R-Fla.), Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), and Scott Peters (D-Calif.) bring the count to four. Houchin’s framing, “a patchwork of fifty different state laws,” is the industry’s preferred argument verbatim. It’s a discussion draft, not introduced legislation; sponsors are soliciting stakeholder feedback before a formal Energy and Commerce introduction. The pressure campaigns are already running.

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