The White House is negotiating directly with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) on a federal package that would preempt state AI laws, Axios reported June 8. The vehicle bundles preemption with the Senate version of the Kids Online Safety Act, the NO FAKES Act, and age verification requirements, a legislative trade designed to give every faction in the coalition something to claim.

The arithmetic matters more than the bill text, which Blackburn’s office hasn’t released. Blackburn was the senator whose objection forced the 99-1 vote that killed the 10-year state AI moratorium tucked into the One Big Beautiful Bill. The administration has lacked the votes to override the state patchwork for 18 months, and failed twice in 2025: once via reconciliation, once in a separate Senate vehicle. Flipping Blackburn flips the math.

Her office is careful with the framing. The approach, a spokesperson says, is “subject-matter preemption,” not “blanket preemption.” That’s the concession that makes KOSA and NO FAKES politically legible alongside an industry-friendly override.

The casualty is the bipartisan House work. 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 preemption limited to AI development laws, a $500 million revenue threshold for frontier developers, and statutory codification of the Center for AI Standards and Innovation. California’s AB 2013 training-data disclosure law would fall under it; deployment rules wouldn’t. The Blackburn track moots that calibration.

The states are already litigating. A December 2025 executive order directing Commerce to withhold portions of $42.5 billion in BEAD broadband funds from states with “onerous” AI laws is stalled in court. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser threatened suit; 22 state AGs plus DC pushed back on a parallel FCC effort. Preemption by statute is the administration’s response to losing preemption by decree.

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