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, the most comprehensive federal AI governance text Congress has produced and the first to package frontier-model safety obligations with a direct preemption of state development laws. Co-sponsors include Scott Franklin (R-Fla.), Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), and Scott Peters (D-Calif.).

The timing reads as deliberate. The draft landed two days after a Trump executive order establishing voluntary 30-day frontier model reviews, positioning the bill as the legislative scaffolding for an emerging federal posture that’s already moving administratively.

The preemption is the fight. State laws “specifically regulating the development” of AI models would be blocked for three years before the carve-out sunsets, per Roll Call. Trahan’s office confirmed that California’s AB 2013 training-data disclosure law and portions of SB 53 fall inside that perimeter. Deployment and use laws are untouched, and state attorneys general can opt in to receive incident reports and bring enforcement actions.

For large frontier developers, defined as firms with more than $500 million in prior-year gross revenue, the bill mandates published risk-management frameworks, critical safety incident reporting, and semi-annual audits by state-licensed Independent Verification Organizations. Penalties run up to $1 million per violation per day, according to IAPP. Current state regimes cap out between $1 million and $3 million total.

The bill also codifies the Center for AI Standards and Innovation in Commerce at $100 million annually across fiscal 2027 through 2029, extends the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 through fiscal 2035, and orders a jawboning study.

Opposition is already organized. The Alliance for Secure AI is running ads in Massachusetts targeting Trahan over the preemption clause, a signal that consumer groups and state AGs who spent two years building the California framework don’t intend to surrender it quietly.

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