Sen. Marsha Blackburn is “spearheading the negotiation with the White House” on a Senate package that would bundle KOSA, the NO FAKES Act, and a three-year preemption of state AI laws into a single vehicle, according to her spokesperson as reported by Bloomberg Government and Axios. The shape of the bundle, and the resistance now hardening against it, says more about the politics of AI federalism than any single bill.

The deepfakes piece is moving. Senate Judiciary advanced Sen. Chris Coons’s NO FAKES Act by voice vote on June 18, carrying platform penalties of up to $750,000 per embodiment and 15 bipartisan co-sponsors (eight Republicans, seven Democrats). KOSA, by contrast, is the package’s weakest link: 73 Senate co-sponsors, no committee markup, no floor path.

The preemption clause is where the wheels are coming off. On June 16, more than 200 state legislators from 42 states, organized by Americans for Responsible Innovation and The Alliance for Secure AI, signed a letter warning that the freeze would “freeze a sweeping set of state laws” governing child safety, copyrighted training data, algorithmic discrimination, and consumer privacy. The package draws from Blackburn’s 291-page TRUMP AMERICA AI Act discussion draft released in March, and the House companion, the Obernolte-Trahan Great American AI Act released June 4 (which would also impose a three-year freeze and codify the Center for AI Standards and Innovation) is no longer the likely vehicle, per Axios.

Statehouses have spent two years building the AI regulatory stack the federal package is meant to flatten. They aren’t going to let Washington flatten it quietly.

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