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, paired with co-sponsors Scott Franklin (R-Fla.), Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.), Erin Houchin (R-Ind.), and Scott Peters (D-Calif.). The architecture is familiar from years of telecom and platform fights: build a federal floor on frontier-model safety, then preempt the states that have spent two years building their own.

That preemption runs three years, applying to state laws “specifically regulating the development” of AI models, per Roll Call. California, New York, and Illinois statutes are the obvious targets. General-applicability laws and post-deployment rules, chatbot disclosure regimes, child-safety provisions, are carved out, which is where the negotiation will live.

The frontier obligations attach to developers with more than $500 million in prior-year gross revenue, who would be required to publish safety frameworks and report critical incidents. “Catastrophic risk” is defined concretely: foreseeable death or injury to more than 50 people, or more than $1 billion in property damage. The bill codifies the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, with a Commerce-appointed director and $100 million per fiscal year, drawing on Sen. Todd Young’s Future of AI Innovation Act of 2026, according to FedScoop. It extends Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 authorities through fiscal year 2035, funds a DOE/NIST/NSF testbed, opens CISA grants to open-source maintainers, and adds whistleblower protections plus penalties for AI impersonation of government officials.

Americans for Responsible Innovation is already running ads in Massachusetts pressuring Trahan to drop the preemption. “This bill takes the current floor on state AI legislation and turns it into a federal ceiling,” the group’s Carson said. Steinhauser added that the federal package “does not justify preempting states’ ability to pass their own AI safeguards.”

Trahan has signaled the text could move before formal introduction. The fight over those carve-outs is the bill.

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