Sen. Marsha Blackburn walked into the Oval Office Monday with a package that would’ve handed the tech industry its most coveted regulatory win of the year, and walked out without a Truth Social endorsement the White House had already drafted. Sen. Ted Cruz, sitting in the same room, raised objections. The post never went up.

According to the Washington Post, Blackburn’s pitch to President Trump bundled a stack of kids-safety bills, KOSA (S. 1748), the Kids Off Social Media Act (S. 278), the NO FAKES Act, the CHATBOT Act, the App Store Accountability Act, and potentially the Parents Over Platforms Act, with what she described as a “very narrow” federal preemption of state AI laws. It’s the legislative vehicle venture capitalists close to the White House have been chasing for the better part of a year.

Cruz has other ideas. Bloomberg Government reported on July 14 that he’s still targeting July 29 for a Senate Commerce markup, but no text is public five days out, and Tuesday’s Executive Session 23 ran an agenda limited to aviation and transportation. The absence is the story.

The Center for Democracy & Technology has already argued the package doesn’t earn preemption: none of the bills meaningfully restrict AI data use or bar discrimination in housing, employment, credit, education, or healthcare. The House’s own kids-safety vehicle (H.R. 7757) declined to preempt non-conflicting state laws. That’s the ceiling Blackburn was trying to raise.

The venture capitalists aren’t waiting. Per the Post, they’re already pivoting to a piecemeal state-by-state fight. When the cleanest federal vehicle can’t survive a single Oval Office meeting, the industry reads the room and redeploys.

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