Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has pushed his committee’s AI markup to September after bipartisan talks failed to converge on a package, according to a July 29 Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney legislative tracker. What’s now on the table is bigger than a scheduling story: federal preemption of state AI marketing and disclosure rules is, in Cruz’s own phrasing to Punchbowl News, “an element of discussion.”

That framing matters. Cruz’s broader Cruz preemption vehicle would, if it advances with preemption language intact, override the state-by-state patchwork that small businesses have spent the year adjusting to, including California’s AI ad disclosure regime and Texas TRAIGA’s complaint portal.

The schedule has already slipped once. Bloomberg Law reported the markup moved from July 29 into the week of August 3, and an August 5 executive session went ahead covering kids-safety and AI-adjacent bills, including the Cruz-Schatz CHATBOT Act, the Youth AI Privacy Act, and the Children’s AI Toy Safety Act. The larger AI framework didn’t make it into that session.

Two counter-pressures are shaping what September bill text might actually contain. Sens. John Thune and Amy Klobuchar are drafting a catastrophic-risk bill that, per the Buchanan tracker, would build a federal advanced-AI framework while preserving state authority over consumer protection, privacy, and child safety. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, plan amendments watering down preemption clauses; the Washington Post reports they see piecemeal preemption as a route to blanket rollback later.

For owner-operators building disclosure workflows around California’s rules, the practical read is narrow. Don’t rip anything out. Watch for the executive-session notice, and read the actual preemption scope when it drops.

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