Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has until end of day Wednesday to file formal committee notice for a Sept. 23 markup of the Thune-Klobuchar duty-of-care bill, according to Axios reporting republished by Sen. Jim Banks’s office. The clock is the story: miss the notice window, and the markup slips past a Senate that recesses at month’s end.

The bill on the table, drafted by John Thune and Amy Klobuchar, would convert voluntary AI safety pledges into a legal duty of care, exposing frontier labs to liability for failing to manage catastrophic risks. Two Senate aides told Reuters, as relayed by TechTimes, that the current text still contains language preempting state AI laws, which is the quiet part small businesses should read carefully. California’s audit regime, Texas TRAIGA, and New York’s RAISE Act would all be pulled into the shadow of a single federal floor if that clause survives committee.

Whether it gets there’s unsettled. Cruz told reporters, “It’s still my hope to have an AI markup this session.” Thune himself said it “remains to be seen” whether the markup happens. Ranking Member Maria Cantwell opposes the voluntary-testing framework and wants mandatory national-lab vetting, per a Democratic committee aide cited by Nextgov/FCW. Trump has been posting against AI regulation on Truth Social. Cruz is still pressing Klobuchar to introduce the bill she drafted with Thune.

The procedural picture as of Tuesday has barely moved. What has moved is exposure: the state patchwork small teams have been racing to meet is one Senate filing away from being reframed as a federal question. By Thursday the committee agenda tells you which regime you’re actually complying with in 2027.

Sources

Sources