Senate Commerce Chair Ted Cruz has until close of business today to file notice for a Sept. 23 markup of the Thune-Klobuchar frontier AI bill, according to the Washington Post, citing three people familiar with the committee’s plans. If the notice goes in, a preemption clause that would override state AI laws moves from rumor to live text next week. If it doesn’t, the patchwork small businesses currently navigate across California’s SB 53 auditor regime and Texas TRAIGA’s live complaint portal keeps growing.

Cruz told Semafor Tuesday he’d “love to mark it up this month, if we can get bipartisan agreement,” calling negotiations “ongoing” and adding: “we’re not there yet, but I think we’re making meaningful progress.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she’s “continuing to negotiate” text she described as “focused on getting approvals, presenting your models to government experts, [and] alerting of imminent harm.” Majority Leader John Thune said whether the proposal gets a committee vote “remains to be seen.”

The mechanics are what matter. Per two Senate aides cited by The Next Web, the bill creates a duty of care for frontier developers (Reuters names Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI), lets the Commerce secretary block unsafe model releases subject to federal court appeal, and preempts state enforcement on certain model risks. Sen. Maria Cantwell opposes pairing a weak federal standard with preemption and wants models routed to national labs first.

Cruz has postponed twice already, once from July by a week, then again for kids’ online safety bills. The Senate recesses at month’s end until after Nov. 3. In July 2025, the chamber voted 99-1 to strip a ten-year state AI moratorium from a prior bill. That vote is the ceiling this text is working against. Yesterday’s read on the same deadline holds: preemption survives only if the notice lands.

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