Scalise: Preemption of States' AI Laws Won't Be Part of FY26 NDAA
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told reporters Tuesday that a compromise version of the FY 2026 National Defense Authorization Act still under negotiation won’t include language to preempt states’ AI laws, amid ongoing concerns about proposals tying such a pause to funding from the $42.5 billion BEAD broadband program. President Donald Trump has been eyeing a draft executive order that could force NTIA to deny non-deployment BEAD funding to states with AI laws that the administration deems overly onerous (see 2511200057).
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Republicans are “looking at other” legislative vehicles to pursue preemption of state AI laws after it became clear that the House GOP caucus was split on including it in NDAA, Scalise said. “We need to find a place to do it, [but NDAA] wasn’t the best place for this to fit.” The annual NDAA is “an important bill, but it’s a bill that you have to build a separate coalition on,” he added. “But we’re still looking at other places because they’re still an interest.”
Over the summer, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, unsuccessfully sought for the reconciliation law to allocate $500 million via BEAD in FY 2025 to construct and deploy AI infrastructure (see 2506060029). That legislation would have required governments receiving the new BEAD funding to pause enforcing state-level AI rules. Critics claimed the proposal endangered states’ entire BEAD eligibility.
California Privacy Protection Agency Executive Director Tom Kemp hailed reports of the AI preemption’s exclusion from NDAA.
In addition, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., and 43 other lawmakers urged the leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees Wednesday to exclude AI preemption language from the NDAA. “To preempt state laws would directly kneecap the power of individual state governments to implement the work that has already been signed into law,” the lawmakers said in a letter to House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and the panels’ Democratic leaders. “Not only would this stomp on state autonomy, but it would create an unnecessary regulatory vacuum that lets Big Tech run rampant.”