Congress Faces Pressure to Regulate AI — Here’s How the Battle Lines Are Drawing

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., considers artificial intelligence a serious matter that requires careful handling, yet he believes companies should police themselves rather than wait for the government to step in with regulation. He has made clear he opposes any slowdown or moratorium on AI development, arguing that such action would hand the global lead in the field to China.

“AI is serious. We do need to make sure that it’s done safely but let’s again let’s apply common sense.”

Johnson asked the heads of the frontier AI labs to police themselves. He stated, “They don’t need the government to tell them to slow it down. If they want to slow it down, they should,” but he cautioned against halting development, saying that “we will lose our edge to China and that has serious national security implications.”

Hakeem Jeffries of New York, who leads the Democratic minority, does not agree. On Monday he said that “It requires decisive congressional action immediately in a manner consistent with what some of the leading AI voices in the country are now saying needs to happen as it relates to slowing things down to protect the health, the safety, and the well-being of the American people.”

Tuesday in Washington, two speakers with very different backgrounds both called for tighter controls on the technology. Steve Bannon, who serves as a key adviser to President Trump, delivered remarks at the event. So did Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a progressive Democrat.

Bipartisan Efforts That Fizzled

Earlier this year, Representatives Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Lori Trahan, D-Mass., put forward a wide-ranging plan that drew little attention from party leaders on either side. The report was issued by a bipartisan House task force in 2024, and it met with indifference from lawmakers across the aisle.

What OpenAI and Anthropic Want

Two of America’s leading AI firms, OpenAI and Anthropic, have signalled their backing for independent watchdogs to oversee how their systems are built.

The Preemption Fight

Kat Cammack, R-Fla., said at an Axios event in March, “The preemption issue is going to be one of the most difficult things that we navigate.” Companies, she said, “are not going to be able to have a framework for 50 different states and really survive.”

Daniel Cochrane is a senior fellow for the Family First Tech initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, and he has said, “What we’ve seen over and over again is that while Congress has essentially fiddled under the influence of big tech lobbyists, states like Texas and Florida and Utah, red states in particular, have been leading the charge to hold these companies accountable.”

This summer, Nicole Alvarez, a senior tech policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, spoke with NPR about the near-universal agreement among Washington policymakers that artificial intelligence is transformative and demands some kind of policy response. The debate, she explained, centers on what governance should look like.

Federal vs. State Regulation

Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, told NPR in June that “Unfortunately we’re seeing a creep of blue state laws” on frontier models, fairness and algorithmic discrimination. He thinks AI should be regulated largely at the federal level but said, “There seems to be little energy being spent on actually writing those standards before this year’s midterm elections.”

Kovacevich wants to see investments in competitiveness, noting, “We are in an AI race against China and the Chinese government is viewing AI as an existential race to win.”

Cochrane cites the GUARD Act, put forward by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., saying it is “would impose restrictions on AI companions for children and impose criminal liability on anyone who makes a sexually explicit chatbot.”

What Alvarez Wants

Alvarez made the remark that “Some uses of AI are so structurally dangerous or misaligned with basic social values that they shouldn’t just be regulated, they should be prohibited outright. For example, banning AI systems from generating child sexual abuse material.”

The Two Sides of Regulation

The State Push

The states that have led on AI regulation are red states like Texas, Florida and Utah. They have pushed for accountability, according to Cochrane, who said Congress has “fiddled” under the influence of big tech lobbyists while these states acted.

Cochrane fears that a sweeping federal prohibition on state AI regulation could lead to nothing happening at all. He noted that nearly everyone in Washington concurs that artificial intelligence is revolutionary and demands some form of policy reaction.

The Race Against China

The discussion centered on international competition, and Kovacevich addressed it directly, saying, “We are in an AI race against China and the Chinese government is viewing AI as an existential race to win.”

The way a subject is framed matters because it shapes how people talk about it. A national standard places limits on what states can do. Letting each state set its own rules allows some to move faster than others. Both sides are working to protect Americans while pushing for what they see as their own best interest.

The struggle has nothing to do with AI safety. It concerns who writes the regulations instead. The rivalry with China serves as the justification. The true competition is over which party dictates what the corporations must do.

AI regulation · Congress · federal vs state · self-regulation · tech policy