The Billionaire-Backed Push to Ban AI Regulation—for 10 Years

Imagine your state passes a law protecting you from deepfake scams. Or bans employers from using biased algorithms to screen job applicants. Or cracks down on AI systems that track and profile your kids online. Now imagine Congress stepping in—not to offer stronger federal protections—but to ban your state from doing anything about it for the next ten years.

That’s not hypothetical. It’s happening.

Buried in a House Republican budget reconciliation bill—a bill typically used to handle taxes and government spending—is a sweeping ban on all state-level AI regulation. It would nullify existing laws and block new ones through 2035. No oversight. No alternatives. No debate.

And here’s the kicker: Congress has no meaningful AI regulation of its own to replace it.

So who benefits from this vacuum? Not you. Not your family. Not the millions of Americans vulnerable to AI deception, discrimination, and data harvesting.

The real winners are the tech billionaires who are quietly funding this deregulatory push—because they’re paying for a world where they make the rules.

Tech leaders love to warn that if the U.S. doesn’t deregulate AI, China will win the race and dominate the future—but that’s a false and dangerous binary. America doesn’t have to choose between innovation and regulation. From aviation to the internet, our most powerful technologies flourished with strong safeguards. The story of American history, from the industrial revolution to the digital revolution, has shown that responsible regulation is necessary not only to provide for public safety but also to establish a fair and level playing field for the private sector to innovate and thrive. And while U.S. billionaires demand a free pass in the name of “competition,” China is already regulating AI aggressively—and going a step further by working to shape international AI standards on the global stage. In contrast, America’s refusal to act isn’t just reckless; it’s surrendering geopolitical leadership in one of the most consequential technological arenas of our time. The real threat isn’t China outpacing us—it’s America abandoning the democratic values that give us an edge. (I’ll be breaking this down in full in a follow-up post: The China Myth: How Fearmongering Fuels Deregulated AI—coming later this week.)

Let’s Follow the Money

This isn’t just a story about legislation. It’s a story about who’s buying influence, and what they expect in return.

• Marc Andreessen, the powerful Silicon Valley investor with deep AI interests, donated at least $4.5 million to Right for America, a pro-Trump super PAC backing candidates who support a deregulation agenda.

• Elon Musk, owner of the AI company xAI, has spent a staggering $250 million helping elect Trump and GOP candidates who’ll back his preferred policies. He’s openly threatened to bankroll primary challengers to any Republican senator who opposes Trump. He even spent $26 million supporting a Trump loyalist for a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. But Musk’s influence doesn’t stop at campaign financing. He bought Twitter, rebranded it as X, and in the span of a few years transformed the platform into a pro-Trump echo chamber. Under Musk, X has become a megaphone for right-wing views, conspiracy theories, and AI-generated misinformation. Verified accounts, including his own, frequently amplify falsehoods, spread deepfakes, and promote content that erodes public trust in elections, science, and journalism. Musk doesn’t just own a social network. He owns a propaganda engine—and he’s using it to shape public opinion, undercut regulatory efforts, and elevate voices that serve his ideological and business interests.

• And then there’s Mark Zuckerberg. After the 2024 election, Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. But the donation was just the start. In an effort to ingratiate himself to Trump, Zuckerberg has radically reshaped Meta’s policies to reflect Trumpworld priorities:

  • He loosened restrictions on how users can discuss divisive issues like immigration, gender, and sexuality.

  • He shut down Meta’s fact-checking program, putting the burden of policing misinformation on users.

  • He reversed course and said Meta would boost political content in people’s feeds—after previously pulling back.

  • He added UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump ally, to Meta’s board of directors.

  On a Meta earnings call late last year, Zuckerberg also touted that AI-generated content increased engagement by 8% on Facebook and 6% on Instagram. He claimed this improves “user experience,” but the numbers speak for themselves: AI content keeps people scrolling longer, which means more ads, more data collection, and more profit.

This is the world they’re building: a deregulated AI ecosystem, fueled by misinformation, deepfakes, and profit-first engineering—with no government, no state, and no voter standing in their way.

States Are Leading—But Congress Wants Them Out

With Congress stalled on meaningful AI regulation, states have stepped up. And they’ve been effective.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than 30 states passed AI-related laws in 2024 alone—covering:

• Deepfakes in elections
• Algorithmic bias in hiring
• Nonconsensual deepfake pornography
• Creation of unauthorized digital replicas of real people

In fact, Congress’s Take It Down Act—a federal ban on nonconsensual deepfake nudes—only passed after dozens of states led the way with similar laws. State legislatures have been the only meaningful check on AI’s rapid expansion.

Now, House Republicans want to wipe all of that out—and block future laws too. That’s not policymaking. That’s sabotage.

States’ Rights? Not When Big Tech Is Involved

This move also exposes a glaring double standard.

For decades, Republican leaders have argued that states should control how controversial issues like abortion, education, and public health are handled. But when it comes to AI? Suddenly, they want total federal preemption—as long as it means no regulation at all.

It’s not about philosophy. It’s about protecting their donors. When tech billionaires demand a hands-off approach, the GOP obliges.

Profits Over People

The cost of deregulating AI isn’t abstract. It’s already here.

• Deepfake scams are proliferating across social platforms
• AI hiring tools are silently reproducing bias and exclusion
• Corporations are using AI to manipulate consumers and harvest personal data
• Political actors are flooding platforms with synthetic content engineered for outrage and division

Eliminating the states’ role in regulating AI would leave Americans more exposed to harm, with fewer tools to fight back.

And for what? To serve Meta’s bottom line? To help Musk dominate the narrative on X? To allow venture capitalists like Andreessen to cash in on an unregulated AI arms race?

This isn’t “innovation.” This is extraction—of data, attention, labor, and democracy itself.

The Bottom Line

Congress is actively working to dismantle the only effective system we have to govern AI: state-level lawmaking. If the GOP provision in the budget bill passes, states will be banned from enforcing any AI protections until 2035, with no federal rules to replace them.

That’s not just a legislative power grab—it’s a gift to tech billionaires who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure AI regulation dies in darkness.

They’re not funding campaigns to protect your rights. They’re buying a future where they call the shots, and you have no say.

This is what profits over people looks like in the AI age.

📢 If you believe the public—not billionaires—should shape how AI is used in our lives, now’s the time to speak up. Because they’re moving fast—and counting on your silence.