AI Policy Newsletter - June 13, 2025

• The Senate Commerce Committee Republicans pared back language for a blanket 10-year moratorium on state and local AI regulations in their piece of the Senate’s reconciliation package released June 5. Instead of a blanket moratorium, the Committee Republican draft would withhold federal broadband funding from states that pass laws regulating AI. This latest proposal has faced swift and bipartisan opposition including from Senate Commerce Committee Democrats and GOP members like Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Senate Commerce Committee member Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who criticized it as federal overreach and a threat to states' rights. While Republican Senate leadership has given a self-imposed deadline of July 4 to pass its version of the reconciliation package, that timing could slip until later in July, and it remains to be seen whether this new AI provision can pass the chamber’s “Byrd bath” process.

  
  

• On June 3, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced plans to change the name of the AI Safety Institute to the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI). In the agency’s press release, Lutnick stated, “for far too long, censorship and regulations have been used under the guise of national security. Innovators will no longer be limited by these standards.” The press release notes CAISI’s priorities across improving security, evaluating national security risks in AI systems, and guarding against “burdensome and unnecessary regulation of American technologies by foreign governments.” 

  
  

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