Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants to enforce a 10-year moratorium on AI regulation by making states ineligible for broadband funding if they try to impose any limits on development of artificial intelligence.

The House previously approved a budget bill that contained a fairly straightforward provision to ban state AI regulation for 10 years. Cruz, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, yesterday released budget reconciliation text that takes a different approach to preventing states from regulating AI.

Cruz's approach may be an attempt to get around the Senate's Byrd Rule, which limits the inclusion of "extraneous matter" in budget reconciliation legislation. He wants to make it impossible for states to receive money from the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program if they try to regulate AI. Cruz released a summary that says his bill "forbids states collecting BEAD money from strangling AI deployment with EU-style regulation."

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The US Senate today voted along party lines to kill a Federal Communications Commission program to distribute Wi-Fi hotspots to schoolchildren, with Democrats saying the Republican-led vote will make it harder for kids without reliable Internet access to complete their homework.

The Senate approved a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to nullify the hotspot rule, which was issued by the Federal Communications Commission in July 2024 under then-Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The program would be eliminated if the House version passes and President Trump signs the joint resolution of disapproval.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) announced the plan in January, saying the FCC program would "imped[e] parents' ability to decide what their kids see by subsidizing unsupervised access to inappropriate content." He also alleged that the hotspot program would shift control of Internet access from parents to schools and thus "heightens the risk of censoring kids' exposure to conservative viewpoints."

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