The White House met this week with tech companies and kids’ safety groups to try to shore up support for a package of bills that could ultimately preempt some state laws on artificial intelligence, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.
The effort is moving in tandem with a push by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) to pass a clutch of kids’ safety and AI bills.
The Monday meetings — including several with tech companies that have not been previously reported — may represent the latest play by Republicans to block or replace state AI laws, after several failed attempts by the Trump administration and congressional leadership. And it comes less than a week after a separate, bipartisan preemption draft from Reps. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.) and Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) got a tepid reception in Washington.
Still unresolved is whether the White House would seek to block a wide swath of state AI rules — a goal the Trump administration and congressional Republicans have aggressively pursued since last year — or would focus on preempting state action on narrow issues such as verifying social media users’ ages.
“The White House wants to get a deal done, and obviously preemption is an important priority for them that they've had since day one,” said Jon Schweppe, a senior adviser at the conservative American Principles Project and an attendee at one of the White House meetings.
“They understand that a robust kid safety package is how you get to preemption, so they're just trying to piece together something that they think could actually get 60 votes,” Schweppe added.
But some kids’ safety groups told the White House that their support hinges on the inclusion of legislation such as the GUARD Act, a bill that would regulate AI chatbots in a bid to protect kids.
And others fear that the Trump administration plans to use the kids’ safety package as leverage to preempt a broader set of state AI rules.
“Federal preemption is a normal part of our constitutional order, but it’s not normal to trade a kids’ safety bill — or series of kids’ safety bills — for anything broader than that,” said one conservative kids’ safety advocate, who was granted anonymity to freely discuss the proposal.
“What we don’t want to do is make a trade on preemption that is going to block some future action that we need on the state level,” the person added.
According to five people familiar with the negotiations, granted anonymity to describe internal talks, top White House officials met Monday with representatives from four kids’ safety groups in an attempt to sell their new legislative proposal. The officials included Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Ryan Baasch, deputy director of the National Economic Council; and representatives from the offices of chief of staff Susie Wiles and first lady Melania Trump.
In addition to Schweppe’s American Principles Project, the people said representatives from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network and the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center were also present.
The people said the White House gauged the advocates’ willingness to support a package that includes Blackburn’s Kids Online Safety Act and the App Store Accountability Act by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) — bills that would respectively require tech companies to mitigate harms to kids on their platforms and force app stores and developers to verify the ages of their users. The White House also asked about provisions that would preempt some state laws related to kids’ safety online, the people said.
“We were told that this was a baseline, and that there'd obviously be negotiations adding to it, but that this was kind of the core that the White House wanted to promote,” Schweppe said.
He added that the advocates requested that the GUARD Act or other regulation on kids’ use of AI chatbots be included in the package. “We really made the case, and I think they were receptive on the idea,” Schweppe said.
Some of the attendees also pushed the White House to narrow the scope of its planned preemption of state laws. The feeling among the advocates, Schweppe said, was that the White House proposal would override most child safety tech rules enacted at the state level, and that kids’ safety groups would get on board only if those laws were replaced with strong federal regulations on the same topics.
The Washington Post was the first to report on the Monday meeting with kids’ safety groups. Axios had earlier reported that Blackburn was negotiating with the White House on legislation that would address both kids’ safety and preemption.
White House officials also met Monday with top tech companies to gauge their interest in pairing a kids’ safety package with a new preemption push, according to three people familiar with the meetings who were granted anonymity to freely discuss the talks. Representatives from Apple, Meta, Google and xAI attended the meeting, one of the people said. Spokespeople for those companies either declined or did not respond to POLITICO’s requests for comment.
A White House official, granted anonymity to share the administration’s thinking, said the Monday meetings were “pre-decisional” and intended “to gather feedback from stakeholders.”
“Nothing was agreed to. The White House does not have a position on the proposals discussed,” the official said.
Getting all the companies on the same page will be a challenge: Apple and Google have both opposed the App Store Accountability Act, while Meta has aggressively supported it at both the state and federal levels.
All the companies, however, have expressed an interest in preempting state laws around AI and other technologies, preferring a single set of federal rules over a patchwork of state laws they say slows innovation.
“The reports of this proposal or package come as a surprise given concerns raised by industry about these bills and the likely lack of support in the House,” said a tech lobbyist who was one of the people familiar with the meetings.
The new White House package on kids’ safety appears to hew closely to a renewed effort by Blackburn to advance kids’ safety legislation.
In a statement, Blackburn spokesperson Audrey Cook said the senator is “spearheading the negotiation with the White House to finalize legislative text of an AI preemption package that includes protections for kids, creators, and communities through the Senate version of KOSA, the NO FAKES Act, and age verification requirements.“ The NO FAKES Act would create new protections against AI-enabled replicas and deepfakes and allow people to sue over the unauthorized use of their likeliness.
Cook added that the plan is “not blanket preemption of all laws regulating AI or child safety,” and would instead only “preven[t] states from legislating on the same subject matter addressed in the package.”
Despite this week’s flurry of activity, any attempt to pass kids’ safety or preempt state laws on AI faces a high bar to passage. Bipartisan support would likely be essential, particularly in the Senate. And among other concerns, it is unclear whether any Democrats would back legislation that could block states from regulating AI or protecting kids.
“Everything I've heard so far about Senator Blackburn being charged with putting it together has sounded partisan to me, and I just don't think that has a chance of passing,” said Trahan, the Democratic co-author of last week’s bipartisan House proposal on AI preemption.
But Schweppe said the odds for a successful preemption push have risen dramatically now that the White House appears to be engaged.
“And then the question is just, is there a package including preemption that the Democrats will vote for?” Schweppe added. “If not, is there a kid safety package without preemption that Republicans will support? And I don't know the answer to those questions."
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