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ted cruz
Advocates Warn Against Ted Cruz's Industry-Friendly 'Sandbox' for AI
"The mantra in Silicon Valley is 'move fast and break things,' and that's exactly what Big Tech will do with a green light to override the laws and regulations they don't want to follow," one expert said.
Sep 10, 2025
US Senate Commerce Committee Chair Ted Cruz on Wednesday unveiled a legislative framework for artificial intelligence, including a bill to create a "regulatory sandbox," which the Texas Republican said is part of President Donald Trump's AI Action Plan.
The Strengthening Artificial intelligence Normalization and Diffusion By Oversight and eXperimentation (SANDBOX) Act "gives AI developers space to test and launch new AI technologies without being held back by outdated or inflexible federal rules," Cruz's office said in a statement.
While his office celebrated support for the bill from "notable organizations in the tech space like the Abundance Institute, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Information Technology Council," the consumer watchdog group Public Citizen swiftly sounded the alarm over the industry-friendly proposal.
"Public safety should never be made optional, but that's exactly what the SANDBOX Act does," said Public Citizen Big Tech accountability advocate J.B. Branch. "Companies that build untested, unsafe AI tools could get hall passes from the very rules designed to protect the public. It guts basic consumer protections, lets companies skirt accountability, and treats Americans as test subjects."
"It's unconscionable to risk the American public's safety to enrich AI companies that are already collectively worth trillions."
"The mantra in Silicon Valley is 'move fast and break things,' and that's exactly what Big Tech will do with a green light to override the laws and regulations they don't want to follow," Branch warned. "AI corporate executives see the opportunity to deploy all sorts of unregulated and untested products that can threaten our children's safety, consumers' privacy, and American democracy."
"It's unconscionable to risk the American public's safety to enrich AI companies that are already collectively worth trillions," he added. "The sob stories of AI companies being 'held back' by regulation are simply not true, and the record company valuations show it. Lawmakers should stand with the public, not corporate lobbyists, and slam the brakes on this reckless proposal. Congress should focus on legislation that delivers real accountability, transparency, and consumer protection in the age of AI."
Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI, was similarly critical of Cruz's legislation on Wednesday.
"Ideally, Big Tech companies and frontier labs would make safety a top priority and work to prevent harm to Americans. However, we have seen again and again that they have not done so. The SANDBOX Act removes much-needed oversight as Big Tech refuses to remain transparent with the public about the risks of advanced AI," he said. "This raises many questions about who can enter the so-called 'regulatory sandbox' and why. We hope that we will get answers to these questions in the coming days."
Passing the SANDBOX Act, plus streamlining AI infrastructure permitting and opening up federal datasets to AI model training, is just the first pillar of Cruz's five-part framework. Part two focuses on combating government censorship. The third section is about countering "burdensome" state and foreign AI regulations. Pillar four calls for protecting Americans from scams and fraud, as well as safeguarding US schoolchildren. The fifth prong is about bioethical considerations and AI-driven eugenics.
In the absence of federal regulation, states have acted on AI. As Reuters detailed Wednesday:
Several states have criminalized the use of AI to generate sexually explicit images of individuals without their consent. California prohibits unauthorized deepfakes in political advertising and requires healthcare providers to notify patients when they are interacting with an AI and not a human.
Colorado passed a law last year aimed at preventing AI discrimination in employment, housing, banking, and other consequential consumer decisions. The tech industry has lobbied for changes to the law, and the state legislature recently pushed forward its implementation to mid-2026.
In July, ahead of the introduction of Trump's plan, over 90 groups focused on consumer protection, economic and environmental justice, labor, and more collectively called for an AI blueprint that "delivers on public well-being, shared prosperity, a sustainable future, and security for all."
Branch, whose group is part of that coalition, said at the time that "AI is already harming workers, consumers, and communities—and instead of enforcing guardrails, this administration is gutting oversight."
He said the defeat earlier this summer of a Senate measure that would have prevented state-level regulation of AI for a decade sent a clear message from the public: "No more handouts for Trump's tech bro buddies."
"We need rules and accountability," Branch said, "not a Silicon Valley free-for-all."
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The Texas Floods Are an Object Lesson in Why We Need Well-Funded Public Services
Public services can prevent and mitigate disasters, but they’re being prevented from doing so by politicians like President Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
Jul 16, 2025
Growing up in Texas, many of my summers were spent at summer church camps just like Camp Mystic, where 27 girls died in the recent flash floods. Over 130 people in central Texas have been confirmed dead overall.
Had I been just a few years younger, it’s hard not to feel like I could’ve been one of those girls tragically lost. But this tragedy was no “natural” disaster—it was political.
Texans have gotten used to “unprecedented” natural disasters. When I was growing up, we practically never got snow; now winter storms have become the norm. Hurricanes and extreme heat have become more frequent and more dangerous. And intense rain, which causes flash floods, is worsening.
The evidence is overwhelming: These trends are all happening because of climate change, caused by human pollution. And to stay safe, we need to constantly study the climate to predict these disasters and prevent the worst from happening.
While they cry that there’s no money to fully fund and staff environmental agencies, they don’t think twice about passing a Pentagon budget that’s now over $1 trillion a year, or extending trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Better warning systems may or may not have been effective for such an unexpected flood. Yet it seems unthinkable that better funding could not have helped prevent this tragedy. For one, the Guadalupe River is prone to flooding, but state officials have blocked efforts for years to use Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to install early warning systems along it.
Unfortunately, many of our politicians are outright hostile to funding the agencies that do this vital work—or any kind of public service. Just a few months ago, the Trump administration made sweeping cuts to both the National Weather Service (NWS) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
As I write, 6 out of 27 positions at the NWS Austin-San Antonio office, which covers the affected Kerr County, are listed as vacant, including the position for warning coordination meteorologist. (The previous coordinator took the Department of Government Efficiency’s offer of early retirement.) At NOAA, the cuts have affected hundreds of scientists and reduced the agency’s ability to launch weather balloons to more accurately analyze weather patterns.
Texas Republicans are still defending these cuts. Before all the bodies had even been discovered, state Rep. Briscoe Cain (R-128) tweeted, “We must not allow this great tragedy to be used to grow government.” And Sen. Ted Cruz personally eliminated $150 million for NOAA’s climate change research in the GOP budget (the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill”).
Part of the problem is that public goods like the National Weather Service are “invisible”—that is, you don’t notice them when they’re working well. This makes them uniquely vulnerable to calls for budget cuts, because who’s going to notice understaffing at the NWS?
But when these cuts go through—and understaffed agencies fail to serve their purpose—people say the services don’t work. And there are calls for more budget cuts.
The Trump administration’s proposed 2026 budget for NOAA, for example, cuts the agency’s budget by 26%. And despite widespread complaints that FEMA wasn’t answering calls from Texans during the disaster, the administration has proposed eliminating the agency or devolving it to the states.
Public services are caught in a lose-lose situation: Regardless of their performance, they face calls for budget cuts.
But the politicians that spew this rhetoric often aren’t interested in having efficient public services or reducing the federal debt. While they cry that there’s no money to fully fund and staff environmental agencies, they don’t think twice about passing a Pentagon budget that’s now over $1 trillion a year, or extending trillions of dollars worth of tax cuts for the wealthy.
Attending summer camps are some of my fondest memories from growing up. But for hundreds of families in Texas, that experience has become a nightmare. It didn’t have to be this way—and we can still change course.
Public services can prevent and mitigate disasters, but they’re being prevented from doing so by politicians like President Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, who’d rather fund tax breaks for the wealthy and the war machine.
We need to change the rhetoric around public services in this country, and shine a light on all the good “invisible” services do.
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Critics Say Cruz Proposal Takes Industry-Friendly AI Rules 'From Ludicrous to Insane'
Under Cruz's proposal, states would be required to swear off all regulations on artificial intelligence in order to get funding to improve their high-speed internet.
Jun 24, 2025
Consumer advocates are criticizing a change made by U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the Republican megabill this week that would stop states from regulating artificial intelligence in order to bring it in line with the reconciliation process.
The House's version of the $4 trillion budget package, passed last month, contained a sneaky provision that would bar states from enforcing any proposed or existing regulations on AI programs for the next 10 years, which a critic called "one of the most radical positions Republicans have taken."
However, that version of the provision was rejected by the Senate parliamentarian, who oversees chamber rules requiring that reconciliation measures have a budgetary impact.
Cruz (R-Texas), the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, proposed a workaround: threatening to withhold federal broadband infrastructure funding to coerce states into abandoning AI regulations.
The Senate bill's revised language would impact states' access to funding from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. Part of former President Joe Biden's 2021 infrastructure law, BEAD allocated $42.45 billion to expand high-speed, affordable internet access across the United States. On Sunday, the parliamentarian approved Cruz's updated version of the bill.
"This backdoor preemption not only forces states into an impossible choice between protecting their residents and providing broadband access, but also undermines public safety, privacy, and democratic governance just as AI harms are accelerating," the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said in a Tuesday statement.
States around the country have introduced dozens of bills aimed at curbing the potential harms of AI programs.
Many states have passed or introduced bills banning the use of AI to generate fake "revenge porn" or election misinformation. Some have enacted laws regulating AI in hiring and healthcare to prevent discrimination. Others have taken steps to ensure AI algorithms do not violate copyright protections.
Last week, Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) held a press conference in which they spoke out against the provision.
"They have adopted these laws that fill a gap while we are waiting for federal action," Cantwell said. "Now Congress is threatening these laws, which will leave hundreds of millions of Americans vulnerable to AI harm by abolishing those state law protections."
If the Republican moratorium passes, states will be forced either to dump these regulations and or hamstring efforts to update their broadband internet infrastructure.
"High‑speed internet is now a prerequisite for economic participation, education, and healthcare," said Tyler Cooper, editor-in-chief for the research group Broadband Now.
A nationwide audit published by the group earlier this month found that 26 million people across the United States lack access to high-speed internet. Cutting broadband funding to states could hinder efforts to connect them.
The parliamentarian's decision to greenlight this new version of the bill has drawn sharp criticism from consumer advocates.
"This extreme measure is a clear gift to Big Tech at the expense of everyday people,” said Ben Winters, director of AI and data privacy for the Consumer Federation of America.
The push to deregulate AI has big money behind it. Last week, the Financial Times reported that "lobbyists acting on behalf of Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are urging the Senate to enact" the moratorium.
According to data from OpenSecrets, these four companies alone spent nearly $19 million on lobbying in just the first three months of 2025.
That avalanche of money has left many doubting that Congress will ever regulate AI. But it also may ensure that states can't either.
"The tipping point from ludicrous to insane is making broadband funding for rural and urban communities contingent on states abandoning their right to protect their citizens—fully knowing Congress has not historically and will likely continue not to regulate Big Tech," said J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate for Public Citizen.
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