Donald Trump said on Truth Social this morning that he plans to sign an executive order that will preempt any and all state regulations on AI, which was apparently news to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who just last week announced a proposal to establish an AI Bill of Rights for Floridians and introduce protections for communities where AI data centers are being built.
DeSantis’s Bill of Rights would establish several protections that mirror what other states like California have done, including requiring companies to notify a consumer when they are interacting with a chatbot, prohibiting companies from using a person’s likeness without consent, and restricting companies from sharing user information with third parties. The bill also hits on some more conservative-aligned concerns, as well, like banning any local government from using “Chinese-created AI tools” like DeepSeek.
Two specific industries also get a call-out in DeSantis’ proposal: mental health services and insurance providers. The bill of rights would prohibit any licensed therapist or mental health counselor from using AI and bar AI imitations of a licensed professional. It would also limit the ability of insurance companies to use AI for claims, preventing them from relying on AI as the sole determiner in adjusting or denying a claim.
In a separate proposal, the Florida governor also introduced potential protections for Floridians who may have a data center as a neighbor. Most notably, the proposal would prohibit utilities from charging residents more on their energy bills to support hyperscale data centers. It’d also restrict taxpayer subsidies flowing to Big Tech firms setting up shop in the Swamp State, give local governments more ability to block unwanted projects, and prevent the construction of data centers on agricultural lands or nature reserves. It also slips in an apparent ban on the construction or operation of data centers by “foreign principals.”
All of that sounds, frankly, pretty solid! It was good enough to piss off the people at the prominent conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute, which accused DeSantis of “drifting toward the regulatory reflexes” of blue states, and at the center-right R Street Institute, which accused Florida’s governor of “opening the door to let Gavin Newsom and Zohran Mamdani run America’s AI marketplace and decimate our nation’s ability to counter Chinese advances in the rising AI Cold War.”
DeSantis will also find President Trump on the opposite side of this fight. Trump said he will be introducing “One Rulebook” for AI, which could be read as finally passing a federal framework or (more likely) could mean he will finally give the AI industry what it has been asking for and attempt to prohibit states from passing AI regulations. There are some similarities in this case to Trump’s handling of healthcare, which involves constantly threatening to repeal the Affordable Care Act because of its shortcomings, while having nothing waiting in the wings to replace it. Technically, banning states from having their own rules does create a single rulebook, but it just has no rules in it.
The AI battle has caused some rifts within the MAGA movement, most notably being one of the areas of disagreement that eventually pushed Marjorie Taylor Greene out. And while it’s hard to imagine a fight over state-level regulations would be enough to split the party, there’s certainly a start of a tear in the fabric. DeSantis seems like he might be ready to keep pulling where it’s threadbare.
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