The question of whether states should regulate artificial intelligence has opened the most visible split between two irreconcilable factions within MAGA: secular techno-libertarians and religious paleo-conservatives.
Donald Trump's AI Action Plan, issued in the summer of 2025, called for deregulation to unleash "global AI dominance". David Sacks, Trump's "AI and Crypto Czar" and a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, rails against what he claims are 1,000 bills introduced across all 50 states to regulate AI, calling them part of a "doomer-industrial complex". He supports a federal moratorium on state AI bills. Trump has taken Sacks's side, arguing for "one federal standard instead of a patchwork of 50 state regulatory regimes".
Prominent venture capitalists including Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz and Greg Brockman, co-founder of OpenAI, have thrown their weight behind "Leading the Future", a super PAC with more than $100m in funding that lobbies against state-by-state AI regulations. A similar federal law, which would have imposed a ten-year moratorium on state-level AI laws, failed in the Senate in July 2025. On November 19th 2025 the Trump administration considered imposing an executive order to quash state regulation, hoping to get ahead of a New York law seeking to regulate large language models, following the passage of a similar law in California in September 2025.
Steve Bannon has warned that AI would soon engender "the most fundamental, radical transformation" in human history and "must be stopped, slowed down and put in the control of humans". He accuses big tech of using AI to create "techno-feudalism" in which average Americans would be reduced to "digital serfs".
Marjorie Taylor Greene warns that AI will lead to mass unemployment among working-class Americans. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, rails against "transhumanism" and warns that "Americanism and the transhumanist revolution cannot coexist".
Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida, opposes stripping states of the right to regulate AI, arguing it would let big-tech firms run rampant. The Heritage Foundation is similarly suspicious. "Because of the last several decades...the trust reservoir is depleted," says Wes Hodges of the think-tank.
Angela Paxton, a Republican state senator from Texas, helped pass a state ban on using AI to create sexually explicit content featuring children. She says she broadly supports AI experimentation but draws "the line when it comes to beta testing on our children".
A new $10m initiative from the America First Policy Institute, a group with deep ties to the Trump team, is trying to ease divisions within MAGA by developing policies that would support workers affected by AI.
Anthropic's announcement of Claude Mythos on April 7th 2026 marked a turning-point. The model's ability to find software vulnerabilities was so alarming that Dario Amodei reserved it for around 50 big firms rather than releasing it broadly. Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, summoned the biggest banks for urgent talks. OpenAI followed a week later by rolling out a tailored version of GPT-5.4 to a limited group of vetted cyber-security professionals.
A regulatory model is emerging from these decisions. Trusted users would get early access to the most powerful new models; before broader commercialisation, the government could demand certification from industry-led bodies that have tested models for different uses. The approach avoids the lengthy process of creating a new regulator, but critics warn it will reduce competition, slow diffusion of AI's benefits and create a two-tier economy in which insiders are protected from frontier threats while outsiders are left to hope for the best.
Public opinion is turning hostile. Seven in ten Americans think AI will hurt job opportunities, a sharp rise from a year ago. Grassroots opposition to data centres is surging. Members of the Trump administration previously inclined to worry about overregulation have been unnerved by the models' capabilities.
A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in time of trouble.