‘This is going to hurt Utah’: Utah’s top politicians warn about AI provision in the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

When Utah Rep. Doug Fiefia — a Republican freshman lawmaker with a background in the tech industry — found out about the proposed moratorium on state-level artificial intelligence included in President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” he said he was shocked.

“It came across my desk, and I honestly couldn’t believe that it was in there,” Fiefia said in an interview Thursday. “The first thought I had was, ‘This is going to hurt Utah.’”

By then, the bill had already passed the U.S. House of Representatives, garnering votes in favor from all four House members from Utah. At least one Republican lawmaker, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, said she hadn’t been aware of the provision when they voted on it, and that if it remained in the bill when it returned to the House from the Senate, she would not support the legislation.

But, three weeks later, the moratorium is still in the bill with only a slight change: Now, instead of an outright ban, a Senate proposal would strip states of broadband funding if they regulate AI or enforce existing AI regulations — putting estimated $5 million in annual funding at risk for Utah, according to Fiefia.

Utah lawmakers have consistently made tech safety and security, particularly regarding the access children have to sensitive materials online, a legislative priority, and in recent years, have passed a series of bills aiming to regulate the use of AI, including one during the last session that put guardrails on its use for generating police reports.

But now, the proposed federal moratorium has put Utah’s Republican lawmakers — including Gov. Spencer Cox, House Speaker Mike Schultz and Senate President Stuart Adams, all of whom have come out against the provision — at odds with some in their party in Congress, and has thrust the state into negotiations over one of the most contentious parts of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.”

In a statement shared with The Salt Lake Tribune, deputy chief of staff for the Utah State Senate Aundrea Peterson said conversations with the federal delegation and the White House about the bill remained “active and productive.”

“Senators are working closely with federal partners to ensure the best possible outcome. There are many aspects of the bill that senators strongly support, and they are actively engaged in refining the areas they believe can be improved,” Peterson said Wednesday, adding the lawmakers remain optimistic.

As part of those conversations, Fiefia visited Washington, D.C. this week to meet with Utah’s all-Republican federal delegation — which includes Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis and House Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Mike Kennedy and Burgess Owens — and express the concerns shared by dozens of Utah’s lawmakers and elected officials. As of Thursday evening, Fiefia said he’d met with nearly all of Utah’s delegation or representatives from their offices, including Lee and Curtis, who are set to vote on the bill as soon as it comes to the Senate floor.

“It is not nothing,” Fiefia said of the potential loss of federal broadband funding for Utah. “When you compare it to the $30 billion budget that Utah has each year, it may seem inconsequential, but this is money that is going to spread broadband and infrastructure to rural and underserved areas, and we have a lot of rural areas in our state, so this money is important.”

He added, “All of the policy that we’ve done previously in the last two to three years would put us in jeopardy of not receiving that funding if we were to enforce it, or if we were to write any other legislation further on AI.”

‘Lockstep with state-level officials’

Some Republican senators, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee and Josh Hawley of Missouri, have been pushing for an amendment to the legislation that would strip it of the AI provision. Fiefia said he is hopeful that they will be successful.

Later Thursday, the Senate parliamentarian requested a rewrite of the provision to adhere to Senate rules.

Additionally, Fiefia said that as of Thursday evening, everyone he’d met with during his trip to Washington had expressed support for the work Utah lawmakers have done on tech and AI regulation. Some, he said, shared “concern around the language [and] around it being a 10-year moratorium.”

But it’s still unclear if members of the Utah delegation will vote against a budget bill that includes a ban on AI regulation.

“I think Utah does an exceptional job — our state legislature, our governor, they really focus on making sure kids are safe online,” Moore, Utah’s only member of House leadership, said during an interview earlier this month. “Saying that states can’t do any type of regulatory work on AI over the next decade is not something that we would ultimately support.”

Still, Moore said, he voted for the House bill because he was “not going to defund the entire military over this,” and he was confident, he added, that the provision would eventually be removed by Senate lawmakers.

On Friday, a spokesperson for Moore reiterated his opposition and said the representative had met with Fiefia and had “regularly been in touch with Governor Cox’s office on this.”

“Our team is in lockstep with state-level officials on this issue, as we do not support the provision or the changes that have been made that penalize federalism,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. “We are hopeful Senators can offer and successfully pass an amendment to strip the provision from the bill.”

And in a statement Thursday, a spokesperson for Curtis said, “Fundamentally, the Senator does not like restrictions on states. The proposal hasn’t been finalized yet, so he is taking more time to understand it.”

Sen. Lee and Reps. Owens, Maloy and Kennedy did not respond to a request for comment.

‘Undermine state sovereignty’

Fiefia’s cross-country trip to Washington isn’t his first effort to express his concern to federal lawmakers. The freshman lawmaker authored a letter to the delegation earlier this month expressing his concern about the proposal. Sixty members of the Utah Legislature from both sides of the aisle — including all four members of Republican House leadership and Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore — joined Fiefia in fixing their names to the letter.

He noted in the letter that Utah was the first state to establish an Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, as well as an AI learning lab and initial regulatory frameworks. “These initiatives allow Utah to encourage responsible AI development, empower industry leaders, and shield consumers from real-world harm, all without stifling innovation,” he wrote.

He argued that states have served as effective policy laboratories and “a blanket moratorium would not only undermine state sovereignty, it would freeze progress in places where policymakers are working collaboratively with industry, academia, and the public to get this right.”

Last week, Schultz and Adams — the two highest-ranking members of the Legislature — followed up with another letter to the delegation, writing, “While the Big Beautiful Bill contains many positive provisions, the AI moratorium language raises serious concerns.”

“While we all recognize the importance of developing artificial intelligence responsibly, our primary concern lies in the potential for this legislation to strip away states’ rights to regulate and protect privacy,” they wrote. “It overrides Utah’s right to craft responsible, locally driven policy solutions.”

On Monday, Cox sent a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, telling the South Dakota Republican, “The moratorium could also hinder our ability to tackle future AI-related harms that jeopardize Utah’s policy priorities. … Companion AI chatbots pose a serious threat to the development of youth. A 10-year moratorium could shield companies causing harm to Utah children and limit the state’s ability to respond.”

If the bill as written does ultimately become law, Fiefia said Thursday, he thinks it’s possible Utah and other states will choose to forgo funding in order to enforce existing and develop new AI regulations.

“We can still win the global arms race with AI, but [only if] we’re still allowing states to adjust and meet the unique needs of their states and their constituents and their citizens,” the representative said. “I don’t think the latest language actually solves the problem.”

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