House Lawmakers Introduce National AI Standard Draft

Six members of the U.S. House, led by Representatives Jay Obernolte (R-CA) and Lori Trahan (D-MA) of the Energy and Commerce Committee, released a discussion draft of the Great American Artificial Intelligence Act on June 4, 2026, according to the lawmakers' press release and reporting by Reuters, Roll Call, Politico, and FedScoop. Representatives Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA), Scott Franklin (R-FL), Scott Peters (D-CA), and Erin Houchin (R-IN) joined as co-sponsors, per Roll Call. The roughly 269-page text is being circulated for public and stakeholder feedback before formal introduction, and arrives days after President Trump signed an executive order establishing voluntary federal reviews of new frontier AI models, per Roll Call and FedScoop.

According to Roll Call and FedScoop, the draft would preempt state and local laws that specifically regulate the development of an AI model for three years, while preserving laws of general applicability and state rules governing AI use or deployment. It would codify the Commerce Department's Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI) in statute, authorize $100 million per year for fiscal 2027 through 2029, and formally establish the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, per FedScoop. Reuters and Roll Call report the bill would also direct the Government Accountability Office to assess federal AI adoption and flag statutes that burden AI infrastructure, and would extend the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 through fiscal 2035.

Roll Call reports the draft would require large frontier developers, defined as those with more than $500 million in prior-year gross revenue, to:

• •Publish frontier AI frameworks describing whether a model could pose a "catastrophic risk," which the draft defines as a foreseeable, material risk of more than 50 deaths or injuries or over $1 billion in property damage.
• •Retain an Independent Verification Organization, licensed through CAISI, to perform semi-annual audits of safety compliance.
• •Report critical safety incidents within 15 days and imminent risks within 24 hours, with liability of up to $1 million per day for violations.

In the release, Trahan said, "The threats AI poses to our national security, our safety, and our workforce are here and growing by the day. This bipartisan framework is designed to meet the challenges posed by this rapidly advancing technology without smothering American innovation." Obernolte said the draft "is an important step toward building a clear federal framework that promotes innovation, protects Americans from emerging risks, and ensures the United States continues to lead the world in AI," adding that the sponsors released it "to hear from stakeholders, experts, and the public," per Roll Call.

The three-year preemption drew immediate opposition from AI-safety groups, as reported by Roll Call and Reuters. Brad Carson, president of Americans for Responsible Innovation and a former U.S. representative, called preemption a "generational mistake," saying the bill "takes the current floor on state AI legislation and turns it into a federal ceiling." Brendan Steinhauser, CEO of the Alliance for Secure AI, praised the bill's focus on catastrophic risk but said it "falls short," arguing a national standard "should protect at least as much as it preempts," per Roll Call. Industry group NetChoice backed the overall effort while its policy director, Patrick Hedger, flagged the "aggressive auditing regime and data-sharing requirements," per Roll Call.

Preemption of state AI rules has been the central US AI-policy battleground over the past year, and a bipartisan, committee-backed discussion draft is the most concrete federal framework to engage that fight so far. Approaches that hinge on third-party audits, incident reporting, and licensed verifiers typically raise hard operational questions, including access to model internals, reproducible evaluation methods, and agreed technical thresholds for "frontier" capability, that engineering, legal, and compliance teams would need to work through if such a framework became law.

For practitioners: watch how the draft defines "frontier" models and which developers cross the $500 million revenue threshold; the scope and data-access terms of the semi-annual audits; and whether the three-year preemption period survives stakeholder feedback intact, given opposition from safety advocates and some state officials. The sponsors did not say when, or whether, the bill would be formally introduced, and are collecting comments before doing so, per FedScoop.