Democrats Have No Coherent Plan for AI

The Atlantic · Rogé Karma · 2026-11-05 23:22 UTC

<span>Running on the backlash was easy. Getting the specifics right will be much more difficult.</span>

Running on the backlash was easy. Getting the specifics right will be much more difficult.

Among the many gifts that Donald Trump bequeathed to Democrats ahead of the midterms was allowing them the exclusive political use of the AI backlash. Now that Democrats have decisively won control of Congress, voters will expect them to follow through on their rhetoric. The problem is that Democrats don’t actually have a plan to regulate AI. In fact, they don’t even agree on what problems need to be solved in the first place.

Until recently, federal AI legislation seemed impossible until 2029 at the earliest. Trump has consistently opposed any form of AI regulation, going so far as to pressure Congress to preempt state laws. Although some Republican lawmakers have seemed more sympathetic to AI regulation, almost none would dare defy their party’s leader. Of the roughly 150 AI-focused bills that have been proposed during Trump’s second term, only one—a bill that criminalized the nonconsensual posting of sexual images, including AI-generated ones—ultimately passed.

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