Republicans are now openly divided over the biggest technological issue of the decade.
Governor Ron DeSantis just drew a hard line against members of his own party.
And the pro-AI money flooding has exposed exactly who is standing with Big Tech and who is standing with ordinary families paying the bills.
DeSantis Calls Out “AI Amnesty” as Political Poison
At an event in Lakeland, DeSantis went after Republicans who want to hand Silicon Valley a free pass on artificial intelligence, calling it a guaranteed loser heading into the midterms.
“If the Republicans that are running in Florida are saying AI amnesty is our policy, that will hurt them,” DeSantis said.
He didn’t stop there. The governor laid out exactly what he thinks a winning message looks like: “If they say, ‘Hey, we protected you against rate increases, we made sure local communities would be able to choose what type of, if any, they want in terms of construction, and then we want to have an AI bill of rights,’ that’s where you get huge majorities.”
That’s not a subtle argument. DeSantis is telling Florida Republicans, to their faces, that siding with Big Tech on AI will cost them at the ballot box.
And the data backs him up. A University of North Florida poll found that 86 percent of likely Florida midterm voters support specific regulations on AI. That’s not a fringe position. That’s a supermajority of the people these politicians need to win.
DeSantis has been the most aggressive governor in the country when it comes to pushing back on the AI industry. Florida passed new restrictions on hyperscale data centers, the massive power-hungry facilities that drive up electricity rates for ordinary families while the profits flow back to coastal tech headquarters. His handpicked Attorney General, James Uthmeier (R), filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman over ChatGPT’s alleged harms. DeSantis contends his approach is a “thoughtful” way to rein in AI without putting American companies at a competitive disadvantage.
But that position has put him squarely at odds with both President Trump and key members of the Florida Republican establishment.
Trump and the State House Speaker Push Back Hard
President Trump made his view crystal clear the same day DeSantis spoke in Lakeland, posting on social media: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades.”
Trump had reiterated that same position over the weekend in Ireland. The message from the White House is consistent: the federal government, not states, should be setting AI policy — and even then, less is more.
Florida House Speaker Daniel Perez (R), described as a vocal DeSantis critic and Trump ally, killed the DeSantis-backed Artificial Intelligence Bill of Rights after the state Senate passed it. Perez has been blunt about why.
“The federal government should take care of AI,” Perez said. “Whatever legislation or policy has to pass on a national level, as opposed to doing it on a state-by-state basis. I’ve been pretty consistent in stating that.”
Perez’s intervention was not just procedural. It was a statement of factional loyalty. And it landed inside a Republican Party in Florida that is increasingly sorting itself along lines that have less to do with policy than with proximity to Trump.
The argument that states should defer entirely to Washington on AI is not without some logic, but taken to its conclusion it means that no state can protect its own ratepayers from the electricity rate increases that come with massive data center construction, no state can set guardrails on AI chatbots harming children, and no local community can say no to a hyperscale facility going up next door. That’s a lot of power to hand to an industry with a documented history of censoring conservatives.
Big Tech Money Is Already Shaping the 2026 Race
The conflict over AI policy is not happening in a vacuum. A leading pro-AI super PAC called Leading the Future is spending $5 million to boost the Republican gubernatorial campaign of Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is endorsed by Trump and is considered much more friendly to the industry. Donalds was the first state-level candidate to receive financial backing from that group.
Think about what that means. Big Tech is not waiting to see how Florida’s AI debate plays out. It is actively investing in the outcome by backing the candidate it believes will give the industry the friendliest possible operating environment.
And the candidate it chose has Trump’s endorsement.
Vice President JD Vance brings additional weight to the other side of this fight. Vance has a background in Silicon Valley venture capital and close relationships with some of the country’s biggest technology figures. Vance leads early 2028 presidential polling, which means his alignment with the tech industry’s preferences has implications well beyond the Florida governor’s race.
What’s happening in Florida right now is not just a local political dispute. It’s a preview of a larger fight inside the Republican Party over whether working-class conservatives will have any protection from an industry that has spent years silencing them, and whether the promise to drain the swamp extends to the corporations building the computational infrastructure of America’s economic future.
These are not companies that have earned the benefit of the doubt. The same Big Tech firms pouring money into state politics to stop AI regulations are the ones that throttled conservative voices on COVID policy, the 2020 election, and the events of January 6. They built censorship machinery targeting ordinary Americans, and now they want state legislatures to stand aside while they expand their footprint into rural and suburban communities, driving up power bills and consuming water that local families need.
DeSantis is right that opposing consumer protections on AI is a political loser. The 86 percent polling figure should be all any Republican candidate needs to know about where voters stand. But knowing where voters stand and having the spine to stand there alongside them are two different things when there’s $5 million in Big Tech money flowing toward your primary opponent.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and drive unemployment to somewhere between 10 and 20 percent within the next one to five years. That warning comes from inside the industry itself. If that projection is even partially right, the communities absorbing the data centers being built right now will also be the communities absorbing the job losses. The rate increases come first. The displacement follows.
Florida Republicans who vote to protect Big Tech’s ability to operate without guardrails are making a choice. DeSantis is making sure their constituents know it.
Whether that pressure is enough to move the needle before the midterms, against $5 million in industry money and a White House that sees state-level AI regulation as the wrong direction, remains to be seen. But the fight is now public. And the lines inside the Florida GOP are drawn.
Sources: Politico, “DeSantis calls opposition to AI protections a ‘losing position’ for Republicans”; NBC News, “Republicans in Florida again block Ron DeSantis’ push to regulate AI”; The Hill, “Florida Republicans push for AI regulation amid DeSantis’ exit”; University of North Florida poll, March 2026; CBS News, “Trump endorses Uthmeier for Florida attorney general”