New efforts this week in Washington to effectively ban individual states from governing artificial intelligence have provoked bipartisan backlash.

The push from House Republicans and the White House to assert federal control over AI regulation, which echoes a similar attempt over the summer, has forged new lines of agreement between far-right commentators and progressive activists.

“It’s a coalition of almost everyone against a few extreme tech billionaires who are trying to buy unfettered power,” said New York State Assembly Member Alex Bores, a proponent of states’ ability to govern AI and a Democratic candidate for the U.S. House. “States protecting our citizens is overwhelmingly popular and bipartisan.”

A new poll released Friday night, conducted by YouGov in partnership with the conservative-leaning Institute for Family Studies, found that surveyed adults opposed congressional pre-emption efforts on AI by a 3-to-1 margin.

Bores is a co-author of New York’s RAISE Act, which looks to impose safety-monitoring and evaluation requirements on some of America’s largest AI companies, among other measures. The act has passed the state Legislature and is awaiting New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.

The current push for federal AI pre-emption efforts, so called because they would pre-empt or prohibit states’ ability to regulate AI, kicked off early this week.

On Monday, Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., told Punchbowl News that he and Republican leaders were considering introducing legislation overriding states’ ability to legislate AI into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

Amendments unrelated to national defense are often attached to the bill, as lawmakers view the NDAA as must-pass legislation and use it to include measures that would otherwise face stiffer opposition.

The move provoked immediate pushback, with Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, writing on X Monday night that the bill “is a poison pill and we will block it.”

On Tuesday, however, President Donald Trump came out in support of the effort on Truth Social: “Investment in AI is helping to make the U.S. Economy the ‘HOTTEST’ in the World — But overregulation by the States is threatening to undermine this Growth Engine.”

Endorsing a ban on state AI regulation, Trump wrote: “Put it in the NDAA, or pass a separate Bill, and nobody will ever be able to compete with America.”

Prominent proponents of federal pre-emption efforts include White House AI czar David Sacks and several Silicon Valley venture capital backers. Sacks reposted Trump’s comment on X Tuesday night.

Marc Andreesen, co-founder of venture capital mainstay Andreesen Horowitz, followed up on Sacks’ post, writing on X Tuesday night: “A 50-state patchwork is a startup killer. Federal AI legislation is essential.”

Yet several hours later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis denounced the efforts to prevent states from passing laws governing AI. Writing on X, DeSantis argued that federal pre-emption “takes away our sovereignty” and that “sneaking it into the defense bill is an insult to voters.”

The federal pre-emption efforts have also triggered stiff opposition from Republicans’ populist MAGA flank. On his “War Room” podcast Wednesday, influential MAGA whisperer Steve Bannon criticized the moves and advocated for sensible AI regulations. “They’re trying to slip this into another 9,000 page, must-pass NDAA, that they don’t want to have a discussion about, in the dark of night,” he said.

Bannon said individuals seeking “a license to do nails up here on Capitol Hill” currently face more regulation than America’s powerful AI companies.

The fight over who regulates AI switched into a new gear Wednesday night, when a draft executive order designed to pre-empt state AI regulation leaked, as first reported by The Information. The order remains in draft form and might not be signed by Trump.

The White House has not publicly commented on the draft order. The White House did not reply to a request for comment.

On Thursday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., addressed the issue on X: “There should not be a moratorium on states rights for AI. States must retain the right to regulate and make laws on AI and anything else for the benefit of their state.”

Many opponents of the pre-emption efforts contend that, given slow-moving attempts to regulate AI at the federal level, a pre-emption could introduce a vacuum of AI regulation by failing to replace state legislation with sufficient federal law. Other opponents charge that a federal monopoly on AI legislation would threaten American liberty.

Mark Beall, president of the bipartisan AI Policy Network advocacy group, told NBC News: “Without guardrails, Americans are concerned that AI will be used to erode our liberties and privacy,” he said.

“People who disagree on almost everything else agree that innovation shouldn’t mean surrender,” Beall said, arguing that sensible AI regulation would allow Americans to retain their civil liberties while still allowing tech companies to compete with China on cutting-edge AI technology.

On Thursday, Massachusetts’ Democratic senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, urged their colleagues to fight the pre-emption effort given the gravity of risks from AI.

In a joint statement, Warren and Markey wrote that pre-emption efforts “could block state policymakers from moving forward on basic, bipartisan protections, such as protecting children and teenagers online, combating deepfakes, slowing electricity price hikes, addressing the environmental impacts of data center buildout, preventing algorithmic discrimination, or safeguarding workers from dangerous AI-fueled workplace technology.”

“The AI moratorium would be a massive giveaway to Big Tech and [a] devastating defeat for Americans,” they wrote.

Max Bodach, executive vice president of the right-leaning tech think tank Foundation for American Innovation, said that AI’s potential to shake up political divisions remains undervalued.

“Political backlash to AI diffusion and infrastructure buildout is still underpriced as an issue that will increasingly come to dominate U.S. political discourse,” Bodach told NBC News. “I expect to see more ‘horseshoe’ coalitions forming between center-left veterans of the ‘tech-lash’ fight, the new trustbusters, tech-skeptical social conservatives, and America First populists.”

“You’re seeing this emergent coalition form in the reaction to the NDAA and executive order pre-emption push,” he said. “I’m very curious to see how the more techno-optimist wings of civil society, industry, Congress, and the Trump administration respond.”

On Friday, according to Punchbowl News, Republican leaders urged the White House to delay any further action on the executive order as Scalise sought more time to include a pre-emption provision in the NDAA.

Jared Perlo is a writer and reporter at NBC News covering AI. He is currently supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism.