If Blackburn was now voting for a moratorium, surely the compromise was acceptable to MAGA populists. (The penalty for breaking the moratorium: states would lose access to a $500 million fund for AI development, which may have been carved out of rural broadband funding.) Getting the AI moratorium killed was victory enough. The AI companies are eager not to get into even more of a quagmire, one that is targeted at them specifically. With the massive impact that AI is already having in all corners of life, the moratorium was a nonstarter for a broad swath of Americans.