The artificial intelligence safety group Public First Action announced a $15 million project to support Republican lawmakers who have backed guardrails for the technology.
The initiative launches this week with more than $7 million in advertising and features four Republican members of Congress: Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) and Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Ashley Moody (R-FL).
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The Republicans have advocated holding AI companies accountable.
“Conservatives built this country’s technological edge, and conservatives are not going to hand it over to Beijing or to a handful of companies that answer to no one,” said Chris Stewart, the co-founder of the 501(c)(4) political group and a former Republican representative from Utah.
“The people running these AI companies have spent millions telling Washington that any guardrail is an attack on innovation,” he said. “Republicans know better.”
Cotton, for example, introduced the Chip Security Act in May 2025 to protect American chips from falling into the hands of global competitors such as China.
Hawley is a top Republican advocate for measures to guide AI development and has opposed legislation that would prevent states from imposing rules on AI. He has also called for new regulations to protect children.
“The most dangerous frontier of artificial intelligence is not the boardroom or the battlefield,” Hawley wrote in an op-ed last month. “It is your child’s bedroom.”
“This project is about making sure [Republicans’] voices are the loudest ones in the room,” Stewart said.
Public First Action will also debut advertisements over the next month highlighting 12 other Republican members of Congress and AI security and accountability advocates, including Reps. John Moolenaar (R-MI), Andrew Garbarino (R-NY), and Mike Rogers (R-AL).
“When you ask conservatives what they want, they want their kids protected, they want American technology to stay American, and they want somebody watching these companies,” said Brad Carson, another co-founder of Public First Action and a former Democratic representative from Oklahoma.
Alongside the advertising, the Conservative AI Consensus Project announced Friday will also fund a sustained national polling program measuring conservatives’ attitudes toward AI safety, transparency, and export controls, with findings released publicly.
Public First, a super PAC associated with Public First Action advocating AI regulations, recently received a $1 million donation from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei.
The super PAC also received a $250,000 donation from a Google DeepMind employee and $5,000 from Anthropic rival OpenAI.
Public First Action’s three associated super PACs, Jobs and Democracy, Public First, and Defending Our Values, have a combined total of roughly $1.8 million of cash on hand.
