NBC News correspondent Ryan Nobles has highlighted a growing controversy among House Republicans who voted for President Donald Trump’s sweeping budget bill without fully reading its contents, despite previously accusing Democrats of the same behavior.
The issue came to light this week after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) admitted in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that she was unaware of a significant provision buried in the bill—one that prohibits states from creating or enforcing laws regulating artificial intelligence (AI) for the next decade.
“I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights, and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,” Greene wrote. “We have no idea what AI will be capable of in the next 10 years, and giving it free rein and tying states’ hands is potentially dangerous. This needs to be stripped out in the Senate.”
Greene wasn’t alone. Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) also confessed he had no knowledge of a clause in the bill that would block federal courts from holding Trump and his former administration officials in contempt.
“I am not going to hide the truth,” Flood said during a town hall. “This provision was unknown to me when I voted for that bill, and when I found out that provision was in the bill, I immediately reached out to my Senate counterparts and told them of my concern.” His statement was met with boos from the audience.
Nobles pointed out the irony, noting that many of the same Republicans were vocal critics of Democrats during the Biden administration for allegedly pushing legislation through without proper scrutiny. “House Republicans, in particular, whined about that — just out of control whining,” Nobles said during his segment.
He referenced major Biden-era bills like the CARES Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which Republicans claimed they were given too little time to review. Back then, Republicans insisted that legislation should go through “regular order,” allowing for detailed committee review and public debate.
Yet, Trump’s current budget proposal—a massive thousand-page bill containing a variety of loosely related provisions—appears to have been rushed through without that same scrutiny. Nobles emphasized that Trump is pushing for all of his agenda items to be passed at once, avoiding the risk of losing support if broken into separate bills. “And yet we’re still doing it in this version of Congress,” Nobles concluded, highlighting the continuing pattern of political contradiction.