New York
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President Donald Trump confirmed on Monday he plans to sign an executive order preempting artificial intelligence regulations at the state level with his more hands-off federal policy.
“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.”
The post confirms fears that academics, safety groups and state lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed since a draft version of the executive order circulated last month. Critics worry the deregulation push could allow AI companies to evade accountability should their tools harm consumers.
The fast-moving AI category is already subject to little oversight as it extends into more areas of life — from personal communications and relationships to health care and policing. In the absence of broad federal legislation, some states have passed laws to address potentially risky and harmful uses of AI, such as the creation of misleading deepfakes and algorithmic discrimination in hiring.
But leaders in Silicon Valley such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman have argued that navigating a patchwork of state regulations could slow down innovation and affect America’s competitiveness in the global AI race, which they say will have implications for the economy and national security.
The draft order closely mirrored that tech argument, stating it was designed to “enhance America’s global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome, uniform national policy framework for AI.” It directed the US attorney general to establish an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI laws and preempt them with Trump’s more lax federal policy, according to a copy viewed by CNN.
In his Monday Truth Social post, Trump reiterated that sentiment, saying, “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something,” and adding that under such a model, “AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY!”
National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told CNBC on Monday that Trump had reviewed “something close to a final” draft of the order over the weekend.
“There are some states that want to regulate these companies within an inch of their lives, and when they make a misstep, fine the heck out of them,” Hassett said. “This executive order that he’s promised to come out is going to make it clear that there’s one set of rules for AI companies in the US.”
Congress killed an earlier attempt by Republicans to prevent states from regulating AI in July. The US Senate voted nearly unanimously to remove a 10-year moratorium on the enforcement of state artificial intelligence regulations from Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill before it passed. Weeks later, the Trump administration released a Silicon Valley-friendly AI action plan, a package of initiatives and policy recommendations that largely centered on scaling back AI regulation to promote US competitiveness.
The idea of blocking states from regulating AI has received broad pushback in recent months amid a string of reports highlighting risks of the technology causing delusions or contributing to self-harm among users, or exposing children to sexualized, adult material.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis called the effort “federal government overreach” in a post on X last month.
“Stripping states of jurisdiction to regulate AI is a subsidy to Big Tech and will prevent states from protecting against online censorship of political speech, predatory applications that target children, violations of intellectual property rights and data center intrusions on power/water resources,” he said.
Hundreds of organizations — including tech employee unions and other labor groups, tech safety and consumer protection nonprofits and educational institutions — also signed letters to Congress last month opposing the idea of blocking state AI regulations and raising alarms about AI safety risks.
“We’re in a fight to determine who will benefit from AI: Big Tech CEOs or the American people,” Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project, said in a statement about the draft order last month. “We cannot afford to spend the next decade with Big Tech in the driver’s seat, steering us toward massive job losses, surveillance pricing algorithms that jack up the cost of living, and data centers that are skyrocketing home energy bills.”
