President Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Justice Department to challenge state artificial intelligence laws and directly confront states that have advanced their own rules in the absence of federal law.
The order established an AI Litigation Task Force under the Attorney General and directed the Justice Department to challenge state laws for potential conflicts with federal preemption rights and interstate commerce protections.
The order identified Colorado’s new “algorithmic discrimination” law as a key concern and suggested that additional state measures could face scrutiny.
“My administration must work with Congress to ensure a national standard that minimizes the burden, rather than 50 mismatched state standards,” Trump said in the executive order. “The resulting framework must prohibit state laws that are inconsistent with the policies set forth in this order.”
In 2025, all 50 states will consider AI-related bills, and 38 states will consider AI-related bills. According to a report, they have taken about 100 AI measures. Bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures.
In November, rumors began circulating that President Trump would issue an executive order to curb state-sponsored AI policies.
Thursday’s executive order states that “state-by-state regulation, by definition, creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes, making compliance more difficult, especially for emerging businesses.”
“To win, U.S. AI companies must be free to innovate without burdensome regulations,” the order states. “However, excessive state regulation impedes this obligation.”
The order drew immediate criticism from labor groups, technology policy groups, and AI researchers, who argued that it amounted to a power grab by big tech companies, targeting states that are trying to avoid and address documented risks posed by AI systems.
“President Trump’s unlawful executive order is nothing more than a brazen effort to fundamentally undermine the security of AI and give tech billionaires unlimited power over workers’ jobs, rights and freedoms,” the union AFL-CIO said in a statement. “EO seeks to intimidate states by threatening federal funding and violating their legal rights to enact common-sense protections to elect leaders of their allies on both sides.”
“This executive order aims to chill state-level action to provide oversight and accountability for developers and adopters of AI systems, but it does nothing to address the actual, documented harms these systems produce,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said in a statement.
“If anything goes wrong, from AI-enabled cybercrime to AI-facilitated bioweapons attacks to a teenage suicide apparently connected to GenAI, his hands and his reputation will be on the line,” cognitive scientist, AI researcher, and author Gary Marcus wrote on Substack. “And because he’s so closely tied to Silicon Valley, any AI-related economic debacle that happens on his watch will also be closely tied.”
Despite the criticism, some praised the administration’s first-strike approach, while others supported the administration but criticized its implementation.
“To successfully compete with China in the race to lead in AI, the federal government will need to pre-empt most state AI regulations,” Jessica Melzin, director of the Center for Technology and Innovation at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, said in a statement.
“The White House correctly understands the fundamental need for federal AI preemption, but failure to pass an AI bill threatens to undo the overall progress the administration has made in securing American innovation,” said Ryan Hauser, a research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center.
The executive order followed President Trump’s July directive barring federal agencies from using systems that the Trump administration said showed “ideological bias.”
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