President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday that aims to challenge state laws on artificial intelligence and speed up plans to create one national AI framework.
It was a move that was anticipated after a copy of the draft EO was leaked to reporters last last month, as Staff Writer Emma Beavins reported.
As with the draft document, the EO does not contain any healthcare-specific provisions, but rather aims to constrain states from enacting or enforcing state AI laws, many of which also apply to the healthcare industry.
The Trump administration aims to create a comprehensive, unified federal approach to AI to supplant the growing patchwork of state-level AI laws.
“We remain in the earliest days of this technological revolution and are in a race with adversaries for supremacy within it,” Trump wrote in the EO. “To win, United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.”
Trump wrote that “excessive state regulation” hinders those efforts. State-by-State regulation creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups, he wrote. The Trump administration also argues that state laws sometimes impermissibly regulate beyond state borders, impinging on interstate commerce.
The executive order calls on Attorney General Pam Bondi to establish an AI Litigation Task Force within 30 days to challenge what the Trump administration views as unconstitutional, preempted, or otherwise unlawful state AI laws that harm innovation. It directs the Secretary of Commerce to identify “onerous” state AI laws and explore whether the department can withhold federal broadband funding under the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program and potentially other discretionary grants from states with unfavorable AI laws.
The EO also sets in motion actions from the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission that could preempt some state requirements.
And the EO directs Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks to work with Congress to help draft legislation.
Earlier this week, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill supported “lighter regulation” for the AI industry and expounded on how the federal government needs to provide regulatory clarity for AI companies as well as streamline the FDA approval process for medical devices, as Beavins reported.
It’s likely that the executive order will be challenged in court. Tech policy researchers told NPR that the Trump administration cannot restrict state regulation in this way without Congress passing a law.
State lawmakers have pushed back on efforts to curtail state AI laws. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis posted on X that “an executive order doesn’t/can’t preempt state legislative action.”
“Congress could, theoretically, preempt states through legislation. The problem is that Congress hasn’t proposed any coherent regulatory scheme but instead just wanted to block states from doing anything for 10 years, which would be an AI amnesty. I doubt Congress has the votes to pass this because it is so unpopular with the public,” DeSantis wrote.
South Carolina Republican state Rep. Brandon Guffey wrote a letter to Congress, which was signed by 280 state lawmakers, opposing legislation that would curtail state AI laws.
“We appreciate congressional engagement on AI and stand ready to collaborate on thoughtful national policy. But after years without comprehensive federal action on privacy and social media harms, a broad preemption of state and local AI laws until Congress acts would set back progress and undercut existing protections,” Guffey wrote.
A moratorium on state AI laws was previously added as an amendment to Trump’s budget reconciliation bill by Senator Ted Cruz, R-TX. The amendment was eventually excised from the massive spending package by a vote of 99 to 1.
There was an effort to revive the state AI moratorium in the must-pass defense spending bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, but that effort also failed.
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