Trump Order Seeks to Wipe Out State AI Laws, Centralize All Regulation in Washington

President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order Thursday afternoon titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence Leadership,” effectively declaring war on the growing mosaic of state-level AI restrictions and establishing Washington as the sole authority over the technology’s development and deployment across the United States.

The directive creates an AI Litigation Task Force under Attorney General Pam Bondi, ordering it to sue any state whose AI laws impose licensing requirements, mandatory bias audits, transparency rules, or content-moderation mandates that deviate from the federal government’s light-touch approach. Bondi must file the first wave of preemption lawsuits within 60 days.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is instructed to withhold billions in broadband infrastructure funding from the $42 billion BEAD program from any state that refuses to repeal or suspend conflicting AI statutes, giving governors a stark choice between federal dollars and local regulatory autonomy.

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Flanked by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Lutnick, and newly appointed AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks, Trump told reporters that fragmented state rules were driving companies overseas and threatened American supremacy. “We are going to have one central source of approval — the federal government — so our companies can innovate at warp speed without fifty different rulebooks,” he declared.

Civil liberties groups and Democratic lawmakers immediately condemned the move as an unconstitutional power grab that guts consumer protections, eliminates accountability for algorithmic discrimination, and creates a regulatory vacuum just as deepfakes and automated decision systems proliferate ahead of the 2026 midterms.

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