President Donald Trump is done waiting for Congress when it comes to blocking state AI regulations.
Trump said on Monday that he would sign an executive order aimed at ensuring that there’s only “One Rulebook” for AI in the US, saying that the technology will be “destroyed in its infancy” if companies have to comply with different regulations across all 50 states.
“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!”
It is not yet clear what shape the executive order will take, but a draft executive order seen by Business Insider last month would have directed the Department of Justice to sue states for having “onerous” AI laws.
One thing is clear: Trump is likely to provoke backlash from members of his own party if he follows through with this, as many Republicans have been eager to protect states’ rights when it comes to AI.
The fault lines on this issue became clear over the summer, when Republicans tried to enact a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulations via the “Big Beautiful Bill.”
That provision ultimately got watered down over time before being stripped out of the bill in a 99-1 vote in the Senate in the final hours before passage.
Trump recently called for Republicans to include a version of that provision in a must-pass annual defense bill, but that didn’t come to pass. On Sunday, lawmakers released the text of that bill, and it did not include the provision.
In the meantime, the Trump administration has sought other ways to prevent states from enacting AI laws. An “AI Action Plan” released by the White House in July calls for withholding federal funding from states with “burdensome” AI laws.
