in effect
Executive Order 14365, signed December 11, 2025, directs federal agencies to work toward a single national regulatory framework for artificial intelligence that would supersede conflicting state-level AI laws. It also creates immediate enforcement and evaluation mechanisms to challenge state AI regulations the administration considers burdensome to innovation while Congress works on permanent federal legislation.
Within 30 days, the Attorney General must establish an AI Litigation Task Force empowered to sue states whose AI laws it deems unconstitutional or preempted by federal law. Within 90 days, the Commerce Department must publish a list of state AI laws it considers burdensome and refer the most problematic ones to that Task Force for legal challenge. Also within 90 days, states with laws on that list become ineligible for certain federal broadband funding (BEAD program non-deployment funds), and all federal agencies must evaluate whether to tie their discretionary grants to states not enforcing conflicting AI laws. The FCC must begin a proceeding on a uniform federal AI disclosure standard, and the FTC must issue a policy statement explaining when federal consumer-protection law already overrides state laws that require AI models to alter their outputs. A formal legislative recommendation for permanent federal preemption of conflicting state AI rules must also be drafted, with explicit carve-outs preserving state authority over child safety, data center infrastructure, and state government’s own AI procurement.
State governments that have enacted or are considering AI regulations—particularly those addressing algorithmic discrimination, AI transparency, or AI output requirements—face potential federal lawsuits and loss of grant funding if their laws are flagged as conflicting with this order. AI developers and companies, especially startups, are the intended beneficiaries, as the order aims to reduce the compliance burden of navigating different rules in each state. Members of the public are indirectly affected through both the broadband funding conditions tied to state AI policy choices and the longer-term shape of how AI systems they interact with are regulated.