AIAcademy · AIAcademy · 2026-05-16
Read the December 2025 Executive Order
The most consequential US AI-policy story of 2026 is not a new law. It is whether existing state laws will survive.
Start with the timeline. Biden's EO 14110 — the "Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development" framework — was revoked on 20 January 2025, the first business day of the second Trump administration. EO 14179 ("Removing Barriers to American Leadership in AI") followed three days later and mandated an OSTP/OMB sweep of every AI regulation. The July 2025 "America's AI Action Plan" laid out ~90 recommendations. Then the 11 December 2025 Executive Order did three things simultaneously: it created a DOJ AI Litigation Task Force explicitly chartered to sue California, Colorado, and New York; it directed the FTC to identify preemption grounds against state AI law; and it conditioned BEAD broadband funding on state-law cooperation with federal AI policy.
The order itself does not preempt — only Congress or the courts can do that — but the legal and fiscal pressure was immediate. On 27 April 2026, a federal court paused enforcement of Colorado's AI Act (SB24-205). Colorado responded by rewriting the statute as SB 26-189 (signed 9 May 2026), narrowing scope from "high-risk AI systems" to "automated decision-making technology" affecting "consequential decisions." It takes effect 1 January 2027 — a softer, more defensible posture. California's SB 53 and SB 243, Texas's TRAIGA, New York's RAISE Act, and Massachusetts's hiring disclosure law all became live targets the same week.