Trump Orders Justice Department To Sue Any State That Tries To Protect Its Residents From Artificial Intelligence, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Americans Were Still Shielded From The Technology By The Governments They Elected

WASHINGTON. Calling it a long-overdue defense of American innovation, President Trump on December 11 signed an executive order directing the Justice Department to sue any state that attempts to regulate artificial intelligence, resolving a long-standing concern that residents of Colorado, California, and New York were still being shielded from the most powerful technology ever built by the governments they had elected.

Executive Order 14365, titled 'Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence,' establishes a new AI Litigation Task Force inside the Department of Justice and instructs it to challenge state laws on algorithmic discrimination, deepfakes, and child safety in federal court. A companion White House directive, helpfully titled 'Eliminating State Law Obstruction of National Artificial Intelligence Policy,' orders federal agencies to study whether billions of dollars in discretionary grants might be withheld from states that decline to leave the industry alone.

Administration lawyers acknowledged that an executive order cannot, by itself, repeal a state law, a limitation officials described as the precise reason the task force exists. Unable to strike the statutes down, the government will instead sue the states that passed them until they reconsider. 'The framework is uniform, in the sense that there is now nothing in it,' said one official within the administration, describing the absence of any federal AI safeguard as the national standard the patchwork had been missing.

The order directs agencies to complete their reviews within 90 days and to flag any state requirement that developers test their models, disclose their training data, or warn the public before release as a possible burden on interstate commerce. Officials stressed that the policy imposes no rules of its own, an approach the White House characterized as minimally burdensome and, in the case of any American harmed by an unregulated system, minimally involved.

Trump, who has repeatedly framed AI as a race the United States must win at any cost, said the country could not afford to let individual states slow the technology with 'rules and regulations' while competitors abroad surged ahead. The administration did not specify what protections, if any, would replace the state laws it intends to dismantle.

At press time, the AI Litigation Task Force had filed its first suit against a state for the crime of requiring that a chatbot tell a child it was not a person.