According to Mashable, President Donald Trump announced on Monday, January 27, 2025, his plan to sign an executive order establishing only “one rule” for regulating artificial intelligence in the U.S., aiming to preempt state laws. The order, reportedly leaked online last week, would direct federal agencies to determine how to punish states with existing AI regulations, like those recently passed in California and New York. This move follows the failure of the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” earlier in 2025, which included a provision to ban state AI regulation for 10 years; that measure was voted down 99-1 by the Senate after being rejected by Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Tech venture capitalist David Sacks, the Trump administration’s special advisor for AI and crypto, is said to be behind the executive order push. A poll in mid-May showed such a regulatory moratorium was very unpopular with registered voters.
Federal Overreach or Necessary Simplification?
Here’s the thing: this is a classic federalism fight, but with a 21st-century tech twist. Trump‘s argument, posted on Truth Social, is that 50 different state rulebooks will stifle innovation and let China win. And look, there’s a kernel of logic there for businesses. Navigating a patchwork of laws is a nightmare. But calling states like California “bad actors” for passing laws on transparency and teen safety? That’s a pretty aggressive framing. California’s governor, for instance, just signed SB 53 to “advance” its AI industry, not bury it. The real question is whether a federal vacuum is better than a state-led patchwork, especially when, as a report from the Future of Life Institute found, most major AI models are already failing basic safety checks.
A Rejected Idea Gets a Second Life
So why try an executive order when Congress already smacked down the same idea? Basically, it’s a workaround. The legislative path failed spectacularly, with even Marjorie Taylor Greene opposing it and the Senate near-unanimously rejecting it. An executive order lets the administration act unilaterally. But that creates its own huge problems. The legal challenges would be immediate and fierce. Can the White House really tell California its democratically passed laws are null and void? It sets up a massive constitutional clash. And it completely sidelines bipartisan congressional efforts, like the AI-Related Job Impacts Clarity Act from Senators Hawley and Hawley, which aims to tackle workforce issues. This isn’t streamlining; it’s declaring war on state sovereignty.
The Carte Blanche Question
The driving force here seems to be a desire to give AI companies, as the source notes, “carte blanche to innovate.” Proponents like David Sacks likely see state regulations as sand in the gears of the AI revolution. But is that what we want? I mean, we’re talking about a technology reshaping everything from jobs to information integrity. Letting it develop with minimal oversight because it’s “hard” for companies to comply with different rules seems like a massive risk. The growing fight within MAGA circles over AI regulation, with figures like Steve Bannon wary of industry-led rules, shows this isn’t even a unified front. Handing total control to a federal executive branch, influenced by industry advisors, doesn’t sound like a recipe for balanced, public-interest governance. It sounds like a power grab disguised as a efficiency measure.
