Trump wants to stop states from regulating AI. States and Congress keep saying no.

In short: The Trump administration is waging a multi-front campaign to prevent states from regulating AI, using a DOJ litigation task force, Commerce Department evaluations of “burdensome” state laws, and a legislative framework urging Congress to preempt state-level regulation with a “minimally burdensome national standard.” But states have accelerated in the opposite direction – 1,208 AI bills introduced in 2025, 145 enacted – and Congress has rejected preemption twice, including a 99-1 Senate vote to strip an AI moratorium from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Doug Fiefia is a first-term Republican state representative from Herriman, Utah, and a former Google salesperson who managed a team working on the company’s early AI model implementation. Earlier this year, he introduced House Bill 286, the Artificial Intelligence Transparency Act, which would have required frontier AI companies to publish safety and child-protection plans and included whistleblower protections for employees who report safety concerns ...