President Donald Trump has signed an executive order, Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, that lets his administration restrict access to federal broadband money for states whose AI laws conflict with his national policy, according to the order and an accompanying White House fact sheet.
The order directs the Commerce Department to review state AI laws and label “onerous” measures that clash with federal priorities.
States with such laws would be ineligible for remaining “non-deployment” funding under the $42.45 billion Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, which finances high-speed internet buildouts nationwide.
Other agencies are told to consider making the absence or non-enforcement of similar laws a condition for discretionary grants.
Trump says the move is necessary to avoid a “patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes” and to keep U.S. AI firms “free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.”
The order singles out Colorado-style “algorithmic discrimination” rules as examples of laws that could force AI systems to change “truthful outputs” to satisfy civil-rights tests.
Child-safety rules are explicitly carved out from preemption in any future federal legislation that the White House will now draft.
The order raises immediate questions about funding risk and regulatory preemption. An AI Litigation Task Force at the Justice Department will be created to challenge state laws, while the FTC and FCC are asked to explore national disclosure and deception standards that could override conflicting state requirements.
Democratic Representative Don Beyer, who co-chairs the Congressional AI Caucus, said the order would undercut state safety reforms and could violate the 10th Amendment’s protections for state powers.