Federal Policy
White House Unveils National AI Framework, Calls on Congress to Preempt State Laws
A six-pillar legislative blueprint released today proposes federal preemption of state AI regulations, a “light-touch” approach that limits open-ended liability, and explicit opposition to creating any new AI regulatory agency.
The Trump administration on Friday released its formal national AI policy framework, a sweeping legislative blueprint that calls on Congress to act “this year” to establish a unified federal standard for artificial intelligence governance. The six-pillar plan covers child safety, copyright and intellectual property, community effects of AI infrastructure, federal regulatory coordination, protection against indirect censorship by AI systems, and workforce transition — but its most consequential provision is a demand for federal preemption of the patchwork of state-level AI laws that have proliferated since 2024.
The framework explicitly opposes the creation of any new federal regulatory agency to oversee AI, instead directing existing agencies — the FTC, FDA, SEC, and NIST among them — to interpret their current mandates in light of AI capabilities. It also pushes back against “open-ended liability” for AI companies, arguing that excessive litigation risk would drive innovation overseas and hand competitive advantage to Chinese and European rivals. On copyright, the document offers a more measured position than Senator Blackburn’s sweeping bill released earlier this week, calling for “balanced guidance” rather than a blanket prohibition on training-data use.
Technology industry groups greeted the framework with near-unanimous enthusiasm, with the Information Technology Industry Foundation calling it “exactly the kind of smart, innovation-friendly signal the market needs.” But civil liberties organizations and state attorneys general immediately pushed back on the preemption scope. California Attorney General Rob Bonta warned that federal preemption without equivalent federal enforcement would create a “regulatory vacuum” that leaves consumers unprotected. The framework arrives just one day after Senator Blackburn’s 300-page TRUMP AMERICA AI Act — creating the unusual situation of the executive and legislative branches advancing competing AI visions simultaneously, each with dramatically different approaches to copyright, liability, and the role of government oversight.