The new executive order is the latest effort by the Trump administration to establish a “minimally burdensome national standard” for regulating the AI industry.

By Michael H. Rubin, Andrew Gass, Ghaith Mahmood, Sy Damle, and Fiona Maclean

Key Points:

• The Order establishes an AI Litigation Task Force that will challenge state AI laws in court and creates a process to assess any such conflicting state laws.
• The Order targets states that enact or enforce “onerous” AI laws with the threat that they may lose access to certain federal funding.
• Aimed at preempting state laws, this initiative will face legal hurdles, making the full impact of the Order uncertain.

On December 11, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” (the Order). The Order aims to “sustain and enhance the United States’ global AI dominance” by establishing a “minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI” and reducing the web of diverging state laws and regulations that has emerged over the past few years.

For more details, including the Order’s provisions and analyzes its potential impact on AI developers and deployers that operate in the US, see our Client Alert.