On December 11, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a new executive order, “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence.” The new Trump AI order follows Executive Order No. 14179, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence,” which rescinded former President Joe Biden’s Executive Order No. 4110, “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence” and empowers the White House’s AI policy articulated in its July 2025 “America’s AI Action Plan.” Whereas the Biden order aimed to implement a comprehensive AI safety and security control policy framework, Trump’s newest AI order reinforces the administration’s aims to elevate AI to an existential national imperative and ostensibly assume more risk. To achieve this, the order puts in motion steps to liberate industry from burdensome federal and state AI regulations that may encumber the nation’s ability to maintain and advance its technology lead over near-peer global competitors. Most legal commentators have focused on the new order’s efforts to constrain state-level AI regulation—and for obvious reasons. However, it is far more far-reaching in its intent and lays a pathway for the regulatory federalization of AI. Though calling upon Congress’s cooperation, the new order maneuvers around anticipated congressional opposition and delays after its failed effort to pass a moratorium on state AI regulation under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. In so doing, it unleashes a process that will likely conscript the federal regulatory apparatus to meet the administration’s objectives.
The new executive order’s objective is clear. It is to enhance the nation’s “global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI” and “to ensure that there is a minimally burdensome national standard—not 50 discordant State ones.” A key component of this national AI strategy is to squelch state-level interference. In this regard, the new order pushes on multiple levers of federal power. These include restricting federal broadband funding for noncompliant states, directing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Federal Trade Commission to implement policies that may preempt offending state laws, directing the U.S. attorney general to challenge the constitutionality of state AI laws under the interstate Commerce Clause, and establishing a “task force” under the direction of the Secretary of Commerce in consultation with the special advisor for AI and crypto and other assistants to the president to review and identify state AI laws that conflict with the order’s objective.
However, minimizing state interference is a tool to maximize the effect of the order’s primary objective. Though simple and short on details, it is the real substance behind the development and implementation of the least-restrictive federal regulatory framework aimed at promoting and ostensibly driving rapid AI technological progress. Specifically, the Trump order directs “the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST), the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), in coordination with the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB Director) and the heads of such executive departments and agencies (agencies) as the APST and APNSA deem relevant” to develop an artificial intelligence action plan by June 9, 2026 (i.e., within 180 days of the order).
Naturally, attention will focus on the table stakes of AI safety and security, algorithmic bias, children’s safety, and consumer fraud. However, the areas of potential impact are considerably broader. To enable AI, infrastructure must be leveraged. At its core, AI relies on power and communications. Thus, it should be anticipated that regulatory initiatives will be directed at removing barriers to these essential drivers of AI. Priorities will include enabling the rapid development of new power generation and efforts to preempt state and local zoning siting and permitting. Relatedly, there may be an effort to relax environmental protection regulation that burdens or delays core AI enablement activities, including in areas such as clean air, clean water, waste-to-energy transformation, mining, and hydroelectric generation, among others. The rapid siting and approval of new data centers may become a priority. Energy transmission and distribution needs will also be a focus. Siting authority and the power of eminent domain have customarily fallen under state control. Though the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has the authority to exercise preemptive powers and eminent domain under the Natural Gas Act and Federal Power Act, the ability to accelerate power transmission deployment remains challenging despite improvements under Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
In the area of communications, the FCC will be aggressively moving to auction and license 7-8 GHz spectrum for next-generation 6G wireless networks. This is a critical step that will enable ubiquitous AI access. In a presidential memorandum dated December 19, 2025, titled “Winning the Race,” Trump directed the FCC to clear 7.1-7.4 GHz spectrum of federal users for 6G wireless and to identify other available portions of the spectrum for its use. As explained in the memorandum, “[t]he next generation of mobile communications networks (6G) will be foundational to the national security, foreign policy, and economic prosperity of the United States. This technology will play a pivotal role in the development and adoption of emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, and implantable technologies.” A curious bit of language also raises questions about the development of AI-powered brain-computer interfaces and what actions the Food and Drug Administration may be taking to accelerate the deployment of such technologies.
For those involved in AI-related industries or policy, now is the time when federal engagement is at a premium. Paradoxically, despite the stated laissez-faire policy of minimal regulation, the federalization of AI regulation will determine winners and losers in enabling areas adjacent to AI. Stakeholders on all sides would be wise to direct their attention beyond the main stage marked by generalized and hypothetical AI risk and safety debates to the side acts that are likely to have profound effects on day-to-day matters of practical significance.
Postscript: On December 22, 2025, the FTC vacated an earlier Order, In Re Ryter LLC, Dkt. No. C-4806 (Dec. 16, 2024), prohibiting the use of generative AI tools to create consumer reviews and testimonials. Finding the use AI automated review not per se fraudulent and not violative of Section 5 of the FTC Act, the Commission determined the prior order was not in the public interest because it “…unduly burdens AI innovation in contravention of EO 14179 and America’s AI Action Plan.”
If you are involved with AI and have questions about engaging with the government around AI policy, contact the author, Joe Mazzarella, a member of McCarter’s an interdisciplinary team dedicated to understanding the AI revolution.