Signed on 11 December 2025, the order directs the Attorney General to set up an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state AI laws, asks the Commerce Department to identify burdensome state laws, ties some broadband funding to states’ AI rules, and asks the FCC and FTC to act on federal standards.
Since then, the White House has sent Congress legislative recommendations (March 2026), the Justice Department has joined xAI’s challenge to Colorado’s AI law (April 2026), and the FTC has proposed a policy statement on AI accuracy that the order called for (July 2026).
An executive order cannot preempt state law by itself; that needs Congress or a valid federal rule, and courts decide each case. A House discussion draft, the Great American AI Act, would pause some state AI development laws for three years, but it has not been formally introduced. A narrower bill drawn from it, the FRONTIER Act (H.R. 9925), was introduced in July 2026 and would bar state rules on frontier AI risk transparency, auditing and incident reporting; it is still in committee. No federal preemption law has passed.