Executive Order 14365, which President Donald Trump signed on December 11, 2025, commits the federal government to challenging state artificial intelligence laws it deems obstacles to a national policy framework. Per the White House, the order directs the Justice Department to stand up an AI Litigation Task Force and instructs the Commerce Department to review state AI statutes for conflicts with federal policy within 90 days.
USA Daily News 24, an online publication, covers the machinery of this decision; it publishes information, not legal advice, and nothing here predicts how courts will treat the order or any state statute.
What does the order actually direct?
The text, published on the White House website, frames state regulation as a threat to American competitiveness in artificial intelligence and assigns three concrete tasks. The Justice Department's new task force is to challenge state AI laws in court where the administration argues they unconstitutionally burden interstate commerce or are preempted by federal authority. Commerce must review state laws and identify those the administration considers onerous. And federal agencies are told to weigh a state's regulatory posture when awarding AI-related discretionary funds, opening the door to financial consequences for states that regulate aggressively.
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Why are states so deeply involved in AI rules?
Congress has passed no comprehensive federal AI statute, so the operative rules for algorithmic discrimination, deepfakes, high-risk hiring tools and chatbot safety were written in statehouses. Colorado enacted a comprehensive artificial intelligence law; California and Illinois added their own requirements for developers and deployers. That patchwork is exactly what the order targets: a national technology industry facing fifty different rulebooks has argued for a single federal standard, while state officials counter that they regulated first because Washington did not.
Does the president have the power to do this?
That question will decide the order's real effect, and the honest answer is that the instruments are uneven. Preemption is a congressional power: an executive order cannot invalidate a state statute, and courts have repeatedly narrowed claims of implied federal preemption. What the order can do without Congress is reorganize litigation priorities at the Justice Department and condition federal grants — both documented levers, both likely to draw legal challenges from states. The 90-day Commerce review, due in March 2026, will shape which statutes get challenged first.
What does this change?
The immediate change is jurisdictional combat: state attorneys general defending their statutes, tech companies filing amicus briefs on both sides, and Congress under renewed pressure to settle the preemption question in legislation rather than litigation. Federal AI funding is now a bargaining chip in every statehouse session of 2026. Per the White House, the administration's stated goal is one national framework; per the states that have already legislated, the goal is preemption without compensation. The courts will arbitrate between those claims, and the first rulings on the task force's challenges will show whether an executive order can accomplish what Congress has not.