State AI Laws Multiply as Trump Administration Pushes National Standard Over Local Regulation

Trump wants to stop states from regulating AI. This Utah Republican isn't listening

RIVERTON, Utah (AP) -- When a dozen Republican activists gathered on a back deck in the Salt Lake City suburbs to talk about this year's elections, the conversation cycled through all the staples of conservative chatter in Utah such as dwindling water supplies, illegal immigrant fraud and chemtrail conspiracy theories. But Doug Fiefia, a state representative running to be a state senator, wanted to start with something else -- artificial intelligence. Fiefia used to work at Google and, like several other tech employees who have gone into politics, he has made regulating the industry a centerpiece of his campaign. "I know it sounds like 'Doug, this is all you talk about,"' Fiefia said. "That's because it's coming, it's here and it's going to be our biggest fight." Fiefia's focus has put him on a collision course with President Donald Trump's administration, which this year helped block his state proposal requiring companies to include child safety protocols. The White House wants a single national standard for artificial intelligence, arguing that a patchwork of excessive regulation could handicap American innovation in a global competition with China. But with no progress in Congress, it has been state lawmakers struggling to address concerns about a technology that is poised to reshape the economy. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis added the issue to a special legislative session that he is convening later this month. Democratic-controlled New York last year required major AI developers to report dangerous incidents to the state. All told, there are more than 1,000 state legislative proposals addressing AI, a reflection of the uneasiness that has seeped through the country. "None of us are really sure," said Brett Young, a structural engineer who attended the backyard event with Fiefia. "Is this something we should be scared about, or is it no so big a deal and it'll enhance our lives?" Trump has routinely tried to stamp out state-level AI policies, and he issued an executive order that included legal threats and funding penalties to deter new regulations. The White House recently released a framework for potential congressional legislation that calls for preempting state laws considered "too burdensome" but would allow some rules to protect children and copyright material. None of these steps has eased the number of proposals in state capitals. Popular ideas include forcing chatbots to remind users they are not human and barring the use of AI to make nonconsensual pornography, which includes replacing or removing clothing from photos that are posted online. "There's a lot of state lawmakers looking at what the federal government is doing and saying, 'We want to take action because we're not satisfied,'" said Craig Albright, senior vice president for government relations for the Business Software Alliance, which represents software companies. About 8 in 10 people in the United States said they were "concerned" or "very concerned" about AI in a Quinnipiac poll last month, with about three-quarters saying government is not doing enough to regulate the technology. Roughly 9 in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 Republicans wanted more government involvement. The most significant regulations have passed in California and New York, solidly Democratic states. The provisions focus on disclosure of catastrophic risk, such as the AI-controlled meltdown of nuclear plants or AI models refusing to heed human direction. But there is pressure in Republican-led states, too. DeSantis pushed a bill to implement parental controls for minors using AI and to prohibit systems from using anyone's likeness without permission. It fell short in the state House after overwhelmingly passing the state Senate. AI bills in Republican-controlled Louisiana and Missouri have stalled out because of Trump administration resistance. Fiefia is part of a loose network of former tech employees turned state lawmakers trying to meet the demand for stronger regulations. He co-chairs the AI task force of the Future Caucus, a network of younger state lawmakers, with Monique Priestley, a Vermont Democrat who also has worked in tech. Priestley said the group uses video conferences and group chats to share ideas for new proposals and deal with lobbyists who oppose their bills. She said that 166 of her state's 482 registered lobbyists weighed in on her data privacy bill last year, which was ultimately vetoed by the governor. "It's like you're running around against an army of full-time lobbyists," said Priestley. Like many state lawmakers, she works a separate, full-time job. Alex Bores, a former data scientist at the tech firm Palantir who quit after it signed a deal to help the first Trump administration with immigration enforcement, is also a member of the AI task force. A Democrat, Bores wrote the New York bill that was signed into law last year. Now Bores is competing in the crowded Democratic primary to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler representing the east side of Manhattan and parts of Queen and Brooklyn in Congress, and he is facing payback from the industry. A pro-AI campaign committee has spent $2.3 million against his candidacy. Bores said tech companies are trying to make an example of him to scare off more regulation at the state and federal level. "It's one reasons it's so important for me to win this race is because, if I don't, that intimidation they're trying on Congress will be successful," he said. Bores' competitors in the June 23 primary include Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, and George Conway, a former Republican who has become one of Trump's chief antagonists on social media. Fiefia has not attracted the sort of attention as Bores as he tries to move to the state Senate after a single session in the House. The subdivisions and shopping centers of his district are sandwiched between Utah's jagged mountain ranges and the cul de sacs are crammed with children on bikes and scooters. The son of Tongan immigrants, Fiefia grew up in Utah but moved to Silicon Valley, where he worked as a salesperson for Google. Fiefia rose to manage a team working with companies on the implementation of Google's early AI model and was disturbed by what he saw. "What I realized is Big Tech cares about their bottom line, and they were worried about making money, not doing right for the human race," said Fiefia, who now works at a Utah-based cloud computing and AI company. Fiefia's legislation was unanimously passed by a House committee this year, but the Trump administration sent a letter to the Senate saying that the measure was "unfixable." The measure quickly died. Daniel McCay, the state senator who Fiefia is challenging in the primary, said he thinks that was a good thing. "I've been around long enough to recognize the invention of fire, the wheel, cars and the internet did not ruin society and I'm very skeptical of anyone trying to scare society into regulations," McCay said in an interview. He noted that the bill went beyond child safety, including whistleblower protection for AI workers and public disclosure of risks. "It would have driven Utah out of the AI innovation business," McCay said. At the cottage meeting -- the Utah term for a small gathering at someone's home to discuss important issues -- Fiefia faced several tech-related questions from the crowd. Asked about defying the Trump administration, Fiefia said it was especially important to stand up for states' rights when a fellow Republican was in power to demonstrate the principles involved. "The Trump administration is, 'We want zero regulations on AI,'" Fiefia said. "I think that's wrong. I agree with a lot of what Trump says on taxes. I disagree with him on this."

Trump's campaign to preempt state AI regulation faces resistance from states and Congress alike

In short: The Trump administration is waging a multi-front campaign to prevent states from regulating AI, using a DOJ litigation task force, Commerce Department evaluations of "burdensome" state laws, and a legislative framework urging Congress to preempt state-level regulation with a "minimally burdensome national standard." But states have accelerated in the opposite direction - 1,208 AI bills introduced in 2025, 145 enacted - and Congress has rejected preemption twice, including a 99-1 Senate vote to strip an AI moratorium from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Doug Fiefia is a first-term Republican state representative from Herriman, Utah, and a former Google salesperson who managed a team working on the company's early AI model implementation. Earlier this year, he introduced House Bill 286, the Artificial Intelligence Transparency Act, which would have required frontier AI companies to publish safety and child-protection plans and included whistleblower protections for employees who report safety concerns. It passed a House committee unanimously. Then the White House killed it. On 12 February, the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs sent a letter to Utah Senate Majority Leader Kirk Cullimore Jr. stating: "We are categorically opposed to Utah HB 286 and view it as an unfixable bill that goes against the Administration's AI Agenda." Officials held several conversations with Fiefia over the preceding two weeks urging him not to move the bill forward. They did not offer specific changes that could make it acceptable. The bill died in the Senate. Fiefia's response was pointed. He said it was especially important to stand up for states' rights when a fellow Republican was in power, to demonstrate that the principle was not partisan. His bill targeted only "frontier developers," companies using at least 10^26 floating-point operations to train a model, and carried a $1 million penalty cap. It was, by the standards of AI legislation, modest. The White House treated it as existential. The Trump administration's campaign against state AI regulation has three components, each building on the last. The first was Executive Order 14365, signed on 11 December 2025, titled "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence." It created an AI Litigation Task Force within the Department of Justice, operational from 10 January 2026, to challenge state AI laws in federal court on grounds of unconstitutional burden on interstate commerce or federal preemption. It directed the Secretary of Commerce to publish by 11 March a comprehensive evaluation of state AI laws identifying "burdensome" ones, and instructed the FTC to issue a policy statement on when state laws are preempted by the FTC Act. It conditioned access to federal broadband funding on states' willingness to avoid enacting what the administration considers onerous AI laws. The executive order carved out child safety protections, data centre zoning authority, and state government procurement from preemption. The second was the Commerce Department's evaluation, published on the March deadline, which flagged laws in Colorado, California, and New York for particular scrutiny. The evaluation feeds into the DOJ task force, which is expected to begin filing federal legal challenges by summer 2026. Cases are projected to take two to three years to resolve. The third was a National Policy Framework for AI released on 20 March, containing legislative recommendations organised around seven pillars: child protection, AI infrastructure, intellectual property, censorship and free speech, innovation, workforce preparation, and preemption of state AI laws. The framework states that "Congress should preempt state AI laws that impose undue burdens to ensure a minimally burdensome national standard consistent with these recommendations, not fifty discordant ones." The administration's position on copyright is that training AI models on copyrighted material "does not violate copyright laws." On content moderation, it urges Congress to prevent the federal government "from coercing technology providers, including AI providers, to ban, compel, or alter content based on partisan or ideological agendas." David Sacks, who served as AI and crypto czar until transferring to a presidential advisory committee role in late March, framed the logic bluntly: "You've got 50 different states regulating this in 50 different ways, and it's creating a patchwork of regulation that's difficult for our innovators to comply with." On Colorado's algorithmic discrimination rules, he said they raised "very serious First Amendment concerns." On blue states more broadly: "We don't like seeing blue states trying to insert their woke ideology in AI models, and we really want to try and stop that." The states have not been idle while Washington argues about whether they should be allowed to act. In 2023, fewer than 200 AI bills were introduced across state legislatures. In 2024, the number rose to 635 across 45 states, with 99 enacted. In 2025, 1,208 AI-related bills were introduced across all 50 states, the first year every state introduced at least one, and 145 were enacted into law. In the first two months of 2026 alone, 78 chatbot-specific safety bills were filed across 27 states. California's Transparency in Frontier Artificial Intelligence Act took effect on 1 January 2026. Texas's Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act became effective the same day. Colorado's AI Act, which bans algorithmic discrimination, had its effective date delayed to 30 June 2026. The volume of legislation reflects a bipartisan consensus at the state level that AI regulation cannot wait for a Congress that has repeatedly failed to act. Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican, has asserted that states should retain the power to regulate AI. "Let's use this technology to benefit humankind, and let's regulate it to make sure they don't destroy humankind," he said. "I don't think that's a contradiction." He warned that if AI companies "start selling sexualised chatbots to kids in my state, now I have a problem with that," and announced a "pro-human" AI initiative with $10 million for workforce readiness. The administration's framework requires Congressional action to gain legal force. The executive order itself does not preempt, repeal, or invalidate any state AI law. Until courts rule on specific challenges, regulated parties must continue to comply with state regulations. The most comprehensive federal AI bill is Senator Marsha Blackburn's TRUMP AMERICA AI Act, a 291-page discussion draft released on 18 March. It would impose a duty of care for high-risk AI systems, require developers to publish training and inference data use records, repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, and create an AI liability framework enabling the Attorney General, state attorneys general, and private actors to sue AI developers. It would preempt state laws on frontier AI catastrophic risk management and largely preempt state digital replica laws. It remains a discussion draft and has not been formally introduced. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act originally included a provision for a ten-year moratorium on state AI regulation, later reduced to five years tied to federal broadband funding. The Senate voted 99 to 1 to strip the AI preemption provision, with only Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina voting to keep it. The bill was signed into law on 4 July without any restrictions on state AI legislation. Congress's message was unambiguous: the guardrail question is not settled. The lobbying infrastructure on both sides has scaled to match the stakes. Leading the Future, a super PAC launched in August 2025 by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman, raised $125 million in 2025 and had $70 million on hand at year end. It supports candidates favouring AI-friendly policies and uniform federal regulation over state-by-state approaches. On the other side, Anthropic donated $20 million in February 2026 to Public First Action, a bipartisan group that plans to back 30 to 50 candidates from both parties who support AI safeguards. Public First's broader network of super PACs has pledged $50 million for pro-regulation candidates. The tech industry reportedly spent more than $1 billion in total efforts to prevent states from regulating AI. A bipartisan coalition of 36 state attorneys general sent a letter to Congress opposing AI preemption, arguing that risks including scams, deepfakes, and harmful interactions, especially for children and seniors, make state protections essential. Colorado's attorney general has committed to challenging the executive order in court. The administration revoked Biden's Executive Order 14110 within hours of taking office on 20 January 2025, calling it "unnecessarily burdensome." That order had required developers to conduct pre-release safety evaluations and share findings with the government. Its replacement, signed three days later, was titled "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence." The trajectory from revoking federal safety requirements to attempting to prevent states from creating their own has a logic: if the federal government will not regulate AI, and it will not allow states to regulate AI, then AI will not be regulated. The contrast with Europe is instructive. The EU AI Act entered full enforcement in January 2026, creating a single regulatory framework across 27 member states. The US approach is the inverse: no binding federal standard and an active campaign to prevent the states from filling the gap. The result is that AI governance in America is being determined not by legislation or regulation but by litigation, executive orders, and the political leverage of the companies that stand to benefit most from the absence of rules. Doug Fiefia, the Utah Republican who watched his transparency bill die after a White House letter, is now running for state senate. His opponent, the incumbent who helped kill the bill, reportedly said it "would have driven Utah out of the AI innovation business." Fiefia co-chairs the AI task force of the Future Caucus alongside Monique Priestley, a Vermont Democrat with 24 years in technology. They represent a generation of state lawmakers who have worked in tech, understand what AI can do, and believe that understanding should inform regulation rather than prevent it. The question is whether the regulatory vacuum they are trying to fill will last long enough to become permanent.

Trump Wants to Stop States From Regulating AI. This Utah Republican Isn't Listening

RIVERTON, Utah (AP) -- When a dozen Republican activists gathered on a back deck in the Salt Lake City suburbs to talk about this year's elections, the conversation cycled through all the staples of conservative chatter in Utah such as dwindling water supplies, illegal immigrant fraud and chemtrail conspiracy theories. But Doug Fiefia, a state representative running to be a state senator, wanted to start with something else -- artificial intelligence. Fiefia used to work at Google and, like several other tech employees who have gone into politics, he has made regulating the industry a centerpiece of his campaign. "I know it sounds like 'Doug, this is all you talk about,"' Fiefia said. "That's because it's coming, it's here and it's going to be our biggest fight." Fiefia's focus has put him on a collision course with President Donald Trump's administration, which this year helped block his state proposal requiring companies to include child safety protocols. The White House wants a single national standard for artificial intelligence, arguing that a patchwork of excessive regulation could handicap American innovation in a global competition with China. But with no progress in Congress, it has been state lawmakers struggling to address concerns about a technology that is poised to reshape the economy. In Florida, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis added the issue to a special legislative session that he is convening later this month. Democratic-controlled New York last year required major AI developers to report dangerous incidents to the state. All told, there are more than 1,000 state legislative proposals addressing AI, a reflection of the uneasiness that has seeped through the country. "None of us are really sure," said Brett Young, a structural engineer who attended the backyard event with Fiefia. "Is this something we should be scared about, or is it no so big a deal and it'll enhance our lives?" Pressure in the states Trump has routinely tried to stamp out state-level AI policies, and he issued an executive order that included legal threats and funding penalties to deter new regulations. The White House recently released a framework for potential congressional legislation that calls for preempting state laws considered "too burdensome" but would allow some rules to protect children and copyright material. None of these steps has eased the number of proposals in state capitals. Popular ideas include forcing chatbots to remind users they are not human and barring the use of AI to make nonconsensual pornography, which includes replacing or removing clothing from photos that are posted online. "There's a lot of state lawmakers looking at what the federal government is doing and saying, 'We want to take action because we're not satisfied,'" said Craig Albright, senior vice president for government relations for the Business Software Alliance, which represents software companies. About 8 in 10 people in the United States said they were "concerned" or "very concerned" about AI in a Quinnipiac poll last month, with about three-quarters saying government is not doing enough to regulate the technology. Roughly 9 in 10 Democrats and 6 in 10 Republicans wanted more government involvement. The most significant regulations have passed in California and New York, solidly Democratic states. The provisions focus on disclosure of catastrophic risk, such as the AI-controlled meltdown of nuclear plants or AI models refusing to heed human direction. But there is pressure in Republican-led states, too. DeSantis pushed a bill to implement parental controls for minors using AI and to prohibit systems from using anyone's likeness without permission. It fell short in the state House after overwhelmingly passing the state Senate. AI bills in Republican-controlled Louisiana and Missouri have stalled out because of Trump administration resistance. 'An army of full-time lobbyists' Fiefia is part of a loose network of former tech employees turned state lawmakers trying to meet the demand for stronger regulations. He co-chairs the AI task force of the Future Caucus, a network of younger state lawmakers, with Monique Priestley, a Vermont Democrat who also has worked in tech. Priestley said the group uses video conferences and group chats to share ideas for new proposals and deal with lobbyists who oppose their bills. She said that 166 of her state's 482 registered lobbyists weighed in on her data privacy bill last year, which was ultimately vetoed by the governor. "It's like you're running around against an army of full-time lobbyists," said Priestley. Like many state lawmakers, she works a separate, full-time job. Alex Bores, a former data scientist at the tech firm Palantir who quit after it signed a deal to help the first Trump administration with immigration enforcement, is also a member of the AI task force. A Democrat, Bores wrote the New York bill that was signed into law last year. Now Bores is competing in the crowded Democratic primary to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler representing the east side of Manhattan and parts of Queen and Brooklyn in Congress, and he is facing payback from the industry. A pro-AI campaign committee has spent $2.3 million against his candidacy. Bores said tech companies are trying to make an example of him to scare off more regulation at the state and federal level. "It's one reasons it's so important for me to win this race is because, if I don't, that intimidation they're trying on Congress will be successful," he said. Bores' competitors in the June 23 primary include Jack Schlossberg, the grandson of former President John F. Kennedy, and George Conway, a former Republican who has become one of Trump's chief antagonists on social media. From Google to politics Fiefia has not attracted the sort of attention as Bores as he tries to move to the state Senate after a single session in the House. The subdivisions and shopping centers of his district are sandwiched between Utah's jagged mountain ranges and the cul de sacs are crammed with children on bikes and scooters. The son of Tongan immigrants, Fiefia grew up in Utah but moved to Silicon Valley, where he worked as a salesperson for Google. Fiefia rose to manage a team working with companies on the implementation of Google's early AI model and was disturbed by what he saw. "What I realized is Big Tech cares about their bottom line, and they were worried about making money, not doing right for the human race," said Fiefia, who now works at a Utah-based cloud computing and AI company. Fiefia's legislation was unanimously passed by a House committee this year, but the Trump administration sent a letter to the Senate saying that the measure was "unfixable." The measure quickly died. Daniel McCay, the state senator who Fiefia is challenging in the primary, said he thinks that was a good thing. "I've been around long enough to recognize the invention of fire, the wheel, cars and the internet did not ruin society and I'm very skeptical of anyone trying to scare society into regulations," McCay said in an interview. He noted that the bill went beyond child safety, including whistleblower protection for AI workers and public disclosure of risks. "It would have driven Utah out of the AI innovation business," McCay said. At the cottage meeting -- the Utah term for a small gathering at someone's home to discuss important issues -- Fiefia faced several tech-related questions from the crowd. Asked about defying the Trump administration, Fiefia said it was especially important to stand up for states' rights when a fellow Republican was in power to demonstrate the principles involved. "The Trump administration is, 'We want zero regulations on AI,'" Fiefia said. "I think that's wrong. I agree with a lot of what Trump says on taxes. I disagree with him on this."