On 11 December 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14365, “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence.” The order was published in the Federal Register on 16 December 2025 at citation 90 FR 58499. Its stated aim is to counter what it frames as a patchwork of state-level AI laws and to establish a single federal posture in their place. The order states that “it is the policy of the United States to sustain and enhance the United States’ global AI dominance through a minimally burdensome national policy framework for AI.”
The order directs several concrete actions aimed at state laws the administration regards as obstructive. It instructs the Attorney General to stand up a litigation effort: “Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Attorney General shall establish an AI Litigation Task Force (Task Force) whose sole responsibility shall be to challenge State AI laws inconsistent with the policy set forth in section 2 of this order.” It also conditions federal broadband money on state compliance, providing that “States with onerous AI laws identified pursuant to section 4 of this order are ineligible for non-deployment funds, to the maximum extent allowed by Federal law” - a reference to funding under the broadband-deployment program. And it tasks independent agencies with related proceedings: the Federal Communications Commission is directed to “determine whether to adopt a Federal reporting and disclosure standard for AI models that preempts conflicting State laws,” and the Federal Trade Commission Chairman is to “issue a policy statement on the application of the Federal Trade Commission Act’s prohibition on unfair and deceptive acts or practices under 15 U.S.C. 45 to AI models.”
The order is the federal-versus-state preemption move within the broader policy direction set earlier in 2025. It follows Executive Order 14179, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” (January 2025), and America’s AI Action Plan (July 2025), both of which framed federal AI policy around accelerating innovation and removing regulatory friction. Where those documents set strategy, EO 14365 turns the federal government’s attention to the fifty states, several of which had by late 2025 passed their own AI statutes.
As with the other AI actions of this period, the framework operates through executive direction and agency proceedings rather than legislation. Whether the litigation, the funding conditions, and the FCC and FTC proceedings ultimately preempt state law is a question for those agencies and the courts; the order itself sets the policy and instructs the executive branch to pursue it. Like its predecessors, it can be revised or revoked by a future administration.