“This is the wrong approach and likely illegal,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, said in a post Thursday.
“We need strong federal safety standards, but the downsides of AI should not take away from the few protections Americans currently have,” Klobuchar said.
President Trump’s executive order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create a task force to challenge state laws regulating AI.
The Commerce Department was also directed to identify “onerous” state regulations targeting AI.
This instruction is used by OpenAI and google Venture firm Andreessen Horowitz and others have all campaigned against state regulation, viewing it as a burden.
This comes after some Republicans in Congress sought to impose a moratorium on state AI laws. Recent plans to add that moratorium to the National Defense Authorization Act fell through.
Colin McCune, director of government affairs at Andreessen Horowitz, praised Trump’s order, calling it an “important first step” to foster competition and innovation in the United States. But McCune urged Congress to codify a national AI framework.
“The state has an important role to play in addressing harm and protecting people, but Congress alone cannot provide the long-term clarity and direction for the nation that only Congress can provide,” McCune said in a statement.
Sriram Krishnan, a White House AI adviser and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Friday that President Trump is considering working with Congress to pass such legislation.
“The White House is taking a determined stance to roll back the ‘devastating’ laws that currently exist in many states across the country,” Krishnan said.
He also said the purpose of the executive order is to give the White House an avenue to pursue state laws that it believes make the United States less competitive, such as recently passed laws in Democratic-led states such as California and Colorado.
Krishnan said the White House does not intend to use the executive order to target state laws that protect child safety.
Robert Wiseman, co-director of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said Trump’s order is “almost a rant” and that the president “cannot unilaterally preempt state laws.”
“We expect that the EO will be challenged in court and defeated,” Wiseman said in a statement. “In the meantime, states should continue their efforts to protect their populations from the growing dangers of unregulated AI.”
“This bounty to big tech companies is a shameful invitation to reckless behavior,” Wiseman said of the order.
It comes from the world’s largest corporation and completely invalidates the principles of federalism that Trump and MAGA claim to respect. ”
In the short term, the order could impact some states that have already passed legislation targeting AI. The order says states whose laws are deemed onerous could lose federal funding.
A Colorado law scheduled to go into effect in June will require AI developers to protect consumers from reasonably foreseeable risks of algorithmic discrimination.
Some believe President Trump’s order has no substantive impact on the law or other state regulations.
“You can’t tell states what to do by executive order, so I’m pretty much ignoring it,” said Democratic Rep. Brianna Titone, a co-sponsor of the anti-discrimination law.
In California, Governor Gavin Newsom recently signed a law requiring major AI companies to publish safety protocols starting in January.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, the law’s author, said the latest move undermines President Trump’s stated goal of giving the U.S. dominance in the field of AI.
“Of course, he just authorized chip sales to China and Saudi Arabia, the exact opposite of ensuring American primacy,” Wiener wrote in the X-Post Thursday night. The Bay Area Democrat is seeking to succeed Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. House of Representatives.
President Trump said Monday that he would. Nvidia The company is making sales of its advanced H200 chips to “approved customers” in China conditional on the U.S. taking a 25% cut of the revenue.
