The Preemption Fight Goes Far Beyond AI. States Must Persist.

We have heard the message loud and clear these last few weeks: the Trump Administration and their allies in Congress want to block states from regulating artificial intelligence and claim we must have “ONE RULE” nationwide.

The question is: can they actually do that?

Certainly not through an executive order alone, even though they have been eager to push the narrative that their latest attempt should be seen as a serious effort. But even on the legislative side, there is little evidence of consensus at the federal level on what rules to govern AI systems should look like, and the proposals currently being considered include many different, and at-times overlapping and intersecting, sets of rules — not a single standard. These are complex issues that require a multi-pronged policy approach, as we have seen this year in California where the legislature passed more than a dozen new laws in this area.

The reality is that the states have been (and remain) at the forefront in addressing tech policy issues related to privacy, online safety and AI oversight over the past decade. The Trump administration and a few prominent Republican members of Congress have tried to block state lawmaking on these important issues, including AI. They failed in June, and they are failing again now in December. We will keep fighting this fight, and I hope they will keep losing.