Federal AI Regulation Explained: The Executive Order, the 99-1 Vote & What’s Next

Congress has never passed a comprehensive federal AI law. Not one. So who’s actually writing the rules?

While Washington has stayed on the sidelines, 50 state legislatures haven’t — introducing over 1,200 AI bills in 2025 alone. Now the Trump administration is fighting to shut that down, using a Justice Department task force built specifically to challenge state AI laws in court, and Congress is trying, for a third time, to pass a federal framework that would preempt them.

This Deep Dive breaks down how we got here:

⚖ The December 2025 executive order that created a DOJ task force with one job: suing states over their AI laws.

🏛 How the DOJ’s intervention in a Colorado lawsuit led to that state repealing its AI Act — without the government even winning in court.

🗳 The 10-year state AI moratorium that united Rand Paul, the AFL-CIO, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and labor unions against it — and lost 99-1 in the Senate.

📜 The Great American AI Act: the most serious federal AI proposal yet, and the flaw in its central legal analogy.

🕳 The “vacuum problem” — what happens if states are preempted and Congress never passes a replacement.

🗳 Why the 2026 Senate and governor’s races will decide which version of this fight wins.

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AI on the Ballot is a non-partisan program of Regulating AI, a 501(c)(3) organization. Appearances do not constitute an endorsement.

This program is produced in association with the GIE Foundation. 

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