President Donald Trump is set to upend the burgeoning landscape of artificial intelligence regulation this week.
In a social media post on Monday, President Trump announced plans to sign a “One Rule” executive order that would establish a single national framework for AI governance.
“There must be only One Rulebook if we are going to continue to lead in AI,” President Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
We are beating ALL COUNTRIES at this point in the race, but that won’t last long if we are going to have 50 States, many of them bad actors, involved in RULES and the APPROVAL PROCESS.
“THERE CAN BE NO DOUBT ABOUT THIS! AI WILL BE DESTROYED IN ITS INFANCY! I will be doing a ONE RULE Executive Order this week. You can’t expect a company to get 50 Approvals every time they want to do something. THAT WILL NEVER WORK!,” Trump added.
Federal ‘one rule’ vs. 50 state playbooks
The core of the executive order is federal preemption, a legal mechanism that would elevate new federal standards above state-level laws.
In practice, this means the “One Rule” would supersede aggressive AI safety acts recently passed in California, New York, and Colorado, which currently impose liability for algorithmic bias and deepfake proliferation.
By establishing a federal ceiling, the White House aims to dissolve what industry lobbyists have called a “compliance nightmare.”
For Silicon Valley, the order is a victory. Tech giants have long argued that navigating fifty different regulatory regimes makes it prohibitively expensive to deploy AI tools nationally.
However, the proposal has alarmed state attorneys general and civil liberties groups.
They argue that in the absence of comprehensive Congressional legislation, states have been the only entities filling the regulatory vacuum to protect citizens.
The fear among critics is that a federal “One Rule” will be a weaker standard, effectively stripping voters in pro-regulation states of their ability to hold companies accountable for algorithmic harms.
What could actually change in AI regulation?
For businesses, particularly AI startups, the immediate impact would be a reduction in legal overhead.
A unified standard allows companies to scale products like automated hiring tools or credit-scoring algorithms across state lines without fearing local lawsuits.
However, corporate legal teams face some uncertainty.
Executive orders are subject to interpretation by federal agencies and can be overturned by future administrations, potentially leaving firms in limbo while the specific rules of the “One Rule” doctrine are written.
For workers and everyday users, the stakes are personal.
The order could roll back state-level protections regarding workplace surveillance and automated hiring.
For instance, laws in jurisdictions that require employers to notify workers when AI is monitoring their productivity could be nullified if the federal standard adopts a lighter touch.
Consumers might find they have fewer avenues to sue if an AI system denies them a loan or misidentifies them, as state-level private rights of action could be preempted.
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