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Washington’s latest move to centralize power over artificial intelligence is a wake-up call for every patriot who believes in limited government and state sovereignty. On December 11, 2025, the White House issued an executive order directing federal agencies to build a national AI policy framework that would challenge and, in some cases, preempt state AI laws. That power play is paired with congressional maneuvers earlier this year that embedded a sweeping preemption in a House bill, showing a coordinated effort to lock down control of AI policy in the federal bureaucracy.
The executive order doesn’t hide its intentions: it creates an AI Litigation Task Force, orders an evaluation of state laws, and even ties state eligibility for certain federal broadband funds to compliance with federal AI priorities. It also asks the FTC to issue policy statements that could be used to invalidate state rules labeled “deceptive,” effectively weaponizing federal agencies against state innovation. This is not mere coordination — it’s federal edict dressed up as “uniformity.”
House Republicans have already flirted with outright bans on state regulation, inserting a ten-year moratorium on state and local AI rules into a major bill that passed the House on May 22, 2025. The provision would freeze state action while Washington writes one-size-fits-all rules, and even supporters admit it’s designed to avoid a costly patchwork — but at the cost of state authority and local accountability. Senate hurdles and Byrd Rule challenges may slow it down, but the intention is clear: carve out a federal monopoly over AI governance.
State leaders have pushed back for good reason. The bipartisan National Conference of State Legislatures reaffirmed its opposition to any federal preemption of state AI laws on October 22, 2025, and lawmakers from states like California have begged Congress not to strip away tools designed to protect children and consumers. These are not partisan hobbyhorses; they are states acting as laboratories of democracy, responding to real harms like deepfakes and algorithmic manipulation.
Conservative Americans should be deeply suspicious of handing this power to federal elites who answer to neither voters nor the messy accountability of local government. Big tech and trade groups are lobbying hard for federal preemption with promises of economic windfalls, but when industry money and bureaucratic ambition mix, the result is often crony regulation that benefits incumbents and silences competition. The math industry lobbyists use to promise a $600 billion “abundance dividend” ignores the political reality: centralization invites capture.
Make no mistake: there are real dangers from AI that deserve thoughtful policy, but those dangers don’t give Washington license to trample the Constitution’s balance of powers. State laws aimed at stopping AI-driven child exploitation, deepfakes, and privacy invasions would be gutted by a blanket federal ban, and citizens would have fewer avenues to hold bad actors to account. If conservatives value both liberty and safety, we must insist on solutions that keep power close to the people, not concentrated in anonymous federal offices.
The right response is not reflexive paranoia but a principled defense of federalism: demand narrowly tailored federal standards where necessary, preserve state authority where appropriate, and reject any open-ended preemption that hands control to unaccountable elites. The White House and Congress can write useful law without erasing the states, and conservatives should lead that argument with clarity and conviction. Americans who love freedom must be louder than the lobbyists — our republic depends on it.
