Trump administration might not fight state AI regulations after all (techcrunch.com)

The Trump administration had been pushing for a single federal standard on AI and reportedly prepared an executive order to create an "AI Litigation Task Force" that would sue states over their own AI laws and threaten to revoke federal broadband funding for noncompliant states. That hardline approach followed an earlier attempt to insert a 10-year ban on state AI rules into legislation (later removed by the Senate) and came amid partisan and industry fights over state safety bills like California’s SB 53. Reuters now reports the executive order is on hold, and if revived it would likely draw significant political and legal opposition — even from some Republicans who opposed the earlier moratorium idea. For the AI/ML community this matters because federal preemption or aggressive litigation would reshape the regulatory landscape: it could halt state-level policy experiments, chill adoption of safety rules, and introduce legal uncertainty for companies, startups and research labs operating across jurisdictions. It also highlights deep fractures between policymakers and industry players (e.g., firms backing state safety laws vs. those opposing regulation). The situation underscores that governance of model safety, transparency and liability remains contested — with consequences for how quickly technical safeguards and compliance practices are developed and deployed.