AI Safety & Society · The 2026 incident files
You can describe the 2023-26 federal-versus-state preemption fight in US AI policy — and explain why California's SB 53 ended up as the actual landed frontier-AI regime.
For three years, the central US AI policy question has been: which level of government writes the rules? The Biden administration tried federal regulation via executive order. The Trump administration is trying federal preemption to clear the states out. The states kept legislating anyway. By mid-2026 the federal government had not landed a comprehensive AI statute — but California had.
Biden's 2023 EO 14110 was revoked on Day 1 of the Trump administration. Trump's January 2025 EO 14179 reversed direction; the 11 December 2025 EO set up a DOJ AI Litigation Task Force to sue state AI laws. The Colorado AI Act was paused by a federal court on 27 April 2026 and rewritten as SB 26-189 for 1 January 2027. Meanwhile California SB 53 — the Transparency in Frontier AI Act — went live 1 January 2026 and stayed live.
This chapter walks the four moves of the preemption battle and asks what we learn when the federal government tries to preempt and the states win anyway.
Type: multi-choice
Prompt: > What is the practical result of the 2023-26 federal-vs-state preemption fight in US AI policy?
Chapter contains 4 lessons.