Trump's AI Blueprint: Federal Dominance, No State Laws, Minimal Regulation

The Trump administration’s new AI policy blueprint, released Friday, says the federal government should block states from setting their own AI rules and Congress should not create a new regulatory body for the technology. The core argument: AI is “an inherently interstate phenomenon with key foreign policy and national security implications,” and “fifty discordant” state standards would undermine the national goal of global AI dominance.

The seven-point plan is a legislative wish list, not law. Every provision requires Congress to act.

What the framework says

Child safety is the one area where the administration is willing to regulate. The blueprint calls for legislation similar to the Take It Down Act — signed into law in May 2025, requiring platforms to rapidly remove nonconsensual AI-generated intimate imagery — and proposes age verification requirements for AI services likely accessed by minors. It would also limit AI training on minors’ data and restrict targeted advertising to children.

On copyright, the document explicitly tells Congress to step back. “Although the Administration believes that training of AI models on copyrighted material does not violate copyright laws,” it says, “it acknowledges arguments to the contrary exist and therefore supports allowing the Courts to resolve this issue.” Translation: no legislation on AI training data, let the lawsuits play out.

The framework would extend federal likeness protections — creating what amounts to a national right-of-publicity law covering AI-generated voice and image replicas — with explicit carve-outs for satire, parody, and news reporting.

The Anthropic contradiction

The blueprint calls for Congress to prevent government “coercion” of AI providers to “ban, compel, or alter content based on partisan or ideological agendas” and to give Americans a legal path to seek redress if agencies censor AI platforms. This comes weeks after President Trump ordered federal agencies to blacklist Anthropic — labeling it a “Radical Left AI company” — for setting limits on military use of its models, a move Anthropic is challenging as a First Amendment violation.

The document does not address that contradiction.

Data centers and electricity costs

The administration is threading a needle on infrastructure. It wants to streamline federal permits for data center construction and make it easier for operators to build on-site power generation. But it also says Congress should ensure “residential ratepayers do not experience increased electricity costs as a result of new AI data center construction.” That’s a response to bipartisan concern from communities near large facilities. Whether you can simultaneously fast-track construction and guarantee no rate hikes is an open question the blueprint doesn’t answer.

The bigger picture

The framework continues a push that has so far failed: a federal AI preemption bill has not passed despite White House pressure for nearly a year. States — particularly California, Texas, and Colorado — have been moving ahead with their own AI legislation. The Trump blueprint is explicit that this must stop.

For AI companies, this framework is largely friendly: no new regulator, courts handle copyright, states can’t pile on. The trade-off is child safety compliance and the unpredictability of an administration that has already weaponized procurement against at least one major AI lab.