President signs an executive order directing federal agencies to challenge state laws regulating artificial intelligence.

The President, on Thursday, signed an executive order titled Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence. The order’s stated purpose is to sustain U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence by establishing a federal policy framework and addressing state-level laws that conflict with it.

The order’s operative provisions, as a matter of administrative-law mechanics, are notable. The Federal Trade Commission is directed to issue a policy statement on the application of the FTC Act to AI models, with attention to the question of whether state AI laws are preempted. The Federal Communications Commission is directed to open a proceeding on a federal reporting and disclosure standard for AI models. The Department of Justice is directed to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with the explicit purpose of challenging state AI laws inconsistent with the policy statement.

The state laws contemplated, on the universe of enacted statutes, include California’s algorithmic accountability framework, Colorado’s consumer-AI disclosure law, Illinois’s biometric-information protections, and Texas’s deepfake civil cause of action. These laws were enacted by state legislatures, signed by sitting governors, and, in several instances, withstood early constitutional challenges in state courts.

The order’s mechanism is preemption by federal regulatory action. The mechanism rests on the proposition that an FTC policy statement, an FCC proceeding outcome, or a Justice Department litigation position can establish a preemption baseline, in the absence of an underlying federal AI statute that Congress has not enacted. That proposition is, in administrative-law terms, novel. The doctrine is unsettled. The litigation, as the order anticipates, will be the vehicle for determining the answer.

The order is silent on the question of where the federal law preempting the state laws comes from. The answer, on the order’s text, is agency action under the President’s executive authority. That is the answer the courts will be asked to evaluate. The courts have, in recent years, narrowed the scope of agency action that operates without statutory authorization. The Supreme Court’s major-questions doctrine is on the books. The doctrine, applied here, is the question.

A serious country, when it wishes to preempt state law in a major sector, instructs its Congress to pass a federal statute. This country, on Thursday, instructed its Justice Department to establish a Litigation Task Force.

Calmly documenting the decline.