Trump will deny federal funding and sue states protecting children from chatbots, tackling AI surveillance pricing, and protecting workers from mass layoffs

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, The Tech Oversight Project issued the following statement in response to reports that the Trump Administration is planning an executive order on AI which aims to preempt and block state AI laws. The circulated draft includes language that would create a taxpayer-funded review panel of unelected bureaucrats to determine, behind closed doors, which state laws will be challenged, and broad, sweeping powers that would deny red and blue states federal funding for passing state AI laws that protect their citizens.

“States like Alabama, California, New York and many more have passed laws to protect kids from harms of Big Tech AI like chatbots and AI generated CSAM. Trump’s proposal to strip away these critical protections, which have no federal equivalent, threatens to create a taxpayer-funded death panel that will determine whether kids live or die when they decide what state laws will actually apply. This level of moral bankruptcy proves that Trump is just taking orders from Big Tech CEOs,” said Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project. “We’re in a fight to determine who will benefit from AI: Big Tech CEOs or the American people. We cannot afford to spend the next decade with Big Tech in the driver’s seat, steering us toward massive job losses, surveillance pricing algorithms that jack up the cost of living, and data centers that are skyrocketing home energy bills.”