WASHINGTON, DC – Today, Sacha Haworth, Executive Director of The Tech Oversight Project, issued the following statement after President Donald Trump signed an executive order threatening to withhold federal broadband funding from states that regulate artificial intelligence:

“The Trump-Sacks executive order proves that the White House only listens to powerful Big Tech CEOs who fund ballrooms rather than the everyday people they pretend to serve. This EO will almost certainly backfire because blue states are going to keep leading on AI policy and protecting their own people, while red states, many of which have strong AI laws on the books, fall behind. This is bad policy married with even worse politics, and the AI EO will go down as an unmitigated disaster that puts the Trump Administration at odds with over two-thirds of Americans, and his AI-skeptic MAGA base.”