In Summary: The White House National Legislative Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence

Last July, the White House released "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan," which framed AI as a matter of national competitiveness and emphasized innovation, infrastructure, and international engagement. That direction was reinforced in a December 2025 executive order "Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence," which stated that the United States should pursue a minimally burdensome national AI framework, expressed concern that a patchwork of state laws could create compliance burdens, affect interstate commerce, and slow innovation, and directed White House officials to prepare legislative recommendations establishing a uniform federal policy framework for AI that would preempt conflicting state AI laws.

These White House recommendations were released last Friday as a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence. It recommends federal legislative action across seven areas: child protection, community and infrastructure impacts, intellectual property, free speech, innovation, workforce development, and preemption of certain state AI laws. It also states that the Administration looks forward to working with Congress to turn the proposal into legislation. Overall, the document indicates a preference for a larger federal role in setting baseline AI policy while preserving some state authority over generally applicable laws, infrastructure siting, and state government uses of AI.

1. Protecting Children and Empowering Parents: Summary: This section recommends congressional action on parental controls, privacy-protective age assurance, safeguards against sexual exploitation and self-harm, and confirmation that existing child privacy protections apply to AI systems. It also states that federal legislation should not preempt generally applicable state child protection laws, including laws addressing AI-generated child sexual abuse material.
2. Safeguarding and Strengthening American Communities: Addresses energy demand, AI infrastructure, fraud prevention, national security capacity, and small business adoption. It recommends protecting residential ratepayers from electricity cost increases tied to AI data center growth, streamlining federal permitting for infrastructure and on-site or behind-the-meter generation, strengthening responses to AI-enabled scams, and supporting small business uptake of AI tools. It also calls for ensuring national security agencies have sufficient technical capacity to evaluate advanced AI systems.
3. Respecting Intellectual Property Rights and Supporting Creators: Recommends that Congress avoid disrupting ongoing court consideration of whether AI training on copyrighted material is fair use, while considering collective licensing frameworks and a federal approach to unauthorized AI-generated digital replicas that preserves exceptions for protected expression.
4. Preventing Censorship and Protecting Free Speech: Recommends that Congress prevent the federal government from coercing technology providers, including AI providers, to remove, compel, or alter lawful content based on ideology, and create a mechanism for redress when federal agencies improperly influence expression on AI platforms.
5. Enabling Innovation and Ensuring American AI Dominance: Recommends regulatory sandboxes, wider access to federal datasets in AI-ready formats, reliance on existing sector-specific regulators rather than a new federal AI rulemaking body, and continued use of industry-led standards.
6. Educating Americans and Developing an AI-Ready Workforce: Recommends non-regulatory federal support for AI training through existing education, workforce development, and apprenticeship systems, along with additional study of AI's effects on job tasks and support for land-grant institutions providing technical assistance, demonstrations, and youth programs.
7. Establishing a Federal Policy Framework and Preempting Cumbersome State AI Laws: States that Congress should preempt state AI laws that impose undue burdens, while preserving state laws of general applicability protecting children, consumers, and against fraud; state zoning and siting authority; and rules governing a state's own use of AI in procurement or public services. It also proposes that states should not regulate AI development because of interstate commerce and national security concerns, unduly burden lawful uses of AI, or penalize developers for unlawful third-party conduct involving their models.

For more information or questions please reach out to Kenneth Hardy ([email protected]).