President Trump late yesterday signed an executive order blocking states from enforcing their own laws regulating artificial intelligence.

Specifically, it gives the Justice Department authority to block state laws if they do not support, quote, global dominance of AI.

It would also allow the federal government to withhold funding for broadband and other projects.

The directive marks a big win

for tech giants, but will likely be challenged in the courts. During the Oval Office signing yesterday,

the president's AI and Cryptozar, David Sachs, an investor in multiple AI-related companies,

argued that allowing states to set their own rules poses significant risks. Over 100 of them have already past. 25% of them are in California, New York, and Illinois. You've got 50 states running in 50 different directions. It just doesn't make sense. We're creating a confusing patchwork of regulation. What we need is a single federal standard. For more, we're joined by tech journalist Jacob Ward, founder of the Rip Current.

Jacob, welcome back to the News Hour. Thanks, Jeff. Great to be here. So President Trump in this

executive order says he wants a minimally burdensome national standard. The White House argues

that tech companies can't reasonably be expected to comply with potentially 50 different sets

of state laws.

Break down that argument for us.

Well, the argument right has these two sides.

One is that we need some sort of comprehensive federal regulation for there to be,

as President Trump's executive order describes it, supremacy when it comes to the United States. There is some real rah-rah football team backer kind of language in this executive order that we need to win.

It mentions adversaries, which of course means China.

And so the argument here is that we need to streamline the development of this industry so that we can be the global winner on it.

The other side of the argument, of course, is that the states have always been the

laboratory of democracy.

They are the place where we figure out what regulations work and what don't.

And right now, all 50 states plus Puerto Rico have passed an AI regulation of some form.

You've got Colorado banning algorithmic discrimination.

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