The United States doesn't have an AI law like Europe's — it has an active war between Washington and the states over who has the right to regulate it, and in 2026 that war is being fought in the courts.
"Winning the AI Race: America's AI Action Plan" was published in July 2025 and identifies more than 90 federal policy actions organized around three pillars: accelerating innovation, building American AI infrastructure, and leading in diplomacy and international security. It's the framework document that explains nearly every executive order that followed.
On June 2, 2026, the president signed the executive order "Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Security," directing federal agencies to strengthen federal cybersecurity, expand the use of defensive AI tools, and establish a voluntary coordination framework for the safe deployment of frontier models. The order also asks AI developers to voluntarily share their new models with the federal government up to 30 days before giving other partners access — an early-visibility mechanism that stops short of mandatory approval.
Since December 2025, an executive order established an AI Litigation Task Force within the Department of Justice which, as of January 10, 2026, is responsible for challenging state AI laws in federal courts on the argument that they unconstitutionally burden interstate commerce or are preempted by federal regulation. This is the exact legal context in which Colorado's SB 205 court block occurred following xAI's lawsuit — it wasn't an isolated case, it's the application of an explicit federal strategy.
The practical result is unstable regulatory terrain: states keep legislating (Colorado, California, and others), while the federal government actively challenges those laws in court. For a company operating nationally in the US, this means no state AI law can be treated as final until it survives its first court challenge — the safest compliance strategy is building around principles likely to survive any outcome (documentation, transparency, traceability) rather than around the literal text of a specific state law.
Carlos Montiel is an enterprise AI solutions architect. He implements LLMs, Agents, RAG, and orchestrators for companies across Guatemala and Latin America. Reach out for a consultation.
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