Remember when President Trump told states to stop regulating artificial intelligence? Six months later, the states have essentially ignored him.

In December, Trump issued an executive order directing the attorney general to challenge state AI laws deemed “more than minimally burdensome,” threatening to cut off broadband funding and other grants to states that didn’t comply. The message was clear: federal preemption, the AI industry moves fast, and states should get out of the way.

What actually happened? More AI bills have been introduced this year than last, according to tracking from multiple policy groups. States aren’t retreating — they’re recalibrating. The broad, sweeping AI regulation attempts that got vetoed by governors concerned about overreach have given way to more targeted legislation: bills focused on how chatbots interact with children, how employers can use AI in hiring, what developers must do to prevent catastrophe.

The White House hasn’t followed through on its threats. There’s been no court challenge to any state’s AI law. No funding has been withheld. The executive order sits there, technically in force, practically ignored.

This tells you something important about the limits of executive power on this issue. The Trump administration made AI a national priority and framed state-level regulation as a threat to economic security and the race with China. But those arguments haven’t translated into political will to actually enforce preemption. States know it. Legislators know it. The AI companies that lobbied for federal preemption are discovering that getting a policy win on paper is different from getting it enforced in practice.

What’s particularly striking is the bipartisan nature of the state-level pushback. Trump’s order drew criticism from civil liberties groups and consumer advocates across the political spectrum. The concern — that blocking state regulation would hand AI giants a gift of virtually no oversight — resonates beyond any single party’s base. States are moving on AI not because they’re ignoring legitimate federal interests, but because they’re responding to genuine constituent concerns about how AI systems affect their daily lives.

The federal picture remains stalled. Congress hasn’t passed meaningful AI legislation, and the administration’s own “national policy framework” has been met with bipartisan criticism in the House. The result is a regulatory vacuum that states are filling — carefully, with more targeted bills than before, but filling nonetheless.

The AI industry wanted clarity. What it’s getting is exactly the patchwork it hoped to avoid — except now the patches are spreading faster than anyone in Washington predicted.