White House Expands Stance on Federal AI Regulation

Since the release of the White House AI Action Plan in July 2025, the Trump Administration and federal agencies have been active in fulfilling the strategy’s objectives. The plan lays the foundation for accelerating, enabling and expanding AI innovation.

In response to the plan, agencies are publishing new or updated AI strategies (i.e. HHS), and efforts are being made to bolster AI data center development, such as EPA’s new online resource to streamline permitting processes.

Most recently, OPM issued the memorandum, Building the AI Workforce of the Future, announcing the creation of a U.S. Tech Force which will provide agencies with technical talent from the private sector for 1-2 year intervals.

However, one area of the plan that is gaining the most attention these days is the Trump Administration’s efforts to remove restrictive regulation hindering AI innovation and ensure ideological bias is absent in AI technologies.

Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence

Last week, the White House issued Executive Order (EO) 14365, Ensuring a National Policy Frame for Artificial Intelligence. The EO establishes an AI Litigation Task Force at DOJ to evaluate and preempt State AI laws that alter truthful AI model outputs or that harm innovation. Consequently, for States that retain such laws, the White House directs Commerce to withhold non-deployment Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) funding and instructs federal agencies to evaluate other discretionary grant programs to potentially restrict additional State funding.

The EO also calls on the Special Advisor for AI and Crypto and the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology to jointly develop a Federal policy framework for AI that will standardize preemption of State AI laws conflicting with innovation, with exceptions for State AI laws surrounding child safety protections, AI infrastructure permitting reforms, State procurement and use of AI, and others.

For contractors, the EO will serve to reduce the network of siloed, and often expensive, AI regulations companies face across States. According to the EO, “State-by-State regulation by definition creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups.” However, the EO is likely to face legal challenges from States contesting the federal stronghold on AI regulation. Thus, contractors must stay diligent and flexible in the development of a currently fluid AI regulation environment.

Increasing Public Trust in Artificial Intelligence Through Unbiased AI Principles

Along the same lines of neutralizing bias in AI models at the State regulation level, the White House is expounding efforts at the federal level. OMB issued Memorandum M-26-04, Increasing Public Trust in Artificial Intelligence Through Unbiased AI Principles, in response to EO 14319 to promote unbiased AI principles in large language models (LLMs). The new OMB memo details how agencies will pursue unbiased AI via contractual requirements and procurement policies.

Specifically, the memo directs agencies to obtain adequate information from vendors to ensure LLMs (or other AI models) comply with Unbiased AI principles – defined in the EO as truth-seeking and ideologically neutral. Minimally accepted information required from the vendors includes Acceptable Use Policy documentation; model, system and/or data cards; end user resources; and a mechanism for end user feedback. The memo instructs agencies to ensure these contractual requirements are in place for new contracts, updated in existing contracts, and incorporated into agency procurement policies no later than March 11, 2026.

Depending on the use of the AI model, agencies may request additional information from vendors, including pre- and post-training activities, model evaluations, enterprise-level controls and third-party modifications.

For contractors, the awaited guidance is written to follow the Trump Administration’s goals to limit strenuous regulation while also preventing “woke AI.” The memo explicitly details the ramifications for vendors that do not comply, “Agencies should explicitly identify relevant requirements…as material to eligibility and payment under the contract, to support termination of the contract for default, as directed by the E.O. in cases where the vendor refuses to take corrective action in identified cases of noncompliance.”