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On Sunday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration is considering an executive order that would create a government-industry working group to review new AI models before they're released to the public. The proposal, confirmed by Reuters and Bloomberg, would involve the NSA, the Office of the National Cyber Director, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. White House officials briefed executives from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI on the plans last week.

The focus is squarely on national security. The agencies named are intelligence and cyber bodies, and the trigger seems to have been Anthropic's Mythos model identifying thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across every major operating system and browser. Government Executive reported today that draft policy language circulating between the Pentagon and the White House asserts the government's right to decide how technology it purchases gets used, with one source saying the goal is to clarify that "it is for that democratically elected government to determine what is a lawful and appropriate use of a particular technology, not solely a company."

The comparison to Biden's 2023 AI executive order is inevitable. That order, which Trump revoked on day one, also required government review of frontier models, but was broader: consumer safety, civil rights, algorithmic discrimination, and labor protections across healthcare, housing, and education. The emerging Trump proposal is narrower and driven by intelligence equities rather than societal risk.

The paths are different, but they converge on the same principle: government oversight of AI models before they reach the public. And while Washington works through what that should look like, the states have been writing the rules that actually govern how AI affects people's lives. Here's what that landscape looks like.

What's Inside

Let's get into it.