FCC Reviewing State AI Laws Under White House Plan
President Donald Trump signed three executive orders, including one aimed at promoting data center construction.
WASHINGTON July 24, 2025 – President Donald Trump signed Wednesday three executive orders related to artificial intelligence, including a measure aimed at promoting data center construction.
The orders came hours after the White House released an ‘AI action plan’ aimed at slashing federal and state regulation on AI companies, expediting the buildout of data center infrastructure, and promoting the use of American AI systems abroad.
The action plan would task the Federal Communications Commission with reviewing whether state laws “interfere with the agency’s ability to carry out its obligations and authorities under the Communications Act of 1934.”
“The President’s plan puts forward a series of actions that will ensure America’s AI remains the gold standard around the world,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement. “I look forward to supporting these national priorities.”
The data center order directed the Commerce Department to “launch an initiative to provide financial support for” AI data center projects, “which could include loans and loan guarantees, grants, tax incentives, and offtake agreements.” A new build would have to cost at least $500 million, add 100 megawatts of electricity demand to the grid, “protect national security,” or simply be selected by a member of the president’s cabinet to qualify.
The order also made a slate of efforts to ease federal permitting for those projects. It tasked the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality to create multiple new avenues for avoiding stringent review under the National Environmental Permitting Act, which governs environmental permitting for federal projects.
The order directed the Environmental Protection Agency to identify sites for building data centers and modifying regulations under the Clean Air Act and Toxic Substances Control Act to expedite permitting. It would also direct a federal permitting council to expedite qualifying data center projects via the FAST-41 system, among other things.
Trump signed two other executive orders on AI, one looking to promote the export of American AI systems and one preventing ‘woke’ AI models in federal contracting. He signed them at a summit hosted by the Hill and Valley Forum and the All-In podcast, where Trump’s AI and crypto czar David Sacks is a co-host.
Nicholas Garcia, senior policy counsel at consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge, said the action plan’s solutions to constraints on AI innovation – access to enough training data, computing power, and researchers, in his view, – were "severely lacking.”
“This plan is action without vision or direction,” he said in a statement. “Cutting regulations and eliminating protections is, by itself, not a plan for innovation and competition in AI – it is a handout to already-entrenched, powerful tech companies.”
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