The fight over who writes the rules
The defining feature of US AI regulation in mid-2026 is not any single statute. It is an open contest between Washington and the states over who gets to regulate at all. On 11 December 2025 the White House issued an executive order, Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence, that directs the preparation of a uniform federal framework, establishes an AI Litigation Task Force to challenge state laws viewed as inconsistent with national policy, and instructs agencies to restrict funding to states with what it calls onerous AI laws. The order carves out limited space for state rules on child safety, AI infrastructure and government procurement, and it names the Colorado AI Act specifically.
Colorado: the test case that folded
Colorado's SB 24-205 was the first comprehensive state AI law in the country, built on duties of care against algorithmic discrimination, deployer risk-management programmes, impact assessments and attorney-general reporting. It never took effect. On 27 April 2026 a federal magistrate stayed enforcement while the Department of Justice joined xAI's constitutional challenge to the statute. On 14 May 2026, Governor Polis signed SB 26-189, which replaces the original framework, pushes the effective date to 1 January 2027, and strips the law back to a notice-and-transparency regime for automated decision-making technologies in consequential decisions. Consumer notice and appeal rights survive; the risk-programme architecture does not, and enforcement waits on attorney-general rulemaking. Our 22 May analysis, The Colorado AI Act just got frozen, covers the sequence in detail.
What is actually in force
Federal pressure has not produced a federal statute, and it has not emptied the field. Texas's Responsible Artificial Intelligence Governance Act (TRAIGA) took effect on 1 January 2026, with prohibited-use rules and obligations for state agencies and businesses operating in Texas. California's AI transparency measures, including training-data disclosure requirements for generative AI developers, also took effect on 1 January 2026, and regulations under the CCPA will require pre-use notice, opt-outs and access rights for automated decision-making technology in significant decisions from 1 January 2027. The result is a narrower but very real patchwork, with the federal government litigating against parts of it in real time.
Reading the direction of travel
Across the surviving and incoming state rules, the pattern is consistent. American legislatures are stepping back from EU-style ex-ante governance, the risk-management programmes, impact assessments and regulator filings that defined the original Colorado act, and converging on a thinner core: tell people when an automated system materially shapes a consequential decision about them, explain it, give them a route to a human, and keep the records that prove it. That convergence is the practical good news for multi-state deployers, because it means one well-built control set covers most of the map.
What US deployers should do now
First, stop building to the dead 30 June 2026 Colorado deadline; the governing framework there is now SB 26-189 and its rulemaking clock. Second, invest in the jurisdiction-proof core: an inventory of where AI materially influences decisions about employment, credit, housing, insurance, healthcare or education; consumer notice; a human appeal path; vendor due diligence and contracts; and retention of decision records. Third, track the preemption fight rather than assuming it resolves either way: a stayed state law can revive on appeal, and a federal framework, if one passes, will most likely standardise the same transparency core rather than abolish it.
Sources
Holland & Knight on the December 2025 executive order · Vorys, Battle for AI governance (April 2026) · Hunton, Colorado AI Act amended and effective date delayed (May 2026) · STACK Cybersecurity, Colorado AI law status guide (May 2026) · TRAIGA overview. General information, not legal advice; verify against the statutes and your own counsel.