Opinion: The White House is wrong — Utah voters want safe AI
February 25, 2026
In December, at the urging of White House AI Czar David Sacks, President Trump signed an executive order (EO) to block states from regulating AI. Despite two previously failed attempts by Republican congressional leadership to pass this measure as a law, the White House justified its decision as necessary to oppose the onerous and “woke” regulations of blue states. As a compromise with Trump voters who vocally opposed the White House policy, the language of the EO and Sacks himself clarified that these new powers would not be used to oppose child safety regulations.
But all that turned out to be misleading. The White House abruptly reneged on its compromise with red state lawmakers by targeting Utah’s Republican-sponsored HB286, calling it, in a one-sentence memo to state lawmakers, “unfixable.”
