The Trump administration on Friday announced a legal framework for a single national policy on artificial intelligence.
The goal is to create security and safety guardrails for the use of AI, while also preventing states from enacting their own laws. This legal framework is intended to be a blueprint for Congress to guide AI regulation.
The framework is based on an executive order signed by President Donald Trump in December aimed at challenging state laws regarding AI. The order does not include any healthcare-specific provisions, but rather aims to limit states’ ability to enact and enforce AI laws, many of which also apply to the healthcare industry.
The Trump administration hopes Congress will turn the framework into legislation that the president can sign into law “in the coming months.”
State legislators are backing efforts to reduce state AI laws. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures database, 38 states adopted or enacted AI-related measures in 2025.
In a letter to Congress in November, 280 state legislators expressed opposition to a bill that would roll back state AI laws. “As AI evolves rapidly, state and local governments may be better positioned than Congress and federal agencies to respond in real time. Freezing state action now will stifle the innovation needed in policy design when it is needed most,” the lawmakers wrote.
“After years of no comprehensive federal action to address the harms of privacy and social media, broadly preempting state and local AI laws until Congress enacts them would reverse progress and weaken existing protections,” the state lawmakers said in the letter.
However, the Trump administration believes that national legal frameworks can only succeed if they are applied uniformly across the United States, and “a patchwork of conflicting state laws will undermine America’s ability to innovate and lead in the global AI race,” the Trump administration said in its announcement about the federal AI legislative framework.
“The federal government is uniquely positioned to set a coherent national policy that enables us to win the AI race and deliver its benefits to the American people, while effectively addressing the policy challenges associated with this transformative technology,” the Trump administration said.
This six-pillar outline addresses issues such as protecting children, enabling innovation and accelerating AI development, laying the groundwork for developing AI data centers, respecting intellectual property rights, preventing censorship and protecting free speech, and developing an AI-ready workforce.
Although this framework does not specifically address the use of medical or healthcare AI, it could have far-reaching implications for the healthcare industry.
Tina Joros, Chair of the EHR Association’s AI Workgroup, speaking on behalf of the EHR Association, said the National AI Policy Framework released by the White House is “an important and promising step toward urgently needed regulatory clarity.”
“The EHR Association has consistently supported a federal approach to AI governance to prevent the rapid emergence of a patchwork of conflicting state requirements that complicate compliance, increase provider burden, and inhibit innovation. In addition to acting on this general policy framework, we urge Congress to include healthcare-specific AI governance requirements in the proposed federal framework that distinguish between low-risk and high-risk use cases,” Joros wrote.
“We continue to work with federal and state leaders to ensure that healthcare AI policy protects patient safety, fosters provider and patient trust, supports clinical workflows, and enables responsible progress,” Joross wrote.
