President Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan presents Congress with a conditional gift. In 28 pages, the White House sketches American technological supremacy: data centers sprouting like shopping malls across the fruited plain, Beijing outmaneuvered at every algorithmic turn, and federal procurement purged of what the plan calls “ideological bias.” Splendid.
Now for the tiresome business of making it real.
Executive plans and orders, as Trump surely knows at this point, are short term plays without appropriations. And appropriations without authorizing legislation are mere fiscal foam. Here today, gone with the next Congress. The president has done his part, delivering a vision that marries a bold role for the federal government with a deep concern for regulatory capture. Whether Capitol Hill rises to match his urgency will determine if American innovation leads the next century or watches others take our place.
Start with the National AI Research Resource, the plan’s democratic wager that genius lurks in every graduate program, awaiting only computational power to flourish. At $2.6 billion over six years (roughly what Americans spend annually on ice cream) NAIRR would give every doctoral student supercomputer access. China’s researchers already enjoy such privileges, courtesy of the Chinese Communist Party’s seemingly limitless credit card. Unless appropriators find the funds in next year’s omnibus, American students will continue what they do now: beg for time on corporate machines or abandon their research to those in Beijing’s laboratories.
Infrastructure presents graver challenges. Modern AI training requires data centers that consume electricity like small cities. One hundred megawatts just to start. President Trump promises to accelerate permits through federal fiat: NEPA exemptions, expanded FAST-41 coverage, categorical exclusions for the asking. Environmental lawyers are already sharpening their briefs. Without congressional codification, every exemption becomes litigation fodder, every fast-tracked permit a federal case. The House has energy-siting reforms gathering dust in committee. Combine them into a single AI Infrastructure Act and give the president’s vision a statutory spine.
Even talent policy, Washington’s perennial muddle, finds unusual clarity in Trump’s approach. Yes, apprenticeships and technical education deserve support. But arithmetic remains arithmetic: half our AI doctorates go to foreign-born students. The Keep STEM Talent Act sits ready, proposing green cards for advanced degrees. Combine it with AI-specific visa categories and America keeps the talent it trains. Force these minds to decamp for Toronto or return to Shanghai, and we’ve achieved nothing but self-sabotage with a populist veneer.
The plan’s most controversial provision — withholding federal funds from states with “burdensome” AI regulations — recognizes a fundamental truth: artificial intelligence is inherently interstate commerce, as surely as railroads or telecommunications. Trump grasps what timid constitutionalists miss: a patchwork of state AI regulations guarantees American companies lose to Chinese competitors.
As Trump said before signing the Plan, “I want [AI companies] to be successful, and you can’t have one state holding you up. … We have to have a single federal standard, not 50 different states regulating this industry of the future.” Congress must follow the president’s lead and pass comprehensive preemption legislation. The Commerce Clause exists precisely for such moments. Let Sacramento regulate surf boards and organic produce. When it comes to the commanding heights of 21st-century technology, federal supremacy is existential.
Security measures demand equal urgency. Courts cannot combat deepfakes without evidence rules written this century. DHS cannot coordinate AI security without explicit authority. Export controls mean nothing without inspectors who understand what they’re inspecting. The plan identifies these gaps; Congress must fill them with precise statutory language. Vague authorities invite cautious bureaucrats to do nothing and adventurous ones to do too much.
The calendar compounds every challenge. Fiscal 2026 remains a blank slate. Campaign 2026 will consume every House member and a third of the Senate. Any executive overreach will meet injunctions before implementation. This leaves precious few legislative vehicles: the fall defense authorization, December’s tax package, and the omnibus. Miss those trains and the plan becomes another Washington monument to good intentions.
The tragedy is that beneath the partisan theatrics lies remarkable consensus. Democrats who birthed NAIRR share infrastructure goals with Republicans who hate permitting delays. The semiconductor industry, research universities, and defense establishment all want action. Even the AI safety community would prefer federal standards to California’s regulatory enthusiasm. The coalition exists. Only courage remains absent.
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Trump understands what Congress apparently does not: technological dominance, once lost, rarely returns. And the president has delivered what executives do: vision, urgency, and a bias for action. Congress must now do what only legislatures can: appropriate funds, write laws, and accept that perfect is the enemy of good enough.
We have our AI plan, if Congress can keep it. The question is whether they’ll act like the bold shareholders of the world’s greatest enterprise or the mere custodians of its most sophisticated debating society. History will record their choice, and our children will live with it.
Chris Koopman is CEO of the Abundance Institute. Neil Chilson is Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute.
