Sen. Kelly Blasts Trump’s AI Order Reversal as Policy Failure
Benzinga reported Friday that Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) publicly condemned President Donald Trump‘s decision to abandon his own artificial intelligence executive order, calling it a “failure” with serious consequences for U.S. global competitiveness.
Billionaire Access Shaped Federal AI Policy
According to Kelly’s post on X, the now-withdrawn order would have created a voluntary process for federal agencies to evaluate advanced AI systems before public deployment. The goal was identifying potential risks and vulnerabilities in so-called frontier models.
Kelly argued the order was never ambitious to begin with. Yet even that limited framework was scrapped following pushback from influential technology executives, he said. “America cannot lead in AI if our policy is determined by whichever billionaire gets the President on the phone last,” Kelly stated.
Trump offered a different rationale for the decision. He argued that additional requirements could slow momentum the U.S. has already built. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead,” Trump said.
Background: A Shifting Federal AI Posture
The episode reflects broader turbulence in Washington’s approach to governing artificial intelligence. The Biden administration had previously issued a sweeping AI executive order in 2023, mandating safety evaluations and federal reporting requirements for powerful AI systems. Trump moved to revoke that order shortly after taking office, pledging a lighter regulatory touch to spur innovation.
The latest reversal suggests even internal White House efforts to install modest guardrails have struggled to survive industry opposition. The result is a federal landscape without a standing mechanism for assessing AI deployment risks at scale.
Congress Moves to Fill the Void
Kelly, a former NASA astronaut and Navy combat veteran, is now pressing a legislative alternative. His “AI for America” plan proposes that Congress develop what he called “real, forward-looking policy on AI” rather than leaving the field to executive discretion.
Kelly also highlighted the downstream stakes of poor AI governance. He cited cybersecurity infrastructure, the national energy grid, and the U.S.-China technology race as areas where federal policy decisions will carry lasting consequences for American households.
Without an active federal framework, no government-wide standard currently exists for vetting advanced AI systems ahead of deployment. That gap, critics argue, grows more significant as model capabilities expand rapidly across the industry.
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