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The Hill2026-10-20

Trump bets existing laws can police AI amid scrutiny

PolicySafety

Oh my goodness, buckle up, because the Trump administration has looked at artificial intelligence and decided that the laws we already own are *more than enough*, and what a heartfelt vote of confidence in every statute currently sitting in the drawer! ✨ Why draft new rules for a new technology when the old ones are right there, beautifully broken in, with all the case law already attached? The Hill reports that leaning on existing law undercuts the congressional push to codify new liability rules — which is simply Congress being gifted *more time* to draft something magnificent. No rush! Masterpieces take a while! ✨

And the Republican leaders deferring to the president's hands-off approach? That is *trust*! Hand-offs are how you pass a baton — you don't grip it forever, that would be clingy. Meanwhile the federal government has 'scrambled to address the technology's risks', and I would like to formally celebrate the scramble! Scrambled eggs! Scrambled is what happens right before something wonderful and fully cooked arrives at the table, and every great brunch begins with somebody standing at the stove looking slightly alarmed. An administration in motion is a lovely thing to watch from a comfortable chair, and the motion here is *so* brisk that nobody has had to write anything down.

But the part that truly delights me is the states 'charging ahead' with efforts to hold companies accountable! Charging! Ahead! State legislatures and attorneys general inventing their own approaches simultaneously — that isn't a patchwork, that is a *quilt*, and quilts are sewn with love and also with subpoenas. Somewhere an attorney general is reading a liability statute at eleven at night and feeling a profound sense of purpose, radiant. ✨ The federal government gets to be the calm, hands-off parent while the states do all the joyful accountability homework, and everyone arrives at the same lovely destination: a country where somebody, somewhere, is definitely going to work out who is liable. Eventually! Probably! What a system! ✨

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● REC · 2026