Trump Rescinds the Biden AI Executive Order

federal executive-order January 23, 2025 · by Priya Vasquez

As predicted, EO 14110 was rescinded on January 20 as part of a broader package of day-one revocations. Replacing it: a new executive order titled "Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence," which directs OSTP, the National Security Advisor, and the OMB Director to develop a new "Artificial Intelligence Action Plan" within 180 days. Until that plan lands, federal AI policy is, charitably, in limbo.

The legal question that has occupied us this week is not "what was rescinded" — that is largely as expected — but "what survives." The answer is more than you might think.

What's gone

The most consequential rescissions:

• The Defense Production Act-anchored reporting regime for dual-use foundation models. Companies subject to those reporting obligations are no longer subject to them. Whether the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security will issue a replacement remains to be seen, but the new EO's emphasis on removing "regulatory and other barriers" suggests no.
• The OMB M-24-10 AI use guidance for federal agencies. That memo had real operational teeth — it required agency AI use case inventories and risk classification. Replacement guidance is supposed to come within 60 days. Until then, agencies are operating under their pre-existing internal policies, which vary considerably.
• The various agency-specific AI tasks in EO 14110 — DOL workforce monitoring guidance, HHS health-equity AI guidance, HUD housing-discrimination AI guidance — are no longer required outputs.
• The AI Bill of Rights, never legally binding to begin with, is no longer the official framing document.
• The voluntary commitments labs made in 2023 are not formally rescinded but the White House office that coordinated them has been disbanded.

What survives

More survives than the day-one messaging implies:

• The U.S. AI Safety Institute at NIST. It has independent statutory grounding under the National AI Initiative Act and was created administratively, not by the EO. Its budget is line-item in the Commerce appropriation. Its mission may shift — we expect a focus on standards over safety evaluations — but it persists.
• Agency rulemakings already in progress that don't depend on EO 14110 as their authority. The CFPB's automated valuation model rule, the FTC's commercial surveillance ANPR (in whatever form), HHS Section 1557 — all of these have independent statutory basis and survive their EO-related elements.
• The NIST AI RMF and its Profiles. These are independent NIST work products. The new administration has not signaled hostility to them, and they continue to anchor the U.S. governance practice baseline.
• The export controls under EAR on advanced computing items. These are administered by Commerce/BIS under separate authority and are oriented toward national security rather than safety. We expect them to expand, not contract.
• National security and IC AI work, which is generally on a separate executive track and continues largely unchanged.

The new EO's affirmative content

The new executive order is short — about three pages. Its substantive directives are limited:

1. Identify and revise or rescind any agency action taken pursuant to EO 14110 that conflicts with the new EO's policy of "sustained American leadership in AI."
2. Develop the AI Action Plan within 180 days.
3. Suspend the OMB M-24-10 implementation pending replacement guidance within 60 days.

That's nearly the whole substantive content. The vagueness is deliberate; it gives the administration room to move while preserving optionality.

What this means for compliance

For most clients, near-term compliance posture is unchanged. The federal regulatory baseline is now lighter, but the durable constraints — EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, state AI laws, contractual flow-downs, sector-specific agency rules — remain. The federal pivot will mean less new federal regulation in 2025, not less regulation in total.

Two specific carve-outs:

• Frontier model developers who were investing significant compliance budget against the DPA reporting regime can repurpose that spend. We are not advising clients to wind it down entirely — the EU AI Act's GPAI obligations cover similar ground and are arriving fast — but the immediate U.S. trigger is gone.
• Federal contractors whose AI compliance flowed through M-24-10 should not assume those obligations are off until replacement guidance lands. Many federal contracts incorporate the M-24-10 requirements by reference. Until those contracts are amended, the obligations may persist contractually even after the policy basis is removed. Re-read your active contracts.

What comes next

Three things to watch in the next 180 days:

1. The composition and process of the AI Action Plan working group. Who leads it, who consults, and how open the process is will tell us a great deal about substantive direction.
2. Replacement OMB guidance. The 60-day timeline is aggressive; expect slippage. The replacement will probably be lighter-touch but will need to address the basic question of how federal agencies make procurement and use decisions about AI tools, which the prior memo at least answered.
3. Congressional reaction. Republican AI legislative interest is real but oriented differently than Democratic interest — more focus on China, more focus on innovation barriers, less focus on bias and safety. Expect bills, perhaps in defense authorization vehicles, that fill in some of the federal-policy vacuum from a different angle.

The next twelve months will see the federal-policy story slow down and the state-policy story accelerate. We covered the latter in November; we will return to it as 2025 state legislative sessions get going.