Postponement and stated rationale
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday, May 21, 2026, postponed the signing of an executive order (EO) intended to establish federal oversight of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models. <cite index="3-10,3-11">Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that the event, which was set for later that afternoon, was delayed "because I didn't like certain aspects of it."</cite> <cite index="3-12">He added that AI is "causing tremendous good," and that he was concerned the order "could have been a blocker."</cite>
<cite index="8-5">"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,"</cite> Trump said, framing the decision around international competitiveness.
What the draft order contained
According to reporting on the draft, the EO would have created a voluntary framework for coordination between AI developers and the federal government. <cite index="1-12">The version circulated called on AI developers to submit certain frontier models to the federal government for review at least 90 days before their release.</cite> <cite index="4-3">The order would have established a voluntary review process for frontier AI models prior to public release, with the National Security Agency (NSA) setting which systems counted as "covered frontier models."</cite>
The draft also addressed cybersecurity. <cite index="1-13,1-14,1-15">It included a section dedicated to cybersecurity, calling on government agencies to "establish or expand" internal programs that use AI tools to mitigate cyberattacks, and directed officials to identify federal grant programs that could support such initiatives.</cite>
Industry pushback
<cite index="2-8">Meta Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Mark Zuckerberg, xAI CEO Elon Musk and David Sacks all spoke with Trump between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.</cite> <cite index="4-4">The intervention was led by former Trump AI czar David Sacks, who called the president directly the morning of the planned ceremony after participating in the EO review earlier in the week; Semafor and Politico both reported that xAI's Elon Musk and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg also pushed back.</cite>
Not all industry players opposed the directive. <cite index="1-10">OpenAI Group PBC is reported to have supported the order.</cite> <cite index="4-5">OpenAI's chief lobbyist Chris Lehane had been broadly supportive of "collaborating with the government on AI safety," while other industry executives pressed for a 14-day rather than 90-day model-sharing window.</cite>
Logistical issues also factored in. <cite index="1-16,1-17,1-18">The White House invited several prominent tech industry figures to the Thursday signing event, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, but the trio indicated they would not attend — attendance issues that reportedly factored into Trump's decision.</cite>
Internal disagreement on agency roles
<cite index="2-14,2-15">One tech industry source told Axios there were questions about why the order would give the Treasury Department a leading role in finding and fixing AI models' security vulnerabilities, since the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have typically taken leading roles in reviewing and testing critical security vulnerabilities.</cite>
Policy context
<cite index="8-10,8-11">On his first day in office, Trump repealed one of President Joe Biden's key AI executive orders, which had established its own method for determining which AI models were considered most advanced or highest risk; Biden's order, unlike the planned Trump order, required leading AI companies to share the results of internal testing, security protocols and other development details.</cite>
Federal pre-deployment testing currently runs through an existing voluntary mechanism. <cite index="8-7,8-8,8-9">The administration has already partnered with some leading AI companies to test models for safety concerns before release; those evaluations are run by the Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), housed within NIST. A recent announcement about expanded pre-deployment testing between CAISI and Microsoft, Google and xAI was removed from NIST's website several days after being posted.</cite>
<cite index="8-15">It is not clear whether or when the order could come up again for potential signing.</cite>