US President Donald Trump indefinitely postponed signing an executive order on artificial intelligence (AI) oversight on May 21, 2026, hours before a scheduled Oval Office ceremony, following last-minute lobbying from technology industry leaders. <cite index="6-4">Trump canceled the signing ceremony for a sweeping AI oversight executive order on May 21, pulling the plug just hours before the Oval Office event was scheduled to begin.</cite>
The draft order
The order would not have created a sweeping regulatory framework. <cite index="5-4,5-5,5-6,5-7">It would have established a voluntary mechanism for AI developers to engage with federal agencies and submit advanced models for security review up to 90 days before their public release. No licensing regime. No mandatory hold periods. Voluntary.</cite>
<cite index="4-3">Originally, the order would have compelled AI companies to share advanced models with the government ahead of launch to ensure their safety, but it was later watered down to make tech company participation voluntary.</cite>
Industry lobbying
According to reporting from Semafor, Axios and The Washington Post, three figures spoke directly with Trump in the hours leading up to the planned signing. <cite index="1-3">Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, xAI CEO Elon Musk and Sacks all spoke with Trump between Wednesday night and Thursday morning.</cite> <cite index="3-3">Early on the morning of May 21, Sacks called Trump directly to flag his concerns about the executive order's regulatory framework.</cite>
Reports indicate the industry executives argued the order could slow US AI development. <cite index="4-5">They told Trump that the new system could slow development of AI tech that has become integral to the US economy, anonymous insiders told The Washington Post.</cite> <cite index="2-2,2-3">Sacks later told Trump that he feared the voluntary vetting would act as a de facto licensing regime, slowing down AI companies' releases of new AI models. He also worried that a future administration might easily turn the voluntary procedure into a mandatory one.</cite>
Trump's rationale
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump cited competition with China as his primary concern. <cite index="1-1,1-2">"I postponed it," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. "I think it gets in the way of — you know, we're leading China, we're leading everybody, and I didn't want to do anything to get in the way of that lead," he said.</cite>
Inter-agency disputes
The postponement also reflects unresolved disagreements inside the administration over which agency should oversee model evaluation. <cite index="2-19,2-20,2-21">The discussion over the now-postponed executive order involved heated wrangling between different branches of the U.S. government over who should be in charge of testing and approving AI models. The Commerce Department wanted to hold on to its leadership on model evaluation with the CAISI, but the U.S. intelligence community was also vying for responsibility. Meanwhile, it is Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent who has been leading much of the administration's response to Mythos so far.</cite>
The Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI), housed within Commerce, currently performs voluntary frontier model evaluations. <cite index="2-23,2-24">Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, suggested last week that the administration would set up a licensing system similar to how the Food and Drug Administration reviews testing of drugs before approving them for sale. That brought a rebuke on social media from White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, who said the president was not "in the business of picking winners and losers."</cite>
Current posture
For now, the administration is handling frontier model oversight on a case-by-case basis. <cite index="2-17,2-18">The Trump administration is, for the moment, continuing to exercise a kind of ad hoc licensing process for just that one AI model, Anthropic's Mythos. Anthropic has shared the model with the U.S. government and, under what Anthropic calls Project Glasswing, with a select handful of U.S. technology companies and financial institutions who make software that underpins much of the internet and other critical infrastructure.</cite>
<cite index="1-9">It is not clear when — or whether — the executive order will be signed.</cite>