Colorado lawmakers and state officials say President Donald Trump’s recent order threatening to challenge state artificial intelligence regulations won’t deter their efforts to regulate the new technology — even if they face fresh legal fights or attempts to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding.

State officials and policymakers are treating Trump’s threat as even more reason to pass reworked regulations — as they’ve been trying to do for much of this year — as well as a challenge to be met in court. The executive order is seen by some as toothless and, ultimately, a paper tiger in the fight to protect consumers from a new, largely unregulated industry.

“Without congressional action, there is no free-standing authority for the president to challenge state AI laws or punish states for adopting laws he doesn’t like,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.

On Dec. 11, Trump issued an executive order that emphasized “a minimally burdensome national policy framework” for the artificial intelligence industry. The broad and much-fought-about technology is rapidly embedding itself into everyday life, threatening to upend the economy and traditional decision-making.

Colorado lawmakers, seeking to prevent misuse of the technology, passed a law in 2024 that sought to keep AI from being used to discriminate — knowingly or not — against people seeking loans, renting apartments or applying for jobs. That law was one of the first in the nation, and it has not yet gone into effect.

During an August special session, lawmakers and the governor opted to push back its implementation from this February to the end of June to give themselves more time to find common ground on how to regulate the industry without stifling businesses in the state. The issue will return as the legislature convenes its regular session in mid-January.

In his new order, Trump — who repeatedly has assailed policies that promote diversity, equity and inclusion — singled out Colorado’s pending law for “banning ‘algorithmic discrimination’ (that) may even force AI models to produce false results in order to avoid a ‘differential treatment or impact’ on protected groups.”

To bring states in line with his vision for the AI industry, Trump’s order says the government could withhold federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment, or BEAD, program funding meant in part to expand internet access into rural areas. Colorado recently announced it expected $420 million from the program, with hopes for an additional $400 million to follow.

Trump also is convening an “AI Litigation Task Force” to fight state AI laws it opposes in court.

“We remain in the earliest days of this technological revolution and are in a race with adversaries for supremacy within it,” the executive order states.