Congress's bipartisan task force on artificial intelligence (AI) released its long-anticipated report this week, detailing strategies for how the U.S. can protect itself against emerging AI-related threats while ensuring the nation remains a leader in innovation within this rapidly evolving sector.

Responses to the report, which sought to strike a "flexible sectoral regulatory framework," were positive and with mixed concerns. 

"The Task Force report offers a thoughtful and forward-thinking framework that balances AI's transformative economic potential with the imperative to address legitimate safety concerns," said Dr. Vahid Behzadan, a professor in the computer science department at the University of New Haven. "That said, there's still work to be done."

He pointed to the importance of developing an "international collaboration strategy," especially with U.S. allies, the need to establish "clearer priorities among the many recommendations provided" and the need for more guidance on market competition and consolidation. 

FOX NEWS AI NEWSLETTER: OPENAI RESPONDS TO ELON MUSK'S LAWSUIT  

The Center for AI Policy, a nonpartisan research organization based in the nation's capital, issued a press release that commended lawmakers for their work on the report. But the group echoed Behzadan's remarks about the need for more detail.

"The body of the report does not contain enough detail about how or when these frameworks will be created," the group said after the report's release. It also expressed concern over the report's lack of emphasis on "catastrophic risks" posed by AI.

"Congress has deliberated on AI for two years now, and it is time to start moving forward with decisive action," the press release stated. 

Yaron Litwin is the chief marketing officer for Canopy, a digital parenting app and an expert in how AI technology is revolutionizing parental control and internet safety. He said "we need faster" and "stronger" protections than what was laid out in the report. "To me, the report appears more business-friendly than not."

The report pointed out that it would be "unreasonable to expect Congress to enact legislation this year that could serve as its last word on AI policy." But while Congress may be slow to act, some states have already moved the ball forward on regulating AI, and experts who spoke to Fox News Digital said the report could serve to bolster those efforts.

AI-POWERED DECEPTION: THE SNEAKY MACOS MALWARE MASQUERADING AS YOUR NEXT VIDEO CALL  

Lawmakers in Colorado enacted the first comprehensive piece of AI legislation this year, which placed certain obligations on developers of "high-risk artificial intelligence systems." Meanwhile, in California, lawmakers passed a bill this month aiming to regulate AI in health care.

"These federal soft law standards could work alongside state efforts to protect consumers and give businesses clear, consistent, and science-based federal guidelines," said Tatiana Rice, Deputy Director for U.S. Legislation at the Future of Privacy Forum, a nonprofit that explores challenges posed by technological innovation. Rice pointed out that an increasing number of state AI laws "include carveouts or assumptions of compliance if businesses adhere to federally recognized standards," and she noted that Congress's approach will likely "make it easier for businesses to meet legal requirements, incentivize consumer trust and safety, and reduce regulatory complexity."

Craig Albright, Senior Vice President of U.S. Government Relations for the Business Software Alliance, posited that the report could likely encourage states "to be more aggressively [sic] next year than what we are expecting to see in Congress."

LISA KUDROW BEGAN TO FEAR AI AFTER SEEING TOM HANKS MOVIE

On the issue of whether the 25-page report strikes the balance that lawmakers were hoping for in terms of balancing regulation with the need to foster innovation, experts who spoke to Fox News Digital expressed optimism.

"The House AI Working Group report strikes the right tone," Dakota State University President José-Marie Griffiths told Fox News Digital. Griffiths has advised both the Senate and White House on AI policy, including Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., co-chair of the Senate AI Caucus. 

"While there will always be debate over regulation versus not enough government oversight, the report is a step in the right direction," said Griffiths. "With the development of any new technology, regulation requires a nuanced and flexible approach. My recommendation going forward will be for Congress to pick and choose to legislate on specific aspects of AI policy."

Griffiths' reaction to the report was echoed by others who warned that in such a rapidly evolving industry, it will be critical not to get trigger-happy with regulations that could soon become obsolete.

"It is encouraging that the report suggests taking an incremental approach to AI policy," said JD Harriman, a partner at Foundation Law Group who has worked as outside patent council at technology corporations like Apple and Pixar. "Many areas of technology have been stifled by over-regulation before a complete understanding of the technology was undertaken."

"The task force’s honesty – ‘We don’t know what we don’t know’ – is both refreshing and daunting," added Cassidy Reid, the founder of Women in Automation, a nonprofit group that supports women in the tech sector. "It acknowledges the speed of AI’s evolution but raises a bigger question: Are we ready to govern something so inherently unpredictable?"

The Biden administration's aggressive regulatory stance towards big businesses has stymied growth, a cohort of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and other business sector experts expressed to Fox News Digital. 

Earlier this week, Albertsons abandoned its $25 million merger with fellow grocery store chain Kroger, after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), led by President Biden appointee Lena Khan, sought to challenge the buyout, arguing it would stifle competition and raise prices. The challenge and the merger's eventual failure is the latest example of the Biden administration's offensive against big business. 

"We have literally had offers from strategic buyers to buy us, and we go to our counsel and the counsel says, 'Don't even try. The FTC will absolutely flag this thing, and you will spend tens of millions of dollars and be stuck in a bureaucratic hell answering questions in court for a year," said venture capitalist Ravin Gandhi, a former CEO who has been involved in multiple merger and acquisition deals and maintains a stake in a number of startups. 

‘GOV’T KNOWS BEST': BIDEN ADMIN BREAKS OBAMA RECORD FOR FILLING FEDERAL REGISTER WITH MOST REGULATIONS

"Lena Khan was explicit in talking about even mid-market M&A as a vehicle for monopoly. And anyone who has built a business and sold it, like I have, knows that's ridiculous."

The chilling effect described by Gandhi has been echoed by other analysts, who say that the Biden administration's rhetoric and policies have required businesses to take matters into their own hands by abandoning or restructuring their transactions in the face of FTC and Department of Justice antitrust concerns. An analysis by international law firm Morgan Lewis found that under Biden, the vast majority — nearly three-quarters — of all transactions in which the government sought more details from companies about a proposed merger were subject to enforcement action.

"America wants a different choice," said Cardone Capital CEO Grant Cardone. "This idea that Joe Biden is going to make the world more competitive is a red herring."  

Cardone, too, expressed frustration over regulatory battles with the Biden administration, noting that they have made it "almost impossible for people to do business." 

Several other business leaders, venture capitalists and people with detailed knowledge of mergers and acquisitions echoed the concerns shared by Gandhi and Cardone that business growth has been stymied.

"The FTC’s aggressive antitrust enforcement under the Biden administration has significantly dampened M&A activity, particularly in the tech sector," said Kison Patel, a financial tech entrepreneur and the host of "M&A Science," a podcast about mergers and acquisitions. "For example, one Fortune 10 tech company has scaled back its deal making from 30 to fewer than five transactions." 

CONSTRUCTION TRADE GROUP LEADERS LOOK FORWARD TO NEW LEADERSHIP UNDER TRUMP: ‘RELIEF ON THE HORIZON’

Armen Martin, a veteran merger and acquisitions attorney, added that in talking to venture capitalists, he had heard optimism about FTC Commissioner Khan's exit. She will be replaced by President-elect Trump's nominee for FTC Commissioner, Andrew Ferguson. 

"I think you will see a lot more M&A activity under the Trump administration as companies feel more confident that the government won't get involved," Martin said.

Meanwhile, in a statement to Fox News Digital, FTC spokesperson Douglas Farrar said that the recently blocked grocery store merger "makes it clear that strong, reality-based antitrust enforcement delivers real results for consumers, workers, and small businesses."  

"Today's win protects competition in the grocery market, which will prevent prices from rising even more," he added.

Leaders in the cryptocurrency space are up in arms over documents that were recently uncovered showing the Biden administration instructed banks not to engage in cryptocurrency business.

The uncovered documents allegedly confirm suspicions that cryptocurrency tech founders were being "debanked" under a program known colloquially as "Operation Chokepoint 2.0." 

Chris Lane, the former chief technical officer of Silvergate Bank, accused federal regulators of contributing to his bank's collapse after the documents were released Friday. 

"Silvergate became what it was serving cryptocurrency clients," Lane wrote on social media. "[Crypto was a] strategic vertical we started focusing on in 2013. Regulators came in sometime in Spring 2023 and severely limited the amount of U.S. dollar deposits we could hold for digital asset clients. There went our entire business model." 

Lane described the experience as the equivalent of being "shot in the back." 

HOW DOES THE FUTURE OF CRYPTOCURRENCY CHANGE AFTER TRUMP'S ELECTION WIN?  

Meanwhile, David Sacks, President-elect Donald Trump's new artificial intelligence and crypto czar, said Friday that there were "too many stories of people being hurt by Operation Choke Point 2.0," and that "It needs to be looked at."

Last week, Paul Grewal, the chief legal officer for Coinbase, considered one of the largest cryptocurrency exchange platforms, shared documents that he and his team had obtained following Freedom of Information Act requests that have paralleled a protracted legal battle between the company and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). 

The documents showed that the Biden administration's FDIC sent numerous letters to banks, calling on them to "pause all crypto-asset related activity."

BIPARTISAN LAWMAKERS PUSH BIDEN TO INVESTIGATE HAMAS' CRYPTOCURRENCY FINANCING

"Law-abiding American businesses should be able to access banking services without government interference," Grewal said Friday in conjunction with his publication of the documents. "The incoming administration has the opportunity to reverse so many poor crypto policy decisions, chief among them politically motivated regulatory decisions like Operation Chokepoint 2.0."

Grewal pledged to continue fighting for transparency, including seeking to obtain copies of the documents without redactions.

Concerns over regulators stifling crypto from engaging with banks gained renewed traction during Thanksgiving week after tech investor Marc Andreessen said on Joe Rogan's podcast that more than 30 tech founders had been "debanked" for political reasons. Andreessen compared what was taking place to a similar Obama-era program known as "Operation Chokepoint," which sought to inhibit high-risk industries like payday lenders and gun dealers.  

Fox News Digital reached out to the FDIC and SEC for comment but did not receive a response by press time. 

President Biden's administration has filled up the Federal Register with more pages of regulations than any other president in history, breaking President Barack Obama's record. 

As of last week, on Dec. 3, the Biden administration set a new federal record for the most Federal Register pages filled in a single year – 96,088. The number puts the administration on pace to fill more than 100,000 pages by the end of its term.

The record was previously held by Obama, who, in the final year of his second term, filled 95,894 pages.

EPA'S NEW RULE TO CHARGE OIL AND GAS COMPANIES FOR EMISSIONS COULD FACE A TRUMP RECKONING

The Federal Register, which is published by the National Archives and Records Administration and overseen by the Office of the Federal Register, is a daily publication of new and amended federal regulations.

"Federal Register page counts are a highly imperfect gauge of regulatory burden. Biden’s milestone, though, still underscores the expanding scope of federal intervention," said Clyde Wayne Crews Jr., fellow at the Washington-based nonprofit the Competitive Enterprise Institute. "The record-setting 2024 Federal Register provides a stark reminder of the scale of the regulatory state, and it ain’t even done yet."

CONSTRUCTION TRADE GROUP LEADERS LOOK FORWARD TO NEW LEADERSHIP UNDER TRUMP: ‘RELIEF ON THE HORIZON’

During the final year of President-elect Trump's first term in office, the Federal Register saw its fourth-largest number of pages filled. However, Crews said that number was likely inflated by efforts to eliminate rules that require agencies to issue new ones, as well as emergency COVID-19 pandemic measures. Meanwhile, during Trump's first year in office, 2017, there were fewer pages added to the Federal Register than anyone since Bill Clinton in 1993, Crews pointed out.

Shortly after entering the Oval Office in 2017, Trump issued Executive Order 13771, which initiated a new federal rulemaking process requiring that for every single regulation added by the Trump administration, two must be taken away. The result of this was net cost savings throughout Trump's first term, Crews said.

LEAVE THE OIL TO ME: TRUMP VOWS TO UNLEASH US ENERGY, UNDO KEY BIDEN RULES IN 2ND TERM

Trump has signaled that he will expand his deregulation efforts during his second term, pledging to erase 10 regulations for every new one added.

Machalagh Carr, director of the Center for Legal Action at the American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce, told Fox News Digital that with the incoming Trump administration "a new day is dawning and help is on the way."

"For the last four years, [the Biden administration] has done their very best to strangle American free enterprise with a blizzard of unworkable regulations and mandates," Carr said. "The political appointees calling the shots in the Biden administration have a hostile view of the innovators and companies that power our economy and believe that government knows best."

Fox News Digital reached out to representatives for both Biden and Trump, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom will convene the state legislature for a special emergency session Monday to propose a "Trump-proof" legal defense fund of up to $25 million for the state's justice department.

Newsom said in a statement the Golden State "is a tent pole of the country … protecting and investing in rights and freedoms for all people" and that officials "will work with the incoming administration and we want President Trump to succeed in serving all Americans." 

"But when there is overreach, when lives are threatened, when rights and freedoms are targeted, we will take action," Newsom said. "And that is exactly what this special session is about – setting this state up for success, regardless of who is in the White House."

PROPOSITION 36 OVERWHELMINGLY PASSES IN CALIFORNIA, REVERSING SOME SOROS-BACKED SOFT-ON-CRIME POLICIES

State lawmakers, who are majority Democratic, are expected to introduce the proposed legislation in the coming weeks. Officials anticipate the legislation will be signed into law before Inauguration Day on Jan. 20.

"It’s not a resistance brand," Newsom told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday. "It’s around pragmatism. It’s about preparedness. We would be fools not to get on top of this before January."

Between 2017 and 2021, California's Department of Justice led 122 lawsuits against Trump administration policies, spending $42 million on litigation. Newsom's office said in one case, the federal government was ordered to reimburse California nearly $60 million in public safety grants.

While California filed over 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration, President-elect Donald Trump lobbed only four major lawsuits against the state. In 2018, Trump's DOJ filed a lawsuit over three California sanctuary state laws that restricted cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. That same year, Trump sued California for its state-level net neutrality law.

TRUMP PLANNING TO LIFT BIDEN'S LNG PAUSE, INCREASE OIL DRILLING DURING 1ST DAYS IN OFFICE: REPORT

In 2019, Trump also filed a lawsuit against California's vehicle emissions standards, attempting to revoke California's ability to set its own emissions rules. The Trump administration also sued California over its controversial independent contractor law, AB 5, in 2020. 

California, a sanctuary state for illegal immigrants, abortion procedures and transgender transition treatments for children, could be targeted by the Trump administration, especially considering Trump's mass deportation plan of illegal immigrants. 

Meanwhile, Republican state Sen. Brian Jones, who serves as the upper chamber's minority leader, said last month the special session "is clearly just another political stunt" and a "desperate attempt to distract from Democrats’ significant losses across California on Tuesday — in the state Senate, state Assembly, U.S. House, and on key ballot measures, including Prop 5’s defeat and Prop 36’s overwhelming win."

"Californians have made it clear: affordability is their top concern," Jones said. "Yet, even with the massive deficit he created, Gov. Newsom wants to hand his attorney general a blank check to wage endless battles against the federal government — while our own state is on fire, both literally and metaphorically."

Experts expect President-elect Donald Trump to take aim at federal agencies and Biden-era regulations after campaigning on deregulation of the administrative state. 

"The first thing is that on day one of [Trump's] presidency, we'll see a lot of executive orders, which will order agencies to review the administration regulations to determine whether they should be retained, amended or repealed," Robert Glicksman, J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law at George Washington University Law School, told Fox News Digital. 

Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, particularly pointed to Biden-era regulations, saying they could be on the chopping block once Trump takes office, telling Fox News Digital, "the Biden administration did a lot of things that lacked statutory authority completely."

'EFFICIENT AND ACCOUNTABLE': GOP-LED DOGE BILL AIMS TO SLASH OUTFLOW OF FEDERAL DOLLARS

Chenoweth noted that the Biden administration has already been the target of lawsuits over its regulations and said that if Trump were to take those regulations on, "I think they'll enjoy a lot of success."

Trump has already been vocal about his intentions of cutting back on federal agency power and slashing the flow of federal dollars. The president-elect has also announced he has tapped Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to head the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

The entity will act as an advisory panel, not a government agency, and will be aimed at suggesting ways to dismantle government bureaucracy and restructure federal agencies in order to save costs and improve efficiency, according to Trump's transition team.

Regarding DOGE, Glicksman stated the Trump administration will "certainly take seriously" DOGE's guidance on "cutting back on regulations, streamlining executive agencies, possibly even eliminating some agencies." 

Both Chenoweth and Glicksman said they can foresee labor regulations becoming a target come January. Glicksman said climate change and environmental regulations could also come under fire.

COMER TO CREATE DOGE SUBCOMMITTEE CHAIRED BY MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE TO WORK WITH ELON MUSK, VIVEK RAMASWAMY

"In the labor area, because [the Biden administration has] been so radical, they really reached well beyond what the statutory authority that was given to NLRB or the Department of Labor with a lot of what they've done. So that's one area that I could foresee," Chenoweth said. 

Likewise, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn the Chevron doctrine in June of this year in its Loper Bright decision. The doctrine previously gave deference to an agency's interpretation of a federal regulation. In its holding, the Supreme Court effectively scaled back administrative power in holding that "Courts must exercise their independent judgment in deciding whether an agency has acted within its statutory authority."

ELON MUSK SAYS 'ALL ACTIONS' TAKEN BY DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY WILL BE ONLINE: 'TRANSPARENCY'

Chenoweth, whose organization litigated on the matter, applauded the Loper Bright ruling, saying it "goes back to empowering Congress rather than the administrative agencies."

"For the last 40 years, the administrative state has been burgeoning because of this ability to, kind of, write law and create law itself when there's a gap or ambiguity in the statute," Chenoweth said. "Now, they're not going to able to do that so much. And so it's going to throw it back to Congress if we need to have reform in an area or new legislation."

Glicksman, however, said Loper Bright could "boomerang" on the Trump administration instead. 

"Had Chevron remained in effect, it would be Trump administration initiatives that would get the benefit of Chevron deference, but that's no longer the case," Glicksman said. "And so it's possible that courts will look more rigorously or apply greater scrutiny to Trump administration initiatives in administrative law issues in administrative ones than they would have done had Loper Bright not been decided."

Glicksman said he can foresee Republican-led legal challenges to later Biden-era actions unfolding specifically in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which notably tends to lean conservative in its rulings. Likewise, Glicksman predicts Democrat-led challenges to appear in the Ninth and D.C. Circuits. 

"I think you'll see blue states led by California challenging those regulations, starting off probably in the Ninth Circuit and the D.C. Circuit, which are more friendly to agency authority than the Fifth Circuit and some other circuits. So you'll see a skewing of litigation," Glicksman said. 

Chenoweth stated that because so many Biden-era regulations "are so lacking in authority," the circuit in which the lawsuit is started may very well not make much of a difference.