GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2026

Status

Forthcoming

Abstract

In the United States, artificial intelligence (“AI”) policy has become a critical arena for ethnonationalism—an ideology that defines national belonging through shared ancestry, culture, and language. Amid rapid demographic change and cultural anxiety, the second Trump Administration has harnessed federal AI governance to advance its broader agenda of dismantling diversity—most notably through Executive Order 14,179, “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence” and related legal directives. By eliminating safeguards against algorithmic bias and recasting equity as an ideological threat to innovation, the policies facilitate exclusion under the guise of neutrality. These moves are not merely deregulatory; they represent a coordinated legal strategy to encode ethnonationalist priorities into the infrastructure of the future. By defaulting to dominant patterns, unregulated AI systems reproduce racial inequality and suppress cultural pluralism. This Article offers the first sustained legal analysis of how the Trump Administration’s AI agenda advances its broader ethnonationalist project. It also proposes an alternative: the Equitable AI in Government Act, a legislative framework to embed democratic values—fairness, pluralism, authenticity, and autonomy—into the acquisition and use of AI by federal agencies and contractors. While the Act does not address every harm posed by private-sector AI, public institutions are the right starting point: they bear a unique obligation to serve a diverse public and can shape AI norms. This Article reframes AI law as central to the legal architecture of a racially inclusive democracy.

GW Paper Series

2026-04

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