On the first day of his second term in office, President Donald Trump rescinded an executive order signed by President Joe Biden that had established mandatory safety standards for AI use by federal government.
Last summer at a summit in Washington, D.C., Trump added three more executive orders he called his “AI Action Plan,” a 28-page document with over 90 policy actions to remove regulations and fast-track data center permits and promote what the White House has called “woke” AI models.
One goal of the plan was to meet the power demands of Al software by mandating that federal agencies remove certain environmental regulations that Trump believes slow progress on infrastructure. A second order promotes American technology exports in international markets. “We’re in an AI race, and we want the United States to win that race,” a Trump administration official explained. A third executive order requires Al projects seeking government funding to avoid “ideological dogmas such as diversity, equity and inclusion programs.” “The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models,” Trump said in his summit speech.
“The White House AI Action plan was written by and for tech billionaires, and will not serve the interests of the broader public,” said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute.
Eight months after Trump’s AI action plan, in March of 2026, Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced the filing of the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Data Center Moratorium Act. “We cannot sit back and allow a handful of billionaire Big Tech oligarchs to make decisions that will reshape our economy, our democracy and the future of humanity,” Sanders said. “We need serious public debate and democratic oversight over this enormously consequential issue. The time for action is now. We need a federal moratorium on AI data centers.” Ocasio-Cortez added: “Congress has a moral obligation to stand with the American people and stop the expansion of these data centers until we have a framework to adequately address the existential harm AI poses to our society. We must choose humanity over profit.”
The Data Center Moratorium Act of 2026 would do that by instituting an immediate federal moratorium on AI data centers until strong national safeguards are in place to ensure that:
- AI is safe and effective, and will not threaten the health and well-being of working families, our privacy and civil rights.
- The economic gains of AI will not benefit just wealthy owners of Big Tech.
- AI will not increase electricity prices, harm communities or destroy our environment.
According to NPR, a typical AI data center uses as much electricity as 100,000 households, and the largest will consume 20 times more. They suck up billions of gallons of water for systems to keep their computer hardware cool. Some are larger than a million square feet — the size of 17 football fields. By 2028, data centers could consume up to 12% of total electricity in America.
At the state and local level, anti-AI data center movements are not waiting for federal lawmakers to unplug the data centers. According to Data Center Watch, between May 2024 and March 2025, $18 billion worth of data center projects have been blocked, and another $46 billion of projects delayed in the face of opposition from residents and activist groups. There are at least 142 activist groups across 24 states organizing to block data center construction and expansion. In Virginia, home to over a third of the data centers worldwide, communities are seeing the impact of electricity and water usage hit their utility bills. Virginia is now the focal point for community opposition to data centers in the United States, with 42 activist groups taking up the fight.
On June 2, 2026, voters in Monterey Park, California approved a permanent ban on data centers within city limits, becoming the first city in the U.S. to adopt a data center ban ballot initiative with 86% voter support, to “protect air quality, drinking water resources, and public health” and “prevent impacts to electricity and water rates.” “A lot of the other cities that are facing data center proposals are going to follow suit,” predicted Monterey Park Mayor Elizabeth Yang. “There’s [a] bad reputation across the board, across the country, from other data centers that have been built in neighborhoods.”
We may not have enough acreage or water reserves to host a very large data center in western Massachusetts, but our state’s history from the Quabbin forward should prompt us into defensive regulatory action.
Al Norman’s Pushback column appears in the Recorder every first and third Wednesday of the month.