What Is This Bipartisan Data Center Bill Really About?

Will this actually help ordinary people with their energy bills—or are vulnerable incumbents just trying to look busy?

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What is this bipartisan data center bill really about?

On Tuesday, Congress will consider the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that aims to make data centers responsible for their costs to the energy grid. The premise sounds good—but some critics say all it would really do is give cover to vulnerable incumbents in an election season dominated by concerns about affordability and AI data centers.

The bill, introduced by Democratic Representative Kathy Castor of Florida and Republican Representative Gabe Evans of Colorado, tells states to consider adopting a federal standard that ensures data centers cover the costs of their grid updates. The key word there is “consider.” Under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, state-level utility commissions set their own rates. Congress can only tell these commissions to consider changes, but can’t actually force those changes itself. The bill is the legislative counterpart to President Trump’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” a voluntary and nonbinding pledge that the White House said nearly 200 utilities and AI companies signed in March. Both the bill and the pledge tell AI companies to shoulder the cost of data centers, but neither has an enforcement mechanism to make that happen.

“It doesn’t really have much in the way of teeth,” said David Pomerantz, the executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute. Both Pomerantz and Grayson Flood, a senior fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, said that the bill’s toothlessness doesn’t mean it’s bad—just that it doesn’t actively change much. “It should be something that folks support,” Flood said. “Where I would push back is if it starts to be framed as: Well, we’ve done the thing and now we don’t need to do any more.”

Some view the legislation more harshly. Mitch Jones, the managing director of policy and litigation at Food and Water Watch, said that his organization is opposed to the bill because it acts as a “fig leaf” for Big Tech companies and members of Congress to hide behind without meaningfully addressing high utility costs from data centers.

“This legislation is clearly meant to give members of Congress cover, especially during an election year, when the issue of data centers and the issue of AI more broadly have really come to the fore as one of the top issues animating politics in the United States currently,” Jones said.

Polls suggest voters overwhelmingly hate data centers, and a number of this bill’s co-sponsors are facing tough elections this November. Notably, GOP Representatives David Valadao of California, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, Mónica de la Cruz of Texas, and Bill Huizenga and Tom Barrett of Michigan have signed on to the bill since September 1. All are facing strong Democratic challengers in their elections. Barrett is facing Will Lawrence in Michigan’s 7th congressional district; Lawrence has made data centers a central part of his campaign, and has criticized Barrett on data centers and AI specifically.

Instead of this bill, Jones said, Congress should pass the moratorium on data center construction introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in March. Flood, for his part, wants to see Congress levy taxes on data center tenants based on their electricity usage—something Congress actually does have the authority to do. “That creates a floor that every data center has to pay, regardless of what state it’s in,” he said. That “makes it harder for these tech companies to do what you would call regulatory arbitrage,” playing states off of each other to secure the best deals possible.

The experts who spoke to The New Republic emphasized that states are already tackling this issue themselves, and don’t need Congress to tell them it’s important—in recent months, governors including Kathy Hochul in New York and Greg Abbott in Texas have called for pauses to new data center construction, and other states are considering plans to address the issue. “There’s nothing inherently wrong” about Congress making a “political statement” about data center costs, Pomerantz said. But ultimately, Flood noted, “This is the bare minimum.”

In barely 24 hours after Republican Texas Railroad Commissioner candidate Bo French posted a bizarre, racist comment on X, several Republicans denounced him—and 500 new donors flocked to Democratic candidate Jon Rosenthal, The Texas Tribune reported on Monday. The original social media post on Sunday featured a picture of numerous nonwhite students cheering the Texas Longhorns’ big comeback win over Ohio State Saturday, with French commenting: “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.” Wrote the Tribune’s Carlos Nogueras Ramos: “French, who has scarcely debated the issues the Railroad Commission regulates since launching his campaign last November, vigorously defended his remarks. He said UT-Austin and other institutions have prioritized foreign students and workers, which, without evidence, he said has resulted in fraud.” Last year, Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick called for French’s resignation as Tarrant County party chair after French posted a poll asking whether Jews or Muslims posed a bigger threat to the United States.

For those curious about the outsize influence that the three-member Texas Railroad Commission has over the country’s greenhouse gas emissions, check out Kate Aronoff’s explanation from the 2020 election season.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

On Tuesday, Arizona State University and New America host their 12th Annual Future Security Forum “in collaboration” with the Global SOF Foundation, Security & Defense PLuS, the McCain Institute, and Small Wars Journal. The forum, focused on “America’s Post-9/11 Wars,” will feature among its many speakers Vermont Democratic Senator Peter Welch, Colorado Democratic Representative Jason Crow, General Joseph L. Votel, and reporters Azmat Khan, former New America head Steve Coll, Jason Burke, and Joby Warrick.

Wednesday at noon, the Center for American Progress hosts an in-person and Zoom discussion with Senator Tim Kaine, Representative Jason Crow (busy guy this week!), and Representative Chrissy Houlahan about how to “reform” national security post-Trump. The Brookings Institution’s Damian Murphy and Allison McManus will moderate, with opening remarks delivered by Dan Herman.

—Heather Souvaine Horn

Political Trivia Question of the Day

Clarence Thomas is probably the most conservative Supreme Court justice in modern U.S. history. Which two men, who both sat in the mid-to-late twentieth century, are generally considered the most liberal justices in the court’s history? (Sign up for The TNR Blue Book to find the answer in tomorrow’s newsletter.)

Dems Want to Regulate AI. But Will AI Money Divide Them?

Many politicians want immediate action after disturbing news from Anthropic this week. But rival tech super PACs have spent a lot of money this year—and the tech industry’s influence in politics won’t be going away anytime soon.

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Dems want to regulate AI. But will AI money divide them?

Democrats are loudly demanding new artificial intelligence regulation after an Anthropic researcher publicly announced his resignation this week with a social media post saying his colleagues believe AI “could kill us all by the end of the decade.” On Thursday, another Anthropic news item threw fuel on the fire: The company announced that it had discovered and thwarted a “series” of attempts by “suspected state-sponsored groups, financially motivated criminals, and politically motivated individuals” to use its AI models to develop biological weapons.

Now, as some Dems call for immediate action, the question isn’t just whether the party will hold the power to do something in January—it’s also whether the new Congress could be hampered by the role of pro-AI money in politics.

The biggest player in the AI PAC world is Leading the Future, which is funded by OpenAI president Greg Brockman, venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of Palantir.

The other major AI PAC is Public First Action, which was founded by former Democratic Representative Brad Carson and former Republican Representative Chris Stewart to act as a counterweight to Leading the Future. Anthropic is a major funder of the group, and donated $40 million to it this year. “This is too important a conversation to let a few billionaires decide the future of AI in our country and put profits over people,” Anthony Rivera-Rodriguez, a spokesperson for Public First Action, told The New Republic. “We exist to advocate for public safeguards in this debate.”

Other tech sectors, notably the cryptocurrency industry, pour money into politics as well. There’s some overlap between the interests of pro-AI and pro-cryto PACs like Fairshake.

While both groups are funded by the AI industry, campaign finance reform advocates say there are crucial differences. “If I had my druthers, none of these PACs would exist,” said Colin McGlynn, the AI policy adviser at Demand Progress Action. “But given that we’re stuck with the Supreme Court we have for now, that we’re not going to get that kind of money out of politics, I definitely prefer that there be some money on the side of being ready to regulate AI,” he said, referring to Public First Action’s stated goal to support AI regulation.

So far, Leading the Future’s Democratic sub-PAC, called Think Big, has intervened in 15 Democratic primaries, according to Federal Elections Commission filings and the watchdog group Guardrails Action. The candidates they’ve supported include: Ritchie Torres, Marilyn Strickland, Greg Stanton, Jimmy Panetta, Joseph Morelle, Robert Menendez, Jared Moskowitz, Dan Koh, Ben McAdams, Jesse Jackson Jr., Valerie Hoyle, Yvette Clarke, Melissa Bean, and Jeremy Moss.

Notably, Think Big spent millions to oppose Alex Bores’s campaign for New York’s 12th congressional district. Bores authored New York’s RAISE Act, which requires frontier AI labs to publish information about their safety protocols and disclose any safety breaches. Jobs and Democracy PAC, an affiliate of Public First Action, jumped in to support Bores, but he ultimately lost his race.

Think Big has also offered endorsements (but not financial support) to Sam Liccardo, Josh Gottheimer, Jimmy Gomez, Tom Suozzi, Eric Sorensen, Joyce Beatty, Herb Conaway, Emilia Sykes, and Suhas Subramanyam.

Of those, a few names stand out: Gottheimer is a co-chair of the House Commission on AI and the Innovation Economy, a group launched by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries late last year. Meanwhile, Subramanyam is a co-sponsor of the FRONTIER Act.

Besides Bores, Public First Action and its Jobs and Democracy PAC has spent money on candidates like Colin Allred, Valerie Foushee, Brian Poindexter, Scott Weiner, and Bob Brooks. Alongside Representatives Greg Casar and Sara Jacobs, Foushee last month introduced a bill to prevent mass unemployment due to AI.

In sharp contrast to Leading the Future, Public First Action explicitly supports state and local AI legislation, and says on its website that it “opposes federal efforts to........

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