Trump likes data centers. Congress seems stuck. The midterms could deliver a verdict.

Filed 52m ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

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Vanishing

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Yoichi Okamoto · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons

The House passed legislation 417-3 requiring state regulators to consider making data centers pay the full cost of the electricity, transmission and distribution upgrades they require. A University of Massachusetts Amherst poll found just 11% support building data centers locally, with 65% opposed. The bill now sits in the Senate with no clear path forward.

Democrats split between those calling the bill a modest first step and progressives like Rep. Ro Khanna pushing for outright bans or moratoriums. President Trump, meanwhile, compared data center critics to climate change activists on Truth Social, calling them 'Revolutionaries for a Bad and Evil Cause' working against U.S. interests.

Industry group Edison Electric Institute praised the bill's direction while critics like the League of Conservation Voters noted its 'voluntary consider' language lets state regulators ignore it entirely. The Department of Energy projects data centers could triple their electricity share by 2028.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A vote of 417 to 3 is the kind of number you don't see unless everybody's afraid of the same thing, and here that thing is the electric bill. But passing a bill that tells states to 'consider' doing something is like telling your neighbor to consider mowing his lawn: it costs nothing and changes nothing. The real fight, over whether anybody gets to say no to a data center in their backyard, hasn't even started.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Vanishing · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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