Bernie Sanders Unveils National Bill for Indefinite AI Data Center Moratorium, Tying Construction Halt to Sweeping AI Safety Reform
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a new federal bill this Wednesday that calls for a nationwide moratorium on AI-focused data center construction, a freeze that will remain in place until Congress enacts legislation that protects the public from the full range of potential harms posed by unregulated artificial intelligence. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will introduce a companion version of the proposal in the U.S. House of Representatives in the coming weeks.
While the bill is extremely unlikely to pass into law — particularly given the Trump administration’s full-throated support for AI advancement and the massive lobbying sums the tech industry has invested in federal policy this year — the legislation marks a clear, high-profile stance for progressives who are tying growing community anger over data center expansion to broader demands for AI governance.
Speaking on Capitol Hill Tuesday evening ahead of the bill’s rollout, Sanders framed the pause as a necessary step to prioritize public good over corporate profit. “A moratorium will give us the chance to figure out how to make sure that AI benefits the working families of this country, not just a handful of billionaires who want more and more wealth and more and more power,” Sanders said. “A moratorium will give us the time to figure out how to ensure that AI is safe and effective and prevent the worst outcomes. A moratorium will give us the time to figure out how to make sure AI does not harm our environment or jack up the electric bills that we pay.”
Sanders’ bill establishes an open-ended moratorium on both new construction and upgrades to existing data centers purpose-built for AI development. The legislation defines qualifying AI data centers through physical metrics, including an energy load of more than 20 megawatts. The freeze will only be lifted once Congress enacts laws that meet multiple core requirements: blocking data centers from contributing to climate change, environmental damage, and rising household electricity rates; preventing tech firms from releasing AI products that harm working families’ health and well-being, erode privacy and civil rights, or threaten humanity’s long-term future; and requiring that the wealth generated by AI is broadly shared with the American public. A separate provision would ban the export of computing hardware, including semiconductor chips, to any country that has not enacted equivalent AI and data center regulations.
The bill explicitly names high-profile tech leaders who have both amassed enormous profits from AI growth and publicly warned about the risks of rapid unregulated development: xAI’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei.
The frantic nationwide push to build out AI-capable data centers has already sparked a wave of grassroots opposition, driven by concerns over spiking utility rates, excessive water use, carbon emissions, and displaced local communities. Recent Pew Research Center polling finds nearly 40% of Americans believe data centers harm the environment and drive up home energy costs, while 30% say data centers reduce quality of life for people living nearby. Public anger over data centers and rising electricity bills has already become a key electoral issue in states like Virginia and Georgia, which have seen explosive data center growth in recent years. Just in the second quarter of 2025, a report found $98 billion worth of proposed data center projects were stalled or canceled due to community pushback alone.
Sanders became the first national politician to call for a federal data center moratorium back in December, just days after a coalition of more than 230 progressive groups sent a letter to Congress demanding the policy. The letter argued that “the rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security.”
In response to local public pressure, dozens of U.S. cities and counties have already implemented local moratoriums on new data center development. This year alone, at least 12 state legislatures — including Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming — have introduced state-level moratorium bills.
Sanders’ national proposal breaks new ground compared to most local and state measures, however, by tying data center growth to broader AI safety risks rather than only addressing local community and environmental harms. Since his December announcement, Sanders has been openly outspoken about the dangers AI poses to society, particularly its threat to working-class jobs.
“It makes sense to me that his bill is going to focus primarily on that aspect,” said Mitch Jones, policy and litigation director at Food and Water Watch, an environmental watchdog that advised Sanders’ office on the moratorium and convened the December progressive coalition letter.
Pew polling shows Democrats are more likely to view data center expansion negatively, but criticism of the buildout crosses party lines. Long before Sanders publicly backed a moratorium, prominent Republican and MAGA-aligned politicians including Representative Thomas Massie, Senator Josh Hawley, and former Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene had already questioned the rapid pace of data center development. Last month, Hawley and Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal introduced a bipartisan bill to shield utility customers from rate hikes driven by data center energy demand. In December, influential anti-AI conservative voice Steve Bannon dedicated an entire segment of his War Room podcast to the issue, titled “Data Centers Are Devouring Public Land.”
Most state-level moratorium bills have been sponsored by Democrats (Food and Water Watch helped craft New York’s proposal), but Republican lawmakers have backed measures in states like Oklahoma, and Georgia’s bill earned cosponsors from both major parties.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has emerged as one of the most vocal Republican critics of both unregulated data center growth and AI harms. “I don’t think there’s very many people who want to have higher energy bills just so some chatbot can corrupt some 13-year-old kid online,” DeSantis said at an AI roundtable in February. In December, DeSantis endorsed two pieces of state legislation: an AI bill of rights that would protect consumers, including a ban on minors interacting with AI chatbots without parental consent, and a data center proposal that would strip subsidies from tech firms and ban data center development that drives up household electricity rates. The AI bill of rights passed the Florida State Senate but failed to advance in the state House.
Both the White House and Big Tech have acknowledged that the rapid data center buildout has severe public optics problems. In March, representatives from top data center developers and AI firms including Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google gathered at the White House to sign a nonbinding agreement pledging that data centers would cover “the full cost of their energy and infrastructure” and protect consumers from rate hikes. “Data centers … they need some PR help,” President Donald Trump said at the event. Experts told WIRED the agreement is largely symbolic, and that core promises like requiring data centers to absorb added costs that would otherwise pass to customers are outside the control of both the White House and tech companies.
“A moratorium would limit internet capacity, slow critical services, eliminate hundreds of thousands of high-wage jobs, drain billions in local tax revenue, and raise costs for American families and small businesses,” Cy McNeill, senior director of federal affairs at industry trade group the Data Center Coalition, told WIRED in an email. McNeill added that the industry “remains committed to working with communities, local officials, state and federal policymakers, and the Administration to ensure the continued responsible development of this industry while protecting families and businesses.”
