Senator Josh Hawley Backs Nationwide Moratorium on Data Center Construction

Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has endorsed a nationwide data center moratorium, according to Politico. The push comes amid public concern over rising electricity bills, though a Harvard and UPenn study cited in the discussion attributes only about 4 percent of utility rate increases over five years to data centers. Earlier research from Brattle, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the Electric Power Research Institute found data centers sometimes lowered costs in certain regions.

Why it matters: A bipartisan-scale political backlash against data center buildout could constrain where and how fast AI compute capacity gets built, so teams planning AI infrastructure should track it.