AI data center moratorium bill and community backlash over power bills
US households facing rising power bills now have a federal response. On June 24, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the House version of the AI Data Center Moratorium Act, which would pause new data center construction. More than 500 groups have urged Congress to act.
Households across the United States are seeing higher electricity bills as power demand from artificial intelligence facilities climbs, and the issue reached Congress this week. On June 24, 2026, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the House version of the AI Data Center Moratorium Act, a companion to the Senate bill brought by Senator Bernie Sanders. The legislation would temporarily halt construction of new data centers and the expansion of existing ones until lawmakers pass rules covering the economic, environmental, and water-related effects of these projects. The federal move follows mounting local resistance. More than 500 organizations have written to Congress calling for a national pause. According to the International Energy Agency, data centers accounted for roughly half of all growth in US electricity demand last year. Local governments have acted on their own: Seattle, home to Microsoft $MSFT and Amazon $AMZN, passed a one-year pause affecting several proposed projects, and Google, part of Alphabet $GOOGL, withdrew a rezoning proposal for a planned billion-dollar facility in Indianapolis in September 2025 after resident opposition. In Festus, Missouri, voters removed council members in April 2026 after they backed a data center despite public pushback. Reporting from Common Dreams, the Harvard Gazette, and Tom's Hardware documents how the dispute now spans household budgets, water supplies, and local land-use decisions.