Democrats expected to push for tougher data center regulations

For restrictions could be coming to data centers. Welcome to Fox 2 News at 10. I'm Rup Raj with Democrats soon taking control of Congress. They're expected to push for tougher regulations. In the meantime, the industry is trying to regain its footing after a sharp reaction on Wall Street. Fox 2's Dave Kinchin is live tonight with reaction. Yeah, Rupert, spoke with some lawmakers who are going to be heading to Lansing, and they say, you know, they're still wrapping their head around all of this, what they believe their caucus in the new majority will do as far as regulations. But I can tell you that on the heels of what's happening in Washington with the new congressional majority coming in, some AI companies are already making their own changes. Just take a look. OpenAI, for example, released a new series of data center commitments vowing to pay full Full electricity and infrastructure costs at its facilities alongside new environmental protection plans. It comes as Democrats in the incoming congressional majority push for a one-year moratorium on new data center construction, citing power grid strain, public safety, and job loss concerns. Lawmakers are also demanding mandatory safety frameworks, and they even want big tech CEOs to testify in hearings. We did ask some industry experts what these policies are. The expectation is that they'll put up some legislation similar to what we've seen from states like Illinois and California to maybe prevent larger companies from taking advantage of the leeway that they've had in AI. For the past few years. Well, we're always going to try to protect the people, right? So we're looking at how do we protect energy, how do we protect water, how do we protect communities, you know, looking at noise regulations, all of those things to try to protect communities where these data centers are being built. So I assume we're going to see more of that. I hope we don't see a moratorium because I think that slows us down quite a bit. But I do hope we see those regulations. And we've seen other states do regulate this while they're building and not slowing down economic development. There's been a lot of AI and data center pushback at the local level across the country following the midterm elections. There have been dozens of local ballot initiatives around the country in various municipalities that were approved that will put new restrictions or outright ban data centers from certain communities. Tonight on The Edge, we're going to take a deeper look at the financial impact of the activity on Wall Street following the congressional majority taking over in Washington. And see how the data centers or the AI industry, how they plan to move forward with all of this. Reporting live in Southfield, Dave Kinchin, Fox 2 News. Yeah, it's interesting because the moratorium only buys you some time. But eventually you've got to kind of face this issue head on. And in waiting a year, if you do a moratorium, you're allowing China to continue to do the work they're doing. And also other states to develop things that you now don't have in your backyard. Yeah. And folks in the industry obviously don't want to see that slowdown. They don't want to see that stoppage with the moratorium. And I think folks in Washington, especially many in the Democratic leadership going into the majority, they've talked about the need to stay ahead of China in technology and science and development. So this would be one of those key areas. A lot to consider for all the communities involved with this. Our Dave Kinchin for us live tonight. Dave, thank you.