AP News53%
Trump expands a voluntary pledge to protect consumers from high utility bills from AI data centers 66%
By JOSH BOAK54% MATTHEW DALY52%
7/23/2026, 3:37:37 PM
Keywords: Donald Trump, Data Management And Storage, Greg Abbott, Information Technology, Artificial Intelligence, Energy Industry, Texas, Trump Hub, Tx State Wire, Trump AI Data Centers Pledge, Technology, United States Government, Illinois, Matthew Freedman, Openai Inc, Nvidia Corp, American Electric Power Co Inc, Ron Desantis, Microsoft Corp, Amazon Com Inc, Alphabet Inc, Kathy Hochul, Equinix Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Gina Hinojosa, Oracle Corp, District Of Columbia, Duke Energy Corp, Climate And Environment, Jensen Huang, Florida, Business, Space Exploration Technologies Corp, The Southern Co, Virginia, Taylor Rogers, Politics, Nextera Energy Inc, Climate
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Availability Heuristic, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 25.8% saturation with 194 hits. Analysis detected 1,275 faulty-reasoning hits from 753 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 60% and a BS Rank of 66% (7,280 of 21,097 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 65.50% of the article peer group.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday had governors and electricity companies join a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers — a sign of how the artificial intelligence build-out has become a lightning rod of controversy before the midterm elections.
The president first announced the pledge with leading AI and tech companies in March, but that initial commitment has done little to comfort voters who are already grappling with affordability issues as they worry about competing for electricity, water and land with tech companies controlled by billionaires.
It’s unclear, with electricity demand already growing, whether consumers would see genuine savings.
Trump is doubling down on the pledge at a time when the broader social contract is being rewritten by AI, a technology that is evolving so quickly in its capabilities that governments are struggling over how to provide oversight.
“You have to convince your community,” Trump said.
“You can’t fight it.
You have to go with it.”
The president added: “If you don’t take all that money, somebody else is going to take it.
You might as well do it yourselves.”
The White House said Thursday the pledge has been signed by 23 governors and at least 187 companies, including 55 utilities and 27 data center developers.
Signers include some of the nation’s biggest utilities such as NextEra Energy, Duke Energy, American Electric Power, Southern Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric.
Data center developers that have signed the pledge include Equinix, Digital Realty and Prologis.
The slowdown in data center construction could derail what has been one of the dominant drivers of U.S. economic growth, in addition to possibly ceding the U.S. edge in cultivating the technology to China and create national security risks.
But AI’s increasing ability to perform basic tasks — such as driving, analyzing spreadsheets and writing software — also threatens millions of jobs.
That has created mounting public resistance as tech companies concentrate historic levels of wealth in the hands of a select group of tycoons.
The opposition has spread into the Republican stronghold of rural Texas and led to frustration with Gov.
Greg Abbott, who is now among the 23 Republican governors who signed Trump’s nonbinding pledge.
Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for Texas governor, has been using the issue to challenge Abbott before the November election.
“They are owned by the richest men in the world,” she said of data centers.
“We’re all footing the bill.
There are no rules.
It is the Wild West of data centers.”
The increased electricity demand could cause monthly utility bills to rise by 15% to 40% by 2030, according to a recent analysis by ICF, a consulting and technology services company.
Opposition to data centers has spiraled into a bipartisan issue.
Voters are worried about the environmental impact, use of AI in schools and the prospect of data centers making their communities more expensive and less livable.
Data center companies say their facilities help to generate tax revenues for school districts and reduce property tax burdens for homeowners.
In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, whose computer chips are enabling the AI revolution, said America’s weakness is a lack of power generation for further developing the technology.
Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI and Amazon are among the companies that have already committed to the Trump administration’s “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” that consumers will not shoulder the cost of the data center build-out.
Despite the pledge, there are challenges on addressing issues with electricity prices.
The White House has complained that PJM Interconnection, which oversees electric power in 13 states from Virginia to Illinois, can’t ensure adequate electricity supplies at reasonable prices in the AI-driven boom.
White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said Thursday that PJM —- the nation’s largest grid operator — has failed to implement a bipartisan statement of principles signed by the Trump administration and all 13 governors in the region.
“The Trump administration strongly advises PJM and its member companies to proactively reform its stakeholder process, reform its board governance, and implement the Statement of Principles before it is too late,” Rogers said.
There are efforts to formalize Trump’s pledge as law, with the House Energy and Commerce Committee approving a bipartisan bill.
The bill would require data centers to bear the costs of grid upgrades.
Associated Press writer Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.
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