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artificial intelligence
Alarmed by 'Rapid, Largely Unregulated Rise' of AI Data Centers, 500+ Groups Demand Congress Pass Moratorium
The coalition called for a nationwide ban "until adequate regulations can be enacted to fully protect our communities, our families, our environment, and our health from the runaway damage this industry is already inflicting."
Jun 11, 2026
Over 500 organizations representing millions of people across the United States wrote to Congress on Thursday to call for "a national moratorium on the approval and construction of new data centers," warning that "the rapid, largely unregulated rise" of such projects already threatens "Americans' economic, environmental, climate, and water security."
"The rapid expansion of data centers across the United States, driven by the generative artificial intelligence (AI) and crypto boom, presents one of the biggest environmental and social threats of our generation," the groups wrote. "This expansion is rapidly increasing demand for energy, driving more fossil fuel pollution, straining water resources, and raising electricity prices across the country."
"All this compounds the significant and concerning impacts AI is having on society, including lost jobs, social instability, and economic concentration," the letter notes. "We urge you to join our call for a national moratorium on new data centers until adequate regulations can be enacted to fully protect our communities, our families, our environment, and our health from the runaway damage this industry is already inflicting."
While the letter doesn't name any specific legislation, it came just a few months after a pair of progressive powerhouses, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), announced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act, a first-of-its-kind federal bill that would prohibit new construction until a range of safeguards are in place.
Thursday's letter was facilitated by the advocacy group Food & Water Watch (FWW)—a key backer of that bill—and signed by hundreds of other national, regional, and state organizations, including Americans for Financial Reform, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Food Safety, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace USA, Honor the Earth, Oil Change International, Our Revolution, People's Action Institute, Popular Democracy, Third Act, Women's Earth and Climate Action Network, and more.
"The large and surging national movement to rein in runaway data center build-out was born at the grassroots level, with concerned residents in countless communities across the country reacting to the real harms and hazards this industry brings wherever it lands," said FWW organizing director Emily Wurth in a statement. "We are following their lead, working at the local, state, and federal levels to support these fights and halt Big Tech in its tracks."
In addition to unveiling the letter to Congress on Thursday, the groups announced the Stop Data Centers Coalition. Wurth declared that "the time is right for a national coalition to lift up state and local fights, and drive a national agenda that will allow stakeholders to properly consider not how, but if this industry can operate in a responsible, sustainable manner."
📣 BIG NEWS 📣 Today we’re launching the Stop Data Centers Coalition – a group of advocacy organizations fighting Big Tech’s unregulated data center frenzy. Learn more about the coalition, explore helpful resources and learn how you can plug in here: https://fwwat.ch/datacentercoalition
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— Food & Water Watch (@foodandwater.bsky.social) June 11, 2026 at 11:30 AM
Paco Fabián, deputy director at Our Revolution, said that his organization "is proud to help launch this coalition because a moratorium is necessary to ensure transparency, accountability, and community input before more energy-intensive projects move forward and lock us into decades of higher costs and greater climate risks."
The coalition and letter announcements followed US Environmental Protection Agency Administrator (EPA) Lee Zeldin's saying at the Politico Energy Summit on Wednesday that he would not set national requirements for data centers.
"Ten times out of 10, I'm not going to sit inside of an agency building in Washington, DC, and that we say that we know that local community in Georgia or Florida or Arizona or elsewhere, better than everyone there locally," Zeldin said, as polling demonstrates the unpopularity of data centers and people in communities across the country—including from Monterey Park, California and Seattle, Washington just this month—come together to block new projects.
Responding to Zeldin's remarks, Clara Vondrich, senior policy counsel with Public Citizen's Climate Program, said in a statement that he "just gave Big Tech the green light to build data centers that will consume massive amounts of power and water without any enforcement by the EPA. He says he won't meddle in community affairs, but his inaction dooms communities to higher asthma rates, noise and light pollution, and new fossil fuel infrastructure the climate can't afford."
"Once again, the administration is dangerously out of touch with the needs and wants of the American people: A majority of registered voters oppose building data centers in their local area, and 6 in 10 think that if a data center opened in their local area, their electricity bills would increase," Vondrich continued. "Yet the administration insists on enabling Big Tech companies in the race to be first and fastest, cosigning their reckless build-out of behemoth AI data centers with a combination of gas, diesel, and even coal."
"Zeldin is right that we should follow what communities want. And that's clear: no dirty data centers near their homes, schools, parks, and playgrounds," she added. "Big Tech executives have lobbied hard to ingratiate themselves into the Trump administration's orbit... Zeldin made clear that their investment was money well spent."
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Watchdog’s Online Tracker Shows Which Candidates Are Being Showered With AI Industry’s Dark Money
"With AI Money Watch, Americans can see which candidates the biggest AI Super PAC is buying, who they are trying to stop, and how much they are spending.”
Jun 10, 2026
The artificial intelligence industry's super political action committees are dumping a heap of dark money into electing candidates from both parties to protect their interests on Capitol Hill amid growing public skepticism and backlash.
On Wednesday, the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress unveiled a new tool to help voters keep track of which midterm candidates are on the take.
The website, known as "AI Money Watch," is using Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings to track spending by the largest AI super PAC, Leading the Future (LTF), which has raised $125 million for into this year's midterms after being created last August to oust critics of the industry and protect allies.
"AI chatbots have been accused of flirting with children, discouraging people in distress from seeking help, and even offering instructions on how to plan a mass shooting—and billionaire AI CEOs are doling out millions to kill any safeguards that would stop this," said Demand Progress Action's AI policy adviser, Colin McGlynn, in a statement announcing the tracker. "With AI Money Watch, Americans can see which candidates the biggest AI Super PAC is buying, who they are trying to stop, and how much they are spending.”
The tracker allows users to view all 21 races in which LTF has spent money through its affiliated Democratic and Republican PACs and the 13 candidates it has endorsed.
While LTF has said it supports common-sense AI regulations to protect children and improve privacy, its affiliated nonprofit, Build American AI, has voiced opposition to state-level regulations and urged Congress to adopt a White House framework unveiled in March that calls for the federal government to preempt state AI laws.
Among LTF's principal backers are top MAGA donors, including OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, as well as Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale and CEO Alex Karp.
But its top three beneficiaries are all Democrats. The group has spent more than $982,000 on advertising through its Democratic affiliate Think Big in support of Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), a centrist facing a progressive primary challenger, Michael Blake, in his Bronx district. Torres, whom LTF has endorsed, has been one of the most active legislators in the realm of AI, introducing a regulatory bill last year aimed at "unleashing AI innovation" that was described by critics as too industry-friendly.
LTF also threw over $1.1 million behind former Rep. Melissa Bean, an ex-investment banker, who won the Democratic primary for the open seat in Illinois' 8th congressional district with additional help from cryptocurrency and pro-Israel groups, which gave her the edge over her Justice Democrats-backed opponent Junaid Ahmed.
The group poured even more money, $1.4 million, into backing former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.—the son of the late civil rights icon—as he attempted a comeback after nearly 14 years out of Congress. The Democrat had said he wanted Illinois' economically marginalized 2nd District to be on the ground floor of the AI economic revolution.
By far the super PAC's biggest target has been New York State Assemblymember Alex Bores (D-73), whom it has bombarded with $5.7 million worth of negative ads to fight off his run in the state's 12th congressional district.
Bores, a former Palantir employee, has run proudly on his role in helping to enact one of the strongest state-level AI regulation frameworks in the country and made himself a target for LTF's benefactors. Think Big has described his legislation as “ideological and politically motivated" while Lonsdale has degraded him as a "random legislator in New York state" seeking to "harass and slow us down, and make us lose to China.”
LTF has also backed two pro-AI Republicans for US Senate through its GOP PAC American Mission—the hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham, who fought off an anti-interventionist primary challenger in South Carolina, and Rep. Andy Barr, who is gunning for the Kentucky seat long held by Sen. Mitch McConnell after comfortably winning his primary.
In a similar fashion to the cryptocurrency industry's $245 million push to put its allies in Congress and the White House in 2024, the AI industry's titanic effort to influence the midterms comes as its unchecked growth has left voters feeling increasingly uneasy and angry.
As Ryan Cooper explained on Wednesday for The American Prospect, "any messaging the PAC produces will almost certainly be dishonest."
AI as a business is quite unpopular, with 56% negative sentiment and just 38% approval in a recent NBC News poll. The data centers AI requires are even more unpopular, with a recent Heatmap News poll finding that Americans oppose them by a 71-21 margin—a 49-point swing in just one year.
When something is this unpopular, its associated PACs tend to carefully avoid mentioning what they actually care about. Instead, they run pretextual ads that raise unrelated pseudo-objections against their enemies. That’s how crypto took down Sen. [Sherrod] Brown (D-Ohio), and it’s how the Israel lobby took down Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.). So, when some ad campaign is talking about housing, jobs, or whatever, and it’s funded by LTF, it will be vitally important to point out what is really going on.
McGlynn told Cooper that it's especially important to keep an eye on candidates like Torres, who claim to be in favor of some regulation but are receiving massive support from an industry that wants none.
“If you are going to take the money from the people that say, ‘No, don’t regulate anything,’ then you’ve lost credibility,” said McGlynn.
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Florida Man's Wrongful Arrest Suit Highlights Dangers of AI Facial Recognition in Policing
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," said Robert Dillon.
Jun 10, 2026
A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Middle District of Florida by a Fort Myers resident wrongfully arrested nearly two years ago highlights the risks of police agencies relying on facial recognition tools.
"This case is about what happens when police let an error-prone artificial intelligence (AI) system stand in for an investigation," explains the complaint, filed by attorneys with the state and national ACLU as well as the firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney. "A facial recognition algorithm flagged Robert Dillon as the man who tried to lure or entice a child under 12 years old at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's. It was wrong."
The 52-year-old "lives more than 300 miles from" and "had never set foot in Jacksonville Beach," the complaint continues. "But rather than test the machine's answer against the evidence that would have cleared him, the officers built a case to confirm it. Mr. Dillon was arrested and prosecuted for one of the most stigmatizing crimes a person can face."
Dillon—one of at least 15 people wrongfully arrested in the United States due to police reliance on incorrect facial recognition results—is suing the city of Jacksonville Beach as well as law enforcement officers from the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO), and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Reporting on the case Wednesday, Wired noted that while the Pinellas agency did not respond to a request for comment, a JSO spokesperson simply said that "due to pending litigation, we would be unable to comment further on the incident."
The actual suspect allegedly approached a girl at the McDonald's shortly before midnight on November 2, 2023. The following month, Dillon was flagged as a possible match by the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System (FACES)—which "has been operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office since 2001, making it one of the oldest police face-recognition systems in the country," according to Wired. "At its peak in 2021, its tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver's license photos were accessible to more than 260 agencies."
After denying any involvement in the case in December, Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife the next August, "held overnight in jail, forced to borrow money and pledge the title to his truck to post bond, subjected to months of criminal prosecution, and publicly branded with a mugshot that remains accessible online, long after the charges were dropped," the complaint states. "Community members still approach him in public to ask about the case. He no longer feels comfortable being friendly to children."
"He had no connection to the McDonald's, to the child who was targeted, or to anyone involved in the crime. He became a suspect for one reason: a facial recognition algorithm included him in a list of possible matches to a suspect captured on grainy surveillance footage at the restaurant," the document emphasizes. "The investigating officer treated that algorithmic output as a near-certain identification, omitted critical exculpatory evidence from his arrest warrant application, and failed to pursue routine investigative steps that would have immediately excluded Mr. Dillon as a suspect."
"The arrest warrant that deprived Mr. Dillon of his liberty was the product of a cascade of investigative failures by the lead investigator, Jacksonville Beach Police Department officer (now corporal) Scott O'Connell," according to the filing. Among them was the officer's "complete failure to consider that the suspect was alleged to have been a 'regular' customer."
The complaint also notes that "O'Connell is an officer with a documented history of volatility and poor judgment, having previously been terminated from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office for threatening to 'blow up' the agency, later reinstated, then arrested for domestic battery before resigning under the weight of those charges. Jacksonville Beach PD hired him anyway, assigned him as lead investigator on a sensitive child-luring case, and later promoted him to corporal after his investigation resulted in the wrongful arrest and prosecution of an innocent man."
Dillon said in a Wednesday statement that "the night I spent in jail after they arrested me for a crime I did not commit still haunts me to this day. I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I'd ever go home to my wife and daughter again."
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," Dillon added. "Florida police must implement safeguards and ensure this never happens to anyone else, because until they do, nobody is safe."
Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, stressed that "no one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong."
"These Florida police departments owe it to Mr. Dillon to make amends and to take serious steps to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else," he argued. "Police across the country are on notice: Unreliable face recognition technology is hurting people, and we will keep fighting to hold them accountable for these abuses."
The ACLU has previously sounded the alarm over other cases, including those of Robert Williams, a Black man wrongfully arrested in 2020 after software owned by Michigan State Police misidentified him as a shoplifting suspect, and Randal Reid, who spent nearly a week in jail in 2022 after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities.
The legal group on Wednesday also pointed to the reported role of FACES in the 2025 wrongful arrest of New Smyrna Beach resident Beau Burgess, as well as another case involving the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office: Jalil Richardson told Action News Jax earlier this month that after being misidentified as a vehicle thief, he "sat in there for over 50 days, in the most worst jail ever."
"There was no proper investigation done... to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida," said Richardson, whose charges were dropped after he provided time sheets showing that he was at work in North Carolina when the vehicle was stolen.
In his case, JSO provided a lengthy statement, saying in part that "facial recognition software is just one tool in a large toolbox for investigators," and "calling the arrest the result 'police AI misidentification' is a catchy headline but does not provide accurate context," including that "the victim chose Mr. Richardson out of a photographic lineup to include other potential suspects."
Nicholas Warren, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said Wednesday that "one wrongful arrest is one too many."
"Florida's growing reliance on facial recognition technology threatens us all," he warned. "We must stop this dangerous pattern before it traps more innocent people. No one should have their freedom taken away because the police rely on faulty technology."
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