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bernie sanders
Sanders Pushes for Moratorium on New AI Data Center Construction Amid Growing Backlash
"Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families?"
Dec 17, 2025
Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday called for a moratorium on the construction of new artificial intelligence data centers in the US amid growing nationwide backlash.
In a video posted on social media, Sanders (I-Vt.) explained why it's time for the government to hit the brakes AI data center projects, which have drawn protests all over the country for driving up electric bills and draining communities' water supplies.
Sanders began the video by acknowledging that AI has the potential to be a truly transformative technology, before noting that those who are pushing for its rapid development the most were the wealthiest people on the planet, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, and Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
"So here is a very simple question I'd like you to think about," Sanders continued. "Do you believe that these guys, these multibillionaires, are staying up at night, worrying about what AI and robotics will do to working families of our country and the world? Well, I don't think so."
Sanders then argued that AI's biggest backers are pushing the technology to further enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else by replacing human laborers entirely with computers.
Sanders then quoted Musk, who predicted that AI and robots would "replace all jobs" in the future, and then cited a quote from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who said that "humans won't be needed for most things."
Sanders then questioned how people will survive if AI meets its backers' goals and deprives people of jobs on a mass scale. This problem is being compounded, Sanders continued, because "very few members of Congress are seriously thinking about this."
In addition to discussing AI's potential to vastly undermine working people's economic power, he also touched on its social implications, and said he was concerned that "millions of kids in this country are becoming more and more isolated from real human relationships, and are getting their emotional support from AI."
"Think for a moment about a future where human beings are not interacting with each other," he said. "Is that the kind of future you want? Well, not me."
Sanders concluded by arguing that the push to advance and integrate AI is "moving very, very quickly," and without proper considerations for the economic and social impacts it will have.
The Vermont senator argued for his proposed moratorium on data center construction to give "democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes we are witnessing."
Sanders' message on data centers came on the same day that MLive reported that both Republican and Democratic politicians in Michigan have been rallying against the construction of more data centers, which have been championed by Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
During a Tuesday anti-data center rally, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel slammed plans to build a 2.2-million-square-foot data center in Saline Township, and pointed to electric service company DTE's efforts to rush through the construction approval process as reason enough to oppose it.
“Do you guys trust DTE?" she asked. "Do you trust OpenAI? Do you trust Oracle to look out for our best interests here in Michigan?"
Republican gubernatorial candidate Anthony Hudson told MLive that he shared Nessel's criticism of the data center plan, and he questioned whether Michigan residents would see any economic benefit from it.
"They don’t support local job growth," he said of the data centers. "They pull millions of gallons of water a day, and they’re going to strain the power grid that’s already crippled. And once they’ve made their money, like Dana Nessel said, they’re going to leave."
Earlier this month, more than 230 environmental advocacy groups, led by Food and Water Watch, demanded a moratorium on building new data centers, which they said consumed unsustainable amounts of water and electricity, while also worsening the global climate emergency.
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We Have to Create a New Form of Society
Our job is to recognize the problems are real and to put the finger on the real cause of the problem, which is the greed of the oligarchs in this country.
Dec 13, 2025
Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders delivered these remarks at the How We Win conference over the weekend of December 5 in New Orleans. They were originally transcribed and published by Jacobin. The conference was organized by the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, Jacobin, the Nation, and others for democratic socialist elected officials and their staff.
Thank you for inviting me to say a few words. Let me begin by thanking all of you for having the guts to run for public office. It’s a lot harder to go out and knock on doors to represent constituents with the problems they face seven days a week, so I want to thank you very much for that. Despite the horror in the White House right now, they’re out there all across this country. We’re seeing strong progressive growth. It is not just Zohran Mamdani in New York or Katie Wilson in Seattle. From coast to coast, you are seeing progressive democratic socialists standing up, taking on the establishment, and winning elections.
And one of the great secrets of the corporate media is that right now in the House of Representatives, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has about 100 members, including dozens and dozens of very strong progressives. That is the result of the hard work all of us have done over the last number of years.
I’ve been asked to give you some advice. What I’m gonna tell you is probably what you already know. No. 1, here is a radical idea: Do your job that you were elected to do. Now, I’ll tell you a story. I was elected to be mayor of Burlington, Vermont, and won it by 10 votes way back in 1981. We had a strong foreign policy. We had exchange programs. We dealt with national issues. But I’ll never forget, there was an article in the local newspaper, and the report asked some guy, “But what does it mean? What do you think about having a socialist as your mayor?” And the guy said, “Well, I don’t know much about socialism, but I do know they’re getting the snow off of the streets a lot faster than they used to.”
The struggle is going to be between the Trumpists of the world—right-wing extremism—and a democratic socialist alternative, which recognizes the problems that we face and provides concrete and real and bold solutions for working families.
You gotta do your job. If you’re on the city council, the school board, the state legislature, you gotta do it. And if you do your job well, people will give you the latitude to talk about many, many other issues. But don’t lose focus regarding the job that you are elected to do.
Second of all, establishment Democrats have the brilliant idea that the only people they can talk to are establishment Democrats. They literally have lists of people: “Don’t knock on this door; don’t knock on that door. Only on these.” I strongly disagree with that suggestion. Knock on every door in your district. And what you’ll find when you do that is you’ll have the right-wing people slam the door in your face. You’ll have some unpleasantness. But by and large, what you’ll find is that there is a lot more commonality of interest than you might have appreciated. In my view, the reason Donald Trump is president of the United States today is not because people voted for a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1% or massive cuts in healthcare. He is the president of the United States because of Democratic establishment candidates’ failure to provide a real analysis and agenda that meets the crises that we face today.
Establishment Democrats believe that you can tinker around the edges, you can tell the world how terrible Donald Trump is, and that’s fine. But right now, what the American people understand is that übercapitalism—an oligarchic form of society, which is what we have today—is a disaster for the working class of this country. We don’t have to tinker around the edges. We have to create a very new form of society.
So for just your average person out there, you are in many cases going nowhere in a hurry. You understand that with real inflation accounted for, wages are basically the same as they were 50 years ago, despite a huge increase in worker productivity as a result of all of the expansion of technology. And almost all of the gains of that new technology have gone to the 1%. And ordinary workers know that there’s something wrong with 60% of our people living paycheck to paycheck while Elon Musk owns more wealth himself than about the bottom 52% of American society. They know that.
They know that there’s something wrong when we have a campaign finance system that is totally corrupt and allows billionaires in both political parties to buy elections. That’s a broken system. I say these things because you’re gonna have Republicans who understand this as well. They understand if you look at the basic necessities of life—just think for a moment: You’re living in the richest country in the history of the world, and it cannot even provide the basic necessities of life for working people.
Just take a look at the healthcare in your community. Talk about healthcare. Everybody will tell you that despite spending twice as much per capita on healthcare as any other nation, the healthcare system is totally broken. Everybody knows that. The educational system is largely broken, and the childcare system is a disaster. Kids can’t afford to go to college, or they’re leaving school deeply in debt. Public schools are under enormous pressure. Teachers are underpaid. They’re dealing with all kinds of disciplinary issues, kids who come from troubled families or are acting out in school. We are dealing with a situation where our food system, just nutrition... we are the most obese and unhealthy nation on Earth because you have a food industry that makes huge profit by selling our kids crap, and the price of groceries is soaring.
People understand that. I flew in from the National Airport in Washington; there was a four-hour delay because they couldn’t figure out how to deice the plane. All over the country, you are looking at basic problems people are struggling with. The system is failing. Our job is not to run away from that reality but to offer a real alternative. Because in my view, what the future is gonna be about isn’t establishment Democrats. All over Europe, for example, the establishment parties are fading away. The struggle is going to be between the Trumpists of the world—right-wing extremism—and a democratic socialist alternative, which recognizes the problems that we face and provides concrete and real and bold solutions for working families.
So what Donald Trump does is go, “Yeah, we got a lot of problems. And the problem is undocumented people, the problem is the trans community, the problem is that we have Somalians who are ‘garbage.’” That’s what demagogues do. They take the problems that we face—often that they cause—and then they blame a powerless minority. Our job is to recognize the problems are real and to put the finger on the real cause of the problem, which is the greed of the oligarchs in this country. So that’s where we’re at now. And it ain’t gonna be easy. Especially with Trump in the White House.
To summarize, the American people know the system is broken. They are hurting. They can’t afford groceries. They can’t afford health care. They can’t afford education. They can’t afford a lot of things. And at the same time, the billionaire class has never had it so good. The establishment Democrats cannot talk about these things because, very often, they’re getting funded by the billionaire class. So what we have gotta do right now is get out into the streets. We gotta talk to our people—all people, not just people within our zone of comfort. And we’re gonna be providing real solutions to the crises that we face. So once again, what you have done is extraordinary. I thank you so much and congratulate you for getting out on the streets, for winning elections, and for standing up for working people.
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Senators Demand Trump Admin Come Clean on Plan to 'Quietly Kill' Social Security Offices
The lawmakers accused the Social Security Administration of "a slash-first, think-later approach," for which "beneficiaries will pay the price."
Dec 11, 2025
Leading Senate Democrats and Independent US Sen. Bernie Sanders this week pressed the Trump administration for answers following reports that the Social Security Administration is planning to dramatically reduce visits to its field offices.
"We write with concerns regarding recent reports that the Social Security Administration is reorganizing its field office operations, and has established a goal of cutting the number of field office visits in half—amounting to 15 million fewer visits annually," Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote in a letter to SSA Administrator Frank Bisignano.
"Given that beneficiaries are already waiting months for field office appointments, and the agency has not shared with Congress or the public on how it plans to achieve this goal, we are concerned that these efforts are in fact part of a plan to 'quietly kill field offices,' implementing a backdoor cut in benefits by making it harder for Americans to access the Social Security customer services they need," the senators said.
"The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security."
Earlier this month, Nextgov/FCW revealed that the Social Security Administration said in internal documents that it wants “no more than 15 million total” in-person visits to its field offices in fiscal year 2026—or about half the current number of such visits. An anonymous SSA staffer told the outlet that senior agency officials are aiming for “fewer people in the front door" and for "all work that doesn’t require direct customer interactions to be centralized.”
As Warren's office noted Thursday:
The Trump administration has relentlessly attacked Social Security. Under Commissioner Bisignano, the administration has implemented policy changes that make it harder for Americans to get their benefits, including by implementing burdensome in-person and bug-prone identification processes that force millions more beneficiaries to visit field offices each year—at the same time they are slashing SSA’s workforce by around 7,000 and closing regional offices.
Instead of staffing up to meet these needs, SSA’s field office capacity has significantly declined. Beneficiaries are being forced to wait hours to get help—only to be told they will need to call to schedule an appointment.
"We are concerned that your plan is to force beneficiaries onto SSA’s bug-prone website or push them into customer service phone tree 'doom-loops'—which will almost certainly result in delayed or missed benefits for some individuals," the letter adds. "Once again, you seem to have adopted a slash-first, think-later approach to 'modernizing' SSA, and beneficiaries will pay the price."
The senators are asking Bisignano if the reports of proposed SSA office visit reductions are accurate, and if so, how and when the plan will be implemented, how the agency will "provide services to beneficiaries that would otherwise go to field offices," and how the reductions will affect already lengthy wait times and service online users and callers to the agency's 1-800 number.
The lawmakers' letter comes as Republican senators on Thursday voted down a proposed three-year extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies, a move that is expected to result, on average, in a doubling of health insurance premiums for around 22 million people. Critics said the vote underscores the need for single-payer healthcare legislation like the Medicare for All Act reintroduced by Sanders and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) earlier this year.
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