SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
maryland
Maryland Residents to Pay $1.6 Billion More in Power Bills Due to Out-of-State Data Centers: Complaint
"Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects, nor will they meaningfully benefit from them," said Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp.
May 08, 2026
A top state utilities regulator is calling foul on an effort to shift the power cost of out-of-state artificial intelligence data centers onto Maryland residents.
Maryland's Office of People's Counsel on Thursday filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) against electric grid operator PJM Interconnection objecting to plans that it said would force residents in the state to pay $1.6 billion in data center-driven transmission costs over the next decade.
The complaint states that the transmission cost allocation methodology PJM is using "broadly socializes" the cost of increased power demands that is being driven by AI data centers.
"That result is unjust and unreasonable and violates the cost causation principles that have long governed transmission cost allocation and that this commission has repeatedly affirmed," the complaint says. "PJM’s tariff imposes these costs on Maryland electric customers even though Maryland customers do not meaningfully cause nor benefit from those investments."
The Office of People's Counsel pointed to the massive number of data centers built in neighboring Virginia as a primary culprit for added strain on the electric grid.
"Amidst national data center growth, Virginia stands as the epicenter," the complaint says. "Virginia is the largest data center market in the world... As of December 2024, data centers represented 3.6 GW of demand... reflecting, since 2013, a 660% increase in megawatt-hour consumption."
This explosive growth in energy demand is only expected to intensify over the next several years, the complaint continues, noting that "PJM projects 32 GW of peak load growth across its territory by 2030, of which approximately 30 GW is attributable to data centers."
As a remedy, the complaint asks FERC to "require PJM to take immediate action to assign data center-driven transmission costs to the PJM zones where the data center customers are located" instead of shifting the cost to Marylanders.
Commenting on his office's complaint, Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said that the attempt to saddle Maryland consumers with a $1.6 billion bill for facilities outside the state's borders shows "PJM’s cost allocation rules are broken."
"Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects," Lapp added, "nor will they meaningfully benefit from them."
Data centers have become political lightning rods in recent months, as residents from across the country object to their mass resource consumption, which is leading to a major spike in utilities bills, as well as the noise pollution they generate.
As CNBC reported earlier this year, PJM currently projects that it will be a 6 GW short of its reliability requirements in 2027 thanks to the added demand from data centers.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year introduced a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction “until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
Maryland Becomes First US State to Ban Surveillance Pricing for Groceries
A new law will ban retailers from using shoppers' personal data to hike grocery prices—but consumer advocates warn it contains loopholes that companies could exploit.
Apr 27, 2026
Maryland will become the first US state to outlaw "surveillance pricing" for groceries after Democratic Gov. Wes Moore signed a bill on Monday barring retailers and food delivery services from using customers' personal data to alter prices.
The practice has already become rampant in online commerce, with companies like Amazon, Uber, and Delta Air Lines accused of using everything from browsing history and location to demographic information to squeeze every possible cent from consumers.
The Protection from Predatory Pricing Act, which takes effect in Maryland beginning on October 1, targets the growing use of such tactics by grocery chains and delivery apps, which Moore has accused of using "new technologies to drive up the bill for working families."
These include electronic shelf labels, which advocates have warned could allow companies to instantly change grocery prices based on the time of day, weather, and other factors that influence consumer demand.
“Digital price tags are replacing paper ones. It’s happening because we are having cameras that are watching aisles, it’s happening because we have apps that are moving from search-based to predictive,” Moore said.
Moore has cited an investigation published in December by Consumer Reports and the Groundwork Collaborative, which found that Instacart was running a “pricing experiment” that charged some customers as much as 23% more for the same items than others based on shoppers' personal data.
Another investigation by Consumer Reports last May found that Kroger was collecting lengthy profiles of individual customers, including estimates of their household size, education level, income, and even perceived "loyalty" to the company, along with sometimes dozens of other pages of personal data.
"Surveillance pricing can drive up the price of food," said Grace Gedye, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. "Retailers have a lot of data about individual shoppers: how often we search for or hover over particular items, whether we live near competitor stores, inferences about our likes and dislikes, our dietary needs, our income, our family size, and more."
"Surveillance pricing," she said, "allows companies to take advantage of that information asymmetry and charge you as much as they think you’re individually willing to pay.”
To combat this, Maryland's new law requires that shelf prices remain steady for one full business day. It also bars retailers from using surveillance data, such as inferred income, ethnicity, family size, neighborhood, or purchasing history, to raise prices for individuals.
Companies that violate the law will receive civil penalties of up to $10,000 for first offenses and $25,000 for repeat offenses. They will also be given 45 days to correct violations before these fines apply.
Gedye said, "While it’s encouraging to see the Maryland Legislature take up this issue, this law has loopholes that will limit its real-world impact."
The law faced fierce opposition from industry groups, including the Maryland Retailers Alliance. The group ultimately withdrew its opposition, but only after several new provisions were introduced that Consumer Reports said "undercut" the law's effectiveness.
While the law bans the use of personal data to set higher prices, the group said there is no way to determine what constitutes a "baseline or standard price," meaning price fluctuations could easily be marketed as discounts. It also said companies could use loyalty and subscription programs—which are exempt from the law—to raise prices.
The group also warned that the law is too hard to enforce, since only the Maryland attorney general, not customers themselves, can bring suits, which it said is a "departure from Maryland’s primary consumer protection law."
Many other states—including California, New York, and Illinois—are considering similar bans, and legislation has been proposed at the federal level to outlaw surveillance and surge-pricing practices nationwide.
Gedye said, "We urge other state legislatures considering personalized pricing legislation to build in stronger consumer protections and avoid loopholes that weakened this bill.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Malicious Abuse of Power': Trump Slammed for New Arrest of Ábrego García and Deportation Threat
"This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Ábrego García; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid," said one advocate.
Aug 25, 2025
A crowd of community members who had gathered outside an immigration office in Baltimore on Monday chanted, "Shame!" as a lawyer for US resident Kilmar Ábrego García announced that he had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents once again—days after he was finally released from prison after a monthslong ordeal.
Attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told the crowd that assembled to show support for Ábrego García that ICE had ordered the Maryand father and sheet metal worker to report to its offices for an interview on "false" pretenses and said his legal team is filing a habeas corpus petition to challenge the administration's plan to deport Ábrego García to Uganda.
Ábrego García's lawyers are arguing in the Federal District Court of Maryland that ICE re-arrested him without allowing him to express "fears of persecution and torture in that country."
The team is asking the court to ensure that Ábrego García "is not put on any flight to any country whatsoever, whether it's Uganda, South Sudan, what have you, unless and until he has had a full and fair trial in an immigration court as well as his full appeal rights," said Sandoval-Moshenberg.
It’s not clear what charges Abrego Garcia is facing, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg says, or where he will be detained.
Sandoval-Moshenberg says another federal lawsuit is being filed to challenge the planned deportation to Uganda, of any other third-country. pic.twitter.com/9YYKd0hOfG
— Mikenzie Frost (@MikenzieFrost) August 25, 2025
As Common Dreams reported, when Ábrego García was released from a jail Friday in Tennessee—where he'd been held on human smuggling charges since being returned to the US in June following his mistaken deportation to El Salvador—the administration informed his legal team that it may deport him once again to Uganda.
That threat was made when Ábrego García declined an offer to be sent to Costa Rica as part of a plea deal in which he would be required to plead guilty to human smuggling.
Another lawyer for Ábrego García, Sean Hecker, said Monday that "the government's campaign of retribution continues because Mr. Abrego refuses to be coerced into pleading guilty to a case that should never have been brought."
Ábrego García's ordeal has been at the center of outrage over the Trump administration's mass deportation agenda and President Donald Trump's $6 million deal with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, under which hundreds of migrants have been deported to El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Ábrego García was initially sent to CECOT in March, and US Department of Justice officials acknowledged that his deportation had been the result of an administrative error. He was accused of being a member of the gang MS-13 based on a statement from an anonymous police informant, and a judge ruled in 2019 that he could not be deported to his home country of El Salvador due to concerns over torture and persecution there.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Monday said Ábrego García was being processed for his new deportation order, but did not say where the administration plans to send him. She repeated the Trump administration's unproven claims about the Maryland resident, calling him "an MS-13 gang member, human trafficker, serial domestic abuser, and child predator" and said he would not "terrorize American citizens any longer."
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who visited Ábrego García when he was imprisoned in El Salvador and demanded his release, condemned Noem for continuing to "spread lies about his case."
"Instead of spewing unproven allegations on social media, [officials] need to put up or shut up in court," said Van Hollen.
"The federal courts and public outcry forced the administration to bring Ábrego García back to Maryland, but Trump's cronies continue to lie about the facts in his case and they are engaged in a malicious abuse of power as they threaten to deport him to Uganda—to block his chance to defend himself against the new charges they brought," Van Hollen said. "As I told Kilmar and his wife Jennifer, we will stay in this fight for justice and due process because if his rights are denied, the rights of everyone else are put at risk."
Sarah Mehta, deputy director of policy and government affairs at the ACLU, said Ábrego García's arrest on Monday put "the Trump administration's obsessive and petty cruelty... on full display" and condemned the "latest move to deport Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland father they admitted to wrongfully deporting to a torture prison, to a country with which he has no relationship."
"This vindictive behavior is not just about Mr. Ábrego García; this is once again the administration showing that it can weaponize the law to punish people standing up for their rights and make our immigrant neighbors afraid of being rapidly exiled, including to places where they may be persecuted," said Mehta.
The Times reported Monday that Ábrego García "expressed willingness to leave the United States to accept refugee status in Costa Rica" after initially rejecting the plea deal.
An order handed down by the chief federal judge in Maryland in May requires the government to give Ábrego García a two-day reprieve before being expelled from the country following the filing of the habeas corpus petition.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, suggested the administration has continued targeting Ábrego García simply because he and his legal team brought nationwide attention to the fact that officials had wrongly deported him and other migrants.
"The entire weight of the federal government has been brought against this man for one reason, and one reason alone," said Reichlin-Melnick. "He tried to get them to fix a mistake they admit they made."
Ábrego García acknowledged other families that have been impacted and separated by Trump's mass deportation policy before entering the ICE facility on Monday.
"To all of the families who have also suffered separations or who live under the constant threat of being separated," he said, "I want to tell you that even though this injustice is hurting us hard, we must not lose hope."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular