A new push in Congress would let towns block AI data centers and stop them from raising local power bills — good for residents, bad for the tech companies building them.

• Ro Khanna is proposing a "data center bill of rights" that would ban the sites near homes, schools, hospitals, and farmland.
• The biggest complaint is money: ordinary people are seeing higher electricity bills to cover power for data centers they get nothing from.
• Communities also point to noise, air pollution, and drained water supplies, plus building that starts before environmental reviews are done.
• The plants create few lasting jobs — they are giant buildings full of wires, not offices.
• Even so, AI construction is propping up the economy, with one Harvard estimate crediting it for most of the country's growth in early 2025.

Outlook: Pausing data centers polls near 80%, but with both parties taking industry money, the bill faces long odds and the fights will stay local.