Who should decide whether AI data centers pay for their own power: Washington, states, or towns?
The president has declared that large data centers must generate their own electricity, but federal regulators just ruled that only states can impose such a requirement on retail customers. When the cost of the AI buildout lands on household electric bills, which level of government should actually hold the pen, and what happens to the buildout if nobody does?
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In today’s episode of Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts (October 24, 2026), the hosts dig into the gap between a presidential post and an enforceable rule: Trump’s Truth Social mandate that data centers make their own power arrived twelve days after his own FERC appointees said that decision belongs to the states. The show traces how the president ended up adopting the core demand of the very towns he called ‘backwards and poor’ in August, just as electric-bill backlash surfaces in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan ahead of the midterms. The deeper question the hosts wrestle with is whether a buildout this large can proceed with no one clearly in charge of who pays. Listen to the full episode and tell us where you think the authority should sit.
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