Democrats and some Republicans question how the information will be used.
Neal Kurk fought for privacy rights for three decades as a Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire. Now he is joining a fight in the famously libertarian haven to keep the federal government from obtaining a list of the state’s voters.
“This is an attempt to exercise federal interference in what is really a state issue,” said Kurk, who is part of a bipartisan group trying to intervene in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department to get that list. “In New Hampshire, we’re always trying to make sure that our voter lists are accurate.”
The Trump administration wants to control how data centers connect to the power grid
At a conference of state utility regulators in Seattle, a group of Trump administration officials got an earful of complaints about a plan the White House is pushing for the federal government to take control of part of the country’s power grid in the service of artificial intelligence.
Their concerns stem from instructions Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently gave to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which is known as FERC and oversees wholesale power in the U.S., to draft new rules that would give it oversight of how giant data centers connect to the power grid. The process is typically overseen by states.