King Donald Is Trying To Bomb States’ Rights For AI & Fossil Fuels

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Once upon a time, states’ rights were a big deal for conservatives. As Wikipedia summarizes states’ rights, these are “political powers held for the state governments rather than the federal government according to the United States Constitution, reflecting especially the enumerated powers of Congress and the Tenth Amendment.” Some conservatives on the right blew the states’ rights horn loudly in efforts to fight desegregation and same-sex marriage, among other issues.

In general, states should have the ability to pass laws and make decisions for activity within their borders as long as they don’t violate the Constitution, and as long as they don’t violate Congressionally passed laws. The President of the United States, though, cannot tell states what they can and cannot do on a wide variety of matters via executive order. King Donald President Donald Trump, however, seems to think he has those powers — or, basically, unlimited powers.

In the latest example, we have Trump’s executive order on artificial intelligence (AI). The order wants to force states to let AI companies run amok, and also let these companies pollute their air and water. Yes, Trump thinks states shouldn’t have the right to manage the AI industry’s enormous power requirements as they see fit or manage what AI does and does not do.

“Today, Donald Trump issued an executive order seeking to remove state guardrails around artificial intelligence and the infrastructure needed to run AI, including popular state-level initiatives to require data center build transparency, protect privacy, and reduce impacts on electric affordability and pollution,” the Sierra Club writes.

“The critical state protections that Donald Trump wants to prosecute—including guardrails like large load tariffs—are in place to ensure everyday Americans are not held liable for data centers’ massive power and infrastructure needs. Sierra Club has helped utilities, regulators, and consumer advocates implement commonsense safeguards like long-term contracts, credit guarantees, and minimum bills that protect affordability for residential customers.

“The executive order also seeks to get rid of state standards that protect Americans from toxic fossil fuel pollution at data centers. If these protections get rolled back—which Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is already trying to do—Americans will be exposed to far more pollutants in their air and water.”

That’s just the power industry stuff. “United States AI companies must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulation.  But excessive State regulation thwarts this imperative. First, State-by-State regulation by definition creates a patchwork of 50 different regulatory regimes that makes compliance more challenging, particularly for start-ups. Second, State laws are increasingly responsible for requiring entities to embed ideological bias within models. For example, a new Colorado law banning ‘algorithmic discrimination’ may even force AI models to produce false results in order to avoid a ‘differential treatment or impact’ on protected groups. Third, State laws sometimes impermissibly regulate beyond State borders, impinging on interstate commerce.” Ah, yes, we come back to racism again. Now, the argument is that states shouldn’t be allowed to guard against algorithmic racism, or discrimination of other sorts. Forget states’ rights — we have to ensure that AI is allowed to have racist underpinnings.

Anyway, it’s another horrible, disastrous executive order, and one the president really doesn’t have the power to create or implement.

Let’s get back to electricity and consumer costs to close this discussion out (hopefully forever). “This executive order is nothing more than federal overreach that will further increase costs and remove protections for the American people. These state protections are in place because Americans have a right to privacy and transparency, and must not be held responsible for the massive costs of data centers operated by some of the richest companies in the world. Utility bills have already been skyrocketing due to growing energy demand from data centers and utilities’ reliance on expensive fossil fuels, and we must be doing everything we can to lower these costs and prioritize affordability,” Sierra Club Principal Advisor Jeremy Fisher says.

“If Donald Trump cares at all about lowering costs for Americans, he should work on setting up more safeguards for customers, rather than bulldozing the progress states have made thus far. Unfortunately for us, this order makes it clear he’s only interested in bolstering profits for his billionaire buddies in Big Tech at our expense.”

Indeed. One of the most shocking things for me regarding this Trump era of politics is how many normal working people don’t understand that Trump is not for them and never has been. He has golden toilets and doesn’t know how to go grocery shopping because he’s been one of the richest people in the country since he was a baby. He despises normal working people and does almost everything to show off for and get things from his super rich buddy friends. And that normally means scr**ing over most Americans.