There’s a bill in Congress that would make it harder to pull off what happened in Memphis with xAI.
It’s called the AI Data Center Site Selection Transparency Act.
It says that before a company can build one of these giant data centers, it has to come out into the open first. Six months ahead of time, it has to tell local leaders and the public three things – where it’s going, how much power and water it will use, and what it might do to the area around it.
And the bill doesn’t let “tell the public” stay vague. It spells out the work. Tell the local news. Mail a notice to the neighborhoods nearby. Put up a sign at the site. Do it in more than one language, because the people who live next to these things don’t all speak English. And pay for an outside review of the harm – one the company doesn’t get to run itself.
Then there’s the line that reads like someone wrote it with Memphis in mind. The bill bans the secret contracts – the NDAs – when they cover a public resource like your water or your power.
That’s the whole trick that shut South Memphis out. When the deal gets signed in secret, you don’t get a say. You get a press release. This bill takes that trick away.
This bill does not allow a single House member to issue a permit or block a data center. Those calls are made by the city and the state – and I’ll always tell you the truth about which fight belongs to which office. What this bill does is set one rule for the whole country. Build one of these anywhere, and you have to show your work first. That kind of rule is Congress’s job to set.
The bill is in committee now. Steve Cohen, who currently represents the district xAI is in, is one of the people who wrote it.
If I won the congressional seat that xAI will be in after the gerrymander – I’d sign on too – and I’d bring the Memphis story with me, because what happened in Memphis is exactly what this bill is built to stop. The biggest AI machine on earth landed here as a done deal. The people who breathe the air next to it got to speak up only after it was too late.
We’re the town that got handed the finished deal. Now’s the time to protect everyone from the same thing happening to them.