On Tuesday night, Democrats made history as they took control of the House and the Senate, and a blue wave swept through traditionally red and swing states - with the nation's first Black woman governor elected in Georgia, the country's first Native American woman governor elected in New Mexico, and a Maine Senator ceding to a Democrat after 30 years in office. In these and other campaigns, one theme kept coming up: holding AI companies accountable to the American people. Now, the AI industry is left considering the prospect of regulation, data center construction slowdowns, and more.

Publicly, most major AI company CEOs have remained silen …

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Tech CEO hearings. Tougher AI and data center guardrails. Investigations of Elon Musk's DOGE cuts. The gates are open for Democrats once they regain control of committee gavels come January after a historic win of majorities in both the House and Senate on Tuesday.

"LAWYER UP," the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee wrote on X in a message aimed at the Trump administration as well as "corporate corruption" shortly after networks like NBC News projected Democratic control of the House. "Subpoenas," Senate Finance Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR) posted. It's clear tech executives will also be caught in Democrats' crosshairs. "They …

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Donald Trump’s big, rapid American AI buildout now faces a major slowdown as voters in yesterday’s elections overwhelmingly supported candidates and measures that favored increasing restrictions on AI and data centers nationwide.

One resource from a polling firm, called Redbud Consulting, tracked data center initiatives on the ballot and reported that out of 44 measures across 10 states seeking to restrict data centers, 38 passed so far. Those measures included dozens of moratoriums and bans. Analysts suggested those won’t impact data centers already under construction or approved through 2027, instead largely impacting future projects planned for 2028. Only one measure passed allowing a data center to proceed. But even that small win represented pushback on the AI industry—requiring data center developers in a North Dakota city to pay for independent reviews and hold public hearings when expanding or proposing projects.

In addition to increasing regulations on data centers, voters also backed anti-AI candidates, electing officials vowing crackdowns in key states building out the most data center capacity in the US.

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Data center developers are poised to face a more restrictive building environment after voters across the country voted in candidates who favor moratoriums and ballot measures that put more obstacles on their expansion, delivering a stinging blow to a central pillar of the AI industry.

Of voters polled by NBC News on Election Day, 76 percent said they opposed data centers in their communities. Dozens of local communities voted directly to restrict development through ballot measures. And upset winners like Texas Democratic Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa and Michigan's Democratic Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed support moratoriums on development.

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When Donald Trump began his second term as president, Silicon Valley gratefully embraced moral nihilism. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and more collectively donated millions to Trump's inauguration fund to ensure his favor in a new era of gangster tech regulation. Meta overhauled its content policy to allow calling gay people mentally ill and women property. Elon Musk started throwing Nazi salutes - yes, allegedly, but he would soon be posting nonstop about protecting the white race from extinction, so that's the most fragile of fig leafs.

As of mere months ago, this was working out pretty well for them. The Trump administration took a mostly …

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The 2026 midterm elections will determine the scope of President Donald Trump’s power in his final two years in office, and signal what voters care about going into the 2028 presidential election. While this year’s races are expected to be most broadly defined by affordability issues, there are several topics impacting the tech industry that appear to be on voters’ minds.

Among them are concerns about data centers, and whether voters will have to bear the burden of higher energy costs, AI safety, and the rapid expansion of surveillance technology through Flock. There’s also the question of how to tax billionaires’ wealth in California, a topic that has driven heavy tech spending and creative stock class structures meant to keep tech executives from fleeing the state should a ballot measure pass.

The next Congress is likely to continue grappling with how to regulate AI, and stem the data center backlash, among other issues. How that conversation shapes up, and which tech CEOs are hauled to testify on Capitol Hill, will be shaped by the outcome of November 3rd.

• Severe weather is affecting some voters across the country.
• A ballot scanner issue is impacting a New York suburb.
• Election protection hotline has received 3,000 calls this morning.
• DOJ sends 1,000 election monitors to watch polls in every state.
• Prop 45 in California could be hiding a loophole for data centers
• Another election year, another tech company war room.
• Voters in Texas agree: They hate data centers
• Data center backlash is uniting America
• Republican politicians have embraced anti-Indian racism — and it’s costing them votes
• Meta made a deal to keep Mark Zuckerberg from leaving California over its billionaire tax.
• Trump is giving Nick Shirley $10,000 and launching a $25 million fraud bounty program
• Democrats think cracking down on AI could give them an edge
• Tech billionaires have reportedly donated over $340 million to fight a wealth tax in California.
• Elon Musk has donated over $276 million to Republican midterm efforts
• The midterms are going to be a data security nightmare
• Democrats preview how they’d go after the Ticketmaster settlement if they regain power
• AI backlash is coming for elections

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"See which of your friends or family members have voted in the past and remind them to vote this year."

If any of these messages sound familiar, it's likely because they're part of the massive stream of text messages flooding your phone leading up to the US midterm elections on Tuesday. The scal …

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