“Say this for President Trump: He understands the stakes in the AI race with China. Not so Senate Democrats, who this week torpedoed legislation to create a framework for data centers to fully cover their share of the electric grid's costs. Why? Because the bill doesn't strangle AI with regulation.
The President is being ridiculed for convening AI executives this week to sign what he called a "morally binding" compact to self-police. The Washington press corps apparently thinks he should be calling for the heads of AI executives on pikes and urging a federal takeover of AI under the guise of safety. Mr. Trump is striking a more sensible path.
"Every company is responsible for developing its own technology safely and in a way that builds trust with customers and the public," the AI compact says. Signatories agree to develop "robust" internal monitoring of models, use outside auditors to test them, and designate an independent board committee to oversee the internal safety team.
This voluntary pact more or less concedes the limitations and drawbacks of government regulation, especially in the face of open-weight Chinese models that needn't abide by U.S. laws. AI has serious risks, and one of the largest is that bad actors use Chinese models for destructive purposes. The best defense is for U.S. models to develop fast enough to detect and counter such attacks. No regulatory plan we've seen would do better against rogues.
Companies also have strong business incentives to pace and police themselves to avoid costly lawsuits and government enforcement actions. "I have a guardrail. You know what the guardrail is? The Department of Justice," Mr. Trump said this week.
He's right that new laws aren't needed to punish wrongdoing or negligence. Companies know the government sword is hanging over them. To reinforce the point, Federal Trade Commission officials this week let it be known they have opened a probe of frontier AI models.
Democrats nonetheless want to put the federal government in charge of AI. That's the real reason Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked the Ratepayer Protection Act, which the House passed last month on an overwhelming bipartisan 417-3 vote.
The bill would require state public utility commissions to consider adopting a federal standard under which large data centers pay the incremental costs of new grid infrastructure to support their power loads. In our view, the legislation is unnecessary since most states are already doing this. AI companies are building their own power generation and paying for grid upgrades to connect data centers.
Yet Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer objected to the bill because it isn't binding. "Senate Democrats want to make it mandatory for data centers to cover their own costs, by law, not by suggestion or hope or whim," he said. No -- they want to block data centers to put AI development under political control.
See Bernie Sanders's bill, which would pause data-center construction until the government ensures they don't "exacerbate the threat of climate change" and their models "do not threaten the health and well-being of working families, privacy and civil rights, and the future of humanity" or cause "job displacement."
His legislation reflects the growing Democratic consensus. Had Kamala Harris won the 2024 election, it's likely the federal government would have used its power to impose a de facto AI moratorium. When it comes to AI, Mr. Trump has superior intelligence.” [1]
1. Trump Has the Right Instincts on AI. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 02 Oct 2026: A14.
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