AINEWS
Khanna's non binding measure would protect towns' right to reject AI infrastructure. The federalism fight is whether Washington has already taken that right away.
On August 3, 2026, Rep. Ro Khanna introduced H.Res.1471, a "sense of the House" resolution that would protect communities' right to reject, regulate, or ban data centers in their backyards. The text, now in the Congressional Record and tracked on LegiScan, reads like a municipal zoning bill. Communities could demand transparent approval processes, block projects within 2,500 feet of homes, schools, hospitals, or nursing homes, require clean energy, and bar operators from pushing electricity rate changes onto local utilities.
The measure is non-binding. It does not become law even if the House passes it. What it does is mark where Khanna, a California Democrat, thinks the rules for AI infrastructure should sit.
Data centers are the physical plants behind cloud computing and AI training: warehouses full of servers, the cooling systems that keep them running, the backup turbines and generators that keep them running when the grid wobbles. The on-site pollution footprint is visible from the nearest road. Gas turbines and diesel generators, run during grid stress events, emit the particulate matter and nitrogen oxides that local air districts have spent years trying to push down. A figure cited by Engadget's coverage projects that AI data centers could consume up to 32 billion gallons of water a year by 2028. The underlying study is not named in the public-facing coverage, so the number should be read as an order-of-magnitude estimate rather than a settled accounting.
Federal policymakers have spent the past two years moving in the opposite direction. The federal government has exempted data centers from portions of environmental review and pushed to preempt state-level rules for the sector, according to DataCenterDigest's legislation tracker. That is the lever Khanna's resolution tries to pull back. A binding "Data Center Bill of Rights" is being prepared separately, per CNBC, and Quartz confirms H.Res.1471 has been referred to the House Energy & Commerce and Judiciary committees. The non-binding measure is the political peg. The political peg is local control.
New York enacted a one-year moratorium on new data center construction in 2025, the first statewide pause of its kind. It has since become the reference point for similar fights in Virginia, Texas, and Oregon. The state moratoriums, and the town-by-town resistance underneath them, are why a federal resolution with no enforcement teeth is news: a House member is putting a marker down on the side of the towns.
Khanna's record on housing complicates the picture. In California, he has been one of the loudest voices against local control of housing, supporting state laws that strip cities of the power to block apartment construction. The same member now argues towns should be able to block data centers. The simplest read is that the category changed. A four-story apartment building is one kind of neighbor. A multi-hundred-megawatt industrial plant that runs turbines at 3 a.m. is another. That is the argument Khanna is making, and the question any binding bill will have to answer.
Cosponsors are the next test. As of the DataCenterDigest snapshot, no cosponsors are listed for H.Res.1471; that read is based on absence on congress.gov and GovTrack rather than a direct listing, and the count can move quickly. The action, in the meantime, is in state legislatures and county commissions that are already writing the rules Washington has not.