The first big thing the Senate has done since the midterms is make it easier to build data centers, pipelines and power plants, and harder to sue over them. On Monday, senators voted 73 to 25 to advance a 417-page bill that shortens permitting, narrows environmental review and limits what courts can do when communities object.
The NAACP opposes it. “The NAACP strongly opposes BAAJA because we should not rush through a decision that directly threatens the health, safety, and future of Black and frontline communities,” said Abre’ Conner, the organization’s climate and environmental justice director. BAAJA stands for the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act.
The Black stake is where this kind of infrastructure ends up. As Capital B reported, communities with higher shares of Black residents are more likely to sit near industrial infrastructure and are exposed to more pollution as a result. Memphis, where a $575 million data center is planned between two Black neighborhoods, is one example readers already know.
Democrats Martin Heinrich of New Mexico and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Republicans Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Mike Lee of Utah sponsored the bill. It narrows what counts as a “major federal action” that triggers review under the National Environmental Policy Act, limits judicial enforcement of that law, shortens Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act reviews, and speeds permits for interstate transmission lines and gas pipelines. It also requires data centers to pay for the transmission costs tied to them.
Supporters say the current system is the problem. Slow reviews have left 2,060 gigawatts of generating capacity stuck in connection queues, they argue, and faster permits would unlock clean energy as well as fossil fuels. The data center cost rule answers a fair complaint: households should not subsidize a tech company’s power bill.
But a lawsuit is the tool a neighborhood without lobbyists has used to make an agency answer. Cutting back review and the courts’ role cuts back that tool. The Sierra Club and the National Wildlife Federation oppose the bill too, and Mark Macarro, president of the National Congress of American Indians, called it “such an existential threat to Indian country.” Bill McKibben put the politics this way: “It would be highly ironic if, having won an election where data center opposition was at the front and center, the first act of Congress was to make it easier to build data centers.”
President Trump endorsed the bill, calling it a “BIG WIN for U.S. ENERGY INDEPENDENCE and DOMINANCE.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has criticized it as falling short. Whitehouse said Trump’s support should help it move toward a House vote.
Monday’s vote did not pass the bill. It only moved the Senate toward debate. When the final vote comes, a bill that Trump is celebrating and the NAACP is warning against should not have Democratic votes.
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