April 30, 2026

Photo credit: Florian Gaertner/picture alliance / photothek.de/Newscom

As concerns grow about artificial intelligence and its capabilities, legislators on the Left and Right have been pushing back. Senator Bernie Sanders called for a moratorium on building data centers, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis introduced a bill that would let local communities veto data-center construction. California politicians pushed for a wealth tax that would threaten the state’s AI-startup ecosystem. Many Americans believe that the technology will negatively affect society—or even eliminate humanity altogether.

Where do things go from here?

“We should expect more legislation to restrict AI and potentially even violent resistance to the technology,” Sanjana Friedman writes. “The successful recent protest to scrap plans for a data center in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is just the latest in what will be a series of similar efforts likely to be organized by a coming wave of technophobic activist groups.”

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For years, California’s 911 emergency system has been in dire need of an upgrade. So in 2019, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services named four contractors to build a “Next Gen” system that would use location, video, and text to quickly identify people in need.

The buildout was slow. It wasn’t until 2022 that the new technology was launched in just a few dispatch centers.

It evidently wasn’t worth the wait—the system was a disaster. “Dispatchers in Tuolumne County, the first to launch the technology at full capacity, were unable to process calls, identify locations, or immediately see callers’ phone numbers,” Christopher F. Rufo and Haley Strack write. “When they tried to transfer calls, the line on the other end would remain ‘silent.’ A whistleblower claimed that citizens were ‘losing faith in the 9-1-1 emergency system.’”

Late last year, California officials pulled the plug. That means the state has now spent $502 million (four times the initial estimate) on a system that was never fully activated. And the state has gone back to the drawing board to develop a new system that won’t be completed until 2030.

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Despite securing every major union endorsement, Karen McDonald, a Democratic attorney general candidate in Michigan, failed to win her party’s nomination. Democrats instead chose her opponent, Eli Savit, who boasted just one union endorsement.

The attorney general race reflects what’s been happening in the state since 2018, Jake Altman writes. As the far Left grows ever-more powerful within the party, labor unions have been losing influence. Altman saw this firsthand at the Michigan Democratic Party convention, where “labor looked small and concentrated,” he observes. “This hard-left shift is forcing traditional Michigan unions to choose between their historic affinity for the Democratic Party or a new, more moderate option.”

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During a recent event at Columbia University, American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten spoke about her recent book, Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.

In the book’s introduction, she notes how former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called her “the most dangerous person in the world,” claiming it was part of a right-wing strategy to “blame teachers over and over and over again, truth be damned, in order to divide the American people and defund and destabilize public education.”

That’s a bit rich, Nic Rowan writes. “After all, Weingarten may be responsible for the greatest destabilization of public education in living memory. In 2020, during the Covid pandemic, the AFT used its influence to keep schools closed until the federal government placated it with a $126 billion aid package.” Children still suffer the consequences today.

Read more about the event and what Weingarten had to say.