Democrats’ Big Tech Breakup
D.C. is at a standstill. But the politics of tech are changing, with or without it.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made waves last week with their proposal to pause all data center construction until new AI regulations are put in place. The legislation is going nowhere for now — and it would face long odds even in a Democratic-controlled D.C. But the announcement underscores just how hostile parts of the Democratic Party are becoming towards the tech industry, and how quickly its leading figures are moving towards embracing increasingly aggressive regulations at the state level.
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Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker is one figure leaning into the shift. This week, he escalated his push to ban cell phone use in schools and impose new guardrails on social media use for minors — including age verification and algorithmic oversight. Pritzker flooded social media with a pitch for the legislation, the Children’s Social Media Safety Act, and sat down with NYU professor Jonathan Haidt, who has become the most prominent critic of youth social media use.
The PR blitz, which comes as the Illinois state legislature is now advancing the measures to his desk, demonstrates that, for ambitious, would-be 2028 candidates, there is now a perceived upside to throwing in with the kinds of regulations that, just a few years ago, were relegated to deep red states. Pritzker’s push also comes after a stretch of notable developments among Democratic governors across the country:
AZ Gov. Katie Hobbs, reversing her previous stance, called for ending a state tax incentive for data center construction in January.
CA Gov. Gavin Newsom last year signed a sweeping age verification measure, arguably the most aggressive for any Democratic-controlled state. In February, he officially backed a proposal to restrict those under 16 from social media altogether.
NY Gov. Hochul signed legislation in December requiring social media companies to post warning labels on potentially addictive algorithms and features. She’s pushing further regulations in her 2026 budget proposal, including expanded age verification, which a source in state government tells me is likely to be included in the final budget negotiations (New York enacts most major policy changes in its annual budget).
In Virginia, Democratic lawmakers are pushing to eliminate a data center tax exemption, setting up a major clash with Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who has signaled she wants to keep it in place.
In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering a bill to require large data centers to foot the bill for grid upgrades made necessary by high electricity use. The legislation passed the General Assembly last week.
All the while, school phone bans continue to seep into blue states. As I’ve written before, bans on phone use in primary schools used to be the exclusive province of red states — when Donald Trump was sworn in last year, every single state with a statutory school phone ban had voted for him in 2024. That has changed significantly in the past year: if/when Illinois enacts its ban, it will be the seventh Harris-voting state with such a ban.
The culture shift is also being felt on the campaign trail. Blue state candidates like California’s Tom Steyer and Iowa’s Rob Sand have loudly argued for either more restrictions on AI use or data center incentives. Former Georgia state Sen. Jason Esteves, the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate to go on the air, notably featured a call to “end the billions in tax giveaways to AI data centers” in his first ad in March.
It’s too early to quite call this a sea change. But there’s clearly something going on under the surface of the party. The relationship between Democrats and Big Tech — first frayed in the late 2010s, then effectively broken by the alliance between tech CEOs and the second Trump administration — is becoming outright adversarial. Notably, Democratic voters are also becoming increasingly clear about their discomfort; a Quinnipiac poll released on Monday found registered Democrats to be, by far, the most concerned about AI’s impacts on the economy, and the most suspicious of AI companies’ motivations.
Conversion therapy fallout
Ruling in Chiles v. Salazar on Tuesday, the Supreme Court rejected a Colorado law banning so-called conversion therapy, the widely discredited practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, for minors. The ruling’s margin was wide (8-1, with only Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting), but its holding was technically narrow (it returned the case to the lower courts to reevaluate the law).
Still, it could have big implications for blue states, which now overwhelmingly ban the practice for minors, and whose broader LGBTQ rights efforts could now face a new level of threat. Today, 23 states have statutory bans on the books, according to the Movement Advancement Project. They are overwhelmingly Democratic-leaning — all but one voted for Joe Biden in 2020 — and now face a potentially much different legal landscape. I asked Chris Geidner, who writes the newsletter Law Dork, about the implications for these states’ laws. He indicated the biggest impact may be the narrowing of existing bans’ scopes.
“State officials will have to review their laws, assessing whether talk therapy was ever covered by the ban and, if so, how implementation and enforcement of their law needs to change in light of Chiles,” Geidner told me. “A final option could be legislative ‘fixes,’ efforts to address Chiles while maintaining the state's policy choice. In light of Gorsuch's opinion (and the 8-1 vote), that will be difficult, but I could see some states or at least lawmakers trying to do something on that front.”
I’ll note that I’ve long been interested, and somewhat skeptical, about the actual efficacy of the bans. Many of those determined to find this kind of treatment for children were going to do so regardless of state licensing rules. Where I feel the ruling could have the most impact is in eroding the social stigmatization of conversion therapy that the state bans had helped establish — an effect not easily remedied.
One last thing
Governors continue to not be safe from the Israel-Palestine debate roiling the Democratic Party. This week, KY Gov. Andy Beshear notably sidestepped the question of whether the Israeli government has committed genocide in Gaza, labeling it the kind of “litmus test” the party needs to move on from.
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