Trump EO, Cotton Bill, and PJM Rules Reshape AI Data Center Power Policy

The Trump administration has moved on multiple fronts to address AI data center power demand. Trump signed an executive order expediting federal permitting for data centers supporting AI inference, training, simulation, or synthetic data generation, and separately stated that every new AI data center built under his administration must generate its own electricity, with excess power fed into the national grid. On the legislative side, Senator Tom Cotton introduced the DATA Act of 2026 on January 8, 2026, which would exempt fully off-grid power suppliers from the Federal Power Act and Department of Energy regulations, enabling data centers to build dedicated captive generation capacity outside the federal regulatory framework. At the grid operator level, PJM submitted a compliance filing on February 23, 2026, with a requested effective date of July 31, 2026, establishing a 50 MW cumulative nameplate threshold for retail behind-the-meter generation netted against load; above that threshold, loads must take one of four new transmission services and be studied for reliability impacts.