Many leftists pin their hatred of Donald Trump on their unproven claim that he was involved with Jeffrey Epstein — but that isn’t stopping them from supporting an alleged abuser at the box office.

And BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales is tired of the hypocrisy.

“They’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, we hate pedophiles. We are the party against pedophiles, and the Republicans are always protecting pedophiles. If there’s anything we hate, it’s pedophiles,’” Gonzales mocks.

“Actually, that’s historically not been the case. Has not been the case, as documented with all of these Democrats involved with Jeffrey Epstein, but also they have apparently been crawling all over each other to go watch a movie about [an alleged] renowned kiddie diddler,” she continues.

The movie is Antoine Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic, which brought in a whopping $218.8 million globally over its opening weekend and became the biggest domestic opening of all time for any biopic.

“Michael Jackson, when it comes to him, technically he was cleared in the legal system in 2005,” Gonzales says, though she isn’t buying it.

And according to a report in People magazine, Gonzales may be on to something.

The report claims that the director of the biopic allegedly made an extra $25 million to remove child sex abuse allegations.

“That’s a lot of money to pay the director and a producer to remove things from the movie if they weren’t true,” Gonzales says, pointing out that it’s not the first time allegations of abuse have been suspiciously squashed.

“You also had the documentary ‘Leaving Neverland,’ which was 2019. And the biggest accusations that came out were highlighted in this. … But guess what? If you missed it and you want to go back to check it out, you’re not going to be able to see it because the Jackson Estate sued to remove it from the internet, just like they buried it in the movie and got paid off,” she continues. “Are you sensing the trend yet?”

Want more from Sara Gonzales?

To enjoy more of Sara’s no-holds-barred takes on news and culture, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Abuse, Allegations, Antoine fuqua, Biopic, Blaze media, Blaze news, Blaze online, Blaze originals, Blaze podcast network, Blaze podcasts, Blazetv, Blazetv host, Box office, Child sex abuse, Democrats, Director, Documentary, Hypocrisy, Internet, Jackson estate, Jeffrey epstein, Leaving neverland, Leftists, Michael jackson, Money, Pedophiles, People magazine, President, Producer, Republicans, Sara gonzales, Sara gonzales unfiltered, The blaze, Trend, United states 

For the first time in nearly 35 years, a British monarch has addressed a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

King Charles III, no doubt sensitive to the recent political friction between the U.S. and Britain over the matter of the war in Iran, noted at the outset Tuesday night that these are “times of great uncertainty, in times of conflict, from Europe to the Middle East, which pose immense challenges for the international community and whose impact is felt in communities the length and breadth of our own countries.”

Charles emphasized, however, that even in such times, it remains clear that America’s and Britain’s destinies are entangled and that the two countries share a special “bond of kinship and identity” that is “irreplaceable and unbreakable.”

After reassuring lawmakers that his presence stateside was not “part of some cunning rearguard action” and lauding the American founding fathers both as “bold and imaginative rebels with a cause” and inheritors “of the British Enlightenment,” Charles hyped the need to build upon and renew the Anglo-American partnership, particularly in the military space.

On the theme of renewal and in an apparent nod to President Donald Trump’s repeated insistence that North Atlantic Treaty Organization members boost their defense spending, Charles noted that the U.K. “has committed to the biggest sustained increase in defense spending since the Cold War.”

RELATED: Pentagon floats ousting Spain from NATO, punishing allies for not toeing the line on Iran

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer committed last year to spending 2.5% of GDP on core defense by April 2027. The U.K., which spent an estimated 2.3% of GDP on defense in 2024, has since entertained the possibility of increasing spending to 3% in the next Parliament — an increase that Starmer said would be made possible by reductions to aid spending.

Charles, speaking weeks after the Trump administration signaled an interest in pulling the U.S. out of NATO, said the military alliance is as relevant now as it was during the Cold War and “in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when NATO invoked Article Five for the first time.”

The king — who acknowledged that “the commitment and expertise of the United States Armed Forces and its allies lie at the heart of NATO” — suggested further that the alliance was imperative to keep “North Americans and Europeans safe from our common adversaries,” singling out Ukraine as a nation now in need of defense.

Charles closed his speech with an apparent knock at isolationism, stating, “I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth and across the world and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking.”

The last royal address to Congress was given by Charles’ late mother, Queen Elizabeth II, in the wake of the Gulf War. Elizabeth similarly spoke with interest about nurturing Britain’s “long-standing friendship with the people of the United States.”

“We want to build on that foundation and to do better,” said the queen. “And if the going gets rough, I hope you can still agree with your poet Emerson, who wrote in 1847, ‘I feel, in regard to this aged England, with a kind of instinct, that she sees a little better on a cloudy day, and that, in storm of battle and calamity, she has a secret vigor and a pulse like a cannon.’ You will find us worthy partners, and we are proud to have you as our friends.”

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​Alliance, Britain, British monarch, Congress, Defense spending, Foreign entanglements, Gulf war, International community, Isolationism, King charles, King charles iii, Military, Monarch, Nato, Queen elizabeth ii, Shared values, Speech, United states armed forces, Us congress, War in iran, Politics 

The advocates of enforced age verification promise safe and secure technologies that protect user privacy.

Age verification mechanisms have, they insist, developed sufficiently, users need not fear, and skeptics’ arguments are relics of a bygone time. The newest security protocols, they argue, have rendered the privacy and cybersecurity concerns once attached to age verification outdated.

But promises of what can, theoretically, be done by public policy often founder when implemented — when practical, technological, and human constraints mount a counteroffensive against the best-laid plans of academics’ white papers.

If privacy is to be forfeited, the citizenry can demand evidence that their sacrifice will yield significant benefits, but the data provided so far gives little assurance.

The claims of robust security can be dispensed with: Age verification services routinely succumb to hacks, data breaches, leaks, and sloppy data-management practices. These failures publicize users’ government-issued documentation and other personal information.

The latest case study from the European Union lends no assistance to the advocates of age verification.

Only hours after Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced the EU’s new age verification platform, soon to be made available — and mandatory — to the continent, the app proved rotten.

Security consultant Paul Moore, as reported by Politico, claimed to have hacked the app in under two minutes. He found in the application myriad deficiencies, including one that enabled users to evade the verification process altogether. The EU repaired its code, but Moore quickly dismantled the updates.

The EU has stumbled, joining a lengthy list of compromised verification platforms. Count among their number Outabox, AU10TIX, and two third parties employed by Discord. Add to these a breach of IDMerit, which alone compromised 1 billion records of personal data.

In March, hundreds of security and privacy academics signed a letter “call[ing] for a moratorium on [age verification] deployment plans” — at least “until the scientific consensus settles on the benefits and harms” of the technologies in question.

The manifest dangers of age verifications remain unresolved, even as regulators rush to enact mandates that would precondition access to everyday digital services on the user’s willingness to give up sensitive information about himself to vulnerable digital databases.

“Two critical issues have not been addressed: whether age assurance is efficacious and what the potential damages to general security and privacy are,” the letter reads.

Besides the privacy failings, the letter raises another inconvenient question: the efficacy of age-verification regimes. If privacy is to be forfeited, the citizenry can demand evidence that their sacrifice will yield significant benefits, but the data provided so far gives little assurance.

RELATED: The FBI should get a warrant before reading your messages

J. David Ake/Getty Images

The implementation of the Online Safety Act in the United Kingdom was met with a rush of British users resorting to virtual private networks, which allowed them to circumvent the age verification process.

Australia attempted to bar minors from major social media platforms, instituting age verification to effect the mandate. And yet, according to the findings of the Molly Rose Foundation, “three fifths (61%) of [12- to 15-year-olds] who previously held accounts on restricted platforms continue to have access to one or more active accounts.” Moreover, seven in 10 children called it “easy” to dodge the law.

Children are by nature troublemakers and hell-raisers. They carry these qualities — at once endearing and enraging — into the digital world. The government cannot ensure that children remain safe online, because it cannot love or know children as parents can, nor can it monitor children’s operations in the digital world.

Age verification is sold to credulous legislators as the one-size-fits-all fix for a world populated by innumerable young people, diverse in their abilities, proclivities, desires, and weaknesses. As extant age verification mandates demonstrate, noncompliance is, quite literally, at the fingertips of minors enterprising enough to best the regulatory requirements they confront.

No government knows enough about any given child or what he does every day to parry his every thrust. Once more, the responsibility comes home to parents, who must raise and protect their children as vigorously in the digital world as in the physical one.

From one vantage, it seems logical to support enforced age verification. But the technological and human facts of the case reveal the policy’s manifest dangers and scant chances of success.

Traditional child-protection standards lodge primary responsibility for children’s formation and well-being in the family — with parents. The digital world is novel, but human nature is eternal. Even in the digital world, the remedy is to be found at kitchen tables, not in legislatures.

​Age verification, European union, Social media platforms, Personal data, Social media restrictions, Free speech, Censorship, Eu, Opinion & analysis 

A ProPublica investigation portrayed a pregnant mother, Cherise Doyley, as a victim of Florida’s “fetal personhood policies” after she was forced mid-labor into a virtual court hearing and told she would be compelled to undergo a cesarean section if an emergency developed. However, the story, which numerous left-leaning outlets and advocates amplified, overlooked an important detail that Doyley’s doctors claimed sparked the drastic intervention to protect her unborn baby’s life.

A transcript and video of the hearing obtained by Blaze News revealed additional details about the hospital’s decision to alert the state about Doyley’s case.

‘We were concerned that she would not want to act in the best interest of her infant, even if it came to that.’

In Sept. 2024, Doyley, a doula and then-student midwife, arrived overnight via ambulance at the University of Florida Health in Jacksonville after her water broke while over 41 weeks pregnant, according to the hospital’s doctors.

Doyley had been receiving prenatal care from UF Health throughout her pregnancy and had adamantly expressed that she wanted to have a vaginal birth after cesarean section, instead of a fourth C-section.

By her 12th hour of contractions, Doyley was forced to attend a court hearing via Zoom video call from her hospital bed. Joining her on the call were Circuit Court Judge Michael Kalil, lawyers, and hospital staff.

Judge Kalil explained to Doyley that the state had filed an emergency petition requesting that the court order her to undergo a C-section. He called these types of hearings “extraordinary,” noting that such petitions are “infrequently filed.”

The order granting the emergency petition for declaratory judgment explained that the petitioner, the state of Florida, had “a compelling interest in the preservation of the life of an unborn child and the protection of innocent third parties, such as Unborn Child, who may be harmed by the parental refusal to allow or consent to life-saving medical treatment.”

Doyley, who insisted that she had not been notified in advance, repeatedly requested her own legal representation or a patient advocate before proceeding with the hearing. This request was denied after Kalil and the state prosecutor concluded that there is no constitutional right to legal counsel in emergency civil proceedings.

RELATED: The truth about the brain-dead mother giving birth — and why it’s the right choice

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The hearing: What the transcript shows

Arguments in the hearing began with Dr. Erin Burnett, an attending physician at UF Health, detailing Doyley’s medical history, including noting that the pregnant mother had never had a successful vaginal birth in her three prior pregnancies. According to Burnett, these included a failed induction at 42 weeks with her first child, an attempted trial of labor after cesarean with her second that ended in a repeat C-section after a uterine infection with her newborn, requiring a two-week NICU stay, and potential fetal heart rate decelerations during her third labor that also resulted in a C-section. Burnett further testified that Doyley had a “uterine window,” or thinning of the scar tissue from a prior C-section, which increased the risk of uterine rupture.

Burnett acknowledged the risks associated with C-sections and that Doyley had “some very bad experiences” trying to heal from those prior surgeries, including suffering from hematomas that required drains and other complications that impacted her ability to care for her children during her weeks-long recovery.

When Doyley arrived at UF Health around 2:00 a.m., Burnett stated, she was experiencing contractions, had ruptured membranes, and was three centimeters dilated. Burnett assessed that Doyley was unlikely to have a successful vaginal birth because, during her time at the hospital, dilation had progressed only to five centimeters and her contractions had become less frequent. For a successful vaginal delivery, the cervix must fully dilate to 10 centimeters.

Without a C-section, Burnett expressed concern that the unborn child might sustain brain damage or brain bleeds.

“I think the most, or more, concerning thing was her fetus,” Burnett testified. “When she got here, the fetal tracing was much more reassuring. But for the past six to eight hours, the fetus has lost what we call fetal heart rate variability, which … essentially tells you if the baby is getting acidotic or not.”

Burnett claimed the baby’s heart rate had dropped to the 50s, whereas the typical range is in the 110s to 160s. She explained that when the baby’s heart rate returned to normal, it was then that the hospital recommended a C-section, per its protocol, hoping to avoid another potential heart rate drop that could lead to an emergency.

When staff approached Doyley about this, she refused and “made the comment that if her baby dies, so be it,” Burnett alleged.

She stated that Doyley’s alleged comment about her unborn child’s life, which was not mentioned in the ProPublica articles, was what sparked the hospital’s intervention.

“We were concerned that she would not want to act in the best interest of her infant, even if it came to that,” Burnett said.

Jenny Van Ravestein, the then-division director of women’s services at UF Health Jacksonville, reiterated the reason that the hospital decided to intervene. Van Ravestein testified that the “concern from my nurses … and from the physician, I truly believe, was about the welfare of this infant.”

While Van Ravestein was not on site to witness the interaction firsthand, she alleged that “when I was put on speaker [phone] with the patient in her room, she said that the baby could just die, it was okay if the baby just died, she was not going to have a C-section.”

“I heard her say, ‘I’m not gonna have a C-section. If the baby dies, the baby just dies,'” Van Ravestein alleged again a few moments later.

“That, to me, was what was extremely upsetting to my team,” Van Ravestein added.

Transcript and video of the hearing reveal that Doyley did not explicitly deny making the remarks, but did claim they were “taken out of context.”

Referring to Van Ravestein, Doyley told the judge, “She actually was not in the room, so this statement is being taken out of context, which makes sense because she was over the phone. But the statement was in regards to, if it is my life or the baby’s life, the baby’s going to have to die. And I stand on that because I have three other children that I have to take care of.”

Van Ravestein testified that as a result of Doyley’s alleged comments about her infant, the hospital staff reached out to risk management and the hospital insurance program, which instructed her to contact the hospital’s legal team, setting off the chain of events that led the state attorney’s office to file an emergency petition.

While ProPublica’s reporting noted that Van Ravestein said she and her staff were “very concerned about the baby’s welfare,” the outlet did not include her statements about Doyley’s alleged remarks.

When reached for comment about why it did not include these alleged remarks by Doyley, ProPublica told Blaze News, “We stand by our reporting. In the hearing, neither Dr. Burnett nor Jenny Van Ravestein testified that they directly heard Ms. Doyley make that statement, and Ms. Doyley disputes that she said this. It’s secondhand information that has not been substantiated and therefore wasn’t included in the story.”

The State Attorney’s Office confirmed that the hospital reported Doyley’s case partly due to the alleged comments she made about her preborn baby’s life.

“UF Health alerted the State Attorney’s Office that a 41-week, full-term baby was facing grave risk of death without medical intervention,” the State Attorney’s Office told Blaze News. “The mother was refusing that care. In accordance with our legal duty, our office brought the matter before the Circuit Court, which held an evidentiary hearing. After hearing from the mother and medical professionals, the court determined a cesarean delivery was necessary to protect the child’s life and mother’s health.”

“The State Attorney’s Office does not make medical decisions — we ensured the court was presented with the facts so a judge could make his determination under the law,” the office added.

Dr. John Davis, professor and chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Florida College of Medicine, Jacksonville, told Doyley during the hearing that the hospital has been recognized for its low C-section rate and performs them only when required.

“I think I can say … to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, you are not going to be able to deliver vaginally,” Davis testified, stating that it was his understanding that she had never dilated beyond seven centimeters during any of her previous pregnancies.

“The longer this labor goes on, there are increasing likelihood of complications for the baby — infection, brain damage, death — but also increasing risk of complications for the mom, including infection, uterine rupture, and death.”

Doyley’s response and the risks

Several times during the hearing, Doyley stated that she was willing to consent to a C-section in the event of an emergency. Hospital staff on the call acknowledged Doyley’s expressed openness to an emergency surgery.

“Where we were at this morning, where she was refusing regardless, is much different than where we’re at now,” Burnett told the judge.

“I’m very happy that she has consented in the event of an emergency to undergo a C-section. … When we initially kind of initiated all this stuff, she was in a much different state of mind.”

Although Doyley agreed to the C-section in an emergency, she disagreed with the doctor’s evaluation of the urgency of the situation. She argued that the baby’s heart rate was normal and pointed out that the doctor had not checked her dilation status for at least four hours.

“For them to say that I have not made any cervical change and that the baby’s life is in danger without exhausting all options is completely false,” Doyley told the judge. “And I feel it all boils down to people, doctors, thinking that they know and understand my body better than me.”

She also stated: “I am concerned about the well-being of my child, but at the end of the day with my background, I can read a trace just like they can. And there’s nothing that is saying that this is an emergency situation that I have to be rushed into a C-section within a hour.”

Doyley emphasized that the risks associated with a C-section are significantly higher than those of a vaginal birth and that she had “a major complication” with each of her prior C-sections.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which sets guidelines for pregnancy and birth care, strongly endorses VBAC for patients with one prior C-section and considers it reasonable to offer the option for those with two. However, it does not outright endorse or oppose VBAC for women who have undergone three or more prior C-sections, citing limited data. However, the group firmly stands behind a pregnant patient’s “right to refuse treatment, even treatment needed to maintain life.”

‘This case demonstrates that Florida is committed to both protecting innocent life and upholding the rule of law. Hospital staff and the judge lived up to that in this situation.’

Doyley, who accused the hospital staff of pushing for surgery based on “a lot of what-ifs and maybes,” highlighted ACOG’s guidelines to the judge, stating that the organization “do [sic] not have any specific policy that says that someone cannot have a vaginal birth after three C-sections.”

“Any time you go into childbirth, whether you do a vaginal or a C-section, there’s inherent risk to the mother and the baby,” she added. “So if it’s between them choosing whether I have to live or the baby has to live, I did tell them that I want to live. I have other children out here in the world that need me.”

Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB-GYN speaking on behalf of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, detailed the risks of VBAC in a statement to Blaze News, stating that “there’s not a lot of data out there on … women laboring with three or more C-section scars.”

Francis cited one study, which she noted was “a little bit of an outlier,” that showed uterine rupture risks were under 1% for multiple prior C-sections. Other studies, she stated, showed a risk of uterine rupture from 2% to 3.5%.

“The way we counsel most patients with that many C-sections is, because of that increased risk, it likely is safer to do a scheduled repeat C-section,” Francis said.

Francis also addressed the data on repeated C-sections, calling it “very mixed” and stating that many studies show the risks associated with repeat surgeries are “actually higher than a woman going through a trial of labor, even if she has that many previous C-sections,” including risks of hemorrhage and infections.

“It really is not a clear decision, I would say,” Francis remarked, emphasizing the importance of “shared decision-making” between a pregnant woman and her doctor, describing it as “a travesty” that Doyley felt unsupported by hospital staff.

During her testimony, Doyley rejected claims that there was nothing else the doctors could do to help her achieve a natural birth. She repeatedly insisted that UF Health transfer her to another hospital where she could receive a second opinion. UF Health staff explained that a transfer was unlikely to occur on such short notice, since another hospital would first have to agree to accept her as a patient.

She criticized the hospital for not having “one person of color that is on this floor working,” adding, “I have 20 white people against me.” She accused the hospital staff of trying to take her rights away, comparing it to “slavery.”

“Just knowing what we know, as far as black maternal health in America and how black women are three times more likely to die during childbirth, a lot of that comes from medical negligence and medical racism, where we have a group of white doctors that think that they know what is best for black bodies and black babies,” she testified.

At the conclusion of the multi-hour hearing, Kalil determined that Doyley could continue laboring to attempt to have a natural birth but that the hospital could force Doyley to undergo a C-section in the event of an emergency, to which Doyley agreed. The judge’s order defined emergency events as fetal bradycardia, fetal heart tracing category 3, or signs of uterine rupture.

The infant was ultimately delivered via C-section after doctors said her heart rate dropped overnight for seven minutes, ProPublica reported. While Doyley recovered from the surgery, the baby was brought to the NICU due to respiratory distress and placed on a continuous positive airway pressure machine to assist with her breathing.

The court’s jurisdiction in the matter terminated upon the child’s successful delivery.

A spokesperson for UF Health Jacksonville declined to comment, citing privacy regulations that prevent the hospital from discussing patient information.

RELATED: ‘PRAISE GOD!’ Florida defeats radicals’ attempt to enshrine nearly limitless abortion as a right

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The reaction to Doyley’s case

Progressive advocates have used Doyley’s experience to argue that Florida’s pro-life laws have gone too far and infringe on pregnant women’s medical freedom.

ProPublica wrote that while “mentally competent patients typically have the right to choose their medical care — or refuse it,” pregnant patients do not. The outlet highlighted this as an “inconsistency” in Florida, noting that the state has championed expanded medical autonomy for patients wishing to avoid vaccines and fluoridated water.

“In Florida and many other states, court-ordered medical procedures are just one of the ways pregnant patients’ rights are restricted. The effort to chip away at those rights is rooted in the concept of fetal personhood — that a fetus has equal and, in some cases, more rights than the woman sustaining it,” ProPublica wrote, claiming that “even a state prisoner on a hunger strike has more rights to make medical decisions” than a pregnant woman.

Francis suggested that the hospital’s intervention may have been driven by concern over serious complications and potential malpractice liability.

“As the ProPublica piece is referring to, I don’t think that it probably centered around placing the personhood of her preborn child ahead of the consent of the patient,” Francis said, adding that Doyley’s case “highlights a significant problem in this country” that has “nothing to do with abortion laws or fetal personhood laws” but rather a fear of malpractice lawsuits. A 2023 American Medical Association report found that 62.4% of OB-GYNs had faced a lawsuit.

The author of the ProPublica report, Amy Yurkanin, seemed to give Kalil some credit for his ruling, stating that judges in these cases are in a “difficult position.”

During an interview with WJCT’s “First Coast Connect,” Yurkanin stated, “I think he did try to thread the needle really with his ruling.”

“The hospital wanted him to court-order a C-section. He declined to sort of issue that blanket court order,” she remarked.

State Rep. Berny Jacques (R) shared his thoughts on Doyley’s case with Blaze News.

“This case demonstrates that Florida is committed to both protecting innocent life and upholding the rule of law. Hospital staff and the judge lived up to that in this situation,” Jacques said. “It’s especially refreshing that in a time when we’re seeing a lot of activist judges who ignore the law to score political points, the judge in this case simply followed the law as written and did the right thing.”

Jacques added that he wishes the mom and child “all the best.”

When Blaze News contacted Kalil for comment, the Fourth Judicial Circuit’s general counsel stated that the court “is unable to provide any comment or participate in any public discussions regarding these matters.”

Doyley did not respond to requests for comment.

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​Cherise doyley, Csection risks, Fetal personhood, Florida, Jacksonville, News, Preborn, Prenatal care, Pro-choice, Pro-life, Propublica, Uf health jacksonville, Unborn child, University of florida, University of florida health, Politics 

Some like to imagine that the digital world has freed us from the physical one, that computing lives somewhere above the friction of pipelines and permits and power lines, in a clean, abstract place we have named, without irony, the cloud. That illusion is dispelled when a transformer shortage causes a delay in the construction of data centers.

To give a sense of the amount of energy throughput required to keep building, the following numbers come from federal laboratories and utility research organizations: In 2023, American data centers consumed approximately 176 terawatt-hours of electricity, or 4.4% of all the energy the country used. By 2028, that figure is expected to reach somewhere between 325 and 580 terawatt-hours. By 2030, data centers could account for between 9% and 17% of national electricity consumption. Virginia, which already hosts more data-center capacity than any other state, could find itself directing between 39% and 57% of its electricity to the machines by decade’s end.

The political consequences are becoming visible at an unsettling pace.

What Sightline Climate reported in February 2026 is clarifying in its plain arithmetic: At least 16 gigawatts of data-center capacity were supposed to come online in the United States during 2026. Of that, roughly five gigawatts were under construction. The remaining 11 gigawatts had been announced but showed no construction progress. Given this delay, between 30% and 50% of the year’s projected capacity is unlikely to exist by year’s end. The buildings are failing to rise not because of any shortage of ambition or capital, but because the electrical systems that would bring them to life are themselves a constrained resource.

Tech acceleration, electricity slowdown

The technology industry tends to describe its obstacles as temporary inconveniences, friction to be optimized away. The power problem is not that kind of obstacle. A modern data center, before it is a real-estate asset or a monument to computational ambition, is an electrical system. IT equipment can represent 95% of its total demand. Cooling systems are themselves power-electronics loads. For the highest-performing AI facilities, operators have begun to omit traditional backup protection for their servers, relying instead on software checkpointing and restart logic, because the weight of the electrical infrastructure has become something to work around. “Construction complete” does not mean the facility can be turned on. Completion requires that the utility interface, the internal electrical architecture, the backup strategy, and the thermal system are synchronized and tested. The construction is the least of it.

The physical bottleneck is in a part of the supply chain that is rarely mentioned. Distribution transformers, the equipment that turns high-voltage transmission power into the voltages that buildings can actually use, are in short supply. Lead times that ran three to six months in 2019 stretched to 12 to 30 months by 2023. Large power transformers are custom-made, difficult to substitute, expensive to stockpile, and dependent on grain-oriented electrical steel, aluminum, and copper, all of which faced their own post-pandemic constraints. When a hyperscale campus needs utility service, substation capacity, and specialized transformer equipment at the same moment as the broader grid, delay is the usual result.

RELATED: How AI could decide the midterms — with $200 million to sway your vote

Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publishing/Getty Images

Why they weren’t ready

A relevant historical parallel is the railroad age. There is a structural similarity beyond the lazy metaphor that “data centers are the new railroads.” The railroads began as a private development wave and became a problem of political economy. They forced changes in public regulation, organizational form, and the distribution of costs and benefits that their builders had not anticipated. The data center is following a similar path. American electricity demand is being reshaped at a pace unseen since the postwar industrial boom, but with a crucial difference: Today’s growth arrives in enormous concentrated parcels, in specific counties, on venture-capital timescales. The grid, in contrast, expands on utility and regulatory timescales. These are not the same.

The political consequences are becoming visible at an unsettling pace. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered PJM Interconnection, a regional grid operator, in December 2025 to write clearer rules for serving AI-driven data centers. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation reported in 2025 that 13 of its 23 assessment areas face resource-adequacy challenges over the next decade. The Energy Information Administration announced in March 2026 that it was launching pilot studies on data-center energy use, covering electricity consumption, cooling systems, server metrics, and site characteristics. For two decades, data centers were background infrastructure. The regulatory apparatus of the federal government now wants new instruments to see them clearly.

The grid at a crossroads

Maine, in April 2026, approved the first statewide moratorium on large-scale data centers in the United States, halting approvals for facilities above 20 megawatts while a state council studies grid, air, water, and cost impacts. Only Democrat Gov. Janet Mills’ veto stopped the push (for now). In Mississippi, a lawsuit accused a major AI company of operating gas turbines near Memphis without the required permits, the speed-to-power logic having collided with environmental permitting. In March 2026, the Trump administration announced a pledge under which major hyperscalers agreed to build or buy new generation and cover the cost of power-delivery upgrades rather than passing those costs to households. Whatever the durability of that commitment, the political signal is clear: Once officials begin publicly assuring households that they will not be asked to subsidize AI infrastructure, the issue has moved from sectoral regulation to the politics of fairness.

The “cloud” always involved a rhetorical stance. It described a physical system as if geography, electricity, and equipment lead times were incidental to it. The transformer shortage, the interconnection queue, and the emergency turbines pierce through that description. The internet reappears as pipes, wires, substations, permits, emissions, and cost-allocation fights. It arrives in a specific county, draws on a specific grid, and asks specific communities to absorb consequences that were designed, by the grammar of cloud computing, to belong to no one.

Delay is the form this revelation takes. It forces governments to decide what may be built, at whose cost, and on whose timeline.

​Tech