NEW YORK (AP) — To billionaire Elon Musk and his cost-cutting team at the Department of Government Efficiency, Karen Ortiz may just be one of many faceless bureaucrats. But to some of her colleagues, she is giving a voice to those who feel they can’t speak out.

Ortiz is an administrative judge at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — the federal agency in charge of enforcing U.S. workplace anti-discrimination laws that has undergone tumultuous change since President Donald Trump took office. Like millions of other federal employees, Ortiz opened an ominous email on Jan. 28 titled “Fork in the Road” giving them the option to resign from their positions as part of the government’s cost-cutting measures directed by Trump and carried out by DOGE under Musk, an unelected official.

Her alarm grew when her supervisor directed administrative judges in her New York district office to pause all their current LGBTQ+ cases and send them to Washington for further review in order to comply with Trump’s executive order declaring that the government would recognize only two “immutable” sexes — male and female.

Ortiz decried management’s lack of action in response to the directive, which she said was antithetical to the EEOC’s mission, and called upon some 185 colleagues in an email to “resist” complying with “illegal mandates.” But that email was “mysteriously” deleted, she said.

The next day, after yet another frustrating “Fork in the Road” update, Ortiz decided to go big, emailing the EEOC’s acting chair Andrea Lucas directly and copying more than 1,000 colleagues with the subject line, “A Spoon is Better than a Fork.” In it, Ortiz questioned Lucas’s fitness to serve as acting chair, “much less hold a license to practice law.”

“I know I take a great personal risk in sending out this message. But, at the end of the day, my actions align with what the EEOC was charged with doing under the law,” Ortiz wrote. “I will not compromise my ethics and my duty to uphold the law. I will not cower to bullying and intimidation.”

Ortiz is just one person, but her email represents a larger pushback against the Trump administration’s sweeping changes to federal agencies amid an environment of confusion, anger and chaos. It is also Ortiz’s way of taking a stand against the leadership of a civil rights agency that last month moved to dismiss seven of its own cases representing transgender workers, marking a major departure from its prior interpretation of the law.

Right after sending her mass email, Ortiz said she received a few supportive responses from colleagues — and one calling her unprofessional. Within an hour, though, the message disappeared and she lost her ability to send any further emails.

But it still made it onto the internet. The email was recirculated on Bluesky and it received more than 10,000 “upvotes” on Reddit after someone posted it with the comment, “Wow I wish I had that courage.”

“AN AMERICAN HERO,” one Reddit user deemed Ortiz, a sentiment that was seconded by more than 2,000 upvoters. “Who is this freedom fighter bringing on the fire?” wrote another.

The EEOC did not feel the same way. The agency revoked her email privileges for about a week and issued her a written reprimand for “discourteous conduct.”

Contacted by The AP, a spokesperson for the EEOC said: “We will refrain from commenting on internal communications and personnel matters. However, we would note that the agency has a long-standing policy prohibiting unauthorized all-employee emails, and all employees were reminded of that policy recently.”

A month later, Ortiz has no regrets.

“It was not really planned out, it was just from the heart,” the 53-year-old told The Associated Press in an interview, adding that partisan politics have nothing to do with her objections and that the public deserves the EEOC’s protection, including transgender workers. “This is how I feel and I’m not pulling any punches. And I will stand by what I wrote every day of the week, all day on Sunday.”

Ortiz said she never intended for her email to go beyond the EEOC, describing it as a “love letter” to her colleagues. But, she added, “I hope that it lights a fire under people.”

Ortiz said she has received “a ton” of support privately in the month since sending her email, including a thank-you letter from a California retiree telling her to “keep the faith.” Open support among her EEOC colleagues beyond Reddit and Bluesky, however, has proven more elusive.

“I think people are just really scared,” she said.

William Resh, a University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy professor who studies how administrative structure and political environments affect civil servants, weighed in on why federal workers may choose to say nothing even if they feel their mission is being undermined.

“We can talk pie in the sky, mission orientation and all these other things. But at the end of the day, people have a paycheck to bring home, and food to put on a table and a rent to pay,” Resh said.

The more immediate danger, he said, is the threat to one’s livelihood, or inviting a manager’s ire.

“And so then that’s where you get this kind of muted response on behalf of federal employees, that you don’t see a lot of people speaking out within these positions because they don’t want to lose their job,” Resh said. “Who would?”

Richard LeClear, a U.S. Air Force veteran and EEOC staffer who is retiring early at 64 to avoid serving under the Trump administration, said Ortiz’s email was “spot on,” but added that other colleagues who agreed with her may fear speaking out themselves.

“Retaliation is a very real thing,” LeClear said.

Ortiz, who has been a federal employee for 14 years and at the EEOC for six, said she isn’t naive about the potential fallout. She has hired attorneys, and maintains that her actions are protected whistleblower activity. As of Friday, she still had a job but she is not a lifetime appointee and is aware that her health care, pension and source of income could all be at risk.

Ortiz is nonetheless steadfast: “If they fire me, I’ll find another avenue to do this kind of work, and I’ll be okay. They will have to physically march me out of the office.”

Many of Ortiz’s colleagues have children to support and protect, which puts them in a more difficult position than her to speak out, Ortiz acknowledged. She said her legal education and American citizenship also put her in a position to be able to make change.

Her parents, who came to the United States from Puerto Rico in the 1950s with limited English skills, ingrained in her the value of standing up for others. Their firsthand experience with the Civil Rights Movement, and her own experience growing up in mostly white spaces in Garden City on Long Island, primed Ortiz to defend herself and others.

“It’s in my DNA,” she said. “I will use every shred of privilege that I have to lean into this.”

Ortiz received her undergraduate degree at Columbia University, and her law degree at Fordham University. She knew she wanted to become a judge ever since her high school mock trial as a Supreme Court justice.

Civil rights has been a throughline in her career, and Ortiz said she was “super excited” when she landed her job at the EEOC.

“This is how I wanted to finish up my career,” she said. “We’ll see if that happens.”

________

The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Claire Savage, The Associated Press

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — Bernie Sanders is standing alone on the back of a pickup truck shouting into a bullhorn.

He’s facing several hundred ecstatic voters huddled outside a suburban Detroit high school — the group that did not fit inside the high school’s gym or two overflow rooms. The crowd screams in delight when he tells them that a combined total of 9,000 people had shown up for the rally.

“What all of this tells me, is not just in Michigan or in Vermont, the people of this country will not allow us to move toward oligarchy. They will not allow Trump to take us into authoritarianism,” Sanders yelled. “We’re prepared to fight. And we’re going to win.”

At 83 years old, Sanders is not running for president again. But the stooped and silver-haired democratic socialist has emerged as a leader of the resistance to Donald Trump’s second presidency. In tearing into Trump’s seizure of power and warning about the consequences of firing tens of thousands of government workers, Sanders is bucking the wishes of those who want Democrats to focus on the price of eggs or “roll over and play dead.”

For now, at least, Sanders stands alone as the only elected progressive willing to mount a national campaign to harness the fear and anger of the sprawling anti-Trump movement.

He drew a crowd of 4,000 in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Friday night. He faced another 2,600 or so the next morning a few hours away in Altoona, Wisconsin, a town of less than 10,000 residents. And his crowd of 9,000 in suburban Detroit exceeded his own team’s expectations. By design, each stop was in a swing U.S. House district represented by a Republican.

Sanders, who was just elected to his fourth Senate term from Vermont, conceded that this is not the role he expected to play at this stage of his career.

In fact, his team intentionally waited in the early weeks of the Trump presidency to launch what they are now calling his “stop oligarchy tour” to see if a high-profile Democrat would fill the leadership void. Instead, Sanders — who is not a Democrat himself despite allying with Senate Democrats and running twice for the party’s presidential nomination — has people wondering if he’s considering another White House bid.

“This is like presidential campaign rallies, isn’t it? But I’m not running for president, and this is not a campaign,” Sanders told The Associated Press. “You gotta do what you gotta do. The country’s in trouble and I want to play my role.”

The divided Democratic resistance

Since losing the White House, Democrats across Washington have struggled to coalesce behind a consistent message or messenger to stop Trump’s aggressive moves to slash the government workforce, weaken federal oversight and empower tech titan Elon Musk to execute his vision.

There has been no centralized movement to organize the anti-Trump resistance.

“You look around — who else is doing it? No one,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said of Sanders’ efforts. “My hope is that the dam will break in terms of Democrats going on the offense … We need to take the argument directly to the people.”

Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime Sanders ally, said she would join him on the road in the coming weeks. She’s also planning solo appearances in Republican-held congressional districts in Pennsylvania and New York — and perhaps others in places where Republicans have declined to hold in-person town halls where they might face protests.

“It’s not about whether Bernie should or shouldn’t be doing this. It’s about that we all should,” she said. “But he is unique in this country, and so long as we are blessed to have that capacity on our side, I think we should be thankful for it.”

Beyond Sanders’ tour, angry voters have so far relied on grassroots groups like Indivisible to organize a series of local protests. They have been effective in pressuring Trump’s allies in some cases. A number of House Republicans facing angry questions have criticized Musk or questioned the cuts being carried out at his allies’ behest.

Indivisible co-founder Ezra Levin, who has been critical of many Democratic leaders, praised Sanders for stepping up.

“I wish more Democrats were traveling the country, including to red states, to rally the the majority against Musk and Project 2025,” Levin said. “Sure as hell beats (House Democratic leader Hakeem) Jeffries traveling the country for his children’s book tour during a constitutional crisis.”

During last month’s congressional recess, Jeffries made two appearances to promote a children’s book about democracy. He has also traveled to support House Democrats. This past weekend, he was in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

The truth is that few, if any, Democratic leaders have the capacity to draw such crowds on short notice or organize the related logistics on a national scale. The party’s nascent class of 2028 presidential prospects, a group that includes California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, have limited national profiles and they have been reluctant to step too far into the national spotlight so far.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, among the more outspoken Trump critics in Congress, said that Democrats must be better organized.

“People are desperate to be plugged into action right now. People see the threat. They are anxious and angry and motivated and they want to be sent in a direction to help,” he said.

Murphy acknowledged that Sanders still has plenty of detractors within the Democratic Party who view him and his progressive policy ideas — replacing private and job-based health insurance with a government-funded “Medicare for All” plan, free public college, and the “Green New Deal” on climate policy — as too radical.

Indeed, it was just five years ago when Democrats coalesced around Joe Biden to effectively block Sanders from winning the party’s 2020 presidential nomination.

“There still are a lot of folks who view Bernie as a danger to the party,” Murphy said, “whereas I see his message as the core of what we need to build on.”

Sanders was a staunch supporter of Biden over the last four years but criticized the Democratic Party in the aftermath of Kamala Harris’ loss last fall, declaring that Trump’s victory was possible only because Democrats had “abandoned” the working class.

United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain, who introduced Sanders in Michigan, said more Democrats need to “follow his lead to focus on working-class people and working-class issues.”

“They’ve got to take a hard look in the mirror, in my opinion, and decide who the hell they want to represent,” Fain said of Democrats. “We’ve been clear as a union, if they aren’t looking out for working-class people, we’re not going to be there for them.”

The voters speak

The voters who packed venues across Wisconsin and Michigan over the weekend composed a diverse group, including some who did not support Sanders’ past presidential campaigns. Most said that Democratic leaders have not done enough to stop Trump.

“I’m here because I’m afraid for our country. The last six weeks have been horrible,” said Diana Schack, a 72-year-old retired lawyer who attended her first Sanders rally on Saturday. “I am becoming a more avid Bernie fan, especially in light of the work he’s doing traveling around the country. These are not normal times.”

In Kenosha the night before, Amber Schulz, a 50-year-old medical worker, demanded that her party “step up and do something.”

“Bernie is the only politician I trust,” she said.

Tony Gonzales, 56, an independent from Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin, said he’s worried that Trump will “dismantle historic American standards” and try to stay in office beyond this term. The Constitution bars presidents from serving more than two terms, even as Trump has suggested he deserves a third.

“It’s a dangerous time right now,” Gonzales said. “What Bernie has to say — and the turnout — is important. His voice is still being heard.”

Sanders delivered the same fiery populist message over the weekend that he has for decades, seizing on the nation’s economic inequality to call for free health care, free public higher education and stronger social safety net programs. Sanders was especially focused on the team of billionaires Trump has appointed to serve as leaders in his administration, including Musk and a half dozen others.

“They want to dismantle the federal government and cut programs that working people desperately need,” Sanders warned.

“Yes, the oligarchs are enormously powerful. They have endless amounts of money. They control our economy. They own much of the media, and they have enormous influence over our political system,” he continued. “But from the bottom of my heart, I believe that if we stand together, we can beat them.”

It’s unclear how long that Sanders, an octogenarian who was hospitalized for a heart condition during his 2020 campaign, will continue in this role. A spokesperson said Sanders hasn’t had any health issues since the 2019 episode.

He is not expected to slow down anytime soon. Sanders is leaning on his 2020 presidential campaign manager, Faiz Shakir, to organize his stops, backed by a handful of former presidential campaign staffers working on a contract basis.

Shakir, who lost his bid to become the new chair of the Democratic National Committee, acknowledged strategic differences within the party about how best to combat Trump.

Last month, veteran political strategist James Carville penned an opinion piece calling for Democrats to “roll over and play dead,” betting that Trump and his party would ultimately suffer a political backlash from voters for going too far.

“One theory is you can play dead; you can strategically retreat,” Shakir said. “Or, you play alive, and you go out to people and you talk to them with conviction and integrity.”

Steve Peoples, The Associated Press

Fulbright scholar Aubrey Lay was supposed to get paid for three months of work by the U.S. government through his teaching assistantship at a school for Ukrainian refugees in Estonia. Instead, he only got about one week’s pay and no word on when he might see the rest of his grant.

Lay is among scholars around the world who depend on State Department funding to participate in long-established programs like Fulbright and say their payments were abruptly cut off after being notified that officials were reviewing their activities. The move appears to be in line with the White House’s initiative to sharply slash government spending, a shakeup that has affected scores of federal agencies.

The government faces even more dramatic changes in the coming weeks and months. President Donald Trump has directed agencies to prepare plans for widespread layoffs, known as reductions in force, that likely will require more limited operations at agencies providing critical services.

The funding freeze has sparked panic among thousands of scholars who area stranded outside their home countries without clarity on the future of their programs or the money needed to support themselves.

In February, the U.S. State Department temporarily paused spending in an effort to review its programs and activities, according to NAFSA, an association of international educators. That included programs such as Fulbright, Gilman and Critical Language international scholarships.

In the weeks since officials enacted the pause, some scholars and advocacy groups have said the flow of funds dried up for people’s grants, yet there is no communication from U.S. officials on whether that will change.

The State Department did not immediately respond to an inquiry by The Associated Press about the funding freeze.

Lay found the lack of communication from U.S. officials troublesome. He was also left wondering about the future of the program that his grandmother also participated in decades ago. After it was established in 1946, the program has become a flagship for the U.S. government’s mission toward cross-cultural engagement. Worst for him is what it will mean for his students, particularly if he is forced to leave early.

“I don’t want to be one more thing that is changing and uncertain in their lives,” Lay said. “I can’t bear that thought.”

Lay said he will be OK for another month, but he worries about participants with no extra money saved.

“The clarity that I’ve gotten is that nobody knows what’s going on?” he said. “The clarity that I’ve gotten is that every time I’ve asked anybody, they don’t know what’s happening, and they are just as confused as I am, as we all are.”

Thousands of scholars are in similar positions to Lay, according to the Fulbright Association, which is a nonprofit group comprising alumni. In a newsletter email, the association said the halt in funding impact “over 12,500 American students, youth, and professionals currently abroad or scheduled to participate in State Department programs in the next six months.”

Aside from U.S. citizens, the Fulbright Association also said the pause has cut funding for U.S. programs hosting more than 7,400 people.

Halyna Morozova, a Fulbright scholar from Kyiv teaching Ukrainian to students at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, said she was at the airport Feb. 28 after what felt like a never-ending day. Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy earlier that day in an extraordinary Oval Office meeting. The future of her country along with her family back home weighed heavily on her mind.

Then she got an email from the Institute of International Education, commonly referred to as IIE, which administers the Fulbright scholarship.

“IIE is currently authorized to send you a partial stipend equivalent to one week of your anticipated upcoming stipend payment,” the email said. “We will update you on future payments as soon as possible.”

Morozova panicked. She usually gets $750 each month. Now, she has to stretch $187.50 to make ends meet.

“It was very scary, I would say, not just because I am lost in another country,” she said. “We don’t know if we will ever get another stipend here, and if they have enough money to buy our tickets home. So there are a lot of things that are not clear and not certain.”

Olga Bezhanova, a professor who manages Morozova and two other scholars, said the exchange program has been in place for nearly two decades at her university, becoming a bedrock of their language education. Now, she is trying to see if her university will supplement the funds being withheld by the federal government. If that doesn’t work out, she said she was unsure of what else could be done.

“I have to look into the faces of these wonderful people, and they’re asking me: ‘Is this America? What is this?’” she said. “This is a mess.”

___

Olivia Diaz is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Olivia Diaz And Heather Hollingsworth, The Associated Press

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Air Force fighter jets intercepted a civilian aircraft flying in the temporarily restricted airspace near Donald Trump’s Florida home Sunday, bringing the number of violations to more than 20 since the president took office on Jan. 20.

North American Aerospace Defense Command said in a statement that Sunday’s incident, which took place as Trump finished a round of golf at his West Palm Beach golf course, saw F-16s deploy flares to get the attention of the civilian pilot. Jets also conducted an intercept on Saturday morning shortly after Trump arrived at the course from his private Mar-a-Lago club and residence.

The airspace intrusions in the heavily congested south Florida airspace have prompted fighter jet intercepts but did not alter Trump’s schedule or impact his security, officials said. NORAD says the flares may have been visible from the ground but that they burn out quickly and don’t pose danger.

Federal officials maintain a permanent flight restriction over Trump’s club that expands to a radius of 30 nautical miles when the president is in residence.

Violations, and intercepts, are relatively routine, but NORAD is raising alarm over the frequency of the intrusions since Trump’s inauguration, saying it has responded to more than 20 incidents and blames civilian pilots for not following regulations requiring them to check for airspace restrictions before taking off.

“Adherence to TFR procedures is essential to ensure flight safety, national security, and the security of the President,” Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of NORAD and US Northern Command said in a statement. “The procedures are not optional, and the excessive number of recent TFR violations indicates many civil aviators are not reading Notice to Airmen, or NOTAMS, before each flight as required by the FAA, and has resulted in multiple responses by NORAD fighter aircraft to guide offending aircraft out of the TFR.”

Zeke Miller, The Associated Press

DENVER (AP) — For decades, conservatives in Congress have talked about the need to cut government deeply, but they have always pulled back from mandating specific reductions, fearful of voter backlash.

Now, President Donald Trump’s administration is trying to make major cuts in government through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, run by billionaire Elon Musk — an initiative led by an unelected businessman who’s unlikely to ever run for office and was appointed by a termed-out president who no longer needs to face voters again.

The dynamic of cutting government while also cutting out those who answer to voters has alarmed even some fiscal conservatives who have long pushed for Congress to reduce spending through the means laid out in the Constitution: a system of checks and balances that includes lawmakers elected across the country working with the president.

“Some members of the Trump administration got frustrated that Congress won’t cut spending and decided to go around them,” said Jessica Reidl of the conservative think tank The Manhattan Institute. Now, she said, “no one who has to face voters again is determining spending levels.”

That may be changing.

On Thursday, facing mounting court challenges to the legality of Musk ordering layoffs, Trump told his Cabinet that Musk could only make recommendations about government reductions. And there were more signs that Congress, after sitting on the sidelines for nearly the first two months of Trump’s administration, is slowly getting back into the game.

On Wednesday, Republican senators told Musk that he needed to ask Congress to approve specific cuts, which they can do on an up-or-down, filibuster-free vote through a process known as recission.

Senators said Musk had never heard of the process before. That was a striking admission given that it’s the only way for the executive branch to legally refuse to spend money that Congress has given it.

“To make it real, to make it go beyond the moment of the day, it needs to come back in the form of a rescission package,” said Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, a longtime advocate of spending reductions who said he introduced the idea of recission to Musk during the lunch meeting of the GOP caucus.

Of course, letting Congress have the final word may be constitutional, but it would open up the process to individual representatives or senators balking at cuts because of home-state interests or other concerns, as some have already. But Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and an economist in George W. Bush’s administration, said that “messy” process is a superior one.

“There’s always this instinct in people to insulate decisions from politics,” Holtz-Eakin said. “It’s a mistake in a democracy. It’s really messy. You’re not going to get the cleanliness of a corporate reorganization.”

Riedl noted she has advocated for deep cuts for decades, but there’s a reason Congress has balked.

“If Congress won’t pass certain spending cuts, it’s because the American people don’t want it enough,” she said. “If I want spending levels to be cut, it’s my job to persuade the people of America to agree with me.”

Trump and his supporters argue they did just that in the last presidential election when he promised to shake up Washington: “The people elected me to do the job and I’m doing it,” Trump said during his address to Congress last week.

A corporate-style approach to government has long been the goal of conservatives, especially one segment that has recently called for a more CEO-style leader who is less tied down by democratic commitments to voters. Musk has embodied that, bringing the same disruptive, cost-cutting zeal he brought to his private companies. Some of his DOGE moves mirrored steps he took to slash the social media site Twitter, including the email offering buyouts, both times called “Fork in the Road.”

Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, said the effort seems more destructive than just an attempt to shrink government in ways conservatives have long advocated.

“It is usurping the role of Congress on spending and program design, using cuts as a backdoor way to impound and close agencies created by Congress,” Moynihan said. “It is implementing an unprecedented scale of disruption.”

Grover Norquist, an anti-tax activist whose pledge to make government small enough to “drown it in a bathtub” has made him an icon for small-government conservatives, cheered the DOGE project. He said Congress has to authorize any real reductions, but hoped that DOGE’s cuts show the legislative branch that voters will not panic when government is shrunk.

“If we do something for three years, they’ll make it the law,” Norquist said of Congress. “They’ll see it’s safe, they’ll see it’s successful. They’ll come in and put their name on it.”

Norquist acknowledged that Congress has repeatedly balked at the level of cuts that he would like to see, even under unified Republican control. He asserted that “95%” of Republicans support such reductions but “that wasn’t enough to get it across the finish line” in an era where the majority party usually only has a razor-thin margin of control in either chamber.

The past nearly half-century of politics has been defined by conservatives pledging to cut government spending, only to see it continue to grow. Republican Ronald Reagan swept into the presidency in 1980 pledging to cut government, but when he left eight years later its size had increased. The trend continued through Trump’s first term and during Democrat Joe Biden’s presidency.

Now, however, Trump will not face voters again, despite occasional quips about seeking a constitutionally prohibited third term. He has been open about his grudge against the federal bureaucracy, which he blames for many of his troubles during his initial four years in office.

“I don’t think previous presidents have had the same animus towards the federal government this one has,” Holtz-Eakin said.

He noted that Trump has launched a second cost-cutting initiative through traditional channels — his own Office of Management and Budget, which asked agencies to prepare for mass layoffs. That, Holtz-Eakin said, makes those coming reductions likelier to stick than DOGE cuts.

Holtz-Eakin said there are initial signs of voter discontent over the pace, depth and chaos of the cuts. “The usual way you visit that on a president is you wipe out his party in the midterms,” Holtz-Eakin said. “You never evade the voters.”

Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Facing projections of spiking energy demand, U.S. states are pressing for ways to build new power plants faster as policymakers increasingly worry about protecting their residents and economies from rising electric bills, power outages and other consequences of falling behind Big Tech in a race for electricity.

Some states are dangling financial incentives. Others are undoing decades of regulatory structures in what they frame as a race to serve the basic needs of residents, avoid a catastrophe and keep their economies on track in a fast-electrifying society.

“I don’t think we’ve seen anything quite like this,” said Todd Snitchler, president and CEO of the Electric Power Supply Association, which represents independent power plant owners.

The spike in demand for electricity is being driven, in large part, by the artificial intelligence race as tech companies are snapping up real estate and seeking power to feed their energy-hungry data centers. Federal incentives to rebuild the manufacturing sector also are helping drive demand.

In some cases, Big Tech is arranging its own power projects.

But energy companies also are searching for ways to capitalize on opportunities afforded by the first big increase in electricity consumption in a couple of decades, and that is pitting state political leaders against each other for the new jobs and investment that come with new power plants.

Governors want to fast-track power plants

Moves by states come as a fossil fuel – friendly President Donald Trump and Republican-controlled Congress take power in Washington, D.C., slashing regulations around oil and gas, boostingdrilling opportunities and encouraging the construction of pipelines and refineries that can export liquefied natural gas.

States are seeking action, with the National Governors Association asking Congress to make it easier and faster to build power plants and criticizing the U.S. as among the slowest developed nations in approving energy projects.

But there may be less that the federal government can do right away about a looming power shortage, since greenlighting power plants to feed the electric grid is largely the province of state regulators and regional grid operators.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wants to establish an agency to fast-track the construction of big power plants and dangle hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks for projects providing electricity to the grid.

The state, and the country, needs more power plants to win the artificial intelligence race and provide reliable and affordable power to residents, said Shapiro, who suggested Pennsylvania may leave the regional grid operated by PJM Interconnection in favor of “going it alone.”

“It has proven over the last number of years too darn hard to get enough new generation projects off the ground because of how slow PJM‘s queue is,” Shapiro told a news conference on Feb. 27.

Indiana, Michigan and Louisiana are exploring ideas to attract nuclear power while Maryland lawmakers are floating ideas about commissioning the construction of a new power plant there.

In Ohio, a lawmaker wants to restrict the influence of electric utilities in hopes of giving independent power producers more incentive to build power plants to feed the state’s fast-growing tech sector.

The bill, which awaits a vote, won the support of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel, the state’s residential ratepayer watchdog, and business groups whose members care about electric prices. However, it split the energy sector between companies operating in competitive markets and those operating under state utility monopolies.

States competing against each other

In Missouri, utilities including Ameren and Evergy, as well as the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, labor unions and the state’s top utility regulator are backing legislation to repeal a nearly half-century old law preventing utilities from charging customers to build a power plant until it is operational.

The law was approved in a 1976 voter referendum when states were looking to hedge against utilities saddling ratepayers with financing upfront, potentially bloated, inefficient or, worse, aborted power projects.

Consumer and environmental groups protested the bill, saying it would result in new natural gas plants that are likelier to be more costly to ratepayers.

Last year, similar legislation passed almost unanimously in Kansas, along with companion legislation extending tax breaks to new power plants.

Within months, Evergy announced alongside the state’s leaders that it would build two 705-megawatt natural gas plants and said the legislation will “help Kansas compete with other states for investment and ultimately save customers money.”

John Coffman, the utility consumer counsel for the Consumers Council of Missouri, said utilities are playing the two states, Missouri and Kansas, against each other and were planning to build the power plants anyway.

But, he said, “They’re just looking for opportunities to squeeze more money out of the process.”

Energy companies see an opportunity

Snitchler said action is being spurred by states realizing that longstanding power reserves are dwindling, especially as coal-fired and nuclear power plants retire, and now all sorts of power companies are leaping at the chance to make money.

A pitfall he sees in the race to build plants is an undoing of protections that some states once adopted to shield ratepayers and put the risk of building expensive power projects onto corporate shareholders.

“The problem, of course, is it shifts the risk back on the people who perhaps should not be bearing it,” Snitchler said.

A Pennsylvania state lawmaker, Sen. Gene Yaw, wants to set up a massive power plant-financing fund like Texas, which established a $10 billion low-interest loan program after the state was wracked by a deadly winter blackout in 2021.

Yaw, a Republican, has no misgivings about Pennsylvania helping finance power plants. Even by conservative estimates, the state will need dozens more power plants to meet projections of rising demand, he said.

“And what do we have underway or planned right now? Nothing,” Yaw said. “And we haven’t built anything since 2019. So we’ve got to do something to encourage people to come here and build in Pennsylvania just to maintain the status quo.”

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Marc Levy, The Associated Press