Section 230 turned 30 and Congress is debating its sunset, AI data centers are straining the power grid faster than it can be upgraded, and there's still no federal data privacy law after three failed Congresses — how much should Washington regulate the digital infrastructure everything else now runs on?
Each issue breaks into the specific questions Congress actually fights over. Read each position, then head to the interactive version of this issue to mark which reflects your view and build a message to your representatives.
Meta and other platforms faced significant jury verdicts in 2026 tied to algorithmic content decisions, intensifying pressure on Congress to narrow Section 230's liability shield, and bipartisan sunset legislation — including a bill that would end Section 230 protection entirely after December 31, 2026 absent replacement legislation — reflects genuine, cross-party frustration that the 30-year-old law now shields algorithmic curation decisions its authors never anticipated.
The bipartisan breadth of support for reform — co-sponsors spanning from Josh Hawley to Amy Klobuchar to Lindsey Graham — masks real disagreement about what should replace Section 230's current protections: conservatives largely want platforms held accountable for what they call biased content moderation and viewpoint suppression, while many Democrats want accountability for algorithmic amplification of harmful content, meaning 'reform Section 230' means substantively different things depending on who's saying it.
Big technology companies spent tens of millions of dollars lobbying against Section 230 changes in early 2026 alone, and critics of reform — including smaller platform coalitions like Internet Works — warn that removing the liability shield would primarily benefit the largest, best-resourced platforms that can afford extensive legal compliance and content-moderation staff, while crushing smaller competitors and startups the original 1996 law was designed to protect.
NTIA's 2025 restructuring of the $42.45 billion BEAD program toward a technology-neutral 'Benefit of the Bargain' bidding process eliminated dedicated funding for the digital-literacy and workforce-training programs that determine whether newly connected rural households actually adopt and benefit from broadband service, prioritizing the lowest sticker price per connection over the full picture of what makes a broadband rollout succeed long-term.
The restructuring genuinely accelerated a program that had been stalled for years — more than 50 of 56 eligible entities had Final Proposal approval by mid-2026 — but whether that speed came at an acceptable cost in technology quality and program scope remains contested, since 'technology-neutral' in practice means substituting fixed-wireless or satellite for fiber in some areas originally slated for fiber-optic connections.
Requiring costly fiber buildouts in every location, as the original BEAD rules effectively did, was driving per-location costs so high that many rural communities faced years of additional delay, and organizations representing fixed-wireless providers argue the technology-neutral approach lets rural areas get connected faster and at lower public cost — with 'Benefit of the Bargain' simply meaning taxpayers aren't overpaying for a specific technology when a cheaper one delivers comparable service.
U.S. data centers are projected to consume 9-17% of national electricity generation by 2030 — more than double current levels — and FERC's June 2026 order directing regional grid operators to speed data-center interconnection prioritizes tech-industry demand at a moment when consumer advocates warn the resulting transmission upgrades, estimated at $720 billion nationally, risk being passed through to ordinary ratepayers' electric bills rather than absorbed by the companies building the AI infrastructure.
FERC's order explicitly states it acts to prevent cost-shifting onto other transmission customers while leaving retail rate protection to the states — a real division of authority that means whether AI's power costs land on ordinary electricity customers depends heavily on decisions state utility regulators haven't all made yet, not on the federal order itself, which only addresses how quickly data centers can physically connect to the grid.
PJM's December 2025 capacity auction failed for the first time in its history to procure enough power to meet reliability targets, a genuine warning sign that the grid needs faster generation and transmission investment regardless of AI's specific role, and streamlining interconnection — rather than blocking or slow-walking data-center growth — is the more direct fix for a supply problem that predates the current AI buildout and will outlast any one company's data-center plans.
The FCC's general spectrum auction authority lapsed in 2023 and still hasn't been fully restored — Congress only directed a narrow, one-time AWS-3 auction that closed in June 2026, raising over $3.5 billion — meaning the broader spectrum pipeline mobile carriers and rural wireless providers depend on for future 5G and rural coverage expansion remains stalled on case-by-case congressional mandates rather than the FCC's normal, standing authority.
The AWS-3 auction's strong results — bidding well above expectations across 72 rounds with 17 qualified bidders — demonstrate real market demand for available spectrum even under the narrower, congressionally-directed process, but industry groups note that demand doesn't resolve the underlying authority gap: without permanent reauthorization, every future spectrum release requires its own dedicated act of Congress rather than routine FCC action.
Directing the FCC to auction the specific, previously-unassigned AWS-3 spectrum through targeted legislation — rather than broad, permanent auction authority — let Congress attach conditions, including using up to $3.3 billion of the proceeds to fund the FCC's 'rip and replace' program removing Chinese telecom equipment from U.S. networks, a national-security-linked use of spectrum revenue that broader, unconditional auction authority might not have delivered as cleanly.
Nearly 20 states now have their own comprehensive data-privacy laws, several with private rights of action letting individuals sue companies directly, and every federal preemption bill introduced in 2026 — including the Consumer Data Privacy and Security Act — would override those state laws in favor of a single federal standard enforced only by the FTC and state attorneys general, eliminating the private lawsuit option that gives California and a handful of other states' laws their strongest enforcement teeth.
The core disagreement in every federal privacy bill introduced since 2024, including 2026's competing proposals, has consistently been the same two questions — should federal law preempt stronger state laws like California's, and should individuals be able to sue directly — and no version has resolved both in a way that keeps both major parties' negotiators on board, which is why comprehensive federal privacy legislation has now failed in three consecutive Congresses despite genuine bipartisan interest in the goal.
A single national privacy standard would replace a genuinely confusing 20-state patchwork of different consumer rights, opt-out mechanisms, and compliance deadlines that smaller businesses in particular struggle to navigate, and FTC-and-state-AG enforcement — the model in 2026's Consumer Data Privacy and Security Act — provides real regulatory teeth without the litigation costs and inconsistent outcomes that come from allowing private lawsuits under 50 different potential legal standards.