Ahsen Mujeeb Malik

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Bringing Americans on the left, right, and center together with the firm belief that we have more in common than our disagreements, and that we should agree to disagree civilly with mutual respect.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

I am open to bringing both sides together to facilitate a mutually agreeable compromise to eliminate the possibility of civil strife in the future

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Whatever your experience level, we would love to hear from you if you are interested in joining the campaign. Please fill out this form.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

I fully support all local legislative efforts to completely ban new data center construction

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Residents in localities across the country, including here in Virginia, are responding primarily in two ways: passing local moratoriums or zoning changes banning new data center construction where state law permits it, and pushing to remove existing tax incentives and exemptions, an effort that has succeeded at the state level in Ohio, Illinois, Arizona, and Maine. No locality has yet gone further to impose special, elevated taxes specifically designed to make new data center construction cost-prohibitive, though I believe this is a tool worth putting on the table.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Ultimately, if this fight is left entirely to individual localities, data center growth will end up concentrated in the communities with the least political power to resist it, typically lower-income communities with fewer resources to organize, hire land-use attorneys, and sustain a multi-year fight against a well-funded developer. This pattern has a long history in American land use: landfills, incinerators, and other locally unwanted infrastructure have consistently ended up disproportionately in under-resourced communities. In the U.S., this has often meant communities of color, though the underlying driver is political and economic capacity to resist, not race itself. Wealthier, better-organized communities will keep data centers out. Poorer ones, with fewer resources to fight back, will end up bearing the noise, the water stress, the air pollution, and the strain on the local grid.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

The AI Data Center Moratorium Act (Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Carson) would freeze all new AI data center construction until Congress separately enacts safeguards on rates, environmental harm, community approval, subsidies, and labor standards. Two of its conditions, barring subsidies and requiring community approval, are sound and worth keeping. But a blanket, indefinitely timed freeze with no defined criteria for when or how it ends doesn’t solve the underlying problem, it postpones it, while doing nothing to prevent the same siting and equity problems from recurring the moment the freeze lifts.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Survey by Global Strategy Group and the Chesapeake Climate Action Network Action Fund, January 2026, as reported by Consumer Reports. ↩

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Here is a fact that should inform how we think about this problem: even China, the country investing more aggressively in solar, wind, and battery storage than any other nation on earth, still generates more than half of its electricity from fossil fuels today. China’s motives aren’t purely environmental, either. It imports roughly three-quarters of the oil it consumes, and that dependence on foreign energy, much of it shipped through vulnerable chokepoints like the Strait of Malacca, is a national security liability Beijing is actively trying to engineer its way out of. Even with that economic and strategic incentive stacked on top of climate concerns, clean energy hasn’t yet been built out at the scale a modern industrial economy requires, anywhere in the world. That doesn’t let the United States off the hook. We built our economy first and emitted more, cumulatively and per person, than any country on earth to get here, and that history means we have a responsibility to lead on bringing the next generation of clean technology to scale, not an excuse to wait for someone else to solve it first.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

None of this is simple, and none of the tradeoffs are easy. Moving too aggressively away from fossil fuels before reliable alternatives exist at scale risks energy price spikes, grid instability, and real economic pain for working families. Moving too slowly risks the consequences of unchecked climate change continuing to compound. Getting that balance right requires genuinely careful, technical, good-faith judgment, not a bill written by one party to satisfy its own base, then reversed by the other party as soon as power changes hands. A bipartisan bill, built by members of both parties who have to actually defend it to their own constituents, is far more likely to land on tradeoffs that can survive a change in political power, and far more likely to get the engineering judgment right instead of delivering an ideological talking point.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Here’s something most voters don’t know: the federal approval process for any major energy project, a new transmission line, a solar farm, a pipeline, a nuclear plant, a geothermal well, is governed by a 1970 law called the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Today, it routinely takes federal agencies four and a half years on average just to complete the environmental review for a major energy project, and legal challenges can add years more on top of that. This slows down everything: clean energy projects and fossil fuel projects alike.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Some voters might be wondering where I stand on the various “Green New Deal” bills that have been proposed. For bills with evidence-based, quantifiable emissions savings, like the Green New Deal for Public Housing, I support the goal but not necessarily the means. Rather than adding the cost of retrofitting public housing to the national debt, I’d support bringing in private capital to help fund it, on the condition that public housing authorities retain a majority ownership stake, consistent with existing federal safeguards for similar programs, along with binding tenant protections against rent increases and displacement, and full public disclosure of the terms of any deal. Other bills, like the Green New Deal for Cities, don’t reasonably guarantee emissions savings, since they depend on giving block grants to localities and success depends entirely on downstream decisions. I don’t support this approach, as I believe it’s likely to be an inefficient way to guarantee real emissions reductions. Other bills, like the Green New Deal for Public Schools direct the majority of their funding toward things that have nothing to do with fighting climate change or reducing emissions. That’s not to say these other programs aren’t worth funding. If they are, they need to be debated as their own separate bill, on their own merits.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

I support a bipartisan climate bill that aggressively expands clean and renewable energy, invests in the mineral supply chains and domestic manufacturing capacity, includes real permitting reform, and addresses issues beyond energy sources

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Invests in the mineral supply chains and domestic manufacturing capacity that any serious clean energy transition will require. This is a real tradeoff worth being honest about: continuing to rely on oil and gas means continuing to accept higher domestic carbon emissions, while shifting toward clean technology means relying on battery minerals whose supply chains are today largely controlled by other countries, China in particular. I don’t think either side of that tradeoff should be accepted blindly, which is exactly why building up our own domestic mineral supply chains and processing capacity matters: it’s how we lower emissions without simply trading one form of dependence for another.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Let’s be honest, the passionate activists on both sides believe the other side to be supporting the “moral equivalent of slavery.” Most Americans in the middle don’t view it this way and would like a broad compromise that accommodates both sides.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

I support the necessary federal legislation that will equitably manage the negative externalities of any new data center construction

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

The GRID Act (Hawley, Blumenthal) would require new data centers over 20 megawatts to source 100% of their power off the public grid, with a 10-year window for existing facilities to comply, backed by steep daily penalties. This bipartisan effort correctly identifies the ratepayer cost-shifting problem as one of the most politically salient harms, but as written it has real feasibility problems: industry estimates put full off-grid compliance at $500 million to $2 billion in added cost per facility, the 180-day compliance window for new facilities isn’t realistic given how long it takes to build independent generation, and exempting off-grid facilities entirely from federal reliability oversight creates a genuine safety gap. Last summer, 60 data centers near Loudoun County simultaneously dropped off the grid due to a standard safety mechanism, forcing grid operator PJM to scale back power plants to avoid a cascading outage. An off-grid mandate that removes a facility from reliability coordination altogether can create new grid instability risks, not just remove old ones.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

WJLA/7News, “Data center noise, fumes create flood of complaints in Loudoun County,” 2026. ↩

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

For power generation, solar, wind, batteries, and nuclear are all proven technologies. However, what’s lagging for renewables is deployment pace, particularly long-duration battery storage: PJM, our own regional grid operator, has barely begun to build storage capacity compared to grids like Texas and California, and storage is one of the most important levers, alongside transmission buildout, for turning intermittent generation into dependable capacity. What’s lagging for nuclear in the U.S. specifically is a construction and permitting pipeline that can deliver new plants on time and on budget, something Georgia’s Vogtle project illustrated at real cost, running roughly double its original budget over about 15 years. Industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, aviation, and shipping present a different and harder challenge. Together they account for a fifth to a third of global emissions, depending on how broadly hard-to-abate sectors are defined. Their emissions come not just from the fuel used to power them, but from the chemical processes and material inputs themselves. While pilot-scale projects are advancing, genuinely low-carbon alternatives at scale remain a work in progress. A serious energy plan must be honest about that difference: build out mature clean power as fast as we can and be upfront that the hardest parts of industrial decarbonization don’t yet have a proven, at-scale answer.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

The good news is that permitting reform is one of the few issues in Washington right now where genuine bipartisan work is already happening, and it deserves more attention than it’s getting. The House passed the SPEED Act in December 2025, and Senate negotiators have spent the summer working on a bipartisan companion package, though they missed their goal of finishing before the August recess and now hope to reach a deal in September. The SPEED Act itself hasn’t been signed into law, and as written, it’s built to be strictly technology-neutral: treating a pipeline and a solar farm the same. I don’t think that’s the right goal, and I’m not shy about saying reform should deliberately favor cleaner energy sources rather than pretend every technology is starting from the same place. Fossil fuel infrastructure has decades of built-out pipelines, existing grid connections, and established permitting relationships behind it. Clean energy projects are the newer entrants, and they disproportionately depend on new transmission that doesn’t exist yet. Treating an incumbent with a decades-long head start the same as a newer competitor still building its first connections isn’t neutral in practice, it just locks in the advantage the incumbent already has.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Climate policy tends to get presented as a binary choice. Either you believe in aggressive government action to eliminate fossil fuels as fast as possible, or you’re a climate skeptic standing in the way of progress. That binary doesn’t reflect the views of most Americans.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Is written and negotiated by members of both parties, so that the tradeoffs it makes reflect a durable consensus rather than a temporary majority and so the resulting policy survives long enough for businesses and families to plan around it.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

If you are pro-choice, I understand that compromise is difficult, especially given how the legal landscape has shifted since Dobbs. But I believe the pro-choice side can still secure a strong, durable outcome here. If you are pro-life, I respect your belief that human life, in the morally significant sense that sets it apart from all other forms of life, begins at conception. But that’s a theological claim, not a scientific one. Science can confirm biological facts, but it can’t answer moral questions. Because it’s a matter of faith, I believe abortion in early pregnancy is fundamentally a religious liberty issue. Why should a Jewish woman, Muslim woman, Hindu woman, or liberal Christian woman be forced into the theological opinion of conservative Christians? How is that fair?

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Data Centers are a vital necessity — data centers are essential infrastructure for our information-based economy. Were there to be a complete national moratorium on any new data center being built anywhere in the country, we would likely lose the AI race to China. If you were to tell Americans exactly what it would cost them to have no new data centers built in this country, most would not want to pay that price. They want the benefits data centers bring, from cloud storage to AI tools people now use daily, but they don’t want to live next to one. It’s a real, understandable NIMBY dynamic, not a contradiction to be dismissed.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

The Local Control Protection Act (Bresnahan) would bar developers from suing a municipality or county in federal court over a denied data center application, so long as the denial rests on documented findings about public health, infrastructure, water, or community character, and would bar federal agencies from approving permits for a developer actively litigating against a locality that said no. It also requires community benefit agreements as a condition of federal tax incentives for projects that are approved.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

WUSA9, “As data center noise concerns grow, Loudoun Co. officials discuss possible mitigation efforts,” April 2026. ↩

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

To be clear about what I’m proposing and what I’m not: I’m not proposing to rewrite NEPA’s substantive standards along partisan lines. I’m proposing a dedicated federal fast lane, sitting alongside the existing NEPA process, that specifically targets the biggest bottleneck holding back new clean energy: transmission. For clean energy, one of the biggest bottlenecks is often what happens after a project is already approved: slow-moving state siting processes, transmission constraints, and utility interconnection queues that can leave a fully built solar or wind project sitting idle for years, unable to connect to the grid. That’s exactly why Congress should strengthen and expand the federal backstop transmission siting authority that already exists on paper but has gone largely unused since 2011 due to legal challenges: it’s the tool best positioned to get interstate transmission built when state and utility-level processes stall. Fossil fuel projects would continue through the same review process and timelines in place today, with no rollback of environmental standards and no new fast lane either. The point of permitting reform should be to help build the energy system we need for the future, not to hand fossil fuel infrastructure an equal seat at the front of the line it’s already in.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Includes real permitting reform, building on the bipartisan momentum already underway in Congress, by funding federal agencies to clear their review backlogs and creating a dedicated federal backstop and fast lane for the transmission lines and clean energy projects stuck for years in state-level siting fights and utility interconnection queues, so approved projects can’t be cancelled by political whiplash after developers have already invested.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

A guaranteed right for a woman to have an instant abortion on demand (no waiting periods, no bureaucracy, etc.) within the first 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

Saleem Chapman, Climate Cabinet, “Taming Data Center Turmoil” policy series; interview on the Volts podcast with David Roberts, “What should state policymakers do about data centers?”, August 2026. ↩

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

No woman should be criminalized for any harm that happens to her fetus during a pregnancy.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

A guaranteed right for a woman to have an instant abortion on demand (no waiting periods, no bureaucracy, etc.) within the first 9 weeks of pregnancy.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

An exclusively States Rights issue in weeks 9-19. After week 9, states would be free to ban abortion completely without any exceptions or permit abortion completely without any restrictions.

The text below is the exact source material used for this statement.

The pro-life side might counter with leaving the issue of abortion completely to the states. Right now they don’t believe that rather they believe in “having your cake and eating it too.” For example, those in the pro-life movement that are pushing for a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks also support laws of state legislatures completely banning abortion. If they are actually serious about the compromise of leaving the issue completely to the states, (i.e. there would be a federal law that would explicitly state that the issue of abortion is exclusively left to the states) that would be a major concession for many on the pro-choice side, but it might be worth considering. However, there is currently no broad support among the pro-life movement for such a bill.