The Emergency Powers Built for Iran Are Now Aimed at the County Line

"Unusual and extraordinary threat" is a phrase with a home. It comes from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, the 1977 statute presidents use to sanction foreign adversaries, freeze their assets, blockade their oil. It was written for Iran, for Russia, for the other side of the world. In late August it showed up in an order about the American power grid. The executive order banning foreign-made grid equipment, batteries and switchgear and transformers, rests on that exact language, declaring the nation's dependence on reliable electricity an emergency of the kind the statute reserves for foreign threats. ^[1]

The rapid growth of advanced manufacturing, data centers, artificial intelligence, and defense production has increased the Nation’s dependence on abundant, reliable electricity and magnified the consequences of a successful attack or supply disruption on the bulk-power system. — Donald Trump

The man who connects the two worlds is Doug Burgum. At Davos in January, the Interior Secretary described the doctrine in a single breath: selling energy to allies against Iran and Russia, and a domestic mine permit that had sat pending for 29 years, now approved. ^[2]

When we can sell energy to our friends and allies versus have them buy it from our adversaries, this is how we take the influence of people like Iran or Russia off the table. — Doug Burgum

He drew no line between the two. This is the same official who traveled to Venezuela to facilitate mineral concessions, ordered the recovery of critical minerals from 111 abandoned uranium mines and coal refuse sites, and repealed the BLM conservation rule that had put conservation on equal footing with drilling. ^[3][4][5] The toolkit is shared. The Defense Production Act, a Cold War mobilization statute, has now been invoked three ways: to accelerate domestic oil, gas, and coal production; to ban defense sourcing from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea; and to seize private materials deemed critical to national security. ^[6][7][8] Same statute, three registers, no line drawn. The domestic applications keep stacking. The Energy Department selected four federal sites, Idaho National Lab, Oak Ridge, Savannah River, and Paducah, for AI data centers, building on federal enclaves to bypass county zoning. ^[9] FERC ordered six grid operators to reform their large-load tariffs within 60 days. ^[10] The administration pressured PJM into an emergency auction that forced tech firms into 15-year contracts to fund new power plants. ^[11] The bypass-the-slower-layer tactic has a foreign twin. When the Lula government in Brazil moved too slowly, Washington signed mineral deals directly with two Brazilian states. ^[12]

We are discussing it, we had some preliminary discussions, but we're still waiting — Gabriel Escobar

Then the framing of the people who object. Half of registered voters say local governments should hold primary authority over data center approvals; only 7% would leave the decision to private companies. ^[13] Trump's answer to that sentiment was not to argue with it.

China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. — Donald Trump

The language reserved for Iran is now aimed at county boards in Montana and Maine, where voters want moratoriums. ^[14] The courts have begun to push back. A federal judge vacated the wind-energy freeze in December, calling it "arbitrary, capricious, and contrary to law." ^[15]

We won our lawsuit and stopped the Trump administration from blocking an array of new wind energy projects. — Letitia James

The line can still be redrawn. But the same courts have been systematically overruled from above: the Supreme Court cleared lower-court rulings against the administration roughly 94% of the time through unsigned emergency orders. ^[16]

Yet each time this Court rewards noncompliance with discretionary relief, it further erodes respect for courts and for the rule of law. — Sonia Sotomayor High School

A county zoning board is now, in the administration's telling, a national security threat. The only open question is whether anyone with the power to say otherwise will do it in time.