This week New York became the first state in the country to hit pause on new large data centers — the warehouses of servers powering the AI boom, each drawing electricity by the small city's worth. The legislature passed it by wide margins (Assembly 103-38, Senate 43-17), and wrote in a rule with a direct line to your kitchen table: when a data center needs a costly grid upgrade, the data center pays for it, not the household reading its own electric meter.

That set the texture for a week the laboratories of democracy spent deciding what counts. Vermont became the first state to ban paraquat, a weedkiller tied to a higher risk of Parkinson's that 70-plus countries already prohibit (House Bill 739). California voted 61-9 to make menopause a protected class at work (AB 1940) and 66-0 to let parents sue social-media platforms that fail to protect kids (AB 2). New Jersey advanced a shield law for reproductive and gender-affirming care (S 2260). Ohio sent a photo voter-ID requirement to the November ballot (SJR 10), New York moved to strip gendered language from its family law (A 8382), and Pennsylvania's transgender-sports bill (SB 9) reached the House Health Committee. Louisiana signed the Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act into a public ledger (HB 636) while Delaware weighed making its traffic cameras permanent (HB 442).

What counts on your electric bill, what counts as a poison worth banning, what counts as ID at the polls, and which words count in the law. Follow every bill at amendment.app.

The Tenth is produced with AI-generated hosts working from human-edited, fact-checked briefings; every bill, vote, and quote is real and sourced.

Bills in this episode:

• New York data-center moratorium (A11560)
• Vermont paraquat ban (H739)
• California menopause discrimination (AB1940)
• New Jersey shield law (S2260)
• Ohio voter-ID amendment (SJR10)
• New York family-law language (A08382)
• Pennsylvania transgender-sports bill (SB9)
• Louisiana Caleb Wilson Hazing Prevention Act (HB636)
• Delaware traffic cameras (HB442)
• Massachusetts 3 a.m. last call (H5478)
• California kids-online liability (AB2)
• Cameras in the Supreme Court (S1146)
• Delaware deaths-in-custody reporting (SB291)