By JESSICA HILL

PAHRUMP, Nev. (AP) — Nevada is the only state where people can legally purchase sex, and now sex workers at one of the state’s oldest brothels are fighting to become the nation’s first to be unionized.

“We want the same things that any other worker wants. We want a safe and respectful workplace,” said a worker at Sheri’s Ranch in Pahrump, Nevada, who goes by the stage name Jupiter Jetson and asked that her legal name not be used for fear of harassment.

Prostitution is legal at licensed brothels in 10 of Nevada’s rural counties. That doesn’t include Clark County, home to Las Vegas, though Sheri’s Ranch is about an hour’s drive away. The majority of the brothel’s 74 sex workers submitted a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board last week under the name United Brothel Workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America.

Jetson said the drive was spurred by a new independent contractor agreement issued in December that would give the brothel power to use the women’s likeness without permission, even if they no longer work there.

“This is how you end up the face of a Japanese lubricant company without ever having signed a document,” Jetson said. “This is how you end up finding yourself on a website offering AI companionship without ever seeing a penny.”

Sex work, and the employment rights of the those who do it, remains a largely taboo topic worldwide. Prostitution is only legal in a handful of countries, including Germany, and organizing efforts vary. In Spain, where prostitution is unregulated, the government approved a union for sex workers in 2018 but a court quickly outlawed it, saying it made the exploitation of prostitutes legal.

“All workers are guaranteed certain human decencies and dignities, and the right to organize is one of those,” said Marc Ellis, state president of the Nevada Communications Workers of America.

Sheri’s Ranch respects the right of workers to “express their views on workplace structure,” Jeremy Lemur, the brothel’s marketing and communications director, said in an email. The business’s focus is on providing a “safe, lawful and professionally managed environment.”

The process could go back and forth for weeks, but the brothel could choose to recognize the Communications Workers of America as the sex workers’ representatives and begin negotiating a new contract immediately, according to union attorneys.

Concerns over contract terms

The workers at Sheri’s Ranch, who call themselves courtesans, were given a new contract in December that would give the brothel control over their intellectual property and power of attorney. The contract, viewed by The Associated Press, said the brothel will have the “irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, non-exclusive license” to distribute the women’s material.

Another worker, who goes by the stage name Molly Wylder, said the terms would make it harder for courtesans to leave the industry and pursue other opportunities. For Wylder, sex work is a temporary job to help pay for her student loans. Like Jetson, she asked that her legal name not be used.

“It was never my plan to stay forever,” Wylder said.

When the women brought their concerns to management, they were told to sign or leave, they said. The women requested more time to decide, while some signed under duress, Jetson said. The dispute remains ongoing. Lemur did not respond to questions about the women’s concerns.

Jetson said she and two others were fired after the brothel learned about the unionization effort. The Communications Workers of America is fighting for them to be rehired. Lemur did not respond to questions about Jetson’s employment.

Independent contractor vs. employee

Sex workers are typically classified as independent contractors, said Barb Brents, an expert in Nevada’s sex industry and retired professor at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. Independent contractors do not get as many legal protections as employees, but they usually get more freedoms. The success of their unionization could come down to a debate between whether they are considered independent contractors or employees.

The independent contractor status is fundamental to the workers’ autonomy, said Lemur.

But the women argue they are treated as employees. They have set schedules, they can’t work from home and they are required to charge a minimum of $1,000 per hour to their clients, Ellis said. Sheri’s Ranch gets 50% of what they earn.

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“In our dream scenario, we would like to be recognized as employees because we would like the full rights and bargaining power that employees have,” Jetson said.

With many of the women making their own online content, they want their intellectual property protected. They also said they want to negotiate over their dress code — they were recently told they can only wear denim shorts, not pants — and they’d like to see a fairer wage contract.

Wylder said she’d also like to negotiate for health insurance, which they are not provided.

Other workers in the sex industry have seen success. In Los Angeles, dancers at the topless bar Star Garden became the only unionized group of strippers in the U.S. The Lusty Lady, a San Francisco strip club, was pioneering when its workers unionized in 1997, though it’s now closed.

Brents said the Sheri Ranch courtesans’ effort is significant in a stigmatized industry in which its workers historically lay low and stay quiet.

“It’s pretty amazing and heartening to see so many sex workers standing up for their rights,” she said.

(Ben Sargent)

To see more political cartoons from Ben Sargent, visit our Loon Star State section. Find Observer political reporting here.

The post Loon Star State: The Texas Republican Olympics appeared first on The Texas Observer.

By E. EDUARDO CASTILLO

BEIJING (AP) — It’s not just people — in China, the robots are also getting ready to celebrate the Lunar New Year.

Friday was dress rehearsal day for four cute humanoid robots, each about 95 centimeters (3 feet) tall at a mall in western Beijing. Curious onlookers stopped to watch.

Each robot got a colorful lion costume and within minutes the moves started: Bend the knees, up, to the left, to the right, shake the mask, and do it all again!

Ahead of the Lunar New Year celebrated next week, and as part of different “fairs” and activities around Beijing, some venues have been busy setting up their stages and props.

For a second year in a row, one of the fairs will be devoted to technology and — yes, again — robots will take center stage.

People will see them dancing and also them stacking blocks on top of others to make a little tower, skewering hawthorn berries onto a stick — coated with a syrup, a popular sweet snack — or playing soccer.

“This year, the number of our robots has increased a lot,” said Qiu Feng, a member of the organizing committee. “They will perform dance, martial arts, Peking Opera, poetry and soccer.”

“Some events were also available last year but the finness of the actions and the high-tech vibe are stronger” this time, Qui added.

China has been scaling up its efforts to develop better robots that can perform different activities, powered by artificial intelligence and with less human intervention.

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But though they can now do things that were difficult to imagine a few years ago, humans are still needed to help them — for example, to dress them or move them when they stop in the middle of a mini-soccer field.

“Technology is developing faster and becoming more advanced every day,” Qui also said. “As long as we keep up with this trend, our … fair will continue to evolve and rise with the times.”

The robots performing at the mall were developed by some Chinese startups, like Booster Robotics. The company will display around 20 humanoid robots, which will also dance and play soccer.

“It is an AI environment, which means, once the whistle sounds, the remote control will all be put aside and all its decision-making and motion control are made by the robots themselves,” said Ren Zixin, director of marketing at Booster Robotics.

By MARC LEVY

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — As outrage spreads over energy-hungry data centers, politicians from President Donald Trump to local lawmakers have found rare bipartisan agreement over insisting that tech companies — and not regular people — must foot the bill for the exorbitant amount of electricity required for artificial intelligence.

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But that might be where the agreement ends.

The price of powering data centers has become deeply intertwined with concerns over the cost of living, a dominant issue in the upcoming midterm elections that will determine control of Congress and governors’ offices.

Some efforts to address the challenge may be coming too late, with energy costs on the rise. And even though tech giants are pledging to pay their “fair share,” there’s little consensus on what that means.

“‘Fair share’ is a pretty squishy term, and so it’s something that the industry likes to say because ‘fair’ can mean different things to different people,” said Ari Peskoe, who directs the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard University.

It’s a shift from last year, when states worked to woo massive data center projects and Trump directed his administration to do everything it could to get them electricity. Now there’s a backlash as towns fight data center projects and some utilities’ electricity bills have risen quickly.

Anger over the issue has already had electoral consequences, with Democrats ousting two Republicans from Georgia’s utility regulatory commission in November.

“Voters are already connecting the experience of these facilities with their electricity costs and they’re going to increasingly want to know how government is going to navigate that,” said Christopher Borick, a pollster and director of the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion.

Energy race stokes concerns

Data centers are sprouting across the U.S., as tech giants scramble to meet worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that require large amounts of computing power to train and operate.

The buildings look like giant warehouses, some dwarfing the footprints of factories and stadiums. Some need more power than a small city, more than any utility has ever supplied to a single user, setting off a race to build more power plants.

The demand for electricity can have a ripple effect that raises prices for everyone else. For example, if utilities build more power plants or transmission lines to serve them, the cost can be spread across all ratepayers.

Concerns have dovetailed with broader questions about the cost of living, as well as fears about the powerful influence of tech companies and the impact of artificial intelligence.

Trump continues to embrace artificial intelligence as a top economic and national security priority, although he seemed to acknowledge the backlash last month by posting on social media that data centers “must ‘pay their own way.’”

At other times, he has brushed concerns aside, declaring that tech giants are building their own power plants, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright contends that data centers don’t inflate electricity bills — disputing what consumer advocates and independent analysts say.

States moving to regulate

Some states and utilities have started to identify ways to get data centers to pay for their costs.

They’ve required tech companies to buy electricity in long-term contracts, pay for the power plants and transmission upgrades they need and make big down payments in case they go belly-up or decide later they don’t need as much electricity.

FILE – High-voltage transmission lines provide electricity to data centers in Ashburn in Loudon County, Virginia, on July 16, 2023. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

But it might be more complicated than that. Those rules can’t fix the short-term problem of ravenous demand for electricity that is outpacing the speed of power plant construction, analysts say.

“What do you do when Big Tech, because of the very profitable nature of these data centers, can simply outbid grandma for power in the short run?” Abe Silverman, a former utility regulatory lawyer and an energy researcher at Johns Hopkins University. “That is, I think, going to be the real challenge.”

Some consumer advocates say tech companies’ fair share should also include the rising cost of electricity, grid equipment or natural gas that’s driven by their demand.

In Oregon, which passed a law to protect smaller ratepayers from data centers’ power costs, a consumer advocacy group is jousting with the state’s largest utility, Portland General Electric, over its plan on how to do that.

Meanwhile, consumer advocates in various states — including Indiana, Georgia and Missouri — are warning that utilities could foist the cost of data center-driven buildouts onto regular ratepayers there.

Pushback from lawmakers, governors

Utilities have pledged to ensure electric rates are fair. But in some places it may be too late.

For instance, in the mid-Atlantic grid territory from New Jersey to Illinois, consumer advocates and analysts have pegged billions of dollars in rate increases hitting the bills of regular Americans on data center demand.

Legislation, meanwhile, is flooding into Congress and statehouses to regulate data centers.

Democrats’ bills in Congress await Republican cosponsors, while lawmakers in a number of states are floating moratoriums on new data centers, drafting rules for regulators to shield regular ratepayers and targeting data center tax breaks and utility profits.

Governors — including some who worked to recruit data centers to their states — are increasingly talking tough.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat running for reelection this year, wants to impose a penny-a-gallon water fee on data centers and get rid of the sales tax exemption there that most states offer data centers. She called it a $38 million “corporate handout.”

“It’s time we make the booming data center industry work for the people of our state, rather than the other way around,” she said in her state-of-the-state address.

FILE – People opposed to a data center proposal at the former Pennhurst state hospital grounds talk during a break in an East Vincent Township supervisors meeting, Dec. 17, 2025, in Spring City, Pa. (AP Photo/Marc Levy, file)

Blame for rising energy costs

Energy costs are projected to keep rising in 2026.

Republicans in Washington are pointing the finger at liberal state energy policies that favor renewable energy, suggesting they have driven up transmission costs and frayed supply by blocking fossil fuels.

“Americans are not paying higher prices because of data centers. There’s a perception there, and I get the perception, but it’s not actually true,” said Wright, Trump’s energy secretary, at a news conference earlier this month.

The struggle to assign blame was on display last week at a four-hour U.S. House subcommittee hearing with members of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Republicans encouraged FERC members to speed up natural gas pipeline construction while Democrats defended renewable energy and urged FERC to limit utility profits and protect residential ratepayers from data center costs.

FERC’s chair, Laura Swett, told Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, that she believes data center operators are willing to cover their costs and understand that it’s important to have community support.

“That’s not been our experience,” Landsman responded, saying projects in his district are getting tax breaks, sidestepping community opposition and costing people money. “Ultimately, I think we have to get to a place where they pay everything.”

Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter