The data center backlash has entered the midterms conversation.
Politicians from across the spectrum have changed their minds — or at least their policy positions — about data centers in the past few months as public resistance to their construction has skyrocketed. A major example is Texas, where just about one year ago, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott was proclaiming that his state was the “epicenter of AI development.”
Now, after months of grassroots organizing and community outcry, Abbott is pushing to slow the roll of new data centers in Texas. He’s imposed a statewide moratorium on new construction pending an audit over the new connections to Texas’s power grid. While he hasn’t explicitly said the change is tied to his reelection campaign this November, the pause is expected to last through the election.
As dramatic as Abbott’s about-face has been, he’s not alone: Democrats and Republicans alike are following suit.
Jeremy Merrill, a data reporter at the Washington Post, analyzed thousands of social media posts and newsletters to see what elected officials on both sides of the aisle are saying about data centers. He spoke with Today, Explained co-host Noel King about his findings, what they say going into midterm elections, and how the backlash might change the way we think about what politicians owe to their constituents.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Data centers didn’t used to be a big deal. And now, almost all of a sudden, they’re a big issue. Candidates are falling over themselves to sound tough about data centers. And data centers are overwhelmingly portrayed as a problem rather than an opportunity or a benefit.
A great example is Sen. Jon Husted, who’s a Republican senator from Ohio, who’s up for election this November. He used to praise data center projects that were coming to Ohio when he was lieutenant governor because it would help establish Ohio as “an important tech hub in America.”
He said that data centers are essential to our digital lives. And now he’s saying he’s trying to “protect Americans from having to foot the bill for data centers.”
He’s really emblematic of a shift that happened all across the Republican Party in about February of this year. That’s when the bulk of messages from Republicans about data centers flipped from focusing on them as bringing benefits to their states and communities, to talking about their downsides.
This is really a case of the anger and unhappiness bubbling up from everyday people up to political elites. And that grassroots anger was all across the political spectrum over a whole range of issues: power bills, claims about how much water data centers may use, air pollution, eminent domain, taxes, subsidies, and a generalized, physical manifestation of the anxiety that people feel about what AI is going to do to our society, to our brains, to our kids and to our jobs.
We know that it’s not just one single candidate, maybe even not just a handful, because you reported that the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned that, “Data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck.”
That’s pretty strong language. Is the National Republican Senatorial Committee admitting that the wrong position on data centers is enough to lose a candidate a race at this point?
I think it’s something that they’re certainly worried about. He’s in a tough race. It’s a tossup. And presumably you’re looking for an edge, or to prevent your opponent from getting an edge over you.
What about President Donald Trump’s messaging on data centers? He, initially at least, was very bullish on AI investment in the US. What has Trump been saying?
This is a story in two or three parts. As President Trump took office again last year, he was overall trying to portray his second term as president as “inaugurating a golden age for American manufacturing and technological dominance.”
As part of that, he issued an executive order trying to make it easier to build data centers in the United States. And I think that’s probably why last year most Republicans across the board were talking about data centers as a benefit to the country and to the communities where they were being built — talking about jobs, talking about investment.
But like I said, the tide turned. And so on the one hand, you have President Trump promoting this bill that would protect people from having data centers cause their power bills to go up. But on the other hand, he just wrote earlier this week on Truth Social, “If [communities] want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
He’s saying if they don’t want data centers, they’re going to “end up being backwards and poor.” So he’s still very pro-data center, which is fascinating.
Let’s talk about the Democrats. Which Democrats in particular are we seeing change their minds?
There are a lot of governors who used to be very positive on data centers in their states because these bring jobs. These bring construction investments, some amount of permanent jobs, some amount of construction jobs. Examples of folks who are now limiting data centers in their states include Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and [Gov.] J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.
The most striking case of a Democrat whose rhetoric has shifted so much is Rep. Ro Khanna of California, whose district actually includes Silicon Valley. In 2025, he was calling for building more data centers in the United States versus overseas. When the Trump administration did an AI deal with the United Arab Emirates, he said, “Why are we putting data centers and research hubs in Dubai?”
But now he’s more critical, calling for an end to data center extraction, taking communities’ water and jacking up their bills, sucking all the money into the hands of a few tech billionaires.
Is anyone in either party still coming out strong for data centers?
My favorite example of this is Rep. Eric Burlison, who’s a Republican from Missouri. He’s really focused on the need to build data centers in order to compete with China. In June, he wrote, “Ask yourself who benefits when Americans turn against data centers? China does.”
He’s making the point that I think a lot of people in tech are making, which is, “This is coming whether you like it or not.” And part of politics is dealing with reality.
In this day and age, it seems constituents don’t want to deal with that reality, but clearly there are people who hold office, or who hope to hold office, who are going to maintain the line that this is something we’ve just got to do.
This is a classic political science dispute about what a politician’s job is supposed to be. If you accept the premise that we need data centers to build a wonderful technological future or keep pace with China or whatever the argument is, is the job of a politician to just do what their constituents want, to be their tribune in Washington? Or is it to be the wise, thoughtful leader who’s willing to push back when constituents are missing something important?
This is one thing I keep in mind when analyzing — particularly some of these governors who shifted more recently — is that they’re talking about the downsides of data centers. They’re talking about mitigating those downsides. They’re saying, “Oh, we need to get data centers to pay their fair share. We need to make sure that data centers don’t screw up our water. We need to make sure they don’t raise your power bills. We need to make sure they give back.”
But then it’s so that we can build them and still reap the benefits while mitigating the costs.
What is it about this issue, do you think, that has got us to this place? We’re polarized, but we’re not polarized in the same way that we’re often polarized.
One possibility is that this is coming from the grassroots so much and bubbling up to politicians and political elites, that everybody got the signal at the same time that this was something that they ought to oppose.
The other possibility is people have for a while been saying, “Are we living through a generational political realignment in the United States where a lot of things are up for grabs?”
You don’t see a lot of the libertarian-adjacent pro-business, free markets, free trade Republican Party. And so when all these issues are up for grabs, politicians see opportunity in being innovative rather than sticking with the same traditional views of their party.
