By Kennedy Maize
From Michigan on the north to Louisiana on the south, New York on the east to Texas on the west, the U.S. push for enormous data centers to power the emerging artificial intelligence industry is producing growing opposition.
The opponents don’t fit any ideological niche. There are MAGA and McCain Republicans, moderate Democrats and self-described socialists, seasoned environmental activists and first-time protestors.
The growth of the data center backlash, built mostly on how the giant electricity gobbling computer centers are either already pushing up power prices or threaten to reach into the pockets of those ordinary folks some in the electricity business dismiss as “rate payers.”
The growing data center backlash finds the Trump administration, to use a tennis term, goofy-footed. The White House, where the President has framed his admiration for AI as a “race” with China that the U.S. must win, as embodied in his June 2, 2026 Executive Order titled “Promoting Advanced Artificial Intelligence and Security.”
The White House has recognized the real and potential impact on retail electricity prices, with what looks like a toothless gesture last March. He signed an “agreement” with Google, Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, xAI, OpenAI, and Amazon for a “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” which says the companies will eat the costs of their new data centers.
The “pledge” is extra-legal. It has no stated legal underpinning, no oversight or enforcement mechanism. Incidentally, Anthropic, one of the top AI firms, was not a signatory, as the company is in the political doghouse in the Trump administration.
Here are some of the current data center battlegrounds:
In New York (Trump’s original stomping grounds back when he was a Democrat) Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul has imposed a one-year delay on approving hyperscale data centers. She says she will also ask the legislature to repeal state sales tax exemptions originally put into place to attract data centers.
In a July news release, Hochul’s office said the push for data centers “has led to proposals across the state for the construction and operation of data centers that could require massive amounts of energy and water to run and cool thousands of computer servers.” She said, “New York will lead the way in creating the strongest standards in the nation for data center development, ensuring that when companies succeed because of New York, New Yorkers succeed too.”
In Texas, where some of the most ambitious data center projects in the nation have been percolating, opposition has also been bubbling up with effect. In mid-July (July 8), the Washington Post headlined a Lone Star State data center story: “In rural Texas, data center opposition is scrambling conservative tradition.” The article began, “A preference for small government has faded as Republican voters press leaders to block the massive projects.”
On August 3, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a MAGA favorite, directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to “conduct a comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection process before any additional data centers are approved to move forward. Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUC and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid.”
Abbott told the state’s two electricity regulatory agencies to pause any data center approvals pending the outcome of their audit.
In his letter to the state regulators, Abbott said ERCOT “is currently considering approximately 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas grid. That is more than five times Texas’ record peak electricity demand for ERCOT. Approximately 90 percent of the new power requests are data centers. That unprecedented load growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid.”
In a wide-ranging interview with Punchbowl News, reported by Newsweek, Trump rebuked Abbott’s data center pause. He said, “I saw Texas the other day sort of is against data centers. I think it’s a mistake.” With characteristic hyperbole, Trump later described data centers as “tremendously important for the economics,” and that AI “could be bigger than oil.”
Purple Michigan saw an Aug. 4 Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat. Rep. Haley Stevens narrowly lost to a progressive physician, Abdul El-Sayed, where they each campaigned in opposition to data centers, but with differing plans.
The Washington Examiner reported that progressive wing candidate El-Sayed has been more directly opposed to the build-out of data centers. He’s backed calls by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria for federal legislation to place a moratorium on data center construction. During the campaign, El-Say joined a protest at a data center under construction in Saline, Mich., 45 miles west of Detroit.
Stevens, a conventional Democratic moderate ducked taking a position on the Saline center, accepting Trump’s formulation that data centers are part of a competition with China. She called for a “clear, responsible policy framework to ensure these technologies are developed safely and securely.”
Despite a wide polling lead, El-Sayed won a tiny, 1% majority, 48.5% to 47.5%. He faces former two-term (2011-2015) Republican Rep. Mike Rogers in the November general election. Rogers was the GOP nominee in the state’s 2024 Senate election, losing narrowly to Democrat Elissa Slotkin.
In Louisiana, a Scarlet Letter red state, a giant Meta data center named Hyperion, under construction in Richland Parish in the northeast part of the state, is generating considerable controversy. Republican Gov. Jeff Landry responded with a June 25 executive order, praising the push for AI and its associated data centers.
Then he lowered the political boom. He charged the state’s Louisiana Economic Development (LED) agency, which oversees state grants of sales and use tax exemptions for data centers, to “ensure that transformational investment benefits Louisiana citizens and communities, and is not realized at their expense….”
The Quad Report, covering energy policy and politics