President Trump took to Truth Social this week to warn any town still weighing whether to fight a data center. Communities that turn them away, he wrote, are choosing to be “backwards and poor.” The ones that welcome them will get lower taxes and jobs “all over the place.” He called the industry the “Golden Goose,” said plenty of other places would happily take the investment instead, and warned that China “could not be happier” watching American towns turn it down.
He’s not wrong: Data center spending has become one of the single largest forces holding up U.S. economic growth this year. That’s normally the kind of growth that a president looking to maintain party control of both chambers would want to campaign on. But instead, it’s become one of the few issues in American politics that Republicans and Democrats can agree on, and what they agree on is that they simply don’t want it near them. With just four months before the midterms, no candidate wants to touch the issue with a 10-foot pole, and if they do, they’re spending millions in campaign funds to get the issue “right.”
Why data centers are so polarizing
Few issues cut across party lines the way data centers do, because what makes them valuable nationally is what makes them hated locally. One facility can draw as much power as a midsize city and remake a town’s tax base within months, and neighboring households bear the cost. Conservatives who normally favor deregulation are showing up at town meetings over property rights and distrust of distant tech billionaires. Progressives who favor the technology’s economic promise are objecting on environmental grounds. A CNN analysis found the backlash is bipartisan because the fight is so local, meaning it skips past national ideology.
