When New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order instituting a one-year moratorium on the construction of the largest, most energy-consuming data centers in the state, President Donald Trump was not happy. “New York should change its Policy, IMMEDIATELY,” he posted to Truth Social. “The Radical Left Dumocrats must not be allowed to cause us to lose Data Centers, AI, and all of this incredible new Technology, to China, and other countries!”

The New York moratorium is the first such statewide ban in the country, though it may not be the last. The frenzy of data center construction is rapidly becoming one of the most important issues on the political landscape, and unlike most issues, it doesn’t fall cleanly across partisan lines — at least not yet.

That’s why Democrats should be celebrating the fact that Trump is making himself the data center champion. 

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Poll after poll shows Americans turning against data centers. In a Marquette Law School poll in January, respondents said 62% to 37% that the cost of data centers outweighed the benefits. A Gallup poll in May found 71% of respondents saying they would oppose the construction of a data center in their area. A Reuters/Ipsos poll in June found 64% saying the data center build-out is mostly a bad thing.

Given how unpopular data centers are — and how they have become a stand-in for people’s feelings about a rapacious tech industry, greedy billionaires and the threats posed by artificial intelligence — nothing could be better for Democrats than to have voters associate data centers with Republicans. 

There are more than 3,000 data centers currently operating in the U.S., with another 1,500 in development, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Tech companies are betting that AI will transform the economy and create unimaginable wealth, so to capture that ocean of future profits, they’re pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into data centers and the equipment to power them. 

But data centers are distinct from other kinds of capital investment. While building one creates construction jobs in the short term, once the facility is built, it requires only a handful of people to keep it running. That makes a data center far less attractive to a community than a factory or other kind of business that would create jobs for local residents. 

The frenzy of data center construction is rapidly becoming one of the most important issues on the political landscape, and unlike most issues, it doesn’t fall cleanly across partisan lines — at least not yet.

Then there are the downsides. Data centers require massive amounts of power, potentially straining the local grid and causing energy prices to spike. They use enormous quantities of water to cool the equipment, leading residents to fear for the future of their water supply. And many residents who live near one report an unceasing hum from the computers, fans, generators and other equipment, which can make living near a data center intolerable.  

Those problems, plus the speed at which the facilities are cropping up all over the country, has created a backlash that is growing at a stunning pace. 

Even in Virginia, the epicenter of the data center boom, voters’ opinions have shifted dramatically in the last few years. According to Washington Post-Schar School polling, in 2023, 69% of Virginians said they would be comfortable if a data center were built in their community; by this year, that figure had plunged to 35%.

Given the alliance Trump has built with the tech industry and its billionaire leaders, voters might be inclined to associate Republicans with the data center boom anyway. And as the leaders of Silicon Valley have increasingly revealed their right-wing tendencies, it’s no surprise that Elon Musk has put himself at the center of the issue. 

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Hoping to catch up to companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic with his “anti-woke” chatbot Grok, Musk’s company xAI (which is now a part of SpaceX) built a pair of gargantuan data centers in the Memphis area. Named Colossus and Colossus II, they are powered by dozens of gas turbines Musk installed in an end-run around environmental regulations. 

Residents in a nearby low-income Black neighborhood say the facilities are polluting their air. When a third data center came online just over the border in Mississippi, the NAACP filed a lawsuit alleging that the facility was violating environmental laws. In an extraordinary move, the Trump administration intervened on Musk’s behalf, claiming the suit should be quashed because Grok — the chatbot best known for calling itself “MechaHitler” and enabling people to create nonconsensual pornographic images (including pictures of children) — is “critical to the economy and the Department of War.” 

Defenders of data centers say we need them to stay ahead in the AI race; as Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves put it after the city of Jackson passed a six-month moratorium, “The idiots in New York are banning data centers … and surrendering the future of technology to China.” 

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The problem is that most people have deep reservations about AI, and don’t see why pursuing it is worth paying any cost. That’s what’s at the heart of the data center backlash: the immediate problems with the centers themselves (pollution, noise, energy costs, water), plus all they represent about the tech industry and AI. 

It can seem impossible to push back against the enormous wealth and power of the tech industry, and the message those tech leaders send about AI — It’s coming whether you like it or not, and it might steal your job — is designed to make people feel powerless. Data centers are tangible, locally sited manifestations of the tech industry, AI and the power of heartless oligarchs eager to crush ordinary people under their boots in an endless quest for more riches. They give people something to fight against as those distant powers have to contend with local zoning boards and city councils — places where ordinary citizens have a voice.  

Even some officeholders who have supported data center construction are getting spooked by the backlash, and finding ways to show they’ll put limits on the damage data centers can do. But the loudest voice belongs to Trump, who seems to have decided to become the face of an issue on which he’s on the wrong side of two-thirds of the public. 

That makes the data center issue an enormous gift to Democrats. It doesn’t take a political genius to see they ought to exploit it for everything it’s worth.