How data center controversies are transforming the 2026 midterm landscape

A couple years ago, few knew about data centers; now opposition is growing among the general public.

The site of a future data center being built near Abernathy, Texas, July 18, 2026, in Hale County, Texas. [Photo: Justin Rex/AP Photo]

The snowballing opposition to data centers in communities across the United States has transformed the midterm election landscape, thrown a wrench into the plans of the world’s richest companies and brought perhaps the industry’s biggest booster, President Donald Trump, to its defense.It’s a dramatic shift from two years ago, when few people had even heard of a data center.But the late 2022 debut of OpenAI’s ChatGPT ignited worldwide demand for chatbots and other generative AI products that typically require large amounts of computing power to train and operate. Now, Oracle, Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft expect to plunge more than $700 billion into data centers in the U.S. this year alone.Here are some takeaways from the shifting politics of data centers.

Sprawling into rural America

Tech giants and developers need huge tracts of land to accommodate mammoth computing warehouses, so they’ve been exploring deeper into rural America.The push has united conservative ranching and farming communities with left-leaning environmental advocacy groups, who share a concern about........

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