Opinion

The data center fight could decide the next president and cost America the AI race

Leaders who once courted AI infrastructure are now imposing limits amid voter backlash

By Len Khodorkovsky Fox News

Published August 31, 2026 5:00am EDT

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Trump: Data centers bring 'tremendous income'

Fox News host Emily Compagno discusses the debate over AI data center construction on 'The Five.'

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It’s the fall of 2028. A debate moderator turns to two presidential nominees who spent their governorships fighting over data centers. "China’s AI lead is now a fact," she says. "In 2026, you decided to restrict data-center construction, and the machinist in Youngstown, Ohio, watched his job follow the servers to the Gulf. What do you tell him? Which of your policies would you take back?"

That reckoning is two years away, but the choices that will decide it are being made now. Rising electric bills deserve a real fix, but not one rushed for political expediency that leaves the people it’s meant to help worse off down the road.

The pressure to do something is building. Gary Elder retired to Lewisport, Ky., on a fixed income that makes any bill feel precarious. At a Public Service Commission hearing in Hancock County this July, the 69-year-old told regulators he was worried a 500-megawatt data center proposed nearby could push his electric bill toward $1,000 or more. Elder represents seven in 10 Americans who oppose a data center in their own backyard. And when politicians sense trouble, they move fast.

FOX NEWS POLL: COOL YOUR SERVERS! VOTERS REJECT DATA CENTERS

By August, Pennsylvania Democrat Gov. Josh Shapiro and Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, two governors who spent recent years courting hyperscale data centers, were both moving the other way. Shapiro signed an executive order he called the "strictest guardrails in the nation." Abbott froze new grid connections pending a statewide audit.

IT technician holding tablet and inspecting a server rack network data center,........

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