Democrats see midterm gift in Trump embrace of data centers |
Democrats see midterm gift in Trump embrace of data centers
House Democrats see President Trump’s embrace of data centers as a political gift, hoping the radioactive issue will help the party flip control of the chamber in November’s midterms.
The topic has emerged as a late campaign juggernaut given the sheer proliferation of data centers in a great many communities around the country, which has sparked protests from residents of all stripes over the impact on electrical costs, water usage, land values and other local quality-of-life concerns.
Trump this week stirred a political storm when he bashed those protestors with a warning that they were relegating their communities to be forever “backwards and poor.”
Democrats see the remarks as a boon in an election cycle where an unpopular president, the rising cost of consumer goods and an unpopular war in Iran are already putting Republicans on the defensive as they fight to retain their fragile majority.
In states as diverse as Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Nebraska, Democratic candidates — incumbents and challengers alike — are leaning on Trump’s aggressive promotion of data centers to portray Republicans as indifferent, or oblivious, to local anxieties. And top Democratic leaders are fueling the campaign from Capitol Hill.
“The president didn’t just say that data reigns supreme and that there should be data centers all over the place. He actually literally wrote that, if a community chooses not to have a data center, then they are ‘backwards and poor,’” Rep. Ted Lieu (Calif.), the vice chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, told reporters this week in Washington.
“He is straight up saying that you are backwards and poor,” he added. “November is coming.”
The controversy over data centers is hardly new on Capitol Hill. Last year, House GOP leaders caused an uproar when they barred local and state governments from regulating data centers as part of their Big, Beautiful Bill Act. The backlash caused the Senate to strip out the provision, which was absent from the legislation that became law.
But virtually every House Republican voted for the regulatory moratorium in the initial House-passed bill. And the final law also encourages the construction of new data centers by providing........