Data center expansion has become a critical component in the leadup to November’s midterms, with polls showing a majority of Americans oppose them being built in their communities. Republicans and Democrats alike have expressed concerns over data centers, with lawmakers and state leaders warning about overloaded power grids, strained water systems and the level of noise the projects create.
Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott this month instituted new regulations on data centers despite expressing broad support for them over the last year on the campaign trail. Michigan Republican Senate nominee Mike Rogers and Pennsylvania GOP nominee for governor Stacy Garrity have both urged for a temporary halt to some projects.
“I think probably 99 percent of the backlash to data centers has come in areas where building a data center means higher utility and higher electricity for the people on the ground,” Vice President JD Vance told reporters Monday at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Vance offered a solution to addressing the concerns: companies that build data centers should send power back into the grid.
“If you build the data center, you should be putting power back into the grid, not taking it out,” he added. “And if that is happening, I don’t think the data centers are that controversial. It’s when the utility bills get so much higher that’s when it’s a real problem.”
But Trump, who has met with some of the world’s leading tech giants on numerous occasions, is adamant that data centers are critical to staying ahead of China in the artificial intelligence race — a point he made in a recent interview with his former fixer Michael Cohen and which he reiterated on Monday.
“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
It’s not the first time Trump has touted data center expansion. Last year, he signed an executive order to accelerate the permitting and building of centers. In a separate Truth Social post from July, he called data centers “one of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs.”
In July, New York became the first state to issue a pause on building new infrastructure — a move Trump criticized shortly after Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the executive order.
