$130 billion in data center projects blocked by protests so far this year

“I have been watching this new groundswell of dissent firsthand in community meetings, organizing sessions and civic trainings here in North Carolina. The resistance has lifelong joiners, alumni from environmental and housing movements and young organizers. There are also a lot of people who have never dreamed of being disagreeable in public, much less considered joining a raucous social movement. The imminent risk of living next to a data center may be why they show up for a meeting, but they’re committing to the issue for bigger, deeper reasons. Political corruption and corporate malfeasance make them feel politically impotent. Voicing their objections, sharing their anxieties with others, recalling politicians who override them and in some cases beating the opposition is giving them something few politicians are offering—a taste of political power.” Although it may be hard for Democrats to craft a national message that capitalizes on anti-data-center sentiment, McMillan Cottom suggested that, if they could, it would be the “greatest untapped opportunity” to win more elections. Data Center Watch noted that the record of $130 billion data centers blocked or delayed in early 2026 was close to matching the value of the total number they recorded for all of 2025, about $156 billion. The researchers suggested that the back half of 2025 marked a “turning point, as data center opposition emerged as a national-level narrative” that showed the AI industry can no longer see the fights as individual zoning disputes. It “is now reshaping elections, regulation, and site viability nationwide,” Data Center Watch reported last year. For officials hoping to quickly build data centers to propel America’s AI ambitions, facing the mounting opposition as the playbook has come together has been tough, NBC News reported. Where before, officials were criticized for quietly signing deals without discussing construction with nearby residents, now they’re encountering backlash before any deal is in the books, Data Center Watch found. “In some cases,” researchers reported, “opposition mobilized before any project was officially filed, the mere rumor of a data center was enough to trigger organized resistance.” This week, Meta claimed a similar data center PR win in Louisiana. One of the tech giant’s data center projects more than doubled Richland Parish’s sales and use tax, leading some teachers to get $50,000 bonuses, due to an ordinance that “lets the school board collect a 1 percent sales tax to fund teacher bonuses,” The Wall Street Journal reported. Scott Franklin, a director of the parish’s chamber of commerce and a farmer who sold the land to Meta for the data center, told WSJ that “anybody that complains about teachers getting a $50,000 check, they just instantly lose all credibility with me.” But The Atlantic story seems to gloss over one of the biggest complaints that locals have about data centers: a lack of comprehensive environmental reviews. Mostly, communities simply don’t want local officials to take the kind of shortcuts to expedite data center approvals that Donald Trump and other Republicans have called for. In Illinois, Governor J.B. Pritzker is pushing lawmakers to develop a legislative framework for responsible data center development in the state with proper environmental reviews at its center. And other cities, counties, and states are pivoting to get residents more information as deals are increasingly obstructed by residents loudly vocalizing opposition. Most recently, a data center developer in Utah vowed to handle all communications himself to make his construction project more transparent, after backlash reduced the total approved land area for the site by 50 percent. McMillan Cottom suggested that no public officials on the right or the left have perfected their messaging to align with anti-data center sentiments. It may be money standing in the Democrats’ way of fully embracing the data center resistance, she suggested, as many AI firms are donating hundreds of millions to campaigns to sway elections. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plans to tax AI firms to force more transparency are “wonky,” she said. And Sen. Bernie Sanders’ call for Americans to profit off AI—which Trump, to some degree, agrees on—depends on creating a wealth fund that at least one critic warned “would enshrine the tech sector’s as-yet-unproven claims of its importance.” Perhaps Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come closest to plugging into the nationwide rage. After joining Sanders in calling for a nationwide data center moratorium in March, she used jars she claimed were filled with dirty data center water to press the Environmental Protection Agency over its alleged failures to investigate a Meta project in Georgia. Meta has denied that its Georgia data center is polluting waters. But analysts think that Ocasio-Cortez’s instinct to use the jars to symbolize data center opposition seems more likely to strike a nerve and drum up support than even the most genuine pushes to regulate or tax data centers, so long as the long-term harms of construction remain unknown and the risks of AI remain abstract. The Atlantic’s piece concluded that the “reasons for resisting data centers may ultimately have less to do with the tangible costs than the symbolic ones.” Along similar lines, McMillan Cottom suggested that “the voters showing up to fight data centers demonstrate that a lot of us want something different.” And what many politicians and AI fans see as a sea of unsubstantiated backlash is actually “the righteous rage driving millions of Americans to look up from their enemy and finally see, instead, a neighbor and future worth fighting for,” she wrote.