Donald Trump has a fan in Molly McCann Sanders. She voted for him and helped him win a second term. She loves him. But she is not happy with his data center policy.
Phyllis Schlafly founded the Eagle Forum Education & Legal Defense Fund, and its president is Sanders. She identifies herself as “a crunchy MAHA mom,” a pro-life Catholic from Texas, and she holds very conservative views on immigration. She is also a fierce opponent of eminent domain, which she characterizes as the government’s power to take private property for public use, and she expresses strong concern about data centers.
“I’m not a data center expert. I’m not a tech expert. But I’m suspicious and wary, and want to move slowly,” she says.
Sanders says she sometimes “looks past” the wilder things Trump says, but she cannot fully overlook his pro-data-center rhetoric. She sees the GOP’s effort to court “the laptop class” — young men who are enthusiastic about technology — as a huge misstep as midterms approach.
Sanders’s Data Center Opposition
The senator is far from the only one raising objections to data centers. A poll released by The New York Times last week found that more than 60 percent of Americans, including 47 percent of Republicans, oppose the construction of data centers. In August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a private memo to AI companies warning that “campaign or party committees can not fix the toxic brand of an entire segment of the economy.” Last week, GOP strategist Tony Fabrizio issued a memo to candidates claiming that “unqualified support for building more AI data centers is a losing position.”
Trump’s Data Center Defense
The former president has failed to receive the memo. Instead of backing down, he has doubled down on both data centers and AI in recent weeks, even as scrutiny on his policies and support for the industry mounts.
In late August, he wrote on Truth Social that only communities that wanted to be “backwards and poor” would refuse data centers coming to town. Last week, he issued a series of posts boosting AI data centers. Users on his own platform pushed back. An analysis from The New York Times found that anti-data-center and anti-AI comments — including from staunch MAGA accounts — outnumbered positive comments by four to one.
The China Angle
Trump’s defense of data centers is not just about jobs or economic growth. His White House allies and tech accelerationists are framing the issue as a national security competition with China.
“He’s bullish on AI,” says Hugo Lowell, Vice’s White House correspondent. “He’s been told that restricting data center development means restricting compute, which means the US loses to China.”
The competition with China is being publicly echoed by David Sacks, former White House AI czar, and Joe Lonsdale, an investor and cofounder of Palantir. Lonsdale went head to head with Steve Bannon’s tech editor, Joe Allen, at a secondary event tied to the convention. As Sanders puts it, that was the only occasion she heard data centers mentioned during the entire midterm convention.
What Voters Think
Voters have not quite made up their minds on how heavily to weigh the issue. The New York Times poll found that AI and data centers rank far down the list of voters’ priorities, and almost 20 percent say they don’t know which party would handle the issue better.
The final outcome is a fractured GOP. Some candidates aligned with Trump may elect to disregard cues from the White House. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee for governor in Wisconsin, has received Trump’s backing. Still, he has also criticized his Democratic opponent David Crowley for what Tiffany claims are pro-data-center views.
The Data Center Backlash
A new plushie called Bezzy is taking the anti-data-center movement in a strange direction. Boone Ashworth’s piece describes the plushie, which is shaped like a server and has a gangly form with a smiley face. Squeezing it produces an awful droning sound — real audio from people who live nearby a data center in Virginia.
“Personally, I love Bezzy and want to adopt one,” Boone says. “Also, it makes me very grateful I don’t live near a data center. I really feel for people who do.”
Where the Issue Goes
A love for Trump runs deep among his supporters, even as his data center policy tests that devotion. He has been a defender of data centers, though that stance has drawn a backlash from his own voters. It remains to be seen whether that resistance alters his course.
Key Numbers
- More than 60 percent of Americans oppose data center construction, including 47 percent of Republicans, in a poll released by The New York Times last week
- Anti-data-center and anti-AI comments outnumbered positive comments by four to one on Trump’s Truth Social posts
- Tom Tiffany attacked his Democratic opponent for pro-data-center views
- Bezzy records audio from people living next to a data center in Virginia
The path forward is not clear.
Source material: “It’s Donald Trump Versus MAGA on Data Centers,” WIRED.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.