The dominant narrative about the Democratic sweep of the midterm elections has focused on President Donald Trump’s brash ineptitude and voters fed up with the costs of living amid reports of corruption emanating from the White House. The climate crisis appeared to take a backseat to concerns about rising energy prices driven by data center build-out and inflation linked to the U.S.
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In recent months, thousands of Americans have flooded municipal government buildings to testify against the construction of AI data centers in their communities. According to a May 2026 Gallup poll, 7 out of 10 people oppose the construction of data centers in their local area, citing grave concerns over their environmental impact, water consumption, noise, and potential health risks.
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The Trump administration has likened the need to build out the nation’s artificial intelligence infrastructure to the Manhattan Project, the World War II effort that produced the world’s first atomic bomb. The White House’s point person on the effort, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, has spoken of the “AI arms race” with China as an existential issue for the nation.
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AI data centers are unpopular for good reason: they drive up utility costs for communities, crowd out everything from schools to family farms, and they’re bad for our health. But these data centers are also a financial crisis in slow motion. The AI ecosystem is built on mountains of debt taken on not only by tech firms like Meta (which borrowed a record-breaking $25 billion in late 2025 to…
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Big Tech is selling us a future in which workers are increasingly disposable, human expertise is devalued, and corporate power is more concentrated than ever. But is that future inevitable? In this episode of Movement Memos, host Kelly Hayes talks with Alex Hanna, co-author of The AI Con, about AI as a tool of class warfare, the hype that obscures its real-world harms, and how workers are…
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Democrats on Tuesday won control of both houses of Congress and a decisive mandate to put a check on Donald Trump’s tumultuous presidency, a victory propelled by voter anger over high prices, corruption and the unchecked spread of data centers. Some of the same concerns helped to lift Democrats to victories in statehouses, where they gained a majority of the country’s governorships for the…
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