Trump is right to put his neck on the line for data centers

On Wednesday, speaking at the White House alongside crypto executives, President Trump noted that he would “absolutely” want a data center in his community.

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous,” he said.

It was a rare and refreshing defense of infrastructure that has become a bête noire for Republicans and Democrats alike, despite the fact that data centers have dramatically improved life in communities where they’re built — think $50K teacher bonuses, reduced tax burdens for residents and the creation of high-paying jobs.

These facilities are powering a revolution, providing the necessary energy for the huge amounts of compute needed for LLMs to work — and for America to beat China in the AI race.

In a midterm environment where politicians across the board are running from data centers, Trump is right to push back against the anti-data center hysteria and give them some “public relations help” as he put it.

To be fair, I completely understand the NIMBY argument — no one wants an objectively ugly building in their backyard. And while there have been valid concerns about electricity and water consumption, data centers are responsible for less than 1% of water consumption, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and use less electricity than commercial and residential lighting according to Grid Lab.

Modern life is full of unattractive infrastructure — cell towers, strip malls, cable lines, warehouses — but data centers have received an inordinate amount of bad PR. The combination of anger about the new technology and a lack of information has made for a full blown data-center derangement syndrome.

A recent Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans oppose building a data center in their area compared with only 53% who oppose a new nuclear power plant nearby.

Sam Lyman, policy director at the America First Policy Institute, says the backlash has become “a massive moral panic” that has spiraled far outside the realm of what is logical.

“Ban data centers,” as he puts it, is the modern tech-policy equivalent of “defund the police” — a rallying cry for progressive elites that doesn’t actually serve the lower-income and working-class communities they claim to want to protect.

Gently pushing back on that hysteria is the best thing for a president who is seeing his own party become infected with anti-data-center fever.

“What President Trump is doing is providing moral leadership in the midst of this moral panic,” Lyman said. “[He’s] taking a principled stance that data centers are a net good, both for the national economy and for the communities where they’re built.”

In Richland Parish, Louisiana, Meta’s data center construction drove a dramatic increase in local sales-tax revenue that funded teacher bonuses of upwards of $50,000 in 2026.

For context, the median household income in Richland Parish pre-data center was $50,000.

In Loudoun County, Virginia, roughly 250 data centers are expected to create $1.3 billion in tax next year — about 40% of the county’s total. The revenue has meant it’s possible to cut residential property-tax rates by roughly 30% over the past decade while also expanding schools, parks, and other public projects.

Wisely, West Virginia is now proposing moves that would allow data centers and put their revenue toward reducing or even eliminating the state income tax.

If more people understood the benefits of data centers, they wouldn’t be against them.

We’ve seen mass hysterias before, and like “defund the police,” we often come to regret them.

Maybe in a few years we’ll start hearing politicians acknowledge that hating data centers was “crazy” —just as AOC acknowledged with Woke 1 last week.

Unfortunately, by then it may be too late to reverse course, reap the benefits, and win the AI race.