Deep red MAGA country is livid as supersized data centers driven by an AI surge and pushed by President Donald Trump appear in their own backyards, draining water resources and sending energy costs soaring.
The Washington Post on Tuesday detailed what it called a "rebellion" against data centers in ruby red counties across the country, including Sand Springs, Oklahoma, where fuming residents built a Christmas parade float featuring a massive data center with blinding industrial lights "towering menacingly" over a helpless gingerbread house.
The town secretly annexed 827 acres for a tech giant, prompting hundreds of angry residents to descend on community meetings with protest signs plastered across rural roads.
“It feels like these data center companies have just put a big target on our backs,” said Kyle Schmidt, head of the new group Protect Sand Springs Alliance. “We are all asking: Where are the people we elected who promised to protect us from these big corporations trying to steamroll us? The people who are supposed to be standing up and protecting us are standing down and caving.”
Similar uprisings are happening in MAGA communities in Pennsylvania and Arizona, where residents are decrying massive power drains and skyrocketing electricity bills. Between April and June, $98 billion in data center projects were blocked.
“We know Trump wants data centers and [Oklahoma Republican Gov. J.] Kevin Stitt wants data centers, but these things don’t affect these people,” said Trump-voter Brian Ingram, who lives near one such planned project. “You know, this affects us.”
Trump's Energy Secretary Chris Wright has admitted to concern over the damage: “In rural America right now, where data centers are being built, everyone’s already angry because their electricity prices have risen a lot,” he told energy executives at a gas forum last month. “'I don’t want them in my state' is a common viewpoint.”
Rick Plummer was more blunt.
“I don’t care how much chocolate icing you put on a dog turd, it don’t make it chocolate cake,” said Plummer, who raises team-roping horses next to a proposed data center. “They are trying to fluff this data center thing up and say, ‘Man, eat this birthday cake.’ But it isn’t birthday cake.”