{beacon} Technology Technology The Big Story GOP wrestles with data center backlash weeks ahead of midterms Republicans are growing increasingly worried that data centers are a liability in the midterms, as concerns over higher power bills tied to the facilities turn into a pocketbook issue for voters. © Greg Nash The debate over the...
Page F2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 1 October 2026
Trump tells towns to want a data center; his own votes 6-0 against one
As it ran on the front
The Hill's wire story this week carries a plain fact: Republican officials are increasingly worried that data centers have become a pocketbook issue ahead of the midterms, as rising power bills tied to the facilities turn into something voters notice at the mailbox. The worry has a number attached to it. Bain's estimate, reported October 1, is that the industry needs $4.2 trillion in new annual revenue by 2031 just to cover the buildout already under construction. That is the spreadsheet. Here is the ledger it runs against.
On September 25, commissioners in Palm Beach County, Florida — home to the president's Mar-a-Lago club — voted 6-0 to enact a one-year moratorium on new large-scale data centers, defined as facilities drawing at least 50 megawatts. The vote was unanimous. The county that hosts the president's own residence is the same county that just told the industry no, at least for a year.…
…(cont) Three weeks before that vote, on September 4, the Washington Examiner reported a Gallup finding: Americans would rather live next to a nuclear power plant than next to a data center, by more than 20 points. Then on September 28, the Hill ran a companion piece noting the backlash had intensified further — more Americans now oppose data centers than fear artificial intelligence itself, even though the industry has a defense ready: data centers use less water than the nation's golf courses. The defense exists. The polling moved anyway.
None of those three filings mentions the other two. They arrived in the same week anyway.
The gap is not a mystery. It is the distance between what the industry says it has to collect and what the county next door to the man who told every American to want one of these facilities just voted, six to zero, not to allow. The spreadsheet does not know about the commission vote. The commission vote does not know about the spreadsheet. Someone is going to have to reconcile them, hon, and right now that someone is not the Republican Party heading into November.
“Look, the industry needs four point two trillion dollars a year just to keep the lights on for computers nobody voted for, and the one place that got an actual vote shut it down six to zero. The bill for the ones already under construction doesn't disappear because the county next door said no — it just goes to whoever's left holding a meter. That's the con: block it in your own backyard, pay for it in everybody else's.”
“Look, data centers use less water than golf courses, that's documented, people act like these things are draining the aquifer. The backlash is really about Americans not understanding the technology yet — did I just say voters don't understand their own power bills? That's not — that's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
AI will need at least $4.2 trillion in new annual revenue by 2031 to support its massive infrastructure buildout, Bain estimates.
· 'Maybe Trump’s Neighbors Know Something He Doesn’t': Palm Beach County, Home to Mar-a-Lago, Passes Data Center Moratorium from the morgue, 25 Sep 2026
· Data center developers should have known how much Americans love their land from the morgue, 28 Sep 2026
· Panic! At the Data Center: Americans would rather live next to a nuke than an AI facility from the morgue, 4 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.