We speak with tech journalist Paris Marx about his new book, Hyperscale: The Ambition and Excess of Big Tech’s Data Empires . In the book, Marx exposes the deceptive ways tech companies are taking resources from vulnerable communities in order to build massive AI data centers. “We have seen the tech companies that, back in 2019, 2020…
Page F119From§Eachthe morning edition — 15 October 2026
Trump warns data-center holdouts go 'backwards and poor,' watches his own county vote 6-0 to join them.
As it ran on the front
THE WRECKING CREW drove to Palm Beach County first, home to Mar-a-Lago, where the zoning ordinance that could stop a data center was already sitting on the books, unused, long before anyone ran for office on it. On August 31, the president told every town in the country that refusing a data center would leave it "backwards and poor." The county that includes his own front porch answered on September 25: a 6-0 vote, "large-scale" facilities over 50 megawatts, one year, no new construction. The tool was never new. The permitting authority sat in the county code the whole time; the commissioners just had to use it.
The chief pointed north. In Washington State, the wiring was older than that. Seattle halted new data-center buildout in June. Spokane followed. So did a Tacoma-area county. By October 6, that patchwork of local halts had become the floor under hundreds of residents at nineteen events across the state, demanding a statewide version of the same zoning brake. No new statute was invented for the day of action — the planner just traced the parts already bolted to the wall and asked why the bolts stopped at the city line.…
…(cont) The tinkerer went to the ledger CBS published on October 12: three in four data centers under construction, and four in five still in planning, sit in states that voted Republican. That is the mechanism this column keeps finding: the industry built its supply chain inside the party that was supposed to defend it, and the wiring is now live in the wrong direction. The Daily Caller noticed the short on October 15, from a Florida House seat where "candidates from both parties are on the defensive." The muscle swung first at the subject, not at either party's lawn sign.
The pilot flew it to Memphis last, because Memphis is where the tool met the fight that started it. Justin Pearson is running in Tennessee's 9th against Brent Taylor, against Elon Musk's xAI Colossus data centers, on a message that needs no new legislation to be true: gas is high, groceries are high, wages are low, and the billionaire class keeps profiting off the pain. Pearson didn't ask Nashville for a new bill. He asked fifteen counties whether anyone, Republican or Democrat, wanted the data center next door. Nobody did. The permitting authority that could have said no was already there before he arrived; the crew's whole job, this week, was pointing at the bolt nobody had turned.
“They tell you a town has no say over a billion-dollar data center, then Trump's own neighbors in Palm Beach vote it down 6 to 0 with a zoning law that was sitting in the drawer the whole time. Seattle did it in June, Spokane did it, Memphis didn't even need a new law, just a candidate willing to ask fifteen counties if anybody wanted the thing — nobody did. The tool was never missing; the only thing missing was somebody willing to turn it, and now that they are, watch the same people who sell you fracking bans getting overturned in Texas try to take this one out of your hands too.”
“These facilities are economic engines — jobs, tax base, maybe a new football field, that's just good neighboring — and any town saying no is choosing to be backwards and, did I say backwards, that's the president's word, not mine, I don't even use that word. Sure, three in four of these things under construction are sitting in red states, but that's a supply-chain fact, it doesn't mean anything, and if a few Republican candidates are suddenly quiet about it that's just, that's strategy, that's not backing down.”
The receipts
The energy needs of the AI boom and the construction of massive data centers in states across the country have created a backlash from both Democratic and Republican voters. The battle against data centers is at the heart of a campaign in Tennessee: Democratic state Representative Justin J. Pearson is opposed to the Colossus data centers…
"Why have we gotten to the point where we have permitted militaries of various states to use civilian commercial data centers for their military purposes?"
The separatist movement is turning alienation into a vehicle for anti-immigrant and white nationalist political organizing.
Cleanview Research found 75% of data centers being built and 80% of data centers in the planning stage are in predominantly GOP states, as public opposition to data centers grows.
Candidates from both parties are on the defensive.
“There's so much power in this fight,” says Saul Levin.
· Out-of-Touch Trump Says Communities That Reject AI Data Centers Will Be 'Backwards and Poor' from the morgue, 31 Aug 2026
· Salena Zito explains how data centers are benefiting communities from the morgue, 29 Sep 2026
· 'Halt the Out-of-Control Tech Oligarchs': Advocates Demand Data Center Moratorium in Washington State from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
· '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
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.