How a small Wisconsin city scuttled a secretive $1.6bn datacenter project; The Guardian, November 1, 2026

 Daniel A Medina with photographs by Eric Ruby, The Guardian ; How a small Wisconsin city scuttled a secretive $1.6bn datacenter project

"The relationship between Balloonist and Menomonie began in February 2024 when two Menomonie city officials, Atkinson and David Schofield, the city’s director of public works, signed NDAs with the developer. The one-page agreement, obtained by the Guardian, makes no mention of a datacenter. It does clearly instruct signatories that they cannot reveal the tech company behind “the project” or even the existence of the agreement itself.

A month after he signed the NDA, Schofield presented the city council with a proposed ordinance which would define the term “warehousing” in the city’s code. The newly added definition included the line, “establishments used primarily for the storage, management, processing, and transmission of digital data”, that effectively paved the way for a datacenter. The city council approved the change at an April 2024 council meeting. It is unclear if any councilmembers knew of Balloonist or of the potential datacenter project at the time of the vote.

That was the first step in a nearly 18-month process where the two sides developed plans for the datacenter campus in secret until the city government put out a press release about the proposed project in July 2025, according to interviews, public records and emails obtained by the Guardian. The emails, which cover a period from January to September 2025, show how the city and Balloonist took the necessary actions to make the datacenter a reality.

The emails also reveal, in real time, the fierce community backlash that eventually doomed it...

Knaack said he was proud to have stopped the datacenter, for now, and that he was encouraged to see the growing backlash nationally, claiming Menomonie could serve as a model for other small municipalities fighting back.

“All small communities should be aware that when somebody comes in with a sales pitch that seems too good to be true, maybe it is,” he said. “Learn from our mistakes and follow our lead...

At least $156bn in projects were blocked or delayed in 2025 across the United States, according to Data Center Watch, a project by the AI safety firm, 10a Labs, that tracks opposition nationwide to datacenters. This year, between April and June, 45 projects worth an estimated $68bn were blocked or delayed.

That opposition to the infrastructure that trains and powers AI models, and growing public distrust of the industry itself, has become one of the defining bipartisan issues ahead of the midterm elections.

President Trump, who has made AI the centerpiece of his second-term economic agenda, lashed out in an August Truth Social post that communities that opposed AI datacenters risked ending up “backwards and poor”.

At the local level, more than 500 counties and municipalities now seek to ban or restrict datacenters, according to an analysis from the climate news site HeatMap."

AI data center boom faces backlash at US ballot box; Reuters, October 29, 2026

Courtney Rozen, Reuters ; AI data center boom faces backlash at US ballot box

"Voters in ​10 US states will decide on Election Day whether to curb data center development in their communities, as the ‌rapid buildout needed to power the AI boom stirs local opposition.

Resistance is especially visible in Ohio, one of the country's fastest-growing data center markets. No state has more data center-related ballot measures, with voters in more than a dozen jurisdictions set to consider 21 proposals alongside Tuesday's midterm elections, according to the ​nonpartisan research group Ballotpedia."

Backlash against AI data centers threatens GOP’s grip on Ohio, Texas; The Hill, October 30, 2026

 IRA BHAKTA , The Hill; Backlash against AI data centers threatens GOP’s grip on Ohio, Texas

"The importance of AI data centers is growing this election cycle as the fight over the infrastructure’s costs and environmental impacts may be threatening Republicans in battleground states like Texas and Ohio.

Grassroots movements in rural communities, particularly where President Trump won by double-digit margins in each of his presidential bids, are threatening the rural vote the GOP has counted on for decades, experts and voters say...

Data centers are increasingly being built in rural communities, with 67 percent of planned projects slated in rural areas, according to an April Pew Research Center study."

Forward Twp. Meeting Canceled After Large Crowd Opposes Data Center; Butler Radio, September 25, 2026

 Tyler Friel, Butler Radio; Forward Twp. Meeting Canceled After Large Crowd Opposes Data Center

"Forward Township canceled last night’s planning commission meeting after a large number of people attended in opposition of a proposed data center.

The planning commission had to reschedule their meeting after too many people showed up to safely fit into the meeting room in the building.

State Police, County Sheriff’s, and fire officials were all on location to inform the public the meeting could not happen due to safety concerns.

The data center has been proposed at the former Misty Hollow Farm on Prospect Road in Forward Township."

As Trump pushes for data centers, voters in key midterm races say they don’t want them; NBC News, September 6, 2026

 Jonathan Allen, Frank Thorp V and Marshall Crook, NBC News; As Trump pushes for data centers, voters in key midterm races say they don’t want them

An NBC News Decision Desk Poll found that 69% of respondents oppose building AI data centers in their areas, with 45% saying they “strongly oppose” the idea.

"Dawn Vogel, a Republican county supervisor in rural Buchanan County, Iowa, doesn’t have a lot in common with the leading democratic socialists in Congress. But on this bit of policy they agree: Data centers are proliferating across the American landscape too fast.

Vogel voted earlier this year for a moratorium that temporarily bans data centers from setting up shop in her heavily Republican county, which favored President Donald Trump 63% to 35% in 2024. In Washington, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. — the nation’s two most prominent democratic socialists — have proposed a similar moratorium that would cover the entire country.

“I don’t think this is a Republican or Democratic issue,” Vogel said on the sidelines of the Iowa State Association of Counties’ annual conference here in late August, adding that she hasn’t talked to a single voter at home who wants data centers."

Voters Aren’t Waiting for November to Try Ousting Officials Over Data Centers; The New York Times, August 19, 2026

 David McCabe, The New York Times ; Voters Aren’t Waiting for November to Try Ousting Officials Over Data Centers

As a backlash grows over data centers, more local officials are facing recall elections for their support of the computing sites.

"Some local officials have already lost their jobs in the face of data center concerns in regularly scheduled elections. Last year, two members of the Georgia Public Service Commission lost their seats amid concern about data centers’ driving up electricity prices. A Virginia state delegate, Geary Higgins, also lost his job last year after his opponent branded him “Data Center Geary.”

“People are standing up and saying, ‘Sorry, we don’t want these data centers in our communities for a number of reasons,’” Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, said in an interview. “‘If you can’t have the guts to stand up to some large corporation, you should not continue serving in office.’”

Voters have little patience for politicians supporting data centers, said Amy Kremer, the chairwoman of Humans First, a conservative-leaning group promoting greater A.I. regulation. They will “step up and recall them and hold them accountable."

The A.I. Giants Weren’t Prepared for This; The New York Times, August 4, 2026

 

Ezra Klein

Produced by Rollin Hu

, The New York Times; The A.I. Giants Weren’t Prepared for This

"What is big and ugly and has united Republicans and Democrats at a time when it has felt nothing could? A.I. data centers.

Last August a Heatmap News poll found that approximately four in 10 voters would oppose a data center being built where they live. By May of this year, opposition grew to seven in 10. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — a Republican, of course — proposed legislation that was known as an A.I. Bill of Rights.

Senator Bernie Sanders called for a national data center moratorium — one of more than 100 local or statewide moratorium proposals across the country. And in New York, Gov. Kathy Hochul, not usually thought of as a hard-core populist, just imposed a one-year moratorium on data center construction."

Data centers have united Americans of both parties in a shared hatred; The Washington Post, July 18, 2026

 Shira Ovide , The Washington Post; Data centers have united Americans of both parties in a shared hatred

"Kyle Schmidt ticked through what makes him irate about the massive Google data center slated for construction about a mile away from his home near Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

He didn’t like that residents were kept in the dark about what would be built on a pristine tract of mostly forested land. He’s worried about the data center’s potential impact on the community’s water supply and on the dream home that his family moved into last year.

But Schmidt said what really bothers him is the powerlessness he felt as the project advanced and elected officials, Google representatives and bigwig data center backers belittled or misled people who raised concerns...

Opposition in both red and blue regions continued to build to the point where he has tracked about 65 state data center restrictions enacted since the start of 2025, and dozens of cities that have imposed temporary halts to data center development. This week, New York became the first state in the nation to impose a temporary pause on large new data center projects...

Tech giants and other data center backers have been caught off guard by the rapid rise of public opposition, arguing that the hubs are essential for modern digital services and to keep the United States ahead of China on AI."