Voters Have Spoken: No Dirty Data Centers
By Abigail Dillen, President of Earthjustice Action
Opposition to data centers gave Democrats their chance to transform the electoral map. Data centers were at the center of countless races, and many historic wins. Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa campaigned on tougher standards for data center development, and she was hardly alone. The Democrats who won their races for Governor in Michigan, Oregon, New Mexico, Ohio, Georgia and New York all supported data center moratoria. Winning House candidates supporting a national moratorium include Will Lawrence (MI-7), Randy Villegas (CA-22), Jamie Ager (NC-11), Rebecca Cooke (WI-3), Katy Padilla Stout (TX-23), Bob Harvie (PA-1), Jake Johnson (MN-1), and Matt Little (MN-2). James Talarico, Abdul El-Sayed, and Sherrod Brown won three of the most contested Senate races in the country on platforms that called for better data center regulation. Brown ran millions of dollars of ads calling his opponent Jon Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio.”
Voters in at least 38 jurisdictions and counting passed data center bans or restrictions, and polling shows that a majority of midterm voters considered AI and data centers to be a major factor in their vote.
No issue has activated more Americans in this historic election than opposition to the current data center build-out. This historic election showed that voters are deeply skeptical about the way that data centers are getting built now — secret deals and corporate tricks to avoid transparency and accountability, sky-rocketing electricity bills, air pollution and failures to protect water, intolerable noise, the sheer scale of industrialization and loss of place, the raw power of the wealthiest companies in the world to speed past anything and anyone in their way – is representative of what is not working for people in our country.
The blue wave that Democrats are riding is inextricable from the data center backlash. Now, it’s time for Democrats to show the leadership that is owed to voters and all the volunteers who organized, knocked on doors, made the calls, and did the hard work to turn out this historic vote.
A few days from now, the Senate is set to vote on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (BAAJA). Without major amendments that appear to be out of reach, a vote for this bill would ignore the message that voters around the county are sending to Washington, D.C.
BAAJA is being promoted by its most vocal proponents as a bill to build new transmission lines to unleash clean energy, and that is critically important. We need to expand the grid and put it to much more effective use by addressing real transmission and interconnection bottlenecks.
But BAAJA is not only or even mostly a transmission bill. It is a sweeping overhaul of federal law. One very big reason why passing BAAJA is such a high priority for the gas industry is it will enable fast delivery of gas to fuel the data center build-out. The speed-to-power rush for AI has become a rush to gas, and the industry is desperate to meet rising demand and lock in more gas consumption.
With its extremely targeted provisions for gas pipelines, BAAJA delivers a precision strike for developers of dirty data centers. Here’s the package: gutting federal environmental review, including an outright exclusion for pipeline expansions, rubber-stamping permits under the Clean Water Act, blocking interference from States and Tribes, and prohibiting courts from issuing injunctions and other meaningful remedies. What this combination gives to the gas industry is an ultra fast-track for new and expanded gas pipelines that is insulated from court challenges and the kind of public opposition to data centers that is now expanding to associated pipeline projects.
Why does the fast-track matter so much? Some of the industry’s biggest players are poised to bring gas from hubs like the Marcellus Shale and the Permian Basin to fuel bigger and bigger data center complexes with gas. From the perspective of AI hyperscalers, piping in gas for on-site power is the fastest, cheapest path to lock in power on a timeline and on terms that are most in their control. The only risk they have now is reliable gas capacity. BAAJA’s pipeline package would solve that problem for them immediately, sealing many deals that would enable the dirtiest version of the data center build-out to move even faster, while the transmission provisions that could enable more clean energy will take years.
Voters are asking elected leaders to stop the build-out of dirty data centers. And, maybe more than anything else, people are demanding that government work for them. Instead, this bill gives more certainty to the most powerful AI and oil and gas companies, while dramatically weakening environmental protections and giving President Trump even greater license to drive his dangerous agenda and do damage that a future president will be unable to repair.
Data centers were on the ballot on Tuesday, and they lost. Across the country, voters came out to stop a “speed at all costs” build-out that is hurting communities and increasing costs and pollution. Voters overwhelmingly approved data center restrictions, and elected leaders who ran on ensuring safeguards and accountability for data center development. Super-charging gas-fired mega-data center projects is the opposite of that. Now is the time to make AI developers do better.
Democrats cannot lose trust before a new class of inspiring, winning candidates even takes office. Leaders across the country now have the opportunity to build on their extraordinary victories and make a better deal to get the transmission we need.