In the past year, data-center construction has become an unavoidable, extraordinarily toxic issue in local politics. This was an organic process: Unprecedented capital is being deployed in a rapid AI build-out, manifesting in communities around the country as massive, urgent physical projects; residents, reacting to rushed plans from presumptuous builders and skeptical of the benefits of having giant power-hungry, mostly automated warehouses in their communities, are mobilizing against them. The backlash is unusually bipartisan and, despite the abstract, universal character of the broader discussion of AI, is most concerned with community matters like local costs, material externalities, political autonomy, taxes, and jobs. It’s a genuine grassroots issue sprouting from a seed bomb of trillions of dollars of out-of-town money.

As a result, many local, state, and now national politicians have been taken by surprise, forced to catch up with the issue and understand their constituents who have raised the salience of data centers in ways that have confused both Democrats and Republicans. Many are finding themselves — like Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania — under pressure from the left and the right.

This week, though, Donald Trump suggested he doesn’t find the issue confusing in the slightest. In an interview with fixer turned enemy turned pal Michael Cohen, the president staked a maximalist position against the populist tide. “Communities that don’t take a data center, they’re making a mistake,” he said, because data centers create “tremendous amounts of jobs and money.” Concerns about energy prices were irrelevant, Trump suggested, because the firms building data centers are also “building the most beautiful — you’ve never seen power plants like this.” Meanwhile, the EPA is taking steps to limit public input on new data-center projects in an apparent attempt to clear the way for new construction.

Trump’s position is interesting in a number of ways. For one, it’s utterly disconnected from the national mood, including the Republican base; while self-identified MAGA voters used to be slightly more supportive of data-center construction than their peers, those numbers are collapsing. Trump is also making a combination of arguments you won’t hear almost anywhere else: His suggestion that “beautiful” power plants may address energy concerns is at least connected to........

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