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Trump Can’t Stop the Populist Uprising Against Data Centers

The grassroots revolt against AI oligarchs is reviving a more than a century-old fight against robber barons and their attempts to seize land, water, and political power.

Petitioners react as the Box Elder County county commission announces approval of a large data center on May 4, 2026, in Tremonton, Utah.

There’s a hulking irony taking shape across the landscape of the 2026 midterms: After a decade of pundits bloviating about the menace of populism in our times, the material conditions that gave rise to American populism have upended the political consensus. In the tirelessly mythologized heartland said to harbor the recondite attitudes and mindset of MAGA-era populism, disenchanted citizens are staging an uprising over the plutocratic seizure of land and resources engineered by a new generation of robber barons. As AI data centers suck up water, land, and political capital—while spewing gas-generated carbon emissions at dangerous new levels—ordinary Americans in the country’s post-industrial interior are in open revolt. The backlash against data centers is now so potent that candidates in both major parties are scrambling to no longer be identified with the tech lords dedicated to disfiguring the country. 

The opposition to data centers in red states has grown so strident that President Donald Trump intervened on behalf of his benefactors in the AI industry. In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump sought to browbeat his followers into submission, claiming the data centers poised to set up Borg-like in their midst will serve both their own economic self-interest and the dictates of national security. The MAGA nation should “let Data Reign,” Trump pronounced—unless, that is, its strongholds would prefer to be “backwards and poor.” “If we kill the Golden Goose,” Trump continued, showing that his mastery of fairy tales is equivalent to his prowess with capitalization, “you will have only yourselves to blame.” Perhaps sensing that any appeal to the alleged equal distribution of the wealth arising from the biggest and most oligarch-friendly investment bubble in human history would fall flat, the president tried to scold the MAGA faithful into recognizing their patriotic duty: “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!” 

It didn’t go over well. “This statement is insane,” went one typical reply on the traditionally Trump-idolizing platform. “I’m already on water restriction.” Another plaint got more personal: “You’re an idiot. You’ll be making money I expect. Meanwhile our lives get shittier with no water, more noise.” One of the more measured responses accurately summed up Trump’s outburst as “horrendous messaging.” 

Behind such unrest in the house of MAGA is a larger truth: Nobody wants a data center anywhere near them. A recent Heatmap News poll drives home how dramatically public opinion has shifted on the issue: A year ago, data centers won 43 percent net support and clocked 42 percent opposition. Now, in that same poll, 75 percent of respondents oppose the construction of data centers near them, and just 15 percent support them—a swing of 61 percent. Sorting through this seismic........

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