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The Trump administration is reportedly considering a dozen data center projects to be built on public lands, a plan that would grant tech firms massive swaths of protected lands as they expand AI projects already sharply criticized for outsized use of public resources.

The proposals under consideration are spread across six states — Arizona, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming — and would encompass at least 17,600 acres of public lands, according to records reported on Friday by The Washington Sun.

The projects aren’t posted publicly on the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) website, as they are evidently in the early stages and not yet subject to the public comment process. The publication also reports that local officials and advocates in at least five of the states were unaware of the proposed projects.

This represents the Trump administration’s latest attempts to roll back protections for and destroy federal lands for his personal projects, while also granting permission to private companies to develop on lands that are supposed to be preserved for the public good.

The Trump administration has directed BLM to prioritize the development of data centers on public lands, directing the agency to identify public lands for that purpose. At the same time, the Trump administration has also taken steps to slash environmental regulations, namely the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), that allow the public to protest certain projects and that help........

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