The context you need, when you need it

When news breaks, you need to understand what actually matters — and what to do about it. At Vox, our mission to help you make sense of the world has never been more vital. But we can’t do it on our own.

We rely on readers like you to fund our journalism. Will you support our work and become a Vox Member today?

Why Democrats stopped talking about climate

A Sunrise Movement co-founder is running for Congress. He’s talking more about data centers than climate.

William Lawrence is a Democrat running to represent Michigan’s Lansing-area Seventh Congressional District with a campaign that largely focuses on data centers and affordability. It’s not an unusual story in 2026 — but not long ago, Lawrence was cutting his teeth in progressive politics as a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, primarily focused on organizing around the climate crisis.

His arc, from progressive activist to politician, is emblematic of a bigger trend, as a wave of millennial progressives in midterm races across the country try to lean into issues that have broader, more immediate appeal with voters.

But that arc also raises big questions about the left’s changing priorities. In a recent interview for Vox’s podcast and video series America, Actually, host Astead Herndon spoke with Lawrence about his past activism and how he has pivoted. “It can sometimes feel like…folks hop from issue to issue, whether it’s climate, even anti-AI right now, without those things being solved,” Herndon told Lawrence.

According to Lawrence, “that’s the reality of the time. It seems like everything is unraveling, and it is because the whole social, economic, political compact is being renegotiated, not just in this country, but on a global stage.” Still, Lawrence said, that earlier organizing shapes how he sees different challenges today.

The real reason voters hate data centers so much

The two also discussed whether opposition to data centers and AI has wide, regular-voter appeal in places like Michigan and how Lawrence went from hopeless and disengaged to regaining a sense of agency through organizing.

Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full show, so listen to America, Actually wherever you get your podcasts or watch it on Vox’s YouTube channel.

You started in Sunrise and were at the forefront of a young progressive movement that was aligned at that time — in 2018, 2019, and I think still — with progressive members of Congress like Rashida Tlaib or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

I remember reporting about Sunrise at the time. The goal was to elect a Bernie Sanders, but the other goal was to have the party largely embrace things like a Green New Deal. How would........

© Vox