In Virginia, a recent poll<\/a> found the public had turned sharply against data centers. The same is true in Wisconsin, said Charles Franklin, director of the Marquette University Law School Poll, which found that around 70 percent of people now say<\/a> the costs outweigh the benefits.<\/p>\n Even more interesting, he said, the state\u2019s deep partisan divide seems to have vanished when it comes to data centers.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was stunningly little difference for our normally extremely polarized state,\u201d Mr. Franklin said.<\/p>\n Or, as Charlie Berens, a Milwaukee-based comedian, put it recently at a meeting in Juneau, Wis., about a data center: \u201cThis is the most bipartisan issue since beer.\u201d<\/p>\n That matches what is happening in Michigan, where citizens of all political stripes are filling once empty town meetings to voice their opposition. Republicans are strategizing with Democrats on Signal chats and Facebook pages. People are becoming experts at extracting government documents, gathering signatures and fund-raising to pay for lawyers. They are even writing songs<\/a> for the cause.<\/p>\n In Mason, just south of Lansing, Paula Caltrider, 53, who voted for Mr. Trump and runs the Michigan for Jesus Facebook page, teamed up with Rita Leolani Vogel, 51, a Never-Trumper, to fight an ordinance they said favored data centers. (Town leaders said they were simply trying to regulate them.)<\/p>\n They were never friends, and Ms. Caltrider had even blocked Ms. Vogel on Facebook over what she said was unfair criticism of a Christian friend who had spoken out against a drag brunch at a brewery.<\/p>\n \u201cWe laugh about it now,\u201d said Ms. Vogel, who served eight years on the Mason City Council.<\/p>\n Data centers do have supporters: local officials desperate to bring jobs and tax money into sagging economies, aging farmers who want to sell their land and labor unions eyeing construction jobs. Many also recognize that A.I. can be a societal good, and that data centers should not be blocked entirely but simply be regulated, much like civil aviation or road traffic.<\/p>\n Some new bills in Congress are moving in that direction, and, reflecting just how politically unpredictable the issue is, they have come from lawmakers as far apart ideologically as Senators Bernie Sanders and Josh Hawley.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, data center construction is surging, with politics racing ahead of policy, sometimes with dangerous consequences. Last month, an Indianapolis councilman said a gunman fired 13 shots<\/a> into his home, injuring no one, after he voted to approve a center. An accompanying note read, \u201cNo Data Centers.\u201d<\/p>\n In Michigan, where, according to one count, at least 50 towns<\/a> have passed efforts to pause data centers, the issue has the potential to scramble politics in a year with three crucial House races, a dead-heat Senate race and an open governor\u2019s seat. And because Democrats run the state, and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pushed for a law that offered tax incentives for data centers, they could be the first to feel the backlash. <\/p>\n \u201cThere is a political realignment going on,\u201d said Christy McGillivray,<\/a> an environmental activist. \u201cDoing this work right now, I feel like the ground is shifting under my feet. The words I have used my entire life to describe politics are not adequate anymore, or accurate.\u201d<\/p>\n Data Centers Everywhere, All at Once<\/p>\n Data centers are being built to power the A.I. boom, and the projects are vast, often multibillion-dollar endeavors. They are powerful new forces in local economies, and because they demand a lot of energy and water, and are massive structures, they also threaten to change the land itself.<\/p>\n In interviews with residents in seven towns in Michigan, people cited different reasons for their opposition \u2014 higher electricity prices, decreased home values, environmental damage and fear of A.I.<\/p>\n Updated\u00a0<\/p>\n May 1, 2026, 8:41 a.m. ET<\/p>\n But it was the sheer scale of the proposals, the suddenness with which they\u2019ve appeared and the secrecy surrounding them that is punching emotion into the issue, turning out thousands of Democrats and Republicans for tense town hall meetings around the state.<\/p>\n Residents said they often discovered a data center project in their town through a quiet rezoning request by a company no one recognized. They said their small town boards were outmatched compared with wealthy companies in a hurry to break ground.<\/p>\n There is no official count of the number of proposed projects in the state, but Michael Bommarito, a Michigan-based former tech worker who published an activist handbook, \u201cHow to Fight a Data Center<\/a>,\u201d counted at least 16 major projects as of December.<\/p>\n In Lyon Township, Starlet Peedle, 79, a retired teachers\u2019 assistant, said she first heard about the project after the town\u2019s planning commission had given it provisional approval.<\/p>\n Worried that the center would be too close to a school and would diminish the value of her home, she began going to town meetings.<\/p>\n She said she heard few answers to her questions. How much would her electric bill go up? What company was behind the project? How would it affect her well?<\/p>\n A town meeting in January intended to answer people\u2019s questions felt more like a marketing session, residents said.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s sneaky,\u201d Ms. Peedle said of the approach.<\/p>\n Projects are given obscure names, like \u201cProject Cannoli,\u201d and \u201cProject Cherry Blossom.\u201d<\/p>\n In Lyon Township, the proposal is called \u201cProject Flex.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know why it wasn\u2019t just called \u2018Project Data Center,\u2019\u201d Geoff Barker said at the Monday meeting. \u201cI mean it could have been \u2018Project Evasive\u2019 or \u2018Project Disingenuous.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Lise Blades, a high school English teacher who is one of the township\u2019s seven trustees, said the town did not name the project and the words \u201cdata center\u201d were on the agenda when it was first discussed last September. She said trustees were stuck between angry residents and state officials, who, she argued, had lured the data centers with the tax breaks, but were now offering no help.<\/p>\n \u201cTiny townships are left with no resources\u201d to handle the issue, she said, noting that calls to state officials have gone unanswered. \u201cWe have nothing. Colloquially, our butts are in the wind.\u201d<\/p>\n A spokesman for Ms. Whitmer did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n In towns across the state, suspicions are still rife, sometimes far-fetched. Residents in different towns expressed worries about effects on fertility. Others worried the centers could end up as military targets, pointing to Iran\u2019s strikes on data center infrastructure in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n
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