The Election Day Revolt That Threatens America’s AI Boom; Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2026

  

Will Parker

, 

Anissa Gardizy

 and 

Amrith Ramkumar, Wall Street Journal; The Election Day Revolt That Threatens America’s AI Boom

Data Center-Related Ballot Measures

Rows shaded in gray are for ballot measures that were more favorable toward development. The unshaded rows are for measures that were more prohibitive or restrictive of data centers.

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Table with 6 columns and 41 rows of data. Currently displaying rows 1 to 8. (column headers with buttons are sortable)

Alhambra	Calif.	✔	Prohibit data centers in the city	82% 82%	18% 18%
Ashville	Ohio	✘	Uphold a term summary to guide negotiations between the Village of Ashville and EdgeConneX regarding two data center	18% 18%	82% 82%
Bloomington	Ill.	✔	Advise the city to impose a moratorium on building large-scale data centers	78% 78%	22% 22%
Boulder City	Nev.	✘	Allow data centers within the Eldorado Valley Transfer Area	29% 29%	71% 71%
Chouteau (Madison County)	Ill.	✘	Advise officials to permit the construction and operation of new data centers in the township	17% 17%	83% 83%
Conneaut	Ohio	✔	Prohibit the construction of data centers with an aggregate monthly electrical demand or peak load greater than 25 megawatts	65% 65%	35% 35%
Defiance	Ohio	✔	Prohibit the construction of data centers with an aggregate demand or peak load greater than 25 megawatts	65% 65%	35% 35%
Downe (Cumberland County)	N.J.	✘	Advise support for data centers in Downe Township	13% 13%	87% 87%

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Note: Tap or click column headers to sort. Table shows measures that were voted on Nov. 3. Data are as of Wednesday afternoon. WSJ classified the measures as either more favorable or more restrictive.

Ohio’s Data-Center Revolt Is Upending the Midterms; Time, October 29, 2026

Naomi Nix , Time; Ohio’s Data-Center Revolt Is Upending the Midterms

"Community pushback prompted the Grove City council to pass a yearlong moratorium on data-center construction. In November, Grove City residents will vote on a proposal to go even further, making all large developments subject to voter approval. The issue has upended the intimate politics of this conservative community of 45,180. Community Facebook groups are filled with bickering, angry residents have filled council meetings, and activists filed freedom-of-information requests seeking answers about city officials’ communications about the referendum. Grove City’s longtime mayor, Richard “Ike” Stage, and other local leaders have fought against their efforts, saying the ballot initiative to restrict development would hurt economic growth...

In June, the moratorium passed 6-1. Emboldened, the anti-data-center advocates with Protect Grove City decided the one-year moratorium wasn’t enough, and wrote a proposed amendment to the city’s charter, which functions like a governing constitution. It would prohibit the city from approving zoning applications for developments that occupy at least 50 acres, use more than 20 megawatts of power at peak capacity, or consume more than 500,000 gallons of water per day unless a majority of voters have backed the project in a public referendum. To drum up support, they canvassed local farmers’ markets, parks, and sporting events to ask people to sign a petition to put the measure on the ballot in November. Within a few weeks, they secured enough signatures."

Springdale data center hearing draws a crowd, a chorus and regional opposition; Pittsburgh's Public Source, October 29, 2026

Jamie Wiggan and  Lucas Dufalla, Pittsburgh's Public Source; Springdale data center hearing draws a crowd, a chorus and regional opposition

Allegheny County’s in-person meeting amid its review of a data center plan filled Springdale Borough’s gymnasium. Concern over diesel generators drowned out enthusiasm for construction work.

"Speakers took turns denouncing the data center plans in prepared speeches, then a spirit of improv took over. One attendee who said she had driven to the Allegheny Valley town from Pittsburgh performed a song she’d written for the occasion on a three-quarter-sized acoustic guitar. Then the crowd broke into a chorus of “we don’t need your damn pollution” to the tune of Pink Floyd. 

The carnival-like protest came ahead of a county-led hearing on Dynamo DC’s plans to transform a former coal-fired power plant site into a mega data center campus. 

With borough approval already secured in December, opponents from Springdale and beyond  see Allegheny County’s land development review as their last chance to halt the project." 

Inside the long, bitter fight over one man’s quest to build the biggest AI datacenter in California; The Guardian, October 17, 2026

Dara Kerr and Gabrielle Canon , The Guardian; Inside the long, bitter fight over one man’s quest to build the biggest AI datacenter in California

"Rucci is among the new class of middlemen who inhabit the burgeoning world of datacenter development. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence – galvanized by Silicon Valley companies worth trillions of dollars – has fueled one of the biggest industrial construction booms in history. The technology requires far more computing power than traditional internet services, and that means building enormous new structures to house millions of servers."

At the White House, Trump will pitch an AI ‘golden age’ to a wary nation; The Washington Post, September 29, 2026

Ian Duncan, The Washington Post; At the White House, Trump will pitch an AI ‘golden age’ to a wary nation

After rogue AI agents probed agency websites, Washington’s concerns are at a peak, but the White House has focused on the technology’s promise.

"After weeks of Washington being gripped by a new wave of fear about artificial intelligence gone awry, the Trump administration will take a sharply different take Tuesday, seeking to convince a skeptical public that the nation is instead about to embark on a tech-powered “golden age.”...

The events come at a pivotal moment for the technology. AI firms say their latest systems have become increasingly powerful, showing signs of being able to design their own more-potent successors. But companies have struggled to keep control of the technology, as rogue AI agents have hacked into company and government systems, and a roster of top industry figures have warned that the end result could be catastrophic for humanity...

Yet even as the public’s concerns have grown and Democrats in Congress have pressed for regulation, Trump has largely dismissed the risk, calling it a “hoax.”

Tuesday’s events are a chance for the administration to focus on the upsides of the technology, propelling a different narrative than the warnings introduced by company CEOs in recent weeks. AI’s many boosters expect it will invigorate the economy, push the boundaries of science and help cure diseases. But that message has found only limited traction with a public worried about job losses and rogue bots sowing chaos online."

Data center developer holds town hall in Venango County; YourErie.com, September 23, 2026

Jaxon Abele, YourErie.com; Data center developer holds town hall in Venango County

"In recent months, Keel Infrastructure, a digital and energy infrastructure company, has taken an interest in a small township near Clintonville in Venango County.

Eighteen months ago, the company bought a power plant in Scrubgrass Township along the Allegheny River, which was actively being used as a Bitcoin mine. Now, they aim to transform the site into a data center...

It’s a project that is still very much in its early phases. Brammer told us there is no official design for the center, but they hope to break ground in 2027 if the design is approved.

A permit has yet to be submitted, but the company is working on two other centers in Pennsylvania.

We asked people who live nearby what they think of the new development.

“I am concerned for the environmental impacts that this data center very well could have on the area. Personally, as a mother of two very young children — I’ve got a one-year-old and a three-year-old — and our health and wellbeing is my absolute number one priority,” said Carrie Worsk, Scrubgrass Township resident."

Data centers have united Americans of both parties in a shared hatred; The Washington Post, July 18, 2026

Shira Ovide , The Washington Post; Data centers have united Americans of both parties in a shared hatred

"Kyle Schmidt ticked through what makes him irate about the massive Google data center slated for construction about a mile away from his home near Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

He didn’t like that residents were kept in the dark about what would be built on a pristine tract of mostly forested land. He’s worried about the data center’s potential impact on the community’s water supply and on the dream home that his family moved into last year.

But Schmidt said what really bothers him is the powerlessness he felt as the project advanced and elected officials, Google representatives and bigwig data center backers belittled or misled people who raised concerns...

Opposition in both red and blue regions continued to build to the point where he has tracked about 65 state data center restrictions enacted since the start of 2025, and dozens of cities that have imposed temporary halts to data center development. This week, New York became the first state in the nation to impose a temporary pause on large new data center projects...

Tech giants and other data center backers have been caught off guard by the rapid rise of public opposition, arguing that the hubs are essential for modern digital services and to keep the United States ahead of China on AI."

Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats; The New York Times, July 13, 2026

Ben Casselman, The New York Times; Nearly 200 Economists and Tech Leaders Warn of A.I. Threats

A letter calls for policymakers to do more to understand and respond to potential disruptions from artificial intelligence.

"Artificial intelligence could transform the economy faster than any previous technology, and policymakers must move equally quickly to figure out how to respond, a group of economists and researchers are warning...

The statement, titled “We Must Act Now,” was signed by nearly 200 people, including 15 Nobel laureates and the chief economists of two of the leading A.I. labs, Open AI and Anthropic. Other notable signatories include Jack Clark, a co-founder of Anthropic; Eric Schmidt, the former chief executive of Google; and Vinod Khosla, a prominent venture capitalist.

Tech industry leaders have been warning for several years that as A.I. grows more powerful, it could quickly take over a large share of human work, leading to widespread joblessness."

Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

 Ben Casselman and Tony Romm, The New York Times; Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses

"Economists aren’t sure if or when artificial intelligence will cause widespread job losses. But they do agree on one thing: The federal safety net isn’t ready for such a shock.

The nearly century-old unemployment system, which provides out-of-work Americans with up to 26 weeks of benefits in most states, is unlikely to cover many of the workers who are most at risk of being displaced by A.I., labor experts warn.

Job-retraining programs and other forms of aid designed for an earlier era of displaced workers haven’t been updated for the current threat or, in some cases, have lapsed altogether. And Republicans in Congress last year made it more difficult for people without jobs to receive the food assistance and health care benefits that are meant to be the last line of defense for struggling families.

The bottom line: If droves of Americans are disrupted by technology and turn to the government for help, they may find the aid insufficient — or, worse yet, be ineligible to receive it."

The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance; The Atlantic, April 30, 2026

 Jacob Noti-Victor and Xiyin Tang, The Atlantic; The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance

"More than 90 lawsuits have been filed by creators against AI companies for copyright infringement. Authors, musicians, visual artists, and news publishers have all accused firms such as OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic of using their copyrighted works to train AI models without permission. (The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere.) These cases are frequently framed as the defining fight over the future of creative labor and the entertainment industry as a whole. As one of these lawsuits put it, artists are seeking to end “infringement of their rights before their professions are eliminated by a computer program powered entirely by their hard work.”

But the future of creative labor will more likely be decided through a different question within copyright law, one that has received far less attention: To what extent should AI-generated works receive copyright protection at all? In a 2024 case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a work generated autonomously by an AI system cannot be protected by copyright, because copyright requires a human “author.” The Supreme Court declined to review that decision in March. With the lower-court decision left in place, the question now becomes how much AI content can be incorporated into a work before it becomes mostly or totally uncopyrightable; courts have not yet weighed in on this but may soon.

The Thaler decision (and any future decisions that refine it) will have major economic consequences for the creative industries and the workers they employ."

‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers; Fortune, April 28, 2026

Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune ; ‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers

"Recent tech layoffs would initially appear to indicate the great labor shift from human workers to AI may already be happening."

A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts; The Washington Post, April 26, 2026

Tim Craig, The Washington Post ; A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts

"Throughout Archbald, a northeastern Pennsylvania town of 7,000 people tucked in a valley near the Pocono Mountains, residents are asking similar questions as the community emerges as one of the latest frontiers in the nation’s increasingly chaotic battles over data centers.

Developers plan to build six of the sprawling campuses in Archbald to power the demand for artificial intelligence, eventually covering about 14 percent of the town’s land. Those campuses would include 51 data warehouses — each about the size of a Walmart Supercenter — including seven buildings encompassing more than a million square feet near Bachak’s home...

Three of the four council members who resigned have now been replaced by data center opponents, with one seat still vacant.

It could be months or years before any data centers are built in Archbald. Once plans are approved by the local planning board, state and local permits are needed before construction can start...

Larry West, a local activist and new borough council member, said the tree cutting revived the “wounds” and “hidden scars” in a community where it took decades for the coal dust to be cleared. The town’s trees, West noted, cover abandoned mines.

“Now, it’s happening again but this time it’s data centers,” he added.

Bachak also believes his property will never be the same, even if the Project Gravity site is never completed. He recently installed blinds on his enclosed patio in an attempt to dull the pain he felt whenever he looked out at what used to be the forest lining his backyard.

“No one wants this,” Bachak said, “except the people making money off it.”"