In a divided America, the left and right unite to oppose artificial
intelligence data centers
[August 26, 2026]
By WILL WEISSERT and SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN
MURDOCK, Neb. (AP) — In rural eastern Nebraska, a technology revolution
could rise from fields of corn and soybean in the form of new data
centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.
But just like around many parts of the country, opposition has been
building in ways that defy typical partisan boundaries. Conservative
farmers and the state Sierra Club chapter recently found common cause
against labor leaders as they filled the firehouse in Murdock —
population around 275 — to share concerns about data center development
moving too quickly.
The scene exemplified an unlikely coalition that worries about dwindling
farmland, declining water supplies and rising electricity bills — not to
mention how massive corporations could reshape small town America into
nodes in a national network of computing warehouses.
The debate around data center projects is one of the rare modern issues
to cut across party lines, demographics and geography — from
Republican-dominated Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming to swing-state
Pennsylvania to Democratic-leaning New Mexico.
Supporters of data centers, including Republican President Donald Trump
and some union leaders who usually back Democrats, praise a potential
jobs and economic bonanza, while helping the U.S. thwart China in the
geopolitical race for technological supremacy.
But hostility toward developments coming at breakneck speed has surged
ahead of November's midterm elections, and forced national, state and
local elected officials to adapt to a shifting political landscape.
Judy Stroy, a fifth-generation Nebraska farmer whose late husband grew
corn and soybeans and whose son still does, worried that with “the
amount of ground that’s getting gobbled up every year, our food source
is in trouble.”
“That should scare everyone,” she said.
Some areas have paused data center expansion
Stroy's fields are just outside Murdock, a village named for a railroad
official at the company that first laid tracks here in the 1890s.
There's a school, a post office, a bar and a Corn Grower’s State Bank
branch, plus the Midwest Farmer's Coop where growers sell their produce
and buy supplies like feed and fertilizer.
Murdock is in Cass County, where officials recently approved a 12-month
moratorium on allowing data center development.
That might freeze energy company Tenaska's plans to potentially option
1,300-plus acres of land along Highway 75, south of the nearby villages
of Murray and Beaver Lake, in a project that activists fear would pave
the way for a data center and its own natural gas power plant.
Tenaska spokesperson Leighton Elise Eusebio said the company has been
exploring "the feasibility of developing power generation to serve large
loads, whether that is a data center or other form of economic
development.”
“We believe there are opportunities to work with public power,
communities and other stakeholders to develop power generation that will
benefit Nebraskans,” Eusebio said in a statement.
Meanwhile, data center operator CyrusOne has nearly 400 acres under its
control outside another Cass County community, Plattsmouth, also along
Highway 75, but no development has occurred nor has a project been
announced, according to a CyrusOne spokesperson.
The area may be seen as particularly favorable because the highway has
been widened, offering easy access to Omaha to the northeast, and to the
college town of Lincoln to the southwest. The Missouri River provides a
reasonably close, major water source.
Some landowners accepted large checks to sell. Local land typically can
go for $10,000 an acre, residents say, and developers sometimes offer
four times that, or even more.
Such paydays can be extra enticing as farming has gotten more expensive
amid rising diesel prices and soybean exports that have declined in the
midst of Trump's tariff fight with a major market for the crop, China.
“What if somebody offered me $40,000 an acre for my ground? It would be
hard to turn down,” Stroy conceded.
Nebraska Sierra Club attorney Ken Winston noted that tech giants have
made donations to municipal programs in Lincoln to help mitigate the
impact of data centers.
“We need to be aware of the fact that they’re going to happen
somewhere," Winston said. “But communities need to be able to protect
themselves and if they don’t want them, they should be able to say no."
Major project sparks New Mexico divisions
There is no development moratorium in New Mexico that could stop Project
Jupiter, a $165 billion data center complex planned near the Mexican
border, but concerns over dwindling water supplies are mounting.
“It is not about blue vs. red, or whether we’re a purple state or
county,” said Samantha Barncastle Salopek, a longtime water attorney,
who is running as a Republican for a seat on the Doña Ana County
Commission partly because of the project.
“This is about the local community coming together and saying, ‘Hold on,
hold on.' We didn’t get enough information, and now we’re very concerned
because also we have to cut back our water use anyway," she said.
Barncastle Salopek, whose family grows pecans, said she frequently
fields worried calls from farmers, ranchers and local business owners
across the political spectrum and in other states.
“When we have to fight over the last piece of the pie, those big
companies are going to win,” she said of pressure on remaining water
supplies. That's because New Mexico has been hammered by persistent
drought, and large swaths of the Rio Grande have dried up in the central
part of the state.
The largest reservoir stands at 1.3% capacity, lows unseen since the
early 1970s, even though New Mexico is on the hook to deliver more water
to Texas under a recent settlement approved by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Activists worry that New Mexico's pecan, chile and other farms could
disappear, taking schools, hospitals and supporting businesses and
incomes with them.
Oracle, which announced Project Jupiter, has offered funding for youth
programs and pledged to invest $50 million in water and wastewater
systems in Doña Ana County.
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Protesters gather outside a state office to voice opposition to the
Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe,
N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)
It also plans to partner with an agriculture technology company to
install sensors providing real-time data to farmers to help them use
water more efficiently — estimating an eventual savings of 21
million gallons annually.
An Oracle spokesperson called the project a generational New Mexico
investment, saying it would generate $4.7 billion in taxes and
create more than 7,000 construction jobs and 1,500 long-term jobs
while being designed to use little water over 15 years, given its
closed-loop cooling and fuel-cell systems.
Still, the Center for Biological Diversity last week filed an
emergency petition with the New Mexico Supreme Court, challenging
the state’s approval of well drilling to supply millions of gallons
of water for Project Jupiter’s construction.
The court on Sunday granted that request, halting authorization to
use water from a new well until the legal fight is concluded.
During a recent protest in the state capital of Santa Fe, the
demonstrators included Jesus Rodriguez, who traveled four-plus hours
from his micro-farm in southern New Mexico.
“The fact is that now the money has taken over,” said Rodriguez, who
described himself as disillusioned with American politics. “Now it
shows that the Democrats, Republicans, or whatever other party is
involved, they don’t care about the land. They care about money. And
that’s because they want power.”
Some labor leaders see new job opportunities
Data centers have found an ally in organized labor, including Mike
Gage, president and secretary-treasurer of the Nebraska State
AFL-CIO. Gage said he personally was worried that some workers are
seeing their jobs replaced by AI, but that the centers can also
create construction jobs and longer-term positions for people
running the finished product.
“This problem is also a very big opportunity for some small
communities,” Gage said. He noted that a data center built decades
ago in Council Bluffs, Iowa, near Omaha, still employs about 60
people today.
Heather McKenzie, who works in labor relations in Lincoln, said
putting more data centers in Nebraska can slow an exodus of skilled
young people leaving the state.
“I don’t think that enough people understand that this is going to
create really good jobs,” she said. “I think a lot of people view it
in a negative sense because it’s being sprung on them.”
Chris Backemeyer, a Democratic congressional candidate in the
district that includes Murdock, is a former State Department
employee. He said he heard about Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates offering to host data centers for the U.S., which might
concentrate technology outside the country.
“That scares the bejesus out of me,” Backemeyer said.
Trump champions data centers, but some Republicans are wary
The president has warned about China's technology gains and
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said that a federal pause on
data center construction might be a “dangerous prospect.”
Still, most registered voters oppose building a data center in their
area, according to a July Fox News poll, including 60% of
Republicans and 53% of MAGA voters.
Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered a one-year ban on
large data centers. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a fellow
Democrat, said his administration would no longer prioritize data
center projects when it comes to issuing construction permits or
granting developers lucrative tax exemptions if they don’t meet
certain standards.
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced a halt on approval of
new data centers until audits determine their impact on the state's
electrical grid.
Abbott told ABC News that data centers hadn't been working in
collaboration with state or local officials and “basically dug their
own grave for the problem that’s been caused for them, and that’s
why they got the backlash they deserve.”
The Republican Party's Senate campaign arm is worried enough about
the issue potentially deciding races in Ohio, that it drafted a memo
outlining how to respond. But politicians on both sides of the aisle
have turned data centers into a punching bag.
Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray, a Republican running for an
open House seat, has pledged to halt their construction.
“If Silicon Valley wants to build their liberal empire, they can do
it somewhere else,” he said in an ad.
That overlaps with an ad for the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania,
Democrat Paige Cognetti, who said "we are not for sale” when it
comes to data centers. Cognetti is trying to unseat first-term
Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan in a battleground district.
Trump is undeterred, saying that what data centers mean “for a
community is jobs and lots of money and lower taxes.” The president
has also conceded, however, that tech companies and developers maybe
“can use a little public relations help.”
Seeking to soften fears about rising utility prices, Trump says his
administration has urged data centers to build their own power
plants.
Yet, during a recent meeting in the conservative East Texas town of
Tyler, residents complained of being forced to live in a “gas cloud”
so data centers can get enough electricity.
The complaint echoed a similar objection from Kardal Coleman, who
leads the Democratic Party in big-city Dallas County. He wrote a
recent email decrying data centers for "replacing our jobs,
polluting our air, and exacerbating the climate crisis, not to
mention the noise disturbing our neighborhoods.”
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Montoya Bryan reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico.
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