The Federal Government Can't Make a Single City Say Yes

In late June, Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell filed eminent domain legislation to seize the property where DC Blox planned a 50-megawatt data center. The government's land-taking power — the same legal tool states use to clear the way for highways and pipelines — was being turned against the very infrastructure the president had just designated as critical to national security. A petition backing the seizure swelled past 500,000 signatures. ^[1] Nashville is the sharpest edge of a pattern that has spread to 49 states. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, at least 75 data center projects valued at nearly $130 billion were blocked or delayed — the highest quarterly obstruction rate since 2023. Grassroots opposition groups have doubled to 833, a figure Data Center Watch calls something more than a spike.

The quarter reflected a structural shift rather than a cyclical spike: communities have internalized an opposition playbook, legislative sessions introduced formal regulatory uncertainty, and the number of active opposition groups more than doubled to 833 across 49 states. — Data Center Watch

The tools local governments are using are not new. They are the same century-old land-use powers — moratoriums, zoning rewrites, tax-incentive repeals — that American municipalities have always wielded. What is new is the scale and speed of their deployment against a single industry. Monterey Park, California passed the first permanent ban on data centers with 86% voter support. New York became the first state to enact a statewide moratorium. ^[2] Missoula County, Seattle, Denver, Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and communities across Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, and North Carolina have all imposed temporary halts. ^[3][4][5] Frederick County, Virginia removed data centers as a permitted zoning use entirely. Arizona and Texas — the state that leads the nation in data center projects — are re-evaluating the tax incentives that drew them there. ^[3][6] The resistance is not partisan. Maine State Rep. Melanie Sachs put it plainly.

Red states, blue states, and purple states are having this conversation. — Melanie Sachs

Researcher David Krueger found the rural opposition to be "quite non-partisan or bipartisan." ^[7] And the resistance is not anti-technology. Ohio's Barry Blankenship, who leads a campaign against data centers in Adams and Brown counties, framed it as a land-use question, not a categorical objection.

It's not anti-data center. It's anti where they're putting it. — Barry Blankenship

The numbers behind the backlash are concrete. Peak water demand at data center sites runs 6 to 30 times annual averages. Water bills rose 33% in Newton County, Georgia. PJM wholesale power prices jumped 76% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2026. ^[8] A Gallup poll found 71% of Americans oppose AI data centers in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed — a resistance level that surpasses opposition to nuclear power plants. ^[9] In April, President Trump designated data centers as critical national security infrastructure and launched a "Build, Baby, Build!" campaign to ensure U.S. AI dominance over China. ^[10] The designation carried strategic weight but no zoning authority. American federalism places land-use power with states and localities, and the executive order did not — and legally could not — preempt a single municipal zoning board. When asked about the local opposition spreading across the country, Trump's answer was direct.

No, I’m not worried about it. — Donald Trump

The administration's actual response came in two forms. The first was a voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge signed by Microsoft, Meta, OpenAI, and Amazon — a non-binding commitment for companies to fund their own power infrastructure. Trump himself framed the problem as a matter of perception.

People think that if the data center goes in, their electricity is going to go up. — Donald Trump

Critics from Public Citizen and Food & Water Watch called the pledge what it was.

Data centers … they need some PR help. — Donald Trump

The second response came from House Energy and Commerce Republicans, who urged the administration to investigate whether China is funding domestic data center opposition. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum suggested "foreign dark money" was driving the protests. ^[5] The claim reframes community resistance as a foreign influence operation, but it does not override a single zoning decision either. Neither does the voluntary pledge. Neither does the critical-infrastructure designation. The federal government has identified the infrastructure it needs and has no legal mechanism to make any local government approve it. The gap is visible in the responses that are actually working. In Michigan, the $16 billion Stargate data center in Saline Township proceeded only after developers sued the township board to overturn a rezoning denial; an October consent judgment allowed construction in exchange for $14 million in community benefits. ^[2] In Hill County, Texas, a developer filed a $100 million lawsuit that forced the county to rescind its construction moratorium. ^[11] The pattern is consistent: local blocking is overcome through litigation and buyouts, not through any federal mechanism. And local governments are adapting — Columbia Borough, Pennsylvania voted to remove data centers from permitted uses specifically to avoid "lengthy legal appeals" from developers. ^[12] Hamilton County, Tennessee approved a one-year moratorium with the explicit goal of crafting zoning codes that can survive lawsuits.

This one year path will allow us to enact zoning code changes that would be permanent and would stand up to any legal challenge. — Weston Wamp

The states are splitting. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker paused tax credits and said operators should pay for their own power. ^[13]

I think locals, people in the local community, should have more say about the siting of where those data centers go because unless they’re incredibly well built, they produce a lot of noise. — JB Pritzker

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine suspended a critical tax break after costs exploded from a projected $142 million to nearly $1.6 billion. ^[14] Pennsylvania passed model ordinances with mandatory water and electricity reporting and $10,000-a-day non-compliance penalties; Kentucky stripped similar protections after utility lobbying. ^[15] U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders proposed a nationwide moratorium — the inverse of the White House's "Build, Baby, Build!" strategy. ^[16] Meanwhile, U.S. Representative Rob Bresnahan introduced the Local Control Protection Act to shield small municipalities from developer lawsuits when they deny data center projects — the first federal legislation to arm local governments against the legal power of developers, rather than to override them. ^[17] The United Kingdom is pursuing the same sovereign AI ambition — Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched a £1.1 billion sovereign compute strategy, with Technology Secretary Liz Kendall calling AI "the defining currency of economic and hard power in today's world." ^[18] The UK faces the same local resistance: nearly 5,000 people signed a petition against the Norwich Apex Data Centre in Norfolk. ^[19] But the UK deployed a tool the United States has not. The government designated Lanarkshire, Scotland as a national AI Growth Zone, using top-down planning authority to push an £8.2 billion data center complex through over local objection. ^[20] The designation has not resolved every dispute — job numbers remain contested, power provision unresolved — but it exists. The US federal government has not attempted anything like it, and the structure of American federalism makes it far from clear that it could. The binding constraint on American AI ambition is not chips. It is not power generation, though that is strained. It is not talent or capital. It is the thousand city councils and county commissions that can say no, and the absence of any federal mechanism to make them say yes. The president can designate data centers as critical infrastructure. He cannot zone a single acre. And the local governments that can are, increasingly, choosing not to.