From Making The Case substack of August 6, 2026

Across the country, leading Republican candidates are backing taxpayer-funded incentives to bring energy-hungry commercial data centers to their communities with little regard for what it would cost ordinary families. Now, as electric bills spike across the country, some of those same candidates are trying to have it both ways: talking about protecting their communities while refusing to make the industry pay its fair share. Voters around the country aren’t buying what these Republicans are selling.

KEY FACTS AND DATA

• Republican candidates are bending a knee to data centers, cutting them major tax breaks as they increase their constituents’ costs.

  • In Ohio, Senator Jon Husted was a vocal supporter of data centers in his tenure as Lieutenant Governor, and he publicly defended a $43.5 million tax break for Google’s New Albany data center. [Tiffin Ohio]

  • Also in Ohio, gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy wants to accelerate the state’s data center boom while personally holding investments in companies he would regulate as governor. [Tiffin Ohio]

    • Ohio’s data center sales tax exemption alone cost the state $1.6 billion in 2025, part of $2.5 billion in cumulative tax breaks for the industry since 2017. [Tiffin Ohio]

  • Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson is personally invested in a data center in Texas, and says the industry should have “no property taxes for the data center… It’s totally up to them.” [Georgia Recorder]

    • His Democratic opponent, Keisha Lance Bottoms, wants to temporarily pause construction of data centers and “gather all the information, factual information, and then make a determination on how we move forward.” [Georgia Recorder]

  • Frontline House Republicans are also sitting on the fence. Rep. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania wants data centers built “on former industrial sites” while also claiming his district is “ready for development,” and Rep. Zach Nunn of Iowa, who represents more data centers than any other Republican incumbent in a competitive House race, gives lip service to constituents’ concerns while calling his state a “model for how workforce development and AI leadership can work hand in hand.” [PBS News; Politico]

• Republicans’ embrace of unfettered data center expansion could present major risks to everyday Americans.

  • Electricity costs were one of the fastest drivers of inflation in 2025, outpacing other basic expenses, like groceries and medicine. [Center for American Progress]

    • Spiking data center energy use will likely make these costs worse. Wholesale electricity costs have skyrocketed as much as 267% in just five years in areas located near significant data center activity. [Bloomberg]

  • Multiple communities near data centers have already filed lawsuits against their local data centers due to high levels of noise pollution disrupting their daily lives. [Newsweek]

    • Residents of Loudoun County, Virginia, one of the “densest data center hotbeds on Earth” now experience a constant high-pitched whine. One resident commented on the noise, “We don’t want to be outside anymore.” Another resident said he could not walk his dog some days because the noise was “unbearable.” [Politico]

    • Trump said in a recent FOX News interview, “data centers, if you look at the stats, everything’s good around them.” [Newsweek]

  • Some data centers use gas turbines to power their operations. Current planned gas burning data centers would release pollutants that contribute to heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, and strokes, among other health concerns. [New York Times]

    • Outside Memphis, Elon Musk’s xAI recently installed gas turbines for a data center project without obtaining necessary federal clean air permits, as the project would exceed federal permit thresholds. The emissions from Musk’s planned data center would be released near predominantly Black communities that are already estimated to suffer disproportionately from lung disease. [Reuters]

    • Nearby one data center in Loudon, VA, air quality emissions from data centers could cost the community an additional $53 to $99 million in health-related expenses each year. [Harvard School of Public Health]

• In the absence of reasonable safeguards, Americans are worried about the impacts of data centers in their communities.

  • 77% of Americans are concerned that AI will make electricity more expensive. [Reuters/Ipsos]

  • 60% of voters believe that “the energy demand of large commercial energy users, like AI data centers” is at least somewhat responsible for the price they pay for utilities like gas and electricity. [Groundwork Collaborative]

  • 77% of voters are concerned about taxpayers being “forced into subsidizing data center construction without knowing the full cost.” [Morning Consult]

  • 74% of voters are concerned about heavy water use and 73% are concerned about industrial noise from data centers. [Morning Consult]

CALL TO ACTION

Share this video on how some Democrats are holding data centers accountable and protecting consumers.

(Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)