As artificial intelligence reshapes daily life, it's also reshaping the landscape — literally. Across the United States, communities are pushing back against a wave of data center construction and, according to UCLA scholar Megan Mullin, the resistance is doing something rare in American politics: uniting people across party lines.
Mullin, a professor of public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, studies local movements and environmental politics. She began tracking data center development the way most Americans did — through conversations bubbling up organically in her own community, among students and family alike.
"Immediately we saw that allegiances were not as clearly defined as they are for so many areas of politics," Mullin said. The opposition to data centers, she found, blends concrete concerns about resources and community impact with emotional responses about local control, distrust of big institutions and anxiety over what AI means for the future.
A familiar fight, at an unfamiliar scale
Data center battles resemble other land-use fights that have played out for decades — over housing developments, pipelines or renewable energy installations. In each case, Mullin said, communities have crossed party lines to oppose projects they see as threatening the places they live.
What's different this time is scale and simultaneity. Rather than a single controversial project, thousands of data centers are being proposed, built or expanded across the country all at once. That has allowed opposition movements to network nationally, sharing strategies and evidence in a way that transforms scattered local fights into a broader, cross-partisan movement — an unusual phenomenon in an era defined by rigid partisan sorting.
"By happening all at once, it's becoming this national resistance that is crossing party lines, which is so unusual in this highly polarized era," Mullin said.
She describes the opposition as building in layers. At the most basic level, residents don't want a large industrial structure altering the visual character of the place they call home. From there, concerns escalate to tangible resource impacts: Will a data center strain local water supplies during drought? Will it complicate an already difficult transition to a cleaner, more resilient electricity grid or drive up utility bills?
Layered on top of that are broader anxieties about corporate power and unease about what the rapid expansion of AI means for the future. Data centers, Mullin said, have become a physical stand-in for all of these fears at once.
Local and state responses have varied widely. Some cities, including Coachella and Monterey Park in California, have enacted outright bans on new data center construction. Others are taking a more measured approach — pausing to gather information on water, energy and land-use impacts before deciding how, or whether, to proceed. The fate of some projects may be determined by the midterm elections: In races across the country, a candidate's support or opposition to data centers has become a litmus test for voters.
The economics of 'cheap' data
A central theme in Mullin's analysis is cost. Data storage and AI tools have been remarkably inexpensive, she noted. That low cost, she said, has discouraged businesses and technology firms from thinking critically about how much data they store and demand.
Amid community resistance, data center developers have been compelled to negotiate community benefit agreements, navigate higher permitting costs and search harder for viable sites. As construction becomes more expensive, those costs will likely be passed on to data users.
Mullin doesn't see that as a bad thing. "We should all be facing the costs of this activity, of these products that we are all using," she said. "We can only make good decisions about data use if we face more of the costs."
Importantly, Mullin doesn't believe local resistance will actually stop data center construction nationwide — only redirect it. Comparing money in politics to water finding its way around an obstacle, she said developers blocked in one community will simply build in another. The policy challenge, she argued, is ensuring that the same disadvantaged communities that have long absorbed unwanted development aren't left holding the bag again and that binding commitments are made to offset the burden.
Politicians caught in the middle
The politics surrounding data centers have shifted quickly. Mullin noted that when data centers first emerged as a political issue, there was no consistent partisan divide — receptive and resistant politicians existed on both sides of the aisle. Over time, however, many officials who initially welcomed data centers, citing economic benefits, have grown more cautious as their constituents' opposition has intensified.
She pointed to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and California Gov. Gavin Newsom as examples of leaders adjusting their policies amid competing pressures. On one side is overwhelming public opposition to hosting data centers locally. On the other, pressure from a tech industry that argues that these facilities are critical economic drivers.
"The development trajectory that AI is on is fueling people's retirement plans, fueling the stock market, fueling the nation's economy in many ways right now," Mullin said. That's a consideration that carries extra weight for Newsom — a governor from San Francisco, neighbor to Silicon Valley — who is widely seen as eyeing a future national campaign.
In 2025, Newsom vetoed legislation that would have required data centers to disclose their water usage. In a sign of the shifting winds, the governor last week signed a sweeping package of legislation aimed at tracking the centers' water and electricity consumption and shielding consumers from rising utility costs. A statement from the governor called the move "the most comprehensive data center laws in the nation."
Hear more from Megan Mullin: "Data centers' are coming" and "AI data centers are becoming political."
A potential upside — with conditions
Amid the tensions, Mullin sees a possible middle path. Data centers, she said, could become productive community partners rather than pure burdens, funding investments in community infrastructure and resilience initiatives — if they are developed through genuine planning and negotiation with local stakeholders rather than through "backroom deals."
She pointed to Loudoun County, Virginia — one of the earliest and largest hubs of data center development — where the facilities now generate roughly 40% of county tax revenue, allowing officials to invest in public facilities and lower residential tax rates. Data centers create relatively few permanent jobs, Mullin noted, but can be significant sources of property tax revenue from their buildings and equipment.
Still, she cautioned that even in Loudoun County, satisfaction may be eroding as noise and visual impacts become more apparent to residents.
For local officials and residents weighing whether and how to host a new data center, Mullin's advice centers on transparency. The race to build new projects often leaves communities in the dark about project impacts.
"Without information being made public, communities won't know what they're getting into," Mullin said. "Sunlight, transparency is key."
The friction surrounding data centers resonated deeply with students in Mullin's U.S. Environmental Politics course earlier this year. And one of her UCLA Luskin undergraduates is pursuing independent research into moratoriums in communities across California — a rare bright spot, she said, in a political landscape that otherwise can feel gridlocked.
