Trump Tells Data Center Opponents They'll End Up 'Backwards and Poor' as Kansas Cities Sue Residents Over Petitions

Since the National Republican Senatorial Committee's August 18 memo warned that data center backlash could sink Sen. Jon Husted's Ohio race, the fight over AI infrastructure has split into two distinct battles: a messaging war from the White House and a legal fight over who actually controls local land-use decisions.

President Trump weighed in Monday on Truth Social, telling communities that oppose new data centers they risk becoming "backwards and poor." "If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign," he wrote, adding that "China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement."

Vice President JD Vance defended the message to reporters the same day, according to ABC News, arguing Trump's point was economic: companies building data centers need to build power plants alongside them. Vance said rising utility bills are driving the backlash but argued deregulation would fix that, not less construction.

The Numbers Behind the Backlash

The political stakes are real. The NRSC memo, obtained by CNBC, said private polling shows Husted in a "dead heat" with Democratic challenger Sherrod Brown in Ohio's special Senate election, and that data centers are "the new problem" undercutting an otherwise favorable race.

Wolfe Research went further in an August 28 report, telling investors that "the pace and scale of the backlash is genuinely breathtaking," citing 60-point drops in net local support for data center construction over the past 12 months, across party lines. Gallup found in March that 70% of Americans oppose building data centers in their own area, with 48% strongly opposed.

Kansas Cities Sue Their Own Voters

The sharpest new flashpoint isn't rhetorical. It's legal, and it's playing out in Kansas.

Edgerton, El Dorado and Emporia have each filed lawsuits against citizen petitions seeking to restrict or ban large data centers, according to Newsweek. Kansas law lets residents force a local vote or ordinance adoption if they gather enough signatures. In each city, officials are instead going to court to argue the petitions are invalid.

Edgerton filed suit August 4 against residents Carrie Schmidt and Kimberly Twente and the group Public Trust Collective, after the Johnson County Election Office certified enough valid signatures to force the city to adopt the measure or put it to voters. The city instead sued, calling the petition "legally and factually deficient." Edgerton argues it doesn't provide water to the proposed site and doesn't operate its own electric utility, that's Evergy, and that the petition's 100,000-gallon-per-day water threshold would selectively target data centers while exempting other industrial users. City Attorney Todd Luckman said residents were named as defendants because Kansas law requires it when a court ruling could affect their interests.

That's a fair legal point. But it doesn't change the optics: three city governments are suing their own residents to keep a citizen-initiated question off the ballot, which is exactly the kind of local-control fight that should trouble anyone who believes voters, not city attorneys, should decide zoning questions that affect their water and power bills.

States Move Faster Than Washington

Federal policy on data centers remains scattered across executive actions and grid rules, according to SupplyChainBrain, leaving states to act on their own. New York enacted the country's first statewide moratorium on data center approvals, running up to one year, and Texas followed within a month. Temporary bans have also taken hold in cities across Missouri, Indiana, Georgia, Colorado, North Carolina and Washington state.

The political fallout has already claimed jobs. In Festus, Missouri, voters recalled their mayor and four of eight city council members in April after they approved a $6 billion data center. In Yukon, Oklahoma, a recall vote targeting the mayor who backed a similar project is scheduled for November.

In Colorado Springs, planning commissioners voted 6-2 to advance a data center proposed by Raeden near Garden of the Gods this summer despite more than 100 public comments against it and only 15 in favor, a lopsided ratio cited by Common Dreams as evidence that local sentiment isn't translating into local outcomes.

What's Actually Driving Complaints

SupplyChainBrain reports that data center construction starts jumped 190% year-over-year in 2025, citing ConstructionConnection data. The World Resources Institute estimates a single large facility can use as much electricity as 100,000 homes, with some newer ones running up to 20 times that. A mid-sized facility needs roughly 1,000 households' worth of water for cooling. The largest can require as much as a town of 50,000 people. Residents near facilities in Southaven, Mississippi, told CBS News their local data center produces noise and air pollution severe enough that they're organizing to fight it, with SupplyChainBrain noting some facilities generate 96 decibels of constant noise, comparable to a running lawnmower.

None of that resolves the underlying tension Vance identified: data centers plainly bring jobs and tax revenue, and the U.S. is racing China on AI infrastructure. But the Kansas lawsuits raise a narrower, testable question that has nothing to do with AI policy: whether city governments can lawfully block certified citizen petitions from reaching a ballot. Kansas courts haven't ruled yet, and Yukon's recall vote in November will be the first concrete measure of whether voters follow through when given the actual chance.