09.29.26 - Republicans Attempt to Rewrite Their Data Center Record + A New Toolkit

The Senate is racing to wrap up their time in Washington and join their House colleagues back at home before the midterm elections. As a result, Senate GOP leaders have teed up votes they believe will be politically popular, including on a bill that purports to deal with data centers’ impacts on energy bills. But this pivot on data centers is a far cry from congressional Republicans’ positions just last year, and could be too little, too late.

Public opinion sours on data centers 

As we discussed in our last issue, public opposition to data centers is skyrocketing. More than 70 percent of Americans don’t want new data centers built in their area, including majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and independents.

I won’t go deep into all the reasons for that opposition within this newsletter — among them, the absence of community buy-in, strain on water resources and the electric grid, and rising utility bills. I strongly encourage you to check out We Build Progress’s explainer, How States are Approaching the Data Center Boom, which breaks down those reasons in detail! 

What’s noteworthy about public opposition to data centers isn’t just that it’s widespread and bipartisan: it’s also pretty new. Americans’ opinions on data centers have grown significantly more negative over the course of 2026 alone. One survey found a 12-point spike in data center opposition in just four months. 

Now, elected officials must reckon with policy positions they staked out on data center development that may be quite out-of-step with their constituents’ current views.

The GOP tries to backpedal on data centers

As a reminder: the GOP’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) created tax incentives for corporations to build big projects in rural areas. Republicans have indicated that encouraging data center construction was a key impetus for the provision. The House’s version of OBBBA simply named the provision “Special Rule for Improvement of Existing Structures in Rural Areas, Including for Data Centers.” House Republicans also note that, with this provision in place, “the economic case for building data centers in designated rural opportunity zones becomes far more compelling.” Similarly, the White House describes OBBBA as “incentivizing the building of data centers.”

While OBBBA’s massive cuts to health care and food access tend to be front-and-center when we talk about this law, the data center tax break has been in the spotlight recently. In fact, this week, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Tina Smith (D-MN) launched an investigation to determine how much data center proliferation is due to OBBBA’s tax breaks. 

The upshot: Democratic lawmakers’ heightened scrutiny and massive public opinion shifts on data centers have Republicans on their heels in the lead-up to the November election. 

One way Republicans hope to deal with this albatross is through a Senate vote tomorrow on the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill directing states to consider mirroring federal rules that would have tech companies cover data centers’ massive energy costs rather than consumers. While this bill passed the House overwhelmingly, it does not require states to adopt new consumer protections against high energy bills, nor does it require Big Tech to eat the cost of data centers’ energy consumption. As such, the bill’s effects could be negligible.   

What’s more, most Republicans in Congress have not embraced calls to halt data center construction, despite polling indicating Americans’ support for such a pause. So, it remains to be seen whether congressional Republicans’ last-minute pivot will convince their constituents that they’re simpatico on this issue — especially when paired with President Trump’s assertion that communities opposing data center construction would end up “backwards and poor.” 

NEW: Data Center Model Policy Guide

For communities that do want to meaningfully regulate data centers, We Build Progress, alongside partner organizations, is excited to launch Communities Take Charge: Data Center Model Policy Guide.

This first-of-its-kind interactive resource is designed to equip community-based organizers and state and local lawmakers with practical, customizable policy tools to regulate proposed and existing data center development.

The Model Policy Guide provides expert-informed legislative templates addressing energy and water use, pollution and environmental impacts, infrastructure costs, permitting and zoning, labor standards and workforce development, subsidies, transparency and reporting, as well as approaches to data center moratoriums, restrictions, and prohibitions. Rather than requiring communities and policymakers to develop legislation from scratch, the guide provides policy language that can be adapted to local priorities and circumstances.

Check out the Data Center Model Policy Guide here! 

If you’d like a live update for your group or coalition, reach out to catherine@webuildprogress.org. Thanks!