Trump Says Your Town Is "Making a Mistake." Here's What the Record Actually Shows.

On August 23, 2026, an interview President Trump recorded with his former attorney Michael Cohen aired in full. Asked about the data center fights spreading through both red and blue states, Trump was unambiguous: communities that turn projects away are "making a mistake," because data centers bring "tremendous amounts of jobs and money." He added that operators "are making their own power plants" and that the facilities are not drawing from the existing grid, and said the U.S. leads China in AI "by a lot" (Axios, Aug 23; The Hill, Aug 23; Forbes, Aug 24).

It was the second time this month. On August 7, responding to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's pause on new data center grid connections, Trump called the state's position "a mistake" and said the industry "could be bigger than oil" (Texas Tribune, Aug 7).

Those remarks are not off-the-cuff. They are the rhetorical layer on top of a federal program that has been building since July 2025. If you are heading into a zoning hearing, it is worth knowing exactly what that program does — and, more importantly, what it does not do.

Part 1 — What the administration has actually built

Permitting (July 2025). Executive Order Accelerating Federal Permitting of Data Center Infrastructure directs agencies to streamline environmental review, offer financial support through Commerce, and open federal land. It covers "Qualifying Projects" — those adding more than 100 MW of new load, costing at least $500 million, or serving national security (White & Case; Beveridge & Diamond).

Federal land. DOE named four sites — Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant, and Savannah River — and the Air Force added five bases (Arnold, Edwards, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, Davis-Monthan, Robins). In Kentucky, DOE has since announced a Paducah "AI and high-performance computing innovation campus" with NextEra, Brookfield and three utilities, pitched at more than $100 billion in private investment, 8,000 construction jobs and 600 permanent ones (DOE; NOTUS).

Progress is uneven. Counsel at Davis Graham note that the Interior Department — which manages over 530 million acres — has identified no sites at all, because BLM would likely need multi-year resource management plan amendments first, and that EPA's brownfield and Superfund criteria have lagged their own deadline.

Grid access (June 2026). On June 18, FERC issued show-cause orders under section 206 of the Federal Power Act to all six RTOs and ISOs — PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE and NYISO — preliminarily finding their tariffs may be unjust and unreasonable because they don't adequately handle large-load and co-located interconnection. Grid operators got 60 days to respond, extendable to 150 (FERC docket RM26-4; Holland & Knight; Utility Dive).

The pledge (Feb–July 2026). Trump announced the Ratepayer Protection Pledge in the February 24 State of the Union. On March 4, seven hyperscalers — Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI — signed at the White House. On July 23 it was expanded to add 55 utilities, 106 cooperatives, 28 developers and 23 governors, every one of them Republican; the White House says signatories now cover roughly 80% of power delivered to American homes and businesses (White House; POWER Magazine; NOTUS).

The five commitments are worth reading closely, because they are close to what communities have been asking for:

1. Build, bring, or buy new power supply to cover the load
2. Pay for the new power delivery infrastructure
3. Pay for that power whether or not they use it
4. Invest in local jobs and workforce development
5. Contribute to grid and community resilience

Part 2 — What critics say, and they are not all Democrats

It has no teeth. This is the near-universal criticism, and it comes from across the spectrum. In a July 9 analysis for Brookings, David M. Klaus and Mark MacCarthy argue the pledge needs enforcement to mean anything: separate rate classes for large loads, standardized tariff models developed through NARUC, take-or-pay contracts, and independent oversight of interconnection agreements. Without them, they warn residential rates could climb 15–40% by 2030. Jeff Dennis of the Electricity Customer Alliance put the practical problem to NOTUS more mildly: "We'll be interested to see how utilities that have signed this pledge go about implementing that specific piece."

The signatories are fighting enforcement elsewhere. A staff attorney at The Utility Reform Network has pointed out that the same companies signing in Washington have opposed state-level bills that would make the same promises binding, California among them. Consumer Reports found 75% of American adults are not confident developers will actually cover their own costs.

The state-level free-market critique. ALEC, no one's idea of a degrowth outfit, supports the pledge but frames the whole question as regulatory competition — states with "complex mandates and higher energy costs risk deterring data center investment." That is the honest version of the industry's argument, and it is the one your developer will make: if you say no, they go somewhere else.

FERC's own ratepayer advocates aren't satisfied. Consumer advocates from four PJM states plus the Pennsylvania Office of Consumer Advocate told FERC its PJM order still leaves existing customers holding part of the data-center-driven transmission bill (Utility Dive). Former FERC Commissioner Allison Clements noted a structural gap: the orders reach only RTO regions, leaving roughly a third of Americans outside them entirely.

And the claim that data centers aren't taking grid power is hard to square with the auctions. PJM's capacity price went from $28.92/MW-day in the 2024/25 auction to $329.17/MW-day for 2026/27. Analysis by IEEFA and SemiAnalysis attributes the majority of the increase to data center load — removing projected data centers from the forecast cuts total capacity payments by roughly $9.3 billion. Some large campuses genuinely are building dedicated generation. Many are not, and the bill for those shows up in a capacity auction that every household in the footprint pays into.

Part 3 — The politics turned before the policy did

The most important number in this story isn't a megawatt figure.

Gallup, surveying 1,000 adults March 2–18, 2026 (±4 points), found 71% of Americans oppose construction of an AI data center in their local area, 48% strongly. Only 25% were in favor and just 7% strongly so. Opposition ran higher than opposition to a local nuclear plant (53%) — and it was highest in the Midwest (76%) and South (75%), the regions the buildout is moving into fastest.

And it is still moving. The Annenberg Public Policy Center's Institutions of Democracy survey (SSRS, n=1,320, ±3.5) found opposition to new local data centers rose from 49% in February–March to 61% by June–July 2026, with support falling from 21% to 14% — twelve points in four months (phys.org).

That is why the reaction to Trump's remarks was not partisan. Governor Abbott — a Republican, in the state with the most aggressive load growth in the country — said AI companies "dug their own grave" by failing to work with local officials, and paused new grid connections pending a review that Axios reports touches as many as 1,800 projects (Axios, Aug 23). Forbes reports GOP strategists worrying openly about midterm exposure, particularly in Ohio.

In Congress the response is already bipartisan in both directions. Senators Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced the GRID Act on February 11, 2026, which would require data centers to source power independently of the grid over a 10-year transition, put consumers first in line, and mandate public disclosure of electricity use. On July 21 the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced the Ratepayer Protection Act (H.R. 9340) from Reps. Gabe Evans (R-CO) and Kathy Castor (D-FL) by 52–0 — a PURPA amendment that would require state regulators to consider making 100+ MW data centers cover the full incremental cost of grid upgrades. That is the pledge, with a statute behind it.

Part 4 — What this actually means for your hearing

Here is the part that matters, and it is the part the coverage tends to bury.

1. The federal orders do not preempt you. MultiState's tracker is explicit: the executive orders "do not preempt state permitting requirements, zoning laws, or energy regulations" (MultiState). A December 2025 order directed Commerce to publish a list of state AI laws deemed invalid; as of MultiState's April review, no such list had been published. Federal enthusiasm is not federal authority. Your zoning code is still your zoning code.

2. The 100 MW threshold leaves most projects out. The federal fast lane starts at 100 MW and $500 million. States are legislating down to 10 MW, and 27 of them are advancing large-load bills; California, Ohio and Utah have enacted them. Maine is positioned to enact the first statewide moratorium, through November 2027. The project in front of your board is far more likely to be governed by that layer than by anything in Washington.

3. The pledge is a document you can hold a developer to — locally. This is the single most useful thing to take from the last six months. If your developer's parent company is on the White House list, they have publicly committed to bringing their own power, paying for delivery infrastructure, and paying whether or not they use it. The pledge has no federal enforcement. A community benefits agreement does. Ask, on the record, whether they will put commitments 1, 2 and 3 into a binding CBA and a signed tariff — and note the answer in the minutes either way. Our model clause library has the take-or-pay and cost-causation language.

4. "They'll just go elsewhere" is testable, not axiomatic. Brookings cites Sightline Climate's estimate that as much as half of announced 2026 projects may never materialize, and counts at least 48 projects worth $156 billion blocked by local opposition in 2025. That is not proof a given developer is bluffing. It is proof the sector's announcement pipeline is not the same thing as its build pipeline — and your board is entitled to ask which one it is looking at.

5. Watch the interconnection venue, not the podium. FERC's show-cause orders will reshape how your RTO treats large loads over the next year, and state PUCs will decide the rate class question. Those are the proceedings where the money actually moves. Our permit and docket lookup points at the RTO queue and PUC docket for a given project.

The honest summary

The President's position is consistent and has been for eighteen months: build fast, build big, treat this as an industrial race with China. His administration has paired that with a real attempt to answer the cost objection — the Ratepayer Protection Pledge asks for close to the right things. What it does not have is a mechanism. It is a promise made in Washington that has to be enforced in fifty state capitals and several thousand county buildings, by people with no obligation to enforce it.

Which puts the burden exactly where it has been all along. The pledge only becomes real in the room where the vote happens. Bring a copy.

See also: Moratorium tracker — what other communities have enacted, with sources and expiry dates · Start here — a three-week plan for a zoning fight · 2026 Senate races — where candidates stand on making data centers pay their own way.

This piece links to primary documents and to reporting from Axios, The Hill, Forbes, the Texas Tribune, Utility Dive, POWER Magazine, NOTUS, Brookings, Gallup and the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Where an outlet's framing is contested, we've said so. Corrections: reach out through the newsletter signup.