An area of Pennsylvania once known for its anti-immigration crackdown is now resisting data centers, just one example of how the AI buildout has created a unified, bipartisan front in an increasingly splintered America.
About 20 years ago, Hazleton passed the controversial Illegal Immigration Relief Act, which withheld permits from businesses employing undocumented immigrants and fined landlords who rented to them. Capitalizing on a time of deindustrialization and demographic changes in a heavily Hispanic city, the law galvanized a base of white, working-class supporters.
Fast forward to today, and Hazle Township, the area where Hazleton sits at the foot of the Poconos, is still making headlines. But this time, it’s the AI infrastructure boom. Data center opponents, diverse in both class and political party, have jumbled what was considered a left-versus-right issue and created a powerful united front pushing politicians to alter their platforms and policies in a consequential election year.
Over the summer, residents of Hazle Township received letters from NorthPoint Development, offering the township’s 4,500 residents each a potential $10,000 payday in exchange for permission to build a 1,300-acre data center in the area, part of the developer’s $165 million proposed investment into the township. At the same time, about 30 properties in nearby Sugarloaf Township faced eminent domain threats from the local utilities company over a proposed high-voltage power line that would run through the homes and power that same proposed data center, dubbed Project Hazelnut.
Locals formed the group Alliance to Stop the Line and filed 20 formal protests against the utilities company over the health and property-cost risks associated with the power line, while others filed right-to-know requests, demanding transparency on the end user of Project Hazelnut, which emails revealed to be Amazon. An Amazon spokesperson told Fortune it is “evaluating multiple sites across the Commonwealth” but does not have a definitive agreement in place with NorthPoint.
What has stuck out to some locals is the demographics of those opposing the data center. Annie Vinatieri, a Sugarloaf Township protester, observed that the data center opponents are a combination of working, middle, and upper classes, mostly white, but definitely nonpartisan, including many who are new to environmental protests.
“It’s invigorating, in the sense that you’re meeting people who might not be like-minded on a lot of things, but it feels for so many people like this a righteous cause,” she told Fortune. “We can maybe disagree on the political finer points of things, but we can find this very real camaraderie in the midst of everything.”
Why data centers became a bipartisan enemy
Data centers have become the common enemy of Democrats and Republicans alike. About 70% of Americans oppose data center construction in their local areas, according to one Gallup poll, including 75% of Democrats and 63% of Republicans.
The backlash is beginning to have material impacts on the tempo of the AI boom. At least 75 data center projects worth more than $130 billion total were delayed or cancelled in the first three months of this year, according to a Data Center Watch report published in June. All the while, active opposition groups grew from 396 to 833 over the same period.
One significant reason behind the bipartisan dissent toward data centers is how tech companies have marketed them to the American people, Tatishe Nteta, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of UMass Poll, told Fortune.
“There has been little to no clear communication of the benefits, economic or otherwise, that are associated with data centers for everyday Americans,” he said. “And there has been extremely clear communication regarding the costs, whether those be environmental in terms of increased use of energy…but also the cost that’s associated more largely with artificial intelligence on the economic well-being of Americans.”
The universality of data center hate has allowed Democrats to make it a wedge issue, Nteta said. But AI infrastructure and AI more broadly have also struck chords with ideologies held by both Republicans and Democrats, just in different flavors, according to Ben Green, assistant professor of public policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School.
For example, environmental concerns around data center buildouts are bipartisan. The difference is that Democrats use words like “climate change” to define the issue, but Republicans focus more on the protection of land.
“Democrats and Republicans might talk about that differently, but massive corporations coming in and forcing a community to deal with some type of project and not really giving a community any voice and operating in secrecy—no one’s really a fan of that,” Green told Fortune.
Pennsylvania’s data center profile
Pennsylvania has established itself as a nexus of data center backlash. The commonwealth is home to only 174 data centers out of about 4,767 total projects in the U.S., but its position as a purple state with a governor widely expected to run for president in 2028, makes it a unique case study in the conversation around national data center opposition.
Gov. Josh Shapiro announced Project Hazelnut in November 2024 immediately following an executive order fast-tracking permitting for AI infrastructure. In July 2025, he announced a $20 billion investment from Amazon for data center buildout in the commonwealth, the largest capital investment in Pennsylvania’s history.
But following public pushback over data center projects in Hazle Township and surrounding areas, Shapiro walked back the permissive AI infrastructure policies. He signed another executive order in August eliminating fast-track permits and gave local agencies power to approve data center projects, rather than the state-level Department of Environmental Protection.
“What I was finding after listening to the neighbors about their concerns, and then talking with some of these developers, is those developers who were wreaking havoc on the communities, they actually didn’t have any access to power,” Shapiro told CBS News Philadelphia last month.
The future of data center opposition
With Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial election coming up next month, candidates’ stances on data center development could further scramble traditional partisan divides.
According to Vinatieri, Democrats are discouraged by Shapiro’s changing data center stance. Meanwhile, Republican candidate Stacy Garrity has largely not broken from Trump’s pro-data center position.
From Vinatieri’s vantage point, there are even enough disgruntled residents that a meaningful number of voters could write in Democratic Sen. Katie Muth, who has sponsored a statewide data center development moratorium.
“I’ve never seen anything quite like it before,” Vinatieri said. “It’s a powerful time and a lot is happening.”
The true test of a changing political tide around data centers on a national level will be whether candidates like Garrity change their stances around data centers, according to Green.
He’s already seen Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican up for reelection, move from calling the Lone Star State the “epicenter of AI development” to implementing restrictions and halting pending approvals on 1,800 data center proposals.
“Those are just signs of the strength of the backlash,” Green said. “It’s no longer possible to just push forward by making generic or super rosy statements about how great data centers are. People don’t believe it, and they will not support candidates who are trying to gaslight them with all of these hopeful claims about why data centers are great.”