Less than a month after apologizing for unsupported claims that opponents of a proposed Utah data center were funded by China, Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo again suggested that opposition to data centers might be driven by foreign interests.
During the July 16 episode of Fox Business’ Mornings with Maria, Bartiromo noted that “hundreds of protests” were planned in “both red states and blue states” as communities demanded “a voice” in how data centers would “affect their daily lives.”
She then recast that opposition as Democratic pushback, asking who was “behind these protests” and “who’s paying for it.” Her guest, American Energy Institute CEO Jason Isaac, blamed “climate alarmist organizations” and claimed there was “clear CCP influence” behind opposition to AI infrastructure.
That allegation is in tension with Fox’s own coverage, which had already touched on the concerns driving opposition to data centers. Fox personalities and guests had questioned whether residents should subsidize new infrastructure through higher electric bills, whether developers should be allowed to consume local water and power without absorbing the costs, and whether communities had been given a meaningful role in decisions about projects that would reshape the places they lived. These are environmental justice concerns, even though the coverage elided the term.
Right-wing media had spent years dismissing, mocking, or racializing environmental justice as a concept. They attacked Biden-era climate and environmental justice provisions and cheered rollbacks of environmental and public health protections, helping the Trump administration recast environmental justice funding as waste, corruption, or left-wing patronage.
But in 2025 and early 2026, Fox Business personalities occasionally mentioned the burden data center projects would impose on residents. Fox Business personality Dagen McDowell cited rising electricity costs and said residents were pushing back against projects because of concerns about electricity, while co-host Brian Brenberg argued that communities could object to projects creating “negative externalities” and said that developers should not be able to “suck up all the energy and suck up all the water and then turn around and say, well, it’s for capitalism.”
Other right-wing outlets registered similar concerns. During the April 6 episode of Real America’s Voice’s War Room, American Principles Project President Terry Schilling warned that data centers would “drive up energy costs,” “drive up water costs,” and “drive down the value of the land.” And on May 27, Newsmax host Rob Finnerty challenged assurances that closed-loop systems resolved concerns about water consumption, asking whether those claims were “not exactly accurate.”
Right-wing media could acknowledge the costs imposed on residents when those concerns came from rural officials, conservative communities, or other figures legible to their audience. These outlets did not connect those complaints to the same environmental justice demands Black communities and organizers were already making elsewhere.
Amid growing opposition, some right-wing media figures have shifted their scrutiny from data center developers to the people and communities opposing them.
Opposition to data centers is an environmental justice fight
Before data centers became a flashpoint in right-wing media, communities near proposed and operating facilities were already warning about demands for land, water, and electricity, along with pollution and higher utility bills.
Capital B News reported that Black communities from Mississippi to Maryland were already fighting projects that would consume enormous amounts of land, water, and electricity in climate “sacrifice zones,” where residents “already face increased health and economic harm.” In Bessemer, Alabama, residents opposed a project that would clear 700 acres of forest, consume nearly 2 million gallons of water each day, and use enough electricity to power Seattle. City leaders signed nondisclosure agreements tied to the project and approved a zoning change that opened farmland to industrial development with limited public input. Similar fights were unfolding elsewhere: Baltimore residents connected data center power demand to rising utility bills; and communities in South Fulton, Georgia, raised concerns about dumping, land use, and exclusion from decisions about their future.
Fox Business also reported on rural residents’ concerns about data centers’ harmful impacts. During the May 22, 2025, episode of The Bottom Line, Davis, West Virginia, Mayor Alan Tomson warned that a proposed data center and natural gas power plant threatened the area’s “fresh air,” “open space,” and scarce water resources. Tucker United spokesperson Nikki Forrester, appearing in the same segment, said residents had been left “in the dark” about what would be built in their community.
The material burdens driving opposition also remained visible in wider conservative media. A December Blaze Media column warned that data center projects “devour land, drain water supplies, and strain already fragile power grids,” while utilities spread infrastructure costs across households and small businesses in the community. In May, the New York Post reported that residents in Fayetteville, Georgia, experienced weak water pressure after a nearby data center used nearly 30 million gallons of water that initially went unbilled. And, in July, Breitbart said that a contractor building Meta’s Cheyenne data center contaminated the city’s reclaimed-water system, prompting the local utility board to suspend wastewater from data center operations and revoke the company’s discharge privileges.
However, as opposition across different racial, geographic, and political demographics converges around the same environmental justice demands, Fox Business and other right-wing outlets have increasingly questioned the people trying to stop data center development.
Right-wing media moved to discredit a coalition crossing racial, political, and ideological lines
Data center development is accelerating even as opposition grows. Goldman Sachs has projected that U.S. data center power demand could more than double by 2027. Gallup found that 71 percent of Americans oppose building AI data centers in their area, including nearly half who strongly oppose them. Half of opponents cited excessive resource use, while others pointed to pollution, utility costs, land use, and broader effects on their communities. Globally, data centers already consume more electricity than all but 10 countries.
As more communities took up the fight against data centers, some right-wing outlets have begun to scrutinize the opposition instead of the companies seeking to build the projects. By early July, Fox hosts and figures had tied data center opposition to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), anti-war activist group CODEPINK, and alleged China-linked funding networks. The New York Post republished a Fox News Digital article amplifying Power the Future’s calls for Congress to investigate what the fossil-fuel advocacy group described as a “coordinated, billionaire-funded, and potentially foreign-backed political campaign” against data center construction. Another Post column cast the backlash as a “moral panic,” arguing that data centers had become a “boogeyman” for broader fears about AI.
Then the focus was New York, where Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a July 14 executive order imposing the nation’s first statewide moratorium on new hyperscale data centers. The one-year pause was intended to give New York time to establish standards addressing rising utility costs and the industry’s demands on energy and water.
Two days later, Fox Business host Charles Payne appeared on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom and claimed that the moratorium was part of a Democratic “war on AI” whose “real agenda” was to “kneecap America’s ability to win the AI race.” Later that day, Fox Business’ The Evening Edit described Hochul as a “far-left blue state governor” who was getting data centers wrong and described the issue as “the fight against China.”
The July 21 episode of Fox & Friends again cast the broader opposition as a Chinese influence operation. Co-host Brian Kilmeade asked whether China was using TikTok and other platforms “to get America to turn on AI and data centers.” Heritage Foundation senior fellow Steve Yates answered “100%” and described the opposition as “astroturf protests” intended to make “Americans defeat Americans.”
The opposition that right-wing media has portrayed as left-wing or foreign-backed includes environmental justice organizers, MAHA activists, and local residents who do not always share politics but are challenging the same corporate claims on their communities.
In June, Fox News’ own polling found that two-thirds of registered voters opposed having a data center built in their area, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans. In fact, a majority of almost every group in Fox’s poll opposed data centers in their area — men, women, voters under 30, voters over 65, white voters, and Hispanic voters.
Data center fights have made environmental justice concerns legible to parts of the right-wing constituency. Right-wing outlets conceded the substance of those issues when they platformed concerns about who would pay higher bills, lose access to clean water, or be shut out of the decision-making process. Now, they are scrambling to defend the data center buildout, resorting to attacks and smears against a coalition whose grievances their own coverage has already validated.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
