When Bernie Sanders and Ron DeSantis Agree, America Should Pay Attention
In the polarized landscape of American politics, few issues unite figures from opposite ends of the spectrum. Yet the rapid expansion of AI data centers has achieved precisely that, bringing together Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican Governor Ron DeSantis as leading skeptics of an industry whose infrastructure demands are reshaping the nation's energy landscape and political priorities.
The alignment signals something profound: the AI data center boom has reached an inflection point where its costs and benefits can no longer be ignored by communities, ratepayers, or policymakers. As the nation hurtles toward the 2026 midterm elections, this technological infrastructure revolution is emerging as a defining issue that transcends traditional partisan divides.
The Scale of the Transformation
The numbers behind the AI data center expansion are staggering. According to BloombergNEF analysis, power demand from data centers will reach 106 gigawatts by 2035. More immediately concerning, a Yale Clean Energy Forum report projects that data centers could consume as much as 12 percent of total U.S. power by 2028—exceeding the combined electricity demand of all steel, aluminum, and other high-intensity manufacturing in America.
To put this in perspective, the PJM Interconnection, which serves over 65 million people across 13 states in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, faces a power shortage nearly equivalent to the electricity demand of Philadelphia. As Joe Bowring, president of Monitoring Analytics, the independent market monitor for PJM, stated bluntly: "It's at a crisis stage right now. PJM has never been this short."
The Promise: Economic Development and Technological Leadership
Despite mounting criticism, the case for AI data center development remains compelling to many industry advocates and some policymakers. The potential benefits include:
Economic Growth and Job Creation: Data centers represent billions in capital investment. Projects like the $165 billion facility being constructed in Abilene, Texas by OpenAI and Oracle promise construction jobs, ongoing employment, and economic multiplier effects for local communities.
Technological Competitiveness: In an era of great power competition, particularly with China, maintaining American leadership in AI development is seen as a national security imperative. The infrastructure to support this technology is fundamental to staying ahead.
Innovation Ecosystem: Data centers create clusters of technical expertise and attract related industries, potentially transforming regional economies much as manufacturing centers once did.
Digital Transformation: The AI capabilities these facilities enable promise productivity gains across sectors, from healthcare diagnostics to climate modeling to scientific research.
For years, this narrative dominated, with data centers viewed as "an unmitigated good and as an engine of growth by a lot of elected officials and policymakers," as one analyst noted.
The Reckoning: Rising Costs and Grid Instability
The bipartisan backlash didn't emerge in a vacuum. Real costs are hitting American households and threatening grid reliability in ways that are politically explosive.
Electricity Price Increases: Residential electricity prices rose approximately 5 percent in 2025 and are forecast to increase another 4 percent in 2026, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. While data centers aren't the sole driver, they're increasingly visible as a major contributor. As one industry analyst told The New York Times: "Electricity is the new price of eggs."
Massive Wealth Transfer: The independent watchdog for PJM has identified $23 billion in costs attributable to data centers that are ultimately passed on to consumers, calling it a "massive wealth transfer" from ratepayers to AI companies. The price to secure power capacity in PJM has exploded in recent years, with consumers bearing the burden.
Grid Stability Threats: Power shortages increase blackout risk. Instead of blackouts occurring once in 10 years, analysts now project more frequent disruptions. This represents a fundamental threat to quality of life and economic stability.
Water Consumption: Beyond electricity, data centers require vast amounts of water for cooling—a critical concern in drought-prone regions where communities already face water scarcity.
Limited Local Benefit: Communities hosting data centers often find the facilities employ relatively few permanent workers while placing enormous strain on local infrastructure and resources.
Political Earthquake in Virginia
The political potency of this issue became clear in Virginia, the world's largest data center market. Rising utility bills played a key role in Democrat Abigail Spanberger's landslide victory in the gubernatorial race this year. Her success sent shockwaves through both parties, demonstrating that data center policy could determine electoral outcomes.
With cost of living at the center of American politics, the impact of data centers on communities will likely play a significant role in the November 2026 midterm elections. Pivotal swing states like Pennsylvania and Virginia fall within the PJM service area, making grid stability and electricity costs especially salient political issues.
Senator Sanders has called for a national moratorium on data center construction to "give democracy a chance to catch up" with the "unregulated sprint" to develop AI. Governor DeSantis has sided with local opponents of data centers, arguing they "devour electricity and water while offering limited benefits to nearby residents" and is pushing state-level regulations ahead of Florida's 2026 legislative session.
Grassroots Resistance Builds
Beyond prominent politicians, a grassroots movement is coalescing. Over 230 organizations across all 50 states have signed onto a letter organized by Food & Water Watch calling for a national moratorium on data center siting and construction. Local rejections of data centers have occurred in communities as varied as Chandler, Arizona and Leesburg, Indiana.
Recent polling shows 80 percent of Americans demanding strict government regulation of the AI market. Only 17 percent believe artificial intelligence will have a positive impact on the U.S. economy over the next 20 years—a stark disconnect from the industry's optimistic projections.
The Infrastructure Deficit
Adding complexity to the challenge, the Trump administration recently paused all offshore wind farm construction off the East Coast, including the massive 2.6 gigawatt Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project intended to help supply northern Virginia's enormous data center market. This decision directly impacts the power available for both data centers and residential consumers, potentially exacerbating price increases and grid instability.
The PJM watchdog has called for the grid to reject data centers it cannot reliably serve or require them to provide their own power generation—a fundamental challenge to the current development model.
Economic Reality Check
Beyond the grid concerns, economic questions are mounting about the AI industry itself. According to recent analyses, 95 percent of corporations implementing AI are not generating profits from it. While AI companies have achieved trillion-dollar valuations, actual revenue remains limited, raising questions about whether this represents a sustainable business model or an investment bubble approaching its bursting point.
Finding a Sustainable Path Forward
The collision between AI's infrastructure demands and America's aging electrical grid, water resources, and community priorities demands solutions that balance innovation with sustainability and fairness.
Potential approaches include:
- Requiring data centers to provide their own renewable energy generation rather than consuming grid capacity
- Implementing stricter environmental impact assessments and community approval processes
- Mandating transparency about actual local economic benefits versus infrastructure costs
- Establishing national standards for data center efficiency and resource consumption
- Creating mechanisms for communities to share in the economic benefits if they accept the infrastructure burden
- Accelerating grid modernization and clean energy deployment to increase overall capacity
- The fundamental question isn't whether AI development should occur, but whether communities should bear the infrastructure costs and risks while benefits accrue primarily to tech companies and their investors.
Conclusion: Democracy's Moment
The unusual political alliance between Sanders and DeSantis reflects a broader recognition that the AI data center boom has outpaced democratic accountability. When technology develops faster than policy can respond, when infrastructure decisions affecting millions occur without meaningful public input, and when costs and benefits are so misaligned, political backlash becomes inevitable.
As we enter 2026, the data center debate will test whether American democracy can effectively govern transformative technology, balance competing interests, and ensure that innovation benefits the many rather than enriching the few at the expense of the many.
The industry's future trajectory may depend less on technological capabilities than on whether it can address legitimate concerns about costs, sustainability, and community impact. In an era when "electricity is the new price of eggs," AI companies ignore these concerns at their peril.
The bipartisan coalition forming against unchecked data center expansion isn't anti-technology—it's pro-accountability. Whether that accountability arrives through market forces, democratic processes, or regulatory intervention may determine not just the future of AI infrastructure, but the broader relationship between technological progress and democratic governance in America.