Seven US States Are Recalling Officials Over Datacenters — and $130 Billion in Projects Is Now Stalled

Residents in seven US states launched recall petitions against local officials in May and June 2026, targeting politicians who approved datacenter projects without disclosing which tech company would operate them. The movement, documented by The Guardian on July 3, has already contributed to at least $130 billion in datacenter projects being blocked or delayed in Q1 2026 — roughly the same amount as all of 2025.

🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE

The US datacenter backlash has crossed from protest into electoral politics. Seven states, bipartisan opposition, and $130 billion stalled in a single quarter. The recall campaigns are not about climate or NIMBYism alone — they are about transparency. Developers are signing NDAs with local officials, hiding which tech company is behind the project, and residents are responding by attempting to remove the officials who agreed to the secrecy. The AI infrastructure buildout is hitting a democratic wall.

$130 Billion Stalled, and the Quarter Was Not Exceptional

Data Center Watch tracked at least 75 datacenter projects worth approximately $130 billion that were blocked or delayed in Q1 2026. That figure matches the total for all of 2025. The acceleration is not a single community saying no — it is a pattern.

The United States has more than 4,400 datacenters, according to Data Center Map. A single center can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes, per a University of Michigan report. A typical datacenter uses 300,000 gallons of water per day for cooling, and large facilities can use an estimated 5 million gallons daily — equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 residents, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

In Virginia alone, 80% of the 31 localities with existing, approved, or proposed datacenters had non-disclosure agreements with the companies behind the projects. The developers routinely do not reveal which tech firm will use the facility until after the decisive votes have been taken.

The Recall Campaigns

The Guardian documented recall efforts in seven states during May and June 2026:

California — Coachella residents launched a recall drive over a datacenter proposal.
Florida — Fort Meade residents filed recall petitions targeting three city officials.
Michigan — Lenox Township residents submitted a petition to recall four members of the board of trustees after emails obtained through open records requests showed developers had contacted the township supervisor despite officials denying any application existed. The proposed datacenter’s promotional website, Lenoxdatacenter.com, did not state who wanted to build it.
Missouri — In Festus, a town where Donald Trump won 67% of the vote in 2024, residents filed a recall petition against the mayor and three council members over a $6 billion datacenter agreement with CRG Clayco. A judge determined voters had enough signatures, but the city council rejected the petition. A resident, Dennis McDonald, has filed a legal challenge.
Oklahoma — In Yukon, Joe Horn, a Republican bank vice-president, filed a recall petition against the mayor and vice-mayor over a proposed $1 billion datacenter, citing water rationing and lack of transparency. Vice-mayor Jeff Wootton resigned. Nearby Luther passed a six-month moratorium after seeing the Yukon backlash.
Oregon — Hillsboro residents pushed for recall amid heated datacenter discussions.
Texas — San Angelo opponents wrapped a signature drive to recall the mayor.

The bipartisan character is the striking part. Evan Sutton, a Seattle resident who has helped datacenter opponents in 10 states, told The Guardian: “People feel like this technology is being shoved down our throats.”

The Secrecy Problem

The common thread across all seven states is not opposition to AI as a technology. It is opposition to being excluded from the decision. In Festus, the developer would not reveal which tech company would operate the datacenter. In Lenox Township, the promotional website did not name the developer. In Yukon, the city manager signed an NDA with Beltline Energy before the city council voted to sell the land.

Michael Bommarito, author of How to Fight a Data Center, told The Guardian: “The company usually goes public only after the decisive votes have been taken.”

This is the pattern that is driving the recall movement. Residents are not being asked whether they want a datacenter. They are being told, after the fact, that one is coming, and that the officials who approved it signed NDAs preventing them from knowing who is behind it. The recall petition is the only tool left.

The China Distraction

The Trump administration has pushed for fast datacenter construction, and some investors and Republicans have claimed the opposition is being driven by Chinese Communist Party propaganda. Kevin O’Leary, the Shark Tank investor, claimed on Fox News that opponents of his Utah datacenter project were funded by China. Wired reported there is little evidence for this. O’Leary later admitted he had no evidence, and Fox News issued on-air apologies in June for airing his claims.

The recall movement in Festus, Missouri — a town that voted 67% for Trump — is not a Chinese influence operation. It is a history teacher and part-time pizza delivery driver who knocked on his neighbours’ doors.

NZ Angle: The Same Conflict Is Coming

New Zealand has been having a slower version of this fight. Australian communities fighting AI datacentre invasion documented Melbourne residents living in the shadow of a 225MW hyperscale facility with 100 diesel generators and zero cumulative environmental assessment. The Australia Greens’ AI crisis moratorium call was a political response to the same pattern. NZ’s Super Fund should be building AI infrastructure is the affirmative case — but the conflict between community consent and infrastructure speed is identical.

The US recall movement is the preview. When a datacenter proposal arrives in a New Zealand district without community consultation, without disclosure of the end user, and with an NDA binding the council, the same tools — recall petitions, public meeting pack-outs, open records requests — will be the response. The question is whether NZ councils get ahead of the transparency problem now, or wait for the backlash to teach them.

❓ FAQ

Why are datacenters controversial? Each facility can consume as much electricity as 2,000 homes and up to 5 million gallons of water per day. They bring noise pollution from cooling systems, strain local power grids, and often require utilities to raise rates for all consumers to pay for infrastructure upgrades. In Virginia, 80% of localities with datacenter projects had NDAs with the companies behind them.

What is a recall petition? A recall is a process that allows voters to remove an elected official before their term ends. The threshold varies by state — typically a percentage of the votes cast in the official’s last election must sign a petition. In several of the cases above, judges ruled voters had enough signatures, but city councils refused to schedule the election, triggering legal challenges.

Is this a partisan issue? No. The Guardian documented recall efforts in Republican-led Michigan municipalities, Trump-voting Festus, Missouri, and Democratic-leaning parts of California and Oregon. The opposition is bipartisan because the concerns — water, electricity bills, property values, transparency — are not ideological.

Has any datacenter project been permanently cancelled? Q1 2026 saw $130 billion in projects blocked or delayed, but “blocked” and “cancelled” are not the same. Some projects are on moratorium. Others have been withdrawn. The recall movement is still in its early stages — the Festus legal challenge is the first to reach the courts.

What does this mean for AI companies? The datacenter buildout is the physical backbone of the AI industry. If $130 billion per quarter in projects is getting stalled by community opposition, the scaling thesis — more GPUs, more power, more datacenters — runs into a democratic constraint, not a technical one. The companies that disclose their end users and negotiate openly with communities will build faster than the ones that rely on NDAs and secrecy.

🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE

The AI industry’s scaling strategy assumes communities will accept datacenters the way they accepted server farms — quietly. They will not. The recall movement in seven US states is the electoral version of what started as protests, and it is working. $130 billion stalled in one quarter is not a rounding error. The developers who win the next phase of the buildout will be the ones who negotiate in public, name their end users, and let communities vote before the bulldozers arrive.