A Truth Social post dated 21 October 2026 urged data center companies to pay communities a dividend, but set no amount and did not say who would decide or whether payments would be required.
NorthPoint Development offered each household $10,000 in Hazle, Pennsylvania, and residents called it a bribe, with many turning it down.
DTE Energy asked the Michigan Public Service Commission to approve 2.1 gigawatts of gas plants in 2031 and 2032, and The Guardian reports customers may pay $6.4bn.
A September NYT and Siena College poll found 47% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats opposed building AI data centers, while at least 75 projects worth about $130bn were blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026.
On Wednesday, 21 October 2026, Trump posted on Truth Social that companies building data centers should pay a dividend to the communities around them. The money could go to the town as a whole or to residents directly, he suggested, and the payments would help win local backing. The post named no sum and did not say who would set the payments or whether companies would have to make them. Trump first floated the idea on 29 September, telling reporters that people living near data centers could receive a dividend, and he met tech leaders including Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Microsoft's Satya Nadella at the White House that same day. His tone was harsher on 31 August, when he warned that communities turning away data centers risked becoming "backwards and poor." He put the central claim this way:
“Data Centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck.”
NorthPoint Development wants to build an AI data center in Hazle, Pennsylvania, and offered each household $10,000 to back the campus. Residents called the offer a bribe and many turned it down, fearing a split between neighbors near the site who declined and those farther away who accepted. Nebius CRO Marc Boroditsky told CNBC the company is "100% in principle" open to discussing local investment, pointing to tax revenue already arriving and a possible more direct benefit for communities.
Opposition is spreading beyond Hazle. Data Center Watch, which tracks resistance, counts at least 75 projects worth about $130bn that local campaigns blocked or delayed in the first quarter of 2026. Residents object to energy and water use, land and power bills, and the opposition crosses party lines. A September poll by The New York Times and Siena College found 47% of Republicans and 75% of Democrats opposed building AI data centers.
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Microsoft has said it will stop seeking tax breaks where it builds, and over 300 companies have joined a non-binding White House pledge to pay for their own power. Senator Bernie Sanders has proposed an AI sovereign wealth fund that would pay Americans directly.
DTE Energy, among the largest US utilities, has asked the Michigan Public Service Commission to approve two new gas plants with a combined 2.1 gigawatts of capacity, due in 2031 and 2032, in counties just outside metro Detroit. The Guardian reports that Michigan utility customers may pay $6.4bn for the plants. DTE has already contracted with Google and Oracle for a combined 2.4 gigawatts for hyperscale data centers, enough for more than 1.8 million homes, and about 2.3 million electric customers in southeast Michigan could be affected. Yousef Rabhi, a public power advocate and former state representative who won the Democratic nomination for mayor of Ann Arbor in August, called any such plan "deeply unjust" and said:
“Those people are going to be subsidizing the wealthiest people on the planet to help them make more money, and that is insanity”
The US Department of Commerce counts more than 5,000 data centers in the country and expects them to expand by about 9% a year through 2030. Cleanview, an energy data company, counts 180 data center buildings completed in 2025 and 88 more so far this year, spread across 22 states.
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Trump has argued that large new facilities should generate their own electricity and either share or sell any surplus to the local community or grid, which he says would blunt utility price increases and could bring a noticeable cut in power bills. On one electricity network serving 67 million households, rising demand from new data centers has pushed total network cost up 174%.
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Trump says data center companies should pay communities a dividend to win over residents, as local opposition spreads ahead of the 3 November midterms. In Hazle, Pennsylvania, a $10,000 offer per household was called a bribe by residents.
AI text based on reports by The Verge, The Guardian, TechRadar and other publishers. Published .