What the report is
On April 27, 2026, the Coalition for Responsible Data Center Development -- in partnership with Evitable and Together Against AI -- published the first comprehensive census of community opposition to U.S. data centers. The 29-page report was authored by Matthew Shaw (Coalition), David Krueger and Sonali Malik (Evitable), and Denys Sheremet and Finn van der Velde (Together Against AI). Layout and design by Luma Kennedy of the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network.
The report is licensed Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC 4.0) and is updated monthly. The companion site, datacenteropposition.com, hosts an interactive map and a press kit. The data was collected without AI -- the authors note this explicitly.
Its purpose, in their words: "document an unprecedented surge in grassroots opposition to hyperscale AI data centers across the United States." Until April 27, individual fights had been covered in the press. The full national picture had not. This report is the first time the full picture exists in one document.
The numbers
As of April 5, 2026, the report identifies 268 local opposition groups organizing on Facebook, totaling 367,800 members. Group membership has more than quadrupled in four months -- a +300% increase from December 2025. In the six months leading up to publication, 209 new opposition groups were created in 182 days: more than one new group every day.
Ninety-six percent of the recorded groups are opposed to data centers. The remaining four percent are neutral or supportive. The opposition is not a fringe.
The planned data centers driving the surge are larger than anything that came before them. The report identifies 112 planned facilities of one gigawatt or more -- a class of project that did not exist a decade ago. Their combined capacity exceeds 200 gigawatts. The total operational data-center capacity in the U.S. today is roughly 40 gigawatts. The pipeline is more than five times the existing fleet.
Financially, the report cites $152 billion in projects delayed or cancelled by community pressure in 2025 alone, citing Data Center Watch's Q3-Q4 2025 update.
The geography is bipartisan and disproportionately swing-state
Opposition groups exist in 37 states. The largest concentrations are in the Great Lakes region, Virginia, Georgia, and Texas -- the same regions where the most gigawatt-scale projects are being planned.
Fourteen percent of U.S. states are swing states. They contain 37% of the opposition groups and 28% of the total members -- more than 100,000 people. Three swing states alone -- Wisconsin, Michigan, and Georgia -- account for 22% of all data-center opposition groups in the country.
Red states have a larger absolute share of both groups and members than blue states, partly because the largest single group the report identifies is in Independence, Missouri (117,000 members at the time of writing, up from 10,000 in less than two months). The pattern is consistent: opposition is not a Democratic phenomenon or a Republican phenomenon. It is a community-next-to-the-project phenomenon.
The report's own conclusion: "data centers could become a wedge issue in the 2026 midterm elections."
Why it is growing this fast
The report is unusually direct on causation. The single largest accelerant of new group formation, the authors argue, is the data-center industry's reliance on non-disclosure agreements during land acquisition and rezoning. "Restrictive non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are a common practice in the process of land acquisition and rezoning for data centers. ... Most groups would likely have formed earlier if it was not for NDAs."
This squares with everything we have reported on /stories. Project Pilot in De Soto, Kansas had a secret tenant. Project Laurel in Limerick, Pennsylvania has a secret tenant. Project Marvel in Bessemer, Alabama uses a Delaware shell. The opposition report's framing is that NDAs do not prevent organizing -- they delay it, and concentrate it into a sharper, more public reaction once the facts surface. The case studies in the report bear this out: in Independence, Missouri, residents learned of a 1.2 GW Nebius campus and a 90% tax abatement at a 3:30 PM "study session" with a council that had already signed NDAs. The Facebook group was formed in the days after that meeting. It now has more members than the city has voters.
The second accelerant is scale. The largest AI data centers under construction are projected to use as much electricity as two million U.S. households -- the equivalent of every household in the state of Alabama, for one facility. Communities that had never previously heard the term "hyperscaler" are being asked to host them next to schools, on aquifers, and over budget cycles.
What to do with this report
The Opposition Report is the cleanest single document in our beat right now. It is short (29 pages), free, openly licensed, monthly-updated, and cites its sources transparently. If you are organizing in a community, share it with your neighbors. If you are a journalist, the report is the best primary source for any story about the size or shape of the data-center opposition movement -- including the New York Times's May 1 piece, which cited the same numbers without naming the underlying study.
If you are an elected official, the wedge-issue framing in the report's conclusion is worth reading carefully. Three swing states -- Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia -- account for 22% of organized opposition. Anyone running for federal or statewide office in 2026 in those states is going to have a constituent question about a data center, whether they have prepared for it or not.
For PoweredByWho readers: the report's $152 billion delayed-or-cancelled figure is the macro version of what we document one project at a time on /wins. Read it, then read /wins. The story is the same.