A police officer shoved a woman to the ground and arrested her after a protest against datacenters at a Utah county commission meeting. A statement from the Utah county sheriff's office said that the woman refused to leave the meeting and struck the officer in the groin before being arrested

Datacenters, AI and distaste for the billionaires developing it has soured Americans on big tech

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The campaign ad begins with a clear, idyllic stream that suddenly turns sludge-brown as two concrete datacenters slam onto its banks. Another facility thuds down on a peaceful suburban park, and two more crush-green pastures as an ominous soundtrack to a disaster movie blares overtop.

“They’re coming for our rivers. Our neighborhoods. Our farmland,” a deep-voiced narrator says. “Because Brent Taylor wrote the law allowing datacenters to take over Tennessee.”

DTE Energy, among the US’s biggest utilities, is requesting approval to build two new gas plants to meet datacenter demand

Michigan utility customers may pay $6.4bn for two new gas plants to meet datacenter demand, drawing outrage from residents.

The potential burden on ratepayers, especially residential customers, is a microcosm of similar tensions nationwide, highlighting how the utility industry benefits from unchecked datacenter growth.

The midterms will be a referendum on the GOP’s alignment with tech overlords over the public they’re meant to serve

Welcome back to How We Win, a Guardian opinion series with leading thinkers, offering bold ideas for America’s political future. Last week, Robert Reich highlighted the link between corruption and affordability. Today’s edition was written by Guardian US columnist Rebecca Solnit. Sign up for future editions here.

“The world should accept some bad things happening,” Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, said recently, “for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.” Like so many things tech oligarchs say, it’s incoherent, since Altman would like to deny the world and the people in it the agency to decide whether or not we should accept his bad things. Surveys show that most Americans would like to pause AI; opposition to AI datacenters is a factor in many races in the midterm elections. People are outraged and anxious about what tech hath wrought, mad enough to fight back in what is coming to seem like a human v machine battle.

Much of Donald Trump’s unpopularity in polls stems from dissatisfaction over the economy and war on Iran

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Developers propose turning San Francisco Centre into not a server-based facility, but a ‘community-based AI exhibit’

Downtown San Francisco has shown signs of revival since being battered by the Covid pandemic, which led to what many called a “doom loop” of vacant buildings, a worsening homelessness crisis and dwindling public transit. But one highly visible reminder of the city’s struggle to recover remains: the San Francisco Centre mall, which sits at the heart of these urban renewal efforts and has been conspicuously boarded up since January of this year.

A number of ideas have been floated for the mall’s reopening, including a multi-level sports complex, housing and more traditional retail uses. But now, another potential plan has emerged: the shuttered mall is being considered for an AI datacenter project, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

A modern-day prospector promised rural Imperial thousands of jobs and millions in tax revenue – but his plan has set off a firestorm of resistance

Sebastian Rucci zoomed in on a map in late 2024, looking closely at a large block of brown earth. The barren plot sandwiched between sprawling alfalfa fields and sleepy desert suburbs was exactly what he’d been searching for – the perfect place to realize his dream of building the largest artificial intelligence datacenter in California.

The dusty expanse wasn’t an obvious location. It was in the Sonoran desert, just north of the Mexican border, where temperatures regularly rose past 100F (37.8C). Water was scarce in the once-booming agricultural area, which gets its supply from the beleaguered Colorado River. And then, there was the city of Imperial – population 22,000 – to win over. As controversial datacenter projects have sprung up across the US, residents were naturally skeptical of a new, energy-guzzling neighbor.

Recent polls show that American voters across the political spectrum are deeply dissatisfied with the Trump administration, and the upcoming midterm elections will provide them an opportunity to express how they feel. The Guardian's reporter Fabiola Cineas breaks down the four key issues that will drive voters to the polls