The Trump-Loving Texas Republican Sounding the Alarm on Data Centers

By sheer numbers, Texas’ stock of existing and planned data centers is bigger than China’s. The state, under the auspices of three-term Republican Governor Greg Abbott, has become an incentive paradise for tech companies looking to capitalize on the AI boom. It might be backfiring. 

As lawmakers across the country throw the doors open to tech giants — including behemoths like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Alphabet, Oracle, and Meta — an enticement war is taking shape between states. Subsidized or discounted utility rates, easy environmental approvals, property tax abatements, and payroll credits are just some of the sweeteners local officials are offering to get data centers built in their backyards. As it turns out, Americans hate it. 

Enter Sid Miller, the outgoing Texas Commissioner of Agriculture, and one of the most vocal Republicans in the state — if not country — clamoring for increased data center regulation. His opposition to the datafication of Texas has placed him at odds with Abbott, currently caught in a closer-than-comfortable reelection campaign, and at times even Donald Trump, despite the president endorsing him multiple times. 

Backlash to the data center bonanza has become an electoral fissure in the run up to November’s midterm elections. A survey published by Gallup earlier this month found that 7 in 10 Americans would oppose the construction of a data center in their communities. State-level polling conducted in August by the Texas Politics Project found that roughly 57 percent of respondents opposed or strongly opposed the construction of data centers in their communities, with the proportion of opposition being much higher in rural areas. They suck up water and energy resources, take up land, disrupt the peace and quiet of the intentional distance you take from the city slickers, and they’re popping up like weeds. 

In a white cowboy hat and a matching Texas drawl, Miller has been sounding the alarm about the looming voter backlash to the industrial AI boom, even going so far as to warn that it could cost Abbott his chance at reelection. Miller lost his own bid for reelection in the Republican primary earlier this year, and with nothing left to lose, he gave Rolling Stone his perspective on the potential make-or-break issue of the midterms.

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Where did this all begin for you? 
I started this way before the primary election, way back probably a year, a little over a year ago. My first concern was all the good farmland that was disappearing. Data centers, crypto mines, solar farms — they want to locate them on our very best, most fertile farmland.

The reason they do is that it’s cleared, it’s flat, it’s got electricity. Most of the time, it’s got water, irrigation, everything. They can just rev up and go. It’s in the county, most of the time, so there’s no oversight or regulation or guardrails, no permits needed. Once they pave that [land] over, we’re not getting it back — it’s gone.

I realized how much water they used and how much electricity they used. So I’ve been raising the alarm. I was the only one, Democrat or Republican, for a long time, and then the Democrats kind of picked up on it and made it a campaign issue. I first called on [Governor] Abbott, brought it to his attention and said we need some guardrails around this industry. I called on him for a one-year moratorium. Well, he wouldn’t do that, He wouldn’t do anything for a long time, other than take $21 million from data center interests.

How did Greg Abbott respond? 
When he wouldn’t do the moratorium, I called him. [I said,] let’s call a special session, get the [legislature] in here, and we get this done in a week, and give it immediate effect. Well, he wouldn’t do that. I said, OK, if you’re really serious about it, you’ve got a conflict of interest, governor. Give that $21 million back. Better yet, instead of giving it back, donate it to the AgriStress Helpline. So we get some of these people that you’ve stressed out some mental help out here in rural Texas. Well, he wouldn’t. He didn’t do any of the three.

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Now, he’s not responding to the citizens of Texas to help farmers and ranchers and consumers. He’s responding to polls because now he sees what I saw — that this is a campaign issue, and he’s got a hell of a lot closer race than he ever thought he’d have. This is one of the issues that’s giving him pain, so in response to the polls, he’s trying to look like he’s doing something. It’s really just smoke and mirrors. He still hasn’t done a moratorium. He still hasn’t done a special session. He still hasn’t returned the campaign dollars.

Do you think it will hurt Texas Republicans in November? 
I predict — hope I’m wrong, I’d love to eat my words — I think we’re going to lose some statewide races for the first time in 30 years. I’m talking about Republicans.

It’s a death by a thousand cuts. It’s data centers. It’s Flock cameras. It’s these massive transmission lines that take electricity to these data centers. It’s that we did away with THC [products]. We forced school vouchers on rural Republicans that didn’t want them. We’ve not delivered on property tax relief in 12 years under this governor. Every year the property taxes have gone up.

You know, 50,000 votes here, another 25,000 here, 100,000 over here. Those add up, and it’s a midterm. We historically do terrible in midterm elections. 

The polling coming out on the race between Abbott and Gina Hinojosa is a bit surprising. She’s managed to really close his lead. 
I think Abbott may lose. 

Those numbers with [James] Talarico at the top — that’s very encouraging, exciting. The Democrats are going to turn out. They see blood in the water. 

They think maybe they’ve got a chance, so they’re not staying home. They see a possible victory, first one in 30 years, and that’s not going to help Abbott.

It seems like now Abbott is moving to slow down environmental permit approvals for data centers, but at the same time the Texas Public Utility Commission voted to soften regulations this week. 

Well, what he originally was trying to do was stall long enough and get past the midterms and let the legislature come in and do its deal, and the new laws and regulations would not take effect until September 2027. So basically, he was just trying to let all of his campaign donors get grandfathered in. 

[Data center constructors can get their Texas Commission on Environmental Quality permit] in less than a week. So even though he stopped TCEQ from issuing new permits, that doesn’t do anything to the other four or five hundred that have already got them.

What exactly was Abbott offering these companies to get them to come to Texas? 
Like $2 billion of tax incentives, and by next year it’ll be $3 billion. The comptroller did an audit to see if the [data centers] were meeting their obligations. They audited 20 data centers, and I think six of them were out of compliance. They hadn’t met their statutory obligations to receive the tax incentives. So a fifth of them are out of compliance, and that’s only out of 20 of them, who knows about the rest. Basically, bottom line, they’re not doing what they said they’d do. 

Are you hearing concerns from other Republicans at this point? 
I’m disappointed that Republicans aren’t really coming around on this issue. Abbott is trying to appear that he is, but the reason is most of them have taken money from the data center people. 

My opponent in the primary, [Nate Sheets], his largest single donor was a data center guy. So they’re tiptoeing around. They’re trying to do a little bit to look like they’re still in touch, but they still need money to finish the campaign. So basically, Texas farmers, ranchers, and consumers are just getting nothing from the Republican side, which is disappointing.

What are Texas ranchers and the people in communities where data centers are being built telling you? 
They’re mainly angry at Abbott and his inaction in allowing the legislature to act. They’re mad because if they have land next to the data center and it’s worth less than half what it was. No one wants to live or have property next to a data center with all the noise and light pollution and traffic and everything else that goes along with it. They’re mad now because that 1,500-acre place that they had leased doesn’t exist anymore because the data center bought it. So now they have less land to farm. 

They’re mad because rental rates have gone up, where the working man really can’t even afford to live in that community anymore. You know, people in these communities are upset when they can’t get a hotel room. They can’t pay. The rent quadruples. They can’t make ends meet. They’re going to have to now move out 30 or 40 miles somewhere and commute in.

This also seems to be colliding with another issue, which is that Texas farming is in its own viability crisis, and many family farmers and producers are choosing to sell off and cut their losses. 
Well, you can’t blame the farmer.

We haven’t made any money in 10 years. If somebody comes along, offers you 10 times what [the land] is worth. Golly, I could put that in the bank and my family is good for two or three generations.

I don’t have to break my back. I don’t have to put in 12-14 hour days anymore. It’s pretty tempting. Some of them don’t sell out — I mean, they’re principled — but it’d be hard to turn down.

Zooming out to the bigger picture. Obviously, this is becoming an issue in a lot of other states, and it’s becoming a major force leading up to the midterms. What do you make of Trump’s response to this? Essentially saying that those who are skeptical of AI and data centers are “stupid”? 
I’m a huge Trump supporter. I disagree with him on this — and then the imported beef —but that’s about the only thing I’ve disagreed on.

I would say this: We won the AI race. It’s over. There’s no race. It’s done. China’s like fourth down on the list. They stopped at 439 data centers. They’re gone. We’re gonna have more than that just in Texas.

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Nationwide, I think the count’s about 5,000. So I think you could call that a win if there was a race to build data centers. No one’s gonna get close to the number of data centers in America, so that’s a non-issue. 

The issue now is, how do we put guardrails around it? How do we regulate it, when there’s even talk of AI taking over the human race?