Nearly 200 activists aligned with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement are urging him to reconsider his push to build artificial intelligence data centers nationwide.
There’s been growing bipartisan backlash to these resource-sapping centers over their environmental harms and negative impacts on public health. Meanwhile, the president and his allies have basically sounded like comic book villains with their rhetoric about the supposed inevitability of new data centers and the need to “roll over” critics.
So it’s telling that the opposition includes activists in a movement like MAHA that, on many fronts, has advocated for a host of policies that undercut public health and stand to make Americans sicker. Perhaps AI data centers are their red line.
In a letter dated Friday, the activists — under the banner “United We Eat” — pleaded with Trump to reverse course on an executive order that prioritizes the use of coal power to help fuel data centers.
“The April 2025 executive order on coal connected rising electricity demand from artificial intelligence data processing centers to expanded support for coal power,” the activists wrote. “It also directed federal agencies to identify regions where coal-powered infrastructure could support AI data centers. That connection deserves urgent reconsideration.”
The activists said they’re speaking out to avoid the appearance of hypocrisy:
We cannot credibly oppose toxins on the dinner plate while ignoring toxins in the air our children breathe or the water they drink. We cannot demand clean labels on processed food while tolerating mercury, soot, arsenic, and coal ash near our homes, schools, farms, and waterways.
They went on to say:
A child’s lungs are not separate from the air. A mother’s breast milk is not separate from the food supply. A baby’s developing brain cannot be fully insulated from the mercury, lead, pesticides, plastics, and industrial pollutants that government policy allows into the environment.
The MAHA activists mirrored rhetoric from progressive climate activists as they encouraged the Trump administration to pursue clean energy sources and, in particular, prioritize the use of solar power:
America has better options. We should accelerate domestic energy solutions that strengthen the grid, defend local communities, and reduce toxic air and water pollution, including responsibly sited American clean power, solar paired with storage, advanced geothermal, grid modernization, and efficiency improvements.
The letter offers yet another example of Trump supporters expressing their concerns about the president’s deferential approach to Big Tech, as evidenced by his oligarchic display of inviting tech executives to last year’s inauguration. Ever since, Trump — who has personally invested in AI companies — has done seemingly everything in his power to help the tech industry, to the dismay of many MAGA stalwarts.
Back in May, I wrote about a different letter from far-right figures pleading with Trump to institute more regulations on the AI industry — with signees including Steve Bannon and “Stop the Steal” election denier Amy Kremer.
Taken together, the letters underscore a reality even some Republicans have come to acknowledge: that the bipartisan outrage over data centers risks driving a wedge between the GOP and some of its staunchest supporters as the midterms approach.
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