A Republican insider who has spent years building conservative grassroots movements is predicting that President Donald Trump will adjust his full-throated support for artificial intelligence data center expansion once he takes to the campaign trail ahead of this fall's midterm elections.
Amy Kremer, a Republican National Committee member and founder of the political group Humans First, said in an interview that the president is currently hearing only one side of the debate — the one presented by large technology companies. She believes that will change as Trump travels the country to support Republican candidates and encounters voters directly affected by the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure.
«He's getting ready to go out on the campaign trail, and I think he's going to hear more from the American people on the data center side of things. And I hope he does,» Kremer said. «I know the president, and his heart, and he would not like the way the Americans are being treated.»
Kremer, a veteran organizer who helped found the modern Tea Party movement and later established several pro-Trump political action committees, now chairs Humans First. The group advocates what it calls an «America First approach to AI» — one that seeks to keep the United States ahead of China while protecting American families, communities, and jobs.
She argued that innovation and safety are not mutually exclusive, pushing back on a narrative she says wrongly suggests the country must sacrifice one to achieve the other. «I love the president. He has been an amazing president. I know he wants us to lead the world in technology and innovation, and I support him in that,» she said. «There's this narrative out there that with innovation, you have to forego safety, and it's just not accurate. It's not true.»
As Republicans gathered in Dallas for their first midterm convention, Humans First unveiled a new data center policy outline that it is urging the president, Congress, and state legislatures to adopt. The plan calls for greater local control over data center development and rejects the use of eminent domain for land seizures. It also opposes federal and state efforts to strip communities of that authority, including through a federal data center moratorium that many AI opponents have demanded.
Instead, the proposal would give local communities the ability to welcome or reject new data center projects through existing zoning and land-use processes. It rejects what it describes as «blank-check tax breaks» and subsidies, stating that any incentives must be transparent and tied to enforceable benefits for the community.
The plan also calls for full transparency before approval, arguing that communities deserve to know a project's end user, electricity demand, water use, land requirements, infrastructure costs, tax incentives, permanent jobs, and environmental impacts. On ratepayer protection, it states that data centers should pay the full cost of the power generation, transmission, grid upgrades, and infrastructure they require, so that families and small businesses do not face higher electric bills.
Two other provisions address the most controversial aspects of AI data center development: local water usage and construction on farmland, which the plan refers to as a «strategic American resource that should be protected.»
Kremer framed the issue as a matter of basic fairness, arguing that big technology companies face far fewer rules than ordinary businesses. «There are more regulations on a hot dog that you buy on a street corner in New York City than there are on these big tech companies with this technology,» she said.
She stressed that the effort is not an attack on the technology itself. «We are not anti-AI, we're not anti-technology, and we're not anti-data centers,» she explained. «What we are is we want the American people to have a seat at the table and a voice in this conversation.»
«We can lead on innovation, we absolutely can,» she added. «But that doesn't mean that it has to be on the backs of the American taxpayers.»
The push comes as the GOP works to hold its majorities in the House and Senate in November. Trump has made American leadership in AI a central part of his economic message, and he has publicly urged governors and mayors to welcome data centers to their communities. Kremer's prediction suggests that the politics of that stance could become more complicated as voters in affected areas make their concerns known during the midterm campaign.