Trump’s Home County Halts Data Centers Amid President’s AI Push

The Palm Beach County commissioners unanimously voted on Thursday to suspend new applications for large-scale data centers for up to a year, amid President Donald Trump's push to expand infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence (AI). The decision came after months of opposition to Project Tango, a planned hyperscale AI data center near Arden in western Palm Beach County, which is approximately 20 miles from Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate.

Several residents spoke against the proposed expansion, expressing concerns over water usage, higher power bills, environmental impacts, and noise disruption. The moratorium prohibits the county from accepting, processing, or approving new data center applications with an anticipated peak electrical load of at least 50 megawatts. However, it does not reverse the earlier approval of Project Tango, which began in 2016.

The county's decision aims to give local officials time to develop new regulations governing projects that may strain local power, water, and other infrastructure. This comes in response to similar measures adopted by other Florida counties, such as Bay, Citrus, Clay, Holmes, Jackson, Leon, Nassau, Pasco, and Walton Counties.

Trump has criticized New York's one-year moratorium on new large-scale data centers in July, stating that they risk becoming "backward and poor" if they reject such projects. He argued that data centers are crucial for job creation and economic prosperity in the future. In contrast, a recent Pew Research Center survey revealed that Americans' views of data centers have become more negative, with 54 percent considering them mostly bad for the environment, 50 percent for rising home energy costs, and 49 percent for negatively impacting residents' quality of life.