AIBRIEF
Bipartisan and concentrated in the South and Midwest, the restrictions are driven by noise and grid strain complaints, and Texas has now paused approvals for a grid audit.
Local US towns and counties have now blocked more than 500 new AI data centers, up from roughly 300 in late June, according to a The Information analysis cited by Tom's Hardware. The shift, tracked independently by Heatmap and Interconnected Capital, is bipartisan and concentrated in the South and Midwest, where more than 400 restrictions sit and roughly three-quarters of July's approvals landed.
Florida has approved 14 of its 23 active restrictions in this recent push, the sharpest single-state case. The grievances behind the votes are concrete: noise, water-supply strain, and electricity-grid load, complaints that have carried from red counties in Texas to blue towns in New York.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has imposed a moratorium on new data center approvals while the state audits companies seeking to connect to the power grid. Texas remains a major AI hub, so the pause bites into the buildout rather than into a symbolic program. Amazon is pressing ahead with a new gas power plant in Pecos County to feed a co-located data center, a site projected to become the single biggest source of US environmental pollution once running.
Local democratic authority over siting and grid hookups has become a third constraint on AI's buildout, and the residents enforcing it do not sort neatly by party.