As Trump Demands Americans Accept More Data Centers and His Interior Secretary Looks to Trade Away Our Public Lands to Build Them, Congress Must Investigate
Washington, D.C. — Donald Trump declared this week that any community resisting data center construction wants to be “backwards and poor,” dismissing a nationwide backlash over spiking utility bills, water use, and noise. Trump’s financial disclosures tell the real story: he personally holds up to $25 million in stocks tied to data center construction and has traded shares in at least 25 companies that profit from the AI buildout, according to a recent investigation. Meanwhile, his Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has spent over a year quietly negotiating a land swap that would open up Prince William Forest Park in Virginia to a data center developer, while stonewalling a congressional inquiry into the deal.
In response, Congressional Integrity Project Senior Adviser Jeremy Funk released the following statement:
“Donald Trump is protecting his own portfolio and dressing it up as a grand vision for America’s future. The president is telling Americans who don’t want a data center in their backyard that they deserve to be poor, while he quietly cashes in on the same buildout through millions in stock trades. Meanwhile his Interior Secretary is treating our public lands like a clearance rack for well-connected developers, negotiating behind closed doors and stonewalling Congress. Congress has a responsibility to find out exactly how much Trump stands to personally gain from this administration’s data center push, and how much of America’s public lands Burgum is prepared to sign away to protect it.”
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