We Have Come To an Inflection Point
After years of GOP control of West Virginia, we have come to an inflection point in our politics and quality of life for West Virginians.
Our Governor, Patrick Morrisey from New Jersey, has made building data centers the highest priority of his term. The governor and his Republican Legislature passed a bill to build data centers across West Virginia and outlaw local jurisdiction to regulate, tax, zone, protect communities, or in any way interfere with the construction and operations of data centers.
These data centers for local people are a living nightmare. Their constant noise is maddening. Their massive use of electricity will push up local residential rates. Their use of groundwater to cool the damn data centers will deplete and draw down our aquifer that fills our wells, keeps us alive in droughts, and provides our most important resource, water.
The governor and the GOP want you to think the data centers will create jobs. That’s just right-wing propaganda. They will create only a handful of custodial jobs after construction.
For only a few new jobs, our people and our communities will see their quality of life and enjoyment of our environment be dragged down and turned into hell.
This is the real truth about the Trump MAGA GOP. We mean nothing to them except for votes and loud, ugly, sometimes threatening support.
It is enraging the Trump base to be confronted with the truth that the MAGA cult leaders don’t give a damn about regular, everyday people. It’s maddening for them to understand that the MAGA cult they found comfort in is destroying their lives and rolling over them.
Berkeley County Indivisible just announced that they are working with others in their county to sue to strike down the governor’s legislative giveaway, H.B. 2014.
With primary elections next month, Republican voters can vote against those legislators who supported Gov. Morrisey’s signature data center giveaway bill for data centers. Because the Republicans closed their primary, and because no Democrats voted for H.B. 2014, there are no Democrats to punish for the legislation.
This massive Republican giveaway to Big Tech, which needs data centers to support Artificial Intelligence and citizen surveillance, is a disaster for West Virginia communities and rural life. It does nothing for us regular West Virginians.
This is the inflection point. While data centers are already destroying people’s peace and enjoyment of creation, no data center will help but only hurt West Virginia people and our communities, delivering more and more wealth to those who own more than some nations. West Virginians will get nothing but destruction, sky-high electric bills, constant, 24-hour dangerous noise, farms destroyed, valleys destroyed, poisoned water, empty aquifers, and the end of rural, countryside peace.
All this is why leaders who value our environment, who treasure our land and water, air, and country way of life, are talking with others who oppose the crushing demands of corporate America, to unite all our communities and people to raise a statewide rising of West Virginians for West Virginia values and freedom.
We will need lots of folks willing to put their shoulders to the wheel to organize, reach out, act, and demonstrate. We will need folks to push this issue in every election this year. We’ll need donations to pay for connection costs linking counties across the Heart of Appalachia. We will need political leaders committed to reversing this Republican assault on West Virginia.
Nobody is to blame for this greedy, ugly thing other than the governor, who is delivering this disaster to ruin our lives and to enrich theirs.
Time to face facts, West Virginia. The Republican governor and Republican legislators are the only ones to blame for the burden brought by these data centers.
Big Tech gets what they want.
We get earthly hell in place of paradise.
Let’s ask ourselves what the GOP Governor is getting?
What are those GOP legislators who sold us out getting in return?
All to ruin a beautiful place of Creation.
This article appeared as a Guest Editorial to the Spirit of Jefferson on April 30, 2026. The lead photo attribution: Andrew Spellman.
