Trump expands data center pledge to shield customers from rising costs

President Donald Trump is set to make a major announcement Thursday about safeguarding Americans from a common concern with burgeoning data centers nationwide. The 47th president is expected to announce at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) headquarters in Washington, D.C. the formation of a coalition of legislators, tech leaders and utility CEOs who together have pledged not to pass along utility costs to customers as data centers continue to be erected nationwide, Fox News Digital has confirmed. The coalition is called the Ratepayer Protection Protection Pledge. The coalition includes 23 governors, all Republicans. Four of them will be present Thursday. FOX NEWS POLL: MOVE OVER BIG BROTHER, VOTERS SEE BIG TECH AS GREATER THREAT TO US Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, Idaho Gov. Brad Little and Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry are scheduled to attend the event with the president. Trump is expected to make the announcement alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Some Americans are skeptical of data centers for a variety of different reasons. One of those is the potential for skyrocketing energy costs from the massive centers, which are largely being built by major tech companies to power the growing artificial intelligence sector. Data centers house computer servers, data storage systems and networking equipment like routers and switches. They require large amounts of electricity and water, especially to power their own cooling systems. THE REAL REASON YOUR ELECTRIC BILL IS SOARING THIS SUMMER WILL SURPRISE YOU But on the energy cost front, Trump in February promised that rising prices would not be passed along to consumers. Trump signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge alongside those tech companies, including Microsoft, Google, Amazon, OpenAI, xAI and Oracle in March. Since then, demand to join the coalition has exploded among governors, utility CEOs and data center development companies, who will also sign onto the president’s pledge. A White House official said 200 stakeholders have signed the pledge. "President Trump is expanding the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to governors, legislators, developers and power providers to ensure everyone involved in building and powering data centers covers their own costs instead of passing them on to American families," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital. "The President’s bold action is turning data centers into engines of growth for local communities, while cementing America’s dominance in the global AI race." THE HIDDEN LEFT-WING NETWORK POWERING A ‘CONSERVATIVE’ REBELLION AGAINST A MAJOR TRUMP PRIORITY The rollout of data centers is a critical Trump administration economic priority, but rollouts of new centers have been subject to protests nationwide. CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP Fox News Digital recently reported that a group masquerading as a conservative grassroots organization has been teaming up with far-left activists to counter Trump's push. In Virginia, a well-known Marxist leader from the Party of Socialism and Liberation (PSL) has become the face of the anti-data center movement.