Across the country, as proposals for energy-intensive data centers are popping up to power the artificial intelligence boom, so too are communities rallying in opposition to them.
It’s no different in Dallas, a Pennsylvania township of just 2,500 people west of Scranton. There, lifelong regional resident Fern Leard, a Democrat in a swing county with a rich legacy of coal production in which President Donald Trump took 60% of the vote in 2024, is running her third campaign in five years for the state House on a platform where she’s put her opposition to data centers front and center.
