- BIG STORY: AI data center fights spread from counties to campaign trail
- ROUNDUP: Latest Medicaid cuts hit legal S.C. immigrants
- LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: Just quoting him
- BRACK: Presidential candidates flocking to South Carolina
- MYSTERY PHOTO: Big head
- FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
AI data center fights spread from counties to campaign trail
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | A broad grassroots backlash against artificial intelligence (AI) data centers is gaining momentum across the Palmetto State, with six counties imposing moratoriums in the month of September alone.
Altogether, 13 South Carolina counties have enacted data center moratoriums since January and at least two more are under active consideration.
The moves come amid a roiling national debate over the facilities, particularly when they are seen as threats to local ratepayers, waterways and ecosystems when their scale is massive and they put heavy energy and water demands on local communities.
Nevertheless, with this November’s midterm elections fast approaching, President Donald Trump has doubled down on his push for data center expansion, calling the industry a “golden goose.”
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want data centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote in a recent social media post. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let data reign.”
On the campaign trail
Here in South Carolina, where Lowcountry pediatrician Annie Andrews is challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Darline Graham, the Democrat this week turned up the heat on the issue, launching a new website, DataCenterDarline.com on Sept. 28.
On the site, Andrews accuses Graham of supporting $70 billion in federal tax breaks for data centers and of benefiting from about $1 million in independent campaign spending by an AI-connected super PAC.
The estimated tax breaks were the result of corporate tax changes in Trump’s 2025 Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Graham has said she supports, though she was appointed to replace her late brother, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, after the Senate voted on the bill.
“Darline Graham has been loud and clear about supporting data centers and tax breaks for them,” Andrews said in a Sept. 28 release. “But where is her plan to cut your taxes or lower your costs? South Carolinians deserve a senator who answers to them — not the special interests spending millions to put her in office.”
In a Sept. 29 statement, Graham spokesman T.W. Arrighi pushed back hard, telling the Charleston City Paper that Andrews, who supports a national moratorium, “always chooses the liberal Washington-knows-best agenda over South Carolina values.”
“Sen. Graham believes local communities and states should decide where data centers go, how they operate and make sure taxpayers don’t end up footing the bill,” Arrighi said.
Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, both candidates support a mix of state and local regulations to protect ratepayers and local interests.
“When I sit with families across South Carolina, the conversation keeps coming back to the power bill,” Democratic gubernatorial candidate Rep. Jermaine Johnson told the City Paper Tuesday. “So when large out-of-state companies want to build data centers that draw as much electricity as a small city, I believe we owe those families an honest answer about who pays.”
In addition, Johnson said, he supports a statewide moratorium “until our state has a comprehensive approval and oversight process in place” for new facilities, including a requirement that operators provide their own power.
On the other side of the aisle, a spokesman for GOP candidate and current
Attorney General Alan Wilson, said his candidate supports “strong statewide standards for data centers,” such as those contained in Beaufort Sen. Tom Davis’s regulatory bill, which failed to get out of the S.C. Senate earlier this year.
“Data centers that come to South Carolina should pay their own way, provide for their own power and water needs, and never leave families footing the bill through higher utility rates,” said campaign spokesman Woods Wooten.
Stopping short of endorsing a statewide moratorium, Wooten added: “Alan understands why counties are hitting pause. Communities deserve clear rules before massive projects move forward.”
Hitting the brakes
Of the 13 local moratoriums passed to date, the ones that drew the most statewide attention were in Colleton and Spartanburg counties, where data center opponents focused their fire on two specific projects.
According to Southern Environmental Law Center spokesman Robby Maynor, whose group has filed lawsuits challenging both projects, the cases are instructive because they highlight the different concerns that exist in rural and urban areas of the state.
In rural Colleton County, that concern was sparked by a $6 billion, 850-acre project proposed by Eagle Rock Partners and Thomas and Hutton, which opponents said would drive up power rates and threaten the nearby ACE Basin, a landmark state conservation project that has received global accolades.
“It was basically right in the middle of one of the most important conservation areas on the East Coast, on the headwaters of the Ashepoo River,” Maynor said. “In my opinion, that’s a really good example of bad siting, and the way data center developers look to rural areas where maybe lax zoning or a lack of resources make it hard to enforce rules.”
But after that project was delayed by the county moratorium, Eagle Rock shifted its attention to a new 1,200-acre site in the western portion of the county — a site that got a major boost on Sept. 14, when Colleton County Council voted to lift its moratorium in a portion of the county west of I-95.
If completed, the project would contain a total of 10 buildings and serve a major AI company such as Microsoft or Meta, officials say.
“We are excited to bring this opportunity that will provide meaningful investment, jobs, and long term investments to Colleton County,” an Eagle Rock spokesman told the City Paper in a Tuesday statement.
In Spartanburg, on the other hand, the major concerns involve a different set of environmental issues, Maynor said, such as air quality in residential areas.
Driving those worries, he said, is the $3 billion Valara data center project, which includes its own natural gas plant for power and was grandfathered in before the county’s moratorium took effect.
“Natural gas is a fossil fuel, and just like other fossil fuels, it creates significant air pollution,” Maynor said, pointing to an SELC-commissioned study from the Harvard School of Public Health showing potential negative health impacts from natural gas generation in another part of the state.
Valara project sponsor NorthMark Strategies Group did not respond by press time to a request for comment on the project.
Asked about the larger picture, Maynor said the county moratoriums are a natural response to the legislature’s inaction on statewide regulation.
“Without statewide action, the buck stops at the county level,” Maynor said. “So counties are taking things into their own hands.”
Jack O’Toole is Statehouse bureau chief for Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com
Latest Medicaid cuts hit legal S.C. immigrants
By Jack O’Toole, Statehouse bureau | Hundreds of thousands of immigrants legally residing in the United States began losing their health care coverage Thursday as another round of Medicaid cuts enacted in last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) took effect.
Though specific estimates are unavailable for South Carolina, a recent analysis by KFF Health News found that about 29,000 residents will lose coverage in neighboring North Carolina, along with another 177,000 in Florida.
Affected groups include war refugees, victims of sex trafficking and interpreters who put their lives at risk helping U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Green card holders remain eligible under the law.
More than 100,000 South Carolinians have lost Medicaid and Affordable Care Act coverage due to OBBBA cuts since President Donald Trump signed the law in July 2025, according to the advocacy group Protect Our Care.
Altogether, the bill is expected to cut about $1 trillion in federal health care spending by 2035.
And the impacts of those cuts will eventually touch every South Carolinian, according to the Appleseed Legal Justice Center’s Sue Berkowitz, as rural hospitals close and the remaining providers shift costs to privately insured patients.
“You just can’t cut a trillion dollars over 10 years without affecting everybody,” Berkowitz told the City Paper.
In other recent news
2026: Andrews outspending, outraising Graham in S.C. U.S. Senate race. Democratic nominee Annie Andrews is outspending sitting Republican U.S. Sen. Darline Graham in the race for the U.S. Senate. Polls across South Carolina show them nearly tied at a time the GOP is weak. But to many, Andrews is still the underdog.
- New poll gives Graham a 1-point lead on Andrews
- Johnson details priorities in bid for S.C. governor
- National Democrats keep coming to S.C. to stump for midterm candidates
- Today is the last day to register in person to vote for S.C.’s Nov. 3 election
STATEHOUSE: Democratic lawmakers call for special session to address affordability. Democrats in the state Senate said they are calling to take up practical measures to ease household costs and strengthen economic security for South Carolinians.
S.C. Arts Commission refuses grant funding for 2 LGBTQ+ organizations. The governing board of the South Carolina Arts Commission denied grants to a pair of LGBTQ+ arts groups in the Upstate without giving a reason.
USC, Westinghouse sign agreement for nuclear workforce training center. The University of South Carolina inked a deal with Westinghouse related to the school’s plans for a nuclear workforce training center within its engineering school. However, it does not commit Westinghouse to any investment in the training center.
Just quoting him
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for shining a light on critical issues in just the right way. This week, he takes on the White House’s ouster of some national news organizations from the White House press pool.
- Love this week’s cartoon or hate it? Did he go too far, or not far enough? Send your thoughts to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Brack: Presidential candidates flocking to South Carolina
Commentary by Andy Brack | Every four years, that rarest of critters – the aspirant for the presidency of the United States – emerges like a periodical cicada.
Across South Carolina, the Democratic species is starting to make appearances because the Palmetto State will host the nation’s first primary on Jan. 22, 2028.
Meanwhile, the Republican variety of presidential contender is mostly still buried and probably waiting until after the midterms to peek out its head in fear of looking like an unfaithful Trump acolyte. Iowa will host the first GOP caucuses in early January 2028 and South Carolina is home to the South’s first GOP primary later that month.
So the buzz is on the Democratic side. Already, there have been visits by a slew of possible candidates, including governors (California’s Gavin Newsom, Kentucky’s Andy Beshear and Maryland’s Wes Moore) as well as senators (Ruben Gallego and Mark Kelly, both from Arizona, Connecticut’s Chris Murphy and New Jersey’s Cory Booker) and at least one congressman (California’s Ro Khanna). Other 2026 Democratic visitors include former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu.
Others you may see in the months ahead: U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia and even more governors (J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro). Former Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s 2024 nominee, participated in a Columbia fundraiser recently, but many think her time has passed.
In the months ahead, you’ll hear all sorts of messages about what America needs and how it can get beyond the damage done to the federal government by President Donald Trump. Some leaders will focus on the current administration’s corruption. Others will highlight the tanking economy with its high prices for gas, food and housing. And others will wax about the benefits of investing in America to grow jobs and build opportunities.
But all of their messages will boil down to something that worked for former President Barack Obama – hope. These Democrats will want to share visions of how the nation can restore itself to its former glory and inspire Americans to hope and dream again.
“I believe that people are going to be looking for something better,” Kentucky’s Beshear said in a recent interview. “They’re going to want decency and they’re going to want kindness, though I would say never mistake kindness for weakness.”
He said Americans are going to demand that the next president fix the economy and how government works. For example, “I think the next Democratic president should make an aspirational investment in housing,” he said.
Candidates will spend a lot of time in our early primary state doing something else, too – listening to what people are hopeful and worried about. Trump, Beshear observed, simply doesn’t listen. He issues edicts that cause congressional Republicans to scurry around like bugs on the floor.
He asked: “So, how do you know exactly what people are going through without listening to them? Are you going to presuppose that you have all the answers?
“The solutions are already there. Community leaders have already been working towards them for decades. What they need is a good partner and that requires a lot of listening.”
Beshear said he believes voters will demand new levels of accountability in the next president after a Trump second term filled with cruelty, corruption, hiding the Epstein files and twisting federal agencies into partisan policy vendors.
“We have to clean up government and make people believe that government can work again, but we’re also going to have to show such a better example, where you can put your kids in front of the TV and not hear the president go on an expletive-filled diatribe.”
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Statehouse Report and the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Big head
Here’s an interesting image. Where is it? Bonus points: Tell us what’s going on with this picture. Please send in your best guess – and your name and hometown – to feedback@statehousereport.com. And if you have a mystery photo to share, send that along too (but tell us what it is because we’re horrible guessers.)
Last week’s mystery, “Old white house” is the Reidville Academy Faculty House in Spartanburg County. It was built in 1860.
Only three people identified it – probably because something went wrong with sending the Statehouse Report newsletter last week. (Remember you can always check the Charleston City Paper’s Statehouse Report section to find the latest statewide news).
Hats off to Bill Segars of Hartsville, Jay Altman of Columbia and George Graf of Palmyra, Va.
- SHARE: If you have a Mystery Photo to share, please send it to us – and make sure you tell us what it is!
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