Regarding the Aug. 12 news article “The data center backlash is building, just in time for the midterm elections”:
The communities opposing the construction of new data centers are not wrong to ask hard questions. However, it’s unfortunate that many of the facts are being distorted. Some of the reason for this is rooted in a foreign influence campaign designed to denigrate America’s artificial intelligence dominance so that China, in particular, can dominate the technology and jobs of the future.
For example, S&P Global found no clear correlation between data center expansion and electricity rate hikes. Meanwhile, Maine, which has very few data centers, saw the nation’s biggest electricity rate spike between May 2024 and May 2025. Virginia, which has more data centers than anywhere on earth, saw one of the nation’s smallest increases in utility costs during that same time period, and it was roughly in line with inflation.
The article claimed that diesel-powered sites are spewing air pollution throughout Virginia. However, these backup diesel-powered generators are limited by state law to emergency use and testing only.
Communities deserve the facts. At a moment in time when politicians are all too eager to oppose data centers for political points, the benefits communities are seeing from AI infrastructure can be amazing. Look at Loudoun County: Data centers sit on about 3 percent of the land but generate 45 percent of the county’s tax revenue.
Moratoriums or data center bans won’t cause AI to disappear or your electricity bills to go down. But they will help hand China the future America should be building.
Kyrsten Sinema, Phoenix
The writer, an independent, represented Arizona in the Senate from 2019 to 2025, and is a co-chair of the AI Infrastructure Coalition.
Don’t pack the courts
Regarding the Aug. 14 editorial “Adam Schiff’s court-packing brainstorm”:
Congress fixed the number of U.S. Supreme Court justices at nine in 1869. It has remained undisturbed for 157 years to avoid becoming a political plaything. Nine has become politically sacralized, which President Franklin Roosevelt discovered when his 1937 court-packing legislation sank within his own Democratic Party.
Sen. Adam Schiff’s court-packing legislation is no improvement. The California Democrat’s argument that the number of justices should grow with an uptick in population betrays ignorance of the Constitution’s separation of powers. The Supreme Court is not a representative body. It is intended as a headwind against popular majorities. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes further explained in opposing Roosevelt in 1937 that increasing the number of justices would confound or arrest rather than facilitate the court’s deliberative processes.
The editorial errantly gave the Republicans a pass in manipulating Supreme Court appointments for partisan purposes. Remember the procedural blockade that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) put up in 2016 against entertaining President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing because it was during an election year?
Bruce Fein, Washington
The writer served as associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan.
“The Supreme Court of the United States shall be composed of nine Justices, consisting of one chief justice and eight associate justices.” That is the language of the proposed Keep Nine Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It would permanently preserve the independence of the Supreme Court. Members of Congress, state and federal officials, and candidates in all parties should endorse it.
The Constitution is silent on the size of the Supreme Court. Without an amendment defining the number of justices, a Congress and president could change that number for political advantage. This strategy is known as court-packing.
Support for the amendment extends across party lines. Court-packing would be a constitutional disaster for the nation and any party that embraced it. An independent Supreme Court is vital for the future of democracy. If one party packed the Supreme Court, another party with a new majority would retaliate by packing the court again. The result would undermine both the independence of the court and the rule of law.
Nine Supreme Court justices have worked well since 1869. We do not need or want 31 Supreme Court justices.
Paul Summers, Nashville
Stephen Rosenthal, Richmond
Roman Buhler, Elma, New York
Paul Summers and Stephen Rosenthal, former attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia, respectively, are co-chairs of the Coalition to Preserve the Independence of the United States Supreme Court. Roman Buhler is the coalition’s executive director.
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