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There were three big losers in Tuesday’s midterm elections in the US: Donald Trump, Elon Musk and datacenters.
Datacenters, the facilities full of semiconductor chips that power artificial intelligence and a host of other online products, were on the ballot in elections in at least 40 jurisdictions across 10 states. Voters responded with a strong rebuke of the giant buildings, which have has become a symbol of the tech industry and AI.
In Ohio alone, at least 14 municipalities passed bans or restrictions on datacenter development, including in Sunbury, where Amazon has proposed a $2m datacenter project. In Maine, eight municipalities passed temporary datacenter moratoriums. In Emporio, Kansas, where a 1,000-acre gigawatt-scale datacenter was recently proposed, a ban on high-impact datacenters was approved by voters.
Voters approved nearly every datacenter moratorium that was on the ballot, dozens in total, with one notable exception: Hardwood, North Dakota. The small city of a population of less than 1,000 people voted down a bill that would impose restrictions on datacenter development.
Where datacenters were not explicitly on the ballot, officials who have pushed back against their development were elected. In Texas, Democrat Gina Hinojosa, who secured a historical victory as governor on Tuesday night over her Republican opponent, has promised to impose moratoriums on their construction. She has pledged to implement greater restrictions on and community input into whether datacenters can be built. Towards the end of his tenure, Greg Abbott, her Republican opponent, had also tried to capitalize on anti-datacenter sentiment, demanding an end to electricity subsidies for them. He reversed his previous stance that had welcomed datacenters to the state.
Keisha Lance Bottoms, who became governor of Georgia, and Amy Acton, the newly elected governor of Ohio, have also pledged to implement moratoria on the construction of large datacenters.
Anti-datacenter sentiment has grown in the last few months has become a bipartisan issue. In May, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill imposing strict regulations on large-scale datacenters. Still, last night’s election solidified the overwhelming opposition to these centers of compute that have come to serve as a stand-in for the ultra wealthy and resource extraction by the AI industry.
“Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now,” Elon Musk, who poured over $400m into supporting conservative candidates, posted on X.
Analyst Dan Ives said the results of the midterms are a clear sign that the pace of datacenter buildout will start to slow down.
“There is no way to sugarcoat that Democrats taking control especially over the Senate will create some major hurdles for AI and tech legislation in the Beltway over the next two years,” Ives said. Ives said he was particularly worried about Hinojosa who is a “known anti-datacenter politician”.
“The biggest worry of the night for tech investors and the AI trade was around the state of Texas where 25%-30% of data center gigawatts and capacity will come from,” he said.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin has agreed to pay $29.5 million to settle claims by President Donald Trump’s administration that it discriminated against white workers through its efforts to promote diversity and equity in an internal bonus program.
Lockheed Martin will pay $22 million to the US government to resolve claims that it failed to comply with anti-discrimination requirements in its federal contracts, according to the settlement announced late Tuesday by the Justice Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
In addition, Lockheed Martin will pay $7.5 million to more than 1,000 affected employees as part of a settlement with the EEOC, which had been investigating the company for violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race.
In a statement, Lockheed Martin denied the government’s allegations but said it “agreed to resolve this matter with the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to avoid the distraction and expense of prolonged litigation.”
“We did not admit liability, determining it would be best for all involved to put these matters behind us so we can remain focused on our critical national security mission,” the company said.
The case is the latest example of the Trump administration’s use of the 1863 False Claims Act to pressure federal contractors into abandoning diversity, equity and inclusion practices. The law states that contractors that make false claims to the government could be liable for extensive damages. Typically used to police fraud, the Trump administration has invoked the False Claims Act against companies it maintains have pursued discriminatory practices under the guise of promoting diversity.
The Justice Department has reached similar settlements with IBM, Deloitte and Accenture.
Civil rights groups have criticized the Trump administration’s policies for taking aim at many long-established practices that are aimed at ensuring the hiring, promotion and other employment practices do not intentionally or unintentionally discriminate against traditionally marginalized groups. Several groups have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration’s anti-DEI policies.
The allegations against Lockheed Martin center around a program the company introduced in 2021 to give the top 20% of employees a merit-based salary bump and promotion opportunities, according to the settlement agreement.
Managers submitted nominations for the bonuses, which the company then ran through an analysis to “flag” statistical outliers based on the race and sex composition of the list. If the nomination list raised flags, managers were asked to review their nominations and the “merit-based basis for the selections, without asking them to take any protected characteristic into account.”
But in practice, according to the Justice Department, Lockheed Martin personnel “exerted pressure on leaders in their business group to resolve race-related ‘flags’ by directing them to add or remove particular employees based on race.” The Justice Department claimed the managers were asked to remove nonminorities from the selections and add racial minorities.
The settlement with the DOJ and the EEOC stems from complaints made by Tim Booher, a former vice president at Lockheed Martin, who will be paid $4.4 million by the US government under a whistleblower provision of the False Claims Act. According to a complaint he filed in federal court in October 2025, Booher resigned from Lockheed Martin in May 2023 because he “felt that he could no longer be complicit in LMC’s illegal discrimination.”
In July 2024, Booher said he met with EEOC Commissioner Andrea Lucas to detail his allegations against the company. Lucas, who was elevated to EEOC chair after Trump took office in January 2025, filed a commissioner’s charge against Lockheed Martin, triggering the EEOC’s investigation.
Attorneys representing Booher released a statement applauding the “amicable conclusion that avoids prolonged litigation and ensures statutory compliance in federal contracting.”
Lucas, a vehement critic of DEI practices, has publicly urged white men to come to the EEOC with discrimination complaints and has filed her own “commissioner’s charges” against the diversity practices of companies, including Nike.
“Title VII protects every worker from employment discrimination on the basis of race — and that protection does not yield when discriminatory decisions are framed as diversity initiatives,” Lucas said in a statement announcing the settlement.

Information in Investor’s Business Daily is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer, recommendation, solicitation, or rating to buy or sell securities. The information has been obtained from sources we believe to be reliable, but we make no guarantee as to its accuracy, timeliness, or suitability, including with respect to information that appears in closed captioning. Historical investment performances are no indication or guarantee of future success or performance. Authors/presenters may own the stocks they discuss. We make no representations or warranties regarding the advisability of investing in any particular securities or utilizing any specific investment strategies. Information is subject to change without notice. For information on use of our services, please see our Terms of Use.
*Real-time prices by Nasdaq Last Sale. Real-time quote and/or trade prices are not sourced from all markets. Ownership data provided by LSEG and Estimate data provided by FactSet.
IBD, IBD Digital, IBD Live, IBD Weekly, Investor’s Business Daily, Leaderboard, MarketDiem, MarketSurge and other marks are trademarks owned by Investor’s Business Daily, LLC.
©2026 Investor’s Business Daily, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

On Tuesday, the internet and politicians responded in outrage to a New York Times report saying that Google would effectively ban students from accessing Search if their schools banned AI entirely under a new initiative.
“Search and AI are deeply integrated,” Google’s vice president for education Chris Phillips told the New York Times, reportedly adding that if a school banned access to its AI services, students “will not have access to search, and they’ll see a message from their school that indicates it’s not available.”
The report immediately drew ire. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who recently announced a ban on student-facing generative AI through eighth grade, said that Google was “trying to use its monopoly power to force AI into our public schools.”
“No corporation should have the power to dictate how we teach our children,” Mamdani wrote in an X post. “Our public schools exist to serve students, not to grow the profit margins of Big Tech.”
Now, Google is claiming that it was all a misunderstanding, while stopping short of directly addressing the central concern raised by the New York Times report: that schools can’t offer students access to Search without also giving them access to AI features.
“We want to clarify what we announced today about our education services,” Google said in a post on X. “Today’s announcements give schools more choice, not less.”
Under the new initiative, expected to take effect early next year, Google’s Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search will be off by default for K-12 student accounts. But schools will have the option to choose which of the three to turn on, and they will be allowed to “turn on one, two, or all of these services individually,” Google clarified.
To give partial credit to Phillips’ original quote, Google’s Search experience is currently deeply integrated with artificial intelligence.
“Google Search is AI Search through and through,” head of Google Search Elizabeth Reid said at the company’s annual I/O conference back in May. Gemini is increasingly baked into the experience through AI Mode and AI Overviews, which company executives say have enjoyed strong usage growth, although AI Mode’s lower ad monetization contributed to slowing Search ad revenue growth in Google’s latest quarter.
So if schools do decide that they want their students to have access to Google Search, a range of AI functions will probably still be made available to them, regardless of whether Gemini or Gemini Notebook are banned.
A recent AI risk assessment by Common Sense Media gave Google Search’s AI functions an “unacceptable risk” rating for kids and teens. The report found that AI Mode completed “100% of the homework assignments” researchers provided it in 180 tests, and sometimes gave wrong answers to queries “with the same confidence” as correct answers. The report also found that AI Mode and AI Overviews missed “clear signs of suicidal ideation,” reinforced and validated signs of psychosis, mania, and disordered eating, and even provided “step-by-step instructions for making deepfakes.”
“What makes Google Search different from other chatbots or AI apps is that it is ubiquitous on children’s personal and school-issued devices, its AI features can’t be turned off, and its AI-generated answers often fail in ways that young users may not be able to detect,” the report says.
The report was mentioned in a letter subsequently sent to Google CEO Sundar Pichai from Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley, raising concerns about what they deemed an “aggressive push of AI products to children in schools.”
Google said on Tuesday that it had heard the concerns and would be updating Search for schools accordingly. The company plans to begin piloting the changes in select U.S. schools later this month.
“Specifically, AI Mode and AI Overviews will offer step-by-step guided learning through problems, so that students don’t get quick answers to schoolwork,” Google said in the X post.