Politics

MTG Splits With Trump Due to ‘Deep Concerns’ Over AI Plan

ON AND OFF

The MAGA congresswoman is unhappy with a recent executive order from Trump.

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has "many concerns" with Trump's new AI plan.
Al Drago/Getty Images

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene can’t seem to find any common ground with President Donald Trump these days.

The Georgia congresswoman said she had “many concerns” with the AI Executive Order the president signed Wednesday, which the White House said would help the U.S. win the “AI race.”

The plan would “usher in a new golden age of human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security for the American people,” the White House added—but Greene firmly disagreed.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has split with Trump on AI policy.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has split with Trump on AI policy. Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

“While I understand the many promised benefits of AI, I remain committed to protecting state rights, human jobs, human lives, human rights, our environment and critical water supply,” she wrote on X Thursday.

Greene specifically noted her “deep concerns” with the order’s plan to swiftly extend AI throughout the country “with little to no guardrails and breaks.”

“It also contains the threat of withholding federal funds from states who regulate AI, which is an absolute threat to federalism and why I strongly opposed the AI state moratorium originally in the BBB,” she said.

Greene seemed to find issue with one key policy in Trump’s “AI Action Plan” in particular.

The policy in question centered around promoting the “rapid buildout” of data centers across the country by “expediting and modernizing permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs.”

“Rushed AI expansion and data centers being built all over the country from state to state with no plan in regards to environmental and critical water supply impact has massive future implications and problems,” she wrote.

Marjorie Taylor Greene said that rushing AI expansion could have "massive future implications and problems."
Marjorie Taylor Greene said that rushing AI expansion could have "massive future implications and problems." Al Drago/Getty Images

Greene claimed that data centers are like “black holes when it comes to water requirements,” since they “consume massive amounts of water for cooling, literally millions of gallons per day,” and that states and counties already fight each other over the water supply.

“Just wait and see how bad lawsuits will become when counties are competing for data centers, in order to get rid of county property taxes, and the unintended results is new data centers that steal the water from surrounding homes and neighboring counties and states,” Greene said.

“Competing with China does not mean become like China by threatening state rights, replacing human jobs on mass scale creating mass poverty, and creating potentially devastating effects on our environment and critical water supply,” she continued.

Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Trump that the new data centers he plans to build will "steal" water from counties and states.
Marjorie Taylor Greene warns Trump that the new data centers he plans to build will "steal" water from counties and states. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Greene said that she’s been in construction her “entire life” and can “tell you firsthand, when you move dirt there is always an impact to the surrounding area.”

“When you build something that requires a HIGH water demand, it will always take water away from others—that means people, cities, businesses, and surrounding counties and states,” she remarked.

The 51-year-old stated that AI’s place in all this requires a “careful and wise approach,” but the “AI EO takes the opposite” route.

Last month, think tank the Federation of American Scientists released a policy memo proposing a set of congressional and federal executive actions “to establish comprehensive, standardized metrics for AI energy and environmental impacts across model training, inference, and data center infrastructure.”

It added, “a single hyperscale AI data center can guzzle hundreds of thousands of gallons of water per day​ and contribute to a “mountain” of e-waste​.

Marjorie Taylor Greene says that handling AI requires a “careful and wise approach."
Marjorie Taylor Greene says that handling AI requires a “careful and wise approach." Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Greene’s opposition to Trump’s recent AI plans comes amid a number of recent criticisms toward the president.

She has made her frustration surrounding the Epstein files abundantly clear, and earlier this month she blasted the Trump administration on its decision to send weapons to Ukraine.

It also comes weeks after she voiced her opposition to the president’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which passed through the Senate in a dramatic 51-50 vote at the start of the month.

Greene originally voted to help push the bill through the House back in May but then pulled a 180, admitting that after actually reading the contents of the bill, she now staunchly opposed it.

“I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there,” she said.

The rare break from Trump was short-lived, as she declared at a congressional hearing the following day that she was “proud” to have voted for the bill, citing its promise to pour more money into border security.

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