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We're in southern West Virginia, a long-time Trump stronghold. We get some gas. But even here, something feels different. What do you think about the price of gas? Outrageous. Outrageous? Yeah. I don't know what people are going to do. Gas prices across the US have gone up about 40% if not more since Trump's war choice with Iran. They need to go down. Is it affecting your life? Yeah, definitely. Is it going to change how you might vote in the next election?
I think the things that he does will cause people to not vote. Did you vote for Trump last time around? Yeah. Yeah? I did. You thinking about not re-electing Republican this time? Honestly, I'm thinking about not even vote. I thought Trump was going to do a lot more great things, you know. Good luck out there. Thanks. Southern West Virginia is coal mining country and has experienced major population loss amid industrial decline.
It's now one of the poorest areas in the country. Donald Trump won overwhelmingly here in 2024. But amidst the cost of living crisis and with the midterms just a few weeks away, I wondered if sentiment here was changing. There's very few Democrats I think who are expecting to see major swings in West Virginia. This is a conservative state, a deep red state and has been for decades now. But I think with Trump's tanking opinion poll ratings, it's still interesting to see what party faithful in deep red counties like here really think about him. We came to a barbecue hosted by the Summers County Republican Party.
Hello. Organized to boost voter turnout ahead of the midterms. It's important that they get out and vote and it's important to maintain the congressional majority that we have. We're we're up against something that none of us would ever thought we'd have to be dealing with the socialism. Do you mind me asking you how you're feeling about the country? That's a very layered question. How do you rate what Trump has done in office in the past 2 years? There are things that I totally agree with him on, and there are things I don't agree with him on. Um you know, the price of gasoline, of course that's the price of this war that
we're we're having. I think we were dumb to do it. It might end up costing your party the House of Representatives in Washington and maybe even the Senate. Price of gas is going to be the thing. And right now there's no reason for gasoline to be as high as it is, even with the war. You sound like a Democrat. Well, I'm not a Democrat, but I got a little bit of common sense. And I know that people are going to vote based on the price of gasoline.
We always get from the left or right promised a lot, and usually nothing prevails out of it. Look at his knuckles. Something big is coming to this part of West Virginia that is also causing a headache for Republicans. Residents are pushing back against the rapid growth of data centers. It's a vast new data center campus that is being proposed by New York-based developers on this patch of land in nearby Mingo County. The facility would run 117 gas turbine engines and could emit hundreds of tons of air pollutants annually. And it's unlikely to lead to many permanent local jobs.
Can you tell me what the effects are of this fight and pollution? We don't anticipate any negative impacts. Last year, despite opposition, West Virginia's Republican supermajority passed House Bill 2014, which rolled back local government's power to regulate these centers and would redirect 70% of their tax revenue to the state. Jordan Maynard is a Republican state delegate who backed the bill. Welcome to West Virginia. Thank you very much. When you speak to folks in some of these communities, they will articulate the idea that power is being taken away from them and they have less choice in where these things end
up. Sense of powerlessness in the face of large corporations. Yeah, maybe we're talking to different people. The people I talk to, they have questions and they have concerns. When China or, you know, other actors are pushing a narrative consistently on social media, etc. that, you know, all their water is being taken or all their power is being sucked off the grid or whatever the scare tactic is. Are you suggesting that they're kind of regurgitating Chinese state talking points? Is that where you think they're getting this misinformation from?
China has a very, very strong incentive to undermine the build-out of certain things, such as data centers or infrastructure or power or what have you. Does that mean every concern is false? No, doesn't mean every concern is false. Of course there are concerns. I just want to read you something that Donald Trump said recently. The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want data centers if they want to end up being backwards and poor. What do you make of that? My contention is do you want to pay teachers? Do you want to pay police? Do you want to have good water and good sewer and good infrastructure? You have to be welcoming of industry into your state into your communities. And ultimately
for West Virginia, this is a once-in-a-multi-generational opportunity. Opposition towards data centers is now bipartisan across many parts of the country. People are standing up to Big Tech and saying no to these data centers being built in their own communities. And in places like Mingo County, it's felt particularly strongly. This used to be a thriving coal mining community with thousands of jobs connected to the industry. But coal's continuing decline in the later part of the 20th century has seen unemployment soar and the area's population has halved in the past 50 years.
It's no surprise that promises from outsiders are viewed with suspicion. Hi. I'm Oliver. I'm Janet. Nice you, Janet. Nice to meet you, too. Janet Gibson's family has been here for generations. She runs a food bank to serve the community's poorest residents. Have you seen the kind of need for your services go up in the past few years? Yes, with our prices rising right now, gas, depending on where you get it here is anywhere between 419 to 449 a gallon. It just keeps rising. Groceries are going up.
Medicine's going up. Jobs are less and less in our community, and then when the kids get the training, they're leaving. We're going to go for a ride. What's special about living here, Janet? I probably know 99.9% of the people here. Yeah. Up every hill, up every holler. Even if we're not biologically related, sometimes it's the non-biologically that become family. And how has the community changed over the past decade?
Well, you will see some abandoned houses where people have left or died off or um the drugs are becoming more and more prevalent. It's really changed. Used to be, growing up, my mom didn't worry about locking the door. We drove near to the site of the proposed data center. Supposed to be up through here somewhere. Here, around here? Yeah. They tell us it's supposed to be the biggest one that's around. We don't I have no conception of how big it's supposed to be.
Do you think it symbolizes something that's bigger than just a data center? It's about community and power and who holds power. Oh, yeah, it's more about the power and things. I mean, and evidently we don't matter down here. They didn't listen to us, but again, they passed House Bill 2014 without even telling us what it was. Even if he lowers taxes with these data centers, how's that going to benefit us with everything else keep rising? Trump has made promises to the people of West Virginia about new years of prosperity. That seems to me like another one of those promises. But it was basically because of coal.
He was going to bring coal back. And we have had some coal mines that have reopened. But we've also had some coal mines that have recently shut down again. It's It's hard. It's hard to make ends meet. I can go back to an old thing that some old-timers back then used to say. If they ain't a crook when they get in, they're a crook when they get out. Amid this lack of trust, local Democrats are looking for authentic connections with the community here. I'd heard about a local organizer who's now running for State House.
A former rapper, she calls herself Baby Hey, nice to meet you. I'm sorry. But a few days before we got to town, her election became even tougher. She was involved in a serious car crash, and without health insurance, she wasn't even able to stay overnight in the hospital. I mean, I remember flipping three times in my vehicle when I was wrecking. The eyewitnesses on the scene said it was five.
I broke my back in um the T4 and the T12. I'm thankful for the coverage that I did receive finally, but it was just Why didn't I already have that as a working American? Why didn't I already have that health care? And these ain't sad tears. These are angry tears. These are also blessed tears to still be here, to still stand up for the people, to still speak. I just wonder why you think the Democratic Party lost the population here. Maybe they liked uh you know, Trump's character. Maybe they liked the promises, you know.
Maybe they were scared of the other options. I don't know. When I've spoken to kind of folks in the State Democratic Party here, I mean, you're you're fighting against somebody that has a significant margin, right? Like this would have to be a huge swing for somebody uh in your position to win. Right. Do you think that you got a chance? I do. Why? Because I connect with all different parties, uh Democrat, Republican, the Mountain Party. talk to all kinds of people, people that don't even get into politics that just know stuff's going on in the world right now. They know I'm going to be a voice for them. I'm not just going to go in there with my own decision. I'm going to go in what they send me in with.
Like my first day, I mean, they already know like if the people's outside, don't even look at my chair to be filled cuz I'll be outside with the people. I mean, it is what it is. So, and plus you can't spell state capital without a T. You know I'll be there. Back at the food bank, I came to meet with a local group of Democrats, Republicans, and independents fighting against the new data center.
I was already seeing signs of that new type of politics Baby T had described. People in West Virginia, we are our own folks. You know, we don't like people telling us what to do. Anything that compromises our families, we get very upset about. And if they can keep us poor up and fighting amongst one another, then they're going to duke us. Exactly. They've duked us already. Everybody can't be billionaires. I'm sorry. That's fact. This November, there's a change coming in America.
There's a mute change coming in because our democracy is at stake. And that includes every one of us. It don't make a difference what politics belong to. You know what I've seen here that's been pretty confronting and surprising is that the kind of support amongst Donald Trump's most loyal base. Where we're going next is Alabama where we're going to try and track Donald Trump's efforts to undermine the Democratic process and to hold on to power in Washington.
