A transmission line in Maryland is pitting rural conservatives against Big Tech in a way that highlights the growing political sensitivities of the data center backlash. Opponents of the project want President Trump to intervene, but they’re worried he’ll ignore them — or even side with the data center developers.
The Piedmont Reliability Project would connect the Peach Bottom nuclear plant in southern Pennsylvania to electricity customers in northern Virginia, i.e.data centers, most likely. To get from A to B, the power line would have to criss-cross agricultural lands between Baltimore, Maryland and the Washington D.C. area.
As we chronicle time and time again in The Fight, residents in farming communities are fighting back aggressively – protesting, petitioning, suing and yelling loudly. Things have gotten so tense that some are refusing to let representatives for Piedmont’s developer, PSEG, onto their properties, and a court battle is currently underway over giving the company federal marshal protection amid threats from landowners.
Exacerbating the situation is a quirk we don’t often deal with in The Fight. Unlike energy generation projects, which are usually subject to local review, transmission sits entirely under the purview of Maryland’s Public Service Commission, a five-member board consisting entirely of Democrats appointed by current Governor Wes Moore – a rumored candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. It’s going to be months before the PSC formally considers the Piedmont project, and it likely won’t issue a decision until 2027 – a date convenient for Moore, as it’s right after he’s up for re-election. Moore last month expressed “concerns” about the project’s development process, but has brushed aside calls to take a personal position on whether it should ultimately be built.
Enter a potential Trump card that could force Moore’s hand. In early October, commissioners and state legislators representing Carroll County – one of the farm-heavy counties in Piedmont’s path – sent Trump a letter requesting that he intervene in the case before the commission. The letter followed previous examples of Trump coming in to kill planned projects, including the Grain Belt Express transmission line and a Tennessee Valley Authority gas plant in Tennessee that was relocated after lobbying from a country rock musician.
One of the letter’s lead signatories was Kenneth Kiler, president of the Carroll County Board of Commissioners, who told me this lobbying effort will soon expand beyond Trump to the Agriculture and Energy Departments. He’s hoping regulators weigh in before PJM, the regional grid operator overseeing Mid-Atlantic states. “We’re hoping they go to PJM and say, ‘You’re supposed to be managing the grid, and if you were properly managing the grid you wouldn’t need to build a transmission line through a state you’re not giving power to.’”
Part of the reason why these efforts are expanding, though, is that it’s been more than a month since they sent their letter, and they’ve heard nothing but radio silence from the White House.
“My worry is that I think President Trump likes and sees the need for data centers. They take a lot of water and a lot of electric [power],” Kiler, a Republican, told me in an interview. “He’s conservative, he values property rights, but I’m not sure that he’s not wanting data centers so badly that he feels this request is justified.”
Kiler told me the plan to kill the transmission line centers hinges on delaying development long enough that interest rates, inflation and rising demand for electricity make it too painful and inconvenient to build it through his resentful community. It’s easy to believe the federal government flexing its muscle here would help with that, either by drawing out the decision-making or employing some other as yet unforeseen stall tactic. “That’s why we’re doing this second letter to the Secretary of Agriculture and Secretary of Energy asking them for help. I think they may be more sympathetic than the president,” Kiler said.
At the moment, Kiler thinks the odds of Piedmont’s construction come down to a coin flip – 50-50. “They’re running straight through us for data centers. We want this project stopped, and we’ll fight as well as we can, but it just seems like ultimately they’re going to do it,” he confessed to me.
Thus is the predicament of the rural Marylander. On the one hand, Kiler’s situation represents a great opportunity for a GOP president to come in and stand with his base against a would-be presidential candidate. On the other, data center development and artificial intelligence represent one of the president’s few economic bright spots, and he has dedicated copious policy attention to expanding growth in this precise avenue of the tech sector. It’s hard to imagine something less “energy dominance” than killing a transmission line.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
