A 1600-word national feature about how the AI data center boom (and the backlash over energy costs, water, and land use) has become a kitchen-table issue that cuts across party lines heading into the 2026 midterms, from Louisiana to Virginia.

My role: research and reporting, plus all of the story’s data work. I built the analysis pipeline in Python, spatially joining every operational and planned U.S. data center to its congressional district using Census TIGER/Line shapefiles, and matched districts to party affiliation. I then used d3.js, QGIS, and Datawrapper to create the story’s chart sand maps, visualizing the results.