Fact-Checking the Governor: Mississippians deserve the truth on data centers

Governor Reeves is celebrating. Mississippi deserves the full truth.

Governor Reeves just posted a victory lap about AI data centers and Mississippi's "Power Play." We agree that investment in our state is worth celebrating. But Mississippians deserve facts — not a political sales pitch. So let's take his claims one at a time.

"JOBS, JOBS, JOBS."

This is the oldest trick in the economic development playbook, and it's worth slowing down on. Data centers create thousands of jobs — during construction. Once the building is done, the servers are switched on, and the construction crews go home, what's left is a far smaller workforce.

Here are the actual numbers from real projects: Microsoft hired over 3,000 workers to build two Wisconsin data centers — and those facilities are expected to support about 800 permanent jobs. Google's massive Kansas City campus? 1,000 construction jobs, 200 permanent. A 1.1 million-square-foot Vantage Data Center in Nevada projected 4,000 construction jobs — and 73 permanent jobs over the next decade. According to researchers at the University of Michigan, data centers "do not bring high-paying tech jobs to local communities."

Governor Reeves hasn't told Mississippians clearly how many of the jobs being celebrated are temporary construction jobs versus permanent positions. That distinction matters enormously — especially when public money, legislative carve-outs, and deals negotiated behind closed doors are involved.

What "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" actually looks like in Southaven right now.

Governor Reeves held a press event last month with Elon Musk's xAI to celebrate a $20 billion investment — the largest private investment in state history, he said. What he didn't mention is what's happening to the people who live next door.

NBC News reported this week that xAI arrived in Southaven last summer and installed 18 methane gas turbines on trailers — without warning neighbors and, according to the NAACP, without the required permits. Nine more arrived in December. The turbines run day and night. Residents describe the sound as jet engines that never stop.

"I intended to die right here," 76-year-old Eddie Gossett told NBC News. "Hell, I couldn't give my house away with all this noise."

A mother named Taylor Logsdon said two of her children developed respiratory problems since the plant went online. A Black family that has owned their 2-acre plot for generations — during a time when many Black families in the region were still sharecropping — has been forced to move their furniture out and shut off their electricity. The wildlife has left their property.

Hundreds packed a public hearing on February 17th. Not one person in the audience spoke in favor of granting xAI a permit for permanent turbines. Attendees wore shirts that said "Not all money is good money."

The Southern Environmental Law Center has given xAI a 60-day notice of intent to sue under the Clean Air Act. The NAACP's Mississippi State Conference president told the hearing: "Mississippi has a long and powerful history of making decisions intensifying environmental harms of Black and low-income communities, treating our neighbors as a sacrifice zone."

Governor Reeves was standing next to xAI's CFO at their press event. He has said nothing publicly about what is happening to the people of Southaven.

That's what "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" looks like when you zoom in.

On Trump's "brilliant" promise that data centers will build their own power.

Governor Reeves praised President Trump's State of the Union announcement that tech companies will generate their own electricity as a move that will "pour gas on the already roaring growth here."

Here's the problem with that: Musk's xAI is already doing exactly that in Southaven — building its own power source — and the result is jet-engine noise at 2 a.m., respiratory problems in children, and a family forced out of the property they've held for generations. If this is what self-sufficient power looks like in practice, Mississippians deserve to know that before we call it brilliant.

There's also a logical contradiction at the heart of Reeves' argument. He claims Mississippi won these investments because of our "excess energy capacity." But if tech companies are going off-grid and generating their own power, then that advantage evaporates. You cannot simultaneously take credit for providing the power and celebrate that these companies won't need it.

Energy experts are also throwing cold water on Trump's pledge more broadly. According to Politico's E&E News, the ratepayer pledge "would address only some of the causes of rising prices." The chair of Maine's Public Utilities Commission called it "potentially a voluntary commitment" with no clear enforcement mechanism. Meanwhile, regulators greenlighted $11.6 billion in rate increases in 2025 to accommodate AI's electricity demands, and residential electricity rates climbed 6 percent in December 2025 Reason Magazine — even as Trump was promising to cut electricity prices in half.

On the secret deals and who's really protected.

At the Mississippi Public Service Commission's own Power Grid Summit, watchdog Kelley Williams of the Bigger Pie Forum raised serious alarms. The agreements between the state, Entergy, and data center operators are not being made public. "We don't know the answer to that question because it's a secret," Williams told attendees. (Magnolia Tribune) He also noted that legislation passed during a special session effectively stripped the PSC of oversight powers and greenlighted unlimited spending for Entergy while subsidizing Amazon's Madison County data center projects.

An Earthjustice analysis found that in other states, electricity rates for large industrial users fell by more than 80 percent while residential rates rose. In Mississippi, where residents already face some of the nation's highest monthly power bills and where poverty rates are high, the risk is acute. Msindy

Governor Reeves says Mississippians should trust him. Mississippians are asking: show us the contracts.

On who Governor Reeves chose to attack.

Governor Reeves opened this post by taking shots at bloggers and lawyers — people who ask questions for a living, then went on to attack opponents of the xAI expansion as "lefties". That tells you something. When your argument is strong, you lead with facts. When it's weak, you lead with mockery.

The people raising questions about Southaven aren't politically connected lefties. They're a 76-year-old former small-business owner who says he can't sleep. A mother whose children are having trouble breathing. A family that held onto their land through the sharecropping era and is now being forced out by a billionaire's turbines running without permits.

Mississippians who work with their hands deserve a governor who fights for them — not one who uses them as backdrop for press events with Elon Musk and then goes silent when those same working families are choking on the exhaust.

What we'd actually like to see.

Mississippi ranks near the bottom in wages, healthcare access, and educational outcomes. If this investment wave is genuinely going to change that, prove it. Tell us how many permanent jobs these projects are creating — with wages and zip codes attached. Open the contracts to public review. Restore the PSC's oversight authority. And stand up for the people of Southaven, not just the billionaire who moved in next door to them without asking permission.

We want Mississippi to thrive. But hype isn't a jobs plan. Secret deals aren't economic development. And calling out the people asking hard questions isn't leadership.

Our people deserve better.

Sources: NBC News, E&E News/Politico, Built In, The Nevada Independent, University of Michigan, Mississippi Independent, Magnolia Tribune, Mississippi Today.