In less than a year, a massive community has gathered on social media giant Facebook of people opposed to the growth of data centers, which have surged in prevalence across the country along with the explosion of artificial intelligence. The group “Say NO to Data Centers,” was created in September 2025 and now has more than 170,000 members. It is filled with average Americans asking reasonable questions about water tables, property values, and utility rates. A Daily Wire investigation finds that the group’s grassroots energy is being channeled by Democratic operatives linked to Soros-funded organizations — and is part of an openly stated effort to turn local frustration over data centers into votes and candidates for the Left. At the heart of the group is the work of a man named George Duarte. He is designated in the massive group as one of five “Group Experts” and presents himself as an expert in “Maps & Navigation Apps” from Beverly Hills, California. He is the creator of “PoweredByWho,” the movement’s most sophisticated tool: a national database tracking 2,299 data center projects across 46 states, mapping their corporate and political money, and packaging it all with a “Community Toolkit” on how to stop a project. Duarte shares map info with the Facebook group almost daily and claims the project is funded solely by its readers.   Screenshot of the PoweredByWho platform PoweredByWho is an extremely technically sound, research-intensive project — all carried out due to his self-professed commitment to the fight against data centers. But what Duarte fails to mention to the group is his day job. Duarte is the director of digital research and AI strategy at Upswing Research & Strategy, a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., with a client list that includes nearly every single Democratic campaign committee: The Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Governors Association. Upswing’s client list also includes a wide range of progressive organizations that are directly involved in the opposition to AI data centers: the Center for American Progress, the Working Families Party, and leftist activist group Indivisible.   Via Upswing Another political operator serving as a “Group Expert” in the Facebook group is Mark Schlosberg, a senior adviser at Food & Water Watch (FWW) — a Washington group demanding that Congress halt all new data center construction. Schlosberg claimed in a statement to the Daily Wire that neither FWW nor its affiliated PAC “has a role with this Facebook page.” According to Power the Future, FWW is the anti-data center campaign’s “chief political quarterback” and receives its funding “almost entirely through anonymizing donor-advised funds.” FWW’s affiliated PAC, Food & Water Action, has backed Democratic candidates almost exclusively. In 2024, it supported Kamala Harris, three Democratic congressional candidates, and one Working Families Party candidate. That same year, the group ran get-out-the-vote operations in Pennsylvania — a swing state where Food & Water Watch has also organized opposition to data center development. That is the machinery of a national political party, and its fingerprints sit on the anti-data-center movement’s central nervous system. Duarte himself bragged on LinkedIn that his project has become a voter-registration machine in swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin — a departure from his role as a Facebook group’s “Maps & Navigation” expert. “They don’t just get mad. They register to vote,” Duarte posted. Duarte told The Daily Wire that PoweredByWho is an “independent personal project” he built himself, and that Upswing “plays no role in it at all.” Upswing did not respond to a request for comment.   Via George Duarte on LinkedIn Indivisible, another client of Upswing, is a leftist activist network best known for bankrolling the anti-Trump “No Kings” protests. It is now among the most active funded organizers in the anti-data-center fight. Indivisible has driven data-center fights nationwide — an April “week of action” in Temple, Texas, complete with a City Hall protest and a council recall; scripted phone banks in central Indiana; and anti-data center rallies from Massachusetts to California. The American Energy Institute has also tracked the group funding similar activity across Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Georgia, and California. The grants database of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros’s $32 billion philanthropic juggernaut, shows more than $7.6 million flowing from George Soros to Indivisible, $3 million of which was earmarked for “social welfare activities.” The American Energy Institute tracked another $1 million in 2025 going to Indivisible from the Berger Action Fund, the advocacy vehicle of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, according to the fund’s tax filings. Wyss is notorious for donating to left-wing advocacy groups such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which, in turn, is well known as a major fiscal sponsor and “dark money” hub for leftist causes. Wyss has been investigated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for allegedly illegally funneling millions in foreign money into U.S. elections through a network of left-leaning nonprofits, although the FEC complaint was later dismissed. Foreign nationals are barred from funding U.S. elections, but money routed through nonprofit advocacy groups remains legal, a loophole congressional Republicans have spent years trying to close. The American Energy Institute tallied more than $39 million in foreign money flowing to 12 organizations active in opposing data center development. The Working Families Party (WFP), a left-wing party that helped elect Zohran Mamdani to office in New York with $23.7 million in funding from George Soros, is also one of Upswing’s clients. FEC records show the WFP’s federal PAC paid Upswing nearly $80,000 over two years. The WFP has publicly urged critics of data centers to run for office in another attempt to convert local frustration into votes for the far Left. The party is recruiting data center opponents as candidates in northern Virginia, the upper Midwest, and the Southwest. WFP national press secretary Ravi Mangla told Wired, “You can’t fill a community center or a town hall just organically.” The same small world of Democratic firms, donors, and organizers surfaces at every layer of an anti-data-center movement that otherwise presents itself as grassroots. The 170,000 members of “Say NO to Data Centers” were never told that their “Group Expert” draws a paycheck from a key Democratic firm — and some have not welcomed the Facebook group’s increasingly partisan tone. One woman posted in the group earlier this year that it seemed to be getting away from its core focus on the data center issue. “Are we supposed to be making political posts in here,” the woman wrote amid a string of purely political posts in the group, “or stay on topic about AI data centers?”   Screenshot via Facebook