From the Front Row to the Hot Seat: What the 2026 Midterms Mean for Big Tech
Just before the 2026 midterm elections, OpenAI hired Jessica Schumer, daughter of Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer. The company also announced it would begin calling its data centers “compute campuses.”
For the past two years, many of Silicon Valley's biggest names cultivated closer ties with President Donald Trump and his administration. Several attended White House events, some companies scaled back diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and some executives donated millions to super PACs supporting his campaign and allied candidates. Administration policies also benefited the industry through tax breaks, the pausing of some federal investigations, and looser AI regulation. Meanwhile, Meta faced lawsuits and billion-dollar fines, and OpenAI confronted suits alleging its technology harmed users.
Now, with the midterms shifting the balance of power in Washington, those same companies are working to rebuild ties with Democrats, who have pledged to tighten oversight of AI. How far that gets them may depend less on image-polishing than on where the real fights are happening: in state capitols, in communities deciding whether to host data centers, and—as we've seen this past week—in the markets watching the AI boom.
“PR Washing” and Public-Private Partnerships
J.B. Branch, director of federal AI governance and technology policy at Public Citizen, a nonprofit advocacy group that describes itself as nonpartisan, told me the tech industry “realizes they have an optics problem.” He characterized moves like the Schumer hire and the rebranding as “PR washing.” He expects more of it, pointing to OpenAI's partnership with the American Federation of Teachers, announced last year, as well as Anthropic's newly launched Claude Corps and Meta's America's Workforce Academy. “I would imagine more of that sort of investment in these corporate, private-public partnerships,” he said.
These initiatives didn't spring up overnight. Meta and other tech companies reportedly began looking for ways to strengthen their ties to Democrats as Democratic gains in the midterms looked more likely. Reached for comment about the midterm elections' impact on Meta, a company spokesperson pointed TechCrunch to remarks that Meta President Dina Powell McCormick made this week at WSJ Tech. “You have to work with the government that the American people elect,” McCormick said. “I have seen it across the board that you have to be bipartisan, and you want to be, because you want buy-in on the things that you're trying to do.”
A Pivot That May Come Too Late
Not everyone expects these efforts to succeed. Alice Marwick, director of research at the tech policy nonprofit Data & Society, told me she expects Big Tech to try to pivot back toward the middle, “if not the left. But it's a little too late,” she said. “Tech companies should be asking themselves how their products can make people's lives better, because right now, it doesn't seem like they are.”
If Democrats follow through on pledges to tighten oversight of AI and Big Tech, the industry could face a tougher environment. Data center moratoriums are gaining traction, and a wave of AI regulation bills awaits drafting. At the same event, Powell McCormick said Meta wants to show that communities welcoming its investments will see “an enormous amount of benefit,” while those that don't want them “will of course have the right to stop them.”
The Real Battleground: State Capitals
Still, the next two years could bring political gridlock in Washington. Aryan Ranjan, founder of Baraza, a political campaign management software company, told me most action will likely happen at the state level, since states have already sued tech companies and passed regulations. “A coalition built on newer, working-class voters is likely to push Democrats to frame AI around electricity bills, data-center siting and jobs rather than abstract AI safety,” he said of what to expect at the federal level.
Last December, the Trump administration signed an executive order creating the AI Litigation Task Force, a federal group meant to challenge state AI laws. The administration has argued that U.S. AI companies “must be free to innovate without cumbersome regulations.”
via TechCrunch