Category: Political / Governments / Nations / Countries /
Someone Is Helping Control Data Center Development
‘Nobody’s negotiating for the people here’: comedian Charlie Berens takes on AI datacenters
Sun 17 May 2026 07.00 EDT
Last summer, journalist turned comedian Charlie Berens started getting social media messages from concerned Wisconsin residents about plans for a massive datacenter campus in their state.
The developer, Vantage Data Centers, claimed the $8 bn project would largely run on zero-emission energy resources like solar, wind and battery storage. The company said the campus would bring thousands of temporary construction jobs and potentially more than 1,000 permanent jobs to Port Washington, a city of 13,000 people about a half-hour north of Milwaukee. Residents opposed the project for what they said was lack of transparency and criticized the lucrative tax incentives offered to Vantage. They worried about the strain on local water and energy sources from an enormous 1.3-gigawatt project that could ultimately span 1,900 acres.
Berens, who shot to internet fame with his “Manitowoc Minute” videos that play on midwestern quirks and stereotypes, had his own reservations about the artificial intelligence datacenter boom. A Milwaukee-area native who still lives in the city, he’d heard about the potential environmental hazards, the steep rise in energy costs for neighbors and noise pollution, among other risks.
When he Googled, he found that lawmakers in his state had paved the way to make the Port Washington project a reality. The deal between Port Washington and Vantage gave an estimated $458m in tax breaks to the developer over 20 years to fund infrastructure for the project, with the city not seeing any of that tax revenue during that period.
“It was shocking,” Berens said.
That’s when he decided to do something he had rarely done before: discuss politics in his videos. He used his platform to address one of the more polarizing issues in contemporary life: what AI portends for Americans.
In August 2025, Berens published his first “Manitowoc Minute” video on AI datacenters. The two-minute skit matched the typical style of Berens’s videos, where he intersperses facts with humor in the style of a TV news report. But he was remarkably direct in his critique of big tech. Sporting a Green Bay Packers tie, he lambasted Silicon Valley CEOs, accusing them of using Wisconsin as a “dumping ground” for datacenters at the expense of the state’s cherished natural resources while evading any type of public scrutiny.
“It is our civic duty to make sure the billionaires become trillionaires,” said Berens in a satiric bit.
He channelled his outrage at lawmakers in Port Washington, a historic city on the banks of Lake Michigan and once home to thriving fishing and shipping industries. In a contentious vote last August, officials there approved the initial $8bn datacenter campus despite strong resistance from residents. (The project later expanded to a $15bn joint venture with OpenAI and Oracle, one of the Trump administration’s showcase “Stargate” megaprojects.)
“I was shocked at how many people I saw speak against this [at public meetings he watched online] and then to see a unanimous vote for it,” Berens said. “It just felt like an imbalance of democracy.”
The video went viral, garnering more than 2.5m views on YouTube alone. Berens’s inbox was soon flooded with messages of support from Wisconsinites of all political stripes – self-declared Maga supporters, avowed socialists and everyone in between – sounding the alarm on datacenters.
“It was 99% positive comments, which doesn’t happen on anything these days,” said Berens. “From that point, I decided that I should do more because nobody’s negotiating for the people here.”
Berens has since thrown himself into the cause, routinely publishing videos and headlining well-attended events with field experts and anti-datacenter activists. He has quickly become the most famous face of a burgeoning movement in Wisconsin, where resistance to these projects – Port Washington is just one of seven hyperscale datacenter projects across the state – has risen dramatically in the last year. A March survey from Marquette University Law School found that nearly 70% of registered voters in Wisconsin say the costs of large datacenters outweigh the benefits they provide, a remarkable shift from last October when that figure stood at 55%.
The attention has placed the comedian in the crosshairs of most of the state’s labor unions, pro-business groups and much of its political establishment, who argue the badger state cannot afford to be left behind in the AI arms race.
In a series of interviews, Berens laid out why he decided to jump head-first into the movement; his case for how big tech destroyed public trust through hard-armed, often secretive tactics to push forward datacenters; and what he has learned as he has crisscrossed the state and toured the country.
“Every step of the way, the more people look, they’re seeing that this is not really a fair fight here,” said Berens.
‘Protecting the people’
On a late winter evening in March, hundreds of people packed a community center in Juneau, a tiny rural town about 45 miles north-east of the state capital, Madison.
The crowd had assembled for a “people’s town hall” to address a $1bn Meta datacenter that has pitted residents of nearby Beaver Dam against their elected officials. The featured speakers ranged from community activists to a former Meta employee. The main act was Berens, who squeezed in the appearance between stops in Iowa and Vermont on his standup comedy tour.
“This is the most bipartisan issue since beer,” he said in opening remarks.
In his roughly 15-minute speech, he called for more regulation of AI, pointing out that a beloved Wisconsin staple, bratwurst, was more heavily regulated than the trillion-dollar industry. Berens warned the audience of the risks of AI technology, running through a slideshow of news headlines that highlighted the potential, and very real, harm to children. He also addressed his critics.
“I will stick to comedy when our politicians stick to policy and stop protecting big tech and start protecting the people that put them into office,” said Berens, to applause.
As he turned his attention to the project in Beaver Dam, he attacked Meta’s use of a shell company and nondisclosure disagreements (NDAs) that required secrecy from some public officials in the process of getting to an approval. In April 2025, a report found Meta was the mystery tech company behind Degas LLC, the listed corporation on the development. By November, the company acknowledged they were behind the project.
Meta’s practices in Beaver Dam are part of a larger pattern across the state, where datacenter projects have often been developed in secrecy despite their huge price tags and massive footprint on communities. A recent investigation from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit news site, found that NDAs have been signed in at least five cities in Wisconsin where AI datacenters are proposed or under construction.
Another panel speaker that night was Maily Kocinski, a lifelong Beaver Dam resident whose farm lies less than 2 miles from the 700,000 sq ft datacenter campus construction site. Last June, she posted a TikTok video after a creek that runs on her property had gone dry one morning. The water came back, but occasionally appeared milky white and gave off a toxic smell. Kocinski said she contacted the state’s department of natural resources on several occasions and was told the agency collected water samples but were not always able to reach her property in time before the water cleared up again.
She personally commissioned a water analysis in February from a lab at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, which found metal levels in her well water above what was considered safe to drink, per recommendations from the Wisconsin department of health services. She questions whether the daily controlled blasts on the construction site led to disruptions in her water supply. Meta commissioned its own study in response, denying any link.
A spokesperson for the Wisconsin department of natural resources confirmed that the department collected a water sample at Kocinski’s creek last November. The results, shared with the Guardian, show elevated metal levels but the department did not speculate as to the potential cause.
“Without a site specific review, the DNR cannot speculate on the role of the blasting on the aquifer and Ms. Kocinski’s private water supply,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Kocinski, an elementary school teacher, said since last fall, she has spent up to 15 hours a week researching the large-scale construction of datacenters and the potential environmental harms they can wreak in a community. In March, she testified in the Wisconsin senate in favor of a datacenter oversight bill that ultimately failed to reach a vote.
She said she had never met Berens before the event in Juneau but the two had been in regular contact for months after she cold-emailed him her story.
“Charlie has really put in the work to understand this issue,” said Kocinski. “Most people came to Juneau probably because he was there, but they stayed and maybe learned a bit about these things [datacenters] … That kind of education leads to action.”
The risks of speaking out
As Berens’s critiques of datacenter projects in Wisconsin have gained traction with the public, he has faced pushback from the state’s trade unions, who welcome the thousands of temporary construction jobs that typically come with a project.
A major Wisconsin labor leader called out Berens in a December op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “For us in the building trades, data centers aren’t some big, scary mystery,” wrote Emily Pritzkow, head of the Wisconsin Building Trades Council that represents nearly 50,000 workers in the state. “They’re high-skill, long-term work. The kind of work that feeds families, pays mortgages, and sends kids to college.”
Local governments have weighed in too. In Port Washington, city officials posted a “fact sheet” online to “clarify some lingering misconceptions” after Berens posted a second video urging residents to question officials about the datacenter project at an October council meeting.
Ted Neitzke, Port Washington’s mayor, expressed frustration with the attention that Berens’s videos had brought his city. He noted that more than 100 people began showing up at council meetings after the comedian published his first video last August, forcing the city to move them to a hotel conference center with an added police presence.
“After Charlie Berens’s video, things escalated very rapidly, very contentiously, and our city was besieged with people from outside of our town,” said Neitzke. “Charlie Berens created chaos for us.”
Neitzke also challenged some claims Berens has made in his videos, including those about the amount of jobs the project would create, its environmental impact and whether residents’ power bills would increase.
“I don’t know where the line gets drawn between factual and embellishment for him,” said Neitzke. “There’s a very gray area between the entertainment and the facts.”
Berens defended his videos and the people who showed up to council meetings in response, noting that a hyperscale datacenter affects not just one city but the surrounding communities and “they deserve a say too”. He maintained that his videos were well-researched and cited news articles to back up his claims.
“I informed people about a massive AI datacenter going up by adding some punchlines,” said Berens. “If the truth brings chaos, that seems like something the mayor would want to take accountability for.”
Neitzke met with Berens last fall in an attempt to find common ground. The mayor described the two-hour meeting as cordial but both left in disagreement. He has been the project’s greatest champion, referring to it as a “transformative” development for the Rust Belt city, one that has the potential to once again make Port Washington a hub in the midwest.
That stance has drawn some fierce public opposition, even leading to an attempted recall effort over the $458m tax incremental finance, or TIF, district with Vantage. Under the deal, Vantage will pay upfront costs for the development and the city will reimburse the company with new property tax revenues over a period up to 20 years. Neitzke said he was no fan of TIFs but called them a “necessary evil” in negotiations to win the contract over other cities chasing major developments to boost revenue.
“This is a save our city strategy,” said Neitzke. “[Berens is] doing what he does, and we’re going to do what we’re doing.”
Berens has also faced criticism online from those who say the comedian has built his career on tech platforms, while looking to close the door to their projects in Wisconsin. He said he “understands the irony” but wants to use his sizable platform to educate his audience on these types of developments that could remake their communities.
Advertisers, too, have noticed his shift to politics. Berens acknowledged that he lost a major brand deal with a company that did not want to appear alongside his anti-datacenter content, though he declined to name the business.
“I’m asking for transparency. I’m asking for honesty. I’m asking for people to get informed,” said Berens. “I’m trying to facilitate that and if that at the end of the day means I lose everything, then so be it.”
A personal evolution on AI
Berens was not always an AI pessimist.
A few years ago, he believed the utopian vision laid out by AI luminaries like OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who spoke of how the technology could be used to cure social ills, even to treat intractable diseases. Berens thought maybe it could also help Wisconsin deal with its Pfas contamination issue. “My interest in AI started with a lot of hope and optimism actually,” he said.
That sentiment eventually turned to cynicism as, he claims, the industry’s billionaire CEOs dispelled any virtuous use of the technology for the social good in favor of enriching themselves and their investors. He cited Altman’s recent efforts to create an Erotica feature in OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, despite concerns even from the company’s advisers that such a tool could create a “sexy suicide coach”, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
“I thought this thing was supposed to cure cancer,” Berens said, referencing Altman’s past statements. “Is this what we’re giving our land for? Is that what we’re giving our water for? Is this what you’re asking to change our communities for?”
For him, the “tip of the iceberg” was the gold rush to build hyperscale datacenters in his state through secretive tactics and potentially exploitative agreements in post-industrial cities longing for an economic revival.
“Wisconsin created an environment that would please the billionaire tech companies,” said Berens of the tax incentives. “Billionaire tech companies took full advantage of that.”
Prescott Balch knows a bit about those types of corporate tactics. A former technology executive at US Bank turned anti-datacenter activist in retirement, Balch was on the frontlines of the successful effort to stop a major Microsoft AI datacenter project last fall in the picturesque eastern Wisconsin village of Caledonia, where he lives. In April, he won a seat on the town’s village board, beating an incumbent who supported the datacenter. He views the AI datacenter boom as akin to the dot-com bubble crash of the early 2000s, another chapter in the boom-and-bust cycles of the volatile tech industry.
“We got irrationally exuberant and built too much stuff,” Balch said of the dot-com period. “Maybe the company running your datacenter will go bankrupt. This big dollar amount that you’re chasing comes with significant risk.”
Balch’s insider expertise in the wonky world of municipal subsidies has been fundamental for Berens. Balch factchecked many of Berens’ videos on the issue, even appearing in one where he methodically crunched the numbers on these developments, referring to the Port Washington project as “up and down a horrible deal”.
The 62-year-old is, in many ways, the polar opposite of Berens. He is professorial in demeanor and careful to point out that he is not an AI alarmist. Where the two agree is a belief that there’s been an information vacuum around these projects, leaving the public largely uninformed about their size and scope. That’s part of the message they have taken on the road, appearing together at events in Wisconsin and Illinois. Berens’s celebrity has been the draw for people to turn out.
“[He] gets people interested in the topic and warms them up,” Balch said. “And I get to do the dry delivery of the financial perspective.”
Port Washington vote
On 7 April, Port Washington residents passed the nation’s first anti-datacenter referendum. By a roughly 2-1 margin, voters approved a measure that would require city officials to get approval from voters before approving tax incremental districts of more than $10m.
The effort came together after a group of residents called Great Lakes Neighbors United gathered more than 1,000 signatures in less than two weeks to get it on the ballot. The referendum does not stop the $15bn datacenter campus under construction, but would apply to all future projects above that $10m threshold. Industry advocates have warned the vote could set a dangerous precedent for municipalities across the country, potentially paralyzing AI datacenter developments.
Mayor Neitzke said the referendum makes the city less competitive and puts it at a disadvantage to vie for future projects. For Berens, the vote reflected the energy he has seen on the ground in Port Washington and in every corner of the state.
“The people who are the heartbeat of this movement are like people in Great Lakes Neighbors United,” said Berens. “These are people from all different walks and all different political stripes, but they all care about the same thing: [that] their community should have a voice.”
© 2026 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)
Political cartoons / memes / and news I want to share. 5-17-2026
“Keep your eye on the ball—not on the mess the grownups have made of things.”
“When are we gonna get to the other side?”
“The grownup version of ‘mewing’ is called ‘gritting your teeth.’ ”
“Sometimes I wonder if we’ll ever know the truth about anything.”
Clay Jones, Open Windows
Trump returns from China trip
claims “fantastic” deals
From the Guardian: “Trump leaves China without breakthroughs on Iran, Taiwan or AI”
I’m sure the only fantastic deals would have been made for the Trump family’s benefit, not America’s.
Can You Grift Me Now?
Reach out and Grift someone
I’ve seen countless memes about the Trump phone over the past week or so. You may have seen these yourself. Heck, you may have even shared them. I found them to be very annoying. Why did I find them annoying? Because they weren’t true. Well, they weren’t entirely true. (snip)
But what really annoyed me about these memes is what annoys me with social media in general. People shared them without fact-checking the claims in the memes. People were using the memes as a news source. I even saw a prize-winning colleague of mine share one of these memes. And if I were to go into the comments and point out the falsehoods in the meme, people would accuse me of defending Trump and of being one of his kool-Aid-drinking cultists.
When it comes to spreading bullshit, liberals can be just as bad as MAGAts, just so long as they want to believe the bullshit. How many fake photos have you seen that someone was claiming were from the Epstein files? I rest my case. (snip-MORE)
MAGA Cookies
He’s not the smartest cookie
Trump is in China, where he is not thinking about our finances, but of the finances of the 17 megarich executives and Eric, who took the trip with him.
Trump landed in China on Wednesday night, where he was greeted at the airport by the vice president, Han Zheng, whose position is a ceremonial role. He was also sent to Trump’s inauguration. He is not a member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power in China’s ruling Communist Party. Zheng has little influence over policymaking.
Trump was also welcomed by a military band, an honor guard, and hundreds of Chinese youth waving flags. Experts on China believe the communist nation is sending a message to Donald Trump by sending a ceremonial figure to greet him and that they are choosing symbolism over substance. (snip-MORE)
Humanitarian Work With Quakers
I receive a couple of weekly emails from Friends Committee on National Legislation. I began working with them back when the US invaded Afghanistan. I’m copy-pasting today’s letter, which includes links for more info, and some even for taking a little action if someone cares to do it. Either way, it’s good to be informed.
| After a months-long political standoff over immigration enforcement funding, congressional Republicans continue to push forward a $72 billion proposal, without measures to hold these rogue agencies accountable. A ruling by the Senate parliamentarian Thursday set back the proposal for now. But we must continue the struggle against a blank check for more lawless, cruel enforcement. One of the most impactful ways we can push back is by lifting up stories of the toll of these policies on our communities. On Wednesday, a group of senators held a hearing spotlighting how immigrants brought to the U.S. as children are facing detention and deportation after being promised protections. Stephanie Villarreal shared a story about her husband Juan, a DACA recipient who has lived in the U.S. for more than 25 years. On Feb. 18, Juan was driving to deliver breast milk to their newborn baby in the neonatal intensive care unit. He never arrived. On his way, Juan was seized by ICE agents as Stephanie listened on the phone helplessly. He has been in detention ever since, separated from his wife, his baby, and his other children. “He did everything he was asked to,” Stephanie said. “But that didn’t matter.” We were also moved by the story of Deiver Henao, a nine-year-old boy held in ICE detention. “I don’t wanna be here anymore,” he said. “I want to be [in school] to be happy … I wish I could leave before the spelling bee.” Thankfully, Deiver and his family were released after his case received media attention. But many other children like him remain detained. These stories are not are exceptional: they are far too common. How we treat people like Juan and Deiver is a test of who are as a nation. We all deserve to be treated with dignity, love, and respect. It is up to us, as people of faith and conscience, to speak out against these heartbreaking injustices and demand better from our government. If ICE cruelty has impacted you or your community, we want to hear from you. “Congressional action depends on local, personal stories from the communities they represent,” FCNL’s Anika Forrest explained.“Let’s make sure that Congress can’t look away.” |
Elsewhere War Powers Resolution on Iran barely falls short Public pressure to end war on Iran is moving Congress. Just this week, we saw resolutions to end the war almost pass – falling only one vote short in the House and two votes short in the Senate. Public opposition to the war is bipartisan and fierce, and growing in Congress. Let’s keep up the momentum and get this over the finish line! As Trump visits China, cries for cooperation multiply President Trump visited China this week, meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, talking about trade, Taiwan, and other issues. FCNL joined a broad coalition of organizations in calling for a peaceful, cooperative relationship between China and the U.S.As our letter to Congress puts it, “At a time when so many domestic needs are going unmet, a confrontational posture toward China is costing untold billions.” Every dollar spent on war or preparing for war takes away from the desperate needs we have at home and abroad to build the world we seek. Members of Congress call on U.S. to stop Ecuador operations The U.S. military is supporting Ecuadorian forces to violently crack down on accused drug traffickers. Twenty members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanding that the U.S. stop and investigate serious accusations of human rights abuses: “The United States cannot continue to be complicit in abuses abroad. There must be accountability.” The path to abolishing the Selective Service Plans for automatic draft registration were announced about a month ago, fulfilling the mandate from 2025’s defense bill. Just yesterday, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation which would end the Selective Service entirely. FCNL’s Priya Moran explained what’s going on and what the future might hold, calling on Congress to “focus on preventing war, instead of maintaining a system designed to force young people to engage in it.” Call for Congress to act! In peace, Bryan Bowman Social Media and Communications Strategist Greg Williams Senior Communications Director |
Trump Drowns Feed With MAGA Praise in Late-Night Truth Social Dump Celebrating Himself
What a terribly fragile ego this person must have. He has to sing his own praises and get people who work for him to compliment him. Questions that start with praise for him and use his talking points are smart questions from good people. Questioners that don’t do either get called names such as stupid, dumb, bad person, and told they are committing treason. Hugs
Trump Drowns Feed With MAGA Praise in Late-Night Truth Social Dump Celebrating Himself
President Donald Trump spent more than an hour reposting praise for himself on Truth Social late Sunday by sharing AI-generated imagery hailing him as the “greatest” from several MAGA loyalist accounts and attacking Democratic opponents.
The president opened the spree by declaring “Excellent Poll Numbers. Thank You!” without linking to what poll he was referencing before unloading a series of reposts from an account called “Women for Trump.”
The 10 posts shared from the account onto Trump’s feed included messages reading: “Trump’s the real deal! A true American badass,” “Thank God for Trump,” “The Greatest of All Time” and “Presidents come and go but he will forever be remembered as the GOAT.”
(Screengrab via Truth Social)
(Screengrab via Truth Social)
Trump amplified a polling item claiming he had overtaken former President Ronald Reagan as the “most beloved president among Republicans.”
The claim appeared to reference a CNN report published in July 2025, rather than more recent surveys showing Trump with approval ratings in the low-to-mid 30s.
(Screengrab via Truth Social)
Trump also revived false claims surrounding election fraud, reposting an image of election workers carrying the caption: “Start arresting poll workers that cheated in elections and watch how fast they tell who told them to cheat.”
Several of the reposts featured AI-generated imagery, including one depicting workers carving Trump’s face into Mount Rushmore alongside former presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
(Screengrab via Truth Social)
The posting spree ended with one post showing former President Joe Biden as the “worst” and Trump sharing an image attacking Democrats as having “no solutions,” “no policies,” “no joy,” and “no love for America.”
Trump Posts Call To Arrest “Poll Workers That Cheated”
Mediaite reports:
President Donald Trump spent more than an hour reposting praise for himself on Truth Social late Sunday by sharing AI-generated imagery hailing him as the “greatest” from several MAGA loyalist accounts and attacking Democratic opponents.
The 10 posts shared from the account onto Trump’s feed included messages reading: “Trump’s the real deal! A true American badass,” “Thank God for Trump,” “The Greatest of All Time” and “Presidents come and go but he will forever be remembered as the GOAT.”
Trump also revived false claims surrounding election fraud, reposting an image of election workers carrying the caption: “Start arresting poll workers that cheated in elections and watch how fast they tell who told them to cheat.”
Read the full article. All posts below were shared by Trump.
Dumb In The Afternoon
I ran an errand, and am sitting down to a little snack of popcorn, looking at emails to keep or delete. Interestingly, it looks as if I can do a little post of links to news that seems stupid. Have a giggle or two while you get some information!
First, this one is not stupid; it’s the Naked Pastor’s YouTube channel link. Naked Pastor is the artist who draws inclusive toons and art, including the one with the trans sheep who was not lost. (This is also a note from me; if I turn it red, the link doesn’t show. -Ali)
I could not resist this one!
FWIW. “VIP Snorkel” intrigued me.
He’s ba-aa-ack …
Rudy Giuliani Seen A Ghost
Look who’s all better!
Could be joyful, rather than stupid, but stupid is as stupid does, yes?
Ag Sec Brooke Rollins Sued By USDA Employees Just For Doing A Little Christian Nationalism
No one told her this wasn’t a theocracy, I guess.
And this does not conclude our stupid for the day, I’m just certain. But, it does conclude this post. Thanks for stopping by!
Open Windows, Clay Jones
Trump Think
Donald Trump is not thinking about you
Donald Trump is not thinking about you. Don’t take my word for it, take his.
“I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.” Trump told us last June that he obliterated Iran’s capability to build a nuclear weapon. Of course, this wouldn’t be a problem if he hadn’t torn up the nuclear agreement that Iran had with the United States and five other nations, which the Obama administration had crafted.
Trump said this to reporters as he was boarding a plane to China. And on that plane were billionaires like Tim Cook, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Stephen Schwarzman, Larry Culp, and Larry Fink. Other executives on the trip included Meta’s Dina Powell McCormick, Cargill’s Brian Sikes, Micron’s Sanjay Mehrotra, Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, Visa’s Ryan McInerney, Mastercard’s Michael Miebach, Illumina’s Jacob Thaysen, and Coherent’s Jim Anderson.
Trump said on Truth Social that he would ask Xi to “‘open up’ China so that these brilliant people can work their magic.” Their financial situations, he thinks about. Your financial situation, not so much. (snip-MORE)
Speaker Johnson sees nothing
which isn’t surprising, given where he is.
Ann Telnaes May 13, 2026
It’s easy to only be focused on Trump’s ever increasing unhinged behavior but his Republican enablers in Congress haven’t changed their tune. And they are the main reason he’s still in office.
It’s A Good Question
Why is RFK Jr. so worried about sperm count?
We spoke to experts about Kennedy’s claims about sperm and fertility — including the author of the study he cited.
This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla and Jennifer Gerson of The 19th. Meet Mariel and Jennifer and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has, historically, been very public about his concerns about what is plaguing the nation’s well-being. His long, complicated history with vaccines is well-documented. So is his long-standing spat with fluoride. Unlike President Donald Trump, he is not a fan of fast food, but he is a big believer in animal protein and raw milk.
And this week, he spoke about another issue vexing him: men’s sperm count.
“The fertility crisis for women began in 2007; for men in 1970. Men had twice the sperm count as our teenagers do today. This is an existential crisis for our country. We had a series of presidents who were trying to discourage childbirth and motherhood in this country. We now have a president who is trying to encourage it,” Kennedy said at a White House event on maternal health Monday.
While many experts agree that sperm counts are likely lower than they were decades ago, it is less clear how much influence a declining sperm count has on the country’s falling birth rate.
What the science says
Dr. Hagai Levine, the lead author the study Kennedy referenced and chairman of Israel’s association of public health physicians, said he agrees with Kennedy’s characterization that there is a “crisis.”
“I truly believe based on the data that there is a male fertility crisis globally and in the U.S.,” said Levine, who is also an environmental epidemiologist and public health physician at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. “It’s manifested in a biological measurement, which is remarkable. It’s not a soft measurement; it’s something that you can count very accurately.”
Levine said his 2022 study, a systematic review of 223 studies, found a 50 percent decline in both sperm concentration and total sperm count between 1973 and 2018 across North America, Europe and Australia.
But a more recent study, “Sperm concentration remains stable among fertile American men” published in January, found no clinically significant decline in sperm concentration among American men between 1970 and 2018.
“We expected to find a subtle decrease over time, not a drastic decrease,” Dr. Scott Lundy, the study’s lead author and Urology Program Director at Cleveland Clinic, said in a blog post. “I think finding nothing at all was a little bit surprising, and it certainly does not mean that we can ignore this issue or not study this further. But in this case, I think there’s at least some evidence to suggest that we can be somewhat reassured.”
Without speaking to any specific studies, Levine said that different methodologies could yield contradictory results. In a meta-analysis, he emphasized the importance of comparing only studies with similar laboratory methods.
“It’s good that in science there are others who make other claims and try to look at other things,” Levine said. “But when I looked at the literature, I was not convinced that there is no decline. I plan to update our study; maybe there is new data. And I hope that I will find that the decline stopped or even reversed.”
Levine said recent studies show that a lower sperm count is associated with higher morbidity — meaning a low sperm count can be a marker of poor health in general. He said more research needs to be done to identify the cause of declining sperm counts, but research on animals has shown that certain chemicals disrupt the endocrine system. Obesity, lack of physical activity, smoking, binge drinking, certain drugs, occupational exposures and climate change, specifically rising temperatures, also likely impact sperm health. Levine said his research findings are a clear sign that something is wrong with men’s health on a global level.
But how much does a declining sperm count impact the falling birth rate in the United States? Levine said it’s not clear, but he suspects that social factors play a bigger role.
“We know that, for example, women’s education is very related to the number of children in a family,” Levine said. “So I would assume that social demographic changes are the main reason for the shifting trends in fertility, meaning the number of children per woman of childbearing age in the United States and in many other countries.”
Dr. Michael Eisenberg, a professor of urology at Stanford University, said reports of declining sperm counts have been circulated in urologist circles for decades. While more controversial in the 1990s and 2000s, Eisenberg said there’s been increasing evidence from larger and more comprehensive papers published in recent years.
“There is still some controversy in the field, but I think generally the consensus is — and I certainly believe — that sperm counts are declining,” Eisenberg said.
Most of the studies on sperm count are meta-analyses, which are studies of studies. There is no systematic tracking of sperm count or national effort to monitor semen health in the United States.
“When people think about fertility, I think that unfortunately the male role in that is somewhat undervalued and underappreciated,” Eisenberg said. “I think bringing a lot more attention to it is important. Women have regular cycles, so they have some sense of their fertility potential, whereas men don’t have that feedback.”
Administration messaging
It’s not the first time that Kennedy has talked about sperm count. In December, he mentioned it during a HHS announcement about coverage for in vitro fertilization (IVF). In April 2025 he made similar remarks to Fox News’ Jesse Watters, asserting that “an American teenager today has less testosterone than a 68-year old American man.”
Kennedy’s language echoes messaging from Trump himself; Trump has called himself the “fertilization president” and the “father of IVF.” At the maternal health care event Monday, he referred to himself as the “father of fertility.” Other members of the administration have also expressed concerns about fertility.
“Let me speak a little bit about the reality that 1 in 3 Americans are under-babied,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said at the Monday White House event “What does under-babied mean? That means that you either don’t have any children or you have less children than you would normally want to have.”
The administration has long courted adherents to pronatalism, or the belief that a declining birth rate is the primary problem of our times — and that everyone should do their part to reverse course by having as many children as possible. (Sometime Trump ally and former head of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Elon Musk, is an avowed pronatalist and is believed to have fathered at least 13 children by at least four different women.)
And baked into pronatalism are traditional gender roles and an insistence that women’s ultimate work is having babies.
Kennedy’s comments draw a direct connection between paying attention to the sexual function of men with the need of women to birth babies.
What women want
Karen Guzzo, PhD, is a professor of sociology and the director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina; she’s an expert on fertility preferences and fertility behaviors.
Guzzo said that Kennedy’s comments reflect an insistence on finding a physiological reason for population decline, despite there being no evidence for that.
The reality is that most Americans who want to have children want to have two or three children.
“The reason that people aren’t having kids or are delaying having kids isn’t because they’re physically unable. It’s because they don’t feel like they’re able to have kids at that point in their life, given their social and economic circumstances,” she said.
Any increase in infertility is largely due to more people delaying having children.
“People aren’t just deciding at 18, ‘Oh I don’t even want to have kids until I’m 38.’ It’s usually because they want to get to a point in their life where they’re like, ‘All right — now I have enough money. Now I have a stable partnership. Now I feel that I can provide a good life for children,’” she said.
What research has shown, in other words, is that what really delays someone from having children are economic and social conditions. Guzzo said some of the key factors that allow people to feel the necessary security are affordable childcare, strong unions and union jobs, affordable higher education, and accessible healthcare — including maternal and reproductive healthcare.
The focus on sperm count? A “clear misdirection,” she said.
“Young women are like, ‘Yeah I’m not asking for the most sensitive guy in the world. I just want a guy that thinks that I should not die in childbirth and that I can also have a job,’” Guzzo said. “Real men are secure enough in their masculinity that they can, in fact, change diapers and stay home with their children and be active parents.”
