Communities across the US have been pushing back against the rapid expansion of data centers built to power artificial intelligence. Residents and local officials rightly argue that facilities consume large amounts of electricity and water, strain power grids, and cause noise and environmental impacts in nearby neighborhoods. Now it appears that President Donald Trump and Big Tech are trying to put a lid on those concerns. Some of the biggest AI producers met at the White House on Wednesday to sign Trump's "Ratepayer Protection Pledge," a nonbinding promise to shoulder the cost of powering data centers and cooling vast arrays of servers. Leaders from Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, xAI, Oracle and OpenAI signed the agreement. "This means that the tech companies and the data centers will be able to get the electricity they need, all without driving up electricity costs for consumers," Trump said at the signing.…