Free Republic

Local moratoriums spring up after state inaction, while New Mexico and Utah fight “hyperscale” data polluters .... Local governments in Colorado are moving quickly to slap moratoriums on new data center development in reaction to a public backlash against rising electricity prices, heavy pollution and lucrative tax breaks. Denver, Jefferson County and Longmont have all moved in recent weeks to limit data centers, which house servers for mass computation that demand enormous amounts of electricity and cooling water. Cities and counties are moving in part because the state legislature failed to act in 2026, eventually letting two competing bills die...

High-Level Overview: The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure is hitting severe physical, economic, and social constraints. Tech giants have committed trillions of dollars to construct massive hyperscale data centers, but nearly half of the projects scheduled to open in the United States this year have already been delayed or canceled. The briefing investigates how the friction between digital ambition and physical realities—ranging from severe power grid bottlenecks to intense local community pushback—is halting the global AI buildout. The Creator's Main Argument: The primary thesis of the video is that the explosive, unconstrained AI data center boom is hitting a...

Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry’s future is supported by more than just the AI data center boom. The retail giant agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energy for its operations in the area, including its stores and a high-tech warehouse in Illinois that stores and sorts perishable food. Walmart will buy 176 megawatts of power from the plant over a 15-year period, or enough power to serve around 150,000 homes. The Walmart deal will allow...

At a press conference earlier this month, a reporter told Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear that people in Boyd and Greenup counties had been "caught off guard" by a deal local officials unveiled to bring a very large data center to the area. A number of Boyd County residents had packed a town hall the day before to lambast county judge-executives and other local leaders in part over concerns about what a proposed hyperscale data center could mean for electricity bills and the local environment. Beshear in response said he was not going to let a data center come into the...

Republican voters ousted Utah’s most powerful lawmaker, state Senate President J. Stuart Adams, Tuesday after a series of controversies and mounting criticism for his role as one of the key decision-makers advancing a proposal to build a controversial data center in Box Elder County. Two other key GOP lawmakers — Sen. Daniel McCay and Rep. Trevor Lee — were voted out as well. Hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into the competition pitting Adams of Layton against Weber State University’s ex-general counsel, Stephanie Hollist, and former Legislature attorney Braden Hess. Hollist held the lead around 11:30 p.m. with 43% of...

I have often noted that the climate scam and the associated forced energy transition would of necessity go away at some point because the proposals being advocated to “save the planet” could never possibly work. But the open question has always been, when that happens, what will it look like? Would all the big enviro groups like the Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Sierra Club all go on national TV one night and admit that the whole thing was a fake scare from the beginning? In the real world, that’s not how these things...

Data centers have become the chic new enemy among activists. Critics claim the centers are using inordinate amounts of electricity and water to power artificial intelligence, inspiring protesters to take to the streets and Democratic lawmakers to head to Albany to stymie their development. However, some experts say the anti-data center push is more of a moral panic than an empirical one, often based on speculative and sometimes bunk projections. It seems that data centers are the boogeyman onto which larger fears about the impact of AI are being projected. “The estimates of future data-center development may be overestimated by...

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stole the show at a recent congressional hearing with two jars of brown water. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) explained that the dirty water had come from Morgan County, Ga., where a Meta data center is allegedly tainting the water of local residents. It was an image perfectly suited to driving the intensifying opposition to data centers in that it was photogenic, easy to understand — and misleading. According to reporting in the New York Times last year, the water problem has affected four homes in the vicinity of the data center, not the entire county, as AOC implied. It...

Findings by academic researchers suggest that hyperscalers' AI data centers contribute to local warming, but not everyone agrees. Findings of a new study conducted by a group of academics from around the globe have revealed that land surface temperature (LST) increases by 2°C (3.6°F) on average after the start of operations of an AI data center, an effect detectable up to an estimated 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) away. The study, The data heat island effect: quantifying the impact of AI data centers in a warming world, was conducted by a dozen experts from leading universities in the UK, Singapore, France,...

We uncovered something far bigger than I ever expected. After seeing coordinated false attacks against the Utah data center project, we brought in an advanced data science team to trace where the content was coming from and the results were shocking. What we found led back to organized networks, political activist groups, and funding trails tied to massive international entities. We dug through IRS 990 filings, tracked IP data from around the world, and uncovered what appears to be a coordinated campaign targeting energy and data center projects across multiple regions. I shared 90 pages of evidence with federal law...

BOX ELDER COUNTY, Utah — Kevin O’Leary, an investor in the proposed 40,000- acre Stratos data centre campus in Box Elder County, accused two Utah groups opposing the project of being funded by the Chinese government. O’Leary made the accusation on Fox News, targeting Alliance for a Better Utah and Elevate Strategies. “Who would want us to stop building our electrical grid? Who would want to stop us from having compute capacity to develop AI? Which adversary would want that? There’s only one. It’s China.” O’Leary said. In a social media exchange, Gabi Finlayson of Elevate Strategies pushed back on...

Data centers are big buildings full of machines that process what we do on our phones and computers. Artificial intelligence requires even more computing power, so companies are eager to build more data centers. The usual suspects are freaking out. “We must stop it!” says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). “Slow it down!” demands Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Data centers do use lots of power, and they need water to cool them down because their computers generate heat. One center can use as much power and water as a small town. “Uses resources like a madman!” says one protester. Last year,...

At least some of the proposed terminations are related to an investigation the department conducted into the manipulation of crime data, officials said. Multiple high-ranking D.C. police officials have been served papers saying the department intends to fire them, according to three officials familiar with the situation. At least some of the proposed terminations are related to an investigation the department conducted into the manipulation of crime data following Republican-led probes into the matter, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive internal process. The terminations portend a potentially sweeping shake-up among top...

California is preparing to share with an outside organization detailed information about driver’s license holders, including immigrants who do not have legal authorization to live in the U.S. That breaks a promise the state made a decade ago when it began issuing licenses to unauthorized immigrants, advocates say, and it means more than 1 million people may face higher risk of deportation.

Government agencies are under increasing pressure to do more with less, all while working to maintain security, compliance, and public trust. High-quality data is one of the few levers that directly supports all three. Accurate citizen address data may seem like a basic operational detail. Yet it underpins everything from citizen communications to fraud prevention, compliance, and emergency response. When data is outdated or inaccurate, consequences ripple across entire programs and leave citizens underserved. Public agencies need to adopt a strategic mindset in support of citizen data accuracy. They otherwise risk sending critical communications like tax documents, benefits information, public...

Executive SummaryThe number of deportations within the United States increased by a factor of five over the course of the first year of the second Trump administration. This new finding comes from a Deportation Data Project release of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data covering the first year-plus of the Trump administration (updating a previous report covering the first nine months of the administration). The new dataset covers the period from the middle of the Biden administration through March 10, 2026. Comparing the last six months of the Biden administration to the recent peak of enforcement in January 2026, we...

One theory about defending against bear attacks is this: Defenders must be careful not to shoot a bear without immediately killing it, because wounded bears are more likely to attack. The theory has been put forward for many decades. One of those who put the theory up for consideration was Stephen Herrero in his book, “Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance“. On page 241 of the 1985 edition, Herrero writes: Of course, if an aggressive bear actually attacks you or a companion, a firearm may be a lifesaver, or it may cause a wounded bear to intensify its attack. Herrero...

A terrifying attack on an Indianapolis city councilman’s home has ignited fears that mounting opposition to the data centers that power artificial intelligence is taking an increasingly violent turn. Ron Gibson, who is serving his third term on the Indianapolis City-County Council, said someone fired 13 shots into his front door early Monday – and left a handwritten note that said “NO DATA CENTERS”. That was just days after Gibson attended a Metropolitan Development Commission meeting to support a data center project, one the developer said would be used at least in part for AI, in a local neighborhood —...

Americans’ personal data could be collected and stored overseas — even if they’ve never downloaded a foreign-developed app themselves — according to a new FBI alert warning about the risks tied to popular mobile platforms. That means information like a person’s name, email address or phone number could be pulled from someone else’s contact list and potentially stored abroad if a friend or family member grants an app access to their device. The warning comes after years of scrutiny over TikTok’s ties to China, but the FBI alert suggests the concerns extend beyond any single platform to a broader range...

Louis Rossmann opens by greeting viewers and introducing a discussion about televisions that now require a Walmart account for full functionality, highlighting how this has become a real trend. He references a Consumer Rights Wiki article explaining that certain newer Vizio TVs—and other brands using the Vizio operating system—require users to create or log into a Walmart account just to complete setup and access smart features. Walmart frames this as a way to streamline setup and connect streaming activity with retail behavior, but he argues the real motivation is clear: companies now make more money from advertising and user data...