For many Americans, data centers represent higher utility bills, noise pollution, tax giveaways, and very few local jobs — all to enrich distant tech giants.

Anew Gallup poll confirms that most Americans hate the prospect of data centers coming to their communities. This revelation has been met with some anger among the tech crowd and its Extremely Online Fans, but the opposition is entirely predictable for a few reasons worth reviewing, even if they are obvious:

3 in 5 Vermont Fiber BSLs are Connected by CUDs.

The Burke family in rural Marlboro, Vermont has a new high-speed internet connection. In a short video entitled “Connection Day,” the Vermont Community Broadband Board, shows just how impactful a fiber broadband connection is to a rural home and family. How much broadband access means and the opportunities a reliable connection brings. The short video captures the moment the Burkes are connected by DVFiber.

The Burkes and so many other families are fortunate to be reached and served by one of the state’s nine Communications Union Districts (CUDs). These entities facilitate fiber broadband builds in every corner of the state. DVFiber serves 24 communities in southern Vermont, including Marlboro.

CHICAGO – Gov. JB Pritzker sent a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday, urging him to approve Illinois’ proposal for federal broadband infrastructure funds.

The $1 billion proposal would connect about 383,000 people, mostly in rural areas, to high-speed internet.

However, Illinois and California lag months behind other states in the approval process – leading to speculation that the funds have been withheld from the two blue states for political punishment or leverage.

The FCC approved EchoStar spectrum sales to AT&T and SpaceX, but requires a $2.4 billion escrow ac | EchoStar won FCC approval for its spectrum transactions with AT&T and SpaceX – and it must establish a $2.4 billion escrow account.

The public-private partnership (PPP) the city struck Arizona-based Wecom Fiber is expected to inject at least $100 million into local economy over five years while saving the city an estimated $18 million in capital expenses.

The fiber network will ultimately pass 30,000 locations within Flagstaff city limits, but also connect 34 municipal facilities. Construction of the network began in April of 2025, and is poised to deliver more than 815 miles of new fiber across Coconino County.

Or that’s at least the conclusion of a new whitepaper by the Fiber Broadband Association, a policy coalition of municipal broadband networks and key fiber industry giants such as Adtran, GFiber, Corning, Calix, and Graybar.

The analysis, "Broadband Community Profile: A Public-Private Partnership for Fiber – Flagstaff, Arizona," explores how the PPP the city struck Arizona-based Wecom Fiber is expected to inject at least $100 million into local economy over five years while saving the city an estimated $18 million in capital expenses.

As the “supercharged” construction of new data centers to power artificial intelligence blankets the country, a growing resistance movement to these massive corporate projects amid a lack of public oversight is not far behind.

As organizer Astra Taylor explains, local fights across the country are leveraging this “industry chokepoint” to force important questions, from the distribution of land, water and energy resources to democratic governance over an industry currently driven by a “billionaire Big Tech agenda.”

While AI boosters frame the technology as inevitable, Taylor says, “I think that many people are more skeptical than that. … That’s part of what it means to have democratic governance over AI, to say, 'No, we don't need this technology to take over every facet of our existence.’”

Bernie Sanders wants a moratorium on data center construction. The political calculus makes sense, but the policy prescription does not.

In October 1982, then-Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders wrote a letter to President Ronald Reagan warning him that nuclear weapons could “destroy all life on the planet” and imploring him to “think courageously and boldly” toward ridding the world of these weapons. Now, in what is likely his last term in public office, Sanders is reprising the existential rhetoric he once brought to nuclear war — this time, for artificial intelligence.

Sanders has recently introduced legislation for a federal moratorium on data centers. Data center moratoria have been introduced in at least 12 state legislatures, so he’s not the first person to do so. But he’s one of the few to ground such a proposal in AI safety terms, and I don’t think that framing is spurious. Sanders’ recent work on AI labor displacement — and his conversations with AI thinkers such as Geoffrey Hinton and Eliezer Yudkowsky — evince a sincere concern for the immediate and long-term risks of AI.

In data centers, Sanders imagines he’s found a vehicle for broader AI governance ambitions. These are visible, literally concrete structures that play on a trifecta of grievances: rising electric bills, anxiety over AI and its corporate creators, and environmental concerns.

America's AI future requires networks that work, in blue skies or in gray. 24/7/365 uptime is the new north star.

The next phase of AI competition is decided by the strength and resilience of the infrastructure beneath it. The systems that keep hospitals online during storms, emergency responders connected during disasters, and utilities operating during outages are the same systems AI depends on: resilient power, uninterrupted connectivity, distributed compute, and low-latency data exchange. A nation whose networks fail under stress cannot lead in an AI-driven economy.

President Trump's recent determination under the Defense Production Act to accelerate domestic grid infrastructure, alongside recent executive orders, the OMB FY27 R&D Priorities, and the March 20 National Policy Framework for AI say so. The recent $2 billion FirstNet agreement with AT&T reinforces the direction: invest in the infrastructure that first responders, hospitals, and small towns depend on. Our Administration's vision is ready for the road ahead.

My last piece was a detailed commentary on the circular nature of the AI economy — and how the illusion of AI demand is just that, an illusion. 

Anyway, one of the most commonly-held parts of the AI bubble is that massive amounts — gigawatts’ worth — of data centers have both already been and continue to be built…

…but then you look a little closer, and things start getting a little more vague. While Wood Mackenzie’s report said that there was “25GW of data center capacity added to the funnel” in Q4 2025 does not say how much came online. CBRE said back in February that “net absorption of 2497MW” happened in primary markets in 2025, with other reports saying that somewhere between 700MW and 2GW of capacity was absorbed every quarter of 2025. At the time, I reached out for any clarity about the methodology in question and received no response.

Okay, so, I know data centers are getting built and that they exist. I believe some capacity is coming online.

But gigawatts? Or even hundreds of megawatts? How much data center capacity is actually coming online? 

Disney and ABC are the targets of a “campaign of censorship” orchestrated by the Trump administration’s FCC, the lone Democrat on the panel said.

On May 1, Nextlink Internet activated what it is calling “the first tower in the nation funded by the federal BEAD program.” The site is located in southern Bienville Parish, LA, bringing service to 104 BEAD locations in the area. It is designed to deliver gigabit internet speeds and higher to homes and businesses across northwest Louisiana via fixed wireless infrastructure.

Here’s a fun fact kids… Rhode Island was the first colony to declare independence from Great Britain. Two months before the Declaration of Independence was signed, Rhode Island passed its "Act of Renunciation."

I recently sat down with Brian Thorn, the Director of Broadband Strategy for the Rhode Island Commerce Corporation. In essence, Thorn leads the statewide broadband office employing a team of 3-plus professionals within the state’s economic development engine. 

Thorn has held the Rhode Island broadband director position for four years, operating out of Providence.

Gas turbines at xAI's Colossus 2 data center have drawn a lawsuit over the company's use of "mobile" gas turbines as power plants.

Elon Musk’s xAI is running nearly 50 natural gas turbines at its Mississippi data center, power plants that the state is currently not regulating thanks to a loophole.

The power plants are considered “mobile” by the state of Mississippi because they are sitting on flatbed trailers, thus allowing them to dodge air pollution regulations for one year. The NAACP, which has filed a lawsuit on behalf of residents in the area, says the unchecked emissions from the turbines is worsening air quality in an already polluted region. This week, it asked the court for an injunction against xAI.

"The conversation is sort of happening in Silicon Valley around one thing, and a totally different conversation is happening among consumers."

Facility would require more power than entire state uses and suck up vast amount of water in drought-stricken area.

Musk’s lawyers questioned Altman over allegations of deception and his network of financial investments, but the OpenAI CEO painted a picture of Musk as obsessed with controlling the company.

Locals in Longmeadow, Massachusetts say they’re being bombarded with misleading mailers, texts, and phone calls from a telecom-industry linked group trying to mislead the public ahead of a key vote on the city’s plan to begin construction of a municipal broadband fiber network today. Longmeadow residents are voting today (May 12) on whether to approve an $8.6 million loan to construct the first phase of what will ultimately be a town-wide fiber broadband network.

U.S. telecom monopolies have a long and sordid history of paying proxy organizations to try and undermine popular municipal broadband deployment projects. The goal is always to mislead, confuse, and disorient the public ahead of key municipal votes in order to shield regional telecom monopolies from reform and meaningful competition.

Disney loves a reluctant hero.

You know the trope: Circumstances force a cautious, cowardly or cynical character to go on a quest, join a rebellion or finally stand up for what’s right.

Under the Trump regime, corporate media have been woefully short of heroics — and the House of Mouse is no exception.

When Trump filed a spurious lawsuit against ABC News, the Disney bosses paid off the president. When FCC Chairman Brendan Carr came after ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel last fall, Disney took the “easy way” out and yanked the host off the air, reversing itself only after public outrage and an upsurge in Disney+ cancellations got its attention.

Like every cartoon bully, Trump and Carr just kept demanding more of Disney’s lunch money — reinstating bogus complaints about old presidential debates, attacking the company’s DEI programs and threatening to revoke Disney’s broadcast licenses after another made-up Kimmel “scandal” over a joke he made about the First Lady.

But a filing at the FCC last week, as The New York Times reported, suggests Disney is finally fighting back against this unconstitutional government censorship — in this case,  the targeting of an ABC affiliate station in Texas.

After a City Council vote, officials will seek bids to renovate an ex-wastewater treatment plant into a network operations center for Willmar Connect, the citywide broadband project.