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More Than 500 Towns Restrict Builds As Councils Shutter Public Comment
Marshall Mayor Scott Wolfersberger told local news station WWMT that the city's police department contacted him on August 12 about the threat and that the investigation is ongoing. Councilor James Hackworth wrote in a social media post that members had received "a legitimate death threat" and that disagreement, protest, and voting the council out are all part of democracy. It's unclear whether the sender supports or opposes data centers, and no suspect has been identified to date.
Woodbury County is separately challenging the annexation in court. The council met a week late on August 20 and voted 3-2 against the moratorium, with Nelson calling officers into the room as members of the public and councilman Gene Monk objected. "We ask for a cool-down period for a year to research, then we can make an educated decision. We can let the people vote for it after that — do something different," Monk said. "It's too big of a decision for us five people [council members]."
Over in Box Elder County, Utah, Commissioner Lee Perry has said that he and fellow Commissioners Boyd Bingham and Tyler Vincent had received threats after voting through two resolutions for the Stratos project area, with an audience of roughly 500 chanting "shame" at the meeting.
Previous incidents show these are more than idle threats. In April, Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson had 13 rounds fired into his home after backing a rezoning, and Saline Township, Michigan, treasurer Jennifer Zink resigned in May citing threats over the 1.4GW Oracle and OpenAI campus that triggered moratoriums in at least 19 Michigan municipalities. Emporia, Kansas, moved its August 5 and August 19 commission meetings online and dropped public comment after its leaders were threatened.
Recent data published in the Soufan Center's July IntelBrief, which is based on a year of scraping X and Reddit, found hundreds of posts with threat language between July 2025 and July 2026, and a volume surge beginning in April that hasn't receded. Most violent threats in its dataset are targeted towards infrastructure rather than people, with posts naming council members and planning commissions a small minority. Many use memes, emojis, and misspellings to dodge moderation.
The center also found that each new incident now draws far more secondary amplification than it did earlier in the year. Emporia's mayor said the threats to his commission didn't appear to come from locals, and Salix, Emporia, and Marshall have all now canceled, moved, or restricted public meetings because of them, at a point when more than 500 local restrictions on data centers are in place nationwide.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30, @02:54PM (1 child)
techbro lawyer: "we's a steal all your drinking water and triple your electric bills"
normal person: "sorry what"
techbro lawyer: "well, we gots to feed the machine that makes wrong answers."
normal person: "no, go back to that other part"
techbro lawyer: "actually, we'll be making you pay us to take your drinking water so technically it's not stealing."
normal person: "that wasn't my original concern, but now..."
techbro lawyer: "you might be wondering how this will affect the local economy, the machine has answers"
normal person: "no, the part about the water"
techbro lawyer: "you think bribing officials is cheap?"
normal person: "the fuck."
techbro lawyer: "gotta say, your mayor made a hard bargain. wanted coke on top of the money. i had to pull my personal supply."
(pan to box of shotgun shells spilling over a table)
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These fuckers care if you live or die, because you dying makes line go up. Attempting to reason with such people (a) not going to have any impact, and (b) not a rational response.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday August 31, @02:02PM
There's a geographic / cultural / racial thing where "globalist epstein class" stuff sells REALLY well in coastal urbanite areas, these events in the news always seem to involve carpet baggers rolling into town, getting tarred and feathered and sometimes railroading the locals (look up the history of that phrase) or sometimes getting run out on a rail.
Not much of a surprise that the worst outcomes are in the historically corrupt areas, what a shocker. Where I live the bills are not going up, its just not corrupt enough of an area. Areas where they're always stomping on people, well surprise surprise the excuse this time is "AI" is why they're continuing to stomp on people. Its not a new thing because of AI.