Seven Days

America is dividing into two countries.

In one country, data centers are the enemy. Residents pack gymnasiums to shout down council members. They file lawsuits, launch recall petitions, and pass referendums. They're winning. In the last two weeks alone, they've fired five elected officials, passed the first statewide moratorium in U.S. history, and added a dozen new local bans to the map.

In the other country, data centers are the future. Texas has 140 projects in the pipeline. Meta just broke ground on a $10 billion campus in Indiana. Wisconsin approved $13 billion in new construction. Electricians are making $200,000 a year and there still aren't enough of them.

These two countries are operating on completely different assumptions about what's coming. And every week, the gap between them gets wider.

This is the story of the last seven days.

Eight days ago, Indianapolis City-County Councilman Ron Gibson woke up just before 1 AM to the sound of gunfire. Someone had put 13 bullets through his front door. His 8-year-old son was home.

Under the doormat, in a sealed plastic bag, was a handwritten note: "NO DATA CENTERS."

The shooting came five days after Gibson supported a $500 million Metrobloks data center in his district. The Metropolitan Development Commission had approved the rezoning 6-2. Gibson, as the district's councilman, had publicly championed the project.

"Just steps from where those bullets struck is our dining room table, where my son had been playing with his Legos the day before," Gibson said in a statement. "That reality is deeply unsettling."

As of today, no arrests have been made. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security are assisting the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, but the investigation has produced no public suspects. Gibson remains firm. He told reporters the shooting would not change his position on the project, which still needs final approval from the full City-County Council.

"I understand that public service can bring strong opinions and disagreement," Gibson said. "But violence is never the answer, especially when it puts families at risk."

The local opposition group, Protect Martindale-Brightwood, immediately condemned the attack and denied any involvement. "Violence has no place in our community or our advocacy," the group said. "Any signage or messaging at the scene is not affiliated with our organization."

The Metrobloks project is not dead. But it's also not built. And the councilman who supported it now has bullet holes in his door.

One week ago, the Festus, Missouri city council sat in a packed high school gymnasium. Hundreds of residents had shown up to oppose a $6 billion data center proposed by CRG Clayco on 360 acres north of Highway 67. The crowd chanted "NO DATA CENTER" at the top of their lungs.

The council voted 6-2 to approve it anyway.

Seven days later, those council members learned what happens when you ignore a crowd like that.

On Tuesday, April 8th, Festus voters fired every single incumbent up for reelection. All four of them. By wide margins. Turnout was 129% higher than the previous year's election.

Karl Weekley beat Jim Collier in Ward 1. Allen Joseph McCarthy beat Brian Wehner in Ward 2. Dan Moore beat Bobby Benz in Ward 3. Rick Belleville, a 70-year-old first-time candidate who had never run for anything, beat Jim Tinnin in Ward 4 by nearly 45 points.

Yesterday, April 13th, the new council was sworn in. They've already announced plans to explore legal options to unwind the deal. At polling places across the city, volunteers are collecting signatures for a recall election targeting Mayor Sam Richards and the four council members who weren't up for reelection this cycle.

"This data center fight has struck this community to the core," Moore said after his victory. "People are awake now, and we're not going to let this continue on anymore."

Mayor Richards insists the project is unstoppable. "That contract has already been signed," he told local news. "I signed it three or four days ago and CRG signed it."

The new council disagrees. Belleville says their attorneys see it differently: "The council can vote to suspend the agreement. Any money given to the city would then be returned to the developer."

And it wasn't just Festus that night.

Thirty miles west, in Pacific, Missouri, where another data center has been proposed, Mayor Heather Filley lost her reelection bid to Alderwoman Debbie Kelley. Kelley ran on the same transparency platform that swept Festus.

Two towns. Same Tuesday night. Five elected officials gone.

While Missouri voters were firing their council members, the Maine Legislature was making history.

On Wednesday, April 9th, lawmakers gave final approval to LD 307, a moratorium on all data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November 2027. The House passed it 82-62. The Senate followed at 19-13.

Maine is now the first state in America to ban large data centers.

The law creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, tasked with studying impacts on electricity rates, water supplies, and local communities before the moratorium expires. Three projects are now frozen: a data center at the former Androscoggin Mill in Jay (which was scheduled to break ground this summer), another in Sanford, and a third at the former Loring Air Force Base.

"We've seen across the U.S. the rapid expansion of AI data centers, with few to no safeguards to insulate people from shocks to electricity demand, impacts to local water supplies, and more," Maine Conservation Voters said.

The debate was fierce. Senator Jeff Timberlake, a Republican, opposed the bill: "I'm not going to support something that doesn't support business, especially in a community that's dying for commerce and to get back on its feet."

But Representative William Tuell, also a Republican, said he'd changed his mind after learning more. "The more we learn, the more I do think a pause is in order."

Governor Janet Mills has not indicated whether she'll sign. But the margins suggest the Legislature could override a veto.

Twenty-four hours after the statewide ban passed, Bangor's city council voted unanimously, with no discussion, to enact its own 180-day local moratorium. They fast-tracked the ordinance, skipping the first reading entirely due to what city staff called "the emergency nature of this issue."

The Bangor Water District general manager had warned that a single data center could consume 5 million gallons of water per day.

Here's what Festus, Port Washington, and Maine have in common: organized opposition groups that learned from each other.

In Port Washington, Wisconsin, a group called Great Lakes Neighbors United formed in late 2025 after the city approved a $15 billion OpenAI/Oracle/Vantage data center with what residents felt was inadequate public input. The group's organizers, Christine Le Jeune, Michael Beaster, and Sebastian Elischer, launched a multi-front campaign: a recall petition for the mayor (it fell short of signatures), a lawsuit challenging the $458 million TIF financing (still pending), and a referendum requiring voter approval for future large tax incentives.

That referendum passed last week, 66% to 34%. It was the first anti-data center ballot measure in American history.

"Obviously we're a little bit late to do anything about the Vantage project," Beaster told Wisconsin Business after the referendum passed. "We believe this gives us some tools now to allow the population of the city to weigh in and say, 'Hey, is this a good project?'"

The Port Washington victory is now being studied by opposition groups in other states. The Festus organizers watched it happen. The Maine legislators cited it in floor debate. Communities are sharing playbooks, strategies, legal theories.

Great Lakes Neighbors United also brought in celebrity firepower. Charlie Berens, a Wisconsin comedian with 3 million YouTube subscribers, has become an outspoken data center critic. At a February town hall that drew nearly 300 residents, Berens told the crowd: "I've been told by some of you to stick to comedy, and I would be happy to stick with comedy as soon as our politicians stick with policy."

The opposition is becoming a movement. And movements learn.

The opposition is winning in Maine and Missouri. But the money hasn't stopped. It's just concentrating somewhere else.

Texas now has 140 data center projects in the pipeline, 75,089 megawatts of planned capacity, more than any other state by a factor of three. Bloomberg projects Texas will exceed 40 gigawatts of total capacity by 2028, representing nearly 30% of all U.S. data center demand. Crusoe just broke ground on a 900-megawatt AI facility in Abilene. Meta revised its El Paso campus to $10 billion. Google announced a new facility in Wilbarger County.

In Wisconsin, despite Port Washington's referendum, Microsoft got approval for 15 new data centers at the former Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant. Taxable construction value: $13 billion.

In Indiana, the same state where a councilman's home was just shot up, Meta broke ground on a $10 billion, 1-gigawatt campus in Lebanon. The project will employ 4,000 construction workers at peak.

In West Virginia, Penzance Management plans a $4 billion High Impact Intelligence Center in Berkeley County, 600 megawatts in a state desperate for the investment.

The six largest U.S. hyperscalers are projected to spend approximately $700 billion on infrastructure this year. That's nearly six times what they spent in 2022.

Cleanview's national tracker counts 602 operating data centers with 16,914 megawatts of capacity. Another 888 projects are in the pipeline, representing 278,302 megawatts of additional capacity.

The buildout isn't slowing down. It's relocating to the places that will say yes.

If you're a contractor watching this chaos, here's what you need to understand: there's more work than workers, and it's not even close.

Electrical systems account for 45 to 70 percent of total data center construction costs. On a $1 billion project, electrical can be $450 million to $700 million of the scope. At IBEW Local 26 in Northern Virginia, the heart of the largest data center cluster in the world, membership has doubled since 2018 to more than 14,700 electricians. Journeymen earn $59.50 an hour. Add overtime or foreman pay, and electricians in this market are clearing $200,000.

Applications for commercial electrical apprenticeships jumped 70% nationally between 2022 and 2024. But that's still not enough. The Associated Builders and Contractors estimates the construction industry needs 349,000 net new workers in 2026 just to meet demand.

"The electrician shortage is quite dire," said Darrell West at the Brookings Institution. "This has become a leading barrier to data center construction."

Google's policy team has said publicly that a lack of electricians "may constrain America's ability to build the infrastructure needed to support AI."

Nathan Hall, vice chancellor at Delta Community College in Louisiana, put it more bluntly: "Data centers are going to be the new oilfield."

Turner Construction and Wohlsen just won CoreWeave's $6 billion Pennsylvania facility. MasTec completed $150 million in data center work last year and is bidding on over $1 billion more. Vertiv's stock is up 61% year-to-date. Generac is up 46%.

The winners in this market aren't necessarily the biggest contractors. They're the ones who can actually deliver crews to job sites in the middle of nowhere.

April 20 - Rowan County, North Carolina holds a public hearing on a proposed data center moratorium. North Carolina has been one of the hottest markets for construction, with Duke Energy signing gigawatt-scale deals. If opposition gains traction there, the movement has reached the Sun Belt.

April 20-23 - Data Center World convenes in Washington, D.C. Industry leaders, investors, and policymakers will gather as the political ground shifts beneath them.

April 28 - Birmingham, Alabama holds a public hearing on a proposed data center. New Orleans Planning Commission meets the same day.

June 2 - Monterey Park, California votes on Measure NDC, a citywide ban on data centers. If it passes, it will be the first outright prohibition enacted by voters anywhere in the country.

In seven days, America watched a councilman's home get shot up, a state pass the first data center ban in history, and half a town council get fired for approving a project their constituents didn't want.

The opposition isn't just protesting anymore. It's winning elections, passing laws, and teaching other communities how to do the same.

But the money keeps flowing. Seven hundred billion dollars this year. Nearly 900 projects in the pipeline. More demand for electricians than the industry can supply.

The buildout isn't stopping. It's splitting in two. One America is fighting data centers at every turn. Another America is building them as fast as the grid can handle.

If you're in this industry, developer, contractor, supplier, the question isn't whether there's opportunity. There's $700 billion in opportunity.

The question is which America you're positioned in.

That's Issue #13.

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