GOP Revives Federal Data Privacy Push, Setting Up Clash With States
'massive step backward'
Republicans must reject Big Tech land grabs or start losing elections
Republicans are continuing their uninterrupted streak of woefully underperforming in elections. However, in the first of its kind referendum on Big Tech data centers, voters are showing that a party that embraces land sovereignty over Big Tech dystopian land grabs will win the day.
Sadly, Republicans have chosen to be on the losing side of the issue.
The public is being asked to shoulder a burden to facilitate a supposed technology whose benefits are very unclear and dubious.
In a first of its kind local referendum, voters in Port Washington, Wisconsin, voted by a margin of 2-1 for a referendum that will require all future data center projects in the area to be approved by a vote of the city’s residents.
The referendum was sparked in the wake of Oracle and OpenAI’s Stargate facility setting up shop in the area. The proposed 1.3 gigawatt facility will consume the power equivalent of over one million households.
The referendum does not undo the Stargate project but will prevent any future project worth more than $10 million from getting approval without the public input.
Over 1,000 residents signed the petition that put this measure on the ballot. "We are not against development," added Michael Baester, founding member of Great Lakes Neighbors United, which spearheaded this campaign. "We are for development that the community understands, supports, and has chosen together. Tonight proves that when citizens organize and engage, their voices can be heard."
What is so important nationally about this vote is that Port Washington was carried by Trump 52-48 in 2024. It is the quintessential swing city that sways the Wisconsin vote, and by proxy, the entire country’s electorate.
Such an emphatic result from a swing town demonstrates the potency of the data center issue.
According to Politico, other communities around the country are set to vote on similar ballot measures.
Imagine if Republicans could get on the right side of the data center issue. What might that do for their failing election efforts?
In Festus, Missouri, a solid conservative jurisdiction, voters ousted four GOP councilmen who recently approved rezoning for a $6 billion data center. Two of them were defeated by margins greater than 2-1.
Thus the grassroots opposition to data centers is just as virulent in red America as it is in swing areas that have already soured on Trump because of the economy.
Oklahoma is a state where Trump carried every county, yet voters there are firmly opposed to data centers.
After Google tried to bribe the locals in Osage County to support a hyperscale data center, the Rock Volunteer Fire Department turned down a $250,000 donation from the company. This is a county Trump won by 41 points.
The opposition is just as stiff in the cities. Last month, the Tulsa City Council voted unanimously to halt construction of new data centers for nine months. All 19 speakers at the meeting voiced support for the moratorium.
Across the state in Oklahoma City, the city council recently voted to rezone over 800 acres of farmland for a Google data center. The council is now facing a recall petition.
Portage County, Ohio, is a prototypical rust belt, blue-collar county that traditionally voted Democrat but migrated to the GOP under Trump. The president carried the county by 15 points in 2024. Last week, the Ravenna City Council moved forward with a 12-month moratorium on the centers after a crowd filled the city council chambers to speak against the proposed projects.
In many respects, the ubiquitous opposition to data centers is a reflection of the sheer pervasiveness and magnitude of these projects, targeting nearly every county in states like Ohio, Indiana, Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Arizona and numerous places in the majority of other states.
According to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, the grid operator in most of the Midwest, by 2030, the proposed hyperscale data centers in Indiana will use an amount of electricity equivalent to twice that used by the entire state.
None of this makes any sense nor is it sustainable, especially for a product that increasingly fails to produce a degree of profit that could come close to paying for all the capital expenditure and power.
This is why red-state RINOs like those in drought-stricken Texas continue to shower these companies with lavish sales tax breaks.
RELATED: Data centers are a hidden tax on your burger
We don’t offer 30-year abatements like this to any other industry, but this is what data centers require to remain solvent because their hardware depreciates so quickly. According to the state comptroller, Lone Star voters will subsidize $3.2 billion in tax breaks to the largest companies on the planet over the next two years.
Four of the largest states targeted for data centers — Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia — are languishing through a severe and sustained drought.
Industry apologists are trying to gaslight people into believing that their closed-loop systems will somehow not affect the water flow, but it’s inconceivable that it won’t have a short-term effect and also pose health concerns when recycled back into the water table.
An application from Amazon to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management indicates that the sanitary system it is constructing for two of its hyperscales in New Carlisle is designed to use more than 1.6 million gallons per day on hot summer days.
This is “only” the equivalent water use of about 5,000 households, which pales in comparison to some other facilities and to the magnitude of the power use. Keep in mind that the entire population of this town is just under 1,900.
There’s a reason why 65% of voters oppose all data center construction, including a clear majority of all demographics, ideological groups, and income levels, despite all of the lobbying and electioneering by Big Tech.
The public is being asked to shoulder a burden to facilitate a supposed technology whose benefits are very unclear and dubious.
Republicans can continue ignoring this grassroots revolt, but they will do so at their own peril. Nothing motivates voters more than the preservation of their own communities. That is one thing that still unites a divided America.
Top Schumer aide joins Big Tech team whose CEO once called for Trump to deploy National Guard in San Francisco
A longtime communications director for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is leaving Capitol Hill for the tech world.
Interestingly, the move comes six months after the CEO of the company he's joining apologized for suggesting President Trump should send troops into California.
'My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution.'
Alex Nguyen, Schumer's communications director for the past seven years, is headed for civilian life after nearly two decades working in the nation's capital.
According to Capitol Hill outlet Punchbowl News, Nguyen will become director of corporate communications for Salesforce, a customer service and automation-software company. Ally Biasotti, a previous national press secretary for Schumer, will take over Nguyen's old role.
In October 2025, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff apologized for saying he would welcome the deployment of National Guard troops to San Francisco — where the company is headquartered — stating, "We don't have enough cops, so if they can be cops, I'm all for it."
According to CNBC, Benioff faced blowback, and his remarks even sparked a resignation from board member Ron Conway, who reportedly told Benioff in an email that their "values were no longer aligned."
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This prompted Benioff to walk back his comments in a post to his X page, stating that he no longer believed "the National Guard is needed to address safety in San Francisco."
"My earlier comment came from an abundance of caution," Benioff wrote, adding that he sincerely apologized for "the concern" his remarks caused.
In a subsequent post, Benioff shared a graph purporting to show that San Francisco Police numbers had plummeted since 2019, while noting that Salesforce had pledged $1 million in sign-on bonuses to SFPD recruits.
RELATED: CNN analyst delivers Democrats devastating news about base support
Nguyen's transition to the Salesforce C-suite comes amid a data breach and rumors of increased layoffs at the company.
Salesforce has confirmed that thousands of customer records were breached, allegedly through a connected third-party app. The app provides a live-chat function that connects to Salesforce to convert customer leads.
At the same time, Salesforce has disputed rumors that the breach also revealed the company was planning to cut approximately 4,000 customer support roles.
According to Storyboard 18, Salesforce said the reported figure does not refer to new layoffs but rather a planned redeployment that was initiated in September 2025.
Schumer's team did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
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West Virginia Republicans are betraying their voters for AI special interests
There is a reason why most red-state Republican leaders fail to reflect the political values of their constituents. They represent the special interests they work for rather than the whole of the people.
Nowhere is this more evident than with the ravaging of West Virginia by generative AI data centers, promoted by people like House of Delegates Speaker Roger Hanshaw, who legally represents special interest groups fighting poor, local communities in court.
The same man who was instrumental in stripping localities of their ability to block data centers is now representing the people behind those data centers in court.
Remember the provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 that originally attempted to strip all state and local governments of any ability to block data centers from being built? Well, last year, West Virginia enacted just such a ban at the state level. Hanshaw shepherded HB 2014 to Republican Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s desk.
Among many special tax and regulatory favors offered to data centers, this bill removed local jurisdiction over the siting, zoning, and operating of certified high-impact data centers and microgrids.
Thus, companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI could work with state politicians bought into their pay-for-play and force their way into any community. And what better person to be fighting for them than the speaker of the House?
While serving as speaker, Hanshaw filed a notice of appearance in the appeal to the Department of Evironmental Protection’s Air Quality Board on behalf of his client MGS CNP1 LLC, which is an affiliate of Houston-based Fidelis New Energy working on a data center project in Mason County.
This was in the middle of the session and just one week after the state House of Delegates passed legislation making it easier for these projects to obtain certification with the Department of Commerce.
Then, just two days after the session ended, Hanshaw took on a case through his work at Bowles Rice for Fundamental Data, the company working on powering the data center bonanza in Tucker County.
So the same man who was instrumental in stripping localities of their ability to block data centers is now representing the people behind those data centers in court against local community groups appealing the DEP’s permit issuance.
It was the Tucker County fight that led me to speak out nationally against this mindless business model of raping red-state land, power, and water for a form of generative AI that serves nothing but chatslop and the surveillance state.
Last August, I vacationed in Tucker County, home to the gorgeous Blackwater Falls State Park and Canaan Valley. A county that voted for Trump by a 50-vote margin, these people are the forgotten men that MAGA was supposed to represent.
RELATED: How to power the AI race without losing control
I spoke with several locals who were irate beyond words about the injustice occurring in a state with barely any Democrat elected officials.
What’s worse is that West Virginia is also being violated with endless transmission lines to power the blue-state “data center alley” in northern Virginia. According to a report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysts, West Virginia energy consumers will be expected to pay $572 million in higher rates to fund the rope to hang themselves.
What is so offensive is that these projects are not even creating jobs. According to the February JOLT report from BLS, construction remains in the greatest recession since the Great Recession, despite these so-called data center projects. Oracle, which is at the center of the cloud computing in the data centers, is laying off 18% of its workforce.
Shockingly, Henshaw and his minions attempted to pass even greater handouts for data centers offered to no other industry, in addition to what was in HB 2014.
This session, they introduced SB 623, which offered a complete property tax exemption and sales tax exemption on all data center equipment. They also introduced HB 4013, which would have created a new tax credit available to data centers to offset all state income, sales/use, franchise, and payroll withholding taxes based on capital investments, construction costs, and wages.
How many jobs did they have to create to qualify? Just 10! Which, of course, is a tacit admission that these behemoths don’t create many jobs, despite their enormous footprint, cost, and consumption of power.
In other words, Agenda 2030 is being fulfilled right under our noses in a state where Republicans control both houses of the legislature with 32-2 and 91-9 majorities.
What West Virginia, with its mind-numbing GOP majorities, shows is that the lack of conservative outcomes under GOP control is not due to a lack of power or votes but too much access to money and special interests.
How to power the AI race without losing control
The artificial intelligence revolution is here, and it arrives charged with the capacity to fundamentally change society for better or worse.
America is currently leading the world in AI development. U.S. companies are building the most advanced models, attracting the most capital, and designing the infrastructure that will shape the next century. But there is one increasingly obvious constraint standing in the way: electricity accessibility.
The political consequences of rapid automation could be just as transformative as the technology itself.
Energy scarcity is only half the story. Even if we succeed in generating the power required to fuel the AI revolution, we must confront a deeper challenge. The same technology that promises medical breakthroughs and economic growth also carries profound societal and even existential risk.
If America wants to win the AI race, we will need to consider a massive expansion of energy production and an equally massive expansion of vigilance.
The energy bottleneck
Modern AI models are trained and deployed in massive data centers packed with tens of thousands of high-performance graphics processing units running continuously. Training a single frontier model can require weeks or months of nonstop computation, while everyday AI tools used by millions of people must process queries around the clock.
These facilities consume electricity at industrial scale, rivaling entire cities in their power demands. In fact, the hyperscale Stargate data center in Saline Township is projected to consume the same amount of electricity as 1.17 million homes.
The understanding of just how much energy is needed to power the AI revolution is still unfolding across the industry. Just a few years ago, Silicon Valley leaders were still thinking in megawatts.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, speaking on a podcast less than two years ago, said his company would build larger AI clusters “if we could get the energy to do it,” describing 50-to-100-megawatt facilities and speculating that 1-gigawatt data centers were probably inevitable someday.
Today, 1-gigawatt facilities are on the smaller end of planned AI infrastructure, with projects up to 5 gigawatts already in motion throughout the United States, including but not limited to the following:
- Project Stargate data center in Abilene, Texas;
- EdgeCore data center campus in Louisa County, Virginia;
- Project Stargate site in Saline Township, Michigan;
- Amazon data center campus in New Carlisle, Indiana;
- Tract data center campus outside Richmond, Virginia; and
- Hyperion data center campus in Richland Parish, Louisiana.
And this list barely scratches the surface. Dozens more large-scale facilities are planned or under construction across the country, and every single one of them will require enormous flows of reliable electricity to operate.
Elon Musk recently stated at Davos that “the limiting factor for AI deployment is, fundamentally, electrical power.” He warned that while AI chip production is increasing exponentially, electricity generation is not.
“Very soon, maybe even later this year,” Musk said, “we will be producing more chips than we can turn on.”
In Santa Clara, California, reports indicate newly built data centers may sit idle for years because the local grid cannot handle the load.
According to a report published by the global consulting group McKinsey & Company, U.S. demand for AI-ready data center capacity could grow from roughly 60 gigawatts today to 170 to 298 gigawatts by 2030.
The International Energy Agency reports that data centers consumed more than 4% of total U.S. electricity in 2024. This amounts to 183 terawatt-hours. IEA projections suggest this number could increase by 133% to 426 TWh by 2030.
To put that in perspective, 426 TWh is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of more than 40 million American homes.
The dilemma is obvious. If we do not have reliable energy, AI innovation will be compromised and could potentially migrate elsewhere. Worse, American households could find themselves competing with Big Tech for increasingly scarce power, driving up electricity costs for families and small businesses.
But energy is only the first layer of this story.
RELATED: States should work with AI, not against it
The promise and the disruption
AI is not your typical technological advancement. It is a general-purpose intelligence system capable of transforming nearly every sector of society. In the coming years, AI could accelerate drug discovery, personalize medicine, supercharge logistics, automate research, and unlock new materials and engineering breakthroughs, just to name a few potential benefits. The economic upside is staggering.
Artificial intelligence is a powerful tool and a dangerous weapon. While promising efficiency and innovation, AI also threatens disruption on a historic scale. Job displacement could occur faster than previous technological revolutions. Entire professions, from legal research to software development, could be reshaped or automated.
If widespread job displacement occurs, there will inevitably be calls for sweeping government intervention. The political consequences of rapid automation could be just as transformative as the technology itself.
Exponential technological developments have changed political operations throughout history. As a recent example, social media algorithms have dominated political discourse over the past decade. Political polarization has subsequently skyrocketed as people on all sides of the aisle are trapped in online echo chambers and subjected to a panopticon of surveillance.
Artificial intelligence has the frightening capabilities of supercharging mass surveillance while baselessly boosting preconceived biases without an objective basis in truth.
There is certainly reason for concern about the potential bias and coercive nature of AI. In recent years, we have already witnessed how tech companies can shape narratives and suppress viewpoints on popular media platforms. Embedding ideological bias into AI systems would mean embedding that bias into education, finance, health care, and governance.
If AI becomes the invisible infrastructure of society, who writes its rules? Who determines its boundaries? And who holds it accountable?
Playing with probabilities
Beyond economic and cultural disruption lies an even deeper uncertainty.
We are introducing a form of intelligence that even its creators admit they do not fully understand. There are already documented cases of advanced AI systems behaving in deceptive or strategically manipulative ways. In controlled environments, some models have been observed lying to human evaluators, scheming to achieve assigned goals, or resisting shutdown instructions.
OpenAI’s stated ambition is to create artificial superintelligence — systems that surpass human capability across virtually every domain. There is no telling where this path may lead. Humanity has never had to grapple with the prospect of a man-made intelligence that is superior to our own.
And remarkably, some of the leading figures in the field openly discuss the possibility of catastrophic outcomes.
Elon Musk has suggested there is “only a 20% chance of annihilation.” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has estimated roughly a 25% chance that AI development goes “really, really badly.” Geoffrey Hinton, often referred to as the “godfather of AI,” has placed the odds of extinction-level consequences somewhere between 10 and 20% over the coming decades.
Those numbers still imply that positive outcomes are more likely than not. But when the downside is losing human civilization itself, percentages matter.
We are advancing a technology with transformative power while relying largely on overzealous corporate discretion to steer its trajectory. Humanity finds itself fiddling with the key to Pandora’s box, and we have no rational means of gauging what will happen if the box is opened.
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Power and prudence
As stalwart advocates for smaller government, we hesitate to call for slamming the brakes on AI development, but it is important to have sober discernment moving forward. America is in a strategic competition with geopolitical rivals who would gladly dominate both this field and us if we retreat.
Reliable energy production is necessary to promote competition and American innovation. Yet it is arguably more important that society engages in serious dialogue surrounding this emerging technology. Government cannot, and should not, be the only voice in this conversation.
Independent institutions dedicated to transparency, accountability, and the defense of individual liberty need to rise and challenge the current trajectory.
Technological revolutions have always reshaped society. The difference this time is scale and speed. AI is a decision-making engine that may soon operate faster and more broadly than any human institution.
America can power the AI revolution. The real question is whether we can power it without surrendering control over our economy, institutions, and ultimately, our freedom.
The future may well belong to artificial intelligence. But whether that future advances prosperity or undermines humanity depends on the vigilance we exercise today.
How government and Big Tech can wreck your new car's resale value
German drivers who bought Lexus vehicles expecting full access to remote and climate features recently got a wake-up call.
Features they paid for were suddenly restricted — not because anything broke, but because of regulatory compliance, connectivity changes, and software control.
The Lexus situation shows how quickly functionality can change when regulations, infrastructure, or software support shifts.
The hardware still works; the car still runs. But the functionality changed anyway.
That’s the part American drivers should pay attention to.
Your vehicle may sit in your driveway; your name may be on the title — but increasingly, key features operate at the discretion of software systems, telecom networks, and regulatory rules.
Rolling computers
Modern vehicles are what the industry calls “software-defined.” Features like remote start, climate preconditioning, and app-based access all depend on telematics — your car communicating with external servers.
If that connection changes or no longer meets regulatory requirements, those features can stop working.
Not because the car can’t do it — but because access has been turned off.
Lexus parent company Toyota confirmed that certain connected services were modified due to compliance and infrastructure limitations. Automakers call this a technical adjustment. Drivers experience it as losing features they already paid for.
This is what happens when policy decisions ripple into everyday life. Governments tighten cybersecurity rules, telecom providers shut down older networks, and automakers update software to stay compliant. And the result shows up in your driveway.
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Resale risk
There’s also a financial impact that many buyers don’t consider. When features depend on connectivity, they may require subscriptions, stop working as networks change, or simply not be supported for the life of the vehicle. That affects resale value.
For decades, ownership was simple. If the hardware worked, the feature worked. Now, automakers control the software. Regulators control what is allowed. Telecom providers control connectivity. The owner depends on all three.
That shift helps explain why automakers are pushing subscription-based features. Remote start, heated seats, driver-assistance systems — even performance upgrades are increasingly tied to software instead of built-in hardware.
From the industry’s perspective, it creates flexibility and recurring revenue. From the driver’s perspective, it introduces uncertainty.
There are real benefits to all this connectivity. Software updates can fix problems without recalls. Safety systems can improve over time. Diagnostics can catch issues earlier.
But those benefits come with dependency.
The Lexus situation shows how quickly functionality can change when regulations, infrastructure, or software support shifts. Many buyers still assume their vehicle’s features are permanent.
That assumption no longer holds.
Coming to America
And this isn’t just happening overseas. American vehicles rely on the same telematics systems, the same cellular networks, and the same shift toward software-controlled features. Electric vehicles push this even farther, relying heavily on software for battery management, charging, and performance.
Connectivity isn’t optional any more. It’s built into how the vehicle operates.
The Lexus case isn’t an isolated incident. It’s a preview. Most drivers still assume ownership equals control. But increasingly ownership means access — access that depends on software, connectivity, and compliance.
Because in today’s vehicles, the most important component isn’t under the hood. It’s in the software.
What to check before you buy
Before you buy a vehicle with connected features, ask these questions:
How long are these features supported?
Don’t assume they last the life of the car. Ask for a timeline.
What happens if the network changes?
If the vehicle relies on cellular connectivity, what happens when that network is upgraded or shut down?
Are any features subscription-based?
Some features are included up front but require payment later to keep working.
Can features be removed or modified?
Check the fine print. Many automakers reserve the right to change connected services.
Will this affect resale value?
A car that loses key features over time may be harder to sell — or worth less.
Is there a non-connected fallback?
If connectivity fails, do basic functions still work?
Google agrees to PAY $68 million to settle yearslong eavesdropping case
For decades, users suspected that Google was listening in on conversations through their smartphones, oftentimes serving ads for products that users spoke about in casual conversation but didn’t actually search for online. While no wrongdoing has been admitted or found, the suspicions are gaining new attention as Google has agreed — citing the "uncertainty, risk, expense, inconvenience, and distraction" involved — to settle a years-long illicit eavesdropping case for a cool $68 million.
The lawsuit
The class action lawsuit, which was filed all the way back in July 2019, alleged that any Google and/or Android devices with Google Assistant hotword detection enabled both recorded and transmitted anything it heard — including conversations — back to Google’s servers without users’ knowledge.
If you just want to kick Google out of your conversations, it’s easy to pull the plug.
A hotword is a phrase you can use to invoke the assistant on your smart devices without touching or otherwise interacting with them. To see if hotword detection is active on your phone, try this quick trick: Android users can say “OK, Google” or “Hey, Google” to bring up the virtual assistant, while iPhone users can say, “Hey, Siri” to invoke the Apple assistant. If your phone immediately lights up and starts to listen to your commands, then your phone could be spying on you.
Before jumping to conclusions, it’s important to note that hotword detection is only supposed to listen for those specific “Hey” or “OK” commands before actively capturing data to answer your query. The lawsuit, however, claims that Google and Android devices recorded data without invoking a hotword.
While the lawsuit specifically alleges Google Assistant is the big offender, Google has since abandoned that service for Gemini, its in-house AI. But Gemini works exactly like Google Assistant, letting users summon the service on an Android device with the same “Hey, Google” or “OK, Google” command. In other words, it has the capability to enable listening of the same kind.
Google has a whole eavesdropping ecosystem
The tricky part about Google Assistant — and now Google Gemini — is that it’s embedded in a wide range of devices. Hotword detection can be enabled on most Android handsets, including Samsung Galaxy phones and Google Pixel phones. For Android fans, that means you carry Google’s listening software in your pocket every day, waiting to hear those magic words that give it permission to record what you say.
But, of course, Google isn't limited to working through your phone. The same service works on Google’s family of smart home products, including those with the Google Home and Google Nest badge. You’ll find it on Android tablets too, as well as Wear OS smartwatches, such as the Google Pixel Watch and Samsung Galaxy Watches.
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It’s everywhere throughout Google’s broad first-party and third-party ecosystem, covering an install base of approximately four billion devices worldwide, giving it access to a massive expanse of data.
How to disable hotword detection on Android devices
Google’s hotword detection is helpful if you like to get information from your device completely hands-free, such as asking for directions to a location, playing a song from your favorite app, or sending a quick text message to your spouse on your way home from work. If you don’t care about these things though, or if you just want to kick Google out of your conversations, it’s easy to pull the plug on hotword detection entirely:
- Open the Google app on your Android phone.
- Tap your profile picture in the top right corner.
- Then tap “Settings.”
- In the Settings menu, tap “Gemini.”
- Then “Talk to Gemini hands-free.”
- Finally, uncheck the toggles beside “Hey, Google” and “While driving.”
As for Google Home and Google Nest products, these all come with a physical microphone kill switch on the device. Simply turn the switch off to block microphone access, cutting off conversations for good.
The settlement
Per the terms of the settlement, Google has agreed to pay $68 million to users affected from May 18, 2016, to December 16, 2022, pending preliminary approval by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. If you believe the settlement applies to your use of Google products, you could be eligible for compensation up to $56 per device, with owners of first-party Google products more likely to receive a payout. To be considered, you must fill out a valid claim form, which at this time isn’t yet available.
Notably, Google isn’t the only company that has been accused of spying on users. Apple also recently settled a similar class action lawsuit for $95 million over Siri’s listening capabilities.
The lesson to take from this is that Big Tech is finally getting a firsthand look at what's at stake in invading users’ privacy. How much improvement awaits us remains to be seen.
With Missouri V. Biden Settled, It’s Time For Censorship Reparations
The resolution to the case in favor of those the government had censored represents a dramatic turnaround of potentially outsize impact.Mother-daughter farmers reject eye-popping Big Tech bids: 'I'll stay ... and feed a nation'
A mother and daughter from Kentucky have a simple message for artificial intelligence companies: Go away.
Ida Huddleston and her daughter Delsia Bare say their land has fed the United States for generations, and that isn't going to change.
'I'll stay and hold and feed a nation.'
The quiet family are making headlines over their farmland, which they say has been in their family since the 1860s, after anonymous bidders have made plays to scoop up their property to erect a sprawling data center.
According to Bare, the potential buyers "will not reveal who they are," telling local Lexington, Kentucky, outlet WLEX that the anonymity of the offer is a huge red flag to her.
The family have been offered $60,000 per acre for Huddleston's 71 acres and $48,000 per acre for Bare's 463-acre portion. This puts the total offer at roughly $26 million. WKRC says this is approximately 10 times the going rate for farmland in the area.
Huddleston said she has rejected multiple offers and that she's not budging.
"What they've proposed and have carried on with us is not a business deal; it's mind harassment," the 82-year-old told WLEX.
"I said I don't want your money; I don't need your money. But I do feel sorry for everybody around us that they're going to be affected by it."
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The economic development director for surrounding Maysville-Mason County previously told WLEX that the potential data center would create 400 full-time positions and over 1,500 construction jobs.
"As far as jobs would go, they would become, if not our largest employer, definitely top three," director Tyler McHugh said.
However, Huddleston disputed the number of potential permanent jobs, saying, "My guess is you won't have over 50, and they won't even be there at this building when it's said and done."
The narrative surrounding the family's lineage has remained very consistent throughout news reports, as have Bare's reasons for refusing to sell.
"I'll stay and hold and feed a nation," she told WKRC. She added that for generations her family has "paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it, even raised wheat through the Depression and kept the breadlines up in the United States of America."
RELATED: Data centers are a hidden tax on your burger
Much of the sentiment was the same for Huddleston, who said she recognizes a sinister pattern.
"They call us old, stupid farmers, you know, but we're not. We know whenever our food is disappearing, our lands are disappearing, and we don't have any water. And poison: We know we've had it."
Her message to those who claim it will bring jobs: "I say they're a liar and the truth ain't in them. ... It's a scam!"
WLEX had previously reported on a different family who turned down offers of nearly $8 million for their land. In December, Andy Grosser and his father, Timothy, said they were also approached about selling their cattle farm to make way for a data center.
"We do not want to sell," Grosser said. "The farm is my dad's, and it means everything to him."
As for Bare, she compared her love for her land to Scarlett O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind:"
"As long as I'm on this land — as long as it's feeding me, as long as it's taking care of me — there's nothing that can destroy me if I've got this land."
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