Medill Podcast: The push to boost confidence in voting by mail

In Festus, Missouri, a town that gave Donald Trump 67 percent of its vote, residents have filed to recall the mayor and three council members over a $6 billion data center. In New York, a Democratic governor has signed the first statewide moratorium on new ones. Across seven states, at least 33 recall campaigns are targeting as many as 58 local officials for the same reason, and the reason is not a party. It is a building.

That makes data centers the rarest thing in American politics right now: an issue where the folding chairs in a red county and a blue one are filled with people saying the same words. They are not saying "no technology." They are saying the box across the road raises their power bill, drains their water, takes the farm, and was negotiated behind a nondisclosure agreement before anyone in town knew its name. In Luther, Oklahoma, the moratorium passed only after word leaked that the mayor had been in closed talks with a developer for months. The anger is not about servers. It is about being handed a decision that was already made.