- The backlash against the AI data-center build-out - which we've been tracking since it was a smattering of county fights across 28 states - staged its first coordinated day of action on Saturday: 142 protests across 42 states, from Wasilla, Alaska to Naples, Florida, organized by Humans First, the nonprofit that Tea Party veteran Amy Kremer co-founded and chairs. The crowds spanned both sides of the aisle...uniting a MAGA stalwart in a 'faith, family, freedom' T-shirt in New Jersey, a first-time activist in Texas, and a left-leaning organizer in California's Imperial Valley.
The fight looked like Kenilworth, New Jersey. Residents of the 8,500-person borough gathered outside the municipal court at mid-morning with drums, plastic horns, and sidewalk chalk to protest the $1.8 billion CoreWeave AI data center their planning board approved in May 2025 on the former Merck campus - a project that has since drawn more than 12,000 petition signatures against it, several thousand more names than the town has people. The woman in the "faith, family, freedom" T-shirt marched beside neighbors holding "Build community, not data centers" signs. When heavy rain arrived later in the day, they pulled on ponchos, shared umbrellas, and kept marching. One sign, caught by Business Insider's photographer on the scene: "You think this is pressure? Wait 'til there's no water pressure."
Texas, the country's hottest data-center market, hosted the most rallies - 18 - with Georgia at 11, California at eight, and Pennsylvania, Florida, and Indiana at seven apiece. In Imperial Valley, where a proposed facility could pull 260 million gallons a year from the Colorado River, Ivan DelSol, 54, told Reuters that around 50 people turned out in 100-degree heat. "It's dystopian that you would use this much fresh water for AI," he said. Organizers released no headcounts; turnout ran below expectations in some rural areas and in Atlanta, where about a dozen showed - most of them, a volunteer there said,
