An unexpected coalition has emerged to fight data centers in rural America. Politicians, take heed.

By Sherman Smith | editor-in-chief

By Max McCoy

Who do you trust?

That was the question during a six-hour meeting June 23 of the Emporia Planning Commission, most of which was taken up with a public hearing about a proposed data center.

More than 400 people attended the event at the W.L. White Auditorium, a space known mostly for basketball games and graduation ceremonies. They sat in hard-backed chairs on the hardwood of the basketball court, and those who wanted to speak were given three minutes to address the seven-member commission. When their time was up an electronic buzzer would shriek. I think it was the same buzzer used for the basketball shot clock and, after six hours of it, I never wanted to hear it again.

The planning commission was scheduled to hear public comment, and then vote, on a proposal to create a “D-IO,” a digital infrastructure overlay district, and a related request to rezone 1,000 acres of land recently annexed into the city as the first step in creating the proposed Flint Hills Digital Campus.

WASHINGTON — Visitors from across the United States traveled to the National Mall Thursday for the opening day of the Great American State Fair, a days-long event that is part of President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 celebration of the nation’s semiquincentennial.

States and territories showed off cultural and agricultural exports at exhibits stretching nearly a mile. Attendees snapped photos on the small Grand Ole Opry stage in the Tennessee booth, kids tried putt-putt at Indiana’s miniature golf course and cowboys rode horses at Montana’s rodeo.

A 110-foot Ferris wheel slowly turned at the center of the freshly manicured lawn, framing the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol in the distance on either side. Nearby stood a model of Trump’s controversial “triumphal arch.”

WASHINGTON — Activists rallied, danced and marched in the nation’s capital Saturday as they laid out their vision for the future of the United States beyond this year’s semiquincentennial.

Event organizers scheduled the rally to counter the Trump administration’s Freedom 250 programming, which is taking place on the National Mall over several weeks.

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