The Liberty Daily 
From the window of our bus, America is still breathtaking.
Rolling farmland. Small towns. Church steeples. Family homes with front porches. The beautiful places people have worked their entire lives to build, preserve, and call home.
But when the bus stops, another America comes into view.
And some of what I’ve seen has broken my heart.
We launched the Humans First Data Center Revolt Bus Tour on September 12, traveling across America to meet the people whose communities are confronting the unprecedented expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure.
There is something deeply familiar about this journey.
Amy Kremer, chair of Humans First, and I both came out of the Tea Party movement more than fifteen years ago. Amy helped lead Tea Party Express, taking its message across America on national bus tours. I served as a staff contributor with Tea Party News Network (TPNN), documenting and participating in a grassroots movement that brought ordinary Americans into the national conversation.
Our Humans First team also includes veterans of FreedomWorks, bringing decades of grassroots organizing experience to this effort.
Now, all these years later, here we are again.
On a bus. Crossing America. Meeting ordinary people who are asking questions about decisions being made in their name.
The issues have changed. The technology has changed. The stakes have changed.
But the people? I recognize them.
Humans First chair Amy Kremer speaks at a press conference in Manassas, Virginia, near an existing data center. Photo courtesy of Humans First.
They’re the Americans who never intended to become activists. They’re the ones who would rather be tending their farms, raising their children, enjoying their grandchildren, and living their lives.
Instead, they’re showing up at public meetings, digging through documents, asking questions, and trying to make their voices heard.
And once again, I’m reminded that some of the most consequential stories in America begin not in Washington, but in the communities that Washington too often overlooks.
I’ve listened to developers, public officials, farmers, homeowners, engineers, and people who never imagined themselves becoming activists.
And I’ve learned that behind every proposed data center is a story that cannot be adequately captured in megawatts, tax projections, or economic-development presentations.
These are stories about people’s lives.
And the level of betrayal many of them feel is painful to witness.
The People Behind the Proposals
In Iowa, I met Janet.
Her family’s farm sits directly across the road from land being considered for a massive data center. Her husband has lived there his entire life.
Janet is worried about his health and what living next to this development could mean for their remaining years together.
Think about that.
After a lifetime of working and building a home, these folks are now confronting the possibility that the peaceful place where they intended to grow old may no longer feel like home.
In Kansas, I met farmers Carol and Ben Marple. Different state. Similar story.
With sorrow in their eyes, they showed us a framed federal land patent dated June 15, 1860, documenting 160 acres in what was then Kansas Territory.
Think about that.
Before Kansas became a state. Before the Civil War. A document issued under President James Buchanan, preserved as part of their family’s history for more than 165 years.
And now, directly across the road from their farm, Compass Datacenters is proposing an enormous industrial campus.
As Carol and Ben held that document, I couldn’t help but think about the generations who came before them. The families who worked that soil, endured hardships, raised children, and passed down something far more valuable than a piece of real estate.
They were holding their history in their hands.
The framed 1860 federal land patent shared by Carol and Ben Marple in Wakarusa, Kansas. The document records 160 acres in what was then Kansas Territory, before statehood and the Civil War. Photo courtesy of Humans First.
And now they’re facing the possibility that the place their family has cherished for generations may be fundamentally transformed.
Residents gather with the Data Center Revolt Bus in Wakarusa, Kansas, where neighboring families are confronting a proposed data-center development. Photo courtesy of Humans First.
These conversations keep repeating themselves.
Older Americans who have spent decades caring for family farms, generational ranches, and rural homes are now wondering whether they’ll eventually have to leave.
Where would they go? Who would buy their property if an enormous industrial facility is built next door? What happens to the inheritance they intended to leave their children and grandchildren?
Their fears about future property values are not yet the same as established losses, but the uncertainty is real.
And for an older couple, starting over isn’t as simple as putting a house on the market.
In Northern Virginia, near Alexandria, I encountered another version of this same heartache.
In Bren Pointe, part of the larger Bren Mar neighborhood, families who invested substantial sums in their homes now face the proposed Plaza 500 data-center campus and an associated electrical substation. According to the Save Bren Mar Coalition, the proposed substation could sit as close as 67 feet from nearby residences.
Sixty-seven feet. About the length of three Ford F-150s parked nose to tail.
Imagine looking out from the home you purchased, maintained, and raised your family in, knowing that an enormous electrical installation could become your neighbor.
A home is not merely an entry on a county tax roll. It is where children grew up, where grandparents visit, where birthdays were celebrated, and where a lifetime of memories accumulated.
An economic-development model can calculate assessed property values.
It cannot calculate the value of somebody’s peace.
What Happens to the Land and Water?
Then there are the places themselves.
In Pennsylvania, Ana helped me understand something I hadn’t fully appreciated about underground water supplies.
An aquifer doesn’t recognize property lines, municipal boundaries, or industrial zoning districts.
These underground water systems can extend for miles beneath multiple communities. Depending on the geology and the amount of water withdrawn, pumping in one location can affect wells, streams, and groundwater levels well beyond the development itself.
Protecting the land immediately surrounding a data center is not necessarily the same as protecting the water beneath it.
And it raises an important question: When a developer presents a water-management plan, has anyone evaluated the potential effects on the entire connected groundwater system — including the families and communities outside the project’s boundaries?
What happens underground matters just as much as what gets built above it.
And then, near Salix, Iowa, our conversations turned to the Missouri River.
The comparison being made was to the Colorado River — a once-mighty waterway whose flow has been profoundly altered by decades of drought, dams, diversions, and competing demands. Today, its waters rarely reach the Gulf of California as they once did.
Data centers did not cause that crisis.
But standing along the Missouri, I found myself wondering what would happen if America’s other great rivers experienced a similar transformation.
The Missouri. The Ohio. The Mississippi.
These are not merely waterways. They are the lifeblood of the American heartland. They sustain agriculture, communities, wildlife, drinking-water supplies, and the transportation networks that move our nation’s goods and food.
If those systems experienced anything approaching the Colorado River’s decline, the consequences would extend far beyond the communities along their banks.
America itself would be changed.
I found myself thinking of the haunting, desolate landscapes in the film The Road. Not because I believe that is our inevitable future, but because the image of a depleted, unrecognizable landscape is difficult to shake when contemplating what we stand to lose.
And then Elijah began talking about the walleye.
Walleye.
Not artificial intelligence. Not cloud storage. Not billions in capital investment.
A fish.
His presentation may have illustrated the stakes more clearly than another hour of technical presentations.
For people who know and love a river, the concern isn’t simply how many gallons an individual facility might withdraw. It’s what happens to the entire interconnected ecosystem — the fish, the wildlife, the groundwater, and the families who have depended upon these waters for generations.
The Colorado River’s history does not have to be the Missouri River’s destiny.
It is a reminder that decisions about water accumulate over time, and the consequences may outlive those who made them.
We cannot afford to discover the true value of our great rivers only after they have been fundamentally changed.
The Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska has also raised concerns about development near Salix and the Missouri River corridor.
Tribal lands are approximately three miles from the proposed site. Tribal leaders have publicly discussed potential effects on their water, wildlife, people, and lands.
Three miles may seem like a comfortable distance on a development map.
Water doesn’t recognize those boundaries.
And the concerns go beyond any single project.
In Stokes County, North Carolina, Project Delta encompasses approximately 1,850 acres along the Dan River, in a landscape carrying centuries of Indigenous history.
The area is connected to the ancestral homeland of the Saura people and the history of Upper Saura Town, with cultural significance extending to descendant Indigenous communities.
These places existed long before Europeans arrived.
They are not empty acreage waiting for an industrial purpose.
They hold history, identity, and cultural memory.
When we discuss transforming land like this, we are discussing more than a change in zoning classification.
What the Technical Documents Reveal
My journey has also brought me into a world of information I never expected to be studying quite so closely.
Electric-load forecasts. Transmission capacity. Utility cost allocation. Water-consumption models. Taxable assessed value. Depreciation schedules. Land-use restrictions. Conditional zoning. Financial guarantees.
And, increasingly, the distinction between a proposed data-center campus and the company that will actually use it.
The numbers explain why this is such a consequential national conversation.
According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s June 2026 report, data centers could account for approximately 9.5% to 15.3% of total U.S. electricity consumption by 2030.
That is an extraordinary infrastructure undertaking.
But the more immediate question for a family in rural America is much simpler:
Who pays for it?
Who pays for additional generation and transmission? What happens if the demand forecasts prove wrong? Are ordinary ratepayers protected if a major customer never arrives or eventually leaves?
And what exactly has the developer guaranteed?
One of my most revealing conversations occurred regarding the project in Walnut Cove, North Carolina, where I spent approximately two hours with Drew Nations of Engineered Land Solutions, developer of Project Delta.
Drew presented proposed protections involving noise, water, buffers, generators, and other operating conditions.
I appreciated his willingness to engage. Some of the proposed safeguards were more substantive than I expected.
But our conversation brought me to a question that has stayed with me throughout this journey:
What is a project legally obligated to deliver, and what is merely projected to happen?
Project Delta advertises more than $40 million in annual local tax revenue at full buildout and 250–500 permanent jobs.
Those figures are projections dependent on future development, investment, and operation.
At the time of our conversation, Drew said the anticipated end user was one of three prospective companies, but no final contract had been signed.
And then I discovered a similar issue in Kansas.
Compass Datacenters has proposed a ten-building campus with 400 megawatts of IT capacity near Wakarusa. In its own public project FAQ, Compass acknowledges that it has not identified a customer for that site.
This is not evidence that every data-center project lacks a committed customer. Many facilities under construction are already preleased.
But it exposes an important distinction between developers, landlords, operators, tenants, and the ultimate users of computing capacity.
A community can be asked to approve a project before its final customer has been secured.
Which raises additional questions about operational requirements, financing, and whether promised benefits will materialize.
And if a property changes ownership or tenancy, who remains responsible for the commitments made to its neighbors?
The Deals Made Before the People Know
And then there is the secrecy.
If there is one pattern I’ve encountered repeatedly as we travel, it is the frustration of residents who discover that conversations about their community’s future have been underway long before they were invited into them.
Nondisclosure agreements. Confidential negotiations. Unidentified developers. Project code names. Economic-development discussions that remain out of public view.
By the time residents learn what is being proposed, land may already be under contract, utilities may have been approached, and preliminary agreements may already be in place.
In Lacy Lakeview, a small Texas community near Waco, the story took an extraordinary turn.
In December 2025, the city council voted 6–1 to approve a nonbinding agreement with developer Infrakey concerning a proposed $10 billion data-center development.
Residents packed the council chambers.
The council voted before the public comment period.
The following January, the city manager traveled to Honolulu, Hawaii, to participate in an international technology conference, where city and developer representatives promoted the project and held a signing ceremony for the previously approved agreement.
City officials described the visit as due diligence. Back home, residents were still asking fundamental questions about the proposed development’s effects on their land, water, and community.
That contrast has stayed with me.
The broader secrecy problem is not anecdotal. Investigative reporting in Texas and Indiana has documented nondisclosure agreements involving local governments and data-center developers, sometimes preventing officials from identifying the companies involved or sharing important project information.
There are legitimate commercial reasons to protect proprietary information during negotiations. But the distinction between protecting a trade secret and withholding information relevant to a community’s future is consequential.
And residents are increasingly asking where that line should be drawn.
I have listened to people describe the humiliation of learning about major developments affecting their homes only after significant planning has occurred.
Imagine having to become a private investigator just to learn what may be built next door.
Imagine discovering that officials have been discussing an enormous industrial project while you are still trying to find out who owns the land, who will operate the facility, and how much electricity or
water it will require.
This is why the emotional response goes beyond concerns about noise, water, or property values.
For many residents, it has become a matter of trust.
A corporation may have trade secrets. A community shouldn’t have a secret future.
The Part That Hurts Most
I have encountered people who welcome these developments because they anticipate jobs, tax revenue, and economic opportunities.
I’ve also encountered residents who feel blindsided by decisions affecting the places they love.
In Stokes County, commissioners approved Project Delta’s rezoning on September 14, despite the Planning Board’s earlier recommendation to deny the application.
For residents who opposed the project, that was a painful outcome.
I’ve witnessed similar frustration in other communities, even where the procedures, proposals, and final decisions differ.
Residents attend meetings. They research documents. They organize their neighbors. They ask for explanations.
Sometimes their questions receive substantive answers. Sometimes uncertainty remains.
And sometimes, after all that effort, a decision goes forward that they believe will permanently change their lives.
That is the betrayal so many have described to me.
They trusted that the place where they built their lives would remain recognizable. They trusted that major decisions about their communities would include them.
Now they find themselves confronting projects of a scale they never imagined, backed by companies whose financial resources can dwarf those of entire counties.
And they are tired.
You can see it in their faces.
Some are frightened. Some are angry. Some feel defeated.
But they still show up.
America Has to Win the AI Race. But What Is the Finish Line?
For months now, we have heard that America must win the AI race.
I understand the importance of American technological leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security.
But I keep asking:
A race to what?
What constitutes winning? More computing capacity? Greater productivity? Medical breakthroughs? Artificial general intelligence?
And how will those achievements translate into better lives for ordinary Americans?
The people I have met are not abstract obstacles in a national competition.
They’re Janet and her husband.
They’re Carol and Ben, holding their family’s 1860 land patent.
They’re the homeowners near Alexandria.
They’re Ana, explaining what happens beneath the ground.
They’re the people who know the Missouri River and its walleye.
They’re Indigenous communities whose relationships with the land stretch back centuries.
They are the people who will still be living with these decisions long after today’s press releases have been forgotten.
Residents gather with the Data Center Revolt Bus in Jonesburg, Missouri, against the backdrop of the agricultural landscape. Photo courtesy of Humans First.
What Gives Me Hope
There is one thing I have seen again and again that gives me tremendous hope.
Americans are finding one another.
People who thought they were alone are meeting neighbors confronting similar questions hundreds of miles away.
They’re comparing documents, listening to opposing perspectives, studying utility agreements, and learning how their local governments work.
People who once knew nothing about data centers can now discuss cooling systems, transmission infrastructure, and development agreements in remarkable detail.
They are doing the homework.
And they are showing up.
I’ve watched people arrive at our bus carrying signs, folders, flyers, maps, and stories. Sometimes they just want someone to listen.
And sometimes, I think, they simply need to know they haven’t been forgotten.
That is what I will carry with me long after this tour ends.
Not the megawatts.
Not the billions.
Not the renderings of massive industrial campuses.
I will remember Janet. Carol. Ben. Ana. Elijah. The families. The farmers. The people along the river. And those who walked the land long before there was an America.
I’ll remember the hurt in their voices. I’ll remember the pain in their eyes.
And I’ll remember their courage.
America can win the AI race without making actual Americans lose to it.
Because from what I’ve seen from the bus, the real story is not simply about America’s technological future.
It’s about the Americans who will have to live in it.
And their stories deserve to be heard.
Brooke McGowan is a longtime grassroots activist, former congressional candidate, and former Tea Party News Network staff contributor whose work has spanned Oklahoma, Hawaii, North Carolina, and national movements. She serves as North Carolina State Director for Humans First and travels nationwide with the Data Center Revolt Bus Tour, documenting the human impact of America’s rapidly expanding AI infrastructure.
