LIVE AMERICANS FIGHT AI Data Centers as Trump Builds Up War Machine

Our reporter JT Cestkowski is LIVE from Wisconsin at a torn down GM plant where activists are fighting against a mega AI data center. This continues the rapid spread of data centers nationwide.

Status Coup is ON THE GROUND this week barnstorming three states in five days to cover the WAR AGAINST US: working class people struggling to stay afloat as prices soar and hope dwindles. We need your support to stay ON-THE-GROUND for these kind of reporting trips. Please support us as a paying member for as low as $5 bucks a month.

Status Coup reporter JT Cestkowski is LIVE from Janesville, Wisconsin in front of a torn-down General Motors plant with several activists who are fiercely opposing a massive AI data center set to be constructed in its place (watch livestream above).

Through community organizing that galvanized thousands of residents, these activists have successfully been able to secure a ballot measure for the coming November election aimed at restricting or banning future data centers to be built in Wisconsin (a similar measure just passed in a Milwaukee suburb).

Here’s some background on this torn down GM plant and proposed mega data center:

In 2009, at the peak of the U.S. financial crash, GM closed its Janesville, Wisconsin, plant, cutting thousands of Wisconsinites’ jobs. Seventeen years later, the region is only just now recovering from the economic devastation.

In a real sign of the times, a proposed mega datacenter project would be built on the former GM site. Residents have fought back hard against this effort and secured a partial victory—forcing a ballot measure to restrict other data centers from being built in Wisconsin. This is a continuation of a nationwide trend where big tech companies like Facebook, Microsoft, X, Oracle—and plutocrats like Elon Musk— build up a massive number of data centers that are sucking up local areas' water, polluting their environment, and ultimately expanding an AI revolution meant to gut the jobs of millions of Americans.

This interview is part of our ongoing WAR AGAINST US reporting trip where Status Coup reporter JT Cestkowski, producer Michelle Dao, and videojournalist Jon Farina are barnstorming Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin this week to, unlike corporate and most independent media, do something RADICAL—talk to living, breathing, everyday working class people (see map below).

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