Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside a state office to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Jacob Weinreich and his mother Sharon Metcalf protest the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)A data center built by the Markley Group is seen over a ballpark and residential neighborhood in Lowell, Mass., June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien, File)Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside the New Mexico Environment Department to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside a state office to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Protesters gather outside a state office to voice opposition to the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Jacob Weinreich and his mother Sharon Metcalf protest the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)Jacob Weinreich and his mother Sharon Metcalf protest the Project Jupiter data center during a demonstration in Santa Fe, N.M., Friday, Aug. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan)A data center built by the Markley Group is seen over a ballpark and residential neighborhood in Lowell, Mass., June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien, File)A data center built by the Markley Group is seen over a ballpark and residential neighborhood in Lowell, Mass., June 30, 2026. (AP Photo/Matt O’Brien, File)MURDOCK, Neb. (AP) — In rural eastern Nebraska, a technology revolution could rise from fields of corn and soybean in the form of new data centers to power the artificial intelligence boom.But just like around many parts of the country, opposition has been building in ways that defy typical partisan boundaries. Conservative farmers and the state Sierra Club chapter recently found common cause against labor leaders as they filled the firehouse in Murdock — population around 275 — to share concerns about data center development moving too quickly.The scene exemplified an unlikely coalition that worries about dwindling farmland, declining water supplies and rising electricity bills — not to mention how massive corporations could reshape small town America into nodes in a national network of computing warehouses.The debate around data center projects is one of the rare modern issues to cut across party lines, demographics and geography — from Republican-dominated Nebraska, Texas and Wyoming to swing-state Pennsylvania to Democratic-leaning New Mexico.Supporters of data centers, including Republican President Donald Trump and some union leaders who usually back Democrats, praise a potential jobs and economic bonanza, while helping the U.S. thwart China in the geopolitical race for technological supremacy.But hostility toward developments coming at breakneck speed has surged ahead of November’s midterm elections, and forced national, state and local elected officials to adapt to a shifting political landscape.Judy Stroy, a fifth-generation Nebraska farmer whose late husband grew corn and soybeans and whose son still does, worried that with “the amount of ground that’s getting gobbled up every year, our food source is in trouble.”Stroy’s fields are just outside Murdock, a village named for a railroad official at the company that first laid tracks here in the 1890s. There’s a school, a post office, a bar and a Corn Grower’s State Bank branch, plus the Midwest Farmer’s Coop where growers sell their produce and buy supplies like feed and fertilizer.This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
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