404 Media

2026-09-01 13:49:42

Oklahoma Tells City It Can't Charge $17,125.44 for a Records Request Related to Data Center Arrest

A city in Oklahoma tried to charge a farmer more than $17,000 to fulfill a public records request for information related to a proposed data center and the farmer’s arrest at a city council meeting. Now, in a win for the farmer, the State’s attorney general has stepped in and told the city to drop the fees and “provide access promptly” to the documents.

Farmer Darren Blanchard attended a meeting about Project Mustang — a proposed 225 acre data center in Claremore, Oklahoma — in February and planned to speak in opposition to the project. He left in handcuffs after the city council ordered him arrested for going 30 seconds over his allotted three minute speaking limit.

Claremore charged Blanchard with trespassing, a municipal crime with a $200 penalty. Blanchard pleaded not guilty, hired an attorney, and vowed to fight the charges on free speech grounds. As part of his defense, Blanchard and his lawyers filed a public records request asking the bodycam footage from the arrest and city records related to previous disturbances at public meetings. Claremore told Blanchard and his lawyers that they’d be happy to fulfill his request, but it would cost $17,125.44.

Katie Griffin, one of Blanchard's lawyers, filed a complaint with the Oklahoma Attorney General about the fees and requested someone at the State take a look. Claremore sent its own letter to the AG, outlining why it thought the fees were justified. “The City knows and is aware that any documents released to Mr. Blanchard and to those associated with him, regardless of the privacy implications of individuals named in such documents, are subject to wide distribution, including on social media,” said Claremore’s lawyers in a copy of the letter obtained by 404 Media.
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Claremore’s lawyers also complained that Griffin wouldn’t narrow the focus of her request.“Her persistence in maintaining an overly onerous request demonstrates that this dispute has nothing to do with transparency and likely has everything to do with causing excessive time/money expense to the City in order to generate public sympathy for her client and negative publicity for the City,” Claremore’s lawyers said.

The bulk of the fees Claremore wanted to charge are for a legal review of 2,800 records related to Blanchard’s arrest and Claremore’s relationship with security contractors and Rogers State University where the meeting took place. Claremore said that the legal review “to ensure that all information which must be withheld relating to members of the public and the City’s personnel is redacted in order to protect their privacy” would cost $16,540.44.

Claremore also wanted to charge a fee of $585 for a 15 hour search — roughly what it costs to employ a city clerk for two days. To do otherwise, the city argued, would cause “excessive disruption to its essential functions,” according to a letter Claremore’s lawyers sent to the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office.

Anthony Sykes, an Assistant Attorney General for Oklahoma, didn’t accept Claremore’s argument, according to a copy of his response obtained by 404 Media. Sykes explained that Oklahoma’s laws only allowed the City to charge for “direct costs of record copying, or mechanical reproduction.” A public body can charge fees for records requests, but only for the direct cost of searching and copying. Critically, if it charges fees at all it must disclose them publicly.

“The City has not posted a schedule of fees as required by the Open Records Act. Having failed to give the requisite notice of the fees charged for public access to City records, the City is foreclosed from charging search fees,” Sykes said. “If I were to conclude otherwise, there would be no incentive for public bodies to comply with the statute. They could simply ignore what the ORA requires and charge what they deem reasonable on a case-by-case basis.”

“I also note that the City also failed to explain how 15 hours of staff time would cause ‘excessive disruption’ of its ‘essential functions,’ such that a search fee would be statutorily permissible in the first place,” Sykes added in a footnote. “Similarly, the City has not provided any justification for charging the hourly rate of the City Clerk — as opposed to a less costly member of the Clerk’s staff — to search for the records.”

Claremore also said it had found more than 10 hours of bodycam footage from Blanchard’s arrest but, again, needed time to review it “to ensure all available redactions are made to protect the privacy of the public and City personnel,” Claremore’s lawyers said. “Much of the footage at issue in Ms. Griffin’s request was taken in a very crowded room and features an incalculable number of people. A review of this footage by legal counsel is required in order to determine what, if any, portions should be redacted as required by law.” 404 Media acquired a portion of the bodycam footage from Blanchard’s arrest and published it in June.

Sykes told Claremore to release the footage without a lengthy review and redaction process. “The footage sought here is of a public meeting attended by scores of people,” he said in his response to the City. “No one in attendance had any reasonable expectation of privacy, and the City has not identified any provision of state or federal law that justifies redaction of any portion of the footage [...] the City should be able to provide access promptly.”

Blanchard’s case is one of a number of people who’ve been arrested at public city meetings in the past year. Police arrested a high school teacher in Kansas for clapping during the public comment period of a city meeting about data centers. The city charged them with interfering with law enforcement and later dropped the case. In Texas a man was arrested in his driveway a week after he’d said “bullshit” during a public city meeting.

The City of Claremore, Oklahoma did not return 404 Media’s request for comment.

Bodycam Shows Moment Cops Arrested a Man for Speaking Too Long at Data Center Meeting

We spoke to Darren Blanchard, the man arrested while speaking out against data centers at a community meeting. He's sharing the bodycam footage of his arrest for the first time with 404 Media.

^{Matthew Gault (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-08-07 14:55:33

City That Arrested Person for Clapping at Data Center Meeting Moves to Virtual Meetings for 'Public Safety'

The small town that arrested a person who clapped during a city council meeting about a hyperscale data center held its meeting on Wednesday virtually and had no public comment period in the name of “public safety.” It says it will do the same for another meeting later this month.

The city, Emporia, Kansas, announced the change just two days before the meeting.

“In the interest of public safety, the Emporia City Commission meetings scheduled for Wednesday, August 5, 2026, and Wednesday, August 19, 2026, will be conducted virtually,” Emporia said in a post about the change on Facebook. “No public comment period will be provided during either meeting.” Then it shared the city’s email and phone number for citizens who wanted to voice concerns privately. Emporia’s police chief told KVOE News that city leaders had received death threats.
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“The City remains committed to conducting the public’s business in an open and transparent manner while taking reasonable measures to protect the safety of elected officials, City staff, and members of the public,” the post said. “The City appreciates the public's understanding and cooperation as it implements these temporary measures while ensuring the continuity of City business.”

Citizens upset about the data center and no longer allowed to make a public comment gathered outside Emporia’s municipal auditorium to protest on Wednesday. Lux Claridge, the person arrested for clapping, attended the protest and told 404 Media that both the protest and the virtual city commission meeting went well. “The commissioners voted unanimously to get our petition on the ballot measure to ban high-impact data centers to a judge. They said that doing otherwise could open up the city to a lawsuit but didn't really elaborate on who, why, or how,” they said.

Some citizens in Emporia are upset about a proposed gigawatt data center called the Flint Hills Digital Campus that would sit on 1,000 acres of prairie land. Zoning and city commission meetings have been held about the project, during which citizens have pushed back during the public comment periods of meetings. During a July 22 meeting, a city leader ordered Claridge to be arrested for clapping. Police charged Claridge with disorderly conduct and interference with police.

On Wednesday, the city commission streamed its meeting on the city website. Residents could watch, but not participate. The commission voted 5 - 0 to send the petition to a judge to see if Kansas law would allow that kind of restriction.

“I would like to see it go to the courts, that way it has an outside decision, so that we don't get ourselves entangled in something that could come back later and we'd be sued over,” Emporia mayor Becky Smith said.

“I think if you accept it or decline it, you’re opening yourself up to a legal battle either way so let’s just send it straight to a judge,” commissioner Erren Harter said.

Claridge said the reason the commission meetings had gone virtual and closed public comment was that members of the commission had reported receiving death threats. “This was also happening days leading up to my arrest, but the threats seem to have ramped up. While I don't doubt that there are credible threats, my big question is on how many there are and from where they are coming,” they said. “Mayor Smith did mention in yesterday's meeting that the threats don't seem to really be coming from locals but ‘it only takes one’ to ruin a meeting so they went virtual. I feel like we're being punished for the actions of outsiders.”

“I'm not so upset about going virtual, it makes sense, but back it up with examples of these threats. I'm more upset that they opted to close public comment and I don't understand why,” Claridge added.

The commissioners will meet, virtually, again on August 19 but they have not yet published the agenda on the city’s website. The commission did not return 404 Media’s request for comment.

With ‘credible threats’ aimed at city commissioners and staff, Emporia city meetings Wednesday, Aug 19 to be held virtually

The Emporia City Commission is meeting Wednesday. It will not meet in person. A news release from the city say...

^{Chuck Samples (KVOE)}

404 Media

2026-07-29 17:42:19

“Clapping Is a First Amendment Right:” An Interview With the Person Arrested for Clapping at a Data Center Meeting

Last Wednesday, Lux Claridge planned to speak out against a proposed 1,000 acre data center in their town of Emporia, Kansas. They left in handcuffs after a city commissioner ordered them arrested for clapping.

“It was annoying,” Claridge told 404 Media. “So what happened was I clapped for the previous speaker. She hadn't even gotten back to her seat before I stopped clapping. My wife was on the way up to the podium. The time for my wife's speech hadn't even been reset yet [...] you see the 51 seconds remaining from the previous speaker. So I don't know what I was disrupting exactly, but I was not clapping the entire time.”
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The big topic in Emporia, a town of 20,000 people, is the proposed Flint Hills Digital Campus — a massive data center that would eat up prairie land near Claridge’s home. There’s been several zoning and city commission meetings about the project and Claridge has been there for many of them.

“They’re talking about a gigawatt facility and our local power facility pushes out maybe a gigawatt on a monthly basis, which is something I brought up on my first speech, June 3, I was like, ‘Where are we getting this power from? Because Wolf Creek’s not going to do it,’” they said. Wolf Creek is a local nuclear power plant. “We’re talking millions of homes of power, that’s how much energy we’re talking about here. It’s not thousands, it’s millions.”

Claridge is not opposed to data centers outright, but they do think the current Flint Hills Digital Campus is a terrible idea. They planned to restate their position at the city commission meeting last week where they were arrested. “I was going to basically just call them out on all the potential lies that seem to be surrounding this. It was the week before [...] The news broke that Gary Pinkston, the developer behind this, under sworn testimony in his bankruptcy case, said has no idea what the digital campus project is. He has no interest in it,” Claridge said. “He said the Kanza Park [the LLC behind the project] is his daughter's thing.”

An open letter to the community from Pinkston appeared in both the Emporia Gazette and on the website for the Flint Hills Digital Campus. In the bankruptcy hearing, Pinkston’s creditors asked him if he’d written the letter. “And he said no. And he said he couldn't tell us who did write it. And we're like, ‘Hold on, what's going on?’” Claridge said. “So I had like four points of, you know, kind of catching them in some inconsistencies and asking them about it. You know, who is this Gary guy? Does he work for this or not?”

During the meeting, the commission warned the crowd to stop clapping multiple times, but Claridge walked into the room after the warnings. “We continued to clap, though eventually it started moving to snapping fingers, all beatnik style,” Claridge said. “I did that a little bit too, but in total, I clapped for 13 speeches. I snapped five times, and there were three warnings, a final warning. Then I finally got arrested.”

On the recording you can hear commissioner Monica Duncan tell the police chief to toss out the next person who claps. Claridge had just finished their clapping for a speaker. Their wife was at the podium. “He instead just walks right up to me, tells me to get out, and then, well, you saw what happened. I went to the floor.”

In footage of the meeting published on social media and Emporia’s city commission page, Claridge tells the cops they have a first amendment right to speak. The police ask them to leave and Claridge tells them to “drag me out.”

“I felt like I had a right to be there to voice my concerns,” Claridge said. “I am fully of the notion that clapping is a First Amendment right that I have. I can exercise that as long as I'm not disrupting, and I still argue that I was not disrupting at all. But I basically told them that you know, yeah, I have a right to speak. I'm here to speak. I have a right to clap, and if you want me out, you're going to have to drag me out. And I just stood firm and, well, sat firm and said ‘drag me out’ a couple of times so they knew for sure what I was about.”

They said that the police charged them with disorderly conduct and came back two hours later to add interfering with a law enforcement officer. Emporia PD has refused to share a copy of Claridge’s arrest report with 404 Media, saying it “could interfere with ongoing investigative efforts.”

Claridge said their wife crowdsourced a bail fund from the local community and they were out of jail about eight hours after they’d entered. “They told me my court date was September 10 in the morning,” Claridge said. “Thankfully, while I was in jail, a family friend who's also an attorney texted me and said: ‘Hey, I think you might have some legal trouble coming up in the future. I would be happy to represent you.’ So I do have a lawyer. He seems pretty gung ho about all this, and so I'm really excited to see how this all shakes out in the court.”

The charges haven’t stopped Claridge from talking about the data center — they’ve been commenting on news stories about Emporia and the arrest on social media. “This is a First Amendment thing so you bet your butt I’m going to be speaking out and talking,” they said.

The arrest is a strange twist of fate. Claridge said they’d had a good relationship with the commission before this. “Monica was actually my quote unquote ‘favorite person’ on the commission, as loosely as I can use that word. So I was very shocked when it was her that probably ordered the arrest,” Claridge said.

The city had even invited Claridge and their wife on a fact finding mission to Pryor, Oklahoma in June. Pryor is home to a massive data center campus that hosts clients like Google and DuPont so Emporia and some of its citizens went to learn how Pryor was feeling about it. Claridge filmed portions of the trip and uploaded them to YouTube.

“I was really impressed with what I saw in Pyror, Oklahoma. I saw all the ad valorem taxes go into things like schools and fire department upgrades. Like the town was wonderful down there, and they brag about how they don't take any state or federal money for their school system. It's all paid by the data center, and I think that's brilliant,” Claridge said. “I would love to see something like that if we can make the benefits outweigh the costs. So you know, do your due diligence. Look into what's being done, what's being promised, and if you don't like it, you know you can always petition and restructure your government or recall your government. That's basically what we're working on now. We got three petitions in the works to try to restructure the city commission into more of a city council situation.”

Claridge isn’t against data centers as a rule, they just want to make sure it’s done right. But the oddities around the bankrupt developer, the current plan to use 1,000 acres of prairie land, and the combative attitude of the city commission are problems. Claridge pointed out that there are already large tracts of land zoned industrial with buildings that have been empty for 20 years. “We have all these properties already ready to go, even in an industrial park four where they want to extend this park. But instead, they just want to build brand new buildings on prairie lands and lands that are like really in people's backyards,” they said.

There’s another meeting in August and Claridge said that the arrest won’t stop them from attending. “From my perspective, these are my representatives and they’re beholden to me and my fellow community members and so I’m definitely going to go and try to make my voice heard,” they said.

Claridge also said they plan to give a speech in the near future, but they haven’t worked out the details. “And I've heard that a lot of people are planning on coming and being goofy, you know, or a standing ovation or different gestures or whatever,” they said. “They really just make fun of the commission for being so upset over clapping.”

Pryor Data Center QA with mayor

Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.

^{Lux Claridge (YouTube)}

404 Media

2026-07-29 14:03:50

Data Centers Are Easy to Build. Powering Them Is Complicated, Slow, and Expensive

On Wednesday the power flickered in homes from Washington DC to Chicago. The cause was a data center disconnecting from PJM — a massive power grid that connects 13 states including North Carolina, Virginia, New Jersey, and Michigan, a span that covers 67 million customers. The incident points to a larger problem with the compute warehouses fueling the AI boom: It’s physically and economically impossible to build power infrastructure fast enough to meet the demands of AI data centers and when problems occur, everyone will pay the price.

AI requires massive amounts of computer hardware to scale. That hardware is housed in data centers, and data centers demand shocking amounts of electricity. More data centers mean more demand on the grid which raises the costs of energy for everyone. This is one of the reasons people hate data centers and have begun to fight their construction.

To bypass the issue of grid demand, many data center builders have promised to power the buildings themselves. The problem with that plan is that it’s easy to build a warehouse full of GPUs. Building power plants and transmission lines to power those warehouses will take years and cost billions more than the data centers. A skilled and efficient builder can complete a data center construction in under a year. Building new energy generation to meet that data center's power needs could take a decade.

Take the humble transmission line — the long conductive cable is one of the most fundamental parts of the power grid. It moves energy from one place to another. “There is a lot that goes into planning, siting, designing and building a new transmission line,” Suzanne Glatz, an energy consultant and co-author of a John Hopkins report on the effect of data centers on the power grid, told 404 Media. “Even rebuilding a line can run into issues and cause delays. For all the reasons, planning a new greenfield line [a common type of transmission line] is likely to take 7-8 years from the date it is approved, but it can take 10 years or longer.”

There are a lot of reasons for this. “Every transmission line will have some unique aspects about it, from the geography, the voltage level, the length, the communities it touches (including the viewshed), environmental impacts, the points it interconnects to existing lines and substations, the reason it is needed as well as what are the alternatives,” Glatz said.

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404 MediaMatthew Gault

There are problems with other key pieces of the grid as well. Building out electricity to meet demand requires the construction of new transformers — a device that takes energy from power plants and helps distribute it to people’s homes. The power industry was struggling to build enough transformers to meet demand before the data center boom. It’s gotten worse as data centers have increased demand and tariffs have made them more expensive to build. “Large power transformers can take 1-2 years from order, but have hit longer times and major logistical challenges with delivery. Poles/towers also can long lead items, though not on par with large power transformers,” Glatz said. “All of this is likely compounded by other issues like tariffs.”

In the absence of easy, scalable, electricity solutions, things are getting weird. A company called FTAI wants to use repurposed jet engines to power data centers. The company is already in the business of refurbishing busted engines for commercial jets, but sees powering data centers as a growth market. “The accelerating demand from AI hyperscalers has created an urgent need for immediate power solutions. We believe FTAI Power will be a critical partner for the AI economy, which requires unparalleled amounts of electricity faster and in a more flexible format,” FTAI chief operating officer David Moreno told Construct Connect News.

One of the fast short-term solutions for powering data centers is to bypass the power grid altogether and generate energy on site. That’s what Shark Tank investor Kevin O’Leary wants to do in Box Canyon, Utah. But there are a lot of problems with this too. These self-powered data centers are relying on gas turbines. But those aren’t fast either. “The lead time for new gas turbines have been cited as up to five years in discussions in the PJM area,” Glatz said.

When gas turbines do come online, there are major problems. Elon Musk’s xAI operates an enormous Colossus 2 data center in Tennessee that runs on 59 natural gas turbines. This has allowed the data center to run without taxing the local grid but comes at the cost of pumping pollutants into the air at an astonishing scale.

Most of these turbines are across state lines in Mississippi, are operating without public permits and are destroying the air quality of people who live near them. Some of the gas turbines weren’t disclosed. A lawyer for the Southern Environmental Law Center told Reuters the turbines are a violation of the Clean Air Act. It may not matter. On July 27, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency announced that power plants that exclusively keep data centers online won’t be subject to the Clean Air Act.

O’Leary’s data center would consume nine gigawatts of power, more than double Utah’s current rate of power consumption. The current plan is to pull gas from the nearby Ruby Pipeline to keep the lights on which could raise carbon emissions in the state by 64%. Utah’s governor said that the data center should never fully run on natural gas and that nuclear, solar, and wind must eventually carry the energy load.

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Cisco, IBM, and major lobbying groups are trying to exempt “critical infrastructure” from an existing Colorado law.
404 MediaJason Koebler

Solar and wind face the same transformer and transmission line problems as more traditional forms of power generation. Tech companies are betting big on nuclear power, but time is against them there too. Meta, Amazon, and Google are all working on nuclear-powered solutions to their energy problem. Microsoft wants to bring Three Mile Island back online but the timeline keeps getting pushed back. Many of these tech companies are betting on some kind of technological breakthrough that will make nuclear power safer, faster, and more scalable. It hasn’t happened yet and startups working on solutions like small modular reactors have been saying they’re five years away from a breakthrough for the past decade. Nuclear power is hard and the cost of a mistake is catastrophic. Tech companies are even attempting to use AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants but it remains to be seen if that’s safe or effective.

The energy infrastructure stopgap hasn’t stopped tech companies and speculators from building data centers. Every new computing warehouse drives up the demand for electricity, which spikes costs for people that live nearby. Officials in Henrico County, Virginia, which has 37 data centers, recently told government employees that the electricity bill for government and school facilities will increase by 25% and asked public servants and teachers to help them keep costs down.

Glatz said things could get worse. “In the coming years, PJM is showing a shortfall that could lead to outages for customers. One solution that we have advocated for is that data centers that connect but do not arrange for new generation, will be subject to curtailment first before other customers,” she said. “That likely means that data centers will power their operations with less efficient emergency backup generation, if that is the case. Either way, based on the load growth projections and the supply commitments, there is a thinning margin of reserve supply which will increase the risk of not enough generation in coming years, the risk being highest on the more extreme days when demand is highest.” In the U.S. and around the world, those extreme days are becoming more frequent and dangerous.

Power Companies Are Using AI To Build Nuclear Power Plants

Tech companies are betting big on nuclear energy to meet AIs massive power demands and they're using that AI to speed up the construction of new nuclear power plants.

^{Matthew Gault (404 Media)}

404 Media

2026-07-27 22:56:07

Person Opposing Data Center Arrested for Clapping at City Meeting

Police arrested a high school physics teacher for clapping during a city council meeting last Wednesday. Teacher Lux Claridge went to a meeting of the Emporia, Kansas City Commission on July 22 with their spouse and brother. All three were there to speak out against a proposed hyperscale data center that would sit on 1,000 acres of rural land in Emporia. They left the meeting in handcuffs, dragged out by police on the orders of a city commissioner.

Emporia PD denied 404 Media’s request for a copy of Claridge’s arrest report. “The requested record is part of an active criminal investigation. As such, it is considered a criminal investigative record,” Emporia PD told 404 Media. “At this time, the Emporia Police Department is denying your request, as disclosure of the requested report could interfere with ongoing investigative efforts. Therefore, the record will not be released.” 404 Media has formally appealed this decision.
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The Emporia City Council met on July 22 and planned to vote on zoning ordinances that would pave the way for the massive Flint Hills Digital Campus data center. Dozens of people from Emporia showed up to speak out against the project. The meeting went on almost five hours — much of it over community concerns about the data center. The small room where the council met could only fit around 30 people. Others waited to speak in a hallway outside or in two nearby overflow rooms.

The overwhelming majority of Emporia’s residents did not want it. There was a strict two minute time limit on public comments and the commissioners repeatedly warned people in the room not to clap or make noise. Attendees clapped anyway, though usually quickly and politely. Again, there were not many people in the room and it was not a rowdy meeting.

But the clapping upset the commissioners. “It was very clear at the beginning that everyone was given their two minutes and we’re trying to be respectful of that. Snapping, clapping, rude comments or anything, and we’ll ask you to leave. You’ve been finally warned and we’re done,” city commissioner Monica Duncan said about 50 minutes into the meeting.

Claridge clapped a few minutes later as a speaker finished and their spouse—Jessica Danford—took the podium.

“Chief, will you take the next person out who claps or anything? Please.” Duncan said. “Sorry, I’m done.”

Emporia’s police chief approached Claridge and asked them to leave. “I have a right to speak,” they said.

“Come on,” the police said.

“Drag me out,” Claridge said. “Drag me out.”Then the police physically raised Claridge up, handcuffed them, and dragged them out. They were later charged with disorderly conduct and interference with police.

Danford panicked as she watched police arrest Claridge. “Take a breath,” Emporia mayor Becky Smith said.“That’s my spouse down there,” Danford said.

“I know. I know. Take a breath,” Smith said.“Please don’t hurt them,” Danford said.

“Let him stay!” People begin to shout in the room.“They can all leave,” commissioner Duncan said, pointing her finger at the room. Then the commissioners shut down the camera feed for the meeting. It resumed about 10 minutes later. Danford was back at the podium and delivered her prepared remarks speaking out against the data center.

A few minutes later, Claridge’s brother David — who is running for state representative — took the podium. “I really look forward to making life hard for you when I get to the statehouse,” he said. “Because you removed my older sibling against their constitutional first amendment rights. This is ridiculous. I have never seen politicians so abundantly terrible at their PR. It is insane. You had someone from the opposition removed for clapping because they enjoyed a speech another member made.”

David told 404 Media that they were angry when police removed his brother. “I was enraged and had to consistently remind myself that a felony battery charge would disqualify me from office,” David told 404 Media. “I don't understand how the commission could think it was a good idea when they are already being so heavily scrutinized. I'm running for office obviously, and I cannot imagine how they thought this political theater would paint them as anything other than a mustache twirling fascist.”

At the end of the evening the commissioners voted 5 - 0 to approve the data center zoning measure.

Emporia, Kansas is like many other towns and cities that are fighting against data centers. It’s small, with a population of around 20,000, and the details around the data center development are shrouded in mystery. The Flint Hills Digital Campus is supposedly the brainchild of developer Gary Pinkston. He penned an op-ed published in the local paper the Emporia Gazette about the importance of the data center for the future of the area. The op-ed was also posted on the website for the Flint HIlls Digital Campus.

Pinkston has also recently declared federal bankruptcy and in public testimony revealed by related to that, he told his creditors that he wasn't involved with the Flint Hills Digital Campus at all. It was, he said, his daughter’s project. “I did not write this,” Pinkston told his creditors when questioned about the op-ed. The Flint HIlls Digital Campus website is now offline. The Emporia Gazette published recordings from Pinkston’s bankruptcy hearing on July 20, two days before an Emporia City Commission meeting where police arrested Claridge.

The police posted a comment about the incident on Facebook. “During the course of the meeting, several individuals in attendance were issued verbal warnings by the City Commission regarding disruptive conduct that was interrupting the proceedings,” the Emporia Police Department said in a statement on Facebook. “One individual, Lux Claridge [...] continued this behavior and was directed to leave the meeting. Claridge did not comply with law enforcement's efforts to remove [them] from the premises, requiring officers to physically carry [them] out of the meeting.”

According to Emporia PD, Claridge was booked at the Lyon County Jail on charges of interference with law enforcement and disorderly conduct. “The Emporia Police Department remains committed to ensuring public meetings are conducted safely and in an orderly manner, while also respecting the rights of all citizens to participate in the civic process,” it said in its Facebook statement.

Emporia Police Department

On July 22, 2026, the Emporia City Commission held its regularly scheduled meeting. During the course of the meeting, several individuals in attendance were issued verbal warnings by the City...

^{www.facebook.com}

404 Media

2026-04-07 13:56:41

Data Center Tech Lobbyists Fearmonger in Attempt to Retroactively Roll Back Right to Repair Law

Lobbyists for major tech firms like Cisco and IBM are trying to push through legislation in Colorado that would drastically roll back a groundbreaking right to repair law under the guise of protecting national security and data centers.

The legislation, which passed through a Colorado state senate committee on Thursday, would exempt hardware from the existing right to repair law if that hardware “is considered critical infrastructure.” One of the issues with this is that “critical infrastructure” is very broadly defined, and could include essentially anything. In practice, the law could essentially repeal huge parts of one of the most important right to repair laws in the United States.

“It relies on a broad, vague definition that allows the manufacturer themselves to self-designate whether their equipment is for critical infrastructure,” Louis Rossmann, a right to repair expert and popular YouTuber, testified at a hearing on the bill Thursday. “So if a laptop manufacturer knows the Pentagon buys their laptops, they can declare that line exempt. If a networking company sells a $20 switch to a federal building, they can claim that hardware is critical infrastructure. It’s a blank check for manufacturers to exempt themselves.”

Ever since consumer rights advocates began pushing for right to repair legislation roughly a decade ago, hardware manufacturers have been fear mongering to lawmakers by telling them that right to repair would introduce security threats by requiring them to reveal proprietary information about their products. In practice, the exact opposite has happened, because greater access to repair parts, tools, diagnostic software, and repair guides means that broken equipment that could potentially be more vulnerable to hacking attempts can be fixed more quickly.

“When we talk about critical infrastructure and fixing things, we often do not have time to wait for an official fix from a company that may not be motivated to fix things,” Andrew Brandt, a security researcher and cofounder of the nonprofit Elect More Hackers, testified Thursday. “What ends up happening is that with smaller companies, where they may have spent most of their budget buying some firewall or router that they can no longer afford, they end up in a situation where they’re just going to keep running that device in an unsafe state and leave themselves vulnerable to cyber attack.”

The groups pushing for this legislative rollback appear to be legacy enterprise hardware manufacturers, who highlighted during the hearing the fact that their technology is increasingly being used in data centers, which seem to be one of the only things the current American economy seems capable of building. Lobbyists for the Consumer Technology Association, which represents many large manufacturers, testified in support of the bill, as did Joseph Lee, who works for Cisco.

“While Cisco appreciates the arguments offered in favor of right to repair devices, not all digital technology devices are equal. A router used in a home is fundamentally different from the infrastructure equipment used to manage a power grid or secure confidential state agency data,” Lee said.

Chris Bresee, a lobbyist with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association, also highlighted the fact that, broadly, there is IT equipment that will need repairs at data centers.

“A growing number of products in data centers with connection to our electric grid as well. It is of the utmost importance to safeguard these critical systems,” he said. “This is not an argument against repair or against consumers rights, it is a recognition that fixing a smartphone is not the same as modifying systems that keep the lights on for our country.”

The argument being made by these lobbyists and major tech companies is that only the manufacturers or their authorized representatives should be allowed to fix these types of electronics. But, again, the definition of “critical infrastructure” is so broad that it can be applied to almost any type of electronic, and there is nothing fundamentally different between a router used at a data center and a router used in a school, business, or home.

“You look at who is backing this bill, it is large firms like Cisco and IBM. They sell information technology equipment to tens of thousands of Colorado businesses, and they are looking to create a de facto monopoly on that service, which exists in the states that have denied this business to business right to repair,” Paul Roberts, a cybersecurity expert and founder of SecuRepairs testified. “The big tech companies backing the bill are using a very real concern about cybersecurity and resilience of US critical infrastructure to pad their bottom line, locking in a monopoly on service and repair. Cyber attacks on US critical infrastructure are rampant and have nothing to do with information covered by Colorado’s right to repair law.”