Invalidation
Week of February 13-19, 2026
Welcome to TRACKING THE CRISIS, a weekly round-up from The Democracy Collaborative tracking the administrative, legislative, and other actions of the Trump Administration as well as the many forms of legal and movement response from across a broad range of social, political, and economic actors. TDC is providing this service for collective informational purposes, as a tool for understanding the times during a period of disorientingly rapid flux and change in the U.S. political economy. This round-up is produced by humans, not by Artificial Intelligence. TDC should not be understood as endorsing or otherwise any of the specific content of the information round-up.
TRUMP TRACKER: Administration actions
Supreme Court rules Trump’s tariffs illegal. In a rare ‘rebuke’ to Trump’s agenda, the United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday, February 20 that Trump acted illegally when he unilaterally imposed sweeping tariffs on countries across the globe nearly 10 months ago on ‘Liberation Day’ in April 2025. The court ruled that Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) – which does give significant economic powers to the executive branch but, as the Court noted, does not specifically mention “tariffs” – was unconstitutional. In writing the Court’s majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts asserted that the power to tax must remain under control of Congress, and that given the “breadth, history, and constitutional context” of Trump’s asserted authority to “unilaterally impose tariffs of unlimited amount, duration, and scope,” he must “identify clear congressional authorization to impose it.” Furthermore, the justices in the majority had strong words for Trump’s use of ‘emergencies’ to assume a broad swath of unilateral powers, warning Trump that he cannot use emergency powers as a sort of ‘cheat code’ to evade Constitutional checks and balances. As Roberts wrote: “Emergency powers,’ after all, ‘tend to kindle emergencies’... And as the Framers understood, emergencies can ‘afford a ready pretext for usurpation’ of congressional power.” Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch concurred in even stronger terms, warning that the Administration’s interpretation of IEEPA would enable a “one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch.” The decision strikes a major blow to one of the cornerstones of the Trump Administration’s policy agenda, which aspired to not only use tariffs as a geopolitical instrument but also to offset major tax cuts for the wealthy in the current federal budget.
Reactions were swift across Washington and the country on Friday morning as the news carried major implications for producers, consumers, and trade partners across the world. Sources say that Trump, who had been meeting with state governors at the White House at the time he received the news, reportedly called the decision a “disgrace” and abruptly ended the meeting to address the situation. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence praised the decision, calling it a “win for the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution of the United States.” Democratic Senator Tim Kaine, who submitted an amicus brief for the case, also celebrated the decision to strike down Trump’s tariff policies that he described as “illegal, dumb and harmful to millions of Americans,” and followed up by calling on Congress to “step up and do the same on tariffs, war powers, and many other issues.” Several Republican lawmakers also welcomed the decision, including Sen. Susan Collins, who said the decision reflected her “belief that these tariffs often harm Maine’s economy and consumers.” Several questions remain unanswered, including the question of who, if anyone, may qualify for tariff refunds. Several companies had reportedly already been lobbying the Court and preparing lawsuits to recoup some of the costs borne over the past year in anticipation of a decision; and Governor Gavin Newsom called on Trump to “cough up” refund checks to millions of struggling U.S. households. The three dissenting justices – Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh – did so on the presumption that reversing the tariffs could unleash “chaos” over refunds. The federal government has collected over $175 billion in tariff revenue since April of last year, and ending this anticipated source of revenue may have immediate, “very consequential” impacts on the federal budget going forward.
Trump called an impromptu press conference at the White House early Friday afternoon to share his reaction, in which he said he was “deeply disappointed” and “ashamed in certain Supreme Court justices,” whom he called “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution.” He claimed the decision of the majority, whom he called “fools and lapdogs,” may have been “swayed by foreign interests,” including various unnamed “slimeballs and sleazeballs,” “RINOs” (Republicans In Name Only), and “a political movement that is far smaller than anyone would think.” He repeatedly bemoaned the fact that though he claimed the Court would allow him to “destroy any country,” even claiming “I can do anything I want,” but they would not “let me charge them one dollar” under IEEPA; he lamented the ruling even though he had exercised restraint on the Court during their deliberations, saying “I wanted to be a good boy.” He credited the tariffs for “solving 5 of the 8 wars I’ve ended” and reaffirmed his commitment to them, saying he could “use many other authorities” to reimpose tariffs that the Court had “incorrectly rejected,” by which he claimed the United States “could make even more money.” He then announced he would be imposing a new 10% “global tariff” under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, on top of already-existing duties that remained in place. Observers noted that Section 122 places a 150-day limit on tariffs under that authority, after which an extension requires authorization by Congress. When asked directly about the statute, he shrugged it off, saying “We have a right to do pretty much what we want to do.” He also said he would use Section 301 of the Act to open investigations into “unfair trade practices,” out of which he would form a justification to impose more tariffs. Near the conclusion of his remarks, he said “I have the right to do tariffs, and I’ve always had the right to do tariffs.” CNN reports that after dismissing the press, he continued his meeting with state governors, where he apparently repeatedly cursed “these f**king courts” and said he had to “do something” about them. The new 10% tariff is set to go into effect at midnight on February 24.
Re-ordering the world: New plans, honey traps and competing U.S. visions at the Munich Security Conference. This weekend, leaders gathered in Munich one year after JD Vance delivered a bombshell speech that began to unravel the longstanding transatlantic alliance between the United States and Western Europe and exposed fissures in the “rules-based” global order that had been hegemonic for 80 years. Attending the conference were dueling U.S. delegations representing two relatively divergent visions of the United States’ geopolitical role in the alliance: the “official” State Department delegation headed by Marco Rubio, and several Democratic lawmakers whose planned visit had been canceled by Speaker Johnson due to the DHS shutdown, but traveled on their own to attend the summit anyway in order to represent an “alternative” to Trump’s belligerent foreign policy (and, as some speculated, to stake out potential bids for the 2028 presidential nomination). At the outset, European leaders were of divided opinion on the degree of the rift’s severity, but agreed on one point: the era of reliance on the United States for their security was over, and the continent must urgently forge its own path in the new, emerging world order. Conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger, taking a cue from Macron in Davos as he donned sunglasses, introduced the conference’s annual report, titled “Under Destruction,” which framed the grim uncertainty of the moment as he said a “wrecking-ball” – leaving no doubt it was a reference to Trump – is smashing “what would normally be part of a stable international order.” Delivering the keynote, German Chancellor Merz declared that the world order of the last 80 years “no longer exists” and warned fellow EU leaders that “freedom is no longer a given”; likening Europe to having “just returned from a vacation from history” as the continent re-enters conditions akin to the era of high imperialist rivalries and “big power politics.” In provocative comments directly aimed at Trump, he insisted that “the culture war of the MAGA movement is not ours” and opined that in this new age of superpowers, the United States has perhaps reached the limits of its capacity as a global leader and may be “not powerful enough to go it alone.”
The tensions that characterized U.S.-European relations over the past year made themselves evident early on at a panel with U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who said the biggest problem was a “lack of accountability” for violating the rules-based order, saying “no country is above the law” and pushing for true multilateralism. Rejecting the criticism, Waltz’s effusive statements crediting Trump for “bringing the world back from the brink” drew a skeptical side-eyed reaction from Kallas that went viral in Europe. He also gifted the panel a hat featuring the slogan “Make the UN Great Again,” which was met with awkward silence from panelists who were well aware of Trump’s withdrawal from over 60 UN treaties, conventions, and organizations one month ago, and his statements this week announcing the formation of a $2 billion MAHA-run “alternative” to the World Health Organization. Other U.S. speakers on the first day concentrated on reassuring Europeans that the alliance may be down but not out, including Governor Newsom, who said Trump “will be out in three years” as he reasserted California’s commitment to advancing climate cooperation. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in her debut appearance at the Munich conference, stressed the class dynamics that underpinned the rise of populism amid the pressures of austerity, and the need for a “working-class centered politics” to reduce inequality. She also condemned the “hypocrises” of U.S. foreign policy, and drew applause as she pointed out that “in a rules-based order… hypocrises are vulnerabilities and they threaten democracies.” She then stumbled on a question regarding Taiwan, a moment reflecting her inexperience in foreign affairs that was quickly exploited by JD Vance and right-wing media. Later in the evening, Macron took swipes at Trump while Zelenskyy had strong words for Putin as he called for more international pressure to force Russia into a ceasefire.
It was Marco Rubio’s address to the conference the next day, however, that became the talk of the conference, a type of ‘political Rorschach test’ in which the “sheer relief of hearing something other than abuse” was apparently impressive enough to garner a standing ovation from the audience, which Chancellor Merz found disturbing. Only later did Europeans apprehend the full implications of Rubio’s neocolonial vision for a “new Western century,” which divided the commentariat and, for some like Kallas, clarified the urgent need to “reclaim European agency.” In contrast to Vance’s aggression at the MSC last year, Rubio adopted a warm, conciliatory tone, calmly explaining how the postwar triumph caused past governments to fall into the “dangerous delusion of the end of history” where the ‘fantasy’ of a “rules-based global order” of liberal democracies “would now replace the national interest” and humanity could “now live in a world without borders, where everyone became a citizen of the world.” Calling it a “foolish idea that ignored human nature” and “over 5000 years of recorded human history,” Rubio said Trump’s goal “was not to separate” from NATO or the EU, but “to rekindle an old friendship” around the common goal of protecting “Western civilization.” Saying the United States will “always be a child of Europe,” Rubio said the Trump Administration’s true desire was to refound the alliance not on the rule of law, but based on the “centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture” and “heritage” that made the United States and Europe “heirs to the same great and noble civilization.” Warning that this civilization has been threatened for decades with “erasure” through migration, “anti-colonial uprisings” and what he called a “malaise of hopelessness and complacency” in the European political class, Rubio said the United States has “no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.” Speaking nostalgically of the “great western empires,” he concluded that the United States “does not need weak allies” and was “prepared to go it alone” in their quest to “reinvigorate” the West’s power; but Western countries “belong together” and he would prefer that the U.S. work alongside “cherished allies and oldest friends” to fulfill their “intertwined destinies.”
By the next day – especially after Rubio snubbed Zelenskyy to embrace far-right Turkish president Victor Orban – some of those who had stood and applauded his speech seemingly realized, like Merz, that Rubio’s soothing words of friendship were just “friendlier packaging” of the white nationalist vision espoused by Vance, as well as the veiled threats laid down by Trump. European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen pushed hard for an independent Europe and a mutual defense clause, Kallas hit back that “woke, decadent Europe” is “not facing civilizational erasure,” pointing to the bilateral partnerships the EU has made around the world, and Le Monde had strong words for Washington in an editorial published Monday, in which they asserted that “while the U.S. administration paints an apocalyptic picture of a European Union that is the graveyard of ambition, identity and liberty, the EU can in return point to Washington's climate denialism, its abandonment of science, its plutocratic drift and authoritarian tendencies.” ‘Western civilization’, they concluded, “no longer has the same definition on either side of the Atlantic, and Europeans have absolutely no reason to relinquish their own,”
Trump inaugurates new Board of Peace by threatening war on Iran, escalates military presence in the Middle East to largest since the Iraq war as nuclear talks continue. Negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program continue as the Trump Administration continues to inch toward war. Trump described building up an “armada” on the waters surrounding Iran last Tuesday, the largest concentration of military assets in the Middle East since the first Iraq War. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has insisted that his nation was “not seeking nuclear weapons... and are ready for any kind of verification,” and is willing to permanently give up pursuing the development of a nuclear weapon in exchange for a lifting of sanctions. Because Iran also uses nuclear power to generate electricity for civilian functions, officials say it cannot give up all enrichment as Netanyahu has demanded, and asserted that the United States has not yet asked them to do so, but they are willing to dilute the existing stockpile to well below weapons grade as a compromise. As of Tuesday, February 17, Iranian officials meeting with U.S. negotiators in Geneva said they have arrived at a ‘set of guiding principles’, indicating some progress, though U.S. officials continued to caution that ‘there are a lot of details to discuss.’ A second aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, is expected to arrive in the area as soon as this weekend, heightening the chance of a strike in the next few days as Trump mulls his options, including the possibility of a ‘limited strike’ targeting key military facilities, similar to those used during the Twelve-Day War last summer, in order to force Iran into making a deal. As mass protests resumed in Iran after marking the end of the 40-day mourning period for thousands of people killed during bloody crackdowns on a protest wave at the beginning of January, Trump held a briefing with top officials on Wednesday night, including Marco Rubio and Mideast envoys Witkoff and Kushner, to weigh next steps.
Officials say Iran has until the end of the month to come up with a ‘package of steps’ that would address U.S. security concerns over the nuclear program; on Thursday, Trump said that Iran has a “maximum” of 10-15 days to reach an agreement before he may decide negotiations have come to an end; Vance has indicated military action “remains an option” at any time. In an exclusive interview on ‘Morning Joe,’ Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran can offer evidence to prove they are only using nuclear power for peaceful purposes, while sending a direct message to Trump warning that just as they are ‘prepared to negotiate,’ they are also ‘prepared for war,’ and will “reciprocate in kind” whether Trump chooses to use the “language of peace” or the “language of war.” As Iranian warships ran joint naval exercises with Russian and Chinese military forces in the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil normally passes, Ayatollah Khamenei issued a threat on Tuesday saying that Iran has the capability to strike the “strongest military force so hard that it cannot get up again.” In response to news of a second carrier group arriving soon into the area, Khamenei said “a warship is a dangerous piece of military hardware. However, more dangerous than that warship is the weapon that can send that warship to the bottom of the sea.” Trump was informed by military officials that initiating armed conflict with Iran would likely become a massive, weeks-long operation that would be more like a full-fledged war than the ‘targeted’ operation utilized to abduct Venezuelan president Maduro last month, and trigger critical disruptions to global oil supplies that could upend the already fragile U.S. economy. The Nation examines the ‘sprawling ecosystem’ of moneyed interests inside the United States that has long been pushing for a war of regime change in Iran, including Reza Pahlavi, son of the deposed Shah; AIPAC and their associated front groups; ‘experts’ at neocon think tanks; and various dark-money fueled social media disinformation and influencer networks run by Israeli intelligence in collusion with Pahlavi.
On Thursday, February 19, Trump officially kicked off the inaugural meeting of his new Board of Peace with a golden gavel and a threat of war against Iran, saying they must “make a meaningful deal, otherwise… bad things will happen.” The organization, which was formed by Trump as part of the 20-point ‘ceasefire’ deal between Israel and Gaza, was launched with much wider ambitions than the UN-approved duties entailed in its original mandate to oversee Gaza reconstruction; CNN recently obtained a copy of its official charter, in which its mission statement describes the Board of Peace as an “international organization” promoting stability, peace and governance “in areas affected or threatened by conflict.” Of the dozens of countries initially invited to join the organization – which carries a $1 billion membership fee for a permanent seat – less than 20 world leaders have officially joined, including a handful of Middle Eastern monarchies, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, known as ‘Europe’s last dictator,’ FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who is notably not a political leader of a country, and Bibi Netanyahu, who has pledged to send a proxy as he is currently wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. An ‘Executive Board’, including Marco Rubio, Witkoff and Kushner, and Tony Blair, provides oversight, with Trump as the Board’s self-appointed lifetime president. No one representing Palestine or Gaza has been invited to join.
Although some European countries sent observers to Thursday’s initial public meeting, none of the U.S.’s G7 colleagues nor the Vatican have accepted the invitation to join the Board of Peace, citing various reasons from the inclusion of Putin and Lukashenko to concerns that the organization may seek to supplant the UN itself. Trump mentioned in his inaugural speech that the Board of Peace will be “looking over the UN” to “make sure it is working properly.” In regards to its Gaza reconstruction mission, Trump announced that nine countries have pledged $7 billion for the effort – about 1/10th of the amount human rights groups have calculated will be needed for rebuilding and relief – and Trump announced the United States will pledge $10 billion to the project, a large chunk of federal funds that would have to be approved by Congress. FIFA pledged $75 million for sports infrastructure; Trump thanked Infantino for the FIFA ‘peace prize’ he was awarded last month, and muttered about how he was “screwed by Norway.” Five countries will send troops for an international peacekeeping force, and Egypt and Jordan will train “trustworthy” Palestinians for a new police force. Trump also touted the ‘end to the war’ in Gaza, although in the two months since it was announced, Israeli forces have repeatedly violated the ceasefire, killing at least 611 Palestinians since agreeing to the ceasefire in October. Trump described Gaza as a “beautiful piece of property” while Jared Kushner showed an AI-generated promotional video unveiling development plans to rebuild the Gaza Strip as a “coastal destination,” and Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo Global Management, spoke about the “tremendous” investment potential in the new venture, estimated conservatively as north of $50 billion.
Also in the News This Week
Trump Administration expands ICE authority to detain refugees. The Department of Homeland Security submitted a recent memo in court this week detailing a new policy granting ICE officers broader authority to detain legal refugees with pending green card applications, dictating that they will need to be returned to government custody for “inspection and examination” one year after their entry into the United States. U.S. immigration law requires refugees and asylum seekers to apply for permanent residency one year after entry (and not before), and the new memo authorizes immigration officials to keep refugees detained for the duration of the application review process. The new policy uproots decades of protections for resettled refugees and puts tens of thousands of refugees admitted under the Biden administration at risk of being abducted by ICE at routine appointments and check-ins. Legal experts and immigration advocates condemned the policy for putting potentially hundreds of thousands of people in a ‘deportation trap’ and legal black hole; one group stated “you cannot invite people here under one set of rules and move the goalposts after they arrive.”
Epstein files fallout: Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the disgraced pedophile formerly known as “Prince Andrew,” was arrested this week at a royal residence in Aylsham, England; the first senior British royal to be held in custody since the Glorious Revolution of 1688. He was held for several hours in custody on suspicion of misconduct of public office as police questioned him and searched his home. Authorities are scrutinizing his time as UK trade envoy, during which his alleged encounters with teenaged girls trafficked by Epstein, including then-17-year-old Virginia Giuffre, would have occurred, as well as other dodgy deals that raised eyebrows at the time. Mountbatten-Windsor has been one of the figures at the center of the Epstein scandal whose fallout is now roiling the globe, as dozens of politicians and business leaders have been arrested or forced out of their positions due to ties revealed in the Epstein files. The British government is considering removing Andrew from the royal line of succession (he is 8th in line for the throne), a move that Buckingham Palace has indicated they would not oppose. The number of people being held to account in Europe for their ties to Epstein has made the U.S. Justice Department’s lack of similar efforts for U.S.-based figures with close ties to Epstein look conspicuous by their absence. The House Oversight Committee deposed Epstein-tied billionaire Les Wexner for five hours at his home in Columbus, Ohio; Wexner denied any knowledge of the sex-trafficking ring Epstein largely ran with his money, and claimed he was ‘conned’ by the deceased pedophile. During the deposition, Wexner’s lawyer was heard whispering in his ear, “I’ll f**king kill you if you say more than five words.”
‘Canary in the Coal Mine’: Blue Owl private credit fund tumbles, sending shockwaves through the market. Private equity firm Blue Owl Capital Inc. triggered a panic in private credit markets this week after it decided to restrict withdrawals from retail investors and liquidated around $1.4 billion worth of assets to pay down debt and fulfill existing withdrawals. Blue Owl, which holds a significant amount of business loan debt for the tech industry, was foremost among the private credit firms highly exposed to the software stock crash three weeks ago when Anthropic released AI products that could supplant most of the industry. Blue Owl was also highly exposed due to its leveraged holdings in shadow banking instruments such as asset-based derivatives and credit default swaps; having lost half of its stock value over the last 2 weeks and dragging down the value of similar funds, it is increasingly being seen as a harbinger of the collapse of the private credit bubble and danger of a broader financial crisis on the scale of 2008 or greater. Sen. Elizabeth Warren decried the changes to CFPB and other federal agencies that gutted post-2008 financial protections and regulations during Trump’s second term – which included an August executive order allowing managers of formerly protected funds like 401ks and pensions to invest in risky assets like private credit and crypto – and called for an “increase in bank capital requirements for private credit exposures, greater data disclosure from the funds and a stress test for the market.” In a statement Thursday, she said federal watchdogs in the Trump Administration “need to wake up. Stop pushing these risky investments into Americans’ retirement accounts.”
MOVEMENT TRACKER
More cities fight back against ICE warehouse purchasing for detention centers, finding unlikely allies in real estate developers, mayors, and NIMBYs. Warehouse owners and the real estate industry are increasingly joining in the fight against ICE’s $38 billion plan to acquire warehouses across the country for use as migrant detention camps, and as emerging reports of horrific abuse, unsanitary conditions and disease outbreaks in existing detention centers add fuel to the fire. In Chester, NY, ICE was forced this week to retract a prior statement saying they had recently acquired a former Pep Boys store for use as a detention facility after weeks of sustained protests and a bipartisan letter signed by more than 50 local elected officials saying they did not want ICE in their community. ICE initially denied having purchased the building, then said the statement was sent out by mistake, then finally admitted its retraction and abandoned the effort. The town’s bipartisan unity in kicking out the center has drawn attention and praise across the country; a local member of the Hudson River Brigade noted how “it’s no longer a case of right vs left… it’s a case of right and wrong.” In Kansas City, Platform Ventures, a developer and owner of a South Kansas City warehouse, announced they are no longer moving forward with sale of the warehouse to any government agency after federal officials were seen touring the facility and sparked local outcry. Last weekend an unidentified woman was seen trying to set fire to the warehouse; no arrests were made. The Kansas City Council subsequently passed a five-year moratorium on “non-municipal detention facilities,” and pledged to “use all available legal tools” to enforce it.
In Leavenworth, Kansas, local protestors have piled on the public pressure after months of back-and-forth between city officials and CoreCivic, a private prison contractor who operates ICE facilities. Immigrant rights groups and low-wage worker associations were joined by clergy and even former Trump supporters Tuesday in chanting “Love, not hate, no ICE in our state” at a protest that has become a weekly fixture in the community. One former Trump supporter said, “In the beginning, I was happy they were coming here to promote jobs, but my mind has changed totally… with the situation that’s going on in the world today, they are one and the same. I cannot separate one from the other because of the violence.” Last week the Appeal reported on a recent CoreCivic earnings call where investors expressed worry that the numbers weren’t high enough, pushing ICE to ramp up detentions for profit reasons. In Social Circle, Georgia, a small town in a deep-red district, the city manager refused federal officials’ requests to turn on the water at a warehouse on the outskirts of town that had been rumored to be one of the ICE purchases. During a site fight in Ashland, Virginia, Canadian protestors in British Columbia acting in solidarity with the town helped pressure the warehouse’s billionaire Canadian owner, Jim Pattinson, to back out of the sale. His development company released a statement saying they were not aware of the site’s final owner nor intended use of the site when it accepted an offer from a U.S. government contractor. Oklahoma City mayor David Holt met with the owners of a nearby warehouse following public pressure and convinced them to back out of the sale; in his press release, he asked “that every single property owner in Oklahoma City exhibit the same concern for our community in the days ahead.” The New York Times estimates that out of about 20 known pending warehouse sales, nearly a dozen have been reversed or rejected by local communities.
Team Human vs Team Machine: local communities fight back against AI data centers and the surveillance state. TIME Magazine has published a profile this week of the growing backlash to the buildout of AI data centers across the country, and the diverse character of hundreds of local groups – not necessarily bipartisan, but more non-partisan, as most who come together are sick of both parties having sold out their kids’ safety and the future of life in their community. While industry boosters are looking at China in the race for AI supremacy, the article argues, local communities are more concerned with its impact on their quality of life; thus leading to one activist’s framing of the struggle as those concerned with ‘Team Human’ versus those working for ‘Team Machine.’ In New Brunswick, New Jersey, the City Council scrapped plans for a 26,000 square foot data center after hundreds of local residents raised their voices in protest, deciding instead to build 600 units of affordable housing and a public park on the proposed site. In Franklin County, Missouri, a local mayor and the Board of Supervisors are set to pass a moratorium on data centers after public outcry shut down a project just within city limits. In Pennsylvania, at the heart of data center construction, Governor Josh Shapiro, a former AI booster, is slowing his tune and changing perspectives after hearing from constituents whose electric bills are going up month over month; and in Northern Virginia, backlash has grown as data centers tend to outcompete housing in the scramble for affordable land and/or space. Just south of the Tennessee-Mississippi state line, the Southern Environmental Law Center is suing Elon Musk’s X company after discovering that xAI had built an illegal power plant to feed its data center. Data Center Watch, an organization tracking site fights nationally, reports that pushback against data centers increased 125% in 2025, blocking an estimated $98 billion in Big Tech’s capital expenditures.
In the aftermath of the Minnesota occupation, local communities and hackers are fighting against the surveillance machine wherever they can; after a Superbowl ad heralding a partnership linking feeds from Ring, the digital doorbell-cam company, to those from Flock, a surveillance camera company used by local law enforcement, Ring eventually withdrew from the deal, making a statement that “We remain focused on building tools that empower neighbors to help one another while maintaining strong privacy protections and transparency about how our features work.” In communities across the country, residents have been taking matters into their own hands and destroying Flock cameras en masse after word got out that surveillance data was regularly accessed by ICE via local law enforcement contracts. WIRED magazine looks into the workshops and maker spaces of activist hackers around the country who are utilizing 3D printing, laser cutting, and circuit soldering to build community arsenals against ICE, from printing thousands of plastic whistles for community groups to making tourniquets and bodycam mounts, to building out citywide off-grid communications networks that cannot be hacked using conventional smartphone surveillance technology. An activist from Minneapolis shares the conversations being had among neighbors regarding surveillance and digital safety, and the tough choices being made as people stand up and keep going despite the threat of a growing authoritarian state.
