Aug 11, 2026 · 41 min · 19 segments
The midterms are approaching, and as the discourse heats up, one of big new villains is: a kind of building. Data centers. Reporter Jasmine Sun took a road trip through two swing states to meet the…
Jasmine Sun
PJ VogtHost
[instrumental music]What was the first sort of place in your road trip where you found one of your assumptions just being challenged? Where you found yourself surprised?
So the first data center site, or proposed data center site, that we visited was Janesville, Wisconsin.
I had heard of Janesville when I was actually doing research on AI and potential labor impacts, because I had been interested in de-industrialization and what happens when a bunch of jobs disappear.
Once the economic cornerstone of Janesville, the giant GM plant, in its heyday employing 7,000 people.
Even I was dispatched there-
And Janesville is most famous recently nationally because they had, like, a 100-year-old GM plant that closed in 2008 during the financial crisis, and this decimated the community.
When the plant idled in 2008, unemployment soared to 13%, and the town became a non-partisan symbol of the Great Recession.
[church bells ringing]
Thousands of jobs disappeared basically overnight in not that big of a town.
And now, with the old GM site, which has been laying dormant for 15 or so years, there was a data center proposal where it's like, "Why don't we take this brownfield and build a hyperscale data center on top of it?" [gentle music] Okay.
Yeah
Yeah.
So I am born and raised Rock County, so Janesville, Milton area, my entire life.
Been strictly pretty much Janesville area the last 15 years of my life.
He had spoken up on a city council meeting in favor of the data center, which is pretty rare, 'cause there's not a lot of people at these meetings who are pro-data center, or at least vocally so.
[instrumental music]What was the first sort of place in your road trip where you found one of your assumptions just being challenged? Where you found yourself surprised?
So the first data center site, or proposed data center site, that we visited was Janesville, Wisconsin.
I had heard of Janesville when I was actually doing research on AI and potential labor impacts, because I had been interested in de-industrialization and what happens when a bunch of jobs disappear.
Once the economic cornerstone of Janesville, the giant GM plant, in its heyday employing 7,000 people.
Even I was dispatched there-
And Janesville is most famous recently nationally because they had, like, a 100-year-old GM plant that closed in 2008 during the financial crisis, and this decimated the community.
When the plant idled in 2008, unemployment soared to 13%, and the town became a non-partisan symbol of the Great Recession.
[church bells ringing]
Thousands of jobs disappeared basically overnight in not that big of a town.
And now, with the old GM site, which has been laying dormant for 15 or so years, there was a data center proposal where it's like, "Why don't we take this brownfield and build a hyperscale data center on top of it?" [gentle music] Okay.
Yeah
Yeah.
So I am born and raised Rock County, so Janesville, Milton area, my entire life.
Been strictly pretty much Janesville area the last 15 years of my life.
He had spoken up on a city council meeting in favor of the data center, which is pretty rare, 'cause there's not a lot of people at these meetings who are pro-data center, or at least vocally so.
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