Officials nationwide face death threats and gunfire over AI data center projects — More than 500 towns restrict builds as councils shutter public comment
Officials in Marshall, Michigan, did what data center opponents across the country have been demanding: on August 3, its city council passed a one-year moratorium on new builds. Ten days later, police told council members they were the subject of a credible death threat tied to the project. The same week, the 300-person town of Salix, Iowa, postponed its own moratorium vote after Facebook posts put its government “in the crosshairs,” and in Box Elder County, Utah, a commissioner who approved a project told KSL he has police stationed outside his house. Then, on August 21, NBC News reported that city leaders nationwide are now receiving death threats over data centers, regardless of which way officials vote.
Marshall Mayor Scott Wolfersberger told local news station WWMT that the city’s police department contacted him on August 12 about the threat and that the investigation is ongoing. Councilor James Hackworth wrote in a social media post that members had received “a legitimate death threat” and that disagreement, protest, and voting the council out are all part of democracy. It’s unclear whether the sender supports or opposes data centers, and no suspect has been identified to date.
Meanwhile, Salix Mayor Kevin Nelson has said that the Woodbury County Sheriff’s Office is investigating posts that called for “various death and terroristic type things” against the entire city government. Nelson said threats first came in May, after the town annexed 900 acres of farmland in April for a site Google is evaluating.
Woodbury County is separately challenging the annexation in court. The council met a week late on August 20 and voted 3-2 against the moratorium, with Nelson calling officers into the room as members of the public and councilman Gene Monk objected. “We ask for a cool-down period for a year to research, then we can make an educated decision. We can let the people vote for it after that — do something different,” Monk said. “It’s too big of a decision for us five people [council members].”
Over in Box Elder County, Utah, Commissioner Lee Perry has said that he and fellow Commissioners Boyd Bingham and Tyler Vincent had received threats after voting through two resolutions for the Stratos project area, with an audience of roughly 500 chanting “shame” at the meeting.
Previous incidents show these are more than idle threats. In April, Indianapolis councilman Ron Gibson had 13 rounds fired into his home after backing a rezoning, and Saline Township, Michigan, treasurer Jennifer Zink resigned in May citing threats over the 1.4GW Oracle and OpenAI campus that triggered moratoriums in at least 19 Michigan municipalities. Emporia, Kansas, moved its August 5 and August 19 commission meetings online and dropped public comment after its leaders were threatened.
Recent data published in the Soufan Center’s July IntelBrief, which is based on a year of scraping X and Reddit, found hundreds of posts with threat language between July 2025 and July 2026, and a volume surge beginning in April that hasn’t receded. Most violent threats in its dataset are targeted towards infrastructure rather than people, with posts naming council members and planning commissions a small minority. Many use memes, emojis, and misspellings to dodge moderation.
The center also found that each new incident now draws far more secondary amplification than it did earlier in the year. Emporia’s mayor said the threats to his commission didn’t appear to come from locals, and Salix, Emporia, and Marshall have all now canceled, moved, or restricted public meetings because of them, at a point when more than 500 local restrictions on data centers are in place nationwide.
