The throughline that activists are calling for is a moratorium, but the four-point plan only proves to them that their needs aren’t being heard. “We asked for a moratorium, and [Governor Sherrill]’s just recycling things that were already in the process in the State House anyway,” said Casey Palmer, South Jersey Progressive Democrats member who has been protesting a data center local to her in New Jersey’s Monroe Township. At one Monroe Township Council meeting, she recalled, the data centers were not even on the agenda, “but people still went and spoke anyway because they see through the lines.”

Reports from the field by Ryan Novosielski:

5.29.26

A week ago, Delaney Hall became ground zero for grassroots resistance in support of a hunger and labor strike inside the facility. Detainees launched the strike to demand an end to the egregious and inhumane conditions inside the facility. The crowds have grown, and the tension has heightened over the last couple of days. It’s Friday, and protesters are making the same calls to the wider community to join them on the ground in support of the detainees' calls to end their detention.

Newark just held another no‑contest election in which 11.89% of registered voters decided who governs a city of more than 320,000 people. 

This is not an anomaly, but the operating condition of a democracy that has learned how to function without its citizens.