Saturday, May 16, 2026
How many data centers are there in Wisconsin? It depends how you count
Blaise Mesa
Wisconsin is building massive data centers. But the group DC Byte says it has 21 total.
Data centers are appearing across the country as demand for artificial intelligence increases.
In Wisconsin, a Microsoft data center in Mount Pleasant is nearing completion and already has 375 full-time employees, according to a company executive. A second Microsoft data center is under construction, with even more planned for the future, the Journal Sentinel previously reported.
In September 2025, Gov. Tony Evers applauded the company's investment by highlighting the jobs being created in the state.
“This project is creating good, family-sustaining union jobs across the entire region from carpenters, plumbers and electricians,” he said.
There are other data centers in Wisconsin too, including the Cogent, Vaultas Milwaukee and Data Holdings Milwaukee facilities.
What is the purpose of data centers?
The data center boom due in part to the rise of artificial intelligence, but the specific purpose of each data center can vary by location, Stafford said. They are also used for:
- Cloud computing and storage
- Streaming
- E-commerce
- Telecoms However, a University of Virginia report and a World Resources Institute report both put Wisconsin's total at about 50, as the Journal Sentinel previously reported.
There are 53 data centers listed for Wisconsin on datacentermap.com, a website that maps data centers across the country. That count includes 19 data centers in the Milwaukee area.
- IT infrastructure
- Telecoms
- Disaster backup
How many data centers are there in Wisconsin?
There are a few different totals, depending on how the facilities are counted.
DC Byte, a firm that tracks data center development, puts the count for Wisconsin at 21, including 12 data centers that haven't yet gone live.
However, a University of Virginia report and a World Resources Institute report both put Wisconsin's total at about 50, as the Journal Sentinel previously reported.
There are 53 data centers listed for Wisconsin on datacentermap.com, a website that maps data centers across the country. That count includes 19 data centers in the Milwaukee area.
Rob Stafford, of DC Byte, said some facilities may have multiple data centers in one location, and some counts include every individual data center. But DC Byte does not, Stafford said.
These are the DC Byte counts for Wisconsin's neighbors:
- Illinois – 91 data centers (51 not yet live)
- Minnesota – 36 data centers (14 not yet live)
- Michigan – 25 data centers (14 not yet live)
The World Resources Institute report lists these states as having the country's most data centers:
- Virginia - 566 data centers
- Texas - 391 data centers
- California - 287 data centers
- Illinois and Georgia - 195 data centers
- Ohio - 194 data centers
Stafford explained that it can be difficult to compare the size of different data centers because energy use can be hard to quantify, so DC Byte doesn't track it "in any comprehensive way." DC Byte uses proprietary information and talks to people living near data centers to compile its data, he said.
What do data centers do to the environment?
Some large data centers can as much as five million gallons of water a day, the same amount used by a town of 50,000 people, according to the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. Researchers who studied the affects of data centers on air quality say there could be as many as 1,300 premature deaths in the United States by 2030 due to air pollution from power plants supplying electricity to data centers,
At least a few Wisconsin communities have resisted data centers due to concerns about water use and electricity costs.
Three bighorn sheep are latest additions at the Racine Zoo
RACINE — Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep are the latest additions to the Racine Zoo's Mountain exhibit.
Helga and Mantis were born in spring 2023 at Hemker Park and Zoo in Freeport, Minnesota.
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Helga and Mantis are pictured with Mantis’s baby at the Racine Zoo. After being quarantined off-exhibit, the three are now enjoying the Mountain exhibit. Courtesy of Racine Zoo |
They arrived in Racine on Feb. 23 and were held in an off-exhibit quarantine, but are now at their new home in the exhibit, which underwent construction and renovations during the last year, according to a news release from the zoo.
According to the release, Bighorn sheep are the largest sheep native to
North America. They are named for the males’ large, spiraled horns, which can weigh up to 30 pounds.
The sheep are native to alpine grasslands of Western North America. In the mid-1800s, there were an estimated 200,000 sheep in the region, the release said. Their numbers declined as a result of hunting, habitat loss and the spread of disease from domesticated animals.
The numbers are now somewhat stabilized, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists them as “least concern.”
Recent stories by Racine Journal Times reporter Milana Doné
Foxconn North American facilities hacked. Impact on Wisconsin unknown
Ricardo Torres
Foxconn Technology Group is recovering from recent a ransomware attack which happened around May 12.
In a statement to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the company said:
"Some of Foxconn's factories in North America suffered a cyberattack. The cybersecurity team immediately activated the response mechanism and implemented multiple operational measures to ensure the continuity of production and delivery. The affected factories are currently resuming normal production."
It's unclear which facilities were targeted and what the total impact of the attack had on the company. Reports have pointed to an organization called "Nitrogen Group" which allegedly committed the act.
Foxconn's North American headquarters is located in 611 East Wisconsin Avenue but it's main facilities in the state are in Mount Pleasant.
In 2017, the company originally planned to build a massive advanced manufacturing campus with $10 billion of capital investment and 13,000 employees statewide. However Foxconn drastically changed course with its operations in Wisconsin and, as of 2025, had more than 1,300 workers in the state.
Foxconn sold most of its land in Mount Pleasant to Microsoft which is in the process of building a massive data center campus. Microsoft is in the final stages of finishing its first data center and already has more than 375 workers at the facility.
Friday, May 15, 2026
Thursday, May 14, 2026
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer faces pressure to resign
FBI Director Kash Patel denies drinking allegations during budget hearing
One-time direct cash payments can help prevent homelessness, study finds
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
Trump says he doesn't think about Americans' "financial situation" while Iran war continues
Cops Gone Wild: Man who sued police detective in Colorado awarded $24 million
Tuesday, May 12, 2026
What is Fairwater? The name of Microsoft's AI data center network
Ricardo Torres
Data center critics might see irony in Fairwater name
"Fairwater" is defined in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as a boat device, a streamlined bridge, and a submarine's conning tower.
It's also the name of Microsoft Corp.'s artificial intelligence data center network – which some data center critics might find ironic.
When Microsoft announced it was building a second southeastern Wisconsin data center, a small detail went overlooked: its Fairwater name.
"In addition to our Fairwater datacenter in Wisconsin, we also have multiple identical Fairwater datacenters under construction in other locations across the US," Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud and AI for Microsoft, said in September.
The second Fairwater data center is in Atlanta. It was announced in November, and Microsoft stated in a blog post the two data centers are connected.
"This enables Fairwater sites located in different states to work together as an AI superfactory to train new generations of AI models far more quickly, accomplishing jobs in just weeks instead of several months," the post reads.
As for why the name "Fairwater"?
Microsoft says it was an internal code name the company decided to make public.
Water usage has been a key focus of data center critics. Microsoft has tried to calm anxiety around that issue.
"Lake Michigan has nothing to fear from our data center," Microsoft President and Vice Chair Brad Smith said during a September announcement of the second Mount Pleasant data center.
"We build data centers in the desert, that's because we've figured out how to run them without using a lot of water," Smith said, adding the company uses a closed-loop cooling system.
Closed-loop systems reuse most of that water, but they still need occasional flushing and refills.
The Fairwater data center is expected to use 2.8 million gallons of Lake Michigan water in 2026.
But that's more of a floor than a ceiling. Microsoft is planning to build 15 more data centers in Mount Pleasant during the next decade or longer.
Microsoft could use up to 8.44 million gallons of water annually with that expansion, according to the City of Racine, which provides water to the development site. Roughly 6 million gallons are to be returned to Racine.
But even those projections might fall short of reality.
Microsoft's internal forecasts expects its annual water usage for roughly 100 data center complexes world wide to be around 28 billion liters in 2030, according to the New York Times.
In a comment given to the Times, Microsoft said it now expects to use about 18 billion liters of water by 2030. That's roughly 4.8 billion gallons.
Environmental advocate Milwaukee Riverkeeper has pushed for more transparency and action on data center water issues.
"This conversation shouldn’t be about branding – it should center on impact, accountability, and the long-term stewardship of our local waters," said Jennifer Bolger Breceda, executive director of Milwaukee Riverkeeper.
"Data centers place significant demand on water resources, and in a region defined by the Great Lakes, that should require careful consideration and thoughtful implementation," Breceda told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
"When an out-of-state corporation proposes a project of this magnitude, there must be full transparency around water use, clear and enforceable safeguards, and a rigorous review process to ensure our people and waters are protected.
"We also need to take an honest look at the tradeoffs, including whether the long-term community benefits truly match the scale of resource use," Breceda said.
Monday, May 11, 2026
New book gets deep into details of Violent Femmes debut album
If more than 7 million copies sold and a public-television special are not already enough validation of the classic status of the Violent Femmes' 1983 debut album, here's another indicator:
That album is now the subject of a book in the famed 33⅓ series about individual recordings.
Books in this series can vary widely from detailed music journalism to idiosyncratic personal takes. "Violent Femmes" (Bloomsbury Academic) by Nic Brown, a drummer as well as a writer, is both fannish and deeply reported. Brown interviewed original band members Gordon Gano, Brian Ritchie and Victor DeLorenzo at length. He also spoke with album producer Mark Van Hecke and other figures.
As someone who has read many Milwaukee takes on the Femmes over the decades – and has written a few, too – I also enjoyed Brown's view of the band from outside the local hothouse.
Brown explores the band's formation, its unusual instrumentation and how it worked in the studio. He also goes over each song in detail, both lyrically and musically.
Here are a few takeaways gleaned from Brown's book. While passionate fans may already know some of these, you'd have to be a certified expert to know them all.
- Bassist Ritchie coined the Violent Femmes name as a label for the rhythm section he had with DeLorenzo, at a time when the pair played with various other musicians.
- By the time he met Ritchie and DeLorenzo, the prolific Gano had already written all of the songs that would appear on the Femmes' first two albums, and some of the songs that would turn up on the band's third.
- What led to the Femmes' acoustic instrumentation, particularly Ritchie's acoustic bass guitar? "I just thought that we should all be equipped to play acoustic music because there was an imminent apocalypse on the horizon," Ritchie told Brown. "I thought we probably wouldn't have electricity."
- The trio's first gig was in the basement-level Beneath-It-All-Cafe on Downer Avenue (under the old Wash Tub laundromat).
- The person who actually "discovered" the Femmes busking outside the Oriental Theatre on the day of a Pretenders concert in 1981 was Peggy Sue Honeyman-Scott, the wife of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott. It's often written that James or even singer Chrissie Hynde was the initial talent spotter.
- Who bankrolled the recording of the album? DeLorenzo's father loaned the group the $10,000 they needed.
- Castle Studios in Lake Geneva, where the album was recorded, was a facility that had been installed in the main lodge of the fabled Playboy Club there.
- Given the enormous backlog of songs Gano had written and the limited studio time the band could afford, how did they decide what to record for the first album? Gano said Ritchie had "the brilliant idea" to pick only "the poppy songs." That's why the band's second album, "Hallowed Ground," is so different: it has the Gano songs influenced by gospel, country and jazz.
- DeLorenzo calls the distinctive snare drum beats he plays at the beginning of "Blister in the Sun" "stutter flams." A flam, Brown explains, is played with two sticks hitting one note together. Those familiar flams are heard today as pump-up music samples in stadiums and arenas around the country.
- Penn Jillette, of the magic duo of Penn and Teller, gave Gano a specific and enthusiastic compliment about the timing of a line in "Kiss Off." But you'll have to read Brown's book to find out what it was.
Sunday, May 10, 2026
FBI is investigating Wisconsin's 2020 election, sources confirm
Mary Spicuzza
The FBI has started an investigation into Wisconsin’s 2020 election, sources told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
The investigation is only in a preliminary phase and is focused on vetting previous complaints – and no ballots have been seized in Wisconsin, the sources said.
Confirmation of the probe came as the Journal Sentinel reported that an FBI agent had interviewed a state election official in recent days. The agent spoke with Wisconsin Elections Commission deputy administrator Robert Kehoe and discussed how elections are handled in Wisconsin.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that he won the 2020 election. A recount in two Wisconsin counties that Trump's campaign paid for, court rulings, a state audit and a conservative review have confirmed that Trump lost. Biden defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes.
Kehoe reportedly debunked false claims during his meeting with the FBI agent.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment.
Emilee Miklas, a spokeswoman for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, said, 'We are not aware of an active investigation."
Officials in Wisconsin – and especially Milwaukee – have been preparing for an investigation.
The Wisconsin probe comes after federal officials in January seized hundreds of boxes of ballots related to the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia, and after the FBI issued a grand jury subpoena in March for voting information in Maricopa County, Arizona.
Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin have all been central to Trump's false claims that he won the 2020 election. Trump has insisted, without evidence, that former President Joe Biden didn’t win in Wisconsin that year.
Former state Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman previously led a fruitless review of the 2020 presidential election in Wisconsin, which cost taxpayers more than $2 million and turned up little information that wasn't already known.
If federal officials investigate the 2020 election in Milwaukee, it’s possible that poll books and nearly 180,000 absentee ballots with attached ID numbers could be turned over to investigators. Since state law requires absentee ballots counted at a central counting facility to include poll list numbers, the data could be matched with poll book information to identify voters.
Election officials in Milwaukee have raised concerns about such a move, stressing that protecting voters' privacy and their right to vote is a priority.
Ballots from the 2020 election typically would have been destroyed by now. But Milwaukee’s 2020 ballots still exist, partly because of a lawsuit filed against the city by a New London man who has sued state and local election officials over the 2020 election and related issues.
"Based on everything already litigated, reviewed, recounted, and decided by the courts, this appears to be nothing more than a political fishing expedition," said Michael Maistelman, a Milwaukee area election attorney. "There is no factual or legal basis to relitigate Wisconsin’s 2020 election."
The FBI is the investigative agency within the U.S. Department of Justice, which is suing Wisconsin officials over their refusal to provide the confidential information of voters that state election officials say is protected by Wisconsin law.
The federal lawsuit is one of nearly two dozen the Trump administration has filed across the country seeking voter lists without personal information redacted.
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore, a Milwaukee Democrat, sharply criticized the FBI questioning a Wisconsin election official.
"Donald Trump, the loser of the 2020 presidential election, continues to whine and use intimidation tactics against election officials. Trump believes that any election he loses is illegitimate," she said in a statement. "Our elections are safe and fair and will remain that way."
(This story was updated to add new information.)president
Our coddled child president, King-Butt Hurt, still can't accept the fact that he lost an election. His ego won't let the truth in. What a mentally disturbed adolescent he is.
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