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A Power Company Sued A Nurse. She Won.
A Google data center is going up near West Memphis, Arkansas, and residents keep being told someone else is covering the cost for power. Jessica Kivell, a nurse, got curious, so she asked the state for paperwork.
The state sent Kivell the documents. She handed them to Sydney Sasser—a reporter at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette—who published them on August 31. The paper reported on Google covering $526 million for a $1.6 billion solar plant that was built to feed the data center.
It also reported that power company Entergy was charging its customers $5.77 more per month since June that went to three new power projects—one of them the solar plant intended for the data center. Entergy wants a retraction. They claim the math is wrong.
Entergy filed a lawsuit the next day, asking the judge to rule before Kivell or the newspapers could speak about it. They also demanded the article be taken down from the website, and asked the court to make all five defendants name anyone they shared the documents with. Their brief never mentioned the First Amendment.
But presiding Judge Lee Rudofsky did, calling it prior restraint and saying the matter was one of significant public concern. Kivell sat through the hearing in her work scrubs. Rudofsky refused to order the story taken down or to issue a gag order. A day later Entergy abandoned its bid for an injunction.
One person, one records request, and that story is still up.
Two Neighbors Beat A City That Sued Them
Two Johnson County, Kansas residents—Carrie Schmidt and Kimberly Twente—wanted Edgerton to vote on whether a giant data center should go up there.
A Dubai-based developer—DAMAC—wants to put one up for $860 million. It’s been in business with Donald Trump since 2013, when it started building his golf courses in Dubai—and in January 2025 its founder stood at Mar-a-Lago while Trump announced $20 billion in American data centers and promised to fast-track the permits. Edgerton would be its first in the United States.
All Schmidt and Twente needed was 73 signatures to get it on the ballot—they turned in 208. The county’s election office verified more than enough of them, and the county lawyers signed off on the form.
On July 23, the Edgerton City Council voted 3-1 to go to court over it. Twelve days later the city’s filing named Schmidt, Twente, and their nonprofit as defendants.
But on September 3, Judge Stephanie Goodenow put an end to it. Her order notes that instead of passing the ordinance or giving the choice to voters, the city sued. Goodenow found the city’s evidence to be conclusory and insufficient, and struck the case under a Kansas law that protects people who speak out. The judge also ordered the lawyer for the residents to submit his fees; she may make the city pay them.
The day before that hearing, the developer’s Kansas company hired a national law firm and filed 34 pages with the intent to join the case. The claims from the city were thrown out before the court reached that point.
Schmidt said she hopes every city attorney in Kansas is paying attention, because you cannot sue people over protected activities. On September 24, arguments begin on putting the question on the November ballot.
They Deported A Citizen. He Came Back.
Brian Jose Morales Garcia is 25 and was born in Denver, Colorado. This spring he was installing air conditioners in the sweltering Texas heat.
On April 3, his boss got pulled over near Fredericksburg over the car’s window tint. Brian was in the passenger seat. Troopers called in local police to translate, because he speaks Spanish—then they called ICE.
Brian’s birth certificate was sitting at his house. His family drove it over, but agents wouldn’t even look at it. His little girl and pregnant wife were waiting for him at home.
His lawsuit says agents told him he’d go to prison if he kept insisting he was American. He signed their papers rather than disappear for months. On April 7—four days after the traffic stop—they deported him to Mexico.
Then Brian hired lawyers who got him a hearing on Judge Robert Pitman’s calendar. Days before it arrived, the government agreed he could walk back in if he presented his birth certificate and a photo ID at the border. The same birth certificate the government refused to look at in April. On August 30, he walked back across the border into Texas.
Nobody had to look at his citizenship until a federal judge was about to make them explain. His damages case is ongoing.
The Librarian Who Wouldn’t Call A Book Dirty
Patty Hector’s been a librarian since 1985. She spent 15 years at Fort Smith, then some time in California before returning home to Arkansas, where she ran the Saline County Library.
In 2023, the Saline County Republican Women started demanding that books about race and sexuality be moved out of the children’s section. County Judge Matthew Brumley told Hector to get ahead of it and just pull the books from the shelves. Her complaint quotes him as saying it was regardless of legislation, regardless of law and ordinances.
Hector told a reporter that there was nothing wrong with those books, adding that every child should be seen and heard and supported. The response from the Republican women? They put up a billboard that read “Director Hector Must Go.”
Hector’s library board refused to fire her, so the all-Republican county legislature stripped the board of that power and handed it to Brumley. Before making any decisions, he called the Association of Arkansas Counties seeking advice. They told him he could terminate her for what she said publicly—he fired her days later.
Hector went from $44.43 an hour to $11.50 at another library. By the time she sued, that job was gone too. She needed therapy to get through it all.
Last October, a federal judge ruled a jury could find that ordinance was written to get rid of her personally. Only a week before the case went to trial, the county settled with Hector for $275,000. It was paid out of the same association’s insurance fund. Brumley says the county disagreed with her claims and was ready to fight.
They were ready to fight right up until a jury was about to hear the whole story.
Four stories that prove when people stand up, we can win. Trump is not unbeatable—we’ve beaten him before and we’ll do it again. But we need all hands on deck.
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Onward!
Scott
Is your library or school board fighting over books right now? Tell me what town and what’s happening.
Has your power bill gone up this year? How much, and in what state?
Here are the two Congressional letter focuses for today! thanks for all you do!
**Yosemite.** A Nevada developer wants a strip of the park for a private road. 1,172 letters in the first three days. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trumps-yosemite-giveaway
**Mail voting.** Hearing is Thursday, and ballots are already going out in some states. https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-protect-our-use-of-voting-by-mail-and-voting-machines/
Scott, if this column conveys anything it’s what JFK said. “ One person can make a difference but everyone should try”. Your reports constitute who are the very best among us. Thank you for consistently providing such focused and uplifting information.