In central Washington, a farming town of roughly 8,100 people has become an unlikely showcase for America’s data-center boom.

Quincy, long known for potato fields, apple orchards and food-processing plants, has spent two decades attracting some of the world’s largest technology companies. Microsoft began building data centers there around 20 years ago, drawn by affordable land, the region’s cool climate and abundant hydropower from the Columbia River.

Now the town is becoming central to Microsoft’s response to a backlash against the facilities powering cloud computing and artificial intelligence. The company this year cited Quincy as proof that data centers can bring tangible benefits to the communities that host them, as residents elsewhere raise alarms over electricity prices, water use and limited local job creation.

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The economic gains are visible in Quincy.

KUOW reported that years of data-center tax revenue have helped support a state-of-the-art high school and hospital.

The city recently opened a new aquatic center, complete with a six-lane lap pool, lazy river and waterslides, and is planning a separate indoor sports complex.

Data centers are not an employment engine on their own. A single facility can operate with 50 employees or fewer, KUOW reported. But Quincy has enough facilities that the sector has become a meaningful employer in aggregate, while also supporting construction, service businesses and the city’s broader tax base.

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Microsoft says its new national approach will ask local utilities to set rates high enough to cover data-center energy use and grid upgrades without raising prices for residents. The company also says future facilities will use closed-loop cooling systems that recycle water rather than drawing from local supplies.

Quincy already has such a system. Microsoft and the city partnered on a $31 million water-reuse utility that treats and recirculates cooling water. The EPA says the project reduces the company’s reliance on potable groundwater and saves an estimated 138 million gallons of water a year.

Still, Quincy is not without skeptics.

Former Mayor Patty Martin, according to KUOW, has warned that the town must look beyond its immediate economic gains and consider its long-term water and electricity needs, pointing to population growth, electric vehicles and changing snowpack as added pressures on the region.

Quincy’s boom shows what data centers can bring to a small town and the questions communities must answer before they arrive.

EXCLUSIVE: The White House and Department of Homeland Security are pushing back on “false narratives” being advanced by the mainstream media and bringing the receipts after the Washington Post and New York Times reported that noncriminal ICE arrests are skyrocketing under President Donald Trump.

The Washington Post reported last week that ICE is arresting “soaring numbers” of “noncriminal” illegal immigrants. The outlet said the agency had “detained more people without a criminal record this year than in all of 2025.” The New York Times took a similar line, reporting that “ICE arrests soar as people with no criminal record are increasingly targeted.”

However, Lauren Bis, a special assistant to the president and White House spokeswoman, told Fox News Digital that though “nearly 70% of illegal aliens arrested by ICE have been convicted or charged with a crime in the United States,” the “actual arrests of public safety threats and criminals is much higher.” This, she said, is due to many of the “noncriminal” illegal immigrants arrested by ICE having prior criminal history in their home country, including murder, child sex abuse and gang activity.

“These are just a few of the media’s ‘non-criminals,’” said Bis, adding, “Why does the mainstream media continue to peddle false narratives protecting criminal illegal aliens?”

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Fox News Digital reached out to the Washington Post and New York Times for comment.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, “Nearly 70% of illegal aliens ICE arrested across the country have criminal convictions or pending criminal charges just in the U.S.”

The agency said, however, that this statistic “doesn’t account for those wanted for violent crimes in their home country or another country, INTERPOL notices, human rights abusers, gang members, terrorists” and other offenses in foreign countries.

While DHS has emphasized that entering the country unlawfully constitutes a crime, the agency has previously shed light on some of the serious criminal charges of individuals considered noncriminal arrests.

This May, Homeland Security Investigations arrested Salvadoran national Josue Saul Garcia-Lopez, who, despite not having a U.S. criminal record, had an international warrant showing him as an active member of the foreign terrorist organization MS-13 and had been involved in extortion and robbery schemes in El Salvador for several years.

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Just days before, ICE had also arrested a Honduran national named Fredy Alexander Lopez Lara, who had an international warrant for homicide in his home country.

Another MS-13 member, Salvadoran national Danny Granados-Garcia, was arrested by ICE in April. He was wanted in his home country for murdering a pastor.

In March, San Diego Sector Border Patrol agents arrested Mexican national Salvador Suazo-Garcia in Lemon Grove, California, processed him administratively, and turned him over to Mexican authorities. Suazo-Garcia entered the U.S. legally in May 2021 under the Biden administration. He was wanted in Mexico for lewd and lascivious acts upon a child.

Shortly before Suazo-Garcia’s arrest, Border Patrol agents also arrested a female illegal immigrant from Mexico named Silvia Del Rosario Torres-Castro, who was wanted in her home country for homicide.

Late last year, ICE arrested Antonio Israel Lazo-Quintanilla, a Salvadoran national who is a member of another foreign terrorist organization called the 18th Street Gang. DHS said that “while technically his only crime in the United States is driving without a license,” Lazo-Quintanilla was on El Salvador’s most wanted gang members’ list and was wanted for aggravated homicide, extortion, possession of drugs and other felonies. Lazo-Quintanilla’s mugshot showed his face covered in tattoos, including the numbers “666” across his forehead.

Months before that, DHS said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Mexican brothers Pedro Luis Ortiz-Mendez and Jose Vicente Ortiz-Mendez in Texas. Both brothers are wanted for multiple murders tied to an attack on a festival in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, where at least one victim was shot and another victim was attacked with a machete.

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Bis said that “these are just a few examples of murderers, gang members, and pedophiles the media refers to as ‘non-criminals’ because they only have criminal records in their home country.”

“No one would want these heinous criminals to be their neighbors,” she said. “From foreign fugitives, gang members, and terrorists, ICE is getting the worst of the worst off our streets and out of our country.”

Addressing deep intra-party divides over Israel ahead of the general election, Michigan’s Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel urged a private gathering of Jewish Democrats to place the needs of “the rest of humanity” above their own “safety and security.”

Nessel, Michigan’s top law enforcement officer who is also Jewish, made the remarks during an Aug. 30 event in Birmingham hosted by the Michigan Democratic Party’s Jewish Caucus, where members of the press were barred. According to a video recording reviewed by The Detroit News, Nessel invoked the story of Queen Esther to argue that Jewish Democrats have a “moral imperative to place the needs of the world above even our own self-interest,” urging attendees to “sacrifice the comfort, safety and security and even the very future of our own people in exchange for the opportunity to save the rest of humanity.”

The comments highlight a boiling point for Democrats in crucial battleground Michigan, where many Jewish voters report feeling forced to choose between their faith and their party amid rising anti-Israel rhetoric from progressive, far-left candidates. 

The private gathering was attended by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed — a vocal critic of Israel and U.S. military aid to the Jewish state — who used the event to publicly apologize to the Jewish Caucus for past controversial comments. Notably, Nessel has publicly stated she will not vote for Republican Mike Rogers in the tight Senate race, but has thus far withheld her endorsement from El-Sayed over concerns regarding his stance on Israel.

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During the speech, Nessel explicitly weighed the survival of Israel against global crises, including questioning the value of protecting the Jewish state if climate change goes unaddressed.

“What good is defending the historic homeland of our ancestors and demanding that candidates acknowledge its right to exist if the planet upon which it rests is no longer inhabitable?” Nessel asked, according to the recording reviewed by The Detroit News. She went on to characterize supporting former President Donald Trump as an “abdication of our responsibilities as Jews,” arguing that Jewish tradition demands “compassionate action toward others” over what she called “blind obedience to the world’s biggest and most dangerous fool.”

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While Nessel acknowledged the frustration in the room—noting that arguments equating Zionism to racism are often made “by people whose entire understanding of Jewish-Israeli history fits neatly into a 47-second TikTok produced by Qatar or Iran” — she also argued that the GOP and its loyalty to Trump poses a great threat and blasted Republicans for focusing on cultural issues like “transgender girls playing JV volleyball” instead of issues like wealth inequality and artificial intelligence.

Fox News Digital reached out to Nessel’s office to ask for more details about the intended effect of her remarks, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

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“Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel reportedly told Michigan Jewish Democrats to channel Queen Esther and prioritize the survival of ‘the world’ over their own self-interest,” said Hen Mazzig, author and senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute, which describes itself as “an emerging media innovation lab” aimed at countering antisemitism and “changing” how people think about Jews and Israel.

“I am a gay man and lifelong liberal,” Mazzig continued. “I understand why many American Jews care so deeply about the Democratic Party. But Esther risked her own safety for the Jewish people’s survival, she didn’t risk them to save others. Using her story this way is not accurate or helpful.”

Meanwhile, George Mason University constitutional law professor, David Bernstein, offered a more pointed criticism of the reported remarks.

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“You may have thought I was exaggerating when I tweeted last week about how a segment of the American Jewish community is suicidal. The real news here is not that Nessel said this, but that she thinks it’s a viable pitch to at least a large segment of an audience of Jewish Democrats,” Bernstein said, adding that Nessel’s comments reminded him of “Jewish Stalinists who stayed with Stalin through the pact with Hitler, and then through the antisemitic purges of the late 1940s, because they believed that absorbing this stuff was the price Jews needed to pay for a better world.”

Nessel, who skipped the recent Michigan Democratic Party convention due to safety concerns, has become a prominent voice amid Michigan’s crucial Senate race. 

Fox News Digital reported last week that during an appearance on The Atlantic’s “David Frum Show,” Nessel accused the Democratic Party of not valuing its Jewish constituents and making them feel less welcome than members of other minority groups. She also argued that Jewish Democrats have felt ostracized by their own party since the attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and accused leadership of cherry-picking issues that are relevant to supporters.

Nessel added that if faced with the choice, she would choose her Jewish heritage over her party affiliation. She also criticized some of El-Sayed’s past rhetoric about Israel and his refusal to retract certain comments prior to his apology to Jewish Dems in Michigan at the Aug. 30 private confab.  

Fox News Digital’s Julia Bonavita contributed to this report