The Friction Map — Data Center Friction in America
Two reports · 12 + 14 pages · PDF · Current as of October 21, 2026
The fight over America’s data centers is not nine towns. It is hundreds of county commissions, city councils, water boards, courts, and ballot boxes — and it is moving faster than any headline tracker keeps up with. The Friction Map is the tracker that shows its work, published as two reports because the Florida record and the national record are built differently and move at different speeds.
Report 1 — The Friction Map: Florida.
Florida is where every tactic in this fight is being tested at once, so Florida gets its own report: 52 entries covering the state level (SB 484’s large-load tariffs, SB 180’s freeze on local control, the $30M campaign-money front) and 49 counties swept at ordinance and minute level — moratoriums, permanent bans, the DeSoto approval that ballooned from 34 acres to 800+, the Indiantown injunction fight, Pasco’s 2.5 MW threshold against the state’s 50 MW line. The Florida report stands on two legs: the census, and John Dennison’s published reporting in the Dennison Sovereign Intelligence Hub, reconciled against the census and cited throughout. Its watch list carries the Florida triggers through year-end (final readings, the Edgewater charter ballot, PSC rulings, NextEra’s promised announcement), and its coverage page prints the contested items openly — marked with a dagger in the entries — including the four disagreements resolved on primary sources in the October 21, 2026 red team.
Report 2 — The Friction Map: National (Florida excluded).
144 entries across 32 state and federal groupings, each stating its own status and sourcing as of October 21, 2026 — verified or corrected in the October 21, 2026 verification pass, carried from the first edition’s previously verified record, or, for a small number, labeled in the report itself as tracker-only or proposal-stage: New York’s first-in-the-nation statewide moratorium (EO 62), Monterey Park’s voter-approved permanent ban (88.33%), Frederick County’s use removal, Imperial County’s moratorium struck down and rebuilt, Ohio’s 55 enacted municipal pauses, and the claims that didn’t survive checking — printed as corrections, not quietly dropped. Its coverage page shows the census arithmetic, what was excluded as unconfirmed and why, and where the national picture runs into Florida’s — with pointers to the Florida report.
These are living documents. The Florida edition issues every Friday and immediately when a tracked Florida fight resolves; the National edition issues monthly and on major resolutions. Download them today; the maps you get next month will have more fights on them — because there will be more fights.
