Gazette Fifty 6

07/28/2026

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Writer, musician, and storyteller from Hugoton, Kansas. Covering the history, true crime, and everyday lives of western Kansas through Gazette Fifty 6.

07/28/2026

The Big Scary Bipartisan Monster
Gazette Fifty 6 | Derek Evan Releford | July 27, 2026
First things first. What the hell is a data center?
It’s a very large building filled with computers hooked up to the internet. Every time someone uses a phone or computer online, tiny trips are made back and forth from these places. Data centers have been around for a long time. What’s new is that they’ve become the headlining act at the most unwanted show in the country.
For years most of them sat quietly in places like Northern Virginia (now called “Data Center Alley”), Silicon Valley, Chicago, Dallas, and the New York/New Jersey area. There was local conflict, but it stayed mostly local. So why is this suddenly a national political talking point?
The short answer is AI.
Most people claim to dislike AI. Artists and programmers worry about their livelihoods. Others just find the output soulless. At the same time, almost everyone uses it — for silly photos, social media posts, or emails. Like a lot of things that promise to make life easier, it comes with a cost.
What’s interesting is how universal the discomfort seems to be. Left and right both make the same face when the subject comes up. Yet the build-out keeps accelerating. Tech lobbyists frame it as non-negotiable for national security: build the data centers or China will. In January 2025, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at removing barriers to AI development and infrastructure.
So why does this particular issue cut across party lines so cleanly?
Part of it is the sudden realization of how little power a regular citizen may actually have when a project this size shows up. When the companies involved are layered through subsidiaries or based offshore, it can feel like your backyard is being handed to something you can’t see or reach. And sometimes there’s no clear person to call for help.
Look at the Lake Tahoe area. Roughly 49,000 residents served by California-based Liberty Utilities learned that their main power supplier, Nevada’s NV Energy, will stop providing them electricity after May 2027 as it prioritizes surging data-center demand across the state line. The rules sit in one state, the infrastructure in another, and the market deals get cut somewhere in between. That kind of situation makes people feel the system isn’t built for them anymore.
We’re still early in Finney County. Projects are being discussed, special-use permit language has been drafted, and economic-development conversations are underway. But if a large data center arrives and the existing electrical system can’t handle it, new transmission lines may be required. In Kansas, K.S.A. 17-618 gives public utilities the authority to use eminent domain for those lines. The process is governed by the Eminent Domain Procedure Act (K.S.A. 26-501 et seq.). If the path runs across private land and the owner won’t sell an easement, the utility can take it through the courts.
Modern AI-focused data centers can consume as much electricity as tens or even hundreds of thousands of homes. Nationally, data centers already account for a growing share of U.S. electricity use, with projections rising significantly by 2030.
Another major source of distrust is the secrecy. In many deals across the country, tech companies have required local officials to sign nondisclosure agreements before serious talks even begin. Reporting has shown officials in multiple states signing documents that used shell company names. Secrecy is normal in business. Trade secrets and land negotiations often require it. But when elected officials know what’s coming and are legally blocked from telling the public, it creates an obvious problem — especially in places where the first most people hear about a project is after the land is already locked up.
Local opposition has produced real results in several states, but the decisive factor is rarely a petition or a Facebook group by itself. Projects get slowed or stopped when the pressure reaches the people who actually vote on zoning, permits, and tax deals — county commissioners and city council members. Sustained focus on water use, farmland, and transparency has mattered most when it made those officials calculate that approving a project carried a higher political cost than delaying or rejecting it. That kind of accountability has led to cancellations and moratoriums. At the same time, the intensity can turn ugly, as seen in a 2026 Indianapolis case where a councilman’s house was shot up with a note referencing data centers.
So is the bipartisan anger authentic, or is it being fed by political agendas? Probably both. Recent polling has shown Americans on both sides saying they would rather see a nuclear plant in their community than a data center. Meanwhile, AI-related investment continues at a massive scale.
Two broad camps have formed. One sees the build-out as inevitable and necessary. The other sees it as a resource grab that local communities should be able to slow or stop. Both sides are using the tools democracy gives them — meetings, petitions, lawsuits, elections, and pressure campaigns.
I try to stay out of most political arguments in public. On this one I’m genuinely in the middle. The technology is moving whether we like it or not. The question is how much say regular people get in what it does to their power bills, their water, their land, and the look of their communities.
With NDAs on one side and growing public resistance on the other, the fight over what this country physically looks like in the next 10–15 years is just getting started. In places like Finney County, that fight is still early enough that people can still decide how much of a voice they want to have.

07/27/2026

Do It for the Ones Who Depend on You
Stephanie Releford | Gazette Fifty 6 | July 27, 2026
Crystal Bashford’s Story: Faith, Family, and Early Detection in Morton County
Crystal Bashford has lived in Morton County her whole life. She grew up here, raised her family here, and still serves the community every day as the County Extension Agent for K-State Research and Extension. Most people know her as “the 4-H lady,” but her work reaches further — diabetes classes, Medicare help, cooking and health education.
Seven years ago she became the patient.
“It was just a regular checkup, a regular mammogram,” Crystal said. She and a friend had a standing “girl’s day” for their yearly screenings. Crystal had a long history of fibroadenomas and had already gone through seven surgeries starting in her early twenties. So when the call came with the words invasive ductal carcinoma, she wasn’t completely surprised — but she still had to process it.
Her first thought wasn’t fear for herself.
“I wasn’t scared for myself. I was worried about how my son was going to take it and how my mom and dad were going to take it.”
She chose a bilateral mastectomy with immediate reconstruction because of her history of multiple lumps. The surgery cleared the cancer. No chemo. No radiation. Clean margins and no lymph-node involvement. Because the tumor was estrogen-positive, she started tamoxifen — a daily pill she will take for a total of ten years.
The medicine has its own cost: early menopause, hot flashes, joint pain so severe some days she can barely get out of bed, memory issues, weight gain, and mood swings. “I take one pill for the cancer and six pills for the side effects,” she said with a quiet laugh.
What carried her through was faith and people.
“I learned that my faith is very, very strong. I learned I have a ginormous support system… and I learned that I can pretty much conquer anything.”
Her church prayed. Her sister-in-law stayed with her for weeks. Co-workers at the Extension office and the Fair Board simply stepped in and covered everything while she recovered. She also learned something practical: family comes first. Twelve-hour workdays no longer felt necessary.
When I asked what she would say to women who have never had a mammogram, Crystal didn’t hesitate.
“I would say get it done today… From my personal experience, it doesn’t matter how old you are. Go get at least a baseline.”
And if someone still doesn’t want to go for themselves?
“Do it for your family and for your kids and your spouse, because they’re the ones depending on you. If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for them.”
Local Screening Opportunity – Right Here in Elkhart
Ascension Via Christi’s 3D Mobile Mammography unit is coming to town.

Location: Parked behind Morton County Medical Clinic, 411 Sunset Avenue, Elkhart, KS 67950
Dates: Monday, August 4 (9 AM – 5 PM) and Tuesday, August 5 (8 AM – 12 PM)

Who should go: Women 40 and older who have not had a mammogram in the past 12 months.
Bring your insurance card. Self-pay is $133.60 (assistance may be available).
Prep tips: Skip deodorant, powder, lotion, or cream. Wear a top that is easy to remove.
To schedule: Call Pam or Mica at 620-697-2612
Crystal’s story is not about climbing mountains or running marathons. It’s about a local woman who got the screening, faced the hard days, leaned on her faith and her people, and is still here doing the work she loves.
One appointment can change the whole story.
Schedule your screening. Talk to the women you love. Share this with someone who needs the reminder.
Spots are filling up. We are in the last few days of being able to register. Make sure if you are an at-risk woman in the area you make the needed arrangements to get screened.

07/26/2026

07/24/2026

Cullum Defense Shifts Strategy as Oklahoma Murder Case Moves Toward Trial
Derek Evan Releford | Gazette Fifty 6 | July 24, 2026
In November 2025, Gazette Fifty 6 examined Tad Cullum’s first major attempt to have the charges against him dismissed in the killings of Veronica Butler and Jilian Kelley. At the time, his attorneys argued the evidence was insufficient and that testimony from cooperating co-defendants was too unreliable to support the case. That motion was later denied.
Nine months later, the defense approach has changed.
Cullum and co-defendant Cole Twombly still face two counts of first-degree murder and related charges in Texas County, Oklahoma. The cases remain death-penalty eligible. But the legal fight looks different than it did in late 2025. Instead of focusing on the strength of the evidence, recent filings have centered on procedural issues — most notably a motion asking the court to sanction District Attorney George Leach III for allegedly violating a gag order.
Court records show Cullum’s attorneys filed the sanctions motion in June. They argue Leach made public statements to a Kansas journalist and published a blog post that violated the court’s order limiting extrajudicial comments. Prosecutors responded in early July, calling the motion baseless and arguing the district attorney’s comments were corrective rather than improper. A hearing is set for July 30.
This marks a clear tactical shift.
The early defense effort sought to stop the case before trial by attacking the evidence and the credibility of cooperating witnesses. After that effort failed, the focus moved to challenging the prosecution’s conduct, the scope of the gag order, and a range of evidentiary and procedural matters. The practical result has been more time between the original charges and a jury verdict.
Cullum’s trial is currently scheduled for October 2026. Twombly’s trial is set for February 2027. Both dates have already been postponed more than once.
High-profile capital cases often follow a similar path. When a direct challenge to the evidence does not succeed, defense teams frequently turn to procedural disputes that can delay proceedings and build a record for appeal. Whether that pattern fully explains the current filings is for the court to decide. What is clear from the public docket is a change in emphasis: from arguing the State lacked enough to proceed, to contesting how the State has conducted itself along the way.
The July 30 hearing will show whether the latest motion produces any tangible result. In the meantime, the case continues to move, slowly, toward trial.

07/24/2026

End of the Tracks
Derek Evan Releford | Gazette Fifty 6 | Narrative Nonfiction | July 23, 2026
[1]
Ernest Fisher was five years old when his mother Josie died. He was the second youngest of five sons. Sitting quietly on a homemade quilt, rolling a loose thread between his fingers, he watched his father, Captain Charles Fisher, move through the daily work of raising five boys alone in 1879.
Northwestern Indiana was changing. What had once been wet prairie and marsh was being drained and broken into farmland, leaving the country open and exposed. Re*****on itself existed because of the railroad that cut through it—bringing goods, work, and the chance to leave.
Captain Fisher had returned to civilian life after serving with the 46th Indiana Infantry. The regiment lost 264 men over four years of hard campaigning. Death was nothing new to him. That did not make Josie’s death any easier. But a man who has lived with loss long enough forms a kind of callus.
Ernest did not read his father’s quietness as coldness or forgetting. Even at five he sensed that in his father’s eyes the boys were not an obligation. They were the ones still here—the ones who still needed looking after.
[2]
Ernest sat quietly at the depot, waiting for the train that would take him away from Re*****on. He rested his elbows on his knees and stared at the ground, listening to the sounds of the railroad. The ticket grew damp as he passed it from one hand to the other. It wasn’t the decision itself that unsettled him. It was the act of doing it.
Most boys his age stayed close to home and found work. That was expected. Earlier talks with his father had already planted the idea that something larger sat beyond the edge of town. Purdue was only about thirty miles away—a two-hour train ride—but it still felt like a real departure. The school was practical and engineering-focused, a logical place for a young man who paid attention to how things worked. It had opened its doors only a few decades earlier and was still small compared to what it would become, but it was already building the kind of training the country needed.
The world was changing. People and goods moved faster and farther than before. Much of the West still needed track, bridges, and the men who could lay them out. Ernest thought about things like that often—trends, patterns, and what was likely to come next.
The train slowed and stopped. He reached for his things. There was no time left to change his mind.
[3]
By May 1895 the academic year was ending. Degrees were conferred. Another group of young men prepared to leave campus and find work. Among them was Ernest, now twenty-one, trained in the practical disciplines Purdue had emphasized.
That night he sat on his bed and thought of Re*****on. Of Captain. Of his brothers. Of the house that had kept going after his mother was gone. The years at Purdue had passed quickly. What lay ahead looked like a set of unfinished tracks running into open country—no stations marked yet, only the line itself stretching forward.
[4]
Daisy was in the front room with Wallace. He was almost two and moved constantly now—crawling, walking, disappearing the moment she turned her head. She stayed close, watching him the way young mothers do when a child has just discovered motion.
Ernest had married her in January 1909. Nearly three years had passed. He was thirty-eight now, in the later stretch of what would become a seventeen-year run as a construction and railroad engineer. The railroads had done what he had expected: they had pushed deeper into the West, carrying goods and people into country that had only recently been opened. Every new stretch of track needed places to stop—points where local grain and freight could move in and out. Those stops became towns. Ernest had spent his working life as one of the men who helped make that expansion possible.
His work was shifting. The Santa Fe knew what he could do. Years of surveying, grading, and construction made him a natural fit for the growing demand for grain elevators. As more land came under the plow, elevators were needed at the rail points to collect and ship the wheat. That kind of work was pulling him farther south and west.
Daisy asked if he had everything he needed. The train would leave soon. He was heading into country that still felt unfinished, part of the long effort to turn open land into something that could hold.
[5]
Ernest sat alone in the dark on April 28, 1913. His mind moved the way it usually did—sorting details, settling matters. He paused and looked over the paperwork in front of him. A deed from the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company for a new townsite. Open ground on either side of the tracks, still waiting. By morning the lots would be available for purchase. What had been a plan would become a legal fact.
Creating a town along the railroad was a calculated business move. Sell lots to merchants and residents. The trains would bring the ongoing freight and passenger traffic that kept a place alive. Local farmers gained a shipping point, which encouraged more land to be broken and more grain to move. Towns were going to form wherever the tracks went. This one was formed by Ernest. He named it Elkhart.
At thirty-nine, with a wife and young son, he felt he had reached as far along the line as he needed to go. Not everyone gets to say they started a town. Not every town that gets started lasts.
None of that was lost on him.
He stayed.