Gary's Blackout Sparks Debate Over Who Powers the Grid

A derecho knocked out power to Gary, Indiana, with about 370,000 initially affected and over 63,000 still without power by Aug. 20, though power was later restored to nearly all residents. Meanwhile, data centers reportedly remained online, prompting questions about grid resilience and why large energy users may outpace residents during outages. The piece ties the local outage to broader trends of rising electricity costs and the growing role of data-center energy use, advocating for practical resilience through home battery backups and vigilance against policies that subsidize big energy users at the expense of consumers.