Don’s ‘Dividends’
Republican incumbents and candidates facing data center outrage back home have been trying to get President Trump to land where he just landed on data centers for months, as the party works to develop some sort of concrete campaign position for candidates on an issue that has sparked ubiquitous backlash across the nation.
Republican leadership and Trump’s allies, for their part, attempted to carve out a compromise lane for candidates to operate within on the campaign trail, as Trump made his position on the matter clear: he’s in bed with Big Tech and, thus, entertaining no nuance. Both Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Vice President JD Vance tried to obscure Trump’s obstinance on data centers by suggesting in August and September that the tech companies expanding and building them need to cover their electric costs, either by “putting power back into the grid,” as Vance suggested, or by finding ways to make the data centers “self-sufficient.”
“They ought to be able to take care of their own utilities, their own power, and that ought to be a given any place they go in the country. But they shouldn’t be going places where there isn’t support for them at the local level,” Thune told a local South Dakota TV station in September.
Another Senate Republican, Jon Husted, is locked in a heated campaign in Ohio that is also foundering under the weight of the data-center backlash. I’ve written before about the data center skeletons in Sen. Jon Husted’s (R-OH) closet, left over from his time as lieutenant governor. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) has skillfully spun this baggage into a pretty compelling attack operation. Husted then mounted an ultimately unsuccessful gambit to try to get Senate Dems to help him pass legislation that would help him on the campaign trail, which I wrote about here.
But the crux of the matter is this: Husted was pushing to pass a bill, the Ratepayer Protection Act, that would direct state utility regulators to consider implementing new standards that ask Big Tech companies to cover the cost of electric bills and the grid updates needed to run their data centers.
Officials in the Trump administration in August were even working to convince tech and utility companies to sign a pledge to prevent AI model-driven electricity cost hikes.
This is all to say, Republicans have been trying to stand in this lame space between support for Big Tech and its wild enthusiasm for data centers and AI, and Americans’ bipartisan outrage about the risks to their communities and their finances that come along with the facilities. And Trump has not let them, determining a few months back that anyone who is against data centers — and the strain they place on local resources — is “backwards and poor.”
Now, just shy of two weeks from Election Day, he’s come around to other Republicans’ position. In a Truth Social post this morning, Trump “mandated” (whatever that means) that tech companies “make their own electricity” and pay communities that host the facilities “dividends” (he also put this term in quotes, so unclear if he or anyone knows what that means):
As the President of the United States, I have been watching Data Centers very closely, and have come to a very strong conclusion. New and large, in some cases gigantic, Data Centers are mandated by me to make their own electricity, and give or sell any excess back to the local community, or grid, and therefore there is electric price increase. In fact, there could be a substantial decrease. Other elements likewise! If companies want to make their Data Centers popular, pay the community, and/or individuals within the community, a “dividend.” I have watched the process closely, and Data Centers that were highly unpopular in a certain area, have become extremely popular when a financial deal is struck. MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!! GREAT FOR THE U.S.A. President DJT
Republicans have done this to themselves by advocating against AI regulation (state level anti-regulation measures were ultimately stripped from the Big Beautiful Bill before passage, however) and getting in bed with the tech oligarchs gunning to buy off politicians for years. And Democrats struggled with how to message on the matter until the American public invited them to seize on their indignation.
There are a few key races that will reveal whether Trump’s last ditch data center pivot was effective this cycle.
Speaking Of Big Tech Backlash
The state of New Mexico sued Meta, the company that houses all of Mark Zuckerberg’s tech empire, back in 2021 following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and serious concerns that emerged related to the social media company reportedly misleading users about its data privacy policies. A New Mexico judge just ordered Meta to pay $25 billion. Per the New York Times:
Last month, after a two-week trial, a jury in the State District Court in Santa Fe ruled against Meta, saying the company had committed 43 million violations of New Mexico’s consumer protection laws. Each violation carried a penalty of up to $5,000.
On Wednesday, Judge Francis J. Mathew of the State District Court in Santa Fe issued the landmark penalty, writing that the company and its executives purposefully misled the public.
“The harm in this matter is difficult to overstate, and goes to the heart of Facebook’s basic business proposition,” Judge Matthew wrote in a 20-page judgment. He said the “extraordinary number of willful violations” that repeated over years “support the highest level of penalty.”
Vance Weighs in on the Disgusting Ramaswamy Ad
Read This From TPM Today
Read the piece from Layla A. Jones here: Data That Would Measure the Effectiveness of Key Trump, GOP Policies Has Gone Missing Ahead of the Midterms
Yesterday’s Top Story
Democrats Have Big Plans for Elon Musk
What I’m Reading
The DNC Says MAGA Inc. Is Airing Another Ad Created With Taxpayer Dollars
Federal Court Rules OPM Broke the Law by Handing DOGE Access to Sensitive Data
Frist.
When I heard of the Ramaswamy ad, I pretty much knew who was behind in the polls. And yes, it’s despicable. Even the Libertarian candidate condemned it. I think it’s gonna’ backfire.
As for Vance, we now know he’d put a naked photo of his own grandmother in an ad if he thought it would buy a couple tenths of a percentage point.
Sorry Trump, I already voted Democrat.
ICE denies hitting California 'agitator,’ accuses man of ‘flopping for the camera’
https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article317719641.html
Note well: The ICE vehicle kept driving.
Now, I ain’t no lawyer. But CVC 20001, felony hit and run with injuries, seems like a pretty plausible charge.
The rot and corruption of Trump and MAGA know no depths.
All respect to Nicole for handling the Where Things Stand post, but this:
Is completely missing the point: that AI data centers are already bypassing local electric grids because they can’t possibly supply the ginormous amounts of power needed.
So they’re trucking in dozens if not hundreds of portable gas-fired electric generators for each new data center that results in local air pollution and heat island effects. Trump is just giving a wink and a thumbs-up to the environmental disaster that the hyperscalers are already doing!
What’s needed is Federal, or at least State regulations that prohibit this way of bypassing insufficient power on the local electric grid. Not enough local grid power (or water, a separate issue), you can’t build here!