☕ Daily Brief: Data-center Mega-Thread Continued

Good morning! It’s been just me holding down the fort this past week…so if you spotted some strange phrasing or wonky grammar in there, thanks for bearing with me. Our managing editor Brandon is back on Monday. It’s been a fun week with some great debates in the comments.

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WHAT WE'RE WATCHING

📊 Trump admin targets Soros and other left-wing, Muslim organizations. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the IRS are preparing to audit and potentially revoke the 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status of left-wing nonprofits including George Soros' Open Society Foundations, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The initiative stems from a 2025 executive order targeting nonprofits operating with a "substantial illegal purpose."

🏠 Inspector General confirms FEMA illegally skipped homes with Trump signs. A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report found that FEMA disaster relief crews violated agency policy and the Hatch Act by deliberately bypassing 11 Florida homes displaying Trump signs after Hurricane Milton. Workers logged the skipped homes with messages like "Trump sign no entry per leadership" in government systems.

💰 Harlem business owners say they're getting hit with sanitation fines after opposing Mamdani’s public grocery stores. Immigrant business owners who joined a lawsuit against Mayor Zohran Mamdani's government-owned supermarket plan say they've been slapped with an unusual wave of New York City Sanitation Department fines, some as high as $1,000. The Multicultural Business Coalition chairman says penalties ramped up two weeks ago when the group began canvassing door-to-door for support.

🏥 New Jersey signed a shield law protecting abortion and transgender healthcare. Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed legislation that criminalizes interference with reproductive and transgender healthcare while blocking state cooperation with investigations from states where such care is illegal. The law bars extradition of individuals facing out-of-state charges, expands confidentiality protections, and creates criminal penalties of up to five years in prison for those who physically obstruct access to clinics or intimidate patients.

WORLD NEWS

Behind the paywall: Canada's CBC and how its staff were told to describe the September 11 attacks, a Trump executive order barring certain foreign-made equipment from the US electricity grid, and a call for the Justice Department to look at Northwestern University's funding relationship with the Qatar Foundation.

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THE MAIN STORY

WHAT’S HAPPENING

I want to continue sharing my thoughts on data centers because the issue not only motivates voters across party lines but is also shaping up to be a defining election issue in states experiencing heavy development.

First, the backlash is real. While researchers have documented Chinese, Russian, and Iranian efforts to inflame the debate, about three in five Americans now oppose a data center in their community, with majorities opposed across party lines. Given how much rides on America staying dominant in the AI race, politicians should take real steps to address household concerns and limit the damage these billion-dollar corporations might do in their scramble for market share.

Start with the competing motivations. Corporations want to build because of the revenue at stake; AI is lucrative and getting more so. The government wants American AI development to continue because of the military implications and broader economic growth. But the average American would much rather neither lose their job to AI nor have a monolithic data center go up in their backyard, especially when research finds that permanent employment opportunities at these facilities are relatively low.

But this is the new industrial revolution, and it is moving fast. The United States already has more than 3,000 operational data centers, and more than 1,500 are in various stages of development. Federal, state, and local governments are facing a blitz of projects from corporations that have spent decades perfecting lobbying and legal maneuvering. We’re in a period of public revolt, and state regulation is following. I’d argue the political system is working as intended.

Setting aside for now whether any of it is wise, some politicians are calling for strict moratoriums while others propose more moderate reforms. While Trump campaigned in 2016 on punishing companies, specifically ones that moved jobs overseas, he now supports data center growth without pushing back much. This position puts him at odds with Republicans who are turning against projects that have angered voters. The party's own Senate campaign arm calls data centers a sleeper issue for the midterms.

That could cost Republicans in November, and maybe even in 2028.

Below is a thought exercise. After hearing many complaints about data centers, I wrote out what I think should be happening: common-sense solutions that protect the public interest without bringing innovation to a grinding halt. Then I did the research to see whether these common-sense fixes are being proposed anywhere.

I should also note that my solutions would place a heavy burden on data center construction, which may seem unfair compared with the regulations manufacturing plants and other industries face. My reasoning is that data centers are extractive by nature. Once construction ends, they bring relatively few benefits or permanent jobs to a community unless they offset that burden with tax revenue or other tangible benefits.

What governments should do

What governments are doing

Governments are also trying to

THE SYSTEM AS INTENDED

To sum it all up, there are real reasons to oppose data centers, including job displacement from AI, harmful changes to neighborhoods and surrounding areas, and households potentially being left worse off. There are also real reasons to support them: innovation, progress, and military necessity.

There is also a certain hysteria—the idea that data centers spell doom and that Big Tech is steamrolling community after community while politicians do nothing. That may have been closer to the truth a few years ago, at the dawn of these projects. It is not now. If anything, the American system, the eternal contest between industry and government, appears to be working as intended.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

I will have to respectfully disagree with your position on Flock Cameras

Benjamin Franklin warned: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Flock’s mass, continuous, warrantless scanning of license plates is a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Constitution does not allow the government to monitor the movements of the entire population without individualized reasonable suspicion or probable cause. A system that records where every car goes, every day, and stores that data for later fishing expeditions is the definition of a general warrant, which is the exact evil the Fourth Amendment was written to forbid.

Saying “the government already has access to much of our data” is not an argument; it is a deflection. It is the same logic as saying “we already kill people anyway, so what’s one more?” The fact that other privacy violations exist does not make this one constitutional or acceptable. It only proves we have already drifted too far and must draw the line here, not keep moving it.

Yes, the crime-solving numbers sound impressive, but that does not rewrite the Bill of Rights. Safety purchased by surrendering the right to move freely without constant government surveillance is not safety worth having.

— Judah M

Why only violent crimes?

Regarding the suggestion of utilizing Flock cameras only for violent crimes. I totally disagree! I personally know of 2 missing elderly people with dementia being located by police using Flock camera data. Restricting their usage for violent crimes only wouldn’t have allowed officers to use a valuable tool to bring those ladies back to their families alive. That usage cannot be ignored!

— Sally D

TODAY’S POLL

POP QUIZ

POLL RESULTS FROM YESTERDAY

Do you have issues with Flock cameras?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 👍 Yes (471)

🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 👎 No (467)

🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ 🤔 Unsure (168)

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