Donald Trump cannot understand artificial intelligence because the "A. part" and the "I. part" are too complicated for him to understand

 A.I. Is Now a Major Election Issue- Published in The New Yorker

(So, will Artificial Intelligence be able to outsmart its opponents?)

As Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s newly elected Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, put it, “People really effing hate data centers.”
By Benjamin Wallace-Wells

This summer, as the ideologically fractious Democratic primaries begin to recede and the politically pivotal midterm elections edge nearer, candidates and voters alike have had their attention drawn by vast, humming edifices newly constructed on the outskirts of towns. Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former public-health official who finished a deft insurgent campaign by becoming Michigan’s Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, sounded a theme that helped decide primaries in his state and in Kansas last week. “People really effing hate data centers,” he said.

That kind of consensus is rare in politics right now. About seventy per cent of Americans, including sixty-three per cent of Republicans, oppose building the hyper-scale centers that power the A.I. boom in their area, according to Gallup, but more than four thousand centers have been built across the country, and about four thousand more are planned. Politicians, first from the left and then from the center and the right, have spent the past few months hastily distancing themselves from them. 

Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a federal moratorium on new data centers in March, and the pragmatic Governor Kathy Hochul enacted the first statewide one in New York in July. The rallying cries against A.I. can themselves sound a bit as if ChatGPT wrote them. “It’s time to press control-alt-delete to put a stop to this A.I.-data-center crisis,” a closing ad for Francesca Hong, a democratic socialist who is the front-runner in this Tuesday’s primary for Wisconsin governor, announced. Still, when something is this unpopular, blunt talk can work.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, always on high alert for political opportunity, set conditions on new data centers in his state in May. But the surprise in recent weeks has been a reversal on the issue by business conservatives who not long ago were touting A.I. projects as the cornerstone of a new prosperous age. 

Just eight months ago, Governor Greg Abbott, at a news conference with the Google C.E.O., Sundar Pichai, bragged, “Texas will be the centerpiece for A.I. data centers for Google in the entire world.”

Then, last week, Abbott abruptly announced that all such projects would be suspended, pending an “audit” of their costs and potential benefits. Even the brashest, most pro-tech Republicans are sounding defensive. Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Presidential candidate and DOGE co-chair, who is now the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, insisted that “despite my opponent’s claims, I’m not ‘pro-data center.’ ”

Part of the issue is simply that the facilities are so huge and tend not to provide many jobs once construction is complete. 

Microsoft’s announcement of a new site in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, enumerated “46.6 miles of deep foundation piles, 26.5 million pounds of structural steel, 120 miles of medium-voltage underground cable and 72.6 miles of mechanical piping.” The tech journalist Jasmine Sun noted, about a center being built for OpenAI and Oracle in the same state, “Opponents time how long it takes to drive past one at highway speed (1 minute 42 seconds for the Port Washington site).” The resources required for such facilities—electricity for power and water for cooling—have sometimes stressed local systems: after two recent data-center-related electrical surges in northern Virginia, an expert from the Union of Concerned Scientists said that utility companies had fielded “complaints about flickering lights and strange noises coming from refrigerators.” 

Protests spread, and, according to Data Center Watch, at least seventy-five data-center projects, whose costs totaled roughly a hundred and thirty billion dollars, were stopped in the first three months of 2026, alone.

But this summer, some politicians detected a deeper unease, and  began asking more basic questions about whether A.I. infrastructure will benefit ordinary people, or just the billionaires behind the technology, and why it has taken mass protest to force public consideration of these issues. 

As El-Sayed put it during a campaign stop at a data center in Saline, Michigan, “Unless and until we protect local communities from the power of corrupting money and politics, we’re going to continue to see projects like this get pushed onto local communities despite themselves.”

What makes data centers interesting not just as a local issue but as a national one is that they might allow Democrats to highlight the duplicity of Donald Trump’s politics of populism and his embrace of futuristic tech billionaires. Whereas the President’s 2016, run focussed on Rust Belt themes of economic decline, his 2024, campaign featured the presence of Elon Musk, who brought with him a roster of Silicon Valley allies—one of whom, David Sacks, became the President’s A.I. and crypto czar—and the promise of a transformed future. But, as the A.I. boom and the data-center build-out have accumulated momentum, the statements from the tech industry about widespread job displacement have grown increasingly dystopian. In May, Microsoft’s A.I. C.E.O., Mustafa Suleyman, said that the technology would be able to automate most white-collar tasks within twelve to eighteen months. Even if that’s an overstatement, or corporate hype—there’s little evidence of job loss so far, and Suleyman later walked back his remarks—it should have been obvious that the public might need some reassurance that the economy would still require human beings.

But Musk and Sacks have become less visible in Washington, and although A.I. has been the major business and social topic of the past year and a half, the President has barely addressed it. The White House’s most memorable foray into the A.I. debate is still the very weird press conference that Melania Trump held in March where she walked onstage side by side with a white-plated, faintly Stormtrooper-looking robot called Figure 03, which said in a mechanical female voice that it was grateful to play a part in revolutionizing education. For the Trump Administration, the A.I. backlash is at once a source of political trouble and an expression of its second-term rudderlessness, in that the Donald Trump has helped unleash a future that he does not seem to understand.

The moratoriums themselves may not be particularly consequential to the advance of artificial intelligence—many data centers have already been built, and others can be constructed in friendlier jurisdictions, or even overseas. In May, the Anthropic C.E.O., Dario Amodei, waved away the political challenges. He said, “We’re going to find that ideology will not survive the nature of this technology. It won’t survive reality.” The things he was talking about, he added, “are gonna become bipartisan and universal because everyone will recognize the necessity of it.” On the campaign trail, in Michigan and elsewhere, something like the opposite is happening. ♦

Published in the print edition of the August 17, 2026, issue, with the headline “Reading the Data.”

Democrats must support people who show examples of hope and courage in the dangerous age of maga Trumpzi-ism

Maria Shrivere writes in "Sunday Paper": The other evening as I watched the news, I listened to a national anchor interview a young, up-and-coming Democratic Texas representative James Talarico. 

An unnamed political strategist said: "Only a savior can save the Democratic Party." The strategist supposedly went on to say that the country and party need an actual, real-life savior, and that this so-called savior will not appear until after the midterms.

The young Texas representative smartly responded by saying, “I already have a savior. And furthermore, I don’t believe we have to wait until then to save ourselves.”

He went on, “We must all acknowledge what is broken in both parties and offer a vision for how to fix it. I think folks are hungry for the truth.”

Amen to that.

The next morning, looking at the trees and listening to the birds, I found myself thinking again about the privilege of being alive and how absurd the idea of waiting for some fantasy political “savior” is.

Sitting around waiting for someone to save you—be it politically, romantically, financially—is dangerous. Isn’t that what gets us into trouble in the first place? Believing that someone else is going to save us, make the hard choices, or know what’s better for us than we do?

Sadly and truthfully, I’ve been there before. Waiting for someone to come along and save me. Waiting for someone to come along and tell me what to do, how to move myself forward, and tell me that it’s all going to be okay.

Yes, I hate to admit it, but there was a time when I thought someone other than myself would know how to build my media company, would know how to grow MOSH, would know how to expand my work at the Women’s Alzheimer’s Movement, or would tell me what to do regarding certain personal decisions. 

I was waiting for someone to walk in the door, make my troubles go away, and ease my pain. I often wondered silently when I met someone new: Is this the person who will show me the way?

But guess what ❓No one did.

It was only when I realized that I was the person who knew what was best for me that I was able to get busy building what I envisioned for myself. It was only after I took responsibility for myself that I was able to see my life differently. It was only after leaning into my faith in God, my faith in myself, and my faith in my dreams that things started to become clearer and that my confidence grew.

I didn’t need to be saved by some unknown person, and neither do you. We also don’t need a political savior. First, we need to believe in our country. We need to believe in the potential of ourselves. We need to take responsibility for ourselves. We need to take responsibility for things that are broken. We need to find a way to work with others—yes, even those we think we can’t work with—to build something we can all be proud of.

Someone can always emerge who can help us amplify our dreams. That happens a lot. But when we sit around abdicating our power, waiting for some unnamed savior to come along and save us, that’s when we get in trouble. 

We surrender our thinking skills. We surrender our judgment, our clear vision, and perhaps worst of all, we lose our courage. And courage is what this moment needs.

Whenever we sit around thinking someone else is smarter, or that someone else knows us better than ourselves, that’s when we enter dangerous territory. And when you are in this territory, you can talk yourself into all kinds of things. You start seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. But trust me, now is not the time to see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Please do not allow yourself to believe crazy, outlandish things, like the “story” that former President Barack Obama is guilty of treason, as some are alluding to. I mean, please. That video❓😧😒 C'mon.

Do not allow yourself to become a victim to a distract-deflect strategy. Do not let someone come along and gaslight you or manipulate you—be it in your personal life, your professional life, your public life, or your political life.

We all need courage. You are smart. You are clear-eyed. You know the truth when you see it, hear it, witness it. You can see that children and others are starving in Gaza. You can see that it’s possible to denounce this tragedy without being labeled antisemitic. You can see that chaos reigns in Washington, and that it’s not just one party that needs saving, but that both must take accountability and offer the change the American people deserve. You know that courage isn’t reserved for so-called saviors. You have courage, too. Don’t tell yourself otherwise.

Rep. Melissa Hortman and Mark Hortman murdered in Minnesota

Which brings me back to that “savior” comment from the Democratic strategist. Don’t tell the family of Minnesota Rep. Melissa Hortman that we need a savior—what we need is someone with the courage to lead. I hope we can remind ourselves that there are already so many people in public life exhibiting courage on the front lines, every single day. You may not agree with everything they say or do, but courageous they are: Josh Shapiro, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pete Buttigieg are just a few, but there are plenty of others—including people running for statewide and local offices now. They may not be “saviors.” That’s the wrong word. But they are public servants, risking their lives for our country.

This is not the time to abdicate your courage. It’s not the time to lie down and wait for some so-called savior to come along. 

Rather, this is the time to see yourself as smart, capable, and courageous, no matter your age, no matter what you have been through. Because it’s true.

I am 100 percent sure that you have had to be courageous to get to this moment in your life. Maybe you haven’t used that word before, but it’s the truth. Getting through life requires courage. Staying true to your principles requires courage. Falling down and getting back up requires courage. Starting again requires courage. Going, staying, persevering—it all requires courage.

This week, courage was on display everywhere I looked. The Wall Street Journal showed courage when it stood by its reporting, even though the president threatened it. They stood strong. PBS also came out swinging. “We intend to stay the course,” they said.

At least, let’s hope so.

Andrea Gibson’s wife showed courage in the face of her grief. The families in Texas who buried their little girls showed courage—wow, did they ever. Actor Gary Sinise displayed tremendous courage in talking about his grief and his son. The families of the Idaho victims showed unwavering courage as they stood to face their children’s killer in court. This coward just sat there like a motionless wax figure. Disgusting.

Courage or cowardice. It’s a choice.

Speaking of courage, every week I’m blown away by so many Sunday PLUS members who show courage in their weekly comments. I’m often left speechless by all they are juggling, dealing with, and managing without complaint. They are grateful to be here and to be alive, to be in service to family, to community, to one another. They give me so much hope. They really do. They are caregiving, 

So here we are. And here I am. In a way, I’m back to where I started. It’s early in the a.m. on yet another summer day. The sun is out. A butterfly flies by. Negative news abounds. 😒😞For some reason—maybe it’s a good one, I don’t know—Jeffrey Epstein still dominates the news, something, no doubt, Donald Trump finds beyond irritating. But thankfully, I’m focused on the hope that abounds.

Yes, I’m focused on the hope in you and in me. So that’s what today’s edition of The Sunday Paper is all about. The hope that lies in medical research. The hope that lies in our kids. The hope I have in the Pope and so many other spiritual leaders that I look to for daily inspiration. The hope that resides in the millions of us who are grandparents, who are right there alongside our kids offering a helping hand, some wisdom, some perspective—and always, some laughs. (Hope is a motivator, said Pope Francis.  Hope does not disappoint, said Pope Leo XIV)

"Hope is a thing with feathers," wrote Emily Dickinson.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

Mr. Fred Rogers used to say, “Look for the helpers.” Amen to that, but also keep your mind on hope. Do not let the news, the negativity, or the algorithm take you down.

The early morning is full of hope, as is the world around you. 

Can you hear the birds? (...a thing with feathers). Can you hear the sounds of summer❓ Can you smell the grass and the morning air❓ That’s hope you see coming ‘round the bend and down the street. It makes me smile. And I hope it has the same effect on you as well.

I’ll leave you with this message I got from my friend Jimmy. Thank goodness it was the first message I read this summer morning: “I’m on a train from Poland to Prague ~ watching life go by outside the window. Our time together is so incredibly brief. We think we are here forever. Our lives are but a blip on the great big screen of life. It all goes by SO FAST ~ a gentle reminder to savor this moment, because I promise you this: it will not last.”

Why did the Trump campaign have so many conversations with Russians? Mueller Report

Echo opinion letter published in The Post-Star a New York State newspaper:  Editor:

I have been following the coverage of the Mueller investigation from its beginning. I have read many news articles, and because I am too cheap to pay for two upgrades for ESPN and the Golf Channel, my cable package does not include #45's favorite channel. Being unable to hear both sides' opinions, I decided to read the Mueller report. I purchased my copy for $.99 online.

Volume I is a nightmare. It is so redacted, and includes numerous names of Russian persons and organizations, that you need to constantly refer to Appendix A to make sense of it. 

My biggest concern was why were #45's people in contact with so many Russians?

Volume II proved to be much easier to follow. Two parts that people should definitely read are #45's answers to Mueller's questions. For a self-proclaimed "stable genius with a great mind," #45 had difficulty remembering or recalling numerous events.

Reading the possible obstruction of justice cases was much easier. They involved not just #45, but many of the people who he personally knew or worked on his campaign. Each case is quite easy to follow and involves many members of #45's closest allies. My suggestion is that if you really care about what is happening, you should take the time and read this report. 

As for the congressional hearing, I feel badly that Mueller didn't memorize what was in the report so that he could answer more eloquently.

One more thought. I believe that there are 435 members in the House of Representatives. Why is Donald Trump so focused and obsessed with four of them?* If people in the districts they represent don't agree with them, they will vote them out in the next election. That is also true of the next presidential election.

Daniel Trainor, Queensbury/Florida

*Trump escalated his attacks on a group of four minority congresswomen:  

• Representatives Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota 
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York 
• Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
• Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts