“Backwards and Poor”: Trump Rips Americans Opposed to Data Centers

Anyone who opposes data center development is “backwards and poor,” according to America’s billionaire president.

Donald Trump argued on Truth Social Monday that the only reason to oppose a data center in your community is if you don’t want to be rich.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

Trump further claimed that China would be the ultimate benefactor of the pushback, claiming that if Americans “kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”

“The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them,” he continued. “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”

Recent polling indicates that the vast majority of Americans—including Republicans—have no interest in permitting the tech industry to build the facilities in their backyards: A survey published earlier this month by Heatmap revealed that 75 percent of Americans oppose data center development in their communities.

That hasn’t always been the case. Heatmap has asked the same question four times in the last year. This time last year, public perception of the issue wasn’t so bad—Americans were actually evenly split on whether they supported or rejected data center development.

But the tech industry has not done a good job at marketing its product, and Americans have become attuned to the inordinate resource drain data centers create. A medium-sized facility can use 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling its hardware—the same amount needed to support a 1,000-household community, according to a 2025 analysis by the nonprofit Environmental and Energy Study Institute.

Nonetheless, some of America’s biggest tech companies—including Meta, Amazon, and Google—have funneled billions of dollars into data center development to power the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. This year alone, the sum is expected to top $700 billion.

Disgraced former Republican Representative George Santos has become the first person to ever receive a lifetime ban from the prediction market Kalshi.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Santos received the ban after he allegedly made over $17,000 from bets he placed about his attendance at President Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this year. Kalshi said in a filing on its website that Santos didn’t cooperate with the company’s investigation and also has to pay a $71,356 penalty.

Santos mocked the company on X on Monday morning, writing: “Hey @Kalshi thanks for the lifetime ban from your gambling platform. Let’s see how much longer you guys are around for.” In a follow-up post, he complained about not abiding by a “30 day notice” the platform issued to him on August 7, “and today they leaked/announced once again their frivolous nonsense.”

In July, Santos agreed to pay $35,000 in fines to settle claims from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the agency the Trump administration claims has authority over prediction markets. The agency accused Santos of leaving out or misrepresenting key information on his social media accounts in order to influence the price of his positions related to the State of the Union address, and also of betting on an event that he had the ability to influence. Last month, Santos’s attorney, Joseph Murray, said that the former congressman only agreed to pay the fines to avoid litigation and did not admit to any wrongdoing.

Santos was expelled from Congress in 2023 amid revelations that he lied about key details of his life and while facing a 23-count federal indictment on charges including conspiracy to commit offenses against the U.S., making false statements to the government, identity theft, and wire fraud. He pleaded guilty to the latter two charges in 2024 and was given a sentence of 87 months in prison, which was cut short when Trump commuted it last year.

The U.S. Postal Service’s capability could be what decides the November elections.

Election officials are sounding alarm bells that the snail-mail service may not be fit to handle the volume of mail-in ballots this midterm cycle. An analysis published Monday by The New York Times revealed that more mail-in ballots were tossed in 2026 and 2025 than in other years.

The Times examined some of the most heavily contested battlegrounds in 12 states—California, Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Washington—and found that ballots were discarded for lateness at a higher rate than previously recorded.

In Wisconsin, the Times noted that late votes accounted for roughly 78 percent of all the tossed ballots during the spring primary season. In the last spring cycle in 2023, late ballots accounted for just 47 percent of the reject pile.

And earlier this month in Michigan, more than 10,000 ballots were thrown out for arriving after the state’s 8 p.m. Election Day deadline, nearly double the number rejected in 2024.

The disparity has forced regional election officials to try to find new solutions to ensure Americans’ votes count this November.

In Colorado, officials have built more mail-in ballot drop boxes so that denizens can have their ballots mailed early, increasing the total number of boxes by 78 percent since 2018.

“We did change the law last legislative session,” Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state, told the Times. “Mail ballots are going out sooner, and drop boxes are going out sooner. That is in direct response to the uncertainty coming from D.C. and Trump’s attacks on our democracy.”

The Postal Service rebuked the claim that its election-season services had become unreliable, telling the Times that more than 95 percent of mail-in ballots were received in time during recent elections.

“There are any number of factors that may impact the timeliness of a returned ballot,” the statement said. “As such, our consistent message to voters who choose to vote by mail is to mail early.”

The U.S. Postal Service is practically as old as the country. It was developed by the Second Continental Congress during the American Revolution, and Benjamin Franklin was appointed as its first postmaster general. Since then, the Postal Service has reinvented itself again and again, keeping up with the myriad shipping demands of the American public and supporting trillions of dollars in commerce while receiving zero tax dollars for its operations.

Still, that hasn’t prevented America’s public mail system from becoming a favorite target of the president. Since the throes of the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump has repeatedly argued that the Postal Service should be dismantled to prevent mail-in voting—a practice that he has repeatedly accused of fraud despite his own apparent preference to vote by mail.

Last week, the Supreme Court buoyed one of Donald Trump’s more aggressive voter-suppression efforts, permitting the White House to move forward with an executive order that effectively transferred control of the mail-in voting process to Postmaster General David Steiner, who was appointed by Trump in July 2025.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is secretly building an army of veterans turned influencers.

The Department of Defense has employed a number of conservative military veterans with large social media followings in civilian government roles, The Washington Post reported Sunday. It’s not exactly clear what their official roles or assignments are, but these influencers are boosting Hegseth’s pet culture war issues and attacking the Trump administration’s critics.

Among the veterans currently included on the Pentagon’s payroll are Rob Maness, a retired Air Force colonel with more than 135,000 followers on X, and Kurt Schlichter, a retired Army colonel and columnist with nearly 620,000 followers on X, according to people familiar with the matter. Pentagon records reviewed by the Post revealed that both influencers had government emails including a “.civ” suffix as recently as this week, revealing their civilian-employee role, and both were assigned to the office of Anthony Tata, the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

Neither of these government-funded influencers bothered to disclose their employment status during their ceaseless cheerleading of the Trump administration. Maness and Schlichter did not respond to the Post’s request for comment, but the former posted what appeared to be his own response to the report: “Don’t forget kids, regime media is still fake news.” Big words from an apparent state propagandist.

Thomas Anderson, an attorney who writes under the pen name “Cynical Publius” to his more than 323,000 followers, also held a “.civ” email and was assigned to Tata’s office, according to people familiar with the matter and Pentagon records. He was no longer listed as an active employee in Pentagon records this past week. (Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay jointly wrote under the pen name “Publius” while publishing the Federalist Papers.)

Anderson declined to comment to the Post, but wrote in a post on X that he’d been invited to serve on a special task force studying the U.S. military’s senior service colleges after publishing an article on “Making the War Colleges Great Again” in February. He claimed his stint ended in July.

“At no time have I ever received any compensation of any kind from any government source of any kind for anything I write or have ever written on X or in any magazine or other source,” Anderson wrote. “Those who claim otherwise defame me.”

Last week, The Bulwark reported that Jennica Pounds, the Utah woman behind the prominent right-wing account DataRepublican, had been listed as a “special government employee” of the Defense Department since July. Pounds launched a public tool Friday called DSA Explorer, which she described as an “interactive map of the Democratic Socialists of America and the wider anti-imperialist solidarity network.”

The question has baffled industry experts for months now: How has the Freedom Fuel Network, a pro-Trump private chain of gas stations, been able to sell fuel at decidedly lower rates than its competitors? The answer may lie in a new lawsuit against the company.

Oil supplier Mansfield Oil Company sued a company that provided gas to Freedom Fuel, KRSM Inc., for acquiring over 1.1 million gallons of fuel worth about $4 million without paying for it, according to court documents filed in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Pennsylvania on August 19.

According to the lawsuit, KRSM hadn’t paid for the fuel as of August 17, despite getting the fuel from Mansfield between May 21 and July 7, and Mansfield sending updated invoices on July 17. The two companies had agreed that KRSM had to pay for fuel within 10 days of receiving it, but according to the lawsuit, Mansfield’s bank said on July 28 that KRSM had “refused” draft requests for payment.

KRSM sold “a portion” of the fuel it acquired to Freedom Fuel stations, the lawsuit states. Last month, President Trump touted the gas station chain, which has 25 stations in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, for prices under the national average. Freedom Fuel stations “are doing their part to answer the President’s call to lower prices at the pump,” White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said last month.

Mansfield alleges in the lawsuit that KRSM sold discounted fuel to Freedom Fuel and was able to “garner such publicity” because it “never paid” for it. The White House has said the stations, which have since expanded to 29 stations, are private businesses that don’t receive any federal funding.

When the White House was praising Freedom Fuel last month for its below-market prices, it wasn’t clear how it was able to afford it or who was behind the chain. Politico found that least seven of the stations are owned by affiliates of Blue Owl, a New York–based asset manager whose stock Trump has bought and sold, and which he still has significant holdings in.