AI Data Centers are America First in Action

American Thinker 

Artificial intelligence (AI) is not some distant experiment reserved for Silicon Valley giants. It already reshapes Main Street.

Far from ushering in Armageddon, AI gives small business owners the power to cut costs, serve customers better, and compete against anyone in the world.

Republicans who recoil from this reality are handing the future to Beijing. They also embolden a Democrat party now captured by hard-left forces that despise the very foundations of this country. 

Roger Williams, congressional Republican from Texas, is chairman of the House Committee on Small Business. He recently convened a hearing titled “AI on Main Street” that laid out the plain facts.

Nearly three-quarters of small enterprises already use some form of AI. Generative tools help retailers source products more cheaply, restaurants manage inventory, and service businesses handle routine work so owners can focus on growth. A skincare company in California’s Coachella Valley used these tools to find lower-cost suppliers. It avoided passing higher prices to customers.

AI adoption is strong among tech and entertainment companies, yet even half of traditional brick-and-mortar operations have begun to apply the technology. The holdouts are not rejecting the idea out of principle. Many simply lack trained workers, face regulatory confusion, or still do not understand how AI tools fit their daily operations.

Clear national rules on data privacy and targeted training programs, such as those advanced by US House Republicans, are essential. After all, every Main Street proprietorship deserves to move forward with confidence.

President Donald J. Trump understands this. He has directed federal agencies to accelerate approvals for large AI data centers and open suitable federal land. He strips away layers of unnecessary review, while ensuring that ordinary households and small firms do not subsidize the electricity needed for new AI infrastructure.

Large operators must pay the full cost of added power generation. More than 200 utilities, developers, and states have already joined a Ratepayer Protection Pledge. It covers 80 percent of the power delivered to American homes and businesses.

Trump’s broader AI Action Plan rests on three straightforward pillars.

The first is removing barriers to innovation. The second entails expanding the physical capacity of data centers and chip plants, while training the workforce that builds them. The third means exporting and securing American technology packages to trusted global partners.

Energy capacity in the United States has barely grown since the 1970s, while China has raced ahead. Only a determined “build” approach closes that gap and keeps the decisive economic and military advantages on this side of the Pacific.

Yet public resistance has grown loud.

Protests have targeted hundreds of proposed AI data center sites. Local bans and freezes have appeared in dozens of jurisdictions. Polls show majorities in both major parties favor at least a temporary nationwide pause. The stated concerns are water use, noise, traffic, and fear of higher bills. These are real enough for some communities.

Deeper still is anxiety that AI will replace human jobs. Young workers in highly exposed occupations have already seen employment decline. Nearly two-thirds of Americans expect fewer jobs over the next two decades. That fear is understandable. It is also fatal if it becomes national policy.

Global investment in AI more than doubled in a single year. Private capital poured into the sector, with generative tools leading the surge. American private investment dwarfs China’s by a factor of more than 20. The economic value American users already extract from AI has climbed sharply. The technology is not optional. It will expand whether Americans like it or not.

The only question is whether the data centers and the rules that govern them will fly the American flag or the Chinese one.

Some of the most organized opposition carries a darker pedigree. The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a Marxist-Leninist group with documented ties to China. These come through leadership overlap and fiscal networking. The PSL has helped organize campaigns that delayed or blocked more than $20 billion in proposed AI investment across multiple states. Under federal law, the PSL need not disclose its issue-advocacy donors.

While the Chinese communist party (CCP) builds its own AI capacity without hesitation, it benefits when Americans choke off their own. That same party has sunk deep roots into American institutions that shape future leaders.

A joint investigation by House committees revealed that Harvard created a special nonprofit vehicle to accept foreign money when the university itself could not. Its public-health school hosted sessions that appear to have included participants from a Chinese paramilitary force sanctioned for involvement in the genocide of Uyghurs. Harvard officials worried first about damaging relations with Beijing rather than about American law or human rights.

University researchers have co-authored papers with entities tied to China’s defense apparatus on dual-use technologies. One former professor who accepted Chinese talent-recruitment funds later rebuilt his lab in China. He now works on brain-computer interfaces with clear military applications.

The pattern is consistent: Chinese money flows in, standards erode, and sensitive research flows out.

The influence does not stop at Harvard Yard. Community organizations linkedto the CCP’s United Front Work Department have directed the overwhelming majority of their political donations to Democrats for decades. In New York alone, the imbalance has been stark. Executives tied to firms under CCP influence have given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the blue team in this midterm cycle alone.

In California, individuals and employees of companies flagged for close collaboration with the Chinese military have poured substantial sums into the campaign accounts of leading Democrats. These blue “public servants” hold office at every level of government. Senior staff, at businesses the Pentagon believes are intertwined with China’s military, have directed millions of dollars to blue coffers since 2020.

The Chinese Communist Party cultivates influence where resistance becomes weakest. The Democrat party is today’s marshmallow target.

Hard-left forces trafficking in third-worldism, racial grievance, and open hostility to Western civilization now define the blue team. Anti-Western, anti-white, and antisemitic attitudes, dressed up as “democratic socialism,” surge through its ranks. Avowed communists are no longer obscure. They increasingly set the tone.

Should Democrats capture the House, the Senate, or both this November, they will move aggressively to cripple the Trump administration. Investigations that expose Chinese influence will be shut down. Efforts to restrict Beijing’s reach will be slowed or blocked. Simultaneously, Democrats will create every possible obstacle for Republican presidential contenders as the 2028 cycle starts.

The result will be paralysis where resolve is required and surrender where strength is essential.

Republican voters who stay home this November choose to place America last. The progress already made in exposing Chinese penetration of elite institutions, and in advancing American AI leadership, deserves protection. The country should continue to be led with strength. Not handed over to forces of race-communist, democratic-socialist carnage.

Artificial intelligence is the future for small businesses and for the nation. Data centers are the foundation of that future. President Trump is right to endorse them. Anyone who stands in the way, whether from misplaced fear or deliberate sabotage, serves Beijing’s interest and weakens the United States. The choice in November is unmistakable.

Show up and vote to defend America herself.

Podcast thread for August 28

 

almost time for 1 of the best months of the year.

Socialism: The Greatest Rebrand in Political History

Townhall 

The strangest political comeback of my generation isn’t by any one politician, but an ideology many politicians are using to win.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is converting social media views into votes across elections from Colorado to Michigan. And it tells me something extraordinary has happened to my generation.

Socialism, the ideology responsible for the greatest economic failures and deaths of millions of people just in the last century, has become fashionable again. Not that my generation was ever taught that record.

Ask a 22-year-old what socialism means, and you won’t hear about state control, central planning, shortages, confiscation, or concentrated political and economic power. You will hear about affordable housing, “free” healthcare, student-loan forgiveness, higher wages, and about taxing billionaires.

This may be the most successful rebranding campaign in political history.

Only 40 percent of Americans under 30 told Pew Research they view capitalism positively — an astonishing judgment from a generation benefiting daily from technologies created by free enterprise.

How did we get here? Education, or rather, the lack of it.

A young American graduates from college with an increasingly useless degree and increasingly unending debt. She must pay for rent, groceries, health insurance, and transportation. She quickly realizes the home her parents bought when they were 27 may be beyond her reach at 30. Social media algorithms provide a daily parade of rage-bait directed at billionaires.

Then someone offers an explanation seductive in its simplicity: socialism is the cure.

Except it is the disease, with better marketing. The promise of socialism is intoxicating because it begins at the end: Everyone has housing, healthcare, and a dignified wage — nobody is obscenely rich or desperately poor. “Equality” achieved, right?

This is where the lack of education becomes most apparent. Children are not taught about the realities of socialism. Who decides what housing should cost, what doctors should be paid, what constitutes a fair wage, and how much wealth is too much? Government does, and that is the trick buried inside the socialist promise: It claims to transfer power from the powerful to “the people” while actually transferring it from millions of individuals to a small group controlling the state. Socialism doesn’t eliminate power, greed, or elites; it concentrates power, gives greed government authority, and creates elites you cannot escape by taking your business elsewhere.

Eventually, socialism collides with a stubborn reality: Government can redistribute wealth, but it cannot redistribute wealth nobody has created. Its defenders point to Denmark, Sweden, or Norway. These are countries with private property, private companies, market pricing, and entrepreneurship, and they are called socialist. Except that’s not quite true. They are capitalist economies with large welfare states, where capitalism creates the wealth and government chooses how much to redistribute.

Conservatives nevertheless make a mistake when we simply yell “Venezuela!” and consider the argument finished, because Gen Z’s frustrations are real even while the socialist explanation is false.

Housing, college, and healthcare are expensive, and young Americans understandably fear homeownership, marriage, children, and financial security are moving beyond their reach. The question isn’t whether the problems exist, but what actually caused them.

Many of America’s most dysfunctional markets are those where government interference is most disruptive. Housing is scarce where government makes building homes difficult; college prices exploded when the federal government loaned more money; and healthcare operates inside a labyrinth of mandates, subsidies, and regulations nobody would mistake for a free market.

Yet capitalism is indicted, and the proposed cure for markets disrupted by government is… somehow more government.

What Gen Z actually wants is not what socialism is but what socialismpromises: Security, opportunity, a home, a family, and a life in which hard work produces progress. Those aspirations are profoundly human, and no economic system has come remotely close to capitalism’s ability to satisfy them on a mass scale. Free enterprise transformed luxuries into ordinary conveniences, inventions into industries, and human imagination into wealth on a scale our ancestors could scarcely comprehend.

Gen Z has every right to be angry about the economy it inherited, but anger is not an economic system, and socialism is not compassion. It is an old idea with an old record, sold to a generation encouraged to judge it by its intentions rather than its consequences.

My generation should know better than to buy something simply because the packaging changed.

🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 

Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 

man-made wonders, and whatever else you can think of. 

No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 

Democrats’ Racial Grievances Are Just A Cynical Grift

The hypocrisy of Wasserman Schultz shifting districts to represent a majority-minority district was not lost upon black Democrats.

The Federalist 

In November 2012, then Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz declared of the newly elected Congress: “They [Republicans] got whiter and more male, and we now have a majority minority and female caucus for the first time in history.” Fourteen years later, Wasserman Schultz, currently a representative for Florida’s 25th congressional district — a district whose boundaries were shifted earlier this year — has shifted to campaign in another, neighboring Florida district. In the supremest of ironies, it is not only majority-minority (49 percent black), but has been represented by black Democrats since the 1990s.

Wasserman Schultz’s decision to change districts to increase her chances of staying in Congress — soundly defeating the competition, including scandal-ridden Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick on Aug. 18 — not only presents a remarkably blatant example of the former DNC Chair’s hypocrisy, but proof positive that leftist propaganda about racial ideology will always take a backseat to politics. Whether the grifting is of a racial or gender bent, the woke objective has never been about justice, but the cynical exploitation of the language of “diversity” to secure political dominance.

Even Democrats Sniffed A Florida Scam

The hypocrisy of Wasserman Schultz shifting districts to represent a majority-minority district was not lost upon black Democrats there, especially given analysts expect the number of black lawmakers will decrease after the midterm election.

“She’s been an ally, but suddenly it’s feeling more like she’s using the familiarity she’s built against us,” Corey Shearer, president of Broward County’s Black Democratic Caucus recently told the Washington Post.

Of Florida’s fifteen elected DNC members, ten of them signed a statement declaring that Wasserman Schultz was “treating one of Florida’s few remaining majority-Black districts as a political opportunity.” The statement added: “We cannot claim to defend voting rights, racial justice, and representation while undermining Black political power when it becomes politically convenient.”

Wasserman Schultz’s opportunistic political play even elicited criticism from national party leaders. House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries refused to endorse her, describing “the sensitivities of the moment in terms of an unprecedented Jim Crow-like assault on Black political representation.”

Chair of the Congressional Black Caucus Yvette D. Clarke in turn explained: “We had a conversation …. Encouragement was not a part of that conversation.” The liberal American Prospect described Wasserman Schultz as “lily-white” and attacked her for “parachut[ing] into a race alongside four viable Black candidates.”

They Attack ‘Structural Racism’ Until It’s Inconvenient

Wasserman Schultz will probably win the heavily Democratic FL-20 in November — her Republican opponent Brent Anderson has raised far less money than her, and of the district’s registered voters, more than 55 percent of them are Democrats. That her likely victory is in direct contradiction with her own remarks on the racial composition of Congress (let alone the broader platform of her party) obviously illuminates Wasserman Schultz’s hypocrisy. But it also demonstrates that for as much as the left foregrounds race as the most important political issue of our time, the reality is that even the woke ideologues will always prioritize political power over ideological consistency.

During the 2020 presidential election, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden asserted: “we must dismantle systemic racism;” his running mate Kamala Harris condemned the “structural racism” of the United States. In 2022, Hakeem Jeffries, who is a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, demanded the nation “address the poison of white supremacy,” a poison that supposedly affected “the whole country.” Earlier, this year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on the short list for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, opined: “If you are in this country and you are not Black, you benefit from a system of white supremacy.”

Obviously, the left is beholden to grievance narratives antithetical to American history, identity, and our constitutional order. As much as offering obeisance to those narratives rallies the base or presents a means of tarring conservatives as racist, fascist defenders of the patriarchy, liberals exploit them for political advantage. But when they don’t, or even undermine their grasp on power… well, that’s how we get Debbie “Downer” Wasserman Schultz claiming: “We don’t want to lose the power and experience I have for Broward.” (Or Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, who, despite complaints about “400 years worth of institutionalized racism” and demanding “massive structural change” to American cities, was last year elected to a third term.) 

Call Them What They Are: A Grift

All of this shows that the grievance narratives so central to the left’s messaging are a cynical con intended to empower and enrich at the expense of America’s already fraying social fabric. Indeed, in this current Congress, women comprise a minority (42 percent) of Democrat representatives, while non-whites are also a minority of Democrat congressmen and women (45 percent). For all of the talk of structural racism and the patriarchy, Dems seem certainly content to “perpetuate” both by voting for men and whites when it is politically advantageous.

More broadly there is a long list of grievance grifters who have made millions off these narratives, among them Robin DiAngelo of White Fragility notoriety, Ibram X. Kendi who reportedly charges $25,000 for a single-hour presentation, or Black Lives Matter’s Patrice Cullors, who purchased a $6 million Los Angeles-area property with the money she raised for the organization.

The DEI consultancy industry alone is reported to generate at least $5 billion annually. “DEI initiatives play a crucial role in uplifting historically persecuted or marginalized communities and providing pathways to success for countless numbers of students,” Wasserman Schultz declared in 2024.

Floridians in FL-25 will likely have Ms. Wasserman Schultz to represent them and advocate on behalf of “marginalized communities.” As she herself told the Washington Post: “You want to make sure that you have someone who knows the communities and knows their values, who has delivered for them and knows how to fight for them.” Or you can remember her racial remarks from 2012, and note that her victory will ensure a “whiter” Congress.

Here's the Least Surprising Study Ever Regarding Leftist Violence and Transgender Ideology

Townhall 

I mean, did we need to spend money on a study like this? It’s the least surprising finding, since we’ve long known that smoking causes lung cancer. But there appears to be a link between leftist violence and transgender ideology — those who support transgender rights, like the clowns seen outside WNBA games, are more likely to support political violence. Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the school shootings, and other acts of mayhem — the transgender violence has reached levels of absurdity which don’t get covered by the media for obvious political reasons (via NY Post):

Trump administration-funded researchers and independent collaborators found a startling correlation between proponents of a transgender ideology and left-wing violence, according to a new report obtained by The Post and set to be released Wednesday.

The new study from researchers at Rutgers University, the right-leaning Manhattan Institute and Network Contagion Research Institute found that those normalizing transgender beliefs were more likely to be supportive of political violence.

Respondents were quizzed about six potential targets of political violence for the study: “killing Charlie Kirk, killing Donald Trump, killing Brian Thompson, arson of ICE buildings, damaging wealthy people’s property, and violence against police.”

“These findings suggest that gender ideology is associated with LWA [left-wing authoritarianism] and willingness to justify political violence,” stated the study, which titled “Where the Clinic Meets the Movement: Does Gender Ideology Arm Left-Wing Authoritarian Psychology?”

[…]

Kirk’s case was not the only high-profile act of political violence linked to views on gender ideology. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh faced an assassination attempt from a suspect who later identified as a transgender woman.

School shootings in Minnesota and Tennessee were also carried out by trans-identifying individuals.

“One of our study’s most interesting and perhaps shocking findings was that accepting gender ideology appeared to augment authoritarian attitudes on support for political violence,” Colin Wright, one of the researchers, told The Post.

Well…well…well is all I have to say here. 

Russian Airforce Lt Col Killed in St Petersburg Car Bomb Attack

Conservative Treehouse 

Yesterday, CTH noted to pay close attention to the Finland-Russia border region and the areas in/around St Petersburg.  There has been a visible coordination between Finland and Ukraine in the attacks against Russia.  I would not be surprised to hear this terrorist crossed that border region.

A Lt Col in the Russian Airforce was killed immediately when a car bomb exploded that also severely injured his wife.  As you are reading this there are also reports of thousands of Ukraine civilians fleeing Kiev ahead of Russia’s predicted retaliation.  (Update: Russia retaliated) The serviceman was killed in an area heavily occupied by military personnel and their families.

This is the fourth car bomb in the past few months and the seventh Ukraine car/parcel bombing in the last few years. Zelenskyy is in Moldova today organizing new attacks against Russia.

RUSSIA – A senior Russian officer has been killed by a car bomb in St Petersburg, Russian media reported.

Footage posted on Telegram showed emergency workers and police flooding a street littered with the debris of an exploded vehicle and cordoning it off from the public.

An explosion sounded at around 10am near a Magnit supermarket in the suburban neighbourhood of Shushary, killing the lieutenant colonel and badly injuring his wife, according to Fontanka, a St Petersburg news publication, which cited eyewitnesses.

The outlet claimed that both had lost their legs in the blast, which took place as they began driving away from their home. (read more)

As Pete Hegseth Honors Abbey Gate Heroes, NYT Launches Bizarre Hit Piece Targeting Him

RedState 

As a substantial slice of America's electorate passed the fifth anniversary of the Abbey Gate suicide bombing wondering when justice would finally arrive for the people whose incompetence and dereliction of duty made that debacle possible, the New York Times had bigger fish to fry. According to that paper the real issue was not the deeply embedded, bone-deep slovenliness of our corps of flag officers/general officers which was focused on mismatched genitalia and filling in the correct boxes for promotions rather than warfighting. No, the real problem is Secretary of War Pete Hegseth. 

As Pete Hegseth was presenting three U.S. Marines with long overdue awards for heroism on August 26, 2021, awards that had been suppressed on the orders of the Biden administration, presumably because recognizing heroism on that day would point a condemning finger of guilt at Lloyd Austin and his inner circle, (see 'Had to Be Ordered to Stand Down': DoW Honors 'Valor' of Marines Who Defended Abbey Gate – RedState and Sean Parnell Honors Service Members Killed on Abbey Gate Anniversary, Makes Shocking Revelation – RedState), the New York Times declared Hegseth had left the U.S. military "rudderless."

Hegseth removing FOGOs who were not up to the task or who had a reputation for "wokeness" has rubbed the professional media class the wrong way. I previously posted on this reaction (see The Reaction to GEN Donahue's Firing Indicates Hegseth's Action Was Correct and Timely – RedState) and noted, "Holding a senior rank is not a sinecure. It isn't a personal bauble. It is a trust, and part of that trust is loyalty to the President and the Secretary of War, as well as fealty to the Constitution. You can't be faithful to the Constitution while surreptitiously fighting the policies of the commander-in-chief." 

The most notable thing about the NYT piece is that in the political bubble occupied by the writers, nothing happens if there isn't a politically correct 4-star pushing the buttons.

One measure of the vacuum at the top of the Army is the number of four-star generals serving in its ranks. As recently as January 2025, when Mr. Hegseth took office, there were 10 four-star generals on active duty. The service currently has five, the fewest in decades.

Some of those positions are commands focused on regions of the world, like the Middle East or Asia, and are being filled by senior officers from other services. Some have been eliminated.

Others, like the job overseeing the Army’s Transformation and Training Command, have been empty for months. Last summer, Mr. Hegseth selected Gen. David M. Hodne to lead the command and then fired him eight months later without explanation.

The command is responsible for training and equipping the Army’s ground units, including its Patriot antimissile crews. The Patriots are the main defense against Iranian ballistic missiles fired at U.S. bases in the Middle East.

I have a news flash for the NYT. If we are at the point where we need 4-star clout to train soldiers to use Patriot missiles, then we are beyond the point of no return.

More to the point, the 8.3 million men who served in the U.S. Army during World War II, about 6 million Army and 2.3 million Army Air Corps, rated a total of 17 officers at the 4- or 5-star rank. It is hard to believe the approximately 454,000 active duty soldiers in today's Army need ten 4-stars pushing them around.

Hegseth seems motivated by the famous quote from French war correspondent and novelist Jean Lartéguy:

“I’d like France to have two armies: one for display, with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, fanfares, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general’s bowel movements or their colonel’s piles: an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country.

“The other would be the real one, composed entirely of young enthusiasts in camouflage battledress, who would not be put on display from whom possible efforts would be demanded and to whom all sorts of tricks would be taught. That’s the army in which I should like to fight.”

Under Biden we were well on our way to achieving a military that was the punchline to a joke. Hegseth is trying to jerk it into reality. If that means taking a page from General George C. Marshall's "plucking board" in the pre-World War II Army then that has to happen. In the case of Marshall, he knew we were headed for war and he knew that the corps of senior officers, promoted entirely based upon seniority, was not up to the task. In his first six months as Army Chief of Staff he forced the retirement of nearly 200 officers deemed to be not up to the task of leading troops in combat.

Losing a handful of generals and general officer billets has not left the Army rudderless. Rather, to extend the naval metaphor, the culling of the herd has removed the "sea anchor" that was hindering the Army's progress from a DEI consumed organization into a fighting force feared by our enemies. 

There is a footnote to this story that we should take heed of.

Even though the Army hasn't been hit a lot harder than other services by Hegseth's cuts, this article is a series of gripes about Army cuts. I don't think it is a coincidence that this hit piece appeared about the time the rumored departure of Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who allegedly never meshed with Secretary Hegseth in style or substance.

This is not an accusation that Driscoll is behind the story, but from the tenor of the story and the complaints voiced it is definitely sourced by someone in Driscoll's office.

The bottom line is that general officers serve at the pleasure of the President, and, to a great extent, that "pleasure" is contingent on how well they support their service secretary and the Secretary of War. Hegseth can't make the changes that need to be made if he must work with and through a cadre of FOGOs who are beholden to the previous system and loyal to the last administration. There is no evidence that any of the services have suffered because a few generals or admirals have been defenstrated.

♦️𝐖³𝐏 𝐃𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐲 𝐍𝐞𝐰𝐬 𝐎𝐩𝐞𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝

 

W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

posted by DarkGoldenMan

Welcome to the W³P Daily News Open Thread. 

Post whatever you got in the comments section below.

This feature will post every day at 6:30am Mountain time.