Artificial intelligence companies and the data centers that power them are devoting mouth-watering sums to achieve their potential. The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Meta, and Amazon are “expected to spend more than $670 billion this year” on capital expenditures. McKinsey & Company forecasts that “global spending on data centers could reach $7 trillion by 2030.”

As this cash cascades, one would expect citizens and politicians to dispatch marching bands and cheerleaders to celebrate these virtually infinite investments and seduce the CEOs who allocate them.

Hardly.

AI firms and data centers would be lucky to be treated like Rodney Dangerfield.

On June 2, voters in Monterey Park, California, approved a permanent moratorium on data centers. It passed 86% to 14%. Interconnected Capital’s database confirms 127 data center bans in jurisdictions across 40 states, including 11 perpetual prohibitions.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., have introduced a federal freeze on data centers. Sanders also proposes 50% nationalization of the largest AI companies.

Some AI haters want blood.

“The ship may have sailed on nonviolence,” said Stop AI activist Sam Kirchner, per Zusha Elinson’s superb expose on anti-AI extremism in Monday’s Wall Street Journal. On April 6, someone fired 13 shots at the home of Indianapolis City Councilman Ron Gibson. A note on his doorstep read: “NO DATA CENTERS.”

Four days later, police say, Daniel Moreno-Gama hurled a flaming Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco mansion. Moreno-Gama, 20, then allegedly drove to OpenAI’s nearby headquarters, attempted to shatter its glass doors with a chair, and announced his wish to burn it down and kill those inside.

Moreno-Gama pleaded not guilty to two federal counts of attempted murder and other crimes, including exploding or igniting a destructive device. At that time of the incident, officials say, he carried an anti-AI screed on his person.

How do these companies defend themselves amid escalating acrimony and aggression? What is the great, big, beautiful tomorrow that AI envisions? What is the case for data centers?

Who knows?

I have looked fruitlessly for any such advertising or public relations campaign. What little message exists fails miserably to confront AI’s foes.

“Granola is not for breakfast,” a Manhattan billboard declared. “It’s the AI notepad for meetings.” This is the only ad I have seen that suggests how AI improves anyone’s life.

Rather than engage everyday people, most AI ads parrot techno-jargon.

“Encore: The data layer for physical AI,” a sign stated beside Highway 101, just south of San Francisco. Another: “Best AI runs on Coreweave.”

Reconcile AI is maddeningly cryptic: “AI for prod.” 

“You can just build [a game engine] with CODEX,” explained one OpenAI ad. If you work at Nintendo, great. If you are no tech bro, ho hum.

AI companies do pitch to marketing professionals:

An AirOps ad says: “See how AI search describes your brand, then optimize for it.”

Wooing marketing MBAs is fine. But such messages do not soothe workers who fear AI will wolf down their jobs with no upside to such downsizing.

Neither technobabble nor marketing lingo impress regular consumers. Most AI ads are akin to the F-150 truck ditching its durability claim—“Built Ford Tough”—and instead selling “5-link coil rear suspension with Panhard rod!”

While AI companies say little to average Americans, at least their lips move—slightly. The data-center industry is getting jackhammered in the court of public opinion. It has yet to plead not guilty.

The precisely three pro-data center messages I have seen are all by outsiders.

• The pro-market group Unleash Prosperity’s first-rate graph provides desperately needed perspective on water-cooled data centers’ humungous H2O use—a key criticism.

Data centers devour 17.4 billion gallons of water annually. How dare they?

What about watermelons? They absorb 52 billion gallons of water—thrice what the “evil” data centers require.

Golf courses use 531 billion gallons—31 times what data centers use.

Imagine that Americans suddenly craved data centers, and they exploded 200-fold. They still would use less water than the 3.91 trillion gallons required to grow corn for food and ethanol—225 times what data centers swallow.

Data-centerphobes should yank the hay from cows’ mouths and demand a permanent moratorium on alfalfa hay farms. They guzzle 6.03 trillion gallons annually—346 times what the “demonic” data centers gulp. When will OpenAI’s adversaries lob Molotov cocktails at hay farms?

• Free-market stalwart John Stossel’s YouTube video details how decades-old government limits on electricity force AI companies and data centers to compete with consumers for megawatts. Between 2000 and 2025, Stossel laments, “Connecting a new plant to the grid has gone from two years to now eight years.”

• Meanwhile, critics contend that every patch of grass in Virginia soon will be paved over as data centers proliferate and benefit only their multi-billionaire owners. Regardless, The Atlantic praised these facilities—from the Left.

Data centers occupy 3% of Loudoun County’s land but pay almost half of its property taxes, Elias Wachtel reported on June 12. “We’ve been able to build 32 schools, and 16 fire stations, and six libraries, and miles of roads, and more than 1,000 acres of parks and recreation, and started an affordable-housing program,” Loudoun’s Chief Development Officer Buddy Rizer, told Wachtel, “all while lowering the tax rate on our citizens.”

The data center industry should turn that into a 30-second ad, stick $100 million behind it, and run it until Americans cry: “Uncle!”

Instead, the apparent strategy is for AI and data-center executives to hide beneath their desks and hope that their nemeses go away. They won’t. They will torture these companies until they are demoralized into surrender, partially or fully nationalized, or strangled with red tape.

From higher productivity to faster cures and deeper innovation, AI offers possibilities still unimagined. And yet the AI and data center industries fail to defend themselves against these potentially lethal assaults.

AI’s mortal enemies are scaling the front gates. They face not even slingshot fire.

​We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of the Daily Signal.

A 33-year-old Canadian woman named Kaitlyn Tracey is currently cooling her heels in ICE custody after being accused of assaulting a juvenile over the Fourth of July weekend for the sin of wearing pro-Trump clothing.

The post Nolte: Canadian Woman in ICE Custody After Being Accused of Assaulting Juvenile Trump Supporter appeared first on Breitbart.

If you look for the 1939 masterpiece Gone with the Wind on Netflix, you’ll be smacked across the face as a racist and scolded into seeking out the far left-wing radicals in Black Lives Matter.

The post Nolte: Netflix Smears ‘Gone with the Wind’ as Racist, Refers Viewers to Black Lives Matter appeared first on Breitbart.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer appears to have let out a ghastly flatulence this week on the floor of the chamber while criticizing President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.

The post Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer Appears to Loudly Fart on Senate Floor appeared first on Breitbart.

The discussion remains controversial depending on the location.  Generally, data centers located in rural isolation do not seem to be too controversial. However, data centers built in proximity to population centers stimulate a great deal of opposition. Recently New York state banned the building of Data Centers as politicization of the construct has become somewhat […]

The post President Trump Highlights Importance of Data Centers appeared first on The Last Refuge.

Melissa Chaudhry, a Muslim Democrat running for Congress in Olympia, Washington, has reportedly threatened to switch parties if elected after fellow Democrats and LGBTQ+ activists pitted her Muslim beliefs against supporting LGBTQ+ rights.

Andrew Ashiofu, chair of the Stonewall Democrats, the official LGBTQ+ caucus in the Washington State Democratic Party, recently told Jerusalem News Syndicate that Chaudhry threatened to leave the Democratic Party and become the first Green Party member of Congress during a local progressive publication’s election board meeting.

Board members reminded Chaudhry that the meeting was on the record. “This whole meeting, this whole process is on the record,” one member told Chaudhry, according to Ashiofu. “If there’s something, if you don’t want said, don’t say it in the meeting.”

Chaudhry is running for Congress in Washington’s 9th District and is attempting to primary longtime Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash.

Democrats Question Chaudhry’s Commitment to LGBTQ+ Rights

Before Chaudhry levied her threat, she received backlash from local Democrats because she told The Stranger, a progressive Seattle publication, that she omitted explicit references to LGBTQ+ rights from her website because “a lot of Muslims do not feel that way, unfortunately.” When asked directly by Jerusalem News Syndicate whether Islam supports gay people or gay rights, Chaudhry emphasized broader religious principles.

Chaudhry’s comments led to backlash from local advocates and Democratic Party organizations, including the Stonewall Democrats, even to the point of pressuring groups to withdraw their endorsements of Chaudhry.

For instance, Ashiofu wrote in a social media post that “Democratic voters deserve truth, not concealment. Endorsing bodies deserve respect, not attempts to manipulate their process.”

“Equally alarming is her acknowledgment that she omitted LGBTQ+ protections from her platform because she feared it would alienate parts of her coalition,” Ashiofu continued.

Chaundry and Ashiofu did not immediately respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment, while the Washington State Democratic Party declined to comment.

Jonathan Choe, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, said in a statement to Jerusalem News Syndicate that Chaudhry’s remarks raise questions about her political messaging

“When Chaudhry says she supports the LGBTQ+ community, I believe she’s lying,” Choe told Jerusalem News Syndicate. “She will pretend to do so in order to gain votes by any means necessary.”

Chaudhry pushed back on the criticism, arguing that opponents and political activists have misrepresented her views. She told Jerusalem News Syndicate that she was “forced into a corner by an aggressive and dishonest political opponent and an interview panel,” referring to former Seattle City Council member Kshama Sawant and members of The Stranger’s election board.

Chaudhry Pushes Back

Chaudhry compared her experience to historical religious persecution, saying people under pressure sometimes make statements simply to end an ordeal.

She also disputed claims that she does not adequately support LGBTQ+ rights, pointing to language now included on her campaign platform. Her website currently calls for “dignity, protection, safety, equality and full civil rights” and “full legal protection and dignity under the law” for LGBTQ+ individuals.

However, archived versions of the website from early June reportedly did not contain such language.

“Islam teaches justice, mercy and protection for everyone suffering oppression,” she said. “I stand for dignity, safety and opportunity for all, including every marginalized community.”

The dispute escalated after Stonewall Democrats issued a public statement opposing Chaudhry’s candidacy.

In response, Chaudhry accused the group of spreading false information, claiming that it denied her endorsement application and prevented her from addressing caucus members.

Ashiofu, however, told Jerusalem News Syndicate that Chaudhry never contacted the organization or submitted the questionnaire required of candidates seeking endorsement. “Only candidates who submit questionnaires are invited to speak to the caucus,” Ashiofu said.

Chaudhry has sought to demonstrate her support for LGBTQ+ individuals through personal examples. According to Jerusalem News Syndicate, she wrote in a social media post that she helped found a Gay-Straight Alliance in high school, has a sister in a same-sex relationship, and counts a lesbian woman and her family among her close friends.

However, Ashiofu said those personal connections do not resolve concerns about her public statements. “Our community is not optional,” he wrote, adding that LGBTQ+ rights “cannot be sidelined for political convenience.”

The controversy has also fueled scrutiny within Washington Democratic Party circles. The 33rd Legislative District Democrats convened an emergency executive board meeting on July 9 to consider whether to rescind their endorsement of Chaudhry.

On June 30, the Supreme Court affirmed in Trump v. Barbara that the 14th Amendment says that if you are born on American soil, you are an American citizen. Chief Justice Roberts, citing Calvin’s Case from 1608, called citizenship “the right to have rights—to freely participate in our political community.”

The ruling settled the question of birthright citizenship in the courts—for now. But it opened a harder one: If citizenship is unconditional, what holds a nation of citizens together?

For most of American history, civic identity was a set of specific commitments, transmitted through institutions everyone belonged to and enforced by law. Alexis de Tocqueville saw this in 1831: “Without ideas held in common, there is no common action, and without common action, there may still be men, but there is no social body.” He viewed Protestantism as a political habit of mind that held the American republic together: every citizen is competent, no priestly caste is required, and individual conscience is the final authority. To Tocqueville, that was the epistemology that made America’s self-governance thinkable.

John Jay added to Tocqueville’s description a fuller list of the ties that bound Americans together in Federalist 2: “a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs.” Common schools read the King James Bible daily. Militia service was compulsory civic formation. Sunday laws, oath requirements, and opening prayers in legislatures reinforced a highly visible civic religion.

A concern with preserving the homogeneous culture Jay described explains why most of the 13 original states enshrined religious tests for officeholding, though the Constitution barred such tests federally. It was also why the Naturalization Act of 1795 required that an applicant be of good moral character, “attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.” Thomas Jefferson warned that immigrants from monarchies would “bring with them the principles of the governments they leave”—the naturalization process existed to screen for exactly that.

You could adopt the American way of life. You could accept that certain offices were closed to you and still participate in politics. You could leave. What you could not do was pretend that this cultural consensus didn’t exist or that the nation didn’t need it—and then work to dismantle it.

The four dissenting justices in Trump v. Barbara saw the importance of upholding this cultural architecture. In his dissent, Justice Thomas quoted Frederick Douglass describing what bound Americans together: “speaking the same language and being of the same religion, worshipping the same God, owing our redemption to the same Savior, and learning our duties from the same Bible.” This is John Jay’s thesis restated 80 years later by a man born into slavery who understood the demands of American citizenship.

Justice Gorsuch framed the entire dispute as feudal birthright versus “a distinctly American settler’s view of citizenship.” Justice Alito called American citizenship “precious” and warned that the majority opinion allowed a person born to a birth tourist, raised abroad, and “inculcated with hatred of this country” to be a citizen who “can enter and leave the country as he pleases” and “cannot be deprived of his status.”

The majority, by contrast, rejected what was left of the founding cultural framework, completing what the Supreme Court had started in the 20th century.

Between 1947 and 1967, the Court incorporated the First Amendment against the states in cases dealing with school prayer (Engel v. Vitale), Bible reading (Abington v. Schempp), religious tests for office (Torcaso v. Watkins), and loyalty oaths (Keyishian v. Board of Regents). Whatever one thinks of those decisions individually, the cumulative effect was the elimination of most of the mechanisms the founders used to transmit shared civic identity.

Meanwhile, the population the founders built that architecture for was changed beyond recognition—and mostly against the people’s will. America’s foreign-born population grew from roughly 10 million in 1965 to over 50 million today. The religious landscape that Tocqueville described as “the foremost of the political institutions” has fractured; the share of Americans identifying as Protestant fell from 69% in 1948 to roughly a third today.

America’s original levers for producing shared civic identity are gone. So what fills the gap?

The New Civic Religion

In place of the founders’ cultural framework is a sprawling institutional apparatus that is funded by roughly a billion dollars through the Ford Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, and dozens of smaller foundations. It operates through iCivics (145,000 teachers, nine million students), New Pluralists ($30 million in funding), PACE (more than 80 funders coordinating on civic messaging), InterfaithAmerica, Define American, and hundreds of grantee organizations.

They call what they’re building “shared democratic norms.” But of the dozens of “norms” this ecosystem promotes, only a few are representative of the American tradition: losers accept election results, power transfers peacefully, and federalism is respected. The rest inculcate a left-wing worldview.

A review of material published in the Journal of Democracy, the publication of the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, attests to this fact.

Francis Fukuyama argues that cultural communities making group-rights claims—that is, demanding exemptions from common family law, establishing independent religious schools, excluding outsiders from public events—“do not deserve equal protection in a modern liberal democracy.” His examples are Muslim immigrant communities in Europe, but the principle he establishes applies to any traditional religious community that claims moral authority apart from the liberal consensus.

Kanchan Chandra proposes “reformulating our understanding of democracy itself to render it a minoritarian system.” Larry Diamond defines the boundary: any organization that “seeks to monopolize a functional or political space in society, claiming that it represents the only legitimate path, contradicts the pluralistic and market-oriented nature of civil society.” Religious communities claiming moral authority need not apply.

This effort goes beyond politics into identity itself. Rachel Kleinfeld of the Carnegie Endowment urges philanthropists to fund “narratives that let people exist in their full complex identities”—a call to identity engineering via DEI. Jennifer Butler of the Faith in Democracy Initiative calls conservative religious infrastructure the main vehicle of “the authoritarian right” and demands competing philanthropic investment in progressive faith leaders. Alfred Stepan’s “twin tolerations” framework requires religious communities to accept democratic outcomes even when they violate their deepest moral teachings, but it imposes no equivalent constraint on secular actors. “Religious institutions should not have constitutionally privileged prerogatives that allow them to mandate public policy to democratically elected governments,” Stepan writes. They may participate only if they accept liberal-democratic supremacy over religious moral authority.

Against George Washington’s admonition of the importance of religion in supporting republican self-government, former Clinton Administration official Bill Galston contends, “Today, ‘we the people’ is understood to mean all citizens, regardless of religion, manners and customs, and length of citizenship. The people is an ensemble of individuals who enjoy a common civic status.” Galston then quotes John Jay’s formula from Federalist 2, declaring it superseded.

Against John Adams’s contention that there exists “eternal and immutable truths,” Jonathan Rauch of the Brookings Institution contends that “the great breakthrough that lies behind modern science and reason, collective reason, is fallibilism,” which is validated by “networks and professionals and institutions, places like the NIH and the newsroom.” Knowledge is determined by consensus; truth is produced by credentialed networks.

Against Alexander Hamilton’s teaching that since the “safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common National sentiment,” to admit foreigners indiscriminately “would be nothing less, than to admit the Grecian Horse into the Citadel of our Liberty and Sovereignty,” George Soros told Bloomberg in 2015, “Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.” The founding-era goal of cultural cohesion must be explicitly dismantled.

The modern creed prescribes which cultures deserve protection, which identities are legitimate, which version of masculinity is acceptable, and which forms of political participation count as democracy. We didn’t eliminate civic religion. We replaced our country’s traditional self-understanding with the views of left-wing philanthropists.

Forming Citizens

The majority in Barbara cited Edward Coke’s “dual and reciprocal tie” between sovereign and subject—protection in exchange for allegiance—to establish birthright citizenship. But they kept the protection half and discarded the allegiance half. Yet the justices who joined that ruling are the same ones who have spent years warning that democracy cannot survive without civic formation.

Chief Justice Roberts called it the area where the rule of law is “most endangered.” Amy Coney Barrett said the Constitution “commits us to tolerance.” Brett Kavanaugh called civic education “the number one thing.” They cannot simultaneously believe democracy requires shared commitments and rule that citizenship requires none—unless they believe someone else will do the forming.

And someone else already is.

Ford, Carnegie, and Open Society began that project more than 20 years ago—and they have been delivering the new civics catechism ever since. Galston’s “populism is the enemy of democracy” is already a civic norm. Chandra’s minoritarian system is already the design goal. Kleinfeld’s DEI identity engineering is already the method.

John Jay’s descriptions of American culture in Federalist 2 need to become prescriptive. Not every element of it can be as true of America now as it was in the 18th century. But English language primacy and civic education laws rooted in the obligations of self-governance are constitutionally available—and Florida, Texas, Arizona, and New Hampshire are already testing them. The point is to force the Court to answer the glaring question it left unanswered in Barbara: Who holds the authority to form citizens?

The post Born in America, Formed by Open Society appeared first on The American Mind.

DOHA — With the U.S. blockade of the important waterway back on amid renewed hostilities in Iran, President Donald Trump announced that he would secure the Strait of Hormuz by posting an old man who asks you three questions before you may pass.

A new bill in Congress would amend the charter of the Daughters of the American Revolution to clarify that men who claim to identify as women cannot join the ladies’ genealogical society. A key leader of a coalition against men in the DAR told the Daily Signal that the bill would “solve all our problems.”

“This is the answer to prayer and would solve all our problems,” Laura McDonald, founder and president of Daughters Advocating for Restoration and a member of Daughters of the American Revolution since 2018, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

McDonald said the organization is in a “governance crisis.” She accused the DAR’s leadership of foisting transgender ideology on the society and requiring chapters to admit men who claim to identify as women. She helped lead dozens of chapters in submitting a resolution to clarify the bylaws and reverse this state of affairs. Members voted down the resolution at the organization’s convention last month, but DAR chapters are continuing to demand another vote.

Rep. Ben Cline, R-Va., introduced the Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act Wednesday. The bill would amend the society’s congressional charter along the lines of McDonald’s resolution.

“The Daughters of the American Revolution was founded to honor and preserve the legacy of the women whose ancestors helped secure America’s independence,” Cline told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday. “For generations, it has celebrated and empowered women while safeguarding its lineage-based mission.”

“But, as America celebrates 250 years of freedom, the organization has departed from those founding principles by embracing a radical, leftist gender ideology at the expense of the women it was created to serve,” the congressman lamented. “My bill, the Daughters of the American Revolution Membership Integrity Act, amends the DAR’s congressional charter to ensure biological men cannot become members of an organization aimed to celebrate our nation’s true daughters.”

The Daughters of the American Revolution did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Sons Becoming Daughters?

The women who founded the DAR in 1890 did so after the Sons of the American Revolution refused to admit women. The current transgender issue dates back to at least 2022, when a New Jersey chapter reportedly accepted a man in 2022, inspiring backlash.

Organizers of the DAR changed the group’s bylaws in 2023, barring local chapters from discriminating on the basis of gender, religion, or sexual orientation. The group’s president general said the new policy would require chapters to admit men who claimed to identify as women, so long as they changed their birth certificates. Many members reportedly resigned following the new policy.

At least 68 chapters in 27 states signed a resolution demanding a vote to clarify the bylaws. In relevant part, the resolution states:

“Resolved, That in Article III, Section 1 of the Bylaws, the term ‘woman’ shall be understood to clearly mean a woman who was born female, and therefore, individuals who were born male shall not be eligible for membership; transgender women shall not be eligible for membership; and men who have their birth certificates changed from male to female shall not be eligible for membership.”

According to McDonald, the DAR bylaws require a separate meeting to address the resolution, but the DAR leadership held the vote at the society’s annual Constitutional Convention instead. Members reportedly voted, 1,481 to 984, against the resolution, though McDonald harbored many concerns about the voting process. Ahead of the vote, the DAR leadership distributed a legal memo opposing the resolution.

Cline’s bill defines “woman” as “an adult human female,” and “female” as “a person who naturally has, had, will have, or would have but for a congenital anomaly or intentional or unintentional disruption, the reproductive system that produces, transports, and utilizes the large gamete (ova) for fertilization.”

Amending the Daughters of the American Revolution Charter

“Our congressional charter was granted on the premise that the DAR is a genealogical society made up of women,” McDonald, the Daughters Advocating Restoration leader, told the Daily Signal. “To knowingly admit males is a violation of that agreement and a violation of our national bylaws.”

Fox News Digital, which first reported on Cline’s bill, noted that Concerned Women for America, the American Principles Project, the Independent Women’s Forum, and Heritage Action for America endorsed the legislation.

“Until the Left gave up on biological reality, it was understood The DAUGHTERS of the American Revolution was a women’s only group,” Dan West, Heritage Action’s government relations director, told the Daily Signal. “Rep. Cline’s self-evident legislation reaffirms that membership in this storied institution is reserved for women and prevents confused men from interfering in a federally chartered women’s society.”

“Heritage Action will not allow woke virtue-signaling to degrade historic organizations like the DAR,” West added.

Actor Ike Barinholtz, star of Apple TV's "The Studio" and the upcoming "Cocomelon: The Movie," was the fill-in host for Jimmy Kimmel on Tuesday and used his "Live" monologue to make gay jokes about the late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and said Graham's sister will suck President Donald Trump's "tits even harder" the her late brother did while in office. 

The post Jimmy Kimmel Guest Host Ike Barinholtz: Lindsey Graham’s Sister ‘Pledges to Suck’ Trump’s ‘Tits Even Harder’ appeared first on Breitbart.

U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said the army has reached its 2026 recruitment goals "eight and a half months" into the year.

The post Exclusive: U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll Highlights Hitting Recruitment Numbers Early appeared first on Breitbart.

A federal judge this week sentenced a Texas man to 20 years in prison for transporting a minor to a “furry” convention in Atlanta in 2024 for his sexual gratification.

The post Texas Man Who Sexually Assaulted Child at ‘Furry’ Convention Sentenced to 20 Years in Federal Prison appeared first on Breitbart.