News

DON'T USE WATER

Lutnick once called data centers' water use real, now calls it propaganda.

By LouOne More Question · the afternoon edition, 1 November 2026

I keep a notebook in the glove box — spiral, cheap, from the corner store — and there's a page in it I have been meaning to ask you about. Give me a second. It's never where I think I left it. Here. Here it is.

September the 2nd, I wrote this down: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, in a piece about his own interview, is quoted as having once said data centers "suck water." That's the word the article used, in quotation marks, like it mattered that he'd said it that plainly.

Same page, same man, and this is the line I keep coming back to.

I don't know what you do with a man who has both of those in his file. Does the thing suck water, or doesn't it. I went out to the yard that evening with the hose still coiled from the week before and ran it into a bucket, just to have something to do with my hands while I thought it over. Didn't take thirty seconds to fill. The dog watched me do it, the way she does. I'm no engineer. I don't know what a facility that size uses in a day that a bucket in my yard would settle. I only know a man can't be right in both of those sentences, and I had written down both of them, off his own words, a page apart.

There was more under it, so I kept reading. July of 2024, I'd written that four companies hold almost all the fertilizer in this country, and that the Koch family was putting together a merger one outlet said would push the price up again on farmers who don't have another supplier to call. I don't know what that has to do with water. I know it's filed in the same book, under the same worry, which is what it costs a person to grow something.

Then this July, the 22nd, CBS had lung cancer passing breast cancer as the leading cause of cancer death in American women, and said a growing share of the new cases are turning up in women the broadcast calls never-smokers. How big a share, the page I have doesn't say. I wrote down "growing" because that's the word they used, and I'm not going to hand you a number I don't have.

Out on the prairie, the 25th of October, the Guardian had canvassers going door to door across the midwest, talking to people about what's weighing on them this close to an election. It didn't say which worry came up at which door. I wasn't there for it. I only have the one line, that it mattered to them to talk to every single person.

I had the pen capped and the notebook half shut when my wife called in from the porch that the mail had come, and there was a guide in it from a place called Drop Site, dated today, with a title that fits the words "Cancer" and "Water" and "Big Ag" into one line, and a second guide underneath it to the races, because the whole balance of power in Congress, it says right there, is up for grabs two days from now.

So here's what I can't get past, and I'll let you go. A man wrote "suck" in one sentence and "don't" in the next, and the guide that landed on my porch with nobody's name on it is asking the voter two days out to hold both of his sentences at once. Which one of those was the propaganda.

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Cruz's warning denounced as incitement Wednesday; four days later, the same warning becomes "one rational choice."

By LouOne More Question · the afternoon edition, 1 November 2026

I had this written down, give me a second. I run two or three notebooks at once — one in the glovebox, one on the nightstand, the dog's been sleeping on a third — so finding the right page some mornings is its own small project. Here. October twenty-eighth. Did Senator Cruz say that nothing would stop Chuck Schumer from putting Abdul El-Sayed on the Senate Intelligence Committee if El-Sayed won? He did; I copied it out word for word, because that's the only way a notebook is worth keeping: "there is absolutely nothing to stop Chuck Schumer from placing Abdul El-Sayed on the Senate Intelligence Committee."

Underneath that I wrote that Common Dreams, the same day, called the whole statement "straight-up incitement." Does the page put the words "Americans could die" in Cruz's mouth, in quotation marks, like he said them? It doesn't. That characterization is Common Dreams', not his — his quoted words stop at the committee seat. I'm careful about that line because I wasn't, the first time I copied this page, and somebody caught it before it went anywhere. Two different pens on the same page, so to speak, and I don't want to mix them up twice.

Is there an earlier page than that one? There is. September twenty-eighth: a column in the Washington Examiner, a writer named Joe Concha, saying El-Sayed will "do anything and say anything to get elected." Same notebook, same month, same name circled twice more before the Intelligence Committee line even gets written down.

Then November first. Next page. Does a column in the New York Post ask whether Michigan wants to elect a senator "who couldn't obtain a security clearance to work with classified documents"? It does, and it calls beating him the state's "one rational choice." I underlined one word in that sentence and put a star by it. Clearance.

Does Bernie Sanders show up on the same page, the same date? I checked the date twice, because it's the same one on the column two lines above it. November first, both of them.

I went out to the garage after I copied that down. The fan belt's been slipping and I had the tape measure out anyway, checking whether the roof rack still clears the door now that the tires are low on air. Seven and a half inches. Nobody made me fill out a form for that number. Nobody certified me to go measure it. I held the tape up, read it, and wrote it on the inside of a cereal box because the notebook was still in the house.

Oh — one more thing, before this goes back in the glovebox. Did anybody, anywhere in this notebook, answer the Post's question with an actual process — a date El-Sayed applied, an office he was turned down by? I went looking. I couldn't find that page. Maybe it's in with the dog. I don't know what the people using the word mean by it. I just know where I wrote it down, four days after somebody called the same subject incitement. Clearance.

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THE OUTAGE

Washington says it won World War II faster than plugging in a power plant, the lights go out.

By LouOne More Question · the morning edition, 2 November 2026

I called Pepco's public affairs line yesterday afternoon because there was something about the timing I didn't follow, and when it's electricity, I figure the utility that runs the lines is the one to ask. I told the man who picked up: help me with this.

Here's what I was turning over. The Washington Examiner ran a piece on November 2nd arguing America won World War II faster than it can plug in a power plant. A few hours after that ran, by the Examiner's own later report, Pepco customers across Foggy Bottom lost power — the State Department, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and George Washington University, a school, though the wire doesn't say what was running there, so I won't guess.

That report described the outage as an "unscheduled loss of electrical power." I wrote that phrase down because it stuck with me. Was this outage on anyone's calendar ahead of time? I don't know, and the man at Pepco didn't either.

I'm not saying the piece caused the outage — I don't have anything that says that, and Pepco didn't either. I only have two times written down, one after the other: when the piece went up, and when the power went down. The second one comes after the first.

While I had Pepco on the phone I asked about the bill side too. Those are her words.

My car's been at the shop since July for three things. One was the fan belt — that one's done, fixed on the first visit. A second item on the same order is also done. The third is still open; I call about it every couple of weeks. Two finished, one not. I only mention it because I spent the afternoon thinking about things that get finished and things that just sit.

Here's the other date I had written down. On September 15th, the House was expected to vote on a bill about data centers and what they can push onto a regular electric bill. The Hill had it as likely to pass that week. That was seven weeks ago. I can't find a vote since — not yes, not no. As far as my notes go, it's still sitting.

The day before that bill was supposed to come up, on September 14th, the EPA finished something. Finished — not expected to. A rule limiting pollution from power plants, which make up about a quarter of the country's climate pollution by the agency's own older numbers, got, in the advocates' word, eviscerated. That one got done.

So that's my question for Pepco, and the Examiner: of those two things sitting on the table in September, which one needed a vote in Congress to get finished, and which one didn't?

I'm sorry — I keep coming back to that word from the outage report. I won't say "unscheduled" again; I'll put it another way. The power loss didn't have a date on it ahead of time. The vote on the ratepayer bill did — September 15th, same as I wrote it down. It just hasn't happened yet.

Oh — hold on, one more thing, before you go. The EPA's rule finished on September 14th. The House's bill was supposed to come up the next day, September 15th. Which one of those actually happened?

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NEXT STEPS

Jeffries called a cross-party endorsement 'partisan hack' in September, pushed Stevens from his caucus Monday for hers.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 2 November 2026

I want to say up front that this isn't my beat. I don't cover Senate races for a living, I don't know anybody at the Washington Examiner, and I don't know anybody at Truthout either, but they cover this stuff every day and I only come around when I'm stuck, so maybe one of them can walk me through it, because I've read this twice now and I still don't follow it.

I wrote this down because I didn't trust myself to remember it right. Saturday, Mike Rogers put out a video, direct to camera, saying he will not take action to restrict abortion rights at the federal level if Michigan elects him Tuesday. I underlined that part — federal level — because here's the page I can't quite find, hang on, there it is: the same man once co-sponsored a bill that would have banned abortion from the point of conception, and that bill wasn't a state bill either. It was federal too.

I have this one highlighted, too: Monday, Haley Stevens went on the radio and somebody asked her straight out whether she'd been pushed into endorsing Rogers. She said she made the decision herself. Fine. I believe people can make their own decisions. I'm just trying to work out the headcount — if it was her decision alone, how many people were in the room when she made it, and how many of them also work for the Michigan Democratic Party?

In my glove box I keep two insurance cards, this year's and last year's, because I'm slow to throw the old one out in time. If you ask me which card is good, I don't guess from the color or the logo — I read the date in the corner. That's the whole trick. The date tells you, not the card. I keep thinking about that glove box reading this story, because the video gets repeated on the news, and the bill just sits there, filed, same place it's been the whole time.

Here's what else I had written down, earlier in the week, before any of this: the Michigan Democratic Party's chair removed Stevens from the state party outright, for endorsing the man in the video over Abdul El-Sayed. That's one body, one action, done. I want to be careful here because there's a second one and I don't want to mix them up.

So — excuse me, before you go, because I almost let you walk out without this — Monday, separately, House Democrats moved to push Stevens out of their caucus in Washington. Truthout's headline on it calls her endorsement a "despicable betrayal" — those are the House Democrats' words, not the state chair's, and not mine. Hakeem Jeffries called a Republican's cross-party endorsement a "partisan hack" back in September and said he was weighing next steps. Monday, apparently, he found one.

I'm sorry to come back to it — I already wrote it down once — but there are three federals in my notebook now, not two: the one in the video, the one in the bill, and the one Stevens just lost her seat to, Monday, because the caucus that voted her out isn't a state body, it's federal, same as the House she sat in. So I'll ask whoever covers this for a living, since I only get to ask once: which one's binding, the one on the video, or the one that's already federal?

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President who pledged to avoid foreign wars trades stock in companies profiting from the one he started

By The LodgersThe Euro Desk · the evening edition, 2 November 2026

Today we are making a war that was promised over, which is not a dish you get over here, so I shall go slowly. You will need a campaign promise, a price tag still climbing, and a president with money riding on the outcome.

You will need, exactly: forty-seven billion dollars, the Iran war's official cost as of October 28th; over a thousand stock trades made in June, some in energy firms; and a September report crediting the whole foreign policy with saving taxpayers three hundred twenty billion dollars over four years. Keep all three on the counter; do not let them touch yet.

CLIVE: Invested. I have backed my own work more than once, and no one here has matched a poet for commitment to a losing position.

GARY: Invested is one word for it. I invested an evening in Keith's door, which no longer exists — the only return this house has seen.

In October, the Pentagon had moved troops out of the hemisphere where it claims no oil and into the one where it claims thirty-five percent, seating its largest contractor on the committee planning the future of war. You will be looking for the vote. There is none; there is a committee, and the contractor sits on it.

ROB: No vote. Nothing in this house gets voted on either, and nobody asks what happens to the lentils when the gas goes off mid-simmer.

KEITH: Nobody asks because I tell you anyway. If the gas is off that's a supply problem, and I know men who'd pay to say so first.

Now to today. France 24 counted it on November 2nd: wars still running under a president who promised to end them — Iran priced near forty-seven billion dollars, Venezuela's oil thirty-five percent claimed by the Pentagon, diesel above four dollars a gallon from the fighting. At a rally in Texas, a week before the midterm elections, the president said of the Iran war, "It can be over whenever I want it to be over." His own disclosure, filed for the second quarter, showed stock bought in energy firms posting record profits from it, in a quarter when the fighting paused for a ceasefire, then restarted.

The paper on the table today has it as a broken promise: "Trump promised 'no more wars'. His foreign policy tells another story," reads the France 24 headline. At home, the Hill had it as savings: "Trump's foreign policy saves taxpayers $320 billion over 4 years." Both figures sit on the counter; I am not adding them for you.

GARY: Add them up yourself. That's rich from a kitchen that hasn't settled its own meter this quarter, and nobody's rushing to add that up either.

KEITH: Settled. I could settle the meter by Thursday if someone let me sell the rights to how we got here.

This serves the energy firms whose stock rose with the war, and the contractor on the committee planning the next one. The tab, forty-seven billion dollars so far, goes to the taxpayer and the pump, not the president.

CLIVE: Doesn't go to the president. There's a first. I'll put that in the poem too, right after the part about things that never come back to the one who started them.

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Stevens calls it sexist to suggest her fiancé's vote swayed her, six days after he announced that vote.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 3 November 2026

I called the library today about my card — it renews itself automatically, except this year it didn't, and the recording wants me to press 2 for circulation, and circulation wants the branch downtown, and the branch downtown puts me back on the same recording. So I'm standing in the hallway with the phone against my ear and a folder of pages I printed last week and never got around to, because the dog wanted out and then it started raining and I only own the one coat.

That's how I ended up looking at the Michigan Senate race while I waited for a person.

Here's what's in the folder, in the order it happened. Wednesday the 28th, The Hill reports that Jason Turkish — Congresswoman Haley Stevens's fiancé — says he's voting for Mike Rogers over Abdul El-Sayed, and accuses El-Sayed of language he calls antisemitic. The next day, the 29th, the Washington Examiner runs what reads like the same interview — same Wednesday, Turkish saying El-Sayed makes the Jewish community less safe — a second paper picking up what the first one already had. I mention that only because I almost read it as two separate days, and it isn't; it's one remark, in two papers.

Two days later, the 30th, the Examiner has Congresswoman Stevens committing to campaign with El-Sayed for the final stretch — her former primary rival. The 31st, Common Dreams has El-Sayed answering a demand from Stevens that he apologize over his Israel comments, and saying he's staying focused on beating Rogers. So as of Halloween, by what's in my folder, the congresswoman was on the trail with El-Sayed, two days after her fiancé's statement ran in print.

Monday — and I'll go fast here, since another edition already walked through it — Rogers puts out a video promising no federal abortion action, Stevens endorses him anyway, and by that night the House Democratic caucus has moved her out. I'm not retracing that part. What's new is today.

Today the Examiner has Congresswoman Stevens calling it sexist — her word — that anyone would suggest her fiancé's vote had anything to do with her endorsement. Today's folder also has Michigan's Democratic Party chair, on CBS, saying she lied to her own constituents, and the vice president, on Fox, saying her endorsement will "certainly" help and give certain voters "permission." Three descriptions of the same Monday, filed the same Tuesday.

Here's a small demonstration. When I write a check at the bank down the street, it clears, and it's on the ledger whether I bring it up at dinner or not. The teller doesn't ask me if the check counted toward the balance — it counted the moment it cleared, same as Turkish's answer counted the moment the paper printed it, on the 28th.

So here's as far as I got before the branch finally picked up: her fiancé's vote was in print six days before she called the suggestion sexist. Was there a day between the 28th and the 2nd when her household was on the record for two different candidates in the same Senate race — and, hold on, don't put me back on hold yet — is that the same six days she's calling sexist?

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Italy answers a dockworkers' strike against war by deploying troops against them.

By SalStaff Writer · the evening edition, 3 November 2026

On Oct. 15, in Rome, the World Federation of Trade Unions stood up at a press conference and launched something it called the International Day of Action of Dockworkers and Port Workers Against War and Militarisation. Two weeks later, the plan became a fact on the water.

Oct. 30 arrived, and 113 ports in 22 countries on six continents stopped moving. Workers World called it one of the largest internationally coordinated strikes in world history; the organizers quoted by Common Dreams called it the largest coordinated port action ever, bigger than the day of action they'd run in February. The banners said "We won't work for war" and "Ports for peace — jobs with dignity." The claim was not abstract: the unions said commercial ports fuel militarism, and on Oct. 30 they declined to fuel it.

In Italy, the stoppage did not stay on the docks. A Tribune dispatch that same week described farmers, truckers, students and dockworkers shutting the country down together — the piece ran under the headline "Blockade Everything," and for once the headline was the inventory. Trucks sat still. Students marched. The docks, already struck, held.

Rome's answer arrived on the same day the strike did. NBC News reported that Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni deployed troops as Italy faced the strikes and the port blockades, with tens of thousands already gathering in Rome, Milan and other cities to protest the cost of living and high military spending. The demonstrations and the deployment share a dateline: Oct. 30.

Lay the two facts next to each other and the shape of the week is plain. The workers' position, stated on their own banners, was that the ports should not move war. The government's position, stated in troop orders, was that the ports — and the streets around them — should move regardless. One side refused to carry the cargo of the war that the other side is still budgeting for. The government did not say, in anything the wire carried, what sending soldiers into Rome and Milan to meet a labor strike costs, or how it is paid for, while the military spending the marchers were protesting stays where it was.

That is the whole transaction. A strike against war, coordinated across 22 countries, lands on one desk — Rome's — and comes back as a deployment order. Not a hearing. Not a number on the military budget. Soldiers, in the same streets where the demonstrators were already gathering, on the same day the ports went quiet. The dockworkers asked the ports to stop carrying war. The government sent troops to make sure something else kept moving.

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White House declares Iran war 'over,' can't say when it stopped striking Iran.

By LouOne More Question · the evening edition, 3 November 2026

I have a receipt in my coat pocket, from the dry cleaner, dated the day before the election, and at the bottom, where they stamp what you owe, somebody wrote PAID IN FULL, which I take to be a word some people use for over.

I don't bring it up about the shirt. I bring it up because I'm trying to find something written down elsewhere, and I keep misplacing the page.

On August 31st — I have this because somebody printed it — the president told a reporter, after Iran and the United States traded strikes, "We're going to hit them hard. There will be a response." That's a promise of more, not less.

Three weeks later, in Iowa, two members of Congress from his own party were on record saying the war was squeezing their farmers at the pump. That's a different kind of cost, paid at the register, not read about.

On September 26th, the president confirmed, himself, that he had turned down a peace proposal from Iran. "They made a proposal, but I rejected it," he said. I wrote that one down twice because I didn't believe it the first time, and the second time it looked the same.

On October 23rd, in Florida, he was asked about a possible strike that weekend. He said he didn't know anything about it. Then he got on stage and said there might be "another little epic fury." I don't know what that means exactly. I know it's not "no."

On October 28th, in Lubbock, Texas, he told a crowd, "You'll see Iran in a couple of weeks, if you don't mind." That's a date, more or less. Not a secret one.

Somewhere in that same stretch, the price tag on the whole operation kept moving. The Congressional Budget Office had it near forty billion. The Pentagon's own figure, separately, was forty-two billion as of August. By October 28th — the Lubbock night — the Pentagon's own figure had gone to forty-seven billion. Nobody itemized what moved.

Then came the vote itself. The night before Americans went to the polls, the United States struck Qeshm Island. The Pentagon called it defensive.

And by the day after, reporters had found something: the White House had kept striking Iran for weeks without reporting it. So how many of those weeks show up anywhere in a transcript from the podium?

Which is the part I keep circling, the way you circle a lot looking for a space you know is there. Because somewhere in the last several weeks, in public, the president said the war had ended. That's not my phrase — that's the phrase on the page I can't find, that everyone else seems to have a copy of.

Iran's not treating it as ended either. Their negotiators called the American response to the latest proposal "not convincing," the same week Tehran's own officials were reportedly stalling, hoping the midterms would cost the president a win before any settlement. In Tehran, clerics and officials have started making the case, out loud, for a bomb the country had pledged, years back, not to build. That's reporting, this week, on people saying it.

Here's my demonstration, and then I'll let you go. You know the toll plaza, the light that turns green and says PAID. Mine does, each time. Then the statement comes three weeks later with charges on days I don't remember driving — tolls I paid, that the system is also still running a meter on. Both things are true about the same four seconds at the gate.

The car needs a fan belt, my cigar's gone out twice writing this, and none of that is the point.

Excuse me — before you go. I still haven't found the itemized part of that dry-cleaning receipt, the part between drop-off and the PAID stamp. I'm asking: is the war over?

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