‘If we kill the Golden Goose’
Page A7From§Eachthe supper edition — 31 August 2026
Trump pushes data centers on communities, warning refusal breeds poverty; the data disagrees.
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As it ran on the front
The administration's position on data centers is straightforward and, frankly, defensible: communities that decline to host them are choosing to leave money on the table, real money, the kind of money that— actually, let's check the analysis first, because that's the responsible thing to do before repeating a number.
Here's the argument as delivered: opposing a data center in your town isn't a values choice, it's an economic one, and the economic choice is costly. Data centers bring jobs, bring tax base, bring investment, and communities that push back are, in the administration's phrasing, choosing to make themselves poor. That's a strong claim. It's also, according to the reporting on the actual data behind it, not supported by the data. I want to be careful here, because I was about to say the data supports the claim, and it does not. The data does not back that up. That's not my line, that's the finding.…
…(cont) So what's actually being pushed on these communities? Massive facilities, enormous water and power draws, permanent changes to the local grid, sold with a threat dressed as an economic forecast: take the data center or take the poverty that isn't actually coming. That's not an incentive package. That's a dare with a spreadsheet nobody checked.
I understand the impulse to defend infrastructure investment—infrastructure is good, investment is good, this reporter believes that, genuinely. But you don't get to skip the step where you show your work. 'Communities that push back get poor' is a threat. It is not, according to the record, a forecast. And when the warning turns out to be unsupported and the pressure campaign continues anyway, the question isn't whether communities should host data centers. It's why the campaign needed a scare number in the first place, if the real numbers didn't require one. A responsible administration corrects the claim. This one is still making it, on schedule, in the next town over.
“The administration's position is straightforward: communities that decline to host a data center are leaving real money on the table, and that's a defensible economic argument, provided the underlying analysis actually— let's check the analysis first, because that's the responsible thing to do before repeating a number. The claim is that opposition to a data center isn't a values choice, it's an economic one, and communities pushing back are, in the phrasing used, choosing to make themselves poor. That's a strong claim. It's also, per the reporting on the data behind it, not supported by the data. I was about to say the data supports the claim. It does not. That's not my line, that's the finding.”
The receipts
President Trump posted on social media Monday that people who "want to be successful and rich" should be supporting data centers. CBS News' Weijia Jiang reports.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.