GOP Rep. Tim Burchett (Tenn.) responded on Monday to President Trump’s statement that communities that oppose data center construction want to “end up being backwards and poor.” “I guess I’m backwards and poor,”
Page F1From§Eachthe noon edition — 1 September 2026
Administration takes 35 percent equity stake in Venezuelan oil while a Republican calls himself 'backwards and poor.'
As it ran on the front
Let's run the numbers as filed, not as described.
The administration is taking a 35 percent equity stake in a newly formed Venezuelan oil company. That is not a loan, not a grant, not a tariff — it is an ownership position, on the books, in a foreign oil venture. Separately, the administration has been pushing federal support for data centers, the kind that draw the sort of power and infrastructure commitment municipalities usually reserve for hospitals. A House Republican looked at that line item and said, on the record, that opposing it makes him feel 'backwards and poor.' His words, not mine. I checked.…
…(cont) Meanwhile the affordability fight — the one over groceries, rent, the basic math of a paycheck against a bill — runs as a live story in the same news cycle. Not resolved. Not funded. Running.
Here's the reconciliation. One government can locate 35 percent of a startup oil company on short notice. The same government can find enough support for data centers that a member of its own party feels obligated to apologize for questioning it. What that government has not located, in this filing period, is a line item for affordability. Not missing because it doesn't exist as a request — it exists, it's the subject of ongoing debate — just missing from the disbursement side of the ledger.
I want to be careful here, hon, because precision matters more than outrage. Nobody said there's no money. The equity stake proves there's money. The data center push proves there's money. What the filing shows is where the money goes when it moves quickly, and where it sits when it doesn't: quickly to equity, quickly to infrastructure a Republican felt sheepish resisting, and not quickly — not yet — to whatever affordability turns out to cost in dollars once somebody finally prices it.
That's not a scandal, technically. It's a budget. Budgets show priorities the same way a calendar shows which afternoons got kept and which got canceled. This one shows an oil stake, a data-center defense, and a fight over affordability still filed under 'ongoing.'
The gap has a size. It is the size of everything still filed under ongoing.
“They'll tell you there's no money for affordability, then turn around and stake thirty-five percent of an oil company overnight — the con only works if nobody does the math out loud. A Republican calls himself poor for saying no to a data-center subsidy, and that's the tell: even the guys writing the checks know exactly who the checks are for.”
“This is smart statecraft — securing an equity stake means taxpayers actually own part of the upside for once, that's fiscally conservative if anything. And the Congressman's comment, that was clearly self-deprecating humor, not a real critique of the policy... though he did put his own name on it, so maybe he meant it a little.”
The receipts
The Trump administration has confirmed it will be taking a 35% equity stake in a new oil company that will drill across more than a dozen oil fields in Venezuela. On Monday night, the White House published new details of the deal, first announced by President Donald Trump late last week, revealing that the U.S. […]
We’re living in a period of excess business pricing power, not overbearing workers.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.