Commerce Secretary calls data center water fears 'propaganda' a day after federal panel halted one over exactly that.

…(cont) Here is what happened, in order, because order matters. The President told American communities that rejecting a data center would leave them 'backwards and poor.' That's not a threat. That's economics: the choice is real, and somebody has to say it plainly.

Then, before those towns finished deciding, the Interior Board of Land Appeals — an appellate body inside the same federal government making that offer — stayed approval of the Townsite Data Center on public land outside Boulder City, Nevada. Eighty acres. The first data center ever proposed for federal land, halted, on the record, over exactly the water and power demand the President's offer depended on nobody minding.

Then Secretary Lutnick went on CNBC and called that concern propaganda.

I can explain this. The Secretary sets policy. The panel applies law. Different documents, different desks, same eighty acres, inside the same week. I am not going to call that a coincidence. I was told not to call it a pattern either.

Days after, a Gallup number came in: Americans would rather live beside a nuclear plant than a data center, by more than twenty points. The Washington Examiner called that hysteria. I'd call it a survey. People were asked a question, and they answered it, and the margin wasn't close.

So the water usage is either invented or it's substantial enough that the government's own panel just froze eighty acres over it. The administration has argued both, one day apart, and is asking the towns still deciding which version to believe first.