They've been shown to raise electricity bills , pollute drinking water, do little to boost local employment while threatening millions of jobs in a variety of industries, and top executives have warned that the technology they support could wipe out all of humanity by the end of the decade. But rather than take widespread public…
Page F2From§Eachthe early bird edition — 29 September 2026
Johnson's House votes 417-3 to shield voters from data-center bills, he calls their alarm a Chinese psyop.
As it ran on the front
On September 16, a Wednesday, the House of Representatives voted 417 to 3 to pass the Ratepayer Protection Act, a bill requiring data centers to cover the cost of the grid and energy upgrades their operations demand, so households do not eat the difference on their power bills. A vote that lopsided, three no votes out of 435 members, is not a margin a divided Congress produces by accident. It takes near-unanimous agreement that the problem is real.
The next day, September 17, the Cook Political Report released a poll of 37 swing districts. Voters there view AI companies unfavorably by a two-to-one margin; 64 percent say they are more concerned than excited about the technology, against 31 percent who say the opposite. The industry the House had just voted to make pay its own freight was already underwater with the voters who decide swing seats.…
…(cont) Five days after that, on September 22, a separate poll found that only 7 percent of voters list data centers among their top three political issues, and 12 percent list artificial intelligence generally. Low on the priority list is not the same as popular; a household can rank its power bill below the economy and still resent the bill.
The county that hosts the president's own neighbors decided it did not want the thing he has said every American should want.
Then, on Monday, September 28, twelve days after his own chamber's 417-3 vote, Speaker Mike Johnson sat for a Fox News interview. Asked by anchor Cheryl Casone about claims from unnamed tech executives and lawmakers that the nationwide pushback against data centers is directed from China, Johnson agreed: a Chinese psyop, he said, and accused Democrats of fearmongering.
The executives who supplied him that line are the ones whose product a Cook poll finds underwater two-to-one and whose facilities local governments, including the president's own county, are voting to keep out. Seventy-five percent of Americans oppose data centers in their own communities. The Speaker's own caucus already conceded, 417 to 3, that the bills are a problem worth legislating. What his chamber called a ratepayer complaint, he called a foreign operation, twelve days apart, hon.
“They run the number up to 417 to 3, admit on the record the bills are a problem, then twelve days later the Speaker tells you the anger you feel about your own power bill isn't even yours, it's Beijing's. That's not a debate, that's a shell game, the same executives whose data centers spike the bill are the ones whispering "foreign plot" in his ear so the bill stays unpaid by them. Watch your electric statement, not the psyop story.”
“Look, 417 to 3 was grid reliability, standard bipartisan housekeeping, it doesn't say anything about public trust in the industry, don't conflate the two. And the Speaker was answering a direct question about a coordinated campaign, tech executives raised it, lawmakers raised it, he didn't invent it out of thin air. Did I just call defending a psyop line "standard housekeeping"? That's not, that's not what I meant to say.”
The receipts
WHAT’S HAPPENING TODAY: Good afternoon and happy Tuesday, readers! The MLB playoffs are kicking off today with four wild card games. Maydeen, as always, will be cheering for her Los Angeles Dodgers as they set their sights on a three-peat.
President Donald Trump has said every American should want a data center in their town. But his home county in Florida just voted to block them. In a 6-0 vote, commissioners in Palm Beach County—home to the president's luxurious private club and second residence, Mar-a-Lago— voted to enact a one-year moratorium on the construction of new…
· House passes bill to shield households from data center energy costs from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
· Major Swing District Poll Shows Voters Loathe AI Giants, But Love Medicare for All from the morgue, 17 Sep 2026
· Only 7% of voters see data centers as top-three issue: Poll from the morgue, 22 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.