Daniel’s Digest: The Iran Surrender Won’t Change the Losing Equation for Election, Economy

Most citizens and politicians suffer from political amnesia and can’t remember political events from the previous month. Trump is counting on this political amnesia with his impending Iran surrender. He believes that by surrendering to Iran, we can somehow fix our economy. Except, our economy was horrible long before the aimless Iran war. We will still suffer all of the liabilities of the war without reaping any of the benefits.

Meanwhile, as the stories below show, we continue to head in a horrible direction within the GOP, the electoral prognosis, and the economy. I’d love to gather a group of patriots for July 4 to strategize together about our future, but that first requires letting go of the current white pill in Trump and the GOP.

Elections

-Dem group to spend $50 million in rural districts: Democrats leave no stone unturned. In case the election turns into a wave, they want to make sure they invest in Republican districts so they can maximize their potential. They have $50 million to spend on red districts, which is a lot more than conservatives have to spend even in our home territory.

-Emerson with unfathomable Dem lead: We all know how maga inc. loved Emerson the past few election cycles. Well, they have Democrats leading on the generic ballot by 50%-40%, and here’s the shocker: they have Dems up 4 among men! That has never happened before.

-Trump losing support in rural America: We all know that Trump has been enormously popular in rural America over the past decade. Trump won rural America by 2-1 in 2024. He still had a 61% approval from those voters as late as October 2025. Now, a Reuters-Ipsos poll has him at 50% approval and 48% disapproval among rural voters. His approval is, of course, just 35% in the suburbs. This is a recipe for a disaster in November.

Meanwhile, a Civiqs poll has Trump at just 30% approval and 63% disapproval in the suburbs. Again, you can talk about voter fraud all you want, but no amount of election integrity changes will allow Republicans to win an election in this environment.

Technocracy

-Republican House member introduces bill to treat data centers as critical infrastructure: “Republican Tennessee Rep. Matt Van Epps unveiled a House version of Sen. Tom Cotton’s Critical Infrastructure Airspace Defense Act Tuesday, which aims to shield hospitals, power plants, water treatment sites, and dams from potential drone attacks. The bill would make grants available to private companies to purchase government-approved anti-drone technologies and could even extend to data centers.” Well, you know the country that is most targeted by drone strikes? Israel! And they don’t have any hyperscale data centers yet are the most high-tech country in the world.

- The Seattle City Council has unanimously passed a 1-year moratorium on data centers: The legislation makes Seattle the largest U.S. city to pass such a ban amid the generative AI boom. To be fair, they are not really targeting urban areas anyway, but this is significant because Seattle is the home of Microsoft.

-How chatbots choke on their own slop and get worse over time: “Here is the mechanism in one sentence. AI trained on AI-generated data gets dumber every generation until it forgets what real human data looked like. “The internet is filling with AI-generated content.” Here is a great summary of an Oxford report on how over time, as the entire internet becomes AI, it is forgetting human creativity, recycling and retraining on its own miserable slop, and getting the entire world to focus on its narrow purview and even terminology that pushes humanity backwards, not forwards. This is what happens when government backstops an unnatural and unsustainable model and when AI is used as an outcome and agenda rather than a mere tool.

-Google said it used 2.5 billion gallons of water for its data centers last year: This amount would supply nearly 8.3 million average Americans with enough water to meet their daily needs for an entire year. They claim it recirculates, but is that a good thing? Do you really want that water recirculated, and do you trust we’ve vetted the health effects?

-Ohio Farm Bureau warns of efforts to use eminent domain for data centers against farmers: The Ohio Business Roundtable is pushing new legislation in Ohio, which is already over-saturated with data centers, to allow for eminent domain by calling it critical energy infrastructure. And they want to do this without paying farmers up front. This is similar to what Georgia Power is already doing in east-central Georgia.

-Electricity prices reach record high: Among the highest spikes in the CPI was household electricity, which is up 5.9% this year. Unlike motor fuel, electricity is not really affected by the oil crisis in the Middle East. I think we all know what is driving it.

- Meta Moves to Curb Employee AI Usage as AI Costs Reach Billions: So Meta goes into debt to fund a convoluted business model of delivering generative AI tokens. It’s so expensive that their own company can’t afford to use it, and they begin to tell employees to cut back! And this is a Mag 7 company. You can imagine how insolvent this is for the smaller players.

-Ohio Republicans decline to repeal $2 billion tax break for data centers: After the embarrassing revelation that data centers are getting $2 billion in tax breaks per year, Ohio Republicans promised to repeal the tax breaks. Well, the relevant committee adjourned until November for the last time without taking any action. Remember, their proposal would have only reduced the abatement prospectively, yet it’s clear that the industry so badly needs it to function that they lobbied against the bill.

-Virginia under threat of gov’t shutdown over data centers: Remember when Gov. Spanberger promised to ensure data centers pay their fair share? Well, the minute she got into power, she was bought out by the industry. She and her allies in the Virginia House are now in a fight with the Virginia Senate over reducing the tax breaks for data centers, and the impasse is threatening a shutdown. The only thing she did on the issue was create a blue-ribbon panel stocked with industry people.

- More than 200 data centers are going up in dozens of competitive House districts: Politico conducted an analysis of proposed data centers and found that hundreds of them are planned for the most contested districts. Of all the Republicans they surveyed in those races, none of them had a proper perspective on the issue. They will support Big Tech at their own peril. As one GOP consultant candidly said, “Politically, it’s not a very smart move to come out and be seen as too close to big tech or doing the bidding of big tech, but a lot of the money is flying to them through that.”

-Numerous TN localities planning data center ban: Coffee County, TN, and the city of McMinnville in Warren County, Tennessee, have just passed an 18-month data center moratorium. The entire Warren County, Knox County, and Nashville are in the process of debating some version of the moratorium. Again, this is bipartisan. Trump won Coffee County by a 55-point margin and Warren County by 56 points.

-Amazing piece on balancing growth with preserving our land and tradition: Very thoughtful piece from a Liberty University student on reclaiming conservation from the Left. “Land, farmland, clean water, local control, and the right of a community to defend its own future are not left-wing issues. They are conservative issues, and they always have been. Theodore Roosevelt knew that. Rural Americans know it instinctively, even if national politicians often forget it. You cannot claim to love a country while being indifferent to the destruction of the places, people, and landscapes that make it home.”

Trump Administration

-Trump trying to trade online safety bill for state preemption on AI: In order to lure conservatives into supporting the Trump plan to preempt all state laws pertaining to AI and data centers, the White House wants to attach said provision to an online safety bill regulating chatbots for children. Here’s the thing: We don’t need a federal online safety bill. Leave it alone, and leave it all to the states. Don’t come in with your superfluous, fake, and unnecessary regulatory bill and then give Big Tech the ultimate handout on what actually matters.

- Trump inc. added at least $2.3 billion to the family fortune from their main crypto ventures: Meanwhile, other investors sucked into the pump and dump scheme lost about $2.3 billion. Everyone is focused on congressional insider trading, but nobody in Congress reaches the toes of what Trump is doing using his office and public statements to manipulate markets with the foreknowledge of how that will affect his own investments. I’m sorry, but as much as we hate Democrats, no amount of “but the Democrats” can ameliorate this pig.

States

-Wyoming gov’t refuses to implement property tax cut: In 2024, the Wyoming legislature passed modest tax relief, capping property tax increases to 4% annually. In comes Gov. Mark Gordon’s State Equalization Board and instructs counties to disobey the law because of their convoluted reading of the state’s constitution. You have to marvel at liberals who run the reddest states and their willingness to ignore laws they deem unconstitutional, yet we can never find the same thing on the other side.

Foreign policy

-South Korea essentially kidnaps former Trump ambassador: Former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large Morse Tan went to South Korea to monitor the election. The current leftist government, which in itself is a concerning trend, placed him under a travel ban, essentially keeping him locked in the country. The fact that a country for whom we offer so much protection feels like they can screw with us demonstrates how foreign intelligence services understand that Trump doesn’t care about American pride as long as his financial needs are serviced. This is similar to the Guinean government that captured two American civilian pilots just before New Years. While they were let out of prison after a few months of torture, they still remain under house arrest and can’t leave the country.

Economy

-Labor force crisis: The total number of people not in the labor force but still seeking employment rose by 76k, topping out at 6.2 million. That number has increased by 1.2 million over the past two years and has now exceeded the levels during the GFC. At its core, this should have been the primary focus of the administration. This represents the rotting out of the American soul. Yet, instead they want more foreign students and foreign workers.

-EV sales plummet: In 2024, it was predicted that by 2030, 48% of car sales in this country would be EVs. Last year, that projection plummeted to 27%, and this year it’s down to 18%. This is the power of an industry completely built upon government favors. I think we all know that if the subsidies don’t return, that number will be much lower than 18%. The same principle applies to data centers.

- Stock market value: 250% of GDP. Housing value: 146% of GDP: That in a nutshell explains our artificial economy, which is not natural or free market. At 250% of GDP, the stock market valuation is by far the highest it’s ever been relative to the size of the economy. At 146% of GDP, housing is only slightly lower than in the 2006 bubble, but when coupled with the market valuation and inflation, the pricing together is unprecedented. So if you combine the two, per this twitter thread, you get 397% of GDP as compared to 285% of GDP in 2006. The post-WWII average of both is 166%.

Absent the government’s unnatural fiscal, monetary, and regulatory capture policy, we’d have an affordable society with numerous options for consumers and jobseekers. Yes, the stock market would not be as high, and yes, housing would not be a store of value for wealthy baby boomers. The trade-off would be worthwhile.

-Fitch downgrades US economy to deteriorating: In its mid-year analysis, Fitch revised the outlooks for U.S. Homebuilders, North American Building Products, U.S. Packaged Foods, Global Airlines, North American Utilities and Power and North American Finance and Leasing Companies to ‘deteriorating’ from ‘neutral’. This is what happens when you steer capital away from what works to data center capex during a time of crushing inflation and debt.

My latest

-Blaze column: OpenAI wants to make its losses public property

In Liberty,

Daniel

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