Today’s notice: Trump tries to settle the data center debate. What to watch for in the Massachusetts primaries. Copying Zohran in Berlin. Army secretary resigns. And: It’s hard to make economic plans with the Iran war going on next door.
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Chaos season is officially declared. Welcome to September of an election year, the traditional start of campaigns locking in messages and getting serious about executing them. The hot primary summer now turns into a brisk messaging fall.
Republicans, running against historical headwinds and alongside a president with the second-term blues, have said all year to ignore the polls and wait for the fall. The money bombs will drop, the midterm convention will focus candidates on their general election goals.
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However, if this first Real Week of Getting Serious is any indication, it’s going to be a very chaotic fall for the GOP. Party leaders and candidates have spent the last few weeks carefully constructing a new narrative around data centers, one that reflects widespread voter skepticism toward the projects. But with one Truth Social post yesterday, Donald Trump screwed that all up. “Let Data Reign,” he wrote, calling all opponents of data center construction idiots, basically.
Uh, no we’re not, some Republicans quickly responded. “President Trump and I don’t see eye to eye on this issue,” Darren Bailey, the Republican nominee for governor in Illinois, posted on X. The party has been working hard to embrace the gray areas in the data center debate, to show that it is listening. The president just snapped things back to black and white. That’s not message discipline.
“He just put every Republican’s name on the deed to every data center in America, and on the return address to every power bill,” Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson, who has thought a lot about the politics of this issue, told us.
Ironically, the data center industry itself is trying to be more attentive to that gray-area thinking than the president is. NOTUS’ Mara Hoplamazian reports on how data center developers are actively wooing communities nowadays — not only with promises of riches but, in the case of one project in Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, a vow to deposit $10,000 in the account of every family living there. Some locals have called it a bribe, Mara reports. Jury’s out on whether these sweetened deals are good politics.
Open tabs: JD Vance Calls El-Sayed ‘Very, Very Evil’ (NOTUS); Top General Says Military Has ‘No Plans’ to Deploy to Polls During Midterms (NOTUS); Laura Loomer faces fresh criticism over racist comments (Reuters); Republicans Are Urging SCOTUS to Give Them a Discount on TV Ads (NOTUS)
From Massachusetts
Old dogs have their day? Tonight’s primary elections in Massachusetts could serve as a real narrative-buster in the Democratic conversation about age. Eighty-year-old Sen. Ed Markey is cruising in the Democratic senate primary polls against 47-year-old Rep. Seth Moulton. The younger candidate has tried to make age an issue, but that has not made a discernible polling dent (if you believe polls). Markey, of course, also beat a much younger guy in his last primary. In both cases, reporters pointed out that Markey had been in office longer than his opponent had been alive. In 2020, voters didn’t care. Will they this time?
Down the ballot, there is another chance for the age-as-liability truism to go poof. NOTUS’ Kate Nocera reported recently on the Democratic primary in the 1st Congressional District, where Rep. Richard Neal, 77, says he’s got nothing to worry about from challenger Jeromie Whalen, 39.
But don’t discount the narrative just yet: In the 8th District, observers say 71-year-old Rep. Stephen Lynch is in a tight Democratic primary battle with 39-year-old challenger Patrick Roath, who says the incumbent is too old and too moderate for the Boston-area district.
From Germany
Zohran Mamdani is big in Berlin. NOTUS’ Daniella Diaz reports from Berlin on a concerted — and welcomed — effort by Germany’s Die Linke party to copy Mamdani’s success in New York for the Sept. 20 mayoral election in Berlin. Die Linke is hoping voters elect Elif Eralp, who would be the first Muslim mayor of the city and first leftist since the Berlin Wall fell. “We learned a lot [from Mamdani], especially when it comes to community organizing, door-knocking, canvassing campaigns,” Die Linke’s equivalent of an executive director, Janis Ehling, told Daniella.
From the Pentagon
An Army, less one: Army Secretary Dan Driscoll “spoke to the president about the current state of the Army and submitted his resignation” yesterday, an Army official told NOTUS’ Joe Gould, capping off a tension-filled tenure between Driscoll and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Driscoll had butted heads with Hegseth over the direction of the Army and the secretary’s removal of senior officers — on top of the strain between the two men after Hegseth forced Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, to retire in April.
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Local news: A New Commanders Stadium Is Coming. How Will Anybody Get There? By Zara Norman
Sports desk: DMV High School Football Players of the Week, by Noah Ferguson
NEW ON NOTUS
With friends like these: The ongoing war with Iran is stifling efforts by some U.S. allies in the Middle East to plan their economic futures, NOTUS’ Akbar Shahid Ahmed reports. Regional governments hoping to diversify their international positions beyond oil “can continue building hotels, resorts and venues, but they cannot easily compensate for weaker international demand,” Abdullah Baabood, a professor at Waseda University in Japan, told Akbar.
More: Democrats Cry Foul at Texas County’s Plan to Slash Polling Sites, by Jenna Monnin
Trump’s Drug Enforcement Leader Violates a Financial Law, by Dave Levinthal
NOT US
- More Mail Ballots Are Arriving Late This Cycle, and They’re Getting Tossed, by Adam Sella and Nick Corasaniti for The New York Times
- MAHA has arrived in Iowa — and Big Ag is reeling, by Ellie Borst for Politico
- Airman’s ‘contemptuous’ words for Trump lead to high-stakes military charges, by Dan Morse for The Washington Post
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The newsletter was produced by Thomas Burr and Andrew Burton. Photo by Susan Montoya Bryan/AP.
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