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Trump in 'distress' over midterms — despite faking 'indifference': NYT analysis

18 hours agoLeft

U.S. President Donald Trump caused a great deal of anxiety among GOP strategists and Republicans in Congress when, during a Cabinet meeting in late May, he declared, "I don't care about the midterms." But New York Times opinion columnist Frank Bruni believes that Trump's "indifference" to the 2026 midterms is merely an act. In reality, Bruni emphasizes, Trump is suffering acute "distress" over the possibility of Republicans losing the U.S. House of Representatives in November. "Ever the performer, President Trump has lately been putting on a show of indifference," Bruni argues in the New York Times. "The congressional elections on Tuesday, November 3? Farthest thing from his mind…. Trump's imperial airs, blasé banter and self-indulgent decisions — such as his endorsement of (Texas Attorney General) Ken Paxton, who is now the Republicans' hugely vulnerable nominee in the crucial U.S. Senate race in Texas — create the impression of a president unshakably confident and blissfully unconcerned about voters' looming judgment. Don't be fooled."Bruni continues, "He may be too arrogant and insulated to fret as much as he should, but there are reasons for his public nonchalance. There are also plenty of exceptions to it."Bruni lays out a variety of ways in which Trump, according to the Times columnist, is showing how worried about the midterms he really is."The most obvious evidence of his intense interest in the midterms is how hard he has tried to stack the deck in Republicans' favor," Bruni explains. "The rash of Republican gerrymandering over recent months — with redrawn congressional districts in Texas, North Carolina, Florida and more — didn't just happen organically, with state-level Republicans beseeching him to support the effort. He ordered them to undertake it. Bullied them, in fact. And he brutally punished any insubordination, as the Indiana Republicans who recently lost their primaries to Trump-endorsed challengers can attest…. And why insist so furiously on new voting rules nationwide?"Trump, Bruni warns, is making a concerted effort to "depress Democratic votes.""When he talks now about his willingness to suffer whatever political price he must to eliminate Iran as a nuclear threat," Bruni writes, "that's not high-minded, farsighted, selfless leadership…. It's damage control." Trump, Bruni notes, warned fellow Republicans that if Democrats retake the House in November, he will likely face a third impeachment. "That doesn't sound like denial," Bruni writes. "It sounds like distress…. Beneath all that bluster and makeup, he's sweating."

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Trump is fast-tracking AI data centers as EPA ignores their potential 'forever chemicals'

Raw Story

41 minutes ago

Trump is fast-tracking AI data centers as EPA ignores their potential 'forever chemicals'

Data centers require a massive amount of water to cool their systems, which heat up as they process digital information through numerous computers and network servers. Systems that aren’t “closed loop” have to cycle out water that doesn’t evaporate.Most data centers in Virginia are permitted to discharge water into municipal wastewater systems, the same place household water goes to be treated and recycled for consumption. But there’s limited data tracking of potential chemicals in data centers’ discharge water.At least one data center is permitted to discharge directly into a natural water source in the state: Northeast Creek in Louisa County. Another is applying for a similar permit to discharge into nearby Sedges Creek which feeds into Lake Anna.That water is pretreated before being released into the creek and has limits to certain metals and temperature set by the Department of Environmental Quality. But the knowledge gaps about the chemical makeup of data centers’ water discharge poses major questions over whether “forever chemicals” could be contaminating water from the facilities, posing risks to human and environmental health.Cooling the watersAmazon’s Lake Anna Tech Park project will include an evaporative water cooling system, which is what they use in the Northeast Creek location. The H2O will come from well water until industrial systems are hooked up. At that point, the water will be run through a “membrane” that cools the air and fans will blow it onto the data halls containing the computers.Amazon – which operates dozens of data centers in the state – explained that at the two Louisa sites they are only using the evaporation method a small portion of the year; the rest of the time they pull in air from outside for cooling. Water sent through an evaporative cooling system is considered non-contact, meaning it does not directly touch the computer equipment.“In Louisa County, we rely on outside natural air-cooling for about 96% of the year and only use water-based cooling during the hottest periods, which is about 4% of annual operations,” Amazon said in a statement.After a few cycles the water has to be released. The system dechlorinates the water and manages pH balance before sending it into the creek.“As part of this process, cooling water needs to be periodically discharged; this cooling water is called ‘non-contact cooling water.’ It never touches IT equipment, and it’s treated before release in alignment with state environmental standards,” an Amazon representative said.Larger, newer data centers are more frequently designed with “closed loop” systems, meaning they don’t take in as much water on a daily basis. Initially, hundreds of gallons of water are pumped into this type of system, much of which evaporates, and then it’s topped off as needed.But they take more energy to operate.In an aerial view, an Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes on July 17, 2024 in Stone Ridge, Virginia. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)Closed loop systems will often use what is described as mechanical cooling or liquid cooling, where the water is recycled through the system, cooled, and placed directly on chips to bring the temperature down. The heat from those systems still has to be expelled through an HVAC system.The water is pretreated before being released into the creek and has limits for certain metals and temperature set by DEQ. But with recent reports showing the ubiquitous nature of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in everything from water to soil to household products, community members are increasingly worried about whether the data center’s discharge water contains them, too.Residents have also cited concerns over PFAS being present in the equipment inside of data centers that is used to cool the heated systems and routinely replaced every few years.These chemicals can have serious health impacts when people are exposed to even small amounts, such as decreased fertility, higher risk of some cancers, and weakening of the immune system.Virginia currently does not have requirements for the testing of the discharge water of data centers for PFAS, nor does the federal Environmental Protection Agency.Because the water being discharged from data centers either into wastewater systems or into the creek are not explicitly required to be tested for PFAS, it is unclear whether they are present or not.“We know that they may be using, not only PFAS, but other toxic chemicals. We know that they released massive amounts of water, at least to treatment works, and some of them to surface waters,” said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz with EarthJustice, a nonprofit that litigates environmental issues.  ”And beyond that, it’s just a void. There’s really a dangerous lack of information.”The Environmental and Energy Study Institute reports that PFAS can be present in the cooling systems that are liquid based – which is not what the Louisa Amazon data centers use.

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Ex-Republican flags 'underplayed' reason GOP lawmakers are about to walk away from Trump

Raw Story

55 minutes ago

Ex-Republican flags 'underplayed' reason GOP lawmakers are about to walk away from Trump

New York Times columnist David French told MS NOW Monday morning that Senate Republicans are quietly reaching a breaking point with Donald Trump — not because they have suddenly grown a spine, but because they are learning that no amount of loyalty is sufficient to protect them from his wrath.French, appearing on Morning Joe with anchor Jonathan Lemire, said the dynamic driving the frustration has been largely missed in the broader political coverage."There's a very important distinction that a lot of these senators are very aware of that has been sort of underplayed in the public," French said. "Trump turned on senators who had, in many ways, been doing everything that they could to signal their loyalty to Trump."He pointed to John Cornyn as the clearest example. Cornyn, who lost his Texas primary last week to Attorney General Ken Paxton after Trump endorsed Paxton, had been working repeatedly to demonstrate his loyalty to the president in the days before the endorsement. His sin, in Trump's eyes, was voting to certify the 2020 election — a single break in an otherwise unwavering record of support."You were not talking about senators who had defied Trump all over the place," French said. "Just very rarely, very selectively. And so they're now learning that to be with Trump, it's 100% or you're going to have a target on your back."French stopped well short of predicting a Republican revolt. But a small degree of independence — yes, he believes that's coming.The signs are already visible. Lemire noted that Senate Republicans cut their recess short last week, going home early after refusing to take up the anti-weaponization fund in the wake of the Cornyn news. They have also put roadblocks in front of funding for Trump's proposed White House ballroom.Lemire suggested the pattern could have lasting consequences, noting that Trump's primary purges may be undermining his own ability to govern and potentially jeopardizing Republican control of the Senate in November — adding to what he called Trump's "increasingly lame duck status."French agreed the frustration was real. "Loyalty is a moving target," he said. "And I do think that frustration is going to spill over in some important ways."

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Raw Story

2 hours ago

The Roberts-Trump feud is a distraction — Supreme Court already handed him the keys: Slate

While the public has been focused on the occasional high-profile clash between President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, the court's conservative supermajority has been quietly using the shadow docket to hand Trump something far more consequential — effective control of the federal government — and legal analysts say that work is now largely complete.That is the central argument of a new piece by Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern in Slate, who say the popular narrative of a principled Chief Justice John Roberts standing up to Trump conceals a far more troubling reality."Trump's takeover of the federal government is largely complete," Stern writes. "So I just don't think the court needs to issue nearly as many shadow docket orders as it did during that shock-and-awe campaign — it has already achieved its objectives."The shadow docket refers to emergency orders and procedural rulings the court issues outside its normal merits docket, typically with little explanation and no oral argument. During the first year of Trump's second term, the conservative supermajority used it repeatedly and rapidly to clear the way for Trump to impound federal funds, fire executive officials, and rewrite immigration law — moves that would have been blocked under previous interpretations of the law.Lithwick and Stern argue that Roberts has a long-established pattern of using smaller decisions to prepare the ground for larger ones. "Do something small, get people accustomed to it, then do it big," Stern explains. "The shadow docket has become the way you do that now. You seed the ground on the shadow docket and say: 'Well, this is the law now.' This process used to take four or five years. Now, with the shadow docket, you can do it within the same term."The authors also push back on the idea that occasional Trump losses at the court represent meaningful resistance. The justices, they argue, only draw the line when Trump threatens the court's own power and supremacy — not when he threatens civil liberties, voting rights, or the separation of powers more broadly.That selective resistance, Lithwick warns, may ultimately backfire. The court has repeatedly rewarded Trump for defying lower court orders. "There is no clear reason why that should stop with the Supreme Court," she writes. "Eventually, the administration won't just say: It worked all these other times, it should work this time."If that happens, Stern argues, the court will have squandered whatever moral authority it had left. "They've made me a king," he writes of Trump's likely reasoning, "so I'm going to act like one."

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