The socialist creed preaches a narrative of Capitalist Oppressors, often large corporations, who somehow collaborate and conspire to keep the oppressed masses down. I was reminded of that narrative when I recently saw a post at the website called New York YIMBY (“Yes In My Back Yard”), that provided some history of a certain office building in midtown Manhattan, 1301 Avenue of the Americas. The post, by Max Gillespie on September 7, is titled “1301 Avenue Of The Americas Fully Leased In Midtown, Manhattan.” It happens that I am very familiar with this building, since I worked right across the street from it for about 18 years.

The history of 1301 Avenue of the Americas provides a small look into the constant change and churn that are endemic among corporations in the real world.

Here from YIMBY’s post is a picture of 1301 Avenue of the Americas, credited to one of the building’s former owners, the Paramount Group.

This building, built in 1964, is not particularly famous or notable in the forest of high-rises that characterizes midtown Manhattan. However, as you can see, the building is quite large — 609 feet high, 45 stories, and 1.8 million square feet. Over the years it has been home to a number of large corporate tenants. And yet, one by one these tenants have downsized, shrunk their footprint or even vacated the building and gone out of business altogether. Nevertheless, YIMBY reports that, with a recent renewal and expansion by a Cleveland-based bank called KeyBank, the building is now fully occupied:

KeyBank has renewed and expanded its lease at 1301 Avenue of the Americas . . . . The Cleveland-based bank added 15,292 square feet under a 15-year renewal, bringing its total footprint to 112,924 square feet across the entire 35th through 37th floors and portions of the 28th and 38th floors. With the deal, the tower is fully leased.

But consider some of the prior tenants. In its early days, the main tenant was a discount department store chain called J.C. Penney. Do you remember those stores? When 1301 Avenue of the Americas was built, J.C. Penney was riding high. In the 1960s and 70s, “J.C. Penney occupied more than 800,000 square feet across 33 floors as the anchor tenant. . . .,” and the building was known as the J.C. Penney building. In 1977, J.C. Penney then “purchased the property for $55 million.” That was just after J.C. Penney reached its peak with 2,083 stores in 1973. But during the late 70s and 80s, J.C. Penney had already begun to decline. According to the YIMBY piece, J.C. Penney “relocat[ed] its headquarters to Dallas in 1988.” Since then J.C. Penney has continued to shrink. In 2020, the company went through a bankruptcy and restructuring. According to its website, it is down to about 600+ stores today.

But other companies came along to occupy the space vacated by J.C. Penney. Around 1990, the large French bank known as Credit Lyonnais took a big bloc of space, and the building was renamed the Credit Lyonnais building. Credit Lyonnais, by the way, was owned at the time by the French state. The bank’s expansion at 1301 Avenue of the Americas was part of a massive world-wide growth push for Credit Lyonnais. Unfortunately, it all quickly came apart. By 1999, an article in Forbes characterized Credit Lyonnais as “the dirtiest bank in the world,” and its trajectory over the course of the 90s as “by far the biggest banking debacle in history.” According to Forbes:

[O]n a Sunday morning in 1996, . . . [a huge fire began, and] raged for 16 hours, destroying most of [Credit Lyonnais]’s headquarters, the largest nongovernment building in Paris, one that dominated an entire block on the Boulevard des Italiens near the old Opera. . . . It’s a striking and fitting image of what Credit Lyonnais has become. Once a force in global finance, the bank is little more than half its former size, having been looted by criminals, racked by scandal and decimated by the loss of at least $20 billion in reckless and corrupt investments.

Forbes described the debacle as “an object lesson in what can go wrong in a government-owned commercial enterprise without accountability.” By 2003 the French government had arranged the merger of Credit Lyonnais into its former rival, Credit Agricole. The footprint of the bank at 1301 Avenue of the Americas shrank dramatically.

But meanwhile, a big law firm known as Dewey Ballantine had also moved to 1301 Avenue of the Americas in 1990. In 2007 Dewey Ballantine merged with another large New York firm called LeBoeuf Lamb, and the LeBoeuf lawyers moved into 1301 Avenue of the Americas as well. (If you were paying extremely close attention to my post a few days ago on the federal court “standing” doctrine, you may have noticed that the lawyer who argued the seminal environmental standing case called Scenic Hudson on behalf of the utility Con Edison was Randall LeBoeuf, the founder of the LeBoeuf firm.) According to the Real Deal, after the merger the combined firm occupied almost 500,000 square feet at the building. The building put up a large sign with the name “Dewey & LeBoeuf.” That lasted until 2012, when Dewey & LeBoeuf blew up, filed for bankruptcy, and suddenly vacated the entire bloc of space.

The lesson is that even very large and successful corporations operate in a risky and volatile world, where they can shrink and even fail very quickly. Examples are everywhere if you take some time to look around. I’m not expecting any professed socialists to observe this any time soon.

UPDATE, September 12: If you would like something more germane to the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center, the same YIMBY website has a post today about the status of the reconstruction. On the actual WTC site, there remains just one parcel not fully re-built. That parcel has recently resumed construction, in what is to become a new headquarters for the American Express company. At the moment, construction is just reaching street level, and is projected to take several years; but here via the architects (Foster & Parters) is a rendering of what the new building will look like:

You can go to the link for many more pictures, including of the current buildings and the ongoing construction.

For what it’s worth, my personal opinion is that the new buildings on the site are much better than the old ones. But I lost several friends in the attack, and thinking about that day still fills me with sadness.

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian

President Donald Trump on Monday pushed back against growing calls for greater regulation of artificial intelligence, and lashed out at Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei over his urgent plea for an AI slowdown.

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

The Trump Administration has stopped AI ‘people’ from doing bad, or potentially bad, ‘things,’ like Dario (Anthropic!), who is now pretending to be a ‘perfect little angel’ – and we will continue to do so!” Trump wrote.

The president’s latest defense of largely unfettered AI growth came amid a sudden crescendo of leading industry voices raising alarms about the risks of the nascent technology.

On Saturday, Amodei published a blog post titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” arguing for slower development of AI models to “reduce the risk that something goes seriously wrong.”

Days earlier, former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon quit his job and issued a warning that the technology could “kill us all by the end of the decade,” while accusing both OpenAI and Anthropic of “gambling with our lives.”

Other tech CEOs, including OpenAI chief Sam Altman and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, over the weekend said they agreed with calls for a slowdown.

The Trump administration has broadly encouraged the industry’s rapid growth and the development of controversial data centers in the U.S. as it seeks an insurmountable technological edge over China.

Trump on Saturday said, “We’re leading China in AI.”

“And frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins,” the president said.

In his Truth Social post Monday, Trump claimed that leading AI companies are already sufficiently reined in.

“We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies!” he wrote. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China.”

“WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” he added.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Trump’s post.

White House AI czar David Sacks on Saturday pushed back on growing AI fears, writing in an X post after Amodei’s warning that tech giants should “go ahead and pace the frontier” themselves.

“Stop pretending the motivation to slow down is purely altruistic,” Sacks wrote. “You face massive product-liability exposure if your products enable a truly damaging cyberattack. The market already punishes models that behave in unpredictable or unauthorized ways.”

He added that China would be “very unlikely” to join a global agreement to regulate the technology.

Any attempt at AI regulation by Congress appears highly unlikely before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. House members are set to leave town Thursday and remain in their districts through October.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Sunday downplayed the necessity of passing legislation to rein in AI development.

“If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, that is a threat to every single American,” Johnson told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

“We don’t need everybody to panic right now, we need to handle this new technology like we have others in the past, and make sure we’re doing everything we can responsibly to also not smother American innovation,” he said.

— CNBC’s Ashley Capoot contributed to this report.

It looks as if the Democrats have jumped the Blue Whale for the final time. Everything from now on will be anticlimax.

It can’t possibly be any other way, since an actual Democrat candidate has come out and publicly stated on record that she looks forward to Nazi concentration camps for MAGA voters.

As yet, no Democrat has disavowed this. That may well be coming, but it will be half-hearted and shallow at best. I mean, anything more might well cost them a seat, y’know.

The Gauleiter in question is Shelly Headen, Democrat candidate for NC House District 62. Frau Headen joined the party in München in 1926, and was prominent in many street actions against the Bolsheviks. She played a notable role in the NS-Frauenschaft, and after the party took power, was a high official of the Deutsches Frauenwerk, helping build it up as the dominant German women’s organization. Late in the 1930s, she was personally selected by RHSA head Reinhard Heydrich to serve as a camp Aufseherin at the Reich’s facilities for rehabilitating political offenders, before being transferred to new installations in Poland….

Actually no. I have no idea of Headen’s background, and it scarcely matters anymore, because nothing she has ever done or will do is going to outweigh her actions of the past few days. She is always going to be known as the Democrat pol who let the cat out of the bag.

Headen had a photo of herself taken at Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, established in March, 1933, only two months after the Nazis took power, at the express orders of Adolf Hitler. Interestingly, considering the nature of Headen’s actions, Dachau was intended primarily as a camp for political opponents of the Nazis, including communists and social democrats, but extending to all anti-Nazi parties. Some of the most distinguished names in Germany ended up behind the barbed wire there.

Headen published that photo, with a huge smile on her face, along with a caption reading “Visiting Dauchau concentration camp in Germany…. This is where Trump supporters belong.”

Think about that for a minute. Think about how malicious, obtuse, ignorant of history, and plain godforsaken stupid you have to be to do something like that. And then think again…. Because Headen actually took this shot in front of the camp’s ovens, one of the ghastliest places on this sad Earth.

Dachau was technically not a death camp. The Vernichtungslager were never located in Germany but outside the country, mostly in Poland. But believe you me, plenty of people died there – 41,500 is the minimum number, and it was probably much higher. They may not have been gassed, but they were starved, beaten, neglected, tortured, shot, subject to every possible demise that the savagery of the SS could arrange. And when they died, they went to that room and were burned there, with less ceremony than would be given a dead animal. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder whether the universe will ever be clean without the human stain being eradicated.

J.R. Dunn, American Thinker

Everybody says they want freedom, but most people really don’t, mainly because they don’t know what true freedom is. And if they did, they would—and do — reject it. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, and most people don’t want to be virtuous. Which is why they prefer socialism.

Homo sapiens, as a species, is a group of jungle savages who know very little about history, and especially do not understand historical perspective. In fact, when it comes to history, most humans are incredibly ignorant. 

Two hundred and fifty years — the life of the American Republic — when compared to the entire span of human history, is not a very long time. And we Americans look at our history very narrowly, and rarely see the whole panorama that history really is. That’s typical of all humanity. We see through a glass tunnel, and very darkly.

Americans — and especially the Left — tend to judge things, current and past, through the lens of the very slender historical time period we live in — our “zeitgeist.” We rarely — the Left never — put our judgments in an overarching historical milieu. People see all things only as they see them currently, and, most often, the way they want to see them. No vision, no context, no historical perception.

Many Americans today are surprised and dismayed that massive numbers of their countrymen are moving towards socialism, communism, leftism, promiscuity, godlessness, everything the Democrats and the Left are directing us towards. We should not be surprised, and if we knew history well enough, we wouldn’t be. This movement is new for America, but it’s not new for humans, or the world.

Why do so many Americans now prefer socialism to capitalism? Well, by studying history, we discover that most people, surprisingly, actually do prefer slavery (dependence) to freedom (risk). Dependence upon someone else means, well, somebody else takes care of us. That’s a very easy way to live, and how many millions of Americans today have opted for that course? Freedom, which virtuous Americans think is the way things ought to be, means risk, trials, hazards, individual responsibility, and acceptance of consequences. And there aren’t too many people — and never have been, frankly — who have the character and self-control to be able to conquer themselves and achieve that.

Nor do they have the spirituality. Freedom comes from God, the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and property. As Franklin said, only a virtuous people can be free. But since increasingly, more and more Americans don’t believe in or obey God, and don’t want to, they end up rejecting the life, liberty, and property God provides. So, they are rejecting capitalism, free markets, hard work, and individual responsibility for socialism, i.e., letting government take care of them, in effect, sponging off other people. Countless millions of Americans not only do that, but that’s the life they prefer. Selfish dependence, not virtuous freedom.

And history tells us that such dependence — and slavery — is far more common than human freedom. 

Thus, when I see the Democrat Party moving towards socialism, totalitarianism, licentiousness, godlessness, etc., it doesn’t surprise me in the least because as a historian, I try to view historical perspective and not just look at the current, narrow zeitgeist. Zeitgeists are nearly always wrong, and much of ours is too.

We today aren’t allowed to call this dependence “slavery” (our Founders did), not in our current zeitgeist. Slavery has become the worst crime in existence, the unforgivable sin, the one the Left has taught us is the greatest evil imaginable and to never forgive America for. And they teach their sheep that America should be hated for it, since we probably invented the practice. There is zero historical perspective in this, of course.

Slavery is certainly un-American because the founding principle of the country was freedom. But the Left fails to see — or admit — that it was the founding principles of America that eventually ended chattel slavery worldwide. It took time; history usually moves slowly, but that is what historical perspective is all about, of which the Left has none at all.

And, of course, the Left will NEVER admit that socialism is simply another form of slavery. Socialism is not personal, individual chattel slavery; it’s slavery to government. We give government the right to oversee all economic factors, thus ultimately controlling, and distributing — and withholding — economic resources as it sees fit. Socialism makes people dependent upon government. That’s its purpose.

since, sadly, countless Americans today don’t have the virtue necessary for individual freedom, they want socialism.

Americans will insist they want to be free. But how many people voluntarily place themselves into dependence upon government? They don’t have to; they have a choice. But in one of history’s supreme oxymorons, they use their freedom to place themselves in slavery. But they lack the virtue, the character to take care of themselves, and to thus be truly free. And so, they turn to socialism, which makes them dependent upon somebody else. Too many Americans, if they ever had the virtue to be free, have lost it. And the Democrats love that.

The Left, of necessity, has redefined “freedom” as doing whatever one wishes to do, especially sexual licentiousness, the right to have as much sex as one wants with whomever one wishes to have it with — with no responsibility or consequences. But because of this inaccurate, and frankly vile, definition of freedom, people actually become enslaved (addicted, like a druggie) to their own lusts and passions, and, as a result, with no self-control or virtue, become enslaved to (dependent upon) government. These people want moral “freedom,” yet end up in economic dependence (socialism). Exactly what Democrats want.

It is interesting to see that the people who are pushing socialism in America are the same people who are attacking Christianity, glorifying sexual licentiousness, and who hate America—traditional, free America. And history.

Historically, we shouldn’t be surprised at all. 

Mark Lewis, Townhall

Federal investigators are reportedly expanding their scrutiny of California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom, issuing subpoenas seeking years of financial records and communications involving a nonprofit that has helped bankroll the governor’s international travel and other expenses.

The development puts fresh attention on Newsom and his political operation as the California governor continues to be viewed as a potential contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.

According to documents reviewed by the San Francisco Standard, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of California issued subpoenas in early September seeking roughly six years of records connected to the California State Protocol Foundation.

One subpoena reportedly states that the records are being sought as part of “a criminal investigation pending in the Eastern District of California.”

The subpoenas seek information involving the foundation’s donors and fundraisers, Newsom’s international travel and overseas appearances, as well as money potentially used for the governor’s residence, living expenses or other personal costs.

The subpoenas do not identify a specific alleged crime, and their issuance does not mean Newsom or anyone else has been accused of criminal wrongdoing. No charges have been announced against Newsom, his wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, or anyone connected to the foundation in relation to the latest inquiry.

Newsom’s office has fiercely denied wrongdoing and accused President Donald Trump of weaponizing the Justice Department against a political opponent.

“Governor Newsom went after the king — and as he warned in June, the tyrant is now coming after everyone around him,” Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said.

“This is what Donald Trump does to his enemies: investigate first, hunt for a crime that doesn’t exist second.”

But a source familiar with the matter previously told the Los Angeles Times that multiple federal inquiries involving individuals in Newsom’s orbit originated with information supplied by California whistleblowers rather than orders from Washington.

The latest subpoenas appear to bring the California State Protocol Foundation squarely into investigators’ sights.

Created in 2001, the nonprofit has been used by both Republican and Democratic administrations to finance official events, host foreign dignitaries and cover expenses associated with gubernatorial travel.

During Newsom’s tenure, the foundation has helped pay for trips to China, Mexico, Israel, the Vatican and El Salvador.

But questions have lingered over where the nonprofit’s money comes from and the potential interests of its donors.

According to the Standard’s review of state and federal records, more than $5 million raised through funds associated with Newsom’s 2019 and 2023 inaugurations was later transferred to the Protocol Foundation.

Some donors reportedly included companies, tribes and other organizations with business interests before California state government.

Newsom has also directed more than $7.5 million in outside contributions to the foundation since taking office in 2019, according to the report.

Federal investigators are now reportedly seeking communications involving several current and former members of Newsom’s inner circle.

Among them is Rebecca Prowda, Newsom’s chief protocol officer, who oversees the governor’s international travel and is married to San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie.

Investigators are also reportedly seeking communications involving former Newsom chief of staff Steve Kawa, former executive secretary Jim DeBoo, former deputy chief of staff Jason Elliott and other individuals connected to the foundation.

The expanded inquiry comes as another former member of Newsom’s inner circle faces separate legal trouble.

Former Newsom chief of staff Dana Williamson pleaded guilty in an unrelated federal corruption case that began during the Biden administration. That prosecution is separate from the investigation involving Newsom’s travel and the Protocol Foundation.

Newsom revealed in June that federal investigators were examining matters involving himself and his wife, immediately accusing the Trump administration of political retaliation.

Federal prosecutors have not publicly detailed the full scope of their investigation.

But the newly reported subpoenas provide the clearest indication yet of where investigators are looking: the millions of dollars flowing through a nonprofit that has financed expenses connected to one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent governors.

Whether that scrutiny ultimately produces charges remains unknown.

For Newsom, however, the federal investigation surrounding his political and government orbit appears to be getting wider — not going away.

Big League Politics

Democratic Arizona Senator Ruben Gallego appeared on CNN this morning and said the next Democratic President should destroy all remnants of Trump, including the beautification of Washington, DC, once he leaves the White House. 

Trump has undertaken various projects to beautify DC, including cleaning the vandalism and restoring statues and monuments across the city, fixing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, and building a White House Ballroom and a “Triumphal Arch.”

The Department of the Interior is preparing to break ground on the Arch on Columbia Island, where it will overlook the Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial across the Potomac River. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced earlier this month that the excavation work was set to begin “over the next two-week period.”

We are pleased to announce that after a very long wait (over 125 years!), we are preparing to start, over the next two-week period, the excavation work necessary for the Great Triumphal Arch and Military Observation Deck, at Memorial Circle on Columbia Island between the Lincoln… pic.twitter.com/8aff90jKNd

— Secretary Doug Burgum (@SecretaryBurgum) September 3, 2026

But Gallego says he would advocate for the reversal of these actions, including tearing down the Arch and Trump’s ballroom, under a Democratic president. Apparently, he would also have vandals and hobos return to the monuments as well.

“I think I’d be advocating for almost all of that,” Gallego told CNN’s Jake Tapper.

“You know, the real stain that this president has put on this country has been the fact that he eroded democracy,” he continued, pointing to January 6, accusing Trump of attempting a coup. “That right there is a reason why we should not have anything’s name towards him.”

Gallego then said Trump “destroyed the institutions that have kept this government together through some of the hardest times,” including the DOJ, arguing that “we need to be taking down all these, you know, honorific situations or emblems of him.”

Of the Triumphal Arch, he said it’s an “ugly monstrosity” that would desecrate the Arlington National Cemetery and that it’s an example of Trump “destroy[ing] the very fundamental things that these men and women have fought for, which is to save this country and continue this democracy.”

Jordan Conradson, Gateway Pundit

While China has been pouring billions into its own AI infrastructure and expansion, it may also be funding an equally expensive influence campaign here in the U.S. to oppose the building of data centers — critical to advancing the technology.

The stakes in the AI are incredibly high, so high that Interior Secretary Doug Burgum recently said whoever dominates in the field of artificial intelligence is “going to control the world.”

While China is massively expanding their AI industry growing evidence indicates they are pushing misinformation campaigns in the U.S. with the goal of stopping or delaying the build out of data centers.

These centers are massive computing factories with significant energy and water needs that are key to running AI systems like Grok, ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and others.

The data centers have become a focal point for supporters and opponents of the new technology.

In April Sen. Bernie Sanders convened his own panel on Capitol Hill to discuss “the existential threat of AI,” claiming “the richest, most powerful people in the world are now building a runaway train with no brakes.”

Sanders did not hide China’s interest in stopping U.S. AI development. He asked two senior Chinese officials to host the panel with him.

The pair from China — Zeng Yi, dean of the Beijing Institute of AI Safety and Governance, and Xue Lan, a Tsinghua University professor and Counselor to China’s State Council — used their Capitol podium to downplay the U.S.-China AI race.

The far left is unequivocally seeking to completely stop U.S. advancement.

Earlier this year Sanders, along with fellow Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, introduced the Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act. The bill would freeze all new U.S. construction of AI datacenters.

President Donald Trump and others have been counterpunching in what they see an undue foreign influence over a critical technology for U.S. security and economic interests.

On Monday, Trump signed a slew of Executive Orders that aim to combat security risks posed by foreign adversaries.

Last year he signed an Executive Order that streamlined the permitting process for data centers and provided loans and tax incentives for their construction.

In December he reinforced his earlier Order with another one that shields federal permitting from state and local rules.

In May a sweeping new 17-page report from the Bitcoin Policy Institute raised real concerns about China’s efforts to back efforts to sow distrust of data centers and effectively block AI programs in the U.S.

The Institute’s report — “Foreign Influence in the Campaign Against American AI” — details what it calls a multi-year influence operation backed by China targeting U.S. AI data centers and programs. 

Sam Lyman, BPI’s head of research and a former senior advisor to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, traces three interlocking vectors: Chinese state media propaganda; a U.S.-based nonprofit network bankrolled by Neville Roy Singham, a Shanghai-based American with ties to the Chinese Communist Party; and more than $2 billion in dark money from foreign billionaires routed into the very groups now demanding moratoriums.

“None of this is hidden,” the report states. “Each layer is documentable from primary sources.”

The stakes could not be higher, Lyman told Newsmax in an interview.

“Data centers are critical to winning the AI race. Whoever wins, will control the information layer of the global economy, which is why the U.S., with its commitment to free expression, must win,” Lyman said.

Indeed, President Xi Jinping himself declared AI “an important strategic handhold” for Beijing to seize global technological supremacy with a national plan to make China the world’s AI innovation center by 2030. 

While China’s media outlets like CGTN have published and aired reports warning Americans that data centers will spike their electricity bills, strain power grids, and contribute to global warming —  the same outlets trumpet Beijing’s subsidies that slash energy costs for China’s own AI businesses by up to 50%.

Inside the U.S., the most “operationally significant” player is that web of 501(c)(3) nonprofits funded by Singham, as tax records show that the tech billionaire and Marxist activist has poured some $285 million into activist groups since 2017.

Singham’s wife, Jodie Evans, co-founded CodePink, a far-left protest group that has run explicit campaigns against U.S. AI data centers and the Pentagon’s AI efforts, framing them as part of a new Cold War on China.

And multiple signatories to the coalition letter that helped trigger the Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez moratorium bill have taken Singham money.

The movement is also getting an assist from leftist billionaires like Switzerland’s Hansjörg Wyss and Britain’s Alan Parker and his Oak Foundation.

Together these billionaires alone have funneled more than $2 billion into U.S. advocacy, with about $39 million reaching 12 organizations actively opposing data-center expansion. 

A single $1.3 million Wyss grant went to a signatory of the December 2025 moratorium demand letter — with the grant using the same language that appears in the bill from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.

The activists they fund have been increasingly effective at the national and local levels.

So far about five dozen moratoriums have already passed at the local government level, pausing the construction of new data centers in multiple states, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that tracks economic development and corporate subsidies.

Beyond claims that AI is causing electric bills to surge, the left is using environmentalism as an excuse to halt new data centers. 

Ocasio-Cortez, at a Congressional hearing on May 20, dramatically displayed jars of dirty water, claiming the culprit was a Georgia AI data center from Meta, the Facebook parent.

In reality, the brown water came from four private wells and was likely from normal construction dirt that started when Meta broke ground. A probe found no evidence the running of the data center harmed the water supply.

Still, the stunt whipped up a panic about a lack of potable water in the area due to Meta’s project.

Experts say that the water used by most data centers is less than the amount to manage a typical 18-hole golf course.

Hudson Institute research fellow Zineb Riboua sees a deeper ideological driver behind a disparate left-wing coalition that includes CodePink, NAACP chapters, environmental groups, and even anti-Israel activists. 

“These groups arrive with a fully formed ideological inheritance,” she told Newsmax.

“They hold the conviction that Western capitalism is structurally predatory and that American technological power is merely colonialism by another name.

“The data center is simply the latest surface of this.” 

The selectivity, Riboua notes, is revealing. 

“China is building data centers at a scale and speed that dwarfs the American buildout, consuming coal-fired power with no environmental review, no community consultation, and no indigenous land acknowledgment — and there is not a single CodePink rally, NAACP resolution, or climate justice statement directed at any of it,” she said.

The impact of the foreign-backed activism is having a real impact on public opinion.

A Gallup poll released in May shows the backlash is real: seven in 10 Americans oppose new AI data centers in their local area, with Democrat opposition especially intense.

Hundreds of local fights, lawsuits, and rallies have delayed or blocked projects worth tens of billions of dollars, with perhaps a single critic inside the Democratic Party, Sen. John Fetterman.

Fetterman has denounced the moratorium push as “lunacy” and a “China-first kind of a policy.”

Republicans in Congress are becoming more vocal on the foreign involvement in these campaigns.

Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, has opened a probe of the Chinese money flows to activist groups in the U.S.

Smith recently called on Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to remove the tax-exempt status of groups receiving foreign funding who oppose AI data centers because such activities “jeopardize our national and economic security.”

“We’ve tracked down Chinese money that’s come into U.S. non-for-profits that are organizing the protests against data centers because China wants to win computational dominance,” Smith said.

“If they can sow discord and chaos within the American citizenry, they’ll slow down [the U.S. in] the AI race — and they win,” he said, adding “We have to be guarded.”

Paul Bond has been a journalist for three decades, writing stories reporters in legacy media typically ignore.

Victor Joecks•   September 13, 2026

A farmer can’t make his plants grow, but he can create the conditions that lead to their flourishing. A society can’t make its citizens virtuous, but it can nurture the institutions that lead to virtuous citizens.

Great thinkers in Western civilization have long noted the importance of virtue. In “Politics,” Aristotle declared, “The best life, both for individuals and states, is the life of virtue, when virtue has external goods enough for the performance of good actions.”

“Virtue then is a settled disposition of the mind determining the choice of actions and emotions, consisting essentially in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principle, that is, as the prudent man would determine it,” Aristotle wrote in “Nicomachean Ethics.” Practically, that means “virtue in a man will be the disposition which renders him a good man and also which will cause him to perform his function well.”

Contained in that clunky English is a key insight. Virtue requires ascertaining truth and moving toward it with actions. This presupposes that truth is objective, not a personal possession.

This fits in with an observation the great Roman statesman Cicero once made. He contrasted virtuous citizens with those who cared “more for his own interests than for those of the republic.”

Perhaps you can start to see the link between liberty and virtue. A man with the ability to do as he chooses can use that ability to oppress others. Or, as Cicero warned, he could make self-centered choices that undermine the governing system that protects liberty more broadly. Since freedom is rare, both are serious threats.

A tyrannical government may compel subservience from its citizens by removing their ability to take some destructive actions. The result may look virtuous, but coercion doesn’t create virtue by compelling conformity.

Our Founding Fathers talked about the importance of virtue and extended it to Christianity, the ubiquitous religion in the colonies at the time.

In 1776, John Adams declared, “The happiness of society is the end of government.” But his definition of happiness may surprise you. He wrote, “All sober enquiries after truth, ancient and modern, Pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue.”

That should make you think differently about the Declaration of Independence declaring that the “pursuit of happiness” is an unalienable right.

“Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” former President George Washington said in his 1796 Farewell Address. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men & citizens.”

In a 1798 letter, Adams explained why morality and religion are essential to check human passions. Without them, human vices “would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

The country has spent decades rejecting the virtue and Christian principles that the country was founded on. A deeply divided country only seems to agree that the government isn’t working as it should. This is a major reason why.

Government can’t make individuals virtuous, but it can stop undermining the institutions, like the family and churches, that once inculcated virtue in the next generation. Government schools once taught students the Bible. Now those schools undermine parents, the country and even the notion of truth.

A people without virtue shouldn’t expect to enjoy the blessings of liberty indefinitely. That’s a crisis to jump in and fix, not a foregone conclusion to observe passively. Next week, I’ll look at the difference between liberty and license.

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Victor Joecks | contributor

Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal

Victor Davis Hanson

Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal. 

I’d like to offer an update on the Canadian-American trade spat. 

Earlier, I had staged it. I said stage one was surprise on both sides of the border that two neighbors who spoke the same language, had the same civilizational origins in Britain, were close neighbors, and had the largest undefended border in the world were at a point of very angry disagreement. 

The second stage was that Prime Minister Mark Carney started to suggest that the United States was solely culpable, was a bully, and had forced him to cancel the agreement at the 11th hour late on a Friday afternoon without warning.  

And he said that the United States tried to impugn or intercede or limit, prune back, whatever term you use, Canadian sovereignty, both by telling Canada that it couldn’t import cheap Chinese EV vehicles or that it could not import cheap steel and aluminum from China that were really, to be fair, dumped below the cost of production as a way of getting around American tariffs via being used for assembling autos or vehicles in Canada and then shipped into the United States at a cheap price. 

And he accused us of trying to squelch Canadian and indigenous Canadian expression. In other words, our digital media companies were so successful in bringing the news and social media accounts to Canada that people who wanted to get the indigenous voice out and the French voice out couldn’t, and therefore he was going to unilaterally tax us 5% on top of corporate income tax, which nobody else does. 

We don’t tell Canadian broadcasters or Canadian newspapers we’re gonna tax you so you include the particular culture of the San Joaquin Valley of California. We feel that you don’t know anything about it, and so you’re gonna have to pay a tax to operate in our country. It’s absurd. 

So then the second stage was this war on the United States. The third was a recalibration. People said Carney hasn’t really digested the actual details of why he walked out. He’s been mysterious. He’s been murky. He won’t tell us exactly. 

And why would he side with a totalitarian communist government with Maoist roots that has a million Uyghurs in camps, destroys international trading protocols with dumping products below the cost of production, maintains asymmetrical mercantile trade surpluses, manipulates money and currency, and copyright and patent violations?  

Why would he want to side with them over the largest, the longest democracy in the world, its neighbor, its English-speaking neighbor? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would he do that? 

And I also suggested in stage three that one of the reasons he was doing that is Canada has not utilized its treasure house of natural resources. I’m talking about precious metals, potash, timber, oil, gas, you name it.  

It’s a socialist, ossified, calcified European-style economy plagued with 45% of the population was not born in Canada or their parents were not born in Canada, and they have enormous social welfare needs that the ossified European socialist economy cannot meet. 

And so, because it is failing, it has to have trade surpluses with the United States, and it has to have the United States protect it, and it resents the United States, thinking that we caused its problems. We didn’t cause its problems. 

Alberta can’t make a pipeline to British Columbia because of us. It can make a pipeline into Washington. It can make a pipeline into the United States in the Midwest to sell its oil, but it can’t do it between provinces. 

So if you want fossil fuel products into Quebec or Ontario from Alberta, then they’re gonna come through the United States’ pipeline system. We didn’t do that. 

We had nothing to do with their insane immigration policies. We had nothing to do with their net-zero, insane Green New Deal solar and wind policies. We experienced all that, but we stopped it, and we told them to stop it. 

So that was stage three, a second look at Carney’s narratives. 

Stage four is more serious for Canada. The jobs report came out. They’ve lost 41,000 jobs just in one week of the tariff war. We created 160,000 in August. It’s gonna get worse for Canada. 

We have, as I said, nine times the population, 13 times the nominal GDP, and Canada is entirely reliant. Seventy-five percent of it is reliant. I don’t say that out of triumphalism or boasting, but in sadness for Canada. I don’t know what they’re doing. 

Mr. Carney, who had three passports before he was prime minister, a Canadian, a British, and an Irish. He was the epitome of a globalist, and he wasn’t a nationalist. So his immigration, his energy, his defense policy, and his trade policy were all globalist. They were all European-style, and they didn’t realize or properly exploit the natural gifts of Canada. 

So now we’re in stage four, and the Americans are starting to notice something. The Canadians are booing us at sports events between Canadian and American teams. They keep bragging about elbows up, i.e., we’re gonna be like hockey players and defend ourselves from aggressors like you, violent aggressors.  

And they are waging anti-American propaganda. Carney is. He’s whipped this up because he did not want, as I said in stage three, he didn’t want an autonomous Alberta and an autonomous Quebec, and those referenda are coming up. 

More importantly, he’s now interfering in U.S. internal midterm politics. He’s got left-wing governors and senators deliberately taking the Canadian side, trashing their own president, with Gavin Newsom cutting videos in support of Canada, not us, and then targeting these tariffs at red and purple states along the border to get Trump supporters financially endangered, and therefore they won’t vote for Republican congressional candidates. 

And now we have the reaction. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He does not know what he’s doing. He’s living in a fantasy house.  

So far, the Americans have not noticed this. It’s just water off a duck’s back. But when you show on media day after day people booing us, and you hear him talk about war and battle, and you think that the whole world’s against us, they’re not. He’s all alone. 

He and the Chinese are the only two countries that issued counter tariffs. People in Europe love what he’s doing, but not one of them would follow his example. He’s got his neck out, and the fate of 41 million Canadians depends on him being successful, and he’s gonna fail because the United States is saying, “This is a new world. We’re not gonna subsidize everybody’s defense and run up $200 billion deficits with one neighbor, Mexico, and $50 billion to $60 billion with our northern neighbor and call it a free trade zone.” 

It’s not. It’s a mercantile effort, and we are at our wit’s end, and it’s gonna be a new world. We’re not the wealthy powerhouse we always were. We have $31 trillion, maybe $40 trillion, depending on how you calculate it, in debt, and it’s a new world. 

We want symmetry, and we want gratitude, and this man wants to wage an economic war and gin up world opinion against the United States in alliance with the most pernicious, deadly government in history, as a direct descendant of Mao Zedong, who killed 70 million people, and he’s championing Chinese interests by trying to get around our leverage. 

What he doesn’t understand, to conclude, is this: Canada has key interests in the Arctic. Given warming temperatures, the Northwest Passage may be used to navigate from east to west and west to east. We’re in a dangerous world where an increasing number of countries like North Korea have intercontinental ballistic missiles that have nuclear tips on the missiles. 

What am I getting at? Canada has 79 jets, and they’re 45 years old. Seventy-nine. Seventy-nine. I think California’s National Guard has almost as many. It has about 30 large, considerable ships rather than speedboats, but 30, 35 maybe. It has no military. It hasn’t kept its promises. It has welched. 

It depends on the United States to protect it from incoming aircraft or missiles, to protect it when Russian or Chinese ships decide that they’re going to claim areas of the Arctic that Canada thinks it has possession of or when they want to transit the Northwest Passage.  

In other words, we are subsidizing their defense like we just subsidized Europe’s defense. 

We are subsidizing their economy by allowing them to run up a $50 billion annual surplus. There are one million Canadians in the United States. There’s only a quarter of a million Americans in Canada. You’d think there’d be more since we’re so big, 360 million versus just 40 million. But a little tiny country of 40 million has a million in the United States. 

And you know what the final irony is? Two of Mr. Carney’s four children, his daughters, went to Harvard and Yale and live in the United States, and 95% of his globalist investments are in America. 

So when he tells Canadian small businesses to tough it up, we’re going to war economically against the United States, and your little businesses might have to go broke, but my investments are American because I’m betting on America over Canada because I would not dare put my capital into Canadian financial investments. He’s not. And my children prefer to live where? Not in socialist Canada with socialist medicine, with 45% of the population being immigrants or first- or second-generation Canadians, with a bankrupt economy. They want to live in the United States. 

And so the whole thing is absurd. And I would just caution Mr. Carney: The one thing you do not want to do is so gin up this war that you get on the wrong side of the American people. But all that invective, all that cheap booing, all that grandstanding, all of your flirtation with this communist, lethal government are not going down well. 

And for the first time, people are starting to notice. And your entire economy is in peril because when these reciprocal tariffs start to go back, they were aimed at lowering your $50 billion surplus, our deficit, to a manageable level. But now it’s going to go beyond that. 

And your economy cannot withstand it, not what you’ve done to it, not what you and Mr. Justin Trudeau did to it. You took a vibrant economy and a vibrant defense sector, and you turned them into a calcified, aging European economy and culture, and you’re not up to it. 

And don’t get on the wrong side of the American people with your cheap rhetoric. It won’t end well. 

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ADEN/DUBAI, Sept 12 – Saudi Arabia has shut down its East-West pipeline after the vital oil conduit came under aerial attack in the widening Middle East war.

The world’s largest crude oil exporter temporarily closed the pipeline after a drone attack that both Baghdad and Riyadh said had originated in Iraq, where Iranian-backed militias operate. Iraq dismissed a military commander on Saturday in response to the attack.

The 1,200-kilometre (745-mile) pipeline running across the Arabian Peninsula had helped Saudi Arabia to bypass a shipping logjam in the Strait of Hormuz, where tanker traffic has slowed to a trickle due to the war between the U.S. and Iran.