Category: GOP
The Obamacare subsidy fight exposes who Washington really serves
The failure of both Democrat and Republican plans to extend or partially replace enhanced Obamacare subsidies offers a clear lesson: Escaping an entitlement trap almost never happens.
Yes, the House of Representatives on Thursday voted to extend the COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies that expired at the end of 2025. Seventeen Republicans even joined a unanimous Democratic Caucus in voting for the extension. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Republicans have “no appetite” for an extension — at least not without reforms.
Republicans remain an impediment to the necessary reforms and are working hand in hand with Democrats to bring on economic collapse. Time is not on our side.
The reality is, once government creates a welfare entitlement, logic and sustainability exit the conversation. Politicians do not debate whether to grow the program. They argue only over how much to increase spending and how to disguise the costs. That pattern now governs the fight over enhanced Obamacare subsidies.
Why the premise never gets challenged
When the Senate rejected a nearly identical bill in December, the Wall Street Journal reported that Congress faces “no clear path for aiding millions of Americans facing soaring Affordable Care Act insurance costs next year.”
The Journal’s framing accepts the entitlement premise without question. It treats “aiding millions” as morally self-evident while ignoring the coercion necessary to fund that aid. Government assistance does not materialize from thin air. It transfers responsibility, money, and risk from one group of Americans to another.
Once imposed, that transfer only grows.
Both rejected plans would have sent more taxpayer money to insurers than the ACA already guarantees. With no deal in sight, the Journal observed last month that hope for extending the subsidies is fading. That assessment may be accurate politically, but an extension does not deserve hope. It deserves scrutiny.
How entitlement politics works
Democrats want Republicans to extend an expansion they never voted for of a program they never supported. Republicans respond by proposing modest adjustments to reduce political damage without challenging the underlying structure.
Rep. Max L. Miller (R-Ohio), who voted for the bill, summarized the dilemma perfectly. “I just want to make this abundantly clear: This is a Democratic piece of legislation. It is absolutely horrific. Now, it is the best alternative to what we have at the moment.”
That is how entitlement traps operate.
For decades, big-government advocates have followed a reliable strategy. They create a benefit for a defined group, allow costs to spiral, then dare the opposition to take something away from a newly entrenched constituency. When the moment arrives, those who claim to favor limited government retreat or propose cosmetic reforms that leave the core system untouched.
That dynamic explains why the country remains locked into the socialist ratchet, the uniparty routine, and a political class that acts as tax collector for an ever-expanding welfare state.
RELATED: Democrat senator makes stunning admission about Obamacare failures
Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Trapped voters, trapped taxpayers
Entitlements squeeze the nation from both sides. They trap recipients by discouraging work and mobility, and they trap taxpayers by locking future governments into permanent obligations.
The Affordable Care Act stands as one of the most powerful modern examples of this system. The law forced millions into government-regulated insurance markets while guaranteeing insurers a growing pool of subsidized customers. The result was predictable: higher costs, deeper dependency, and a massive political constituency invested in permanent expansion.
Not a single Republican voted for the ACA. They understood what the law would do. Democrats passed it anyway, and it worked exactly as designed.
Who Obamacare was really built to serve
As Connor O’Keeffe has argued at Mises Wire, federal health care policy has long served industry interests. Government interventions channel money toward providers, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers under the guise of helping patients.
Obamacare accelerated that process by mandating coverage and expanding what insurers must provide, driving demand and cost growth in tandem. Once people rely on government assistance to afford insurance, any reduction becomes politically unthinkable.
Republicans now scramble to avoid electoral consequences. House Speaker Mike Johnson says the GOP will advance health care proposals without extending subsidies, yet many lawmakers privately admit that only an extension prevents immediate pain ahead of the 2026 midterms.
That admission exposes the trap. Spending limits become cruel. Taxpayer costs disappear from the conversation. Only the next premium increase matters.
Why conservatives keep losing
History explains where this leads. Entitlement debates almost always end with higher spending. Political power depends on payments to voters. Reducing benefits means losing elections.
Progressives act decisively when in power. Conservatives obsess over procedure and restraint, even as the administrative state grows unchecked.
Last week alone offered two examples. The House overturned President Trump’s March 2025 executive order blocking collective bargaining for over a million federal employees, with 20 Republicans joining Democrats. Even Franklin Roosevelt opposed public-sector unions. Modern conservatives could not summon the resolve to block them.
On the same day, Indiana Republicans declined to redraw their congressional map despite the risk of losing the House and triggering impeachment proceedings against Trump. They clung to unwritten norms while their opponents prepared to exploit the outcome.
RELATED: If conservatives will not defend capitalism, who will?
Leontura via iStock/Getty Images
This pattern defines conservative failure. Republicans manage decline. They preserve a decaying system rather than reverse it.
Donald Trump broke from that habit. A former Democrat, he understands power. Win elections, then act. Trump restored a political energy absent on the right for decades.
His approach to entitlements focuses on restraining growth outside Social Security while expanding private-sector freedom to increase economic output. The goal is not austerity. It is to shrink government’s share of the economy by growing everything else faster.
Reform or collapse
That strategy may succeed or fail. It remains the only alternative to collapse. Without reform, federal spending and debt will overwhelm the system within a decade, possibly sooner. Borrowing costs will explode. Inflation will surge. Control will vanish.
The United States approached that danger under unified Democrat control and Joe Biden’s autopen in 2021 and 2022. Voters halted the slide by electing Republican majorities and returning Trump to the White House.
Trump failed to drain the swamp in his first term, largely because congressional Republicans refused to legislate when they had the chance. In his second term, he has advanced reforms through executive action. Congress has responded with delay and timidity.
The country will escape the entitlement trap one way or another. Reform can arrive through disciplined growth and economic expansion, or through collapse driven by massive overspending.
With their conservative approach to governance, Republicans remain an impediment to the necessary reforms and are working hand in hand with Democrats to bring on that collapse. Time is not on our side.
A red-state lawfare shakedown heads to the Supreme Court
The Republican Party claims to stand against lawfare — especially the obscene, rent-seeking variety that disguises itself as environmental justice. Yet that principle is about to be tested in a highly public and deeply embarrassing way.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on January 12 in Chevron v. Plaquemines Parish. Louisiana officials will face off against the Trump Justice Department and American energy producers in a landmark case over an attempted shakedown of oil companies for alleged responsibility for coastal erosion dating back to World War II.
Lawfare does not become acceptable because Republicans use it. And environmental shakedowns do not become conservative simply because they originate in a red state.
The basic claim is simple enough. Louisiana and several local governments have filed dozens of lawsuits alleging that oil and gas production over the last 80 years caused the erosion of the state’s coastline. But the structure and substance of these cases reveal something far more troubling.
Although the lawsuits were filed in the name of the state and its municipalities, control has effectively been handed over to politically connected plaintiffs’ lawyers — major donors who stand to reap enormous contingency fees. Through a so-called common interest agreement, the Louisiana attorney general’s office surrendered its obligation to independently assess the merits of the claims. In practice, the state abdicated its role to the trial-lawyer donor class.
That alone should raise alarms. The rest only makes it worse.
The lawsuits seek to impose liability for conduct that was lawful at the time and occurred as far back as eight decades ago. Ex post facto liability is fundamentally un-American, which is why almost no one attempts to defend it on the merits.
Even more awkward for Louisiana’s theory, virtually everyone outside the plaintiffs’ bar agrees on the primary cause of coastal erosion: decades of federal intervention by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which radically altered water flow in the Mississippi Delta. Louisiana once sued the federal government on exactly this basis. Now the same damage is somehow blamed on oil companies instead.
Because these claims reach back to the 1940s, they sweep in oil production carried out at the direction of the U.S. government to support the war effort — specifically the refining of aviation fuel for the military. It is a strange irony that after years of Democrat-led lawfare under the Biden administration, a red state has now delivered environmental litigation over World War II to the Supreme Court.
The hypocrisy is hard to miss.
The venue fight exposes the real game. Plaintiffs’ lawyers insist these cases remain in Louisiana state courts. The reason is obvious. Those courts are heavily influenced by the trial bar and have a record of staggering verdicts. Chevron was recently hit with a $745 million judgment in one such case.
Energy producers want the cases moved to federal court — not because victory is guaranteed but because federal courts are more likely to function as neutral arbiters. There is also a compelling jurisdictional reason: Much of the challenged activity involved federally directed wartime production. If any court belongs here, it is a federal one.
RELATED: America First energy policy is paying off at the pump
Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
This kind of forum shopping should look familiar. It mirrors the Democrats’ strategy during the Biden years — carefully selecting friendly state courts to pursue political outcomes they could not secure through legislation. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry (R) and Attorney General Liz Murrill (R) appear to have absorbed all the wrong lessons from all the wrong actors.
This is the same playbook used by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) when she charged President Trump in state court for conduct governed by federal law. It is the same model California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) embraced when he partnered with trial lawyers to sue energy companies for billions over alleged climate harms.
Step back from the legal details and a larger problem comes into focus.
President Trump’s agenda prioritizes American energy dominance. His actions abroad reinforce that priority. Yet Republicans in Louisiana are not merely opposing that objective — they are using the very lawfare tactics they claim to despise to undermine it.
For voters trying to apply a consistent ideological framework, the whiplash is real. When red states start behaving like California, it is fair to ask whether America First has drifted from a governing philosophy into a monetization strategy.
Lawfare does not become acceptable because Republicans use it. And environmental shakedowns do not become conservative simply because they originate in a red state. If the right intends to oppose lawfare, it needs to oppose it everywhere — especially when its own allies are the ones doing the shaking down.
‘Something historic’: CNN analyst GOBSMACKED by how Vance polls against Nikki Haley, others
The 2028 presidential election is 34 months away, and in that time, there are sure to be plenty of surprises. There are, however, already clear signs of who may ultimately make a bid for the White House — and how they might fare in the primaries.
CNN’s chief data analyst, Harry Enten, expressed surprise on Monday by how Vice President JD Vance performed in a recent poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters against former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nimarata “Nikki” Haley, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and other prospects.
‘The rest of the field are like going around in go-karts.’
Enten alluded to prediction market odds indicating that Vance is “running well ahead of the field” and that “nobody else is even close.”
Polymarket puts Vance’s chance of becoming the Republican presidential nominee in 2028 at 54%. The site has the chances of the runner-up, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, securing the nomination at 9%. This high confidence in Vance’s chances is similarly expressed on the PredictIt site as well as on the federally regulated prediction market Kalshi, which suggests Vance and Rubio have a 48% and 10% chance of securing the nomination, respectively.
“JD Vance is like Mario Andretti, and Marco Rubio and the rest of the field are like going around in go-karts at this point,” said Enten. “That’s really what we are looking at. JD Vance is the clear, heavy favorite at this time.”
Enten noted that Vance’s staggering early lead reflected in the prediction markets “is not coming out of nowhere” and directed CNN talking head Sara Sidner’s attention to a poll conducted in October by the University of New Hampshire.
RELATED: ‘All in’: TPUSA’s Andrew Kolvet sets sights on 2028 presidential candidate after AmFest
Photo by Caylo Seals/Getty Images
The poll found that among those who plan to vote in the 2028 Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire, 51% said they would vote for Vance; 9% said they would vote for Haley; 8% said they would vote for Gabbard; 5% said they would vote for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders; 4% would vote for Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.); and 3% each would vote for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
Calgary-born Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who appears poised to run as the kind of Republican President Donald Trump crushed in the 2016 and 2024 GOP primaries, proved unable to capture 1% in the poll.
“Take a look here! JD Vance at 51%!” said Enten. “The next closest is Nikki Haley, who’s at 9 — who’s at 9! I mean, what is that? That’s 42 points ahead of the pack.”
“There’s a reason why he’s such a heavy favorite in the prediction market so far, because if you win the GOP primary in New Hampshire, chances are, you’re going to be the Republican nominee for president,” added Enten.
When asked by Sidner whether it was rare to see an early lead of this magnitude, Enten said, “I looked back. Hitting 50% plus in the early New Hampshire polls for a non-sitting president — JD Vance is the only one.”
“JD Vance is pulling off something historic at this time,” continued Enten.
While Vance’s early lead is unprecedented, the last five sitting vice presidents who ran for president all became their parties’ nominees.
A straw poll was also taken earlier this month at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest, where widowed CEO Erika Kirk endorsed the vice president.
Blake Neff, the producer of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” noted that Vance won the AmFest straw poll “by more than Donald Trump won the 2024 one we did two years ago.” Whereas 82.6% of respondents previously said they wanted to see Trump as the 2024 GOP nominee, 84.2% of respondents said they wanted to see Vance as their nominee in 2028.
The UNH poll that found a majority of likely GOP voters support Vance likewise found that there is a much closer race developing across the aisle.
Among those who plan to vote in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary in New Hampshire, 19% of respondents say they would vote for former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; 15% would vote for California Gov. Gavin Newsom; 14% would vote for New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; 11% would vote for failed presidential candidate Kamala Harris; 8% would vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.); and 6% would vote for Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker.
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CNN’s Harry Enten Says JD Vance Lapping 2028 GOP Field Before Race Has Even Started
‘number is not coming out of nowhere’
Republicans are letting Democrats lie about affordability
Midterm elections go one of two ways. They are either a validation of the sitting president or a repudiation. Historically, they have almost always been a repudiation.
The 2026 midterms are shaping up to be no different — a firm rebuke to Donald Trump. That’s obviously bad for him. Congress will spend two straight years investigating and likely impeaching him.
If President Trump’s supporters don’t show up, Republican defeat is guaranteed.
But the bigger danger is to America. Democrat control of Congress will jeopardize Republicans’ efforts to restore an economy of opportunity for all. Worse, Democrats will lay the groundwork for recapturing the White House in 2028, at which point they will implement the most anti-opportunity agenda in American history. We’re talking welfare for all, funded by crippling tax hikes and a federal takeover of a once-free economy.
Can Donald Trump turn the midterms around? Only if he, his fellow Republicans, and their allies on the right make immediate changes. If they do, they could stem the losses in November — and maybe even defy the odds to expand their majorities in the House and Senate.
First and foremost: They need to realize that midterms hinge on turnout.
The reason midterms are usually a presidential repudiation is that voters from the other party are more motivated. They feel greater anger and intensity, and they show up. The president’s supporters, meanwhile, usually think they did their job when they elected their man. Why bother showing up again?
If President Trump’s supporters don’t show up, Republican defeat is guaranteed. The most urgent need, therefore, is to invest in a massive get-out-the-vote operation. The GOP needs one the likes of which it has never seen.
But such an effort also needs a message — something that resonates with voters and spurs them to action. That’s the second area where change is required. Because right now, Republicans don’t have any meaningful message at all.
The left certainly does. Democrat politicians, their allies in the media, and their associated army of activists and nonprofits have rallied around a single word: affordability. They’re tricking voters into thinking that all the inflation and financial pain that Joe Biden caused is really the fault of Donald Trump. The call to action writes itself: If voters want to make ends meet, their only hope is to vote the GOP out.
This message works, but only because Republicans are letting it work. They are largely silent in the face of Democrat attacks. Worse, in the president’s case, he is calling affordability a “hoax.” For voters who supported him because of Joe Biden’s inflation, nothing could be worse. It’s tantamount to saying their problems don’t matter.
Republicans must reclaim the economic high ground. They need to relentlessly hammer the point that Joe Biden’s enormous failures will take time to fix. They need to point to the relief they’ve given, especially the tax cuts the president signed in July. Most importantly, they need to lay out a unified agenda that speaks to Americans’ deep concerns, convincing voters that the GOP will, in fact, make life more affordable.
RELATED: The ‘blue-slip block’ is GOP cowardice masquerading as tradition
Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Crafting that agenda is as much the work of policy wonks as it is public relations. Republicans and their allies should be relentlessly message-testing and focus-grouping to discover not only what policies Americans want, but how to sell the policies that Americans need — in health care, housing, and beyond. This can be done without compromising conservative principles. In fact, it is essential if those principles are to have a path to becoming policies.
There’s one more message the GOP needs. It’s not enough to make a positive case for Republicans’ own priorities. They need to remind Americans of the danger posed by Democrats relentlessly.
This isn’t hard. The return of crippling inflation. The collapse of our borders once again. Higher taxes on the middle class. Republicans have a simple case to make: If voters want all of America to look more like crime-ridden, welfare-defrauding, utterly unaffordable big blue cities, they should vote for Democrats.
Republicans needed these messages yesterday. They needed a turnout operation that was already delivering these messages to the base and undecided voters alike. If they and their allies don’t get their act together before the start of the year, the midterm elections will indeed be a repudiation of Donald Trump. Worse, they’ll put America’s future at risk. The clock is ticking.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
Reagan Reese, Steve Bannon Break Down Fallout From Indiana Redistricting Collapse
‘This ends with heads on pikes’
Red State Reignites Redistricting Battle After Trump Turns Up Heat
‘Deserve to have fair representation’
The imperial judiciary strikes back
So far, more than 100 federal court judges have ruled against the Trump administration in hundreds of lawsuits filed by states, unions, nonprofit organizations, and individuals.
While some of these rulings are fairly grounded in the Constitution, federal law, and precedent, many are expressions of primal rage from judges offended by the administration and moving at breakneck speed to stop it.
Trump sometimes exceeds his authority. Activist judges substitute ‘frequently’ for ‘sometimes.’ The Constitution and the Supreme Court disagree.
According to a Politico analysis, 87 of 114 federal judges who ruled against the administration were appointed by Democratic presidents, and 27 by Republicans. Most of the lawsuits were filed in just a few districts, with repeat activist judges leading the opposition.
Lawsuits against the administration may be filed in the District of Columbia and, often, also in other districts. Initially cases are randomly assigned. Plaintiffs focus on districts with predominantly activist, progressive judges. Because related cases are usually assigned to the same judge, later plaintiffs file in districts in which related cases were assigned to friendly activists.
Conservative judges generally believe they should interpret the law and avoid ruling on political questions, while liberals tend to see themselves as protectors of their values. After 60 years of domination by activist liberals, the Supreme Court and conservative appeals court judges are finally demanding that district court judges respect the Constitution. The Supreme Court is also re-evaluating precedents established by far-left justices who substituted their values for the words and intentions embodied in the Constitution.
To date, the Supreme Court has reversed or stayed about 30 lower court injunctions blocking the administration, and appeals courts have reversed or stayed another dozen. Even Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson imposed an administrative stay on a district court decision requiring the immediate resumption of SNAP payments.
Federal judges who oppose Trump’s agenda are openly opposing the Supreme Court. In April, D.C. Chief Federal Judge James Boasberg sought to hold administration officials in criminal contempt for violating an order the court had vacated. In May, Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge James Ho criticized the court’s demand that district courts act promptly on administration requests. In a September ruling, Boston Federal Judge Allison Burroughs challenged the court for expecting lower courts to treat its emergency orders as binding legal precedent.
Ten of 12 federal judges interviewed by NBC News in September, and 47 of 65 federal judges responding to a New York Times survey in October, thought the court was mishandling its emergency docket. They described orders as “incredibly demoralizing and troubling” and “a slap in the face to the district courts.”
Deservedly so. Though the Supreme Court and appeals courts judges have rebuked district court judges for ignoring higher courts and abusing their authority, they continue to do so with rulings focused on identity politics and a progressive lens on the woes of immigrants, minorities, women, and workers. They likely expect to be reversed on appeal, but they secure wins by causing delay and creating fodder for progressive activists to rally their supporters.
There is little that can be done about these judges. Removal requires a majority vote in the House and a two-thirds vote in the Senate. With Democrats supporting these judges, those votes are unrealistic.
RELATED: Who checks the judges? No one — and that’s the problem.
Photo by Kevin Carter/Getty Images
Just a few of the dozens of examples of politicized judicial decisions:
In May, Myong Joun, a Biden appointee in Boston, enjoined layoffs at the Department of Education in a decision featuring an encomium to its anti-discrimination mission. The Supreme Court stayed his injunction.
Despite this precedent, Susan Illston, a Clinton appointee in San Francisco, issued a nationwide injunction barring the administration from firing union employees during or because of the government shutdown. Ignoring settled law, she bemoaned the “trauma” of workers who had been under “stress” ever since Trump’s election. Illston gambled correctly that the shutdown would end before her order could be reversed.
Indira Talwani, a federal district court judge in Boston, went further. Declaiming her fear that defunding Planned Parenthood would deprive women of access to abortions, she elided Article I of the Constitution, which requires all federal spending to be approved by Congress, nullifying a duly enacted statute that suspended funding of large abortion providers for a year. By the time she is reversed, the suspension will have expired.
In June, after San Francisco Federal Judge Charles Breyer enjoined Trump from federalizing the California National Guard, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit unanimously stayed his order, explaining that on military matters, the president’s judgment stands unless it is dishonest. Nonetheless, Oregon Federal Judge Karin Immergut subsequently blocked deployments in Portland, substituting her assessment of the situation for the president’s.
An Obama-appointed judge recently interviewed by NBC explained, “Trump derangement syndrome is a real issue. As a result, judges are mad at what Trump is doing or the manner he is going about things; they are sometimes forgetting to stay in their lane.”
Trump sometimes exceeds his authority. Activist judges, who self-reverentially believe progressive technocrats and judges are democracy’s guardians, substitute “frequently” for “sometimes.” The Constitution and the Supreme Court disagree.
Big Tech’s AI boom hits voters hard — and Democrats pounce
Wouldn’t it be a bitter irony if Republicans lost the midterms — maybe even in conservative red states — because Democrats outmaneuvered them on the dangers of the AI data-center boom? The left now warns voters about land seizures, rising electric bills, water shortages, and Big Tech’s unchecked power. Meanwhile, Republicans stay quiet as Trump himself champions the very agenda voters increasingly fear.
During the Biden years, Republicans attacked Big Tech censorship, digital surveillance, Agenda 2030 land-grabs, and the artificial online culture reshaping young Americans. Every one of those concerns now intersects with the data-center explosion — energy demands, land use, power monopolies, and the rise of generative AI — but the political right barely whispers about it.
Republicans can channel AI toward focused, beneficial uses and away from a dystopian model that erodes civic life. Voters already want that shift.
Democrats don’t make that mistake. They see a potent electoral weapon.
Georgia hadn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 2006. Yet Democrat Peter Hubbard defeated a Republican incumbent on the Public Service Commission by 26 points by hammering “sweetheart deals” GOP officials granted hyperscale data centers. Voters in the state face repeated rate hikes linked to the massive energy demands of Big Tech facilities.
“The number-one issue was affordability,” Hubbard told Wired. “But a very close second was data centers and the concern around them just sucking up the water, the electricity, the land — and not really paying any taxes.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. In 2022, Georgia’s Republican legislature passed a sales-tax exemption for data centers. In 2024, a bipartisan bill attempted to halt those tax breaks, but Gov. Brian Kemp (R) vetoed it. Voters noticed — and punished the GOP for it.
Georgia now surpasses northern Virginia in hyperscale growth. Atlanta’s data-center inventory rose 222% in two years, with more than 2,150 megawatts of new construction under way. It’s no mystery why Democrats flipped two PSC seats in blowouts.
Republicans lost because they defended crony capitalism that inflated energy bills, devoured land, and fed an AI industry conservatives once warned about. If Kamala Harris had pushed the data-center agenda as aggressively as Trump now does, Republicans would be in open revolt. But Trump’s support silences the conservative grassroots and leaves Democrats free to define the issue.
Virginia tells the same story. Democrat John McAuliff flipped a GOP seat by attacking Big Tech’s land-grab and the rising utility costs tied to data-center expansion. He blasted his opponent for profiting while family farms vanished under the footprint of hyperscale development. He became the first Democrat in 30 years to carry the district.
At the statewide level, Democrat Abigail Spanberger won the governor’s office by arguing that AI data centers must pay their “fair share” of soaring energy costs. She framed the issue as a fight to protect families from Big Tech’s strain on the grid.
New Jersey voters heard similar warnings as they faced a 22% electric rate increase. Democrat Mikie Sherrill defeated Republican Jack Ciattarelli by double digits after blaming part of the spike on hyperscale energy demand. She pledged to declare a state of emergency to halt increases and require data centers to fund grid upgrades.
This pattern repeats in reliably red states.
Indiana saw dozens of new hyperscale proposals, yet not a single Republican official pushed back. Ordinary citizens blocked one of Google’s planned rezonings near Indianapolis. Liberal groups — like Citizens Action Coalition — filled the leadership vacuum and demanded a moratorium on new data centers, calling it a fight against “big tech oligarchs that are calling all the shots at every single level of government.”
RELATED: Stop feeding Big Tech and start feeding Americans again
Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Republican leaders, meanwhile, worked to ban states from regulating AI at all. This summer they attempted to insert a sweeping prohibition into the budget reconciliation bill that would bar states from regulating data-center siting or AI content for 10 years. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) now seeks to attach the same language to the FY 2026 defense authorization act. President Trump backs the provision.
Instead of ceding the issue to the left, Republicans should correct course. They can channel AI toward focused, beneficial uses and away from a dystopian model that erodes civic life. Voters already want that shift. A new University of Maryland poll found residents believe — by a 2-1 margin — that AI will harm society more than it helps. More than 80% expressed deep concern about declining face-to-face interaction, the erosion of education and critical thinking, and job displacement fueled by AI.
Capital expenditures cannot sustain the current pace of expansion, and public patience with Big Tech’s demands is running out. The political party that recognizes these realities first will earn the credit. Right now, the party that once defended property rights, community values, and human-centered technology is getting lapped by the party that partnered with Big Tech oligarchs to censor Americans during COVID.
Republicans still have time to lead. But they won’t win a fight they refuse to join.
