After the landslide

Recently

• Why does everyone hate “the elites”? Hugo Drochon on how so many voters in the West came to feel shut out of power. (Open-access, in partnership with the Marlborough House Foundation.)

Today

• The weekend despatch is here …

• + New music from Willi Carlisle.

First

• American voters sided against the AI industry in 40 of 41 local ballot measures this week—but the industry has other towns in mind …

‘We beat a city’

In Tuesday’s U.S. midterm elections, voters in Trenton, Ohio, north of Cincinnati, amended their charter. About 80 percent of them voted to bar any new data center that draws more than 25 megawatts. The city had said data centers would bring residents a year off their general-fund property tax, and 30 percent off at the YMCA. “We stood together and we beat a city,” says the campaign’s leader, Barry Blankenship. In the city’s industrial park, east of the Molson Coors brewery, the developer Prologis has begun site work on four buildings that will draw 250 megawatts: “The result does not affect our project.”

Somewhere else

By Ballotpedia’s count, voters sided against data centers, the AI industry’s computer warehouses, in 40 of 41 local ballot measures in 10 states. In October, 57 percent of Americans told ABC News pollsters their utility bills were unaffordable, up from 45 percent in February. Dan Diorio, of the Data Center Coalition, an industry group, says the investment is “going to go to other communities that have not shut themselves off.” Trenton’s ban stops at the city limits. Just beyond them, Amazon has planned a campus on 600 acres (about 240 hectares) in two townships. One of the townships wants a ban of its own, and on November 10, the Butler County zoning commission will take up the proposal.

Far from Madrid

Here in The Signal, Paul Collier says neglected places tend to recover when the people who live there hold the power. The Basques, he says, not Spain’s leaders in Madrid, turned one of Europe’s poorest regions into one of its most attractive. Trenton’s voters hold power over their city charter, and they used it. Ohio’s courts may decide whether that reaches the four buildings already under way. More of the power sits in Columbus, the state capital, where a governor can halt state permits for data centers by executive order, Bloomberg reports. Amy Acton, a Democrat, won that job this week, and she has pledged to block projects unless they meet certain standards. … See “‘Deplorable.’”

From all who pass

In 1862, Munn & Scott built a grain elevator in Chicago and called it the Northwestern. Each January, the city’s elevator owners set their storage prices together. Farmers in the Grange lobbied Midwestern legislatures to step in, and in 1871 Illinois capped the rates. Munn & Scott ran the Northwestern without the required license, and the state prosecuted them. In 1877, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the law, 7–2, noting that nine firms controlled the city’s 14 grain warehouses in 1874. Munn & Scott, Chief Justice Morrison Waite wrote, “stand … in the very ‘gateway of commerce,’ and take toll from all who pass.” If lawmakers abused that power, “the people must resort to the polls, not to the courts.”

… Meanwhile

U.S. President Donald Trump, on whether to resume the war on Iran: “You’ll know soon enough.” … A court in Dar es Salaam acquits Tundu Lissu, who leads Tanzania’s main opposition party, of treason, a capital crime, and jails him for four years for incitement. … Leaked UN findings say a firm based in the United Arab Emirates sent Colombian mercenaries to fight in Sudan’s civil war. … A Nigerian court voids the opposition’s nomination of the former vice president Atiku Abubakar for president. … & Researchers find red blood cells turned to mineral in the bones of a 115-million-year-old dinosaur from Brazil.

The weekend despatch

A ‘message to the West’

Eyes only

• On Friday, emails signed with an infamous surname claimed responsibility. Spain calls it “hybrid aggression,” but investigators can’t yet say whose aggression—or what the point of it would be.

In the air

• What’s left for mathematicians after AI cracks a 90-year-old problem? Standpoints from Alex Kontorovich, Ankur Moitra, and Anders Hansen.

From the files

• Democrats won the U.S. midterms, not least from Trump’s war on Iran and tariffs—now what? Andrew Preston on the powers Congress has ceded to the American presidency in the name of national security.

Features

• Why does everyone hate “the elites”? Hugo Drochon on how so many voters in the West came to feel shut out of power.

Books

• Is tech coming for your job? Paul Osterman, Disposable Workers: The Transformation of Employment.

Music

• Who’s Tyler Childers?
• & New tracks from Willi Carlisle, Everything but the Girl, Junior Boys, Michael Kiwanuka, & Bettie Serveert.

+ Weather report

• Drought eases from Texas to Utah—and worsens along the lower Mississippi …

Thoughts or questions: concierge@thesgnl.com.

Music

‘She Only Loves Horses’

The Arkansas country-folk singer Willi Carlisle has a new album out this week, The Universal Bubba …