MAGA 🤝 Lansing

July 24, 2026

Dave Gonigam

Bipartisanship

Something’s suspicious when both President Trump and Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer land on the same side of a major economic issue.

And if you happen to land on the other side? You might be on a federal watch list.

Begin with the news yesterday, as reported by Reuters…

President Donald Trump announced a nonbinding pledge by U.S. power producers and ‌data centers on Thursday to fund or build energy infrastructure that would meet massive AI-related power needs while shielding consumers from high electricity costs.

Consumer advocacy groups and other administration critics, however, dismissed the pledge as an empty promise to consumers as Trump tries to balance his support for power-guzzling data centers against public anger over rising utility bills….

Community meetings in many states have lasted into the wee hours as residents oppose development of data centers they view as noisy, bad for the environment and a factor in rising electric bills.

Trump tried to pitch data centers as a net plus: "You have communities that really want the data centers, and frankly those are the smart communities.”

But that comment was soon followed by a remark that suggested — well, a certain inevitability to the whole thing.

Yeah, there was zero “convincing” going on earlier this year in Saline Township, Michigan — population 2,277. Only litigation and intimidation.

A consortium of companies including OpenAI and Oracle was bound and determined to build a $16 billion data center known as “The Barn” on a site about 15 miles south of Ann Arbor.

It’s part of the “Stargate” project that Trump, OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle’s Larry Ellison touted last year on the first full day of Trump’s second term. The Barn had Gov. Whitmer’s full backing.

But before the project could go ahead, about 250 acres of farmland had to be rezoned. The township board, feeling the heat from the locals, resisted. Among the objections — The Barn would grow the region’s power demand by 25%.

Last September, both the township board and planning commission voted to nix the project.

Then the data center’s developer — an outfit called Related Digital — sued the township.

The township had precious little money to fight deep-pocketed companies with an army of lawyers — and so it opted to settle the case. Under a court-ordered agreement, The Barn will get a 50% property tax abatement for the next 12 years.

And so on June 1, Gov. Whitmer was joined by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk for a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

After the ceremony, Whitmer was chatting it up with Oracle’s Magouyrk — and inadvertently laid the game bare for all the world to hear.

Admittedly the audio is muddy. But no one, least of all Whitmer, has stepped forward to challenge the interpretation that soon went viral. (You can click on the image to listen for yourself…)

Which is in keeping with Whitmer’s governing style, writes Detroit News columnist Kaitlyn Buss.

“Whether the issue was COVID restrictions, corporate subsidies, electric vehicle mandates, energy policy or now data centers, the pattern is familiar. Public opposition is treated not as a legitimate obstacle to overcome but as background noise to manage.”

➢ Bonus points: The VP of the developer’s parent company is married to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who’s running to succeed Whitmer as governor next year.

So the story’s over? Hardly.

Opponents of the project have every reason to worry about government retribution — as do opponents of data centers everywhere. Read on…

Anti-Data Centers? There’s a Watch List for That

When it comes to AI, both federal and state law enforcement are surveilling what Wired magazine calls a “new and worryingly broad category of people and activities deemed an emerging threat.”

Earlier this year, Wired got its hands on more than 1,000 pages of unpublished reports from Homeland Security, the FBI and “fusion centers” that link the feds with local police agencies.

The reports come on the heels of National Security Presidential Memo 7 — a document signed by Trump last year that instructs the Justice Department to target people with “anti-American,” “anti-Christian” and “anti-capitalism” views.

Now you might think in the context of AI, the feds are simply zeroing in on militant types — like the fellow accused of trying to firebomb the San Francisco home of OpenAI’s Sam Altman.

You know, the sort of people the FBI labels “anarchist violent extremist actors.”

Not so.

For instance, one document describes how the fusion center in northern Virginia — home to the world’s biggest concentration of data centers — is trying to sniff out potential attacks on data centers before they happen.

“But in the breakdown of Suspicious Activity Reporting indicators,” writesWired’s Daniel Boguslaw, “the intelligence report lists activities that could easily be carried out by peaceful protesters, legal experts say… [A] category like ‘anti-tech extremism’ could be drawn so broad as to ensnare peaceful data center protesters, AI skeptics and anyone with a bone to pick with technology that permeates modern life.”

Says Spencer Reynolds of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund: “These intelligence reports are part of a long tradition of agencies identifying protest or even simply having strong opinions as precursors to violence.”

And so if you organize a data center protest in your community… you run the risk of a visit from the cops if you criticize public officials a little too forcefully on social media. They’ll construe it as a “threat.”

Examples abound: Here’s an especially outrageous one, with the caveat we don’t know when or where it took place.

These are deeply concerning developments wherever you fall on the red-blue political divide — as you’ll see momentarily.

Data Centers Scramble the Red-Blue Divide

The power elite’s agenda couldn’t be clearer — and it’s not just about President Trump and Gov. Whitmer.

In May we took note when finance bigwigs like BlackRock’s Larry Fink implied that anyone who opposes data center construction might be a budding domestic terrorist. This month we perked up when The New York Times among others suggested that data-center opponents are dupes of the Chinese and Russian governments.

Politico is out with a new poll trying to frame data-center resistance as a mostly Democrat thing, given an upswell in Democratic opposition the last six months.

But GOP opposition is growing too — and polling data doesn’t fully capture on-the-ground reality.

In May, we spotlighted the opposition to a sprawling data center project in Box Elder County, Utah — which backed Trump in the 2024 election with 79% of the vote.

Last weekend brought dozens of protests nationwide — an effort spearheaded by Women for Trump founder Amy Kremer.

Either Trump doesn’t know about these developments — or he knows and doesn’t care.

Maybe he too is getting “used to people saying ‘f*ck no’ and then doing it anyway.”

One thing’s for sure: Elon Musk’s data centers in space can’t come soon enough.

OK, let’s turn to the markets today…

Markets Today: All Hail the Pakistani Generals!

Aaaand… here we go with “news” designed to depress the oil price and lift the stock market.

From Reuters: “Pakistan is exploring a path towards a resumption of stalled U.S.-Iran talks over ending their nearly five-month-old war, three Pakistani sources said, following a push initiated by China.”

Ah, the good old Pakistani generals! Been weeks since we’ve heard from them.

Let’s see: There’s still next to no oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz. The Bab al-Mandab at the south end of the Red Sea is a no-go for many tankers.

And now Bloomberg reports that China is snapping up all the Russian oil it can to offset any further losses from the Middle East. That means European buyers of Russian oil will have to turn to the United States instead.

➢ Just in: U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East have issued a unified security alert warning of possible “unforeseen escalation” in the Persian Gulf.

But whatevs. The Pakistani generals are good enough to drive down U.S. oil futures by 4% to $88.42. We can have a sub-$90 close this afternoon before Washington steps up its attacks after 4:00 p.m. EDT.

Sure enough, the major U.S. stock indexes also responded to the Reuters story.

For the first hour or so of trading, the S&P 500 was little changed from yesterday’s close. But now it’s up more than a half-percent at 7,450. Likewise the Nasdaq recovered its early losses and is slightly in the green now.

The big earnings report that came out after the market closed yesterday was Intel. The numbers were great — sales up 25% from a year earlier, comfortably ahead of Wall Street analysts’ estimates.

But as was the case with Google and Tesla yesterday, Mr. Market worries that all Intel’s spending will have an uncertain payoff — and that yesterday’s numbers are as good as it gets for the rest of the year. INTC shares are down over 4% on the day.

As the week winds down, we’ll note several wins Paradigm readers have booked in recent days…

20% in two months on the defense contractor RTX for readers of Enrique Abeyta’s The Maverick — a classic rebound after a bad earnings reaction during the spring

After Tesla’s rotten quarterly numbers noted here yesterday, subscribers to Zach Scheidt’s Income Alliance booked 72% gains on a put-option play

Ray Blanco urged his Catalyst Trader readers to grab 37% gains after nine months of holding Agios Pharmaceuticals

And members of the Paradigm Mastermind Group collected 570% after 20 months on a combined AI-crypto play. That’s just half the position; James Altucher is urging readers to let the rest ride.

Elsewhere, precious metals are modestly in the green with gold at $4,063 and silver at $58.45. But crypto is losing ground with Bitcoin under $64,000 and Ethereum approaching $1,850.

Yesterday’s market action brought a rare event — one that doesn’t bode well for stocks in the near term.

On the Paradigm mobile app, trading pro Enrique Abeyta notes that both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 “gapped” down 1% on the open… while oil futures spiked 5% at the same time.

An obscure stat? Perhaps. But “this has happened only six times in the last 20 years,” says Enrique — “with most of those being in 2026.”

The others occurred in early 2011 and early 2022. On both occasions “it did not bode well for the stock market in the coming six months.”

Combine that with the fact that stock market performance is usually punk going into this time of year anyway, “we would be patient in buying dips right now.”

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