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The politics of New York's data center construction pause · INSIGHT TODAY

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  Speaker 1: Welcome back. Isn't it exciting? It is for me political
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: panel time. Let me introduce them to you. You know
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  Speaker 1: the hat, you know the face Democratic strategyes CBS today
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  Speaker 1: is political contributor Chuck Roache, Republican strategist. He doesn't have
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  Speaker 1: a hat. It's got a face though, Matt Wicklow, that's
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  Speaker 1: great to have you.
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  Speaker 2: Good to be with you.
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  Speaker 1: So uh. The iron rule here is if I go
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  Speaker 1: to break with it, we start with it one year
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  Speaker 1: more atarium in New York data centers, hyperscalers. This is
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  Speaker 1: about the power of data, the power of billionaires politically.
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  Speaker 3: Resident absolutely, but I also think that there's a lot
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  Speaker 3: more to this than people are talking about. I feel
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  Speaker 3: like John Fetterman raised an interesting point when he's made
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  Speaker 3: a Democratic senator, Pennsylvania Democratic Senator. He tweeted China wins
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  Speaker 3: with this, and I think that it does raise the
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  Speaker 3: question of is this a smart or short sighted policy?
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  Speaker 3: I think it's fair to raise questions. People have a
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  Speaker 3: lot of questions. They see data centers pop up really
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  Speaker 3: really quickly, and.
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  Speaker 1: They don't know what it's going to do to their
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  Speaker 1: utility builds. It doesn't they don't know what it's going
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  Speaker 1: to mean for water usage. They want some answers. And
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  Speaker 1: what strikes me, Matt, and I want to bring you
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  Speaker 1: in on this, Chuck. Here's an entire industry. They can
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  Speaker 1: hire all the pr people on planet Earth, genuinely, genuinely, yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and they still don't tell their story or explain what's.
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  Speaker 2: Going to happen.
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  Speaker 3: I think that's what needs to happen here. But I
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  Speaker 3: also think it's important for people to know when they're
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  Speaker 3: getting played. The New York Times even reported that there's
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  Speaker 3: lots of signs of foreign influence amplifying anti data center sentiment,
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  Speaker 3: and so it's fair to ask questions. But it's also
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  Speaker 3: fair to know when you might be getting played by
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  Speaker 3: a foreign op that wants America to be less competitive
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  Speaker 3: in things like AI development and build out.
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  Speaker 2: Chuck, There's very few things in my thirty six year
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  Speaker 2: career that I've seen that really motivate both sides of
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  Speaker 2: the isle, and this thing. Man in rural Texas where
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  Speaker 2: they have built a lot of these things, Republicans are
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  Speaker 2: taken to the street like you're tech about to notice. Absolutely,
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  Speaker 2: I mean all around the country. It's a unique dynamic
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  Speaker 2: for Democrats because organized labor in the unions are building
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  Speaker 2: a lot of these things. They're creating a lot of jobs.
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  Speaker 2: And let me explain this because to your point about
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  Speaker 2: them having unlimited money, they wont these things built fast.
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  Speaker 2: And guess what, they're paying a lot of overtime. I've
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  Speaker 2: got labors making one hundred thousand dollars a year and
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  Speaker 2: they're going to their Democratic allies going whoa, whoa, woah,
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  Speaker 2: what are you doing here? While everybody else out in
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  Speaker 2: the neighborhoods are going no, no, no, no, no, let's go
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  Speaker 2: to the streets. So that's the conundrum the party is in.
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  Speaker 3: That's exactly right.
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  Speaker 1: So give me a sense, Chuck, what is the short
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  Speaker 1: and mid term outcome you know of this con.
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  Speaker 2: If you mentioned Texas, if you look at what Gina Hanahosha,
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  Speaker 2: who's running as a Democrat, a guesst Abbott, who's been
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  Speaker 2: there for fifteen hundred years, she's talking about they should
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  Speaker 2: pay for themselves and they shouldn't be using electricity or
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  Speaker 2: water that the neighbors have to pay for. Well, that
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  Speaker 2: is a really good message to folks if you're trying
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  Speaker 2: to find a middle ground. While she's out protesting the
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  Speaker 2: newly developed ones that are happening in rural Texas.
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  Speaker 3: I think that's the key here is there could be
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  Speaker 3: a path forward that you know, uses innovation to make these.
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  Speaker 2: Work a little bit better.
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  Speaker 3: There's also got to be a payoff to the communities,
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  Speaker 3: and I think these companies are trying to find ways
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  Speaker 3: to make it a win win situation. But again, people
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  Speaker 3: need to know when they're getting played by things like
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  Speaker 3: foreign adversaries.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to talk to you about two ice
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  Speaker 1: fatal shootings in less than a week, one Houston and
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  Speaker 1: one in May. It clearly will reanimate the conversation about tactics,
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  Speaker 1: worst of the worst, and what kind of country we're
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  Speaker 1: in right now. Chuck.
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  Speaker 2: Look, we're seeing this play out and it's very disturbing
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  Speaker 2: within my community. I spent a lot of time in
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  Speaker 2: the Hispanic community, where there's an anxiety. There's an anxiety
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  Speaker 2: of even folks that were Republican Latinos that voted for
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  Speaker 2: Donald Trump gravitated there in twenty two. I absolutely had
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  Speaker 2: historic numbers that voted for him. I give, as a Democrat,
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  Speaker 2: full knowledge of that. But those folks who I've been
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  Speaker 2: talking to and focus groups were like, sure, I wanted
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  Speaker 2: to secure border and yes, I wanted folks to port
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  Speaker 2: it that we're going to come here to harm our country.
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  Speaker 2: But this is not what we had in mind.
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  Speaker 1: Matt. This is an achilles seal. It seems to me.
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  Speaker 3: I think main Senators Us and Collins made a notable
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  Speaker 3: call to DHS to say, let's cut back on these
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  Speaker 3: traffic stops and things that we're seeing a little bit
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  Speaker 3: more danger than is necessary, and let's find a way
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  Speaker 3: to really focus on the safer apprehensions and ways that
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  Speaker 3: we get. There's so many people to focus on, let's
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  Speaker 3: focus on the less dangerous.
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  Speaker 1: Well. When Angus King, the independent senator from Maine, says
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  Speaker 1: in the last year two ordre pe people were arrested
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  Speaker 1: in Maine, ten percent of them had criminal records outside
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  Speaker 1: of their undocumented status, he said, ninety percent are not
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  Speaker 1: the worst of the worst by definition by DHS owned statistics.
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  Speaker 1: There's an issue there.
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  Speaker 3: There's an issue there, But I think countrywide there's still
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  Speaker 3: a strong amount of support and pulls for removing illegal immigrants,
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  Speaker 3: whether they're criminals or not. It's just the DHS needs
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  Speaker 3: to prioritize where it makes sense to have the less date.
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  Speaker 1: At least, So I do you have to die in
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  Speaker 1: the process.
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  Speaker 2: Twenty one congression of seats that have more than thirty
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  Speaker 2: percent Latino population, Latino voters will decide the majority in
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  Speaker 2: the House. It was looking good for Republicans up until
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  Speaker 2: this point, and those numbers have tanked. It ain't just
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  Speaker 2: about immigration and ice, but you have an anxiety of
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  Speaker 2: these gestapos in the neighborhood laid over the economic anxiety
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  Speaker 2: we just described with these as centers, the cost of
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  Speaker 2: bread and biscuits, whatever it is, there's a lot of
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  Speaker 2: tension on working Americans. It just happens that Latinos are
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  Speaker 2: at the lower wrong of that, so they're feeling to
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  Speaker 2: squeeze the most.
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  Speaker 1: Chuck Rocher, you get the last word, bat Witlock. Great
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  Speaker 1: to have you here, Chuck, nice hat, thank you, nice blazer.
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  Speaker 2: It's a summertime.
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  Speaker 1: It's summertime. That's a summertime, blazing