I have some great news for you, so I’m glad you’re here. Across the country, people are standing up against this corrupt regime, and they are winning in more ways than one.
Hit the ❤️ like button and restack this edition. Sharing pushes it in front of people who would never otherwise see it, and helps us turn local wins into national pressure.
If you haven’t yet, join us as a paid subscriber today. Three mornings a week I go seat by seat on which races are actually winnable and which ones are being sold to you as winnable. Twenty-three years of running campaigns, seventy-five days left to use it:
Town Beats Big Tech
Developers proposed six data center campuses in Archbald, Pennsylvania, a town of around 7,500 people. The project would include 51 warehouse buildings spread across 1,500 acres, including an 18-building complex next to the ballfields at Staback Park.
In response, Tammy Misewicz-Healey started Stop Archbald Data Centers. Hundreds of neighbors joined her, packing hearings about the data centers wearing yellow shirts, carrying signs, and speaking out for more than a year.
In May, Gov. Josh Shapiro surveyed the area and walked the left field line in the park to see where those buildings would go. Then he sat in state Rep. Kyle Mullins’ district office to meet with residents for over an hour. He left saying he was taking the story of Archbald back with him.
This week, Shapiro signed the strictest data center rules in the country. Companies will now have to sign a contract abiding by the rules, or they’ll have to wait longer for approval and risk losing their tax break. Data centers that get approved have to pay for their own electricity bills instead of passing those costs on to residents. And your town has to say yes before the state can.
Shapiro moved forward without Republicans. He says the Senate majority leader told him he had no intention of regulating data centers at all.
Walz Shuts Door On Mining
The Boundary Waters is the most visited wilderness in America, and the Ojibwe have depended on that water for generations. A few years ago, around 650,000 people wrote to Washington asking them to protect it. In 2023, Biden’s Interior Department issued a twenty-year mining ban in the area. In April, the GOP Senate ripped the protections away with a single vote, 50 to 49. Trump signed it eleven days later.
Twin Metals is owned by Antofagasta, one of the ten biggest copper producers on earth. It’s controlled by one of Chile’s richest families, and they were waiting for this to happen. Their plan is to dig for copper upstream of those lakes.
So on Tuesday, Gov. Tim Walz signed an order calling out Twin Metals and shutting the door in their face. Minnesota won’t rent them that land or give them any permits. They won’t even look at an application. Every existing lease gets pulled back and reviewed, line by line.
This wasn’t a knee-jerk reaction. Back in April, after expert testimony and a recommendation from a judge, Minnesota’s environmental agency ruled that the state’s mining rules aren’t strong enough. They’re rewriting them now.
The order also tells state agencies to draft one more thing—a bill for the state legislature to ban copper mining there for good. Walz leaves office in January, but he’s using his time left to make it difficult for anybody to undo this.
Winless
The DOJ wanted the private records of nearly nine million Minnesotans. Every name, birthdate, home address, driver’s license number, and the last four digits of every Social Security number.
At first, Minnesota cooperated. The DOJ asked fourteen questions about how the state keeps its list of registered voters accurate, plus a fifteenth item that wasn’t a question at all—a demand for the entire voter file. Minnesota answered all fourteen and refused the demand, citing the fact Trump had already ordered Homeland Security to run that data against immigration records.
So the DOJ sued. Its entire case came down to one man in Spring Valley who was charged with casting a single illegal ballot.
Sixteen former DOJ lawyers filed against their old department, telling the judge this demand was nothing like the requests they used to make. One of them ran its voting rights division for six years. Former secretaries of state from both parties filed too, including Minnesota’s own Joan Growe.
On Monday, Judge Katherine Menendez threw out the DOJ’s case. Menendez wrote that you don’t get to sue people first and go hunting for a reason afterward, adding that the government doesn’t get a special pass.
Minnesota’s nine million voters keep their records. That makes twenty-three federal courts that have told the DOJ no.
Cornyn’s Aide Crosses The Aisle
Jacob Smith was a senior staffer for GOP Sen. John Cornyn for five years, and a Republican for his entire career. This week, he took a job working for Democrat James Talarico, who’s running for Senate in Texas against AG Ken Paxton.
Smith didn’t quietly take the job—he loudly called out Paxton, saying he was “the most corrupt, self-dealing politician in Texas.” He told Republicans who know it to say so at the ballot box. Cornyn said the same thing on camera during the primary. Then Trump endorsed Paxton anyway, Cornyn lost, and now he says he’ll back the ticket.
Recent polling has the race dead even. No Democrat in Texas has won a Senate seat since Reagan was president. Republicans have spent thirty-eight years not worrying about this seat, but they’re worried now.
And they should be, because momentum is on our side—not theirs. If we keep working hard, and keep pushing full speed ahead, we can turn Trump into a lame duck.
So here is my pledge to you. My team and I will be working tirelessly every single day to do what we can to make it happen. We will investigate what others won’t, we will deliver the truth to you every day, and we will keep organizing pressure campaigns on Congress and on social media—reaching millions who’d never see this news otherwise.
All of this is funded only by our readers. So if you haven’t yet, join us as a paid subscriber today. Let’s flip Congress together:
One more thing before you go—hit the ❤️ like button and restack this edition. It really does make a big difference. Thanks for all you do.
Onward!
Scott
I have two questions for you today:
Twenty-three courts have said no. Why do you think they keep filing anyway?
75 days out. Are you seeing Republicans in your area walking away from Trump?
Let me know in the comments!
We just launched this. Tell Congress to stop Trump's destruction of our national forests!
https://actionnetwork.org/letters/tell-congress-stop-trump-from-destroying-45-million-acres-of-our-national-forests/
It’s so refreshing to read news grounded in actual evidence and court documents rather than political spin. Thank you for doing the hard work to bring us the facts every single day!