🗳️Trump Expands Election Monitoring to 'Largest Effort in History' Ahead of 2026 Midterms

Tech money and data centers are now on the ballot

The 2026 midterms will decide how much room President Trump has in his last two years in office. Affordability is the issue that will frame most races, but data centers, AI safety, and surveillance tech are right behind it in voters' minds. Why should you care? Because the next Congress will have to deal with AI regulation and the growing local backlash against data center buildouts. If you're planning capacity in a state with a ballot fight brewing, that's a planning problem now, not later. Tech money is also flooding the campaigns. Leading the Future has already spent $45 million, and Public First Action, backed by Anthropic, has raised $80 million. The administration has expanded federal election monitoring to what it calls the largest effort in history. A new Election Operations Center starts this week and runs until every vote is counted, tracking potential misinformation. OpenAI has also set up its own command center to fight election misinfo and abuse of its systems. Proposition 45 in California could give data center developers a way around public scrutiny, which is the detail to watch.