Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. We are on vacation, but that doesn't mean we don't have a great show for you today. Run for Something's Own Amanda Litman stops by to talk about recruiting candidates to win the mid terms for Democrats. But first we have heated's own Emily Atkin to talk about the latest news and climate change.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Emily.
Hey, thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm excited to have you because you are great and you are tirelessly chronicling the fuckery. Let's start with data centers because that feels like the scariest new way to fuck up the climate.
Yeah.
I've been so into this like reporting topic, I wouldn't say that I've been covering it tirelessly. I am quite tired, but this is a subject that sort of demands tireless reporting.
So yeah, happy to start with there.
You know what I think that I think most people get wrong about the data center conversation is that most people, I think think that the biggest water problem is from cooling the data centers, because you know, they need these like huge buildings that are full of like very hot
computer processors need water to cool them down. And it is a huge problem, right, But one of the more surprising things that I've learned recently am I reporting, is that the vast majority of the water use the reason why, you know, there are those studies that say, like it, you know, a long conversation uses a bottle of water, that's mostly because of power generation. That's because of all of the water needed to cool like a natural gas
power plant that is powering the data center. So yeah, the data centers need like a ton of water to cool the servers, but they also need a ton of water because they're all being powered by gas. Which is so interesting because that's a problem that is solvable if you were using not fossil fuel to power the data centers. I just think that's so interesting that it always goes back to the biggest problem is the.
Fossil fuels again, and I think data centers are fucking waste of everything. But if you were to make a data center so you could make AI slop, I could not be more anti AI if I tried. But if you were to make a data center just to make ai slop. If you just had it be solar or wind powered, wouldn't you.
Not have that problem?
You wouldn't have the big water problem that you're having. You would still have a water problem because I think it's like thirteen percent of the water usage just for cooling, and that's a ton And you'd have to check me exactly on that percentage.
I know there are a ton of different studies. I think it's around.
There, but yeah, so much of that water problem is because we don't have enough power to power all these data centers. So we're using gas, building new gas plants, building new gas pipelines, and gas and fossil fuels. It makes sense, right, they're combustible power sources. They're really really hot. They need a ton of water, and it's like in the climate space so often we're thinking about carbon so often, like we forget about the huge water demand of these
plants too. But they do have them, and that's where most of the water wasting is coming for data centers.
I mean, everything is full speed ahead because there's no regulation Undertrune, right, it's basically back to a kind of Gilded Age cleptocracy. Let's get into some of the other carnage that he is rotting on our environment.
There's definitely a lot of things we could talk about about what he's doing to the environment, like, for instance, you know, we just had the International Climate UN Climate Summit this year in Brazil. Every year we have a cop every year, all the countries gather and try to do something about climate change.
America didn't go this year, right.
No, America didn't go.
You know, some people went, like Aba Newsom went, Al Gore went, but they weren't part of the official delegation, so they weren't like in the room where it happens, so to speak, like the negotiations actually happened. So we didn't send people. But while that summit was still going on, the Trump administration released like a bunch of environmental deregulatory
actions that mostly went unnoticed. I think one of them was opening up was basically like eliminating regulations on offshore drilling off the coasts of California and Florida for like the first time in decades, so opening up those coastlines to potential oil and gas development, which the governors of both of those states have been like, please don't do that, including Florida, which is kind of surprising.
Which is wild. Yeah, why does de sant does not want to d do that?
I think that even Florida Republicans understand that the coastlines are really sensitive and valuable in other ways. They think you think of the coastlines in Florida, I mean, they're so essential for tourism and just like for maintaining the environment. They also have a lot of military training. Rick Scott wrote on Twitter it was like, please do not drill here, and obviously Gavin Newsom was like, do not drill here.
There's gonna be fights around that. But also while all the countries were negotiating a climate deal in Brazil, I think Trump also wildly loosened the Endangered Species Act as one does as one does, so he essentially weakened the Endangered Species Act so that it's now easier to remove species classified as threatened or endangered from the list and harder to add.
New species to the list.
It also allows the government, if I remember this correctly, to consider like economic impacts when considering whether to list as species is endangered. So now you know when you're looking at should we make the cheetah endangered? And it's like, well, how would that affect the economy. That's never been how you decide if something is endangered right now it is, So those are the kinds of things that are happening.
But I would also argue that, like especially we're talking about AI, like what the Trump administration is not doing, like regulating AI at all is also like equally as detrimental.
One of the most interesting stories I think I did over the last couple months was interviewing two former Microsoft employees that were both like really gung ho on AI and how awesome it could be for climate change and the environment, and we're like working to promote sustainable uses of AI at Microsoft, and then eventually had to quit because they saw what the company was doing with like totally in their totally unregulated environment, which was mostly selling
their AI to oil and gas companies.
To want to laugh because it's so dark, but it's really dark.
Yeah, because it sounds like I'm making this up, and sometimes I pretend I am making it up.
I'm like, yeah, yeah.
What they told me is that they think that one of Microsoft's the biggest use case for Microsoft's AI today is the application where they sell it to oil and gas companies. So that oil and gas companies can find and extract more oil more easily. So like ver AI helps the oil and gas companies essentially scan underground and.
Be like, there's some oil. There's some oil.
Like, here's how we can get it more efficiently. I'm saying in the.
Most you know, in the least technical way possible.
But it helps these companies drill more more efficiently and profit more.
So well good, but al Gore is still optimistic, So talk to me about that.
Yeah, I interviewed al Gore, which is not something that I would honestly, it's like not something I ever thought that I would ever say that I did because like, I don't know who cares about al Gore, but I've really found it over I've been surprised by him over the last couple of years.
Yeah, so talk to me about al Gore. What's his thinking here?
So, one thing I've really learned about al Gore recently is that he's like really not afraid to talk shit on on fossil fuels.
Which I like nobody else does.
Yeah, he's becoming more and more dark Gore in this.
He's like the fossil fuel industry is sabotaging all of our progress, Like our biggest problem is political influence by this industry, Like politicians on the left and the right are being bought off, Like we have to exclude them from this process.
He's the last couple of years been super.
Gung ho, not just on like educating about the science, which he's always been, but really becoming a for lack of a better word, propagandist against big oil and big oil's political influence.
And what does he think.
Yeah, so he is pretty convinced that the oil industry is just trying to suck up all that it can for the next couple of years under Trump because they
also know that they're losing around the world. And that was sort of his take away from COP thirty in Brazil was that so many nations and like he would say, the majority of nations are actually committed to the science and committing to transition away from fossil fuels, and scares the shit out of the industry, which the oil industry, which is why they're so aggressively trying to strong arm these negotiations, which they were successful in doing, because you know,
Saudi Arabia is there, Russia is there. Those are essentially two arms of the oil industry, right, and if you need every single country at a COP to get an agreement, then you're not going to get a great agreement because Saudi Arabia.
And there and they're essentially arms of the oil industry.
So, like Albor is not denying that that influence is there, but he's of the opinion that their aggressive presence is merely like a smoke screen for their fear. And what is happening Like South Korea, it's one of the seventh I think, like the seventh largest coal fleet in the world, you know, made a commitment at this cop to completely phase out coal from their whole economy, which is pretty big. I mean, that's a big hit for the coal industry
over there. But that's how and then and eighty countries signed an agreement to explicitly, like fully transition away from fossil fuels, and like say, we away from fossil fuels. That's like the biggest language thing that is going on at these cops. So Gore is also really convinced that like Trump is a lame.
Duck, which is true.
Essentially, he is more optimistic than I would have expected him to be, just coming out of a climate summit that was like literally on fire and flooded and didn't produce an agreement where all the countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. He's like, yeah, but he's like, the majority of the world is on the right track.
The United States is just behind.
Wow. Why, I mean, I'm excited. I'm happy that he thinks that.
Does he just think that solar and wind are so much cheaper than eventually they're unstoppable.
So that's part of it.
And then the other thing is that he's really inspired by the midterm election results.
The five cycle, which is sort of the mean mid terms.
Correct, and then all of the political opposition to Trump, the no Kings days, all that. So I think what he's trying to do, if I were to hyperanalyze his politician speak, really he's trying to build momentum to say that as long as we keep opposition high, we can reverse these policies, or we can stem some of this damage. And he's like, we're really on a good track. We just have to keep pushing.
Do you agree with that? You don't agree with that.
I don't think good track exists.
So being a climate reporter for so long at this point, it's like I long ago abandoned the idea that like we're gonna get out of this without being like pretty fucked. Yeah, being pretty fucked But I do understand that there's like always a degree of things can always get more fucked up, more and more fucked up. I actually do think that we can limit the fuck upness to a degree that
perhaps the US will be able to manage. I think that like things will get pretty fucked up a new global South, and I think things will get fucked up here too, But I also think that there's a limit, like we can we can severely limit that, and that's always what I'm hoping for, right the least amount of that possible.
So you are basically in the same spot that I am, which is that you worry about wet bulb, like we're going to see dystopian stuff in Dubai in the area, Yeah, where people are going to die because it's just so hot they can't get cold or they can't get cool. But you think that sort of absolent modern cities will be able to somehow make it through.
Like I think that the rich people in affluent modern cities will be able to make it through. But like you know, I think we need really really aggressive adaptation efforts in addition to our mitigation efforts, because you know, it's not like America is a fully a first world country.
Really were a lot of vulnerable people.
Living here in poverty and are on coastlines, and especially in cities that are that historically don't get very hot, and then they don't have they don't have cooling infrastructure.
The problem with this administration is that it's like not it so rejects climate science that it doesn't even do the thing that you know, some kind of moderate Republicans used to do in the past, where they're like, climate change is real, but we can just adapt, so we'll will support like adaptation policies and just not limit fossil fuels. That's not happening at all either, because like there's because it's the policy of this administration.
Is climate change is a scam. It is fake. I mean it's it's literally on the EPA.
The EPA website now doesn't even list human causes as as climate change. The first thing you I think if you go to EPA dot gov the climate change website now, it's like climate change like the first the first thing listed for what's causing it is like the orbit of the Earth has changed, and.
You're like, what the fuck does that mean? So it's just a bunch of mambo jumbo.
But I will say, like a lot of that really really catastrophic, those really really catastrophic projections that were coming out like eight years ago, right, those look increasingly less likely. Like a five degree scenario we're looking at like a I don't know if this means anything to your listeners, but like a two two.
And a half to three degree scenario, which.
Is I mean it's also catastrophic, but not quite as catastrophe.
Right, I mean these are still situations where all the corals in the ocean die, right, which is like I really don't want that. But it's so difficult to talk about these kinds of things because it's like, how can you even imagine like the difference between you can't super category and aulter catastrophe. And it's gonna look different for
every single person. But that's why I always just come back to like, Okay, I can't predict the future, but I can like do my best to try to sign me the worst outcome, right, And that's that's all I.
Can do, so like it doesn't matter.
It really doesn't matter to me, Like what the outcome is gonna be at the end of the day. That's sort of how I've decided to deal with it. I don't know what the outcome is going to be. I can't decide what the alchemis is going to be, but I know that, like I would like to fight for it to be a better outcome.
No, I know, and you have the problems of being a climate reporter, and I'm sorry that you do, because it's fucking bleak.
No.
I mean I when I talk to you, I'm always you know, you have this incredible site which hundreds of thousands of people are now subscribed to, which makes me happy. But you have a real book the problem which is that you know, you're like seeing the future in a terrible way.
And I'm sorry, thank you.
Someone asked me recently, They're like, why did you decide to get into climate change report?
And I was like, because that was my beat.
I don't know, Like I don't think I would have chosen this, you know, like you working at a newspaper and they're like, here's your beat, it's climate change and you're like, yeah, so that's what it is.
Well, but also like, why are we not all running a bow climate change because Americans can't hear it because it's too scary?
What you do is so valuable and important.
Thank you so much.
I feel like the more you understand it, though, like I would even counter like the fact that Americans can't hear it because it's too scary, I would counter that the more you learn about it, like the simpler it kind of gets. It becomes less scary to me and more frustrating, because the more I learn about it, the more simple it gets. In my mind, I'm like, oh,
so you're saying we know the problem. We've actually known the problem for a really long time, and we know the solution, you know, and so you're.
Like, okay, but it's cruse solution.
And then what's so frustrating about is that we get stuck in these loops of like, well, do we know the problem and do we know the solution? Yeah, we do. That's the most frustrating part is like just being stuck in these loops where I'm back to, you know, deciding if I'm going to cover the fact that the EPA website now just is a climate denial website. I'm like, this is so stupid, Like, can't we just move this
conversation forward? But fortunately, as al Gore said, most of the world is moving this conversation forward, right, Thank god, Thank god for our Gore.
Yeah, thanks to the reminder.
Thank you, Emily. Please come back.
Anytime, anytime.
We have exciting news over at our YouTube channel. The second episode from our Project twenty twenty nine series is out now. It's a reimagining where we examine what went wrong with democrats approach to politics and how we can correct it and deliver changes to help people's lives. The first episode dove into the very sexy topic of campaign finance reform, and our second episode deals with an even
sexier topic, antitrust and regulation. We look at how antitrust and regulation can protect American citizens and make America thrive in an era of rampant corruption and predatory crony capitalism. We talk to the smartest names in the field, like Lena Khan, el Vero Bedoya, Elizabeth Wilkins, and Doha Mechi. Republicans were prepared for when they got the levers of power.
We need Democrats to be too, so Please head over to YouTube and search Mollie John Fast Project twenty twenty nine, or go to the Fast Politics YouTube channel and find it there and help us.
Spread the word.
Amanda Litman is the co founder of Run for Something and the author of the new book When We're in Charge, The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Amanda Lutman.
Thanks Molly, president of Run for Something.
Let's talk what is going on?
No, it's been a good year for young people running for local office all across the country, which we love to see it. We had one hundred and sixty six wins this year, like more than half of our candidates, and on election night in November, more than two thirds of our candidates, including forty three red to blue flips all across the country. Plus we had me. At this point, we're over eighty thousand people who've raised their hands to say they want to run for office in the last
twelve months. That's more than we had in the entirety of Trump's first term. So things are good, which is a really weird feeling in twenty twenty five.
So why are more people running for office now than they were during Trump?
One point? Now well, your part of his.
Room for something's been around a little longer, so people know if they want to run, we are here to help them. But I actually think one of the things that we've heard this year that we didn't hear during Trump one point zero is people quite explicitly saying I'm done waiting my turn. I'm not asking for permission, i am sick of the status quo. I'm sick of the people in charge. I'm not getting in the back of the line. I'm ready to run and I'm not going
to let any stop me. The number one issue, as it has been for a while and now has been affordable housing, you know, childcare, transportation. But that, like frustration with the status quo, is so loud that in a way that it wasn't the first time around.
I want to talk about that because the polling we see shows voters mad at Trump, very mad at Trump. But then unlike twenty sixteen, they're not happy with Schumer, They're not happy with a chem They're mad at Democrats writ large. Is that what you got people coming and saying to you.
Absolutely, they're just curious, They're like, why should I settle for these leaders? They are not fighting, they're not standing up for my community. They have made things better. I think that visceral frustration with the status quo of both parties.
And you know, I'm not going to be like both sides are bad, but that frustration with people in both parties is so deep seated that it is pushing people to make the kinds of changes in their life and in their activism that we just didn't see back in twenty seventeen to twenty twenty, in part because at that point Democrats were a little better at fighting. This time around, the people at the top aren't, but the people who are going to be the leaders are really ready to get in.
So do you think that a Democrat like when people say it's a Democratic tea party, do you think that's true?
Correct?
I do, And I think like you have to keep in mind that most incumbents win, just generally, most incumbents win like like a ninety five percent reelection rate. It's really hard to take out an incumbent in a primary. The fact that there are so many competitive primary challenges, the fact that there's a ton of open races because thank god, many of these older leaders not enough, but many of them are retiring and making it their last term that many of them are like being outraised by
their challenge. Even if the incumbents hold on to power, which I don't think in all of these is a sure thing. They are going to be forced a campaign in twenty twenty six in a way they haven't in years past, and that is a good thing. It's going to be a different Democratic Party at the end of twenty twenty six, and it is in the beginning, and I am cautiously optimistic it'll be for the better.
So what does that mean, Like, are you seeing people primary and so first let's talk about red. I want you to talk about the red to blue flips. Give me a few examples of red to blue flips that you had.
So we had folks like Will Rivera and the Onionta County Legislature in New York, first generation college grad, cancer survivor, local activist was really running on affordable housing. Was part of a wave of young leaders who flipped seats across the state of New York. There was more than fifty red to blue flips across the state of New York. You know, most of the attention went to Zorn, but Republicans had a terrible night here in the umpire's date.
Even then there was only one Republican like blue to red flip oh fifty.
So we had a good We had a good night even in South County because that was the one that I heard.
There was some kind.
Of yeah, but generally speaking like you didn't want me a New York Republican.
Okay, good.
Current favorite is this guy, Andrew Harbough, a current journalist, sports journalist, and a former Republican who left the party after January sixth. He's a parent of two young kids, one of whom is special needs, and the customer Department of Education, we're going to directly affect his kids' education in the services his kid was getting through school. The Medicaid cuts were also going to directly affect his kids.
So he ran for Borough Common Council, which is like a county government office or a local government office, and slipped the seat red to blue in a district county that Trump won seventy thirty.
Huge, awesome.
So one of the things Trump said was that he said affordability is a hoax. What I think he meant again, we never want to be Trump's plainers, but what it seems like he meant were that Democrats are using affordability but they don't really care about it.
Whatever.
I don't think that's true. But what are the things that that Democrats are running on.
I would say that especially the red to blue flips. And we went through and looked at all of our forty three winners on election night in twenty twenty five November, and what we found are a couple things. One, they
are absolutely runting on affordability and specifically housing. They are talking about all the different levers they could pull to build more housing, make it easier for people to buy a home, make it easier for renters, like really focused on when we talk about cost of living, the actual biggest category for most people and their expenses is where they live, So housing is number one. Number Two, they were talking about transparency in a way that actually really
surprised us. Ninety percent of our red to Blue flips specifically named transparency and trust in government, whether it was bringing budgeting forward or you know, community modernization, some kind of way to make people feel good about government. Again, a lot of them talked about if not exactly you know, better sidewalks, then the kinds of like very local, lived experience, things that make living somewhere either good or bad. They were really reflecting the kinds of things that their voters
cared about. Like you could see it in their queue, their ads, their videos, their websites.
It was obvious that.
Their campaigns were not their visions. It was that they were hearing from voter and how they were going to solve their problems. They were across the ideological spectrum in terms of Democrats are the left like, they weren't all you know, I just said Republican. They weren't all like socialist candidates. Most of these red blue flips are not. What they are is deeply rooted in community, and they
love the places they're running. And that feels like such an obvious thing to say, but we can both name candidates where they are running somewhere they don't actually like.
Or don't actually live.
Totally, totally, totally.
There was this congressional seat that recently Republicans were right they were going to lose it. It was at our plus twenty two and the Tennessee Jerrymander seat. They want it, but they only want it by point. The candidate there was very lefty, but she was an activist known in the area.
Right, Yeah, aften Beina run for something alone. We'd worked with her in her state House trace a couple of years ago, and it's funny, you know. Yeah, she had a history of talking about some more of some more lefty type stuff her past, but she'd also been a fears fighter for grocery taxes and like for getting rid of the sales tax on groceries in Tennessee, making food
more affordable for folks. She was running on affordability and she was super compelling, super authentic, really talked about what she believed and how it reflected the voters of her community. Do I think a more you know, there's this discourse, like a more moderate candidate could have made it more competitive.
Shut the fuck up.
She won the primary.
She won the primary. She won the primary.
And if you think that a more moderate candidate should have won, you, whoever the usiness discourse, you should have engaged in the primary. She won the primary, and she campaigned really hard, and she brought out voters who may not have otherwise been excited.
About this election.
Let's talk about winning the primary, because I think that the more competitive a primary is the better, And I think a lot about Biden that a primary would have hurt him, that he should have just you know, and especially with Harris, that they should just be allowed to keep going and that. But do you think a primary process actually does get a candidate in a better spot?
One hundred percent.
Primary make candidates better because running for office, it's like anything else, and which the more practice you get at it, the better you get at it. It gives you a chance to you know, get more reps in giving your some speech and talking to more voters and engaging volunteers. Literally gives you more time to raise money and build data infrastructure and higher staff. It forces you to talk to voters more, which I think is a good thing.
You get to really hear what they care about. I'm not saying that if you can win the primary, then you can win the general. Obviously that is not always true. Like candidates of either party on the extreme ends win primaries and that are very unelectable in the general. But if you can't win the primary, you definitely can't win the general. That's just how this goes. You've got to be able to excite your base, and your base is the Democratic crime ary voter.
So now we look to the midterms and Run for Something does do midterms. There's a lot of state seats coming up, so talk us through. What are the races you are watching organized?
Yeah, so run for Something. As I said, we've had like almost more than eighty thousand people's line up in the last year. So we're making sure that as many of those folks as possible get plugged into races wherever they are, because the battlefields could be super expansive in twenty twenty six. If we're going to have a blue wave, which I suspect based on every available data point, we will, we should be fighting to win in r plus ten or plus twenty communities, and we're thinking ahead to twenty
thirty and twenty thirty two. We laid out earlier this year our battle uplant and of a vision to expand the battleground map that includes a dozen states where we think over the next six years we need to be doing this kind of work to build local power so that eventually they could be battlegrounds. I'm not saying they all will be, but some of them if we don't
do this work, they never will be. So that includes places like you know, Idaho, you taught Nebraska, Arizona, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Ohio, and Iowa. I think I got them off places where it's going to be really important that we have many
paths to victory post redistricting in twenty thirty. You know, the final thing that we're also keeping an eye on in twenty twenty is that so many of our alumni are running for higher office, so like, well, we're not working with those campaigns directly, we are aggressively rooting for them. We have seven run for something running for Senate, including
two running in Texas. James tell Rico and Jasmine Crockett are both run for something along who've come through our pipeline in years past for six running for governor, and a couple dozen at this point running for US House or state wide offices like secretary of State or AG or treasurer. And I'm just so excited because that is more new energy than the Democrat Party could ever have imagined. And I'm really proud that we built that bench that can now rise.
Let's talk about if you're listening to this and you're excited, what's the call to action here?
Two things you should look into running for office. It's probably not too late wherever you are, a couple of places filing deadlines have passed, but you should look it up. You can go to run for wild dot net enter your address, see where you might be able to run. Send it to a friend who should run. Second thing you can do is give money, especially a small recurring donation, make it monthly. Run for something dot net slash donate.
Every dollar goes towards building the largest candidate pipeline in politics and then helping those folks run and win, and we really need it, so thank you.
It's someone who sees a lot of candidates, sees a lot of Democrats, has real eyes on the ground. What do you think are the biggest issues that democrats need? Like that, most opportunities, most you know that democrats should be when they're looking at this cycle.
I think one of our challenges for twenty twenty six is that there's gonna be a lot of attention paid to congressional candidates we're at large, which there should be. We need to flip the House, we should try and flip the Senate. But congressional candidates can't really talk about the issues in a way that we can genuinely believe they'll get things done, like they're not gonna be able
to govern. If you're in the House in twenty twenty seven, and even if Democrats have the majority, you'll be able to do accountability. You'll be able to do oversight.
We'll be able to investigations.
And that's great.
We got to do that.
Shit, You're not really going to be able to write any policy about housing or reproductive healthcare or anything else that Trump.
You don't have the president, you don't have the present.
So one of the tensions I think that we have to hold is that the attention will be on the House. We got to make sure the people running for the local offices, the state legislatures, the mayors, the city council, members of school board candidates who can talk about very specific things they are doing, have as big of a
megaphone as possible. Those got to be the leaders we empower, and those are the got to be the folks that can't have voters who are otherwise unengaged are hearing from the most because those are the people that they can genuinely believe when they say, I'm going to do something to make your life cheaper.
So affordability has clearly been a very good issue for DAMS. What are the other issues that you think DEMS should be running on As someone who has a lot of view into states, you.
Know, I think housing, as I talked about earlier, is probably the biggest one, because it's the thing that people feel the most acutely. It's also in particular for young people, it's not just about like can I afford to live where I want to live? It's can I have the kind of American dream that felt available to my parents,
my grandparents and does not feel available to me. The idea for a twenty or thirty something right now for most of us, like buying a home, feels unrealistic never And I think that instability and that sense that what is it all for is really really challenging for young people. I think that was Mamdannie's really like see superpower. It wasn't the afford to live or that like a city we can afford. It was the afford to dream component of Hispagan, which is it allows you to be ambitious
for other things. I also think childcare, we're seeing this and lots and loots of our campaigns, you know, there was just a big story in New York Magazine earlier this month about how they hear in New York, you know, the child care costs went up twice as high as inflation, or outpaced inflation by double same is true in a lot of places across the country, and it is really affecting twenty and thirty somethings ability to have the families they want, play and the families they want, live where
they want to live, have the jobs they want. Yeah, it's connected to affordability, but it's not about like the economy end jobs. It's about how does it feel to live where you live and to have the kind of family and life that you want. The other piece, and I know this is something that some candidates are starting to talk about. It really bubbles up on the local level is AI and we're talking about data centers, they're talking about electricity, they're talking about jobs, they're talking about
utility rates. They're also thinking really carefully about you know, Okay, I use chashibichi for work. Doesn't seem that bad, but I don't want it to be unregulated. I want to have guardrails. I don't trust the people who are, you know, designing these things to have my best interest. I want people in leadership who understand these tools and can legislate
on them. And I actually do think that's one thing where congressional candidates can really lean in, and even more so than local which is, okay, what are you going to do to make sure the robots don't take all our jobs?
And also they make energy more expensive?
Right?
These data farms make energy more expensive?
They do, and they there's been a lot of really interesting local campaigns against some of these data centers because yeah, it's construction jobs for a short period of time and then ultimately, you know, five or six people employed security, jan and orial staff.
That's it.
It's not like a job creation factory, and if anything, it's a job destruction institution. So how can you usure especially for young people who feel really unsure of how AI is affecting their ability to get hired, you got to speak to it.
So interesting, Amanda Littman, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Always, thanks for having me.
Mollie, Happy holidays.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this Chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for listening.