'Going to fight like hell': New rift in MAGA pits Trump's donors against his voters
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Trump supporters
President Donald Trump has ignited a new battle between his billionaire tech donors and his voters, CNN reported on Monday.
According to senior reporter Steve Contorno, the new Trump allies are using their financial influence to score executive orders and "leeway" for artificial intelligence operations.
All of it came to a head in November when a debate broke out between the chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, David Sacks, and Trump's legal adviser, Mike Davis, a "vocal tech skeptic."
Trump has pressed a federal rule that flies in the face of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves to the states all rights not outlined in the Constitution. The Trump executive order would prevent states from passing any laws or regulations about A.I.
The new power-hungry data centers are prompting state concerns about energy use. California lawmakers proposed a law that would require the centers report their power usage and establish energy efficiency standards. Thus far, however, all efforts to impose mandates on regulation or even monitoring have been defeated by big tech lobbying, CalMatters alleged in a December report.
Other states are concerned that these data centers will dramatically increase energy costs for individual consumers, said States Newsroom.
Davis' efforts to kill legislation that would open the floodgates to AI have worked in some cases.
"And this created a bunch of problems for Sacks and Trump's agenda last year," Contorno said. "And really, it's reflective overall of what we are seeing from the populist right within Trump's movement. People like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson have been very vocally against how much power Trump is giving to these tech companies, and it's reflective of changing views overall by the general population."
Meanwhile, Republican governors are standing up to the data centers and GOP members of Congress are ready to push back with Bannon and MAGA voters behind them.
"We're going to fight like hell. So, don't think that anybody is placated," Bannon said on his show, "War Room."