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Gloria Steinem, trailblazing figure in women’s liberation movement, dies at age 92

September 3, 2026 / 7:35 AM EDT / CBS News

By David Morgan

Gloria Steinem, a co-founder of Ms. Magazine and a trailblazing figure of the women’s liberation movement in the latter half of the 20th century, has died. She was 92.

The Gloria Steinem Foundation said in a social media post Thursday that she “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her.” The cause of death was not given.

“She was one of the architects of the entire structure of women’s equality, I mean tearing down those obstacles to young women being able to participate where their talents and hard work took them,” former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told “CBS Mornings” on Thursday.

“Gloria was at heart an optimist,” Clinton said. “Her activism was rooted in optimism, and that’s a moral choice, and she made it every day.”

Heralded by Newsweek magazine in 1971 as “The New Woman,” Steinem co-founded Ms. Magazine, the first major publication to be owned, run and written by women. Ms. was a spearhead for the promotion of equal rights, helping to raise awareness about issues of inclusion, media representation and social justice affecting women and girls, at a time when politics, mass media and consumerism were becoming conflated as never before.

As a journalist, Steinem exploded the notions that “women’s issues” were confined to women, or that female voices did not belong in discussions of politics or war. Steinem was a tireless advocate for women’s voices in politics — at the ballot box, and in the halls of power — by fighting for voting rights and promoting female candidates for office.

Gloria Steinem on Jan. 15, 2013, in Pasadena, Calif. Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

She advanced the cause of economic and social justice for women and girls, including reproductive freedom and safety from domestic violence, and worked to advance women in media. And a simple idea, Take Our Daughters to Work Day, begun by the Ms. Foundation for Women to advance opportunities in the workplace, would become a global endeavor encompassing millions of daughters (and sons) as it fought gender stereotypes.

The birth of Ms.

In her early years as a reporter for New York magazine in the late 1960s, Steinem attended a gathering of women speaking out about their experiences obtaining an illegal abortion. She told “Sunday Morning” in 2006, “I heard women standing up and saying in public and taking seriously something that only affected women. Up until then, I’d never heard that. If it didn’t also affect men, it couldn’t be ‘serious.’ Something that was illegal, shameful, theoretically. (Women who had abortions) had to enter a criminal underground. And suddenly I thought, ‘Wait a minute: You know, if one and three or four of us, and I too, had had that experience, why is it illegal?’ And that was the beginning of the unraveling.”

That “unraveling” of consciousness would lead to Ms. Magazine. Co-founded with activist Dorothy Pittman Hughes, the publication’s first full issue appeared on newsstands on July 1, 1972. In addition to having Wonder Woman on its cover, the issue featured a petition signed by women of various backgrounds announcing that they had had an abortion and were demanding that it become safe and legal. (It would be another year before the Supreme Court’s decision to protect abortion rights with Roe v. Wade, which stood until 2022.)

Katherine Spillar, an executive editor of Ms., who compiled a 2023 anthology titled “50 Years of Ms.: The Best of the Pathfinding Magazine That Ignited a Revolution,”told “Sunday Morning” that the magazine started and amplified trends, including “a lot of articles about men and marriage and relationships and childrearing and politics and violence against women — (issues) that keep coming back. And it shows the endurance of this movement, but also the endurance of our opponents.”

Feminist and activist Gloria Steinem speaks at a rally outside the United Nations in New York City in 1978. Bettye Lane/Photo Researchers History via Getty Images

And of course there was controversy. A cover photo advertising a story about sexual harassment on the job, depicting a man fondling a doll, got the magazine pulled off newsstands. And selling ads was a challenge; the head of a major cosmetics company told Steinem that women who read Ms. don’t buy makeup, while car manufacturers didn’t want to advertise because they didn’t believe women bought cars.

Still, the magazine persisted, and won awards while publishing articles by such writers as Barbara Ehrenreich, Angela Davis, Alice Walker, Susan Faludi, Susan Brownmiller, Eleanor Holmes Norton, and Jane Wagner. It continued as feminism itself charted new courses. While coming under attack from commentators on the right, who claimed the magazine denigrated “family values,” Ms. was also attacked by some on the left, who claimed the magazine was too conservative and lacked a diversity of opinion.

Steinem said that, as the women’s liberation movement picked up steam, the very word “feminism” seemed to threaten people for two reasons: “One, because they didn’t understand it, and two, because they did understand it!”

Ms. underwent several owners beginning in the 1980s (including a female-driven consortium of investors led by Steinem herself), and a period of ad-free publication, before transitioning to a quarterly. And it continued as the status of women in America changed. In 1972, only 10% of doctors, 4% of lawyers and 1% of engineers were women. Five decades later, those figures had grown to 38%, 41% and 16%, respectively.

But Steinem said the revolution about equality for women is still being fought. “There’s a barrier that has moved, but there’s still a barrier,” Steinem told “Sunday Morning” in 2006. “So, what used to be you couldn’t get a job, now you hit a ceiling after a few years. What used to be unequal marriage, is now unequal after children are born. The barrier has moved, thank goodness. So, there’s more room back here that’s liberated. But the barrier is still there to be pushed.”

Gloria Steinem speaks at a rally during the Women’s March on Washington, Jan. 21, 2017, in Washington, D.C. Kevin Mazur/WireImage via Getty Images

While some were denigrating the term “feminism” itself since the 1960s, Steinem told CBS News in 2015 that she believed the core tenets of feminism are by and large approved of today: “If people just go to the dictionary and discover that [feminist] means a person — male or female —who believes in the full equality of women and men, then they do subscribe to it. And it is a majority now, which it didn’t used to be.”

Pushing feminism into the mainstream

Born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, Gloria Marie Steinem lived an itinerant life as her family moved about, residing in a house trailer, until her parents’ separation and divorce when she was a teenager. Steinem and her mother settled in Toledo, where Gloria ended up caring for her mom, who suffered from mental illness. She then moved to Washington, D.C., to live with her older sister, Susanne, and complete high school.

After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Smith College in 1956, Steinem traveled to India on a scholarship. On her way, while in London, she received a doctor’s assistance in obtaining an abortion, something that was illegal in Britain (and America) at the time. She told NPR in 2015 that she’d tried other methods to terminate her pregnancy but failed: “I really was desperate. I just knew that if I went home and married, which I would’ve had to do, it would be to the wrong person; it would be to a life that wasn’t mine, that wasn’t mine at all.”

Steinem’s career as a journalist began in New York City, where she contributed as a writer to several publications. (One 1965 New York Times article was titled “Nylons in the Newsroom”.) Her first major assignment was a 1962 Esquire article on contraception and premarital sex.

She made a splash with her two-part 1963 exposé in Show magazine for which she went undercover as a Playboy Bunny at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club. She spent two weeks in high heels, forced to wear a Bunny costume that was purposely two sizes too small in order to accentuate the female servers’ curves. She wrote, “The boning in the waist would have made Scarlett O’Hara blanch. [The] entire construction tended to push all available flesh up to the bosom. I was sure it would be perilous to bend over.”

The article, which exposed sexual harassment on the club’s floor and the toll on female employees behind the scenes (including mandatory blood tests and gynecological exams), was a sensation. But Steinem had mixed feelings regarding the outcome. As she explained in a 2011 conversation with Interview magazine:

“At first, it was such a gigantic mistake from a career point of view that I really regretted it. I’d just begun to be taken seriously as a freelance writer, but after the Playboy article, I mostly got requests to go underground in some other semi-sexual way. It was so bad that I returned an advance to turn the Playboy article into a paperback, even though I had to borrow the money. … But feminism did make me realize that I was glad I did it – because I identified with all the women who ended up an underpaid waitress in too-high heels and a costume that was too tight to breathe in. Most were just trying to make a living and had no other way of doing it. … In the sense that we’re all identified too much by our outsides instead of our insides and are mostly in underpaid service jobs, I realized we’re all Bunnies.”

In 1968 Esquire features editor Clay Felker invited Steinem to help found New York Magazine, a news, pop culture and style publication. With a writer’s rostrum that included such names as Tom Wolfe, Jimmy Breslin and Peter Maas, Gloria Steinem was advertised as “writing about the kind of things the ladies magazines don’t let her write about.” Those topics included local and national politics, the Vietnam War, the “New Marriage,” childcare, welfare, and women and power. As a sign of her celebrity, she was invited onto “The Tonight Show.”

Steinem befriended Dorothy Pittman Hughes, a childcare advocate on New York’s Upper West Side whom she profiled for New York, and the two made public appearances together to discuss the women’s movement. (Steinem was uncomfortable speaking in public, and preferred to have Hughes with her.) The two devised a magazine that aimed to push feminism into the mainstream, called Ms. — a newly emerging designation for women who did not want to be bound by the titles Mrs. or Miss, identifiers of marital status.

Felker volunteered to publish a sample issue within the pages of New York magazine in 1971. Steinem and the Ms. team then hit the publicity circuit: “And when I got to California, somebody called the radio show I was on and said, ‘You know, we can’t find it,’” Steinem recalled to “Sunday Morning” in 2023. “And I called Clay Felker in a panic and I said, ‘It didn’t get here.’ And it turned out, it had sold out! That was a moment of recognition that, you know, it had an audience.”

Beyond Ms.

In 1973, Steinem — along with Marlo Thomas, Patricia Carbine and Letty Cottin Pogrebin — created the Ms. Foundation for Women to advance the cause of women and girls, supporting grassroots efforts and advocating for economic justice, safety and reproductive freedom. The foundation also created the Take Our Daughters to Work Day initiative, which was later expanded to sons and daughters.

Steinem was involved in helping nurture other groups and publications dedicated to advancing civil rights. She helped found the Women’s Action Alliance, which advocated for equality, supported battered women’s shelters, and fought stereotyping; and the National Women’s Political Caucus, which promoted women in public office.

She was president and co-founder of Voters for Choice (which later merged with the Planned Parenthood Action Fund), and was co-founder of the reproductive rights organization Choice USA (now URGE). In 2004, she co-founded (along with Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan) the Women’s Media Center, a nonprofit progressive women’s media organization.

In 1999 Steinem was asked by the “CBS Evening News” whether technological advances were responsible for the advancement of women. Steinem discounted that. “There’s nothing automatic about political change, about liberation,” she said. “There’s no substitute for self-respect, banding together with other people, standing up for ourselves. Liberation does not come from outside. Power can’t be given to you. The process of taking it is part of the empowerment.”

In 2000, Steinem — who once thought marriage was demeaning — married David Bale, a human rights activist and the father of actor Christian Bale. “We shocked ourselves, both of us,” Steinem said. “Neither one of us thought that we wanted to get married.”

So, why did they? “It was something about me, I think. First of all, I was 66 years old. I was who I was. I no longer felt that I would have to give myself up in any way.”

Gloria Steinem and her husband David Bale in Los Angeles on March 4, 2003. AP Photo/Dan Steinberg

But their life together ended three years later, when Bale died of lymphoma of the brain. “Maybe you never make peace with it,” she said. “But it taught me an enormous amount. Even if I knew what was going to happen, I would have chosen to go through it with him.”

She said that losing her husband made her understand the difference between sadness and depression. “Yes, because people would say to me, ‘Aren’t you depressed?’ And I realized that in depression, nothing matters. And in sadness, everything matters. It makes everything poignant.”

Steinem continued writing and lecturing into her 90s, as some of the topics introduced long ago by Ms. Magazine, such as sexual harassment in the workplace and domestic violence, took on new force with the rise of the #MeToo movement.

She co-produced a series of Emmy-nominated documentaries about violence against women around the world for Viceland, and co-produced and narrated an Emmy-winning HBO documentary, “Multiple Personalities: The Search for Deadly Memories.” She was also the subject of documentaries, including “Gloria: In Her Own Words,” and “The Glorias.”

In 2013, Steinem received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and in 2019, she received the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum.

President Barack Obama awards Gloria Steinem, co-founder of Ms. magazine, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, on Nov. 20, 2013, during a ceremony at the White House. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

Steinem wrote numerous books, including “An Unexpected Life,” “Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions,” “Revolution from Within: A Book of Self-Esteem,” “Marilyn: Norma Jean,” and “Doing Sixty and Seventy.” A 2014 collection of her essays was titled “As If Women Matter.” She was an editor of Houghton Mifflin’s “The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History.”

In her 2011 talk with Interview magazine, Steinem said that she felt regret for having wasted any time: “I continued for too long to do things that I already knew how to do, or to write stories that I was assigned instead of fighting for stories that I couldn’t get, or doing ones that I thought were important on my own. The wasting of time is the thing I worry about the most. Because time is all there is.”

G20包括中俄一致支持美国放宽AI监管主张

2026年9月3日 18:29 / 联合早报

• G20成员国一致采纳“卡罗来纳原则”框架，支持美国对AI采取较宽松监管主张，将提交年底领袖峰会正式通过。 – 该原则针对不同行业采取差异化监管并避免新设机构，虽不具法律约束力，但获中俄等成员支持释出罕有合作信号。 – 美商务部长敦促各国允许AI合理使用版权内容训练系统并保护创作者，但未具体说明如何同时达成这两项目标。 – 黄仁勋呼吁各国建设数据中心支撑经济，英官员则强调须在加速发展与维持公众信任间寻求不偏不倚的平衡点。

英伟达首席执行长黄仁勋（左）周三在G20科技创新峰会上与美国商务部长卢特尼克进行炉边对话，他说AI就像水、道路、电力和互联网，是国家发展经济必备的基础设施，呼吁各国大力建造AI数据中心。 （彭博社）

（教堂山综合电）美国主张对人工智能（AI）和其他新兴科技采取较宽松的监管，获得包括中俄在内二十国集团（G20）成员国一致支持，这为特朗普政府和硅谷科技企业寻求以AI创新推动经济增长的战略赢得一场政治胜利。

星期三（9月2日）在北卡来罗纳州举行的科技创新峰会上，G20所有成员国采纳了名为“卡罗来纳原则”（Carolina Principles）的新兴科技监管原则框架，将提交给G20领导人在今年底的领袖峰会正式通过。

根据“卡罗来纳原则”，G20成员国将针对不同行业采取不同监管方式，并避免成立新的AI监管机构。框架同时敦促政府与私人界加强合作共同评估新兴科技，同时要考虑到延迟采用突破性产品可能产生的成本。

虽然指导原则不具法律约束力，但在列强争相引领AI发展之际，获得包括中国和俄罗斯在内所有G20成员国的支持，释出罕有的合作信号。美国商务部长卢特尼克称这是“吃力的工作”，“将全球领袖聚在一起，难免涉及很多政治”。

中国国家主席习近平本月稍后访问华盛顿与特朗普会面，主要议程之一预料就是导致中美摩擦渐大的AI课题。北京本周早前批评华府试图设置AI栅栏，阻止中企使用Anthropic的尖端模型。

卢特尼克周三接受彭博电视访问时说，中美官员在科技峰会上探讨可如何合作，但他表明，美国无意放宽对华出口最尖端半导体晶片的管制。

美促各国允许AI合理使用版权内容

在G20科技峰会上，卢特尼克也敦促成员国制定规则，允许AI公司合理使用受版权保护的材料来训练AI系统，同时设法保护创作者。

他说：“我们需要一个框架保护独创性推动着经济运行的创作者和发明家，同时避免对下个世代的创新者造成障碍。”但他并未具体提出两者可如何同时达成。

多家美国科技巨头正因使用创作者的作品来训练AI模型而面临越来越多起诉。美国司法部刚在周三向法院提呈简报，对正面对《纽约时报》和其他报章起诉的OpenAI表示支持，称OpenAI是“合理使用”媒体的版权内容来训练大语言模型。

黄仁勋：AI是支撑经济的基建

出席科技峰会的多名AI科技大佬如马斯克、黄仁勋和奥尔特曼都表明支持特朗普政府要加快AI应用，同时较少干预监管的主张。

英伟达首席执行长黄仁勋在跟卢特尼克对话时说：“我会建议，监管实际和真实的危害，而不是理论和假设的伤害。”

他也大力呼吁G20成员国建设更多数据中心来支持AI革命。“每个国家都必须意识到AI是基础设施，就像水、道路、电力和互联网一样，他们必须建设基础设施，才能支撑本国经济。”

与会官员则对AI的机遇与风险表达持平观点。英国主管科学、创新与投资的副部长麦克唐纳向法新社直言，企业领袖与官员的责任不同，英国同时寻求加速AI发展并维持公众的信任，须在两者间寻求不偏不倚的平衡点。

欧盟委员会主管科技主权、安全与民主的执行副主席维尔库宁警告，AI领域正冒出新一波威胁，尤其近期发生的AI代理网络攻击事件，各国政府须紧密协作。

Kennedy asked to remove Pennsylvania measles death from CDC tally, sources say

2026-09-03 / Reuters

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. asked his new CDC director to remove a reference to two Pennsylvania deaths from the agency’s online measles tally after he questioned whether the disease contributed to the ​fatalities, three sources familiar with the situation said.

Kennedy’s request came after CDC staffers had already accepted the state’s characterization of the deaths as linked to measles, a Pennsylvania official ‌said.

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Despite that, Erica Schwartz, the recently appointed director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, agreed with Kennedy’s directive and implemented it without objection, said the three sources familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The move followed a heated exchange on social media between Kennedy, a long-time anti-vaccine activist appointed by President Donald Trump, and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat. The two officials accused each other of politicizing the outbreak in Pennsylvania, the latest state to grapple with a ​resurgence of measles since the Trump administration took office.

Data from the CDC and from individual states shows that vaccine rates have been declining, with many medical organizations citing rising vaccine hesitancy as a major ​cause. In Pennsylvania alone, the state health department has reported 540 measles cases this year.

Georges Benjamin, chief executive of the American Public Health Association and formerly ⁠Maryland’s secretary of health, said it is “unheard of” for the CDC to publicly raise doubts about the conclusions of state and local health departments, even if the agency seeks more information.

“The secretary had no business ​interfering in the normal process,” Benjamin said. “He has an anti-vaccine agenda and he’s using this to play out his anti-vaccine agenda.”

Grace Davis Jamison, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services which oversees CDC, said ​the public health agency “requested details necessary to determine whether measles caused or contributed to the deaths.” She cited conflicting reports between county and state health officials over what had transpired. Jamison did not comment on Kennedy’s or Schwartz’s role in excluding the deaths. Schwartz did not respond to a request for comment.

Kennedy has for years promoted the idea that vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, despite decades of scientific evidence that they save lives. The combined measles, mumps and ​rubella shot routinely given to U.S. children has been shown to provide 97% protection against infection.

As health secretary, Kennedy has sought to minimize the impact of rising U.S. measles cases, now at their highest level in ​more than three decades. He has repeatedly cast doubt on whether the virus was directly related to the several deaths reported so far.

KENNEDY, SHAPIRO TRADE BLAME

The Pennsylvania health department notified the CDC of two measles-associated deaths on the morning ‌of August ⁠25 and then made the news public on its website, according to the Pennsylvania official, who is close to Shapiro.

Pennsylvania did not share information about the circumstances of the deaths other than that the two individuals were unvaccinated. The CDC did not express concern over the information it had received and “signified its ongoing support for the (state health) department’s efforts,” the official said.

Kennedy called Shapiro by phone and offered federal support to assist with the state’s measles outbreak, the governor said at a press conference later that day. Shapiro said he thanked Kennedy and said the state had implemented an aggressive response, including existing support from CDC and HHS staff, but ​that he would let the secretary know if ​they needed more help.

Shapiro also said he told ⁠Kennedy that the health secretary’s past statements encouraged conspiracy theories and misinformation about the safety of vaccines, “having a negative impact on communities across America.”

Kennedy fired back on X the following day, August 26, accusing Shapiro of refusing to share information with the CDC and questioning whether the deaths were “altogether fabricated by one of the ​Governor’s hopeful staffers.”

That same day, the Pennsylvania health department discussed some details of the two cases with the CDC, the official close to Shapiro said. ​The CDC asked for health ⁠records that contained personally identifiable information about the deceased, which the state is legally barred from sharing, the Pennsylvania official said. The state offered to provide more de-identified information to CDC, but the federal agency has not signed off on the required paperwork, the official added.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania health department said the state has “provided all required epidemiological data to the CDC.”

On Friday, the CDC delayed its regular weekly update to its measles data website. When ⁠it updated ​the page on Sunday, it did not include the Pennsylvania fatalities but added an asterisk to its table on deaths with the ​following note: “At this time, available information does not establish whether measles caused or contributed to the (Pennsylvania) deaths or whether the individuals died from other causes while infected with measles.”

The CDC has not indicated what information it will use to determine whether the Pennsylvania deaths ​were caused by measles, since it is not working with the state health department in its investigation.

Reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in Washington, D.C. and Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Aurora Ellis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

One of the only women left in Trump’s Cabinet has mostly been doing damage control

2026-09-03T10:00:29.398Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/03/politics/brooke-rollins-trump-agriculture-beef-screwworm

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who grew up on a farm and once described winning a hog-catching contest with her sister, should have been in her element at the Iowa State Fair last week.

But she seemed to have been caught off guard when, just as she was making an appearance at the fair in Des Moines, the White House announced a deal to import 300,000 tons of beef.

It was intended to offset high prices at the grocery stores, but ranchers were not pleased.

She defended the plan – “We’re going to see that cost of ground beef go down,” she told reporters in Iowa – even as days later she said she was “not privy” to talk about the details.

Rollins had initially addressed the media after a meeting with Iowa grain farmers and livestock producers grew testy, according to one participant. The secretary ended up spending more time behind closed doors with officials than in public, touring the fairgrounds.

The consternation over beef policy is the latest headache for a normally low-profile Cabinet post. Rollins’ ability to keep the peace with farmers and the agriculture industry over the next few months could have real impacts on elections this fall, as Republicans work to hold onto rural voters in traditionally red districts across the country.

Interviews with more than a dozen people, including current and former officials, industry figures, state officials and people familiar with the US Department of Agriculture’s response depict Rollins as a capable, savvy political operator who has often moved quickly to contain farmer anger, find money inside a sprawling agency and keep herself in Trump’s good graces.

One of few women remaining in the leadership ranks, insiders say Rollins is a shrewd negotiator who has also managed to make inroads with a constituency known for its animosity to “Big Ag”: Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s MAHA supporters.

“She’s deceptively sweet,” said Chuck DeVore, a former California state assemblyman who worked with Rollins for years at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “There’s a lot of steel underneath that velvet.”

But sources also describe a department under severe strain from DOGE-driven cuts and criticized for inconsistent communication with stakeholders.

In one key instance, Rollins came under fire over delays to build a facility needed to help combat an epidemic of New World screwworm, a parasitic fly, in cattle. Critics say time was lost while she entertained a proposal from a politically connected construction contractor — time some insiders now say made the outbreak harder to manage.

Rollins, a native Texan and one of Trump’s most politically fluent Cabinet members, has been saddled with shielding farmers and ranchers from cascading crises since she took over USDA in February 2025, when the sector was already facing a slew of problems.

Bird flu was ravaging poultry flocks, spreading through dairy herds and driving up egg prices. The flesh-eating screwworm livestock parasite, which had been eradicated from the US decades ago, was creeping north through Mexico. And the agency charged with managing those threats was bracing for budget and staffing upheaval as DOGE cuts began thinning its ranks of tens of thousands of employees.

Since then, things have only gotten worse.

Drought, tariffs, fuel and fertilizer costs pushed up by the war in Iran and the screwworm crisis that hit this June have depleted herds and squeezed farm profits. Today, US farm bankruptcies are at a six-year high, according to data from Epiq AACER, a bankruptcy reporting platform.

In an apparent bid to assuage discontent, on Friday, the administration announced new efforts to streamline beef processing. Rollins followed up with plans Monday to invest in rebuilding American cattle herds.

Yet the National Cattlemen’s Association called the processing maneuvers a “short-term political fix” that doesn’t help farmers where they need it – a criticism USDA contended was “extremely shortsighted.”

Rollins did not speak to CNN for this story, but a USDA spokesperson said: “Secretary Rollins has unequivocally supported the President’s America First trade agenda,” pointing to recent initiatives and accomplishments on school food, fertilizer production and modernization efforts for ranchers.

The administration’s agenda has significantly reduced the agricultural trade deficit, they said.

As the threat of parasitic flies crept up from the southern border last year, Rollins weighed tapping a company Trump has favored to helm a multimillion-dollar effort to eradicate them.

Currently one of the most effective methods for dealing with New World screwworm is through breeding and releasing millions of sterile flies who mate without producing viable larvae carrying the parasite, thus eradicating the pests.

Before the first US case popped up in a calf in Texas in June, Trump officials balked at the steep costs of building a US sterile fly facility, which were estimated to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a former senior official.

“It was extremely difficult to convince [Rollins and USDA leadership] that we had to get going then, in order to be prepared for what was coming at us,” the person said.

But with Rollins’ guidance, discussions eventually began with a construction company involved in building “Alligator Alcatraz,” last year, according to the source, who had direct knowledge of the matter.

The immigration detention facility was built rapidly and meant to keep up with the federal immigration crackdown but it quickly became a source of controversy with reports of inhumane conditions. Amid mounting legal challenges, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in June that the facility had been shut down.

The company under consideration, which had previously snagged government contracts under both Trump and former President Joe Biden for border wall construction, made an appealing pitch: a speedy $25 million project.

But about six months later, it said it could not build a massive facility to churn out sterile flies quickly, or as cheaply, as initially proposed, according to the official. Officials were also concerned that it could not keep to promised costs and that their plans could raise biosecurity containment issues regarding the genetically modified flies, according to the source.

The USDA did not answer specific criticisms over its consideration of the company and the process but said its response to the screwworm problem has been successful.

“When the first case was identified in Texas on June 3, 2026, many ‘experts’ and media outlets projected major infestations, but instead the plan has been working and as of today, there are only 3 active cases of NWS and 48 total in the USA,” the spokesperson said.

While Rollins announced an intention to build a Texas facility near the Mexican border last June, it was roughly 10 months before there was action. The delay was inscrutable for the agriculture industry and farmers worried about the coming threat, according to two sources familiar with discussions.

“We wasted a lot of time listening to these pitches,” one of them said.

USDA and the Army Corps of Engineers eventually awarded the bulk of the contract to Mortenson Construction in March 2026. Builders broke ground this April. Rollins announced recently that it is seven months ahead of schedule and could open in the spring. It will cost an estimated $750 million.

In Texas, outgoing Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller — a Republican who lost a reelection bid earlier this year — has repeatedly criticized what he sees as a slow and inadequate response.

“Instead of using every available tool, USDA moved too slowly and relied solely on a partial solution that takes years to fully implement,” he said in a June statement.

Miller also suggested farmers would be unwilling to report screwworm cases, fearing quarantine of their livestock.

Rollins responded to Miller’s criticism that month, calling his charge “a very unserious comment, from perhaps an unserious ag commissioner with just a few months left,” she said. Though he won Trump’s endorsement days before this year’s election, Miller had been hammered by criticism from Texas politicians including Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, over a series of alleged corruption scandals.

Other Texans who have met with Rollins have had a more tempered view.

Texas Farm Bureau President Russell Boening told CNN that Rollins began discussions on screwworm within weeks of being confirmed. “I mean, she was also dealing with the avian flu at that time, egg prices were through the roof, and so she was dealing with that,” he said.

“Do we wish it would have been done a little faster? Yeah, but it wasn’t,” he added. “So, you know, at this point, let’s don’t do any more blame game. Let’s just, let’s just do our best with what we have.”

The USDA spokesperson said the agency’s approach “has been to turn over every rock to bring additional production online as fast as possible.”

“All efforts have moved at a breakneck speed,” they added.

Since February, it has released a billion sterile flies along the US-Mexico border as of late last month, USDA has said.

Though Rollins’ critics complain she does not have direct experience with USDA, her farming credentials run deep.

Previously a lawyer, she hails from a farm in a small town outside of Fort Worth, Texas.

In a 2024 podcast interview on the Lou Holtz Show, Rollins — Rollins, then president of the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute, the think-tank she co-founded with economist Larry Kudlow — recalled winning a hog-catching contest with her sister about a decade ago.

“We had a strategy and a plan, which seems to be a common theme in my life. You always have to have a strategy, and you always have to have a plan,” she told the famed ex-football coach. “We had a plan to wrestle that wild hog — and he was a wild, big hog — and put him into a bag and drag him across the finish line.”

She seems to have taken a similar tack in approaching policy work. Those who have worked with her say she is detail oriented and practical, focused on what building consensus and acting.

Boening, of the Texas Farm Bureau, recalled a meeting Rollins convened last year with 13 Texas state directors.

“She said, ‘I’d like for each of y’all to give me one issue that’s really important to you or to your area,’” he said. “She wrote down every one of those issues, and she went back and addressed them to every person.”

Trump’s team first approached her in 2016 after she had risen to prominence leading the Austin-based Texas Public Policy Foundation, rapidly expanding the tiny conservative think tank into a small government, free-market powerhouse.

She would say that it was not “a think tank, it’s a do tank. So she was always focused on practical implementation of ideas,” Devore, who worked with her at the foundation, said.

Rollins joined Trump’s first presidential campaign as an economic adviser just months before Election Day, but resisted a move to Washington when Trump won.

It was not until 2018 that she joined his administration with a mandate to bring ‘the Texas model’ to federal policy.

By 2018, Rollins had ascended to lead Trump’s Office of American Innovation and later the White House Domestic Policy Council, where her career started to circle back to agricultural policy.

Yet despite her longtime loyalties, there was not an obvious place for Rollins in the second Trump administration, two people familiar with internal transition discussions said. She was the last nominee named to a Cabinet-level position when Trump won his second presidency.

“When I had a chance, I said, ‘What about Department of Agriculture?’ I had no idea that she … went to school on agriculture,” Trump said during a speech to farmers this March. “I would have put her there even if she didn’t.”

Rollins has claimed she is unsure “that you could ever find someone that is more pro-rancher, pro-farmer, pro-rural America than this president,” and that Trump has been fully bought in to what she has needed since the start of the administration.

“I walked in the Oval Office and I said, ‘Sir, there is a pretty serious threat to our livestock that’s headed our way,’” Rollins told a Senate committee in June. “And he said, ‘Well, what do you need?’”

Trump, in turn, said Rollins is doing “a fantastic job” and has called her a natural leader.

“Brooke, I always said, could run any company in the world. She could run these big companies. She’s a great executive,” he said during the March speech.

But Rollins has had to get creative with the agency’s budget to cover the many woes that have befallen farmers in Trump’s second term.

Sources previously told CNN that, last year, amid tariff pressures on farmers’ profits, she once burst into the Oval Office to declare that she had found a critical $3 billion in emergency relief.

The administration later announced a $12 billion relief fund.

Another prospective emergency fund is on the table now: Last month, the House passed a relief package – also for $12 billion – that will now be considered by the Senate.

Senate Republicans, led by Sen. John Boozman of Arkansas, appear eager to finalize a bailout as farmers plan for their 2027 planting season. But with a packed September agenda, including the need to pass a broader federal budget or continuing resolution, its fate remains to be seen.

The relief may not come soon enough for farmers planning their next planting season, said Nick Levendofsky, executive director of the Kansas Farmers Union. On top of pressures from the Iran conflict, the US is sparring over trade agreements with Canada, a major supplier of farm equipment.

“These challenges aren’t going to go away anytime soon. It’s going to be well into 2027, maybe even longer before we start to see any kind of relief, and then you throw the tariffs in there,” said Levendofsky. “Farmers are getting squeezed from all sides, just like consumers, everyday people are.”

Trump’s agreement to import beef — amid outstanding questions about where it is coming from — has set off a fresh round of frustration and open GOP concern.

Cattle producers are “increasingly concerned about the unpredictability of the political policy environment,” Glynn Tonsor, an agricultural economist at Kansas State University who studies meat pricing, said. That uncertainty is particularly problematic for an industry where expanding a herd requires a five- to 15-year investment.

“Most people only make multi-year investments if either the economic return looks very lucrative to support the risk or you’re comfortable with a fair amount of limited risk and unpredictability,” he said. Right now, cattle ranchers don’t see either condition being met.

“We’ve got 71 days [until the midterms], and right now we don’t have a positive message to tell farm country,” retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters on August 24. “If you think that providing subsidized beef for some period of time is going to make farmers happy and prices go down on a systemic basis, you’re wrong.”

CNN’s Jeff Zeleny, Adam Cancryn, Elisabeth Buchwald and Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

伊瓜苏瀑布大雨后水位暴涨形成壮丽景观

2026年9月3日 19:23 / 联合早报

位于巴西和阿根廷边境交界处的伊瓜苏瀑布（Iguazu Falls）星期三（9月2日）在一场大雨后河床水位暴涨，湍急的水流与迷蒙的雾气交织成一幅壮丽景观，吸引大批游客登上步道观赏。

伊瓜苏瀑布由275股流水沿着宽约2.7公里的河床断崖冲泻而下形成，是世界最宽的瀑布，与东非的维多利亚瀑布和美加边境的尼亚加拉瀑布并列世界三大瀑布。它的河床断崖落差最短处60米，最长达82米，仅次于维多利亚瀑布，在2013年被选为联合国世界自然遗产。（路透社）

伊瓜苏瀑布大雨后水位暴涨形成壮丽景观

2026年9月3日 19:23 / 联合早报

位于巴西和阿根廷边境交界处的伊瓜苏瀑布（Iguazu Falls）星期三（9月2日）在一场大雨后河床水位暴涨，湍急的水流与迷蒙的雾气交织成一幅壮丽景观，吸引大批游客登上步道观赏。

伊瓜苏瀑布由275股流水沿着宽约2.7公里的河床断崖冲泻而下形成，是世界最宽的瀑布，与东非的维多利亚瀑布和美加边境的尼亚加拉瀑布并列世界三大瀑布。它的河床断崖落差最短处60米，最长达82米，仅次于维多利亚瀑布，在2013年被选为联合国世界自然遗产。（路透社）

联合国儿童基金会报告：互联网有上千万儿童遭性剥削

2026年9月3日 19:46 / 蔡添成 联合早报

分析显示，遭受科技助长的性剥削的儿童，出现自杀念头、自杀行为或自残的可能性，是其他儿童的四倍。 （路透社）

（日内瓦综合电）儿童面临来自网络的性剥削与性虐待问题日益严重。联合国最新报告估计，在21个国家，12岁至17岁的互联网使用者中，近五分之一在过去一年曾遭遇至少一种由数码科技助长的此类侵害，相当于约2000万人。

联合国儿童基金会（UNICEF）星期四（9月3日）发布的报告，综合分析了21个国家于2020年至2025年间开展的全国调查数据，涵盖非洲、亚洲、拉丁美洲和东欧等地区，调查对象是约2万1000名12岁至17岁的互联网使用者。

报告估计，在所调查的国家中，约1500万名儿童曾在未经同意的情况下接触色情内容；约900万名儿童曾被迫进行性方面的对话或分享色情照片；另有约400万名儿童的私密照片未经同意被他人传播。由于同一名儿童可能遭受不止一种形式的侵害，这些数字之间存在重叠。

近六成相关事件发生在社交媒体平台，以脸书（Facebook）、WhatsApp、Instagram、Snapchat和TikTok为主；另有14%发生在网络游戏平台。

57%的案件涉及儿童原本认识的人，包括朋友、亲属或恋爱对象；另有38%的儿童是在网上首次结识施害者。

报告也对人工智能（AI）引发的安全隐忧提出警告。在九个国家接受调查的儿童中，约110万人说，他们曾遭遇由AI生成的性相关图像或视频的网络侵害。

分析显示，遭受科技助长的性剥削的儿童，出现自杀念头、自杀行为或自残的可能性，是其他儿童的四倍。

针对报告内容，脸书、WhatsApp和Instagram的母公司Meta Platforms发言人回应称，这些调查涵盖的时期从2020年开始，当时公司尚未落实联合国儿童基金会所建议的一些保护措施；接下来公司旗下的各个应用会继续积极打击儿童剥削行为，并协助执法部门起诉犯罪分子。

Snapchat则表明，公司正通过主动检测和封禁违规账户，以及提供用户举报工具等安全功能，积极打击网络的性勒索行为。

TikTok称，已设立一系列保护未成年人的安全机制，包括限制年幼用户使用部分功能，以及将18岁以下用户的账户设为私密等。

报告呼吁各国政府和科技公司加强数码平台安全措施，更新相关法律，并加强儿童保护、举报和求助机制。

联合国儿童基金会报告：互联网有上千万儿童遭性剥削

2026年9月3日 19:46 / 蔡添成 联合早报

分析显示，遭受科技助长的性剥削的儿童，出现自杀念头、自杀行为或自残的可能性，是其他儿童的四倍。 （路透社）

（日内瓦综合电）儿童面临来自网络的性剥削与性虐待问题日益严重。联合国最新报告估计，在21个国家，12岁至17岁的互联网使用者中，近五分之一在过去一年曾遭遇至少一种由数码科技助长的此类侵害，相当于约2000万人。

联合国儿童基金会（UNICEF）星期四（9月3日）发布的报告，综合分析了21个国家于2020年至2025年间开展的全国调查数据，涵盖非洲、亚洲、拉丁美洲和东欧等地区，调查对象是约2万1000名12岁至17岁的互联网使用者。

报告估计，在所调查的国家中，约1500万名儿童曾在未经同意的情况下接触色情内容；约900万名儿童曾被迫进行性方面的对话或分享色情照片；另有约400万名儿童的私密照片未经同意被他人传播。由于同一名儿童可能遭受不止一种形式的侵害，这些数字之间存在重叠。

近六成相关事件发生在社交媒体平台，以脸书（Facebook）、WhatsApp、Instagram、Snapchat和TikTok为主；另有14%发生在网络游戏平台。

57%的案件涉及儿童原本认识的人，包括朋友、亲属或恋爱对象；另有38%的儿童是在网上首次结识施害者。

报告也对人工智能（AI）引发的安全隐忧提出警告。在九个国家接受调查的儿童中，约110万人说，他们曾遭遇由AI生成的性相关图像或视频的网络侵害。

分析显示，遭受科技助长的性剥削的儿童，出现自杀念头、自杀行为或自残的可能性，是其他儿童的四倍。

针对报告内容，脸书、WhatsApp和Instagram的母公司Meta Platforms发言人回应称，这些调查涵盖的时期从2020年开始，当时公司尚未落实联合国儿童基金会所建议的一些保护措施；接下来公司旗下的各个应用会继续积极打击儿童剥削行为，并协助执法部门起诉犯罪分子。

Snapchat则表明，公司正通过主动检测和封禁违规账户，以及提供用户举报工具等安全功能，积极打击网络的性勒索行为。

TikTok称，已设立一系列保护未成年人的安全机制，包括限制年幼用户使用部分功能，以及将18岁以下用户的账户设为私密等。

报告呼吁各国政府和科技公司加强数码平台安全措施，更新相关法律，并加强儿童保护、举报和求助机制。

Her immigrant parents built a NYC grocery store from scratch. Now Mamdani’s experiment could end it

September 3, 2026 6:00am EDT / Fox News

Josefina Aguirre says the family business her parents built in nearly 30 years ago is now at risk

By Amanda Macias Fox News

Josefina Aguirre, a first-generation American whose family has run its NYC grocery store for nearly 30 years, says Mamdani’s city-run stores could threaten her livelihood and ultimately force her family out of business.

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4 min

“It’s going to be $1,” Josefina Aguirre said to a customer, pausing an interview with Fox News Digital inside her family’s Spanish Harlem meat market.

“Okay, I’m sorry. I got a couple of customers. Let’s start over,” Aguirre, a first-generation American, said. “This is me,” she added with a laugh from behind the counter where she has worked for the past 30 years.

Aguirre is among the neighborhood grocers suing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani over his plan to open city-backed grocery stores across all five boroughs. He says the plan will offer shoppers prices roughly 30% lower than comparable retailers. Local business owners argue it will force small local-run stores to shutter.

EXPERTS SCORCH MAMDANI’S GROCERY PLAN AS AN ‘ILLUSION’ THAT WILL HAVE TAXPAYERS FOOTING THE BILL

Bodegas and small grocery stores have long been fixtures of New York City neighborhoods, serving generations of residents often just steps from their homes.(Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“When we heard Mamdani was opening a grocery store where people are gonna save 30%, it scares us because we don’t have the money to compete,” Aguirre said.

“I mean, we are New Yorkers, we’re not scared of competition, we never have been, but when you have a grocery store coming in like this, it could take us out of business.”

One of the proposed city-backed stores is set to open next year at La Marqueta, an existing public market just two blocks from Little Mexico, the family business Aguirre’s parents opened in 1997. The city is expected to spend roughly $30 million to build the location, putting a taxpayer-backed competitor practically on Aguirre’s doorstep.

NYC TAXPAYERS COULD PAY TWICE UNDER MAMDANI’S CITY-OWNED GROCERY STORE PLAN

A $30 million city-backed grocery store is opening two blocks from NYC grocer Josefina Aguirre’s family business.(Kendall Rodriguez/Newsday RM/Getty Images)

For generations, bodegas and small grocery stores have been woven into the fabric of New York City neighborhoods, serving customers who often live just blocks away.

Aguirre said the shop, which she now runs with her two sisters, has survived the COVID-19 pandemic, rising rents and competition from big-box retailers such as a nearby Costco. But after nearly three decades in business, Aguirre fears Mamdani’s city-run grocery plan could be the setback her family cannot survive.

“If I’m selling a whole chicken for $13, and he’s giving it for $7, they’re gonna buy the $7 chicken,” Aguirre said. “Who doesn’t want a 30% discount?”

For Aguirre, the stakes extend well beyond losing customers.

“I pay my mortgage from here. I pay for my kid’s tuition. This is what I’ve been doing for over 30 years. Do I need to start over in a new career?”

Aguirre’s concerns are at the heart of a lawsuit brought by a group of New York City grocers challenging Mamdani’s plan, which would use public money and city resources to create competitors they argue private businesses cannot realistically match.

NYC GROCERS SOUND ALARM ON MAMDANI’S SUPERMARKET PLAN: ‘WE’LL LOSE CUSTOMERS’

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made city-owned grocery stores a centerpiece of his affordability agenda, arguing the government-backed model can deliver lower prices to New Yorkers.(Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Mamdani has committed $70 million to opening five municipal grocery stores, one in each borough, pitching the model as a way to bring down grocery bills for New Yorkers struggling with the rising cost of food. The stores would operate on city-owned property without having to pay rent or property taxes, advantages Mamdani has argued would allow them to offer lower prices.

Independent grocers argue those same taxpayer-backed advantages would leave businesses like Little Mexico competing on an uneven playing field.

Mamdani’s grocery push is also an early test of his broader socialist vision for New York, bringing government-run stores into direct competition with private businesses in a city synonymous with capitalism.

FROM FREE BUSES TO CITY-OWNED GROCERY STORES, HERE ARE MAMDANI’S KEY ECONOMIC PROMISES

For Aguirre, however, the fight is more personal.

“This is what my parents left us,” Aguirre said. “It’ll be sad to see us leave.”

But walking away from the business her family has spent nearly three decades building is the last outcome she wants.

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“So what will happen next? The next thing would be closing our business, and we don’t want to close, we’ve been here for years,” she said.

Mamdani’s office did not respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

Amanda Macias covers the intersection of business, economics and politics, with a focus on how policy decisions shape markets, businesses and American workers.

MAGA begins to crack as 2026 GOP roster backs away from Trump’s tech vision

Fox News poll finds 70% of voters want to hit the brakes on new data center construction in their communities

September 3, 2026 5:00am EDT / Fox News

By Paul Steinhauser

A growing number of Republicans running in this year’s midterm elections are taping the brakes on new AI data center construction following voter backlash.

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With a slew of polls showing that most Americans oppose the construction in their communities of new data centers to power AI, a growing number of Republicans running in this year’s elections are putting daylight between themselves and President Donald Trump.

Trump, a strong proponent of data center development, took to social media Monday to argue that if communities “want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

But with GOP strategists warning that data centers have become politically radioactive, some Republicans on the midterm ballot are reversing course, which is a stark shift for a party that previously had fully embraced the burgeoning AI industry.

Seventy percent of voters questioned in a recent Fox News poll said they wanted to hit the brakes on building data centers in their area to support artificial intelligence, with only 30% in favor. Only 40% of Republicans, and 46% of MAGA Republicans supported new data center construction.

CRUCIAL SENATE RACE ERUPTS OVER AI’S MASSIVE ENERGY APPETITE

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Fueling the opposition are concerns over rising electricity costs and energy and water consumption.

“I think we need to take a pause, probably, and make sure that we’re answering all the questions that people have on them,” former Rep. Mike Rogers, the GOP Senate nominee in battleground Michigan, said two weeks ago when asked about data center construction.

Rogers, who previously welcomed data center expansion in Michigan, later outlined a one-year moratorium, arguing that “Michigan needs stronger guardrails to protect community control, prevent utility price hikes, protect our water, and stop pay-to-play schemes.”

DEMOCRAT FETTERMAN ALIGNS WITH TRUMP ON AI ARGUMENT

Former Rep. Mike Rogers, the Republican Senate nominee in Michigan, announces support for a one-year moratorium on new data center construction, on August 20, 2026, in Detroit, Michigan.(Paul Steinhauser/Fox News)

He’s far from alone.

In Ohio’s crucial Senate race between appointed GOP Sen. Jon Husted and his Democratic challenger, former longtime Sen. Sherrod Brown, the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) warned that the issue could help the Democrats flip the seat. Brown and allied groups have shelled out millions of dollars to run ads calling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio.”

“More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,”the NRSC memo emphasized.

Husted has introduced a Senate bill to stop average Americans from paying for data center energy costs.

BERNIE SANDERS: ‘WE MUST HIT THE PAUSE ON AI BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE’

Volunteers hand out yard signs against a data center complex in Canaan Valley on June 30, 2025, after a public meeting organized by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection regarding an air quality permit application for a gas-fired power plant near Davis, W. Va.(ULYSSE BELLIER/AFP via Getty Images)

The political pushback stretches well beyond Michigan and Ohio.

Texas Attorney General and U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton last month unveiled a four-point plan to curb rapid data center growth and address public concerns over resource strain.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican running for a fourth term steering the Lone Star State, halted new data center connections to the state’s power grid pending a comprehensive regulatory audit.

Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy pledged to issue a first-day-in-office executive order halting approval of all new data center projects until his proposed safeguards are enacted.

Rep. Tom Tiffany, the GOP nominee for governor in swing state Wisconsin, has highlighted that he opposes new data centers unless strict conditions are met. Tiffany has made data centers a centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign, slamming his Democratic rival, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, as “Data Center David Crowley.”

Pennsylvania Treasurer and Republican gubernatorial nominee Stacy Garrity has called for a temporary pause on new and uncontracted major data center developments in her battleground state.

Other Republicans are stopping short of moratoriums. Rep. Byron Donalds, the GOP gubernatorial nominee who opposes bans or moratoriums and whose primary campaign received significant backing from the AI industry, introduced legislation this summer that would require large AI data centers to generate their own power and water rather than draw from public utilities.

COOL YOUR SERVERS: CHECK OUT THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLL ON AI DATA CENTERS

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Trump is standing firm.

The president recently called Abbott’s decision to pump the brakes on data center development a “mistake.”

And Trump, on Monday said, “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.”

The president, who has made data centers a key ingredient in winning the AI race with China, argued: “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement.”

But Trump, at least for now, seems to be giving Republicans some wiggle room.

“If a Republican’s against a data center, that’s OK with me,” Trump said.

Veteran Republican strategist Matt Gorman told Fox News Digital that “Trump is smartly taking the long view of this.”

Gorman said “Republicans on the ballot this year are being responsive to the very real concerns people have,” adding that “these companies and their champions have to do more to make the case.”

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An Amazon Web Services data center in Aldie, Virginia, on May 31, 2026.(Lexi Critchett/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The AI industry is responding to the political backlash.

Build American AI, an industry-aligned group powered by top AI leaders, this week launched a multimillion-dollar public engagement campaign to build support for “clear, strong, and commonsense policies governing the development of the data centers and energy infrastructure.”

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It highlighted that the “policies should protect residential ratepayers, safeguard the environment and water resources, require developers to pay their fair share, and preserve the right of every community to decide whether it wants to welcome data center investment.”

“We can protect ratepayers, safeguard our natural resources, respect the right of communities to decide whether they want to welcome this investment, and still build the infrastructure America needs to lead the world in artificial intelligence,” Build American AI added.

Paul Steinhauser covers the national campaign trail from coast to coast for Fox News