Pressure Systems edition
Data Center Backlash and Megadonor Cash Shake Midterm Races
October 12, 2026
What this edition shows
As the 2026 midterm elections approach, campaign battles are pivoting around computing infrastructure and concentrated capital, with candidates exploiting voter opposition to regional data center expansion while Elon Musk's America PAC injects over $276 million into aggressive ad buys. Simultaneously, tens of millions in generative AI deepfake ads and surging volume on prediction markets like Polymarket and Kalshi are testing regulatory boundaries and reshaping voter information across key battlegrounds.
Reporting and analysis behind this edition 20 sources
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These Midterm Races Will Decide Data Centers’ Political Fate
From the Senate to governors’ mansions, candidates are trying to outcompete each other to be the most anti–data center in races across the US.
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Prediction Markets Have a Lock on the Midterms
As Kalshi and Polymarket dodge state regulations, prediction markets are upping the ante on next month’s elections. The post Prediction Markets Have a Lock on the Midterms appeared first on The Intercept.
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We’ve tracked $80M of spending on almost 170 AI-generated political ads this year – it’s weird
At a 2024 MIT Museum exhibit, visitors were asked to guess which videos were deepfakes. Lane Turner/The Boston Globe via Getty Images The 2026 U.S. midterm campaigns are the first in which AI-generated political ads are regularly appearing on people’s televisions and social media feeds. We are resea…
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Elon Musk has donated over $276 million to Republican midterm efforts
So much for doing less political spending. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images Elon Musk has handed out at least $276 million to Republican groups since July, The New York Times reports, making him both the party's top known donor and the biggest established midterm donor. $158 million…
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Elon Musk’s America PAC Is Spending Big on the Midterms. We’re Tracking It Daily
To follow Elon Musk’s America PAC money, WIRED created a live-updating tracker that highlights the trillionaire’s overall influence on November’s elections.
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AI deepfake ads grow more popular in US midterm campaigns, blurring truth
The US midterm election campaign has been filled with political ads featuring AI deepfakes that can mislead voters.
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DHS’s Nevada ‘Illegal Voter’ Claims Have Dropped From 16,000 To 200 To ZERO In Less Than A Month
Donald Trump has been claiming for years that all elections he hasn’t (or won’t) win are rigged. This also goes for mid-terms — especially this one — where Republicans seem likely to lose seats to Democratic Party members. We won’t know if Trump will try to become President For Life until 2028, but…
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The Many Ways AI Could Disrupt the Midterms
Around the same time that the world learned that swarms of autonomous AI agents were escaping their testing environments and carrying out sophisticated hacking attacks this past summer, researchers who focus on election security were running tests of their own. They wanted to see whether the safegua…
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Elon Musk’s America PAC Is Quietly Funding November’s Most Consequential Elections
America PAC’s approach has been unusual: for every dollar it has spent supporting GOP Senate candidates, it has spent almost three dollars attacking Democrats.
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Is There Anything Kash Patel Won’t Do for Trump Before the Midterms?
Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed before God, Fox Nation, and Donald Trump that he would punish the “deep state” for its manifold transgressions, especially the (actually nonexistent) conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. “I’ve been with the president nearly since day one on this,” h…
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The Real Threat to the Midterms Is Regular Americans Thinking Violence Is the Answer
Robert A. Pape, a leading authority on political violence, wants Americans to understand that the threat is coming not from the fringes, but from the mainstream.
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How Trump Could Threaten the 2026 Election
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube In this week’s episode of The David Frum Show, The Atlantic’s David Frum opens with his thoughts about the recent state visit by the Chinese president Xi Jinping to the United States. David discusses President Trump’s embarrassing behavior at the di…
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The American mood is turning dark, and Republicans are likely to pay the price at the midterms
For the White House, the midterm elections are always agony. They are always a referendum on the president. On October 12 2010, I was serving on the Democratic staff of the US House of Representatives. It was just two years after Barack Obama’s historic presidential election victory. His majority in…
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How American Political Campaigns Are Using AI—and What They’re Spending on the Tools
This essay was written with Nathan E. Sanders, and originally appeared in The Guardian. New campaign finance disclosure data shines a light on which US political campaigns are using AI tools and how much they are spending on them. Candidates’, parties’ and committees’ spending reveals that AI is fas…
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Inside Elon Musk’s Midterm Spending Spree
This week on “Uncanny Valley,” we discuss where Elon Musk’s PAC is spending millions, the latest ideology Trump claims is dangerous, and the backlash against the designer behind Muse’s logo.
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Election Deniers Think the GOP’s Terrible Midterm Polling Is a ‘Psyop’
Dozens and dozens of high profile MAGA influencers and pundits have weighed in. “The laughable fake polls are rolling out,” Catturd posted on X.
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How the Polls Could Be Wrong Again
Less than a month out from Election Day, the polls are predicting a Democratic rout. According to the election forecaster Nate Silver’s polling average, Democratic Senate candidates are leading in Kansas, which voted for Donald Trump by 16 percentage points in 2024, as well as Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, an…
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Ku Klux Klan leader claims rising support ahead of US midterm elections
The Ku Klux Klan says support for its message is growing as it seeks to rebrand around family and faith.
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Why FBI Officials Are Worried About the Midterms
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts The word that the Atlantic staff writer Sarah Fitzpatrick hears often from her FBI sources is desperate, meaning that they believe FBI Director Kash Patel is desperate to please President Trump. What Trump wants, sources fr…
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As Trump’s Coalition Breaks, Can the Left Pick Up the Pieces?
The coalition that sent Donald Trump back to the White House in 2024 marked the culmination of a long-term political realignment that conservative authors and activists had anticipated since the 1970s. Fifty years earlier, right-wing commentators like William Rusher, then the publisher of , were bus…