2026 Midterm Elections' possible impact on AI Data Centers

And thanks for joining us on another busy night of all things people, power and politics. This, my friends, is The Pulse. I'm Rup Raj. The midterms might be over, but there is so much to unpack still. Everyone's asking what's next. That's why we're here, to cut through all the noise on your phone and let you know what's really going on. Talking to sources, understanding the real issues. And in that spirit, we're bringing on Troy Mayor Ethan Baker, Detroit City Council Member Mary Waters, and Madi Nasrallah, the founder and executive director of a youth group that's talking about what's next for both parties. Democrats have control of Congress, but they'll have to work with a Republican executive branch. Our all-star panel is diving into that. Plus, Allcom CEO Brent Yaks takes a closer look at the future of data centers with Democrats in charge and a governor who says perhaps a moratorium is what we need next. And when the Democratic domination comes into question, of course, the big question is who's going to step up in both chambers of Congress and serve in those leadership roles? House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has launched a bid to serve as House Speaker. But in both chambers, there are questions about how the progressive versus moderate wings could come to a consensus. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is confident he'll keep his leadership role, but others aren't so sure if he should serve. And keep in mind, he only needs a majority vote from his party. Take a look. I'll be re-elected as majority leader. Would you vote for Chuck Schumer as the Senate majority leader? No. No, I will not. I'm going to support somebody else. I am for Chris Van Hollen. If he decides he wants to be Senate majority leader, I think he'd be amazing at the job. You know, one of the fallouts we've seen is on Wall Street, there was a major sell-off for stocks leading to a brutal day on Wall Street. The Democratic wins raised the likelihood of moratoriums on those data centers. Here's where things finished off at the end of the day in our stock market. The Dow in the red by 1,800, the Nasdaq also down by 1,400 points, and the S&P down 334 points. There are some House races and Senate as well, of course, that have not been President Trump has said he could be, quote, Mr. Vito, but also signaled he's open to working with Democrats. As we watch for those results, Republicans are reflecting after the massive losses they took on Tuesday. President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance acknowledge the impact Iran's war has had, but Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who's viewed as a 2028 presidential hopeful, believes the GOP wasted its majority. You are not, as Republicans, gonna be able to retake the Senate under this current map just two years from now. And with all the House seats that have been done, probably not viable to take that back as well. So this is really gonna have an impact two years, four years, six years. If there's a race result that you're curious about, Fox 2 is your home for politics. Just scan the QR code on the bottom right of your screen or go to our website, fox2detroit.com. You can look at all the results, plus use our interactive touchscreen map that we use throughout the night, of course, on election night. Again, special thanks to our executive producer, Dylan Dahlberg, and Joe Tavares for making that map possible. Our coverage has been all over the election the last few days, understandably so. But there's a lot of other big stories we're on top of right now, so we're going to pick pick up the pace and run through some of the The other big stories in the world of politics right now, although this story involves a fallout from the midterms, current House Speaker Mike Johnson says he won't seek re-election as House Republican leader after the party's losses. Johnson won re-election, but this move sets up a battle within the party. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said in a letter for colleagues that he'll run for the post, saying, quote, the stakes couldn't be higher. Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan also announced his bid for that job, calling himself, quote, battle-tested. To the White House, where President Trump signed a proclamation he says will stop future changes to the Oval Office and Cabinet Room. It's a possible barrier for future presidents who might want to restyle after President Trump filled it with more gold. He says the proclamation will make both rooms a national monument and require approval from Congress to change. But here's the thing, proclamations themselves Can be reversed, something President Trump himself has done to roll back national monuments. And to New York, where appeals judges grilled the president's lawyers and prosecutors over his bid to erase his hush money conviction. But the court didn't show its cards as far as which way they'll rule. Trump was convicted, as you know, of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. He denies any wrongdoing. To the war in Ukraine now, where First Lady Melania Trump took on a huge foreign policy challenge. Mrs. Trump hosted delegates from Russia and Ukraine who recognized her for her work in brokering a ceasefire in the Ukrainian village of Olhasky. The two countries have been at war since Russia invaded Ukraine back in February of 2022. The First Lady spoke during the meeting, saying she hopes the current peace deal is a small part of things to come. We have chosen humanity over war. Undeniably, the lives of innocent people must transcend the division of war. I hope Oleschki inspires greater peace. Every significant transformation begins with a small spark. What matters is not the modesty of this beginning, but the determination to turn into something extraordinary. Now we must use the courage we brought to Olashki to find common ground through a shared concern for the suffering of innocent people. After the meeting, President Trump said he met with Russia's envoy at the White House, but he didn't meet with a Ukrainian counterpart. He wouldn't get into specifics, but suggested some sort of deal is in the works. We're turning back to the midterm fallout after the break. Our all-star panel of Mary Waters, Ethan Baker, and Mahdi Nasrallah reflect on the results. You're watching The Pulse on Fox 2. Back now, The Pulse, looking at all things people, power, and politics. Here to dive into the midterm results, Detroit City Councilmember Mary Waters, Troy Mayor Ethan Baker, and we also have AM Youth Founder and Executive Director Madi Nasrallah. It's great to see all three of you. Thanks for joining us here tonight. Thank you. All right, I'm going to begin by asking a question because Mary Waters, you have, Councilman, made quite a bit of news and quite a splash in your support of Mike Rogers Thank you. Kind of the last hours of the race there that you were publicly citing that you also understood why Haley Stevens moved towards Mike Rogers. But at the end of the day, if we look at the results, Detroit overwhelmingly voted for Abdul Al-Sayed in numbers that perhaps people didn't imagine. Does that surprise you? It does not. It was a good day to be a Democrat, Rube. And to tell you the truth, Detroiters were going to vote exactly that way, and it's all because of Donald Trump. It was a referendum on Donald Trump. So whoever you had on that ballot, and they were a Democrat, That's exactly what was going to happen. So it did not surprise me at all. What about the proposed groundswell of support, the momentum that Mike Rogers and his team said they were making with Detroiters, Detroiters turning around and thanking him for coming and being a part of the community? I mean, when you end up with 5% of the vote, that doesn't seem like, it's a very small number. Well, you know, he certainly could not reach all of the people in the city of Detroit. Sure, but... Okay, so 5% was, I guess, wasn't too bad, but it certainly should have been more or could have been more if it had not been for the Donald Trump effect. And that is just reality, I don't care how people look at it, Ruth, it was Donald Trump. He was the motivator. When Donald Trump and the president told everyone, pretend I'm on the ballot, they did. And when they pretended he was on They said, no thank you, in large numbers. And Ethan Baker, the nonpartisan position of mayor of Troy, you ran as a Republican for the 10th Congressional District. 11th. 11th, excuse me, and it's been a long few days. The 11th Congressional District, and you didn't make it in that race. Do you blame this Republican administration for that? First, it's good to be back. I can do that now. Welcome back. Now you've come back to the show, yeah. Do I blame the Republican administration? I don't think it's so much about blaming the administration. I think it was as if there was a picture of Donald Trump's face on everybody's ballot instead of the R. I mean, that truly is how people voted, and so people didn't put him on the ballot in many ways. But then you do blame the Republican administration, President Donald Trump and his administration, the decisions they've made, yes? It's always a referendum on the president during the midterms. You look at midterm elections, I mean, and this isn't even the worst a president's done As you look back historically, there's been much bigger losses, even Obama's losses in 2010 in the House were historic at the time. So it is always a referendum on the president. I do think there's much more that the president and the Republican conference could have done to help Republican candidates throughout the country. Obviously, a choice was made to go a certain direction and that didn't pan out. Would it be not to show up as often because you saw JD Vance in town, you saw President Trump in town, and you saw the Republicans kinda crowd around that MAGA base and message. Is it better for Republicans to say, you know what, I'm going to walk away from this and I'm going to run my own campaign without the help of these guys? I think you saw that all over the state for the most part. My race is a little different. Oakland County is very different. So I was never really in that realm to begin with. But certainly I think that there was an idea that if the president and his surrogates came, you could boost voter turnout and that was going to help. Because two years ago, the president won the state of Michigan. The demographics of the state of Michigan have not changed that much. But one thing that has changed is the number of people in one demographic that have rushed to the polls. And that is young people, first time voters, people who are, and by the way, not just Democrats, a lot of young Republican males with a referendum against the Trump administration and a lot of Democrats as well who've said, look, this future matters too much for me and we gotta do something different. What was your take on the pulse of what was going on with young people? Mahdi, by the way, is in high school right now as a senior. Rup, in 2024, every political commentator was talking about how Gen Z was leaning more conservative. And that was the message that you saw in any news channel you turned on. Well, on Tuesday, that notion was left in the dust. Young people turned out overwhelmingly for the Democratic Party. So much so that 66% of young voters voted in the Democratic slate. When it came to the U.S. House seats, this is not just a small shift. This is a major shift that has monumental impacts for generations to come. I mean, how can you sell my generation the American dream when the American reality is so unaffordable? This is something that keeps coming up again and again, and it's why young people mobilized all throughout the midterms. I mean, when you look at Abdul Al Said's campaign and his students' first messaging and really getting students to be a focal point of his campaign, or you look at Jocelyn Benson and her interactions with students, or even Ellie Savitt, each one of them made an effort to get young people, specifically students, involved with their campaigns. And something to be hopeful about is that only 27% of young people who are eligible to vote actually turned out. Which means that there's still more work to do on college campuses and on issues and in places where youth are to get them out to vote. There was a young man named Barron who lives in DC with his dad, Donald Trump, the president, his mom, Melania, who told his dad in 2024, hey, dad, you got to get on these podcasts to get these young people. At the time, there was a surge of young conservative voters who showed up in large numbers and They offered Kamala Harris the same opportunities, and she, for instance, on the Joe Rogan show said, I'm good. If you want to come to me, I'll talk to you, but I don't think I'm making the flight. Have we learned as groups of people who run for office, I'm talking to you all, have you learned, have we learned? The importance of that demographic, the podcast, the younger generations? Oh, absolutely. I've always known that was absolutely important. That's why I don't have a problem working with the young people in the high schools, having conversations with organizations such as Build On. These are young people who are understanding, learning the process, what it means, in fact, to participate in the process. Organizing, Ruth, so that their demands are met, because I had some young people say to me at a build-on meeting, they said, well, they made decisions about whether or not we could have cell phones in the classrooms, and they said, don't we have a voice? I said, well, organize. You should organize if you didn't like what the state legislature was considering to do, then you need to organize and go right to Lansing and tell them what was wrong and what was right with being able to step away from your party and Haley Stevens to be able to step away from her party and have your voices heard. What happened that was good from that decision and what bad came from that? Well, let me put it to you this way. It's always good as a former state representative. It was always important for me to work both sides of the aisle, and I still maintain that even though I'm on the Detroit City Council as an at-large member, one who represents nearly 700,000 people. That is critical that we do that. And so the fact that I had oatmeal with Mike Rogers, it should not have mattered. Gretchen Whitmer, Governor Whitmer, went and met with President Trump. About three different times. But that's different than throwing your support. Do you regret in the last, in the 11th hour of this campaign, when so much was at stake for your party, to step away from your party to throw your support to Mike Rogers? I do not regret the relationship that I've established with Mike Rogers. But the endorsement, do you regret that? Well, I did not endorse. That's the thing. I did say that I... Leaning towards support, but I never once made an official endorsement. And I have a cordial relationship with Mike Rogers. I've known him for a few years, so it's not like I was talking to a stranger. But what impressed me about him is the fact that he understood. What we need in the city of Detroit. He talked about skill trades. He talked about literacy. You know, we have about 88% of our children that cannot read. For people that are mad at me for doing that, I say, go and help our babies learn how to read. People that are hating on social media, talking about what we need to get rid of Mary Waters. Listen, be mad about that. Be mad about the folks... In the King Estates, where we have 25 unsolved murders, those are the kind of things you should be- And the work that you're doing every day and the work that people don't see, the work that people do see that you've been doing for so many years. We only have a quick minute left here, we wanna split that between the two of you here. Ethan Baker, what does Abdul El-Sayed need to do to mobilize to make sure that he's an effective senator? Well, you're asking the guy who's not the US senator, but he needs to realize he's one of 100. And he represents the state of Michigan with Alyssa Slotkin, and he needs to recognize that it's not gonna be all about Abdul El-Sayed anymore. It's gonna be about the state of Michigan and what he can do effectively for us in Washington. That's relationship building on both sides of the aisle. That's about being in a group and not just being about yourself all the time. Madi, what does it say as a young person to see a Jewish American senator and a Muslim American senator represent the state of Michigan? It's the American dream. It's something we're seeing across this entire country. In Georgia, we had the first African-American governor ever elected across the United States. In Wisconsin, we had the first African-American governor elected in that state, and all across the nation. We're seeing diverse representation, especially in the Democratic Party, of people who are leading and getting up to lead. That sends a message to every young person who dreams to dream big. And the first Latina in Texas, yes. This conversation begins at this table, continues at people's dinner tables at home, and hopefully back at this table with the three of you. Always love having all three of you. Thanks for joining us. Madi, Mayor. And also, Councilwoman, we appreciate your time. Returning to the data center debate after the break, we showed you the stock sell-off after the Democrats won the midterms. Allcom CEO Brent Yaks with the future of AI and what does it look like under Democratic control. This is The Pulse. It is People, Power, and Politics. Welcome back to Detroit's only nightly political talk show, The Pulse. Here to dive into the fallout from the midterms from an AI standpoint and really maybe not the fallout, but really the reaction all along. Although the stock market, it seems to be somewhat of a fallout. The Allcom CEO, Brent Yaks, with us here tonight. Thanks for joining us. All right. So let's start with the not so great. We saw the stock market today take a tumble. This happens. Why? Explain to people at home why you think this happened. I think specifically when we're talking about the AI-related stocks, NVIDIA, some of those, I think what we're seeing is just people are uneasy about what's going to happen. Are we going to slow down sort of the progress? I don't think it's a financial thing right now because there is an opportunity in AI. It's still growing. We're not seeing a lot of people turn away from the technology. It's going to last. But it was a big flip. We now have a really big win for the Democratic Party in this election, and now we're curious what's going to happen. The dot-com bubble burst, a lot of people are comparing this to something that could happen with AI. Do you see that? I mean, eventually, I think. Companies that don't have a financial model that works are going to fail. And there are a lot of AI companies out there. So are all of them going to make it? It's just not possible. Some are going to fail. How big of an impact that is, we'll see. But there will be AI. It is a proven technology. It will exist after this, just like the internet did after the dot-com bubble. It did not go away. It's just the stronger companies made it through. So we have this blue wave, blue tsunami, whatever you want to call it, in Washington and, of course, here at home as well. Well, you have a governor that essentially sat right. Right, where you're sitting just three days ago and said, I believe in having a one-year moratorium for AI data centers. What does that do for the industry when you have governors, this being a governor-elect, say that? Well, we're talking one year. If you really dial back, is one year gonna hurt us? Maybe not. I think that we could- Do what other locations have done, like California has done, Ohio has done, Virginia has done, where they put regulations in place while they're developing, meaning they're not going to prevent the economic development while they put together stronger policies. I think we can do that. The moratorium to me is more, I think it's an easy way out. Maybe there was some political points there that people were scoring by saying it, but it doesn't really help us. Putting in good policy. Doing it when you control the House and the governorship, that helps us. Well, a moratorium just sounds like you're putting it off, right? I don't know what to do about this right now, so I'm just going to put it off. And it is a very convenient sentence to couch during an election. But you're saying perhaps the moratorium. Isn't a great idea. Wouldn't you say it would do harm? Because in a year's time, what China can do with moratoriums in big states like Michigan in that year can be pretty severe. It can be severe. But if we just focus in on Michigan and the potential economic benefit of some of these data centers here, and not just one or two or three data centers, it's the ecosystem that supports it. That could be huge for Michigan. So us saying, hey, we're going to take a break for a year, there's... A ton of other states throughout the U.S. that are not going to do that. They are going to build data centers, and we could lose that opportunity. We never know. What happens moving forward in the next year from the federal level in Washington, do you think, given the blue wave? You know, I think federally, there's a ton of regulations that kind of got put on hold. We didn't see a lot of development over the last two years on AI regulations, data center regulations. So those could come back up. Do I think they'll make it anywhere? No, I think there's still veto power from the president. So I don't know what's going to happen there. To me, I think the next two years is going to be a very quiet time from an AI data center standpoint and a regulation standpoint. What about what data centers and these companies, these AI companies can do? To make people feel like they're benefiting from these data centers, even if it not be with the jobs that come or the economy in the long term. But right away, are there things that these companies should do to incentivize data centers in these communities? Absolutely. What should they do? The value here is, well, first of all, let's be real. There are concerns. Let's make sure it's not going into property that we can use for something else. Let's make sure it's not noisy. Let's make sure it's not going to take all our water or take all our power or drive our costs up. Let's make sure that that happens. And then let's look at the job. Financial impact looks like if data centers can pay to fix our water pipes, if they can pay to put a new power infrastructure, there are ways to make this a huge benefit for local communities. But we have to be honest and transparent about what's going on. What about profit sharing? In the community, is that something that would be, is that a good thing? Is that happening? Absolutely. When you look at what are some of the provisions inside of the Saline contract and what they were doing in South Lyon or Lyon Township, I mean, and some of the others, they're putting in their benefits to the community, either tax payments, you know, the additional revenue that they're making in the township. They're putting in education credits. They're putting in power credits, all these different financial things that they're wrapping into these contracts that help people that are living there. Last question for you about the guardrails and about the tech industry, making sure they are regulated well with this stuff. About a month ago, you and I were talking on this show about the dangers and how AI could end the world. All of a sudden. We're not hearing any of that anymore. Why? Well, I don't think I said it would end the world, others, but there was heavy reporting from legitimate sources saying that these AI bots essentially are getting out of the sandbox and are able to do all kinds of things like take over the programs. Is that something that you're still concerned about? You know, it's still there. I mean, they're still doing it. They're still getting out. But no, it's just not as mainstream right now, right? Will it surface again? Probably. The technology is advancing and we do have to control it. We have to make sure there's safeguards in place. But it's probably not going to be as loud over the next couple of years. But those CEOs of those big tech companies, they're asking for regulations. Will they get them? They are doing it on their own right now. That's kind of the play today is we're going to let them self-enforce. So that's going to happen. Will there be federal regulations in two years? I don't see it. Well, in the meantime, the imminent danger of everything being destroyed by AI is also not in the headlines. So you don't have to finish up the ice cream in your freezer just yet. We can see another day, right? We have a minute. We do. Brent, great to see you. Thanks for joining us here tonight. Always great to have you on. That is the Pulse for tonight. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Rup Raj. As always, it was good to be with you.