Trump Tells Midterm Voters: ‘Pretend That I’m On the Ballot’

President Trump tries boosting Republican candidates ahead of the midterms by tying them to him. So I'm asking you to pretend that I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. I'm on the ballot. Just one more time. Plus, Iran shows a new appetite for escalation as it takes direct aim at U.S. forces. And data center developers consider whether going nuclear can quiet growing public backlash against them. It's Thursday, September 10th. I'm Luke Vargas for The Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. President Trump has capped off the first night of Republicans' midterm convention in Dallas, issuing a string of campaign promises in a bid to energize his GOP base. Trump wrapped up his nearly two-hour speech by pledging to make his tax cuts permanent, pass broad health care legislation, and much more in the final years of his term. But our Washington coverage chief, Damian Paletta, was most curious how he'd assess the war in Iran, which has hit Americans' wallets going into the final weeks of the campaign. He said even though he knew it was going to drive up the cost of gas, something that he acknowledged remains the case, he had to do this in order to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. You know, I think that's a good thing. You know, it happens to me all the time. Guys come up, you know, I wish you didn't do the war in Iran. Gasoline's up, ba-ba-ba-ba. And I say, well, let me ask you, just smart people, let me ask you, not too many of them, by the way, let me ask you one question. Can Iran have a nuclear weapon? Absolutely not. Now, this did receive a lot of applause here at the convention, but it's something that many Americans are wrestling with, especially as oil prices continue to go up and gasoline prices are rising as well. It remains a very sensitive issue for many Republicans, and it gets to the heart of this affordability theme that Democrats are really trying to press on Republicans heading in to the final weeks before the midterms. In an apparent bid to blunt that message, Trump took a big swing on affordability, telling voters that if they helped Republicans to retain control of both the House and Senate, every adult citizen would get a $5,000 check. Very much like a successful company will do a cash distribution to its shareholders, or like last year when I gave our great members of the military $1,776, remember? Damien said that pledge, which resembles last year's unfulfilled promise of $2,000 tariff dividends, marks Trump's biggest election gambit yet. This would essentially be like a $1 trillion stimulus check on behalf of the U.S. government to. perhaps more than 200 million Americans. Now, President Trump does like to give out stimulus checks, and they can prove quite popular with voters. But this is a moment when inflation remains a key concern for many Americans and businesses. And checks like this, on this scale, could fuel an inflation that the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government has struggled to contain for several years. So there could be a real debate for many Republicans running for Congress, running for the House, and running for the Senate, whether they would support such a move, or perhaps they feel like this is President Trump's party, these are his policies, he knows how to do populist economic messages, and this is the kind of thing they're going to have to get behind. Well, in Dallas last night, Trump promised that oil prices would go down as soon as we win the war with Iran, something he said was, quote, taking place right now. But as foreign correspondent Georgi Konchev reports, the picture on the ground, suggests otherwise. As Iran intensifies attacks on U.S. Navy warships, including using warheads possibly acquired with help from Russia or China. While CENTCOM reports that U.S. warships have thus far evaded those attacks, Georgi said that any direct hits risk triggering a fierce response and a return to full-scale war. So this by Iran is ultimately a significant gamble that with those attacks, it can make the status quo untenable for the U.S. And the reason for that, the bad strategy is because the economic pressure that has been building over the past months, now it is coming to a head because Iran cannot export any oil from the Persian Gulf since mid-July, since the U.S. instituted its blockade again. So by some estimates, Iran will be out of exportable oil as soon as next month. The revenues that it's still getting, they're also going to be depleted very soon. So ultimately, Iran feels that the status quo is untenable and that's why it's leading to more aggressive action. The Trump administration is proposing a shakeup of the 2030 census to eliminate questions on race and ethnicity that date back to the first census taken in 1790 and to restrict the counting of immigrants unless they've become citizens or permanent residents. It's estimated that that move could exclude up to 15 million immigrants in the U.S. legally and whose presence in past censuses helped to apportion congressional seats and steer federal funding. The proposed rules won't take effect for several months. Men are likely to face legal challenges once finalized. And in a rare defeat for an incumbent, Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee lost his Democratic primary last night, making him the first sitting governor to do so in almost a decade. Former CVS executive and political outsider Helena Folks took the victory and she enters November's general election as the favorite in the Democratic-friendly state. Coming up, we'll look at how to build a data center that people don't hate. That story and more after the break. The European Central Bank is expected to raise rates in just a few hours, the first of several big rate moves ahead of the Fed and Bank of England meetings next week. And here to unpack the task before policymakers is Dow Jones Newswire's economics editor, Paul Hannan. Paul, at this point, the ECB's rate hike is practically a foregone conclusion. We'll know very, very, very soon. The question, though, it seems, according to many analysts, is how much further they'll need to tighten monetary policy. What is driving the ECB today that differs from what they saw in late July when they saw fit to hold rates steady? So right from the start of this conflict, it's been true that the longer energy prices stay high, the more likely it is that workers around Europe will demand and secure higher pay rises. And that, in turn, would trigger another round of price rises as businesses try to maintain their profit margins. So the longer it goes on, the more action the ECB thinks it needs to take to contain that jump in inflation. Paul, let's jump over to the U.S. We've got a Fed move due next week. But before then, two additional data points dropping. Producer price data for August later today and U.S. consumer inflation readings tomorrow, which we've specifically noted is going to be a key reading to help investors handicap what the Fed will do. It feels like it's been a while, Paul, since there was this much uncertainty going into a rate move. How much is resting on Friday's CPI report? It's an unusual situation to be this close to what's considered to be a live meeting. That is a meeting at which policy could change without having a really clear idea of what the outcome is most likely to be. It really seems to be a bit of a toss up, which is why investors are paying so much attention, perhaps not so much to the producer price numbers, but the CPI numbers on Friday. And the thinking is that a hot number on Friday makes a rate rise next week very likely. If it sort of settles somewhere in between, I think it's going down to the wire and no one will really have a good sense of what's going to happen. I mean, uncertainty has a cost. If you surprise people too much, there can be a bit of an overreaction. The markets think that it's not just one, that there are a few to come. And they do what markets do, which is sort of, try to get three or four steps ahead, sell things that perhaps they maybe shouldn't. And it all has a little bit more of an impact on sentiment, confidence and investment than the people who decided to go for the decision in the first place would have liked. I mean, that's one of the reasons why central bankers spend so much time trying to explain and what they're thinking on things is so that there won't be those kinds of surprises when they eventually sort of unveiled a big decision. Paul Hannan is the economics editor for Dow Jones Newswires. As always, Paul, thank you so much. Thanks, Luke. And the growing backlash against data centers is forcing developers to rethink how they power those AI hubs. In a bid to assuage the public and avoid taxing local grids, developers are looking into running data centers off of newly built nuclear plants instead. And that's driving uranium prices to an 18-year high, as our Rhiannon Hoyle explains. These data centers chew up a lot of power. And so industry thinks nuclear can be a key answer to ensuring there's enough energy for them. Only yesterday, we saw Fortum in Finland signing a deal with Google that will enable it to extend the life of a nuclear power plant in Finland. Previously, it was thought that that plant wouldn't operate beyond 2030, but now Google is going to be contracting as much as 50% of the reactor's capacity to 2050. So these kinds of announcements are incredible. incredibly bullish for uranium given their scale. As many states consider banning new data centers. Tech columnist Christopher Mims says that going nuclear could be a way to build AI facilities that people don't hate. So there's a lot of ideas out there. A year or two ago, the idea that these tech companies would pay for 100% of the required grid upgrades was a little bit of a radical idea. Now it is standard language. Another thing they can do is build power on site. They can do what's called behind the meter production, which is just we're not going to connect to the grid at all until the grid is ready. And we're just going to build our own power plant. And then that's also driving these more radical future technologies. And those include small modular nuclear reactors, which don't exist yet, but companies are investing in their development. Google just announced a deal with a company called Fervo, which does exotic geothermal energy, literally drawing heat from deep underground to generate power. And for much more on how data center developers are hoping to overcome mounting public pushback from buying school lunches to powering towns with their excess heat, check out his full interview on our tech news briefing podcast, which we've left a link to in our show notes. And that's it for what's news for this Thursday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sandra Kilhoff. And I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. We will be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening. I'm Luke Vargas. I'll see you next time on The Wall Street Journal.