Money can’t buy everything

Hello from Dublin airport; I leaped out of bed in the unGodly hours of this morning on news from the US of a rejection of Trumpism - and, perhaps most satisfyingly, on realising that Musk’s half a billion dollar investment in the Republicans, $224 million of that in Texas, that might as well have been blasted on a rickety rocket to Mars. His Texas Senate candidate is expected to lose by 10 points.

You can see why he threw his wealth behind opposing the newly elected Democratic Governor of Texas Gina Hinojosa. She has promised a state wide moratorium on data centres in the home state of Musk’s companies, one of three newly minted Democratic Governors who campaigned against data centres.

These include Amy Acton in Ohio, who promised a “conditional freeze” on data centres that don’t meet strict requirements, according to the FT. Ohio also led the field in the range of down ballot measures to restrict data centres, mostly at local level. Forbes has a full list of the measures that had been proposed here - 21 in Ohio, 6 in Illinois, 4 in Maine, and others in Kansas and Wisconsin.

Early results suggest that many have passed with overwhelming majorities - in Ohio many were 80% in favour, according to this reporting by Fortune.

It’ll take a few days for all the results to come in, but overnight movements in markets suggest that the stock market, dominated by the AI trade, will not be happy.

A day when reading the news will be considerably less painful than normal.

But maybe don’t check in on your pension for a few weeks.