Charles Booker, the former West End state representative who ran Senate campaigns in 2020 and 2022, announced Dec. 3 he plans to seek the Democratic nomination to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, whose final term will expire at the end of next year.

The residents came in camouflage hats and red shirts signaling unity, more than 300 of them packing into a rural Pennsylvania planning commission meeting to protest a proposed data center they feared would carve up their farmland and upend the quiet rhythms of their valley.

Most were loyal supporters of President Donald Trump, who carried their home of Montour County by 20 percentage points in the 2024 election. But they bristled at Washington’s push to fast-track artificial intelligence infrastructure, which has driven data-center growth in rural areas around the U.S. where land is cheap.

On a recent November evening, residents in this county of 18,000 people stepped to the microphone, questioning Talen Energy (TLN.O), opens new tab officials about how their planned data center might raise residents' utility bills, reduce working farmland, and strain local water and natural resources.

U.S. manufacturing contracted for the ninth straight month in November, with factories facing slumping orders and higher prices for inputs as the drag from import tariffs persisted. The Institute for Supply Management survey on Monday also showed some manufacturers in the transportation equipment industry linking layoffs to President Donald Trump's sweeping duties, saying they were "starting to institute more permanent changes due to the tariff environment." They added "this includes reduction of staff, new guidance to shareholders and development of additional offshore manufacturing that would have otherwise been for U.S. export."

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"We can see no sign in this report of a surge in manufacturing in the United States since the tariff regime was unveiled last spring," said Carl Weinberg, chief economist at High Frequency Economics. "The manufacturing sector is sick."