Economy

Current conditions: Heavy rainstorms are sweeping across the Great Lakes and the East Coast’s Amtrak Corridor, with the highest flood risk in North Carolina and New Jersey • Monsoonal downpours are drenching western Cameroon, with the West Region capital of Bafoussam facing more than a week of thunderstorms • A tropical storm on track to be named Moke as it strengthens will swipe Hawaii’s Big Island on Sunday afternoon as the archipelago state is still recovering from its rare encounter with Hurricane Lala last week.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Republicans fear data centers will cost the party Ohio

The “data center brand is the anchor” dragging down Republicans fighting to keep former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown from winning back his old seat. That’s the takeaway from a National Republican Senatorial Campaign memo obtained by Axios. “Data centers are the centerpiece in the case Sherrod Brown is litigating; he has made them his de facto opponent, and no one is correcting the record,” the memo reads. Still, the strategists expressed hope: “While the perceptions of data centers are weak, the American people are with us. By overwhelming margins, the American people prefer a Republican candidate who wants to only let data centers be built in communities that approve them by a local vote of the people, and that pay for their own power, water, and other utilities versus a Democrat candidate who wants to stop data center construction altogether, which will cause America to lose the AI race to China.”