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Inspired by the ongoing auction of Bob Ross paintings to raise money for public television, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver is putting some of its own TV artifacts up for auction for a good cause. Host John Oliver dedicated the close of Sunday’s season finale to local public television, which is facing an unprecedented crisis. Federal budget cuts could by next year close as many as 115 public television and radio stations in the U.S. serving 43 million Americans, according to the Public Media Bridge Fund, a philanthropic initiative. “These stations can fill a vital community role,” Oliver said during Sunday’s show. [Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com] Bob Ross Inc. said in October that it was putting 30 paintings by the late artist up for auction to pay for public station licensing fees. The first three paintings sold last week in Los Angeles for more than $600,000 total. Oliver said Last Week Tonight originally tried bidding on one of the recently auctioned Ross paintings in hopes of flipping it to raise even more money for public television. “Sadly, those prices were outside of our budget,” Oliver said. So instead, the show is tapping its own archives with the auction site johnoliversjunk.com. [Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com] Items like the giant Reese’s mug that made its first appearance during a 2017 episode about net neutrality are now up for auction alongside Oliver’s “on-screen wife,” Mrs. Cabbage, and a quintet of bad wax replicas of presidents originally purchased by the show from the now-closed Hall of Presidents and First Ladies in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. All the proceeds from the auctions will go to the Public Media Bridge Fund. [Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com] Though Last Week Tonight didn’t have the budget to drop six figures on an original Bob Ross painting at last week’s auction, Bob Ross Inc. did donate one to Oliver’s auction. “Cabin at Sunset” was created during an 1987 episode of Ross’s PBS show The Joy of Painting, and it’s presently the first item shown on Oliver’s auction site. The painting currently has a bid of more than a million dollars. The top bid for a sculpture titled “LBJ’s Balls” is over $25,000, and the top bid for a trip to New York City to meet Oliver is higher than $50,000 at the time of this writing. So far, the leading bid to appear in a photo over Oliver’s shoulder during a future episode has just passed $100,000 after 45 bids. [Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com] The show found some lower-priced ways to raise money, too, like signed merchandise from the Moon Mammoths, the minor league baseball team Last Week Tonight temporarily rebranded in July, and a Mr. Bean DVD signed by Joel McHale. The auction closes on November 24. Oliver also promoted Adopt A Station, a nonprofit for people who want to help out and donate to public media stations but aren’t able to participate in his auction. Trump administration budget cuts meant an end to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which said in August that it is winding down operations. The Public Media Bridge Fund says the end of CPB funding will destabilize the public media system. It’s seeking to raise $100 million over two years to help the most at-risk communities.
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E-Commerce
The influence of the AI industry is becoming a major topic in New Yorks 12th congressional district, where a crowded Democratic primary packed with millennial and Gen Z candidates is heating up. The seat represents one of the wealthiest communities in the country — and is a liberal stronghold — so whoever wins could eventually become a major player in the fight to limit the most noxious impacts of large language model (LLM) technology. On Tuesday, Cameron Kasky, a political activist and Parkland shooting survivor who lives in the district (which includes the Upper West Side and Upper East Side) announced he was running. His campaign is making fighting the AI oligarchs a pivotal focus, adapting the rally cry used by progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the ChatGPT age. Generative AI is undoubtedly one of the most societally damaging innovations that humanity has ever created, and people do not understand the toll it will be taking on us, says Kaskys new campaign site. This damage includes the fresh water supplies it is depleting, a media literacy crisis that has already gotten out of control in this country over recent years, and the degree to which children are leaning on AI for therapy, companionship, and more — at the cost of their critical thinking skills and cognitive development. Kasky says his legislative priorities will include holding AI companies accountable for their environmental impact, preventing mass layoffs, and better regulating the influence of tech companies on child safety. I have no sympathy for AI, and no tolerance for what it has done to our population. It will only get worse if we do not get in the way as aggressively as possible, he says. Hes not the only person planning to take on AI in the primary. Alex Bores, a Palantir alum who has proposed state legislation the RAISE Act that would rein in the industry, has also made clear that one of his focuses would be regulating artificial intelligence. Earlier this week, he was targeted by ads funded by Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC funded by OpenAI executive Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz thats intent on blunting the influence of tech critics in the upcoming congressional primaries. The group has called Bores’ legislation a clear example of the patchwork, uninformed, and bureaucratic state laws that would slow American progress and open the door for China to win the global race for AI leadership. Bores, in turn, has started fundraising off the ads. This AI super PAC’s first target? Me, said Bores in a tweet. Why? They’re scared of leaders who understand their business regulating their business. They want unchecked power at your expenseand I’m the guy standing in their way. It is a crowded race, with about ten people running for the Democratic nomination in total. Most of the other candidates, who include Nadler favorite Micah Lasher, community organizer Liam Elkind, and attorney Jami Floyd, have yet to issue strong positions on artificial intelligence but that could change. Meanwhile, Kennedy family heir and social media provocateur Jack Schlossberg, who also announced his campaign this month, has at least some thoughts on the tech. Last year, he tweeted his reflections: Question about AI Is it sexual ? Were are ALL sexual beings, thats just a fact. If AI is non-sexual, does that limit its potential ? or make it unstoppable ?
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E-Commerce
Across the country, data center demand and construction have been skyrocketing throughout 2025. And so has local opposition to those projects. From Indiana (where a developer withdrew its application to build a data center on more than 700 acres of farmland after local opposition) to Georgia (where now at least eight municipalities have passed moratoriums on data center development), residents and politicians are pushing back against the water- and energy-hungry sites. Between late March through June of this year alone, 20 data center projects, representing about $98 billion in investments, were blocked or delayed in the United States, according to a new report from Data Center Watch, a project from the AI security and intelligence firm 10a Labs. That number is higher than all of the data center disruptions the research group had tracked in the two years prior to its most recent report. A turning point against data centers Data Center Watch began keeping tabs on this trend in 2023, and released its first report earlier this year, covering 2023 through the first quarter of 2025. In that time frame, 16 projects, worth $64 billion, were blocked or delayed. Though a project may be cancelled for myriad reasons, these were cases where local opposition was reported to have played some role in the decision, says Miquel Vila, an analyst at the Data Center Watch project. In the second quarter of 2025, that opposition surged 125%. We were expecting a few more cases, Vila says of Q2, but not 20. One important caveat, Vila notes, is that the data center industry is booming; it makes sense that opposition would, too. But even accounting for record high construction spend, he sees these recent numbers as a turning point in the trend. What’s wrong with data centers? Tech giants are building out data centers at a rapid pace to meet the enormous power needs of artificial intelligence (AI). But data centers have faced local criticism because of the resources they consume, like water (which is especially a concern in scarce regions like Arizona) and energy (which has been linked to rising electricity prices across the country.) Along with water use and utility prices, communities have also taken issue with noise, landmark preservation, and transparency, Vila addslike if it isnt clear who the end user of a data center will be. Data Center Watch has found 188 community groups that have formed to fight data center projects. Between March and June alone, 53 active groups across 17 states were targeting 30 data center projects. Amid that pushback, lawmakers have also been reconsidering their regions tax subsidies to data centers, as well as regulations around zoning, and the projects environmental impacts. That community opposition is even causing some lawmakers to change their regulations or hold off on building data centers in the future. Local opposition is having an impact in the regulatory landscape of data centers, Vila says. Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the industry group Data Center Coalition, said in a statement that it continues to see “significant interest” across the country for “responsible data center projects,” and said such projects create jobs, economic investment, and local tax revenue. He added that the coalition’s members are committed to community engagement, stakeholder education, and to working with policymakers and regulatory bodies. “Data centers are also committed to being responsible and responsive neighbors in the communities where they operate,” Diorio said. Data centers and politics Data center opposition has become a talking point in recent political races. In Virginiathe biggest data center market in the worldGovernor-elect Abigail Spanberger campaigned in part on making sure data centers pay their fair share, and on addressing rising electricity prices. In Georgia, Peter Hubbardwho was elected to the states Public Service Commission, which regulates its utilitieshas specifically highlighted how data centers can drive up peoples energy bills. Georgia is increasingly becoming a data center hotbed, and is in fact the second-largest such market in the world. But while both those politicians are Democrats, data center opposition is a bipartisan issue, Data Center Watch found. Both blue and red states are rethinking incentives to developers or tightening their rules around such projects. That tracks with other research about data center support: a recent Heatmap poll found that only 44% of Americans would welcome a data center near them. Looking ahead Data Center Watch plans to keep an eye on project delays and cancellations going forward. Already, it seems the trend is continuing into Q3: In one prominent example, Amazons proposed Project Blue data center, was rejected by Tucson, Arizonas town council in August. (In Data Center Watchs latest report, two of the 20 affected projects were from Amazon: one in Becker, Minnesota, which was suspended as lawmakers reconsidered tax incentives, and one in King George, Virginia, which was delayed because of legal issues and resident pushback.) Vila expects data center opposition to keep growingand to increasingly become a part of project calculations. Before, local opposition was more of an anecdotal possibility, he says. Now, its becoming a core feature of development . . . in the same way issues like land, energy, and water are taken into account.
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E-Commerce
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