
Trump and Sen. Dave McCormick team up to promote energy investments in Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit will be held at Carnegie Mellon University, and it comes as the state's political and business leaders are working to forge the city into a hub for robotics, artificial intelligence and energy.
Trump has repeatedly pledged U.S. 'energy dominance' in the global market, and Pennsylvania — a swing state critical to his wins in 2016 and 2024 — is at the forefront of that agenda, in large part due to its coal industry that the Republican administration has taken several steps to bolster.
Neither the White House nor McCormick's office gave breakdowns of the $70 billion or what the investments entail. Some hints began emerging Tuesday with AI cloud computing firm CoreWeave saying it will spend more than $6 billion to equip a data center in southcentral Pennsylvania and Gradiant saying it will begin commercial production of lithium in 2026 by extracting it from gas drilling wastewater in northeastern Pennsylvania.
McCormick, a Republican first-term senator who is organizing the inaugural event, says the summit is meant to bring together top energy companies and AI leaders, global investors and labor behind Trump's energy policies and priorities. He says the investments will spur tens of thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania.
'Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned because of abundant energy, of incredible skilled workers, technology,' McCormick said in a Fox News interview Monday promoting the summit. 'We need to win the battle for AI innovation in America, and Pennsylvania is at the center of it.'
The list of participating CEOs includes leaders from global behemoths like Blackstone, Bridgewater, SoftBank, Amazon Web Services, BlackRock and ExxonMobil and local companies such as the Pittsburgh-based Gecko Robotics, which deploys AI to bolster energy capacity. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, will also attend.
Administration officials speaking at the summit include White House crypto czar David Sacks, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum also will attend, McCormick's office said.
In the Fox News interview, McCormick credited his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, with the idea for a summit. Powell McCormick served as Trump's deputy national security adviser in his first term and is a former Goldman Sachs executive who is now at BDT & MSD Partners, a merchant bank.
Pittsburgh is home to Carnegie Mellon University, a prestigious engineering school, plus a growing industry of small robotics firms and a so-called ' AI Avenue ' that's home to offices for Google and other AI firms. It also sits in the middle of the prolific Marcellus Shale natural gas reservoir.
Pennsylvania has scored several big investment wins in recent months, some of it driven by federal manufacturing policy and others by the ravenous need for electricity from the fast-growing AI business.
Nippon Steel just bought U.S. Steel for almost $15 billion, getting Trump's approval after pledging to invest billions alone in U.S. Steel's Pittsburgh-area plants.
Amazon will spend $20 billion on two data center complexes in Pennsylvania, with more to come, while a one-time coal-fired power plant is being turned into the nation's largest gas-fired power plant to fuel a data center campus. Meanwhile, Microsoft says it is spending $1.6 billion to reopen the lone functional nuclear reactor on Three Mile Island under a long-term power supply agreement for its data centers.
Shapiro, elected in 2022, has been pushing for the state to land a big multibillion-dollar industrial project, like a semiconductor factory or an electric vehicle plant.
In his first budget speech, Shapiro — who is viewed as a potential White House contender in 2028 — told lawmakers that Pennsylvania needs to 'get in the game' and warned that it would take money.
He didn't land a mega project, but he instead has worked to play up big investments by Amazon and Microsoft, as well as Nippon Steel, as he prepares to seek a second term.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
5 Breakout Growth Stocks You Can Buy and Hold for the Next Decade
Key Points Nvidia and TSMC are two of the best ways to play the growth in AI infrastructure. Meta Platforms and Toast are using AI to help drive growth. GitLab is helping transform the software development lifecycle. 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia › Investors looking for long-term winners should focus on companies with strong growth runways, clear competitive advantages, and the ability to adapt to evolving tech trends. Let's look at five breakout growth stocks that fit this bill that you can buy now and hold for the long term. 1. Nvidia Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) is the undisputed leader in artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. Its graphics processing units (GPUs) have become the backbone of AI workloads, and it's hard to overstate the company's dominance. It captured an incredible 92% market share in Q1, and even at a $4 trillion market cap, Nvidia is still in growth mode. Its real moat isn't just its chips -- it's its CUDA software platform. CUDA is the main reason why the company is in the position it is in today. Nvidia pushed its free software platform into research labs and universities well before AI went mainstream. This led to developers being trained on CUDA, and tools and libraries being built on top of it that improve its chips' performance in handling AI tasks. Nvidia, meanwhile, recently got good news when the Trump administration indicated it would once again let it sell its H20 chips in China. The company is also pushing into new markets beyond AI, with the auto segment being another potential huge market with the advent of autonomous driving and robotaxis. As such, Nvidia remains a great growth stock to own for the long haul. 2. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (NYSE: TSM) is the world's leading chip foundry, and its importance just keeps growing. Today, most advanced chipmakers just design chips, leaving their production to TSMC. That includes top names like Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, and Apple. TSMC is benefiting from the AI surge, with high-performance computing (HPC) now making up 60% of its revenue -- up from 52% a year ago. The company is far ahead in advanced node manufacturing, and that lead keeps widening. Nodes refer to how many transistors can be fit on a chip, and the more dense a chip is, the more powerful and energy efficient it becomes. Chips built on 7-nanometer and smaller nodes made up 74% of TSMC's revenue last quarter, with 3nm chips accounting for 24%. With other foundries struggling, TSMC is the clear leader in the space due to its scale and technological expertise. As a result, it has been an invaluable partner to top chip designers. The great thing is that it doesn't matter which company takes market share, as they all use TSMC. With AI demand continuing to grow and new markets like autonomous driving emerging, TSMC looks like a cornerstone stock to own for the next decade. 3. Meta Platforms One company looking to win the AI battle is Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META). Meta already owns one of the most powerful digital ad platforms in the world, and it is now using AI to supercharge it. Meta's Llama models are helping boost engagement across Facebook and Instagram, which means users are spending more time on the apps, leading to more ad inventory to sell. At the same time, its AI tools are helping advertisers build better campaigns and target users more precisely, leading to higher ad prices and stronger return on ad spend. But the biggest opportunities are still ahead. Meta is only just beginning to serve ads on WhatsApp and Threads. WhatsApp has more than 3 billion users, and Threads already has 350 million. Both are early in their ad rollouts, and that gives Meta a long runway for growth. Meanwhile, CEO Mark Zuckerberg is spending aggressively to secure AI talent, with a stated goal of delivering "personal superintelligence." That's a bold vision, but if Meta succeeds, it could become the most important AI platform in the world. That's a reason to own it for the long term. 4. GitLab GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB) is transforming itself from a code repository into a full-blown software development lifecycle platform. Its platform now provides tools for planning, coding, testing, securing, deploying, and monitoring software, as it looks to become a single platform for the entire software development lifecycle. And it's doing this just as AI is fundamentally changing how code is written, tested, and deployed. Software development has been accelerating due to AI, and GitLab is becoming a key partner. GitLab 18 marked a big leap forward, with over 30 new features including Duo Agent, which allows AI agents to help across the full development lifecycle. That matters, because only about 20% of a developer's time is spent actually writing code. GitLab is now focused on helping drive efficiency everywhere else. In an AI-first software world, GitLab's position as an end-to-end workflow solution puts it in a strong spot. This looks like a strong growth story with a lot of upside potential in the years to come. 5. Toast Toast (NYSE: TOST) is growing in importance in the restaurant industry, as its software platform helps restaurants manage operations and drive sales. Meanwhile, the company is now integrating AI into its platform in a way that could meaningfully change how restaurants make decisions. Tools like ToastIQ and Sous Chef are helping restaurants make smarter, faster decisions in real time -- whether it's optimizing staffing, adjusting menus, or helping improve supply chains. It has even started piloting new modules to help restaurants upsell customers and improve their advertising with Google. Toast's value proposition is clear: It helps restaurants run better and make more money. Meanwhile, through its payment processing, it benefits when its customers succeed. As restaurants face rising costs and tighter margins, they're turning to tech to help, and Toast is becoming one of the first places they look. That said, the restaurant industry is large and fragmented, giving Toast plenty of room to continue to expand over the next decade. Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now? Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $636,628!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,063,471!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,041% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 183% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 21, 2025 Geoffrey Seiler has positions in GitLab and Toast. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Apple, GitLab, Meta Platforms, Nvidia, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, and Toast. The Motley Fool recommends Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 5 Breakout Growth Stocks You Can Buy and Hold for the Next Decade was originally published by The Motley Fool
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Fact check: Trump calls to prosecute Beyoncé based on a nonexistent $11 million payment
President Donald Trump over the weekend called for the prosecution of music superstar Beyoncé – based on something that did not actually happen. Trump claimed in a social media post that Beyoncé broke the law by supposedly getting paid $11 million for her endorsement of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris during an October 2024 event in Houston. But there is simply no basis for Trump's claim that Beyoncé received an $11 million payment related to the Harris campaign, let alone for the endorsement in particular. Federal campaign spending records show a $165,000 payment from the Harris campaign to Beyoncé's production company, which the campaign listed as a 'campaign event production' expense. A Harris campaign spokesperson told Deadline last year that they didn't pay celebrity endorsers, but were required by law to cover the costs connected to their appearances. Regardless of the merits of this particular $165,000 expenditure, it's far from an $11 million one. Nobody has ever produced any evidence for the claim of an eight-figure endorsement payment to Beyoncé since the claim that it was '$10 million' began spreading last year among Trump supporters on social media. Fact-check websites and PolitiFact looked into the '$10 million' claim during the campaign and did not find any basis for it. The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request late Saturday for any evidence of Trump's $11 million figure. When Trump previously invoked the baseless figure, during an interview in February, he described his source in the vaguest of terms: 'Somebody just showed me something. They gave her $11 million.' A Harris spokesperson referred CNN on Saturday to a November social media post by Beyoncé's mother Tina Knowles, who called the claim of a $10 million payment a 'lie' and noted it was taken down by Instagram as 'False Information.' 'When In Fact: Beyonce did not receive a penny for speaking at a Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harrris's (sic) Rally in Houston,' Knowles wrote. A spokesperson for Beyoncé told PolitiFact in November that the claim about a $10 million payment is 'beyond ridiculous.' What Trump wrote Sunday Trump revived the false claim in a social media post published after midnight early Sunday morning in Scotland, where he is visiting. He wrote that he is looking at 'the fact' that Democrats 'admit to paying, probably illegally, Eleven Million Dollars to singer Beyoncé for an ENDORSEMENT.' Democratic officials actually reject the claim of an $11 million payment. The White House did not immediately respond to CNN's request for any evidence of a Democratic admission of such a payment. Trump went on to criticize other payments from the Harris campaign to organizations connected to prominent endorsers. He asserted without evidence that these payments were inaccurately described in spending records. And he wrongly asserted that it is 'TOTALLY ILLEGAL' to pay for political endorsements, though no federal law forbids endorsement payments. Trump concluded: 'Kamala, and all of those that received Endorsement money, BROKE THE LAW. They should all be prosecuted! Thank you for your attention to this matter.' Trump has repeatedly called for the prosecution of political opponents. His Saturday post about Harris and celebrity endorsements was an escalation from a post in May, when he said he would call for a 'major investigation' on the subject but did not explicitly mention prosecutions.

Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump says he would ‘like' to strike a trade deal with the EU
US President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would 'like' to strike a trade deal with the EU, adding there was a '50-50 chance'.Trump said Sign in to access your portfolio