President Donald Trump brought his midterm campaign to Ohio on Saturday, defending the state's booming data center industry, backing legislation aimed at shielding electricity ratepayers, and warning Iran it would face "the easy way or the hard way" as Washington weighs its next move. Speaking at Butler High School in Vandalia, outside Dayton, Trump rallied supporters for Republican Senator Jon Husted, who faces a competitive reelection contest against Democrat Sherrod Brown, and for gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Trump repeatedly told the crowd to act as though he were personally on the ballot in the November 3 midterms. "Please pretend that I'm on the ballot, and you need to turn out for a midterm victory," he said. The centerpiece of Trump's remarks was the rapid growth of data centers in Ohio — massive facilities that power artificial intelligence systems — and the backlash the projects have faced over soaring electricity demand. Trump warned that blocking the projects would benefit China. "There's so much money to be made for Ohio. You can't just turn them off. They'll go to China," he said. He framed the buildout as central to the country's contest with Beijing over advanced computing, saying the United States was "beating China" in what he repeatedly called superintelligence. Trump also backed legislation pushed by Husted that he said would stop data centers from driving up electricity costs for households and require the facilities to cover their own infrastructure costs. He said nearly every Senate Democrat had voted days earlier to block the measure, and he pledged to sign it into law within 24 hours if Republicans prevail. The data center boom has drawn bipartisan resistance across the country, with communities objecting to the enormous amounts of electricity, water and land the facilities require, and to the risk that utilities pass the cost of new power plants and transmission lines on to households. Critics have also questioned generous state and local tax breaks for buildings that can cost billions of dollars to construct but employ relatively few workers once finished. Several states have paused tax breaks or tightened approval rules in response. Ohio has become a focal point of the fight: the Vadata campus in New Albany serves Amazon's cloud operations, and Columbus hosts a large AI-ready facility, with both sites cited in coverage of the industry's expansion. The rally came as polls point to difficult headwinds for Republicans. Ohio gasoline prices have risen 35 percent over the past year to an average of $4.16 per gallon, according to AAA, and retaliatory Canadian tariffs tied to the trade dispute with Canada affect roughly $3 billion worth of Ohio exports, according to Canadian figures cited by Reuters. Trump, who won more than 55 percent of Ohio's vote in 2024, has seen his approval ratings slide. Ohio is one of eight Senate races rated competitive, and outside groups have poured tens of millions of dollars into the state, making the Husted-Brown contest the second-most-expensive Senate race in the country based on Federal Election Commission filings, as party strategists scramble to defend Republican-held seats. Husted used the rally to lean into patriotism and pocketbook issues. "I am not asking you to winter at Valley Forge," he told the crowd, invoking three American wars. "I am not asking you to storm the beaches of Normandy. I'm asking you to get out and vote. Will you do it?" Speaking to reporters before the rally, Husted said the U.S. had to win the war with Iran "on our terms" and that in the meantime he was "showing people that I'm fighting for lower prices." A spokesperson for Brown's campaign, Lauren Chou, pushed back, saying Husted backed Trump's Iran policy and supported tax deals that drew data centers to the state. "Jon Husted puts corporations and billionaires first every time, and we all pay for it," she said in an email. Trump struck a confident tone despite the polling, telling the crowd: "I think we're going to have a big surprise because they don't know what's happening." The Ohio stop followed rallies this week in deeply Republican areas of Texas, Oklahoma and Alabama, part of what Trump has described as a 32-day campaign push before the midterms. On Iran, Trump told reporters outside the White House on Saturday that a decision was coming soon. "We have a decision that I'll make about Iran. Iran's been decimated. So the only question is, it'll either be the easy way or the hard way," he said, without describing what action he was considering. A day earlier he had hinted at his plans, saying: "If I told you, you'd have a major story, right? But you'll see. Working out very well. Iran is not doing well." In Texas, he argued that Iran's economy was buckling under inflation and currency troubles and that its armed forces had been heavily degraded, predicting the confrontation would end quickly. "One way or the other, it's going to end very quickly. And when that ends, oil prices are going to drop like a rock," he said. The November 3 midterms will decide control of Congress and set the terms for the rest of Trump's term. With the Senate map tight, Ohio has emerged as one of the marquee battlegrounds — a contest over energy bills, gas prices and the war with Iran, where Trump is asking voters to turn out as if his own name were at the top of the ticket.