This series of posts continues the data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia over the last five years. Each Monday, the Long Term Capacity Factor percentages will be updated. They will show two percentages for that Capacity Factor, the first for the most recent 52 week year, and the second percentage for the long term for the overall total number of weeks of data collection.

Link to Post on how these figures for the Wind Generation Capacity Factors are calculated

Link to Introductory Post ***** Link to each of the weekly update posts ***** Link to all earlier Data Posts (1153Posts)

What Is Capacity Factor.

Capacity Factor is the relationship between total generated power and the Nameplate for a power generation source.

That current Nameplate (as at 6 October 2024) for wind in Australia of 13,460MW from 91 Industrial Wind Plants, so, with the current 30% Capacity Factor, then the actual generated power is only an average of 4038MW.

The total Nameplate for all these wind plants changes as each new wind plant comes on line, delivering power to the grid.

As each new Wind Plant comes on line, I will detail that new addition here, and change the data calculations accordingly to reflect that change.

Wind Nameplate change from beginning of data collection on Monday 1 October 2018 – (then) 5301MW – (now) 13460MW – (Change) +8159MW (an increase of 154%)

The Table below shows the current week ending date, the Total Generated Power across that week, the calculated Average Power (worked out from the Total Generated Power) the Capacity Factor for that week, and the total generated power as a percentage of the overall total power consumption used by the Grid.

Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 30.27% (Last Week – 30.35%)

Long Term Capacity Factor – 400 weeks – 29.66% (Last Week – 29.67%)

Comments for this weekly Update.

For this last week, wind power generation was lower than the average on five days, and higher than the average on the other two days. For the overall week, power generation was lower than the average. The metric used for comparison over time, the Capacity Factor was lower than the average, and because of that, both of those long term percentages fell by small amounts.

*****

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

OzWindPowerGenerationTFOb

An under-the-radar legal switcheroo should concern every business leader, investor, and taxpayer in America. Now, 23 state attorneys general have taken notice and sent a letter to the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts that bolsters the efforts of three eminent scientists who sounded the alarm.Climate activists have found a way to get their preferred evidence standards into the hands of roughly 6,000 federal and state judges — before those judges hear more than 1,000 pending climate cases that could reshape the American economy.

They did it through a handbook.

The Federal Judicial Center (FJC) and the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) jointly publish the Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence. Likely very few Americans realize Congress established the FJC in 1967 as the research and education arm of the federal courts and made the Chief Justice of the U.S. its chair. For decades, the FJC collaborated with the NAS to give judges objective, apolitical guidance on how to evaluate scientific claims in the courtroom. The motivation is obvious, if often taken for granted by the American public: give judges the tools and standards to admit scientific evidence that is objectively true and reject quackery and scientifically invalid hypotheses that would bias the judicial proceedings.

The manual is that guidance, and the fourth edition has just been released.

Three eminent scientists who’ve read the manual immediately started ringing alarm bells. According to Richard Lindzen of MIT, William Happer of Princeton, and Steven Koonin of Stanford’s Hoover Institution, its new chapter on “How Science Works” has a problem. In an April 1 letter to Chief Justice John Roberts, the three scientists argue that the chapter — which balloons from 18 pages in the prior edition to 65 — quietly swaps out the scientific method for something inherently more political: “scientific consensus.”

In so doing, the new version flies in the face of Supreme Court precedent that has shaped the legal evaluation of scientific evidence since 1993.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. The scientific method is a familiar process: form a hypothesis, design an experiment that could prove it wrong, and let the data speak. A claim that cannot in principle be falsified isn’t science.

Consensus, by contrast, is a survey of opinion. It can reflect rigorous work, or it can reflect fashion, funding pressure, or institutional inertia. The two are not interchangeable. The Supreme Court has already said so.

In Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals (1993), the Supreme Court ruled that the scientific method must govern scientific evidence. Is the theory testable? Has it been tested? Is there a known error rate? Has it been subjected to peer review? Daubert marked a deliberate move away from consensus and toward method. The scientists writing to Roberts argue that the new chapter walks that move back—instructing judges to admit evidence on precisely the grounds Daubert rejected.

The Daubert standard, as it became known, guided judges on what scientific evidence to allow based on academic method, not popularity. Lindzen, Happer, and Koonin argue that the rewritten chapter reverses that standard.

The timing could not be more consequential. The letter from the scientists points out that more than 1,000 climate-related cases are now working through state and federal courts, many pursuing damages from energy producers under theories that require attributing specific harms to specific emissions.

The EPA is simultaneously moving to reconsider its 2009 “endangerment finding” — the Obama-era rule declaring carbon dioxide a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, the regulatory linchpin that has justified sweeping federal climate policy ever since. Challenges to that finding have already begun working their way through the courts. The endangerment finding was itself the result of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling, Massachusetts v EPA. The Obama EPA then interpreted that ruling to give them wide latitude to create new rules the defining statute didn’t explicitly permit.

How judges evaluate scientific evidence in these cases carries stakes that measure, without exaggeration, in the trillions of dollars—in compliance costs, regulations, energy prices, permitting timelines, and the wider investment climate. For those making capital allocation decisions today, the question of whether courts will apply Daubert‘s methodological standard or a softer consensus test is a material variable, not an abstraction.

A second Supreme Court decision makes the manual’s influence even larger. Last year’s Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturned Chevron deference, ending four decades of practice in which judges deferred to federal agencies’ interpretations of ambiguous statutes.

Judges must now read the law themselves. That shift places more weight on the scientific record courts independently assemble—and on the manual that shapes how they read it. A handbook that quietly rehabilitates “widespread acceptance” as a standard achieves through evidentiary back channels what Loper Bright foreclosed through statutory ones.

Reasonable scientists disagree about how much weight consensus should carry, and the climate field in particular has long blurred the line between empirical findings and policy preferences. But a manual distributed to thousands of judges is not the place to take a side in that argument. The manual should give judges the cleanest possible account of how to tell rigorous work from advocacy dressed up in consensus.

The earlier 18-page version, by the scientists’ account, did that. Lindzen, Happer, and Koonin simply ask for it back.

Chief Justice John Roberts has a straightforward option. As chair of the FJC, he can direct the center to restore the previous chapter, or commission a new one written tightly around the methodology Daubert requires. It is a simple act of housekeeping to insist that a handbook for judges reflect the Court’s own evidence standard.

Roberts has the institutional lever to correct course. By directing the FJC to revert to the earlier, concise, and methodologically sound chapter, he can reaffirm that American jurisprudence rests on evidence tested by the scientific method, not agenda-driven narratives. The result would support lower energy costs, greater consumer choice, and economic growth unburdened by regulations lacking rigorous scientific foundation.

Happer, Lindzen, and Koonin have done a public service by bringing this to the attention of the chief justice. Chief Justice Roberts should heed it. The integrity of the courts and the prosperity of the American people depend on it.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Jeff Reynolds is Senior Editor for Restoration News, specializing in energy and science policy, as well as dark money. Jeff is an author, editor, strategist, and public speaker. A prolific researcher and writer, he authored the book Behind the Curtain in 2019, which details the billionaires and foundations responsible for the radical left’s ascension in American politics. Jeff graduated from Connecticut College with a bachelor’s in Zoology.

Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation’s free-market think tank and writes for several national publications.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

CNN Business reporter Nathaniel Meyersohn came out with an utterly ludicrous headline June 4 trying to retcon Mamdani’s hammer-and-sickle persona, “Zohran Mamdani’s capitalist plan to fix the housing crisis.” No, you didn’t misread that. Meyersohn is actually arguing that Mamdani’s socialist pipe dream to use $22 billion in tax dollars for government-built “affordable housing,” while putting rent freezes on landlords, is somehow giving a nod to capitalism. The reason: Mamdani is now supposedly looking to get the real estate developers who opposed him to sign off on his agenda. That’s it.Meyersohn tried to put lipstick on the pig of Mamdaninomics:

His strategy uses market-oriented policies — easing building regulations, loosening zoning restrictions and rescuing the city’s crumbling public housing stock through private financing — to advance his social democratic goals of 200,000 affordable homes over the next decade.

However, as always is the case with these textbook cases in media gaslighting, the devil is in the details. The National Review editorial board pointed out May 29 that “Technically, those buildings will be owned and managed by private investors. But the city will foot much of the bill and, in return, layer on mandates that are sure to slow production and drive up costs.” If that wasn’t bad enough, under the Mamdani plan, “Developers will have to pay construction workers a minimum wage of $40, almost twice the industry’s national average. Once the buildings are completed, if ever, the city will keep rents capped.” In short, “Mamdani wants to be your landlord.”

What in the Sam Hill does that have anything to do with free markets? Even Meyersohn, in all his illusory wisdom, undercut his own thesis in the 12th paragraph: “[Mamdani’s]housing plan still contains policies like rent regulations that squeeze private developers and may undermine the city’s ability to produce as much housing as other cities.” And that paragraph came just before a blaring sub-headline Meyersohn included, “Rent freeze.”

Agendas like these would make Karl Marx blush.  As George Washington University Law School Professor Jonathan Turley wrote May 30: “Mamdani promised in his inaugural address to introduce New Yorkers to ‘the warmth of collectivism.’ It now appears landlords will likely be the first to feel the heat.”

Cronyism? Maybe. Capitalism? Only if you’ve been chugging the Schnapps and ended up drunker than your overly political uncle at Thanksgiving dinner. Putting communist NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s rent-control abomination of an agenda and capitalism in the same context as if they’re synonymous with one another is some crazy work, CNN.

Joseph Vazquez is the MRC Business Associate Editor for the News Analysis Division. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in 2018. In June, 2019, he completed an exclusive fellowship with the Hertog Foundation, where he participated in their “Nuclear Strategy and World Order” program. For MRC Business, he oversees projects and media coverage concerning dark money, political spending, economics and finance.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Brainwashed into believing the future is hopeless, too many young couples are foregoing having children.

One of the greatest blessings God gives to humanity is the nuclear family, wherein a man and a woman marry and have children. Literally, the history of the world would not be possible without this most fundamental building block of society.

Thus, when various cultural leaders have attacked this social foundation, the result has always been great suffering and cultural degradation. Before a village can even begin to exist, it takes a true family: father, mother, and children.

Yet, sadly, a significant number of people have bought into the pernicious lie peddled by the climate cult that humanity is effectively a blight upon planet Earth. Humans, we are repeatedly told, are the primary driver of climate change, causing all kinds of environmental destruction.

The scientific reality on the ground does not back up this alarmism. Far from it, for while it does appear that the climate is changing ever so gradually, it is also true that it has always been in flux. The primary cause of this change is likely not man, even if mankind’s activities may contribute to global warming.

Furthermore, it’s not even certain that the current warming is a bad thing, despite all the demagoguery from the climate alarmists. Meanwhile, climate alarmism has more negatively impacted humanity than have rising CO₂ levels.

The New York Times recently pushed an op-ed titled, “Why So Few Babies? We Might Have Overlooked the Biggest Reason of All.” The article, written by opinion writer Anna Louie Sussman, noted that over the past two decades, while prosperity has been rising across the West, an interesting and confounding trend has emerged: Those who can most afford to have kids and build a nuclear family are doing so less and less.

This has led to a concerning problem for aging Western societies because the younger generations will not be able to offset the demographic losses.

Far from the flawed overpopulation myth popularized by Paul Ehrlich in his book The Population Bomb, what is really going to wreak havoc throughout societies is population decline, or the so-called population cliff.

Interestingly, what Sussman identifies as a leading driver of population decline in the West is not affordability. Rather, it’s the nihilistic belief that the future is too uncertain to bring children into the world.

One of the leading issues contributing to this fear that the future will be nothing but doom and gloom is ecofascist alarmism. With both Millennials and Gen Z growing up effectively brainwashed in this alarmism, it’s not hard to see why a significant number have embraced the attitude that bringing children into this world would only cause more harm and greater suffering to the planet.

A case in point is climate activist Greta Thunberg, whose fear of climate catastrophe motivated her extremism and radically misled her activism.

To these generations, the world feels on edge and out of control. Yet the truth is that this has always been the case for every generation. Instability and uncertainty about the future are nothing new. However, past generations — which suffered far more than today’s young have — did not see abandoning the development of the nuclear family as an appropriate response. Rather, they did the opposite: they invested in the family even more heavily.

Note how after fighting the bloodiest war the world had ever seen, the Greatest Generation came home and got busy — real busy — procreating and birthing the Baby Boomers rather than becoming disillusioned with the state of humanity. More than anything else, after all the death and suffering they witnessed during World War II, they leaned into family even harder.

What Gen Z especially needs is encouragement to see the nuclear family as the truly great blessing that it is. Family matters, and younger generations should be encouraged to rise up and meet the new challenges of their era. As history has repeatedly shown, nobody knows who will be the next great leader, inventor, physician, military general, or artist. But what is certain is that they won’t arise from couples who decide not to have children out of fear of what the future may or may not hold.

Thomas Gallatin is the son of American missionaries. Growing up overseas, he became aware from an early age of the unique privilege he enjoyed as an American citizen. Having lived in two different foreign countries that were both drastically impacted by communism, he learned early the devastating consequences that leftist ideology had upon freedom and human flourishing. As a result, he has spent much of his adult life seeking to shine the light of truth against this evil ideology while espousing the virtues of Liberty as both a history teacher and now a staff analyst at The Patriot Post.

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post  https://patriotpost.us/

Journalists love to proclaim that they bring transparency to democracy, but it’s far too often the exact opposite. They try to run our democracy by exploiting anonymous sources.

So when Trump is president, “senior administration officials” say “he’s coming seriously unglued.” When Biden was president, “senior administration officials” say “he’s quite lucid in private meetings.” Journalists use anonymous sources to underline and reinforce the narrative they’re selling.But this abusive manipulation is most ridiculous when it’s journalists quoting other journalists anonymously. Brian Stelter wrote entire books about Fox News with heavy doses of anonymous Foxers. It’s a similar formula to politics: sling mud at people you don’t like, with zero damage to your career, or even benefit your career.

After the firing of Scott Pelley, Stelter anonymously quoted someone channeling Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss: “It’s also about ensuring that ‘60 Minutes’ — and its DNA of hard-hitting interviews, probing investigations, deep journalism — is built to survive a changing media landscape.” But Weiss and new “60 Minutes” boss Nick Bilton have already said this on the record.

Then Stelter quoted an anonymous Weiss basher: “Can you imagine the irony of this anti-woke free speech warrior not being able to handle someone speaking passionately in a meeting?” Or: can you imagine a “free speech warrior” not wanting to speak freely unless they’re anonymous?

Washington Post media reporter Scott Nover uncorked the usual line about CBS staffers “spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.” Candor means openness and honesty, so the word sort of collapses on itself here. Is this anonymous candor, or just anonymous cowardice? Nover found a conga line of Pelley supporters. Why not put your name on it, if Pelley’s so awesome?

“The idea that Scott Pelley creates a hostile environment at that place is the most laughable idea I’ve ever heard,” one former staffer said. “‘60 Minutes’ is full of jerks but he is the most calm, professional and polite correspondent I’ve ever worked for.”

A current staffer said: “Scott Pelley is the only person who allows this show to continue. Without him, ‘60 Minutes’ is gone. They can use the ‘tick-tick-tick,’ but they will never have the whole clock again.”

When asked how the feeling inside “60 Minutes” was, another staffer put it bluntly: “It’s like being awake during surgery.”

Oliver Darcy, whose Status website is dedicated to keeping the elitist media as aggressively leftist as possible, also found an anonymous staffer to say exactly what they need someone to say about Bari Weiss, their arch-nemesis: “She managed to destroy ‘60 Minutes’ in three days. There should be some kind of medal for that.”

Darcy also found a “TV executive” to underline their argument: “In the end, this is what Trump wanted. The Ellisons and Bari Weiss have delivered to Trump exactly what he asked them for.”

Pelley and his supportive anonymous sources are helping Darcy make a living from subscribers as he attempts to shame anyone in the press striking the slightest centrist pose.

Readers have no idea what motivates anonymous sources to say these things. You can’t look up the political donations, or social-media feeds, or LinkedIn pages of anonymous sources. That’s what makes this game fun for them. They can drop bombs or push valentines without anyone questioning their authenticity. They’re authentic cowards, and reporters enable that cowardice – even from other reporters.

Journalists should refrain from lecturing anyone about how they are saving democracy or promoting transparency when this is how they manipulate the “breaking news.”

Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Two House members introduced a discussion draft of a bill that develops a federal standard on artificial intelligence and preempts state limits on the development of artificial intelligence for a period of three years.

Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., arrives for the House Republican Conference caucus meeting at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on May 13, 2026. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., introduced the draft on Thursday, answering the White House’s call to develop a federal AI standard. The Daily Signal obtained a copy of the draft legislation and reported it before its official release.

A discussion draft is meant to solicit feedback from lawmakers and experts before it would be formally introduced as a bill.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Dec. 11 ordering the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to recommend federal AI legislation preempting any state laws in conflict with the administration’s policy on artificial intelligence. The White House released a draft framework in March to provide a template for federal legislation.

Obernolte and Trahan’s draft bill could serve as a vessel for passing the first federal AI standard, although Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., has also made a bid to be the author of the first official framework. Her version contains strict child safeguards.

The 260-page House bill includes no mention of protection for children, but a spokesperson for Obernolte said the congressman intends for child protections to be enacted in separate legislation. Obernolte supports Congress passing multiple bills to accomplish the various aspects of the White House’s framework.

If the bill passes, no state will be able to “establish, continue in effect, or enforce any law or regulation specifically regulating the development of any artificial intelligence model.”

Some critics of that approach have argued that states present a first line of defense against threats posed by AI chatbots to children.

The bill does not limit state laws “applicable to activities occurring upon or after the deployment of an artificial intelligence model.”

The president recently signed an executive order “asking some artificial intelligence companies to give the federal government 30 days to review their frontier models before release.”

“This discussion draft is an important step toward building a clear federal framework that promotes innovation, protects Americans from emerging risks, and ensures the United States continues to lead the world in AI,” Obernolte said Thursday in a statement.

“The threats AI poses to our national security, our safety, and our workforce are here and growing by the day. This bipartisan framework is designed to meet the challenges posed by this rapidly advancing technology without smothering American innovation,” said Trahan in a statement.

This article was updated with lawmaker statements and the announcement of the draft legislation.

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal . http://dailysignal.com/

NPR is following The Washington Post and CBS News’s example by taking a blowtorch to its climate team. It must be tough not being able to rely on that steady stream of tax dollars anymore, eh?NPR Chief Climate Editor Neela Banerjee plastered a somber eulogy for her eco-woke department in a LinkedIn post published May 27. “Today, I was laid off by NPR. The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk.”

She continued, making it seem like she was ready to ride off into the sunset, “I have rarely been as inspired or happy as I was working with the nine other journalists on NPR’s Climate Desk, and I feel so very lucky to have helped you–and learned from you.”

Worth noting that this is the same “Climate Desk” under Banerjee’s leadership that pushed propaganda a few days before Banerjee’s firing characterizing beavers as “little climate warriors” in Britain’s fight against the left’s eternal specter of climate change. And how about this April 3 gem, “NPR wants your big question about reducing your climate impact and saving money.”

Talk about real bang-up journalisming there (not).

It’s pretty safe to say that the world will keep turning without NPR’s supposed, hard-hitting climate coverage. Reading Banerjee’s self-touted bona fides in retrospect is enough to jumpstart a few giggles:

I’ve been at NPR for six years, and for the last three, I worked as head of its (relatively new) climate desk. We were 10 people who did ambitious, prize-winning enterprise and broke news. We launched an annual network-wide Climate Solutions Week that set the standard for cooperation with member stations and that gave audiences a sense of agency and inspiration amid the planetary gloom. We built a reporting collaborative of more than 50 member stations which covered climate at the local level and became tightly knit in the process. We broke down silos within NPR and helped our colleagues at shows, podcasts and desks understand climate change in their contexts.

“Sense of agency and inspiration amid the planetary gloom?” What kind of poorly-crafted word salad is this!

NPR writ large has even gone as far as simping for eco-terrorism, such as this polluted item from NPR critic-at-large John Powers, “’How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ review: An action-packed eco-heist movie.” In that piece, Powers called the manifesto that inspired the film by extremist Andreas Malm “the most compelling argument I’ve read for eco-sabotage.”

At the end of the day, a company’s bottom-line is what drives business. And NPR is apparently being forced to learn like the rest of the liberal media ecosphere that consistently barfing up climate scare porn doesn’t exactly pay dividends.

Joseph Vazquez is the MRC Business Associate Editor for the News Analysis Division. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in 2018. In June, 2019, he completed an exclusive fellowship with the Hertog Foundation, where he participated in their “Nuclear Strategy and World Order” program. For MRC Business, he oversees projects and media coverage concerning dark money, political spending, economics and finance.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

The prevailing climate change narrative took a big hit in recent days, as scientists who comprise the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are backing away from their more outlandish climate predictions for the 21st century.Extreme forecasts of rising temperatures of 4 to 5 degrees, the scientists wrote in the journal Geoscientific Model Development, “have become implausible.” That means predictions of rapidly growing carbon emissions and higher temperatures, supposedly leading to fast-rising sea levels, floods, crop failures, and even human extinction scenarios, are finally being jettisoned.

This long-standing climate change narrative, always a house of cards designed to scare societies into submission, is collapsing — first gradually, now suddenly, to borrow a phrase from Ernest Hemingway.

Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

The artificial intelligence revolution is leaving green electricity states behind. Network operators are choosing states with policies favorable for gas-fired power to support construction of new data centers. States that block data center construction or try to force firms to use wind and solar electricity will lose the economic benefits of the AI boom.We are in the midst of an AI revolution on a scale that may exceed the internet revolution of twenty years ago. BNP Paribus estimates that AI will boost the US economy by more than 10% by 2034. Goldman Sachs forecasts that AI could raise the global GDP by 7% over the next decade, or about $7 trillion.

More than one thousand data centers are under construction all over the nation, filled with servers to run AI. More than 4,000 data centers are now operating, up 50% since June 2024. Data center construction spending now exceeds that for office building construction.

Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Oracle, the five largest AI “hyperscalers,” will spend over $800 billion this year and over $1 trillion in 2027 on AI capital equipment and data centers. Total 2027 spending is projected to exceed US spending for national defense.

Data center installation can bring tremendous benefits to local communities. The $20 billion, 1.8 gigawatt, 795-acre, Joliet Technology Center was just approved in Joliet, Illinois. The project is a medium-sized center but will be the largest in Illinois to date, expected to provide 10,000 construction jobs and $2.1 billion in tax revenue over a 30-year period.

But Illinois wants to force data centers to source power from wind and solar generators. In 2021 the state passed the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act, which requires coal and gas power plants to close between 2030 and 2045. As a result, Hull Street Energy is shutting down two-thirds of its Elwood Energy gas-fired plant years before a 2030 deadline, putting it on flatbed trucks, and transporting it to Texas. The six gas turbines being moved can together generate up to 900 megawatts of power. The loss of most of the Elwood Energy plant and the demands of the new Joliet Technology Center mean a three-gigawatt reduction in the available power capacity in northern Illinois.

Operators strive to bring new data centers online in less than three years to meet rising AI demand. Nuclear plants typically need 10 years for startup. Wind and solar facilities cover wide areas of land, require two to three times as much transmission, and years for transmission approval and construction. Since on-site gas plants can be built quickly, gas has become the dominant power source for new data centers.

But because of the data center boom, gas turbines are now in short supply. Turbine orders doubled from 2024 to 2025, and prices increased by 50%. The lead time for turbines from the world’s top three suppliers, GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi, has stretched out to five years. Elwood Energy took advantage of this shortage by moving turbines to Texas.

Gas power plant construction for data centers is exploding in Texas. According to the Global Energy Monitor, Texas has 11 gas power plants under construction, another 102 in preconstruction—acquiring land, permits, and contracts—and another 28 projects announced. The pipeline of gas power projects in Texas grew to 58 GW in 2025, more than the peak power demand in California. Texas is building more gas-fired power than the next seven states combined, most of these to power data centers.

But like Illinois, many renewable energy states continue to try to force data centers to use wind and solar sources. Currently, 24 states have net zero electricity targets by 2050.Data from USA Data Centers for the last two years shows that, with some exceptions, states without net zero electricity mandates are building data centers at a much faster pace than states with mandates. Since June of 2024, construction in states without mandates has exploded. Examples are Georgia (130 new data centers, up 157% from the number of existing centers), Indiana (84 new centers, up 221%), Iowa (73 new centers, up 252%), Missouri (33 new centers, up 85%), Pennsylvania (59 new centers, up 88%), and Texas (206 new centers, up 81%).

Most states with net zero mandates are building data centers at a much slower pace over the last two years. Examples are California (20 new centers, up 8%), Colorado (1 new center, up 2%), New York (6 new centers, up 5%), and Massachusetts (zero new data centers). Electricity prices in California, Massachusetts, and New York are amongst the highest in the nation, an additional reason why operators prefer other states for center sites.Two exception states with net zero power mandates are Illinois (63 new centers, up 43%), and Virginia (136 new centers, up 29%). Electricity prices in Illinois are just over the national average and Virginia prices are below the average, helping to attract developers.

In addition to energy mandates, several states are considering bans on data center construction. Ten states have introduced legislation for a moratorium on data center construction, including Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Passage of these bills failed in New Hampshire and Wisconsin, and Maine governor Janet Mills recently vetoed a moratorium bill. No state has yet enacted such a ban.

Georgia, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and South Dakota, states that do not have green electricity mandates, are also considering legislation to halt data center construction. Legislation requiring hyperscalers to build their own onsite power plants and to minimize water usage can be sensible policy. But outright bans will leave states behind.

Last month, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the “Artificial Intelligence Data Center Moratorium Act” in the Senate, intending to halt construction of data centers. Representative Ocasio-Cortez plans to introduce a companion bill in the House of Representatives. But these bills are unlikely to pass and, even if passed, are likely to be vetoed by President Trump.

If some states ban construction, hyperscalers will shift to states that will accept data centers and onsite gas power plants. Like Elwood Energy in Illinois, look for companies to close gas plants in green energy states and relocate them to other states with favorable policies. States should rescind their green electricity mandates or expect to be left out of the artificial intelligence revolution.

This article originally appeared at Master Resource

Steve Goreham is a speaker, author, and independent columnist on energy, sustainability, climate change, and public policy. More than 100,000 copies of his books are now in print, including his latest, Outside the Green Box: Rethinking Sustainable Development.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

This series of posts continues the data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia over the last five years. Each Monday, the Long Term Capacity Factor percentages will be updated. They will show two percentages for that Capacity Factor, the first for the most recent 52 week year, and the second percentage for the long term for the overall total number of weeks of data collection.

Link to Post on how these figures for the Wind Generation Capacity Factors are calculated

Link to Introductory Post ***** Link to each of the weekly update posts ***** Link to all earlier Data Posts (1153Posts)

What Is Capacity Factor.

Capacity Factor is the relationship between total generated power and the Nameplate for a power generation source.

That current Nameplate (as at 6 October 2024) for wind in Australia of 13,460MW from 91 Industrial Wind Plants, so, with the current 30% Capacity Factor, then the actual generated power is only an average of 4038MW.

The total Nameplate for all these wind plants changes as each new wind plant comes on line, delivering power to the grid.

As each new Wind Plant comes on line, I will detail that new addition here, and change the data calculations accordingly to reflect that change.

Wind Nameplate change from beginning of data collection on Monday 1 October 2018 – (then) 5301MW – (now) 13460MW – (Change) +8159MW (an increase of 154%)

The Table below shows the current week ending date, the Total Generated Power across that week, the calculated Average Power (worked out from the Total Generated Power) the Capacity Factor for that week, and the total generated power as a percentage of the overall total power consumption used by the Grid.

Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 30.35% (Last Week – 30.41%)

Long Term Capacity Factor – 399 weeks – 29.67% (Last Week – 29.69%)

Comments for this weekly Update.

Wind Power generation for this last week was below the average. On two of those days, it was above average for the day, and the remaining five days were below average, with two of those days at just a tick higher than just one third of the average. Because of that, the metric used for comparison over time, that important Capacity Factor percentage was lower than the average. And with that, then both of those long term averages fell as well.

*****

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

OzWindPowerGenerationTFOb

Over there at The New York Post, Lisa Daftari “a foreign policy analyst and media commentator based in Los Angeles”, nails a real problem with the American media exactly.

Her headline:

The mullahs’ best weapon isn’t a missile — it’s some in the US media

Among other things, Daftari quotes President Trump as follows:

If Iran surrenders, admits their Navy is gone and resting at the bottom of the sea, and their Air Force is no longer with us, and if their entire Military walks out of Tehran, weapons dropped and hands held high, each shouting ‘I surrender, I surrender’ while wildly waving the representative White Flag… The Failing New York Times, The China Street Journal, Corrupt and now Irrelevant CNN, and all other members of the Fake News Media, will headline that Iran had a Masterful and Brilliant Victory over The United States of America.

Daftari notes:

It reads like satire, but it’s a precise description of the coverage Americans are getting.

It is information warfare, and it is working.

Exactly.And there’s more Daftari did not mention. Namely: The recent “news” — and I put that in quotes — from former First Lady Dr. Jill Biden. CBS headlined the Jill Biden story this way:

Jill Biden says she was “frightened” by Joe Biden’s 2024 debate performance, thought he was having a stroke.  

CBS reported:

Former first lady Jill Biden said she was ‘frightened’ by her husband Joe Biden’s 2024 debate performance and thought he was having a stroke.

‘I was frightened, because I had never ever seen Joe like that before or since. Never,’ Jill Biden told CBS News Sunday Morning’s Rita Braver in an interview airing Sunday on CBS.

‘I don’t know what happened,’ she said. ‘As I watched it, I thought, ‘Oh, my God, he’s having a stroke.’ And it scared me to death.’

Well now. What, one media analyst might ask, is going on here?

Answer: The American media is not about reporting the news. The facts. As the fictional Detective Sergeant Joe Friday would always say when questioning a suspect in that ancient TV show Dragnet: “All we want are the facts, ma’am. Just the facts.”

Yes. And as is plain from no less than President Trump and, of all people Dr. Jill, “just the facts” is something that is averse to the American media.

In the long ago (2013), I had my first meeting with then private citizen Donald Trump, who was openly considering running for President in 2016. I asked him about what even then was seen by many Republicans as liberal media bias. His response was blunt. He would call it out and was unafraid to do so. That was a full thirteen years ago. And suffice to say, as just that one statement above from now President Trump makes clear, he has no hesitation in doing so.

The problem is now decidedly for the media. Whether it’s coverage of President Trump’s Iran war operations or the coverage of former President Biden’s health, the media has repeatedly damaged its credibility in not even attempting “just the facts” news.

And alas, it is exactly that tilted coverage that has proved so telling for the media’s credibility. Make that “lack of credibility.” What Americans are seeing unfold in front of them is indeed “information warfare.”

Perhaps most telling in all this is the coverage — or lack of it — provided on the health of former President Biden. For those unfamiliar with this particular bit of history, way, way back in the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was a major participant in World War One. And when it was over, the issue at hand was the US signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which not only ended the war but involved the US in the League of Nations.

President Woodrow Wilson, a Democrat, was a staunch supporter of the US joining the League and set out on a cross country train trip to get support for the Treaty and US League membership. In September of 1919, after a speech in Colorado, his wife discovered her husband the President seriously ill on his train. It was soon announced that the train trip was cancelled with the President returning to Washington. A handful of days after his return to the White House, Mrs. Wilson found him on the floor of a White House bathroom. She called the White House physician, who quickly realized the suddenly paralyzed President had suffered a stroke.

Famously, historians would later learn that the secrecy of the extent of the President’s ill health was so tight that the American people did not know Mrs. Wilson was effectively running the presidency and did so until her husband’s successor, Warren Harding, was elected and inaugurated in 1920.

This is notable because here in the media-centric 21st century one would think a similar problem with President Biden would have resulted in massive coverage and his resignation. But no.

In effect, the role of the protective Mrs. Wilson in 1919 was played this time around by a protective media — and, yes, First Lady Jill Biden. What Americans have seen unfold in front of their eyes in terms of President Biden and his health was “information warfare.”

And as Daftari makes plain, “information warfare” has been at work in the media’s coverage of both Joe Biden (with the aid of Jill Biden) and in the coverage of the events in Iran.

Whether the issue was the media “reporting” on President Joe Biden’s health during his presidency or today’s state of the war in Iran, “information warfare” is being waged by the media.

If the issue involves a liberal Democrat in the White House, the liberal media will, a la Joe Biden, rally to protect him. If a conservative Republican in the White House is defending the U.S. war effort in the Middle East, the lefty media will pile on.

The Democrats count on it. Our enemies can seek to exploit it.

Jeffrey Lord is a Contributing Writer for NewsBusters. Lord is a former White House political director in the Reagan White House and aide to HUD Secretary Jack Kemp.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Watching an arrogant lefty newspaper scatter around like a bug trying to salvage its climate doom mongering after scientists pull the proverbial rug out from underneath it is one of the most satisfying things to see.New York Times reporters Brad Plumer and Eric Niiler tried to temper the political firestorm that erupted after an international team of climate researchers “abandoned” the ridiculous RCP8.5, one of the most dire climate change scenarios that’s been passed around through the academic ether over the years like a virus.

Their May 26 item, “Why Scientists Retired the Dire Climate Scenario Used for Over a Decade,” tried to double down on the global warming boondoggle while giving a perfunctory nod to the fact that the climate apocalypse may have been exaggerated, “While global warming is still a threat, the decision to back away from a worst-case outlook raises questions about whether some risks have been overstated.”

No kidding, Sherlock! The Times itself is guilty of pushing the same kind of unhinged scare porn based on RCP8.5, as American Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. concluded based on a Times article published October 15, 2025 headlined, “New York Is Going to Flood. Here’s What the City Can Do to Survive.” How about this “interactive” beauty from New York Times Magazine legitimizing the RCP8.5 scenario from October 26, 2022, “Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View?” That piece, authored by Times columnist David Wallace-Wells, bookended both the hopeful and catastrophic climate scenarios based on mere projections of future global emissions output:

For decades, visions of possible climate futures have been anchored by, on the one hand, Pollyanna-like faith that normality would endure, and on the other, millenarian intuitions of an ecological end of days, during which perhaps billions of lives would be devastated or destroyed.

Reading Plumer and Niiler’s soft-pedaled walk-back in retrospect is enough to evoke a few chuckles:

The majority of climate scientists still say global warming is a serious problem, and that even more plausible, medium-emissions scenarios can carry grave dangers. But the new paper has raised questions about whether some of the risks of climate change have been poorly communicated or overstated in years past and how best to think about those risks going forward.

Worthy of note is that “majority of climate scientists” is quite the step backward from “overwhelming scientific consensus,” eh boys?

Perhaps The Times should look itself in the mirror, but since when has the Old Gray Lady shown any capability of self-awareness? Plumer and Niiler downplayed how RCP8.5 “wasn’t meant to be a prediction, but more of a ‘worst case,’ said Detlef van Vuuren, a climate scientist at Utrecht University and a leading figure in scenario development.” Then why was the newspaper acting as if it was only a matter of time before New York City would start treading water?

Despite the RCP8.5 scenario being tossed out, both Plumer and Niiler tried to salvage the utility of pushing climate apocalypse narratives, even if they’re implausible in nature:

Many scientists find it useful to probe such hypotheticals. Climate models often struggle to capture dynamics like whether ice sheets might collapse with moderate warming, even though this is an extraordinarily important question for the real world.

It’s also “useful” if you’re trying to scare readers silly to push a ludicrous agenda that has hamstrung the U.S. economy for years.

Joseph Vazquez is the MRC Business Associate Editor for the News Analysis Division. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in 2018. In June, 2019, he completed an exclusive fellowship with the Hertog Foundation, where he participated in their “Nuclear Strategy and World Order” program. For MRC Business, he oversees projects and media coverage concerning dark money, political spending, economics and finance.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

After weeks of speculation, CBS News under Bari Weiss has made some big changes to the team at 60 Minutes — firing the executive producer Tanya Simon, as well as correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega. Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of the show, was also fired, as was Matthew Polevoy, a senior producer.They announced a new executive producer — Nick Bilton, a former New York Times technology columnist who has made documentaries for HBO and Netflix. The New York Times typically dissed their former co-workers for being inexperienced: “Ms. Weiss, an opinion journalist with no prior experience in television,” has hired “Mr. Bilton, who has never worked in traditional broadcast news.” But he’s been making documentaries, which is pretty much what 60 Minutes aims to do.

Liberal media outlets fret about the “traditions” at CBS, which means the “long-standing leftist bias.” No one should ever attempt to move anything two ticks to the center. The Times account added:

Mr. Bilton, 49, will start his position with a staff already anxious about how the long-held traditions of “60 Minutes” might change. In a joint interview with Ms. Weiss on Thursday, he said that his experience in documentary film and TV was in keeping with the founding ethos of the program, which he called “the most important news brand in American life.”

…Mr. Bilton said that the recent furor around “60 Minutes” was “just noise,” chalking it up to routine fallout spurred by disruption at a legacy business. He added that the “end result” of the change would be “quite frankly phenomenal.”

Bilton doesn’t have any right-wing credentials. He became a technology columnist for the Times in 2009, and left in 2016 to join Vanity Fair as a correspondent. None of that screams “Republican takeover.” He’s already talking up a more aggressive daily role for 60 Minutes online as in an interview with the Semafor media newsletter:

Bilton told Semafor the program is an “incredible institution that is largely underutilized,” saying he planned to expand the franchise beyond its one-hour timeslot on Sundays. He envisions a more always-on operation that will publish more investigations and correspondent-driven content online.

“It’s the same as The New York Times publishing in print once a day, or Vanity Fair being a magazine that only goes out once a week or The New Yorker, or whatever. If you look historically to what happens to these institutions, why they fail — it’s because they don’t innovate and they don’t disrupt themselves,” he said. “I think that’s where we are with broadcast television. To me, that’s the most incredible exciting opportunity — to expand it beyond just one hour a week.”

Will anything dramatically change in its tilt? When Bari Weiss revamped the CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil, it hasn’t turned into “CBS Newsmax,” as the leftists always project. It often seems that the rebels inside CBS News are always trying to keep just as much ideological energy as they can, and implying Weiss is going to wreck everything is their way to keep her in check.

Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Last week I wrote about the residents of Richland County, Ohio, siding with their county commissioners on banning new large-scale solar and wind projects in much of the county. The wisdom of tapping the brakes on new solar projects is increasingly evident when we consider how rapidly the “renewables” technology is evolving.In their zeal to force “renewable energy” into every nook and cranny of society, advocates have been consistently guilty of getting the solar-powered cart ahead of the wind-powered horse. In other words, time and again we realize, usually too late, that everybody is getting ahead of themselves.

Large-scale solar power is still an emerging technology. Nevertheless, the Obama and Biden administrations threw billions of tax dollars at states and local communities urging – in some cases, mandating – that they “transition” away from reliable energy sources. As a result, anywhere from 650,000 to nearly one million acres of former farmland are now covered with solar panels, depending on estimates.

American Farmland Trust predicts that as solar installations expand, “the top 12 states will also lose, fragment, or compromise between 306,000 and over 2 million acres of farmland.” Such a waste. Why? Because even for those who fervently believe in the need to transition to “renewables,” patience would be rewarded by advances in technology that would allow solar arrays to generate the same amount of energy with a much smaller footprint.

In 2022, citing a study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a Yale School of the Environment article noted that “most estimates of solar energy’s land requirements are outdated, still relying on numbers from the early days of utility-scale operations, when the efficiency was significantly lower, says study coauthor Mark Bolinger.”

The article points out that “arrays that track the sun throughout the day, the dominant technology currently in use, need approximately four acres of panels for every megawatt of power — less than half the land needed a decade ago. That trend, says Bolinger, ‘should continue into the foreseeable future.’”

We can be sure that “the dominant technology currently in use” will itself soon be surpassed by more advanced technology. And yet, solar companies – backed by tax dollars in the form of government subsidies and following outdated estimates of an eventual need for 10 million acres – have snatched up more and more land, even as technology will require fewer acres.

The price of throwing tons of money at a “solution” while the technology is still evolving was driven home by the case of the Ivanpah Solar Power Plant. I wrote last year about the plant, which, I noted, was “built from 2010–14 at a cost of $2.2 billion—including $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees from the Obama Energy Department—(but) is now ‘set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy,’ according to a recent story in the New York Post.”

The plant was already considered outdated because as the technology rapidly evolved, the Ivanpah facility “couldn’t compete with newer and less expensive forms of creating solar power,” the Post reported. I pointed out that “the reckless hurry to ‘go green’ once again ended up with a project deep in the red.”

But here’s a troubling update: Rather than eating the loss and closing the plant as planned last year, the facility is caught in a costly nowhere land.

“Both the Trump and Biden administrations — along with the utility company that buys its power — have sought to shut (Ivanpah) down, saying it underperforms, produces expensive electricity and has been overtaken by cheaper energy sources,” Fox News recently reported. “But California regulators have refused to allow it to close, warning that closing the plant could strain the power grid.”

That’s right. The Ivanpah plant presents taxpayers with a no-win situation: Closing it “could leave taxpayers responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars tied to a $1.6 billion federal loan, while keeping it open means higher electricity costs for consumers,” as the report explained. Why?

Because California regulators warn that “shutting down Ivanpah could strand more than $300 million in ratepayer-funded transmission and infrastructure tied to the project, while also creating potential risks for grid reliability — particularly as uncertainty grows around how quickly new energy projects can be built.”

All of which points again to the need for the U.S. to codify legislation that would prevent billions in tax dollars going down the drain because the government insisted on implementing technology that is years from reaching maturity. The Affordable, Reliable, Clean Energy Security act (ARC-ES) would help ensure that future decisions on America’s energy needs are based on U.S. security, consumer needs and real-world effectiveness – not on shifting political winds.

ARC-ES, introduced in Congress last year by U.S. Rep. Troy Balderson (R-OH) “would require relevant federal agencies … to review any actions relating to affordable, reliable, or clean energy within 90 days and submit a report to Congress, according to Balderson’s office. “The bill guarantees that our most affordable and reliable energy sources, including nuclear and natural gas, remain part of the energy mix – a crucial requirement to guarantee affordable and reliable energy for American households and businesses.”

If Congress won’t act on ARC-ES, President Trump should enact it through an executive order. Americans deserve to know that their tax dollars are not wasted on solar-capture technologies that are practically obsolete before the sun comes up.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy via Empower Alliance

Gary Abernathy is a longtime newspaper editor, reporter and columnist. He was a contributing columnist for the Washington Post from 2017-2023 and a frequent guest analyst across numerous media platforms. He is a contributing columnist for The Empowerment Alliance, which advocates for realistic approaches to energy consumption and environmental conservation.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

The Trump administration is terminating the existing site leases for monster offshore wind development projects by refunding the lease payments already made. The wind-loving Democrats are nonsensically calling this a “buyout” supposedly done at taxpayer expense.Of course, this costs the taxpayers nothing because the money comes from the developers who are simply getting it back. The taxpayers may even benefit from these near billion-dollar deals depending on how the Feds use the money while they have it, which can be many years in some cases.

Here are the two big deals so far:

TotalEnergies (March): The Interior Department agreed to a near-$1 billion reimbursement to cancel leases off New York and North Carolina. The French company is redirecting these funds to a Texas LNG export facility.

Ocean Winds (April): The administration reached an $885 million deal with a joint venture between France’s ENGIE and Portugal’s EDP to terminate the Bluepoint Wind (New York/New Jersey) and Golden State Wind (California) projects. The funds are to be redirected into oil and gas development including LNG.

Of course, there was an immediate outcry from the wind-loving left. Several top-ranking House and Senate Democrats opened investigations and sent letters of inquiry but, so far, nothing has come of that. Various legal objections have been posited.

In Congressional jargon, the top minority party member of a committee is called the ranking member, all Democrats in today’s Congress. The ranking members of the House Judiciary and House Natural Resources Committees sent a joint inquiry to TotalEnergies. (One word with a capital in the middle is their goofy idea, not a typo.)

The evergreen Sen. Whitehouse, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, also opened an investigation. Ranking members have little authority, so these actions may mean little for now.

In addition, and to no one’s surprise, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey sent a letter to the U.S. Department of the Interior questioning the TotalEnergies deal.

California also got into the act. The California Energy Commission is investigating the deal with Golden State Wind. The commission issued a subpoena to Ocean Winds seeking documents in what it claimed were ​“backroom deals” involving taxpayer dollars.

Given the arcane intricacy of U.S. administrative law, it is always possible that these deals will get stopped. But for now, it is likely that more deals will be done.

The Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has awarded nearly three dozen offshore wind leases since July 2013. The deals to date are for some of the biggest leases, so a very good start, but there is still a long way to go.

The wind-lovers have universally referred to these deals as “buyouts” and “payoffs,” but you cannot buy someone out or pay them off with their own money. A refund is not a buyout. If I buy concert tickets and the concert is cancelled, refunding my money is certainly not buying me out or paying me off.

Word has it that the Feds told the developers to take the deal or they would simply cancel the leases, letting the developers sue to try to get their money back, someday. The Feds have a strong lever here which explains their getting promises from the developers that they would reinvest the refund in oil and gas development.

Whoever came up with this leverage deserves a lot of credit. The President is a big-time, long-time deal maker so maybe he did it.

If Congress changes hands in the coming elections, a lot of this resistance could become much more serious with Democrats chairing committees. Or something could happen sooner than that, and there are a lot of offshore wind leases still to go.

Stay tuned to CFACT as this deal making drama plays out. It is not a done deal.

Dr David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT, working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. His specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment. As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning. This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

When the Supreme Court refused to allow Florida to file a complaint against California and Washington for extending driver’s licenses to illegal aliens who cannot read English signs, Justice Clarence Thomas took his colleagues to task.

Justice Clarence Thomas on Feb. 5, 2025 (Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

“I respectfully dissent from the court’s denial of Florida’s motion because we cannot refuse to hear suits between states,” Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito.

Thomas recounted the story of Harjinder Singh, an illegal alien who failed a driver’s test 10 times in Washington and once in California, but who obtained a commercial driver’s license from each state. Singh, a native of India who had crossed the Mexican border illegally, made a U-turn on Florida’s Turnpike on Aug. 12, 2025, despite a clear sign prohibiting U-turns, causing the deaths of three people.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration tested Singh’s English proficiency, finding that the illegal alien could only identify one out of four highway signs.

“An illegal alien who cannot read English road signs cannot drive an 80,000-pound tractor-trailer,” Thomas wrote. “Federal law and regulators prohibit states from providing commercial driver’s licenses to applicants unless they pass a driver’s test, sufficiently understand the English language, and show appropriate immigration status.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, a Republican, asked the Supreme Court for leave to file a bill of complaint against California and Washington in October. The AG stated that between January 2018 and August 2025, Washington issued driver’s licenses to 685 individuals who failed to prove citizenship or lawful permanent residency, citing Singh as an example.

Uthmeier asked the Supreme Court to declare that California and Washington’s failure to enforce proper safety standards is a public nuisance to other states, and to issue injunctions ordering California and Washington to cease issuing driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.

Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court lacks “discretion to refuse to hear cases within its exclusive original jurisdiction.” Yet, even if the court has this discretion, it should have taken up the case, he argued.

The Supreme Court considers two factors: the nature of the complaining state’s interest, and the availability of an alternative forum for the case to be resolved. This case meets both factors, Thomas argued. “This court declines to even hear Florida’s claims, even though it has nowhere else to bring them.”

Uthmeier’s office condemned the court’s ruling.

“Unfortunately, the Supreme Court leaves Floridians with no avenue to hold California accountable for putting dangerous, illegal alien truck drivers on our roads, despite the U.S. Constitution’s mandate and Congress directing the Court to hear controversies between the states,” Jae Williams, the attorney general’s press secretary, told the Daily Signal in a statement Tuesday.

A Department of Transportation spokesperson responded to the ruling.

Transportation “Secretary [Sean] Duffy is laser-focused on restoring integrity to America’s trucking industry by ensuring truck drivers on our roadways are qualified and vetted,” the spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “The department is going after every link in the chain to root out bad actors, fraudsters, and chameleon carriers who put American families at risk.”

In May 2025, Duffy signed an order announcing new guidance to enforce English proficiency requirements for truck drivers, and he later threatened to revoke federal funding from California and Washington if they continued to reject the requirements. In October, the department announced it would withhold over $40 million from California following an investigation finding that the Golden State had failed to abide by the rules.

In June 2025, Duffy announced a nationwide audit of states issuing commercial driver’s licenses to drivers without permanent residence in the U.S. In November, he claimed California illegally issued 17,000 commercial driver’s licenses and sent notices to the license holders that their licenses would expire.

The Department of Transportation cited at least 17 fatal crashes and 30 deaths in 2025 caused by drivers without permanent residence. Under new rules, these drivers will not be able to obtain a license.

Duffy has also said his agency has pulled more than 20,000 drivers from service for failing to meet basic requirements, such as reading road signs.

Congress is considering a law to bar illegal aliens and non-English speakers from obtaining driver’s licenses.

Tyler O’Neil is senior investigative reporter for The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/, and he is the author of two books, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal  http://dailysignal.com/

National “Public” Radio has existed for more than 50 years as a publicity organ for the Democrats, and for the last ten or eleven, it’s certainly been Red Hot Anti-Trump Radio. MS NOW pundit Andrew Weissman – Robert Mueller’s deputy in the Russian collusion probe – was granted an hour of book publicity on the talk show Fresh Air on May 20.We’ve established that Fresh Air pretty much never grants any national publicity to conservative journalists or authors, but loves promoting Trump-trashing products. You could hear this from the get-go with NPR host Terry Gross:

TERRY GROSS: Why can’t you sue a president or a presidential candidate who knowingly lies to the public? After all, corporate executives can be sued for lying to shareholders. This question about our inability to legally hold politicians accountable for their speech, the threats that poses to our democracy and what we can learn from how other countries deal with these lies are the subjects of my guest Andrew Weissmann’s new book Liar’s Kingdom: How To Stop Trump’s Deceit And Save America.

During Trump’s first term, The Washington Post tabulated over 30,000 false or misleading Trump public statements. Andrew Weissmann was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Russians colluded with candidate Donald Trump and his campaign.

Gross wasn’t going to mention that Post “fact checker” Glenn Kessler abruptly stopped counting allegedly false statements by presidents when Joe Biden came in. Democrats apparently never lie, and the prospect of suing a sitting president for lying only applies to Republicans in the leftist bubble of NPR.

This was the only mention of Russia. There were no questions about Weissman failing to get Trump, or Robert Mueller’s Bidenesque feebleness when he testified after the Mueller Report came out. Fresh Air also promoted Weissman’s book about the Mueller probe back in 2020, and that transcript reads like Weissman wrote all the questions himself.

No, this was just organized publicity. Here’s where Gross really let her hatred flow late in the hour:

GROSS: What are your concerns about if there’s an authoritarian president and if Congress is going with an authoritarian president’s wishes, and a lot of the courts, as well as a majority of the Supreme Court, seem to often take a cue from the authoritarian president or at least seem to agree with the authoritarian president — how the laws you suggested could still be abused?

WEISSMANN: There is the potential for abuse. And there’s no doubt that if there is some weapon lying about, like a Chekhov gun, that Donald Trump or people like him will be tempted to use it. We are witnessing, in my view, a series of retributive indictments and the weaponization of the Department of Justice in the grossest way. And just to be clear, Terry, as you noted, I’ve worked in the Department of Justice for 21 years with Republican and Democratic administrations, and I’ve never seen that in any of those administrations. There just wasn’t that — directives coming from the White House to the Department of Justice.

Oh, sure. They never weaponized or abused the DOJ under Clinton, or Obama, and certainly not the Biden DOJ going after Trump. This is the easiest way to establish a network is a Democrat Party echo. Gross’s question neatly matched the Weissman book blurb by PBS omnipresence Ken Burns, another Democrat warrior:

“Though they thought constantly of posterity, our founders could not have imagined the assault on our founding principles that we find ourselves mired in today—the legislative and judicial branches subservient to an aggressively authoritarian executive. Fortunately, we have Andrew Weissmann to illuminate these dark times and to offer a roadmap back to sanity, a reinvestment in our age-old principles and a return to virtue.” ―Ken Burns, filmmaker

Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

As the first presidential impeachment trial was drawing to a close, newspaper titan Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune ran a bold headline: “CONVICTION ALMOST A CERTAINTY.” If by “certainty” the paper meant falling one vote short of the two-thirds needed to remove President Andrew Johnson, the headline proved accurate.

The last speech on the impeachment, Thaddeus Stevens closing the debate in the House, sketched by T.R. Davis, Harper’s Weekly, March 21, 1868. (Glasshouse Vintage/Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

On May 26, 1868, Johnson slipped the political noose with a 35–19 vote, after 10 Republicans—perhaps the “RINOs” of their day—broke ranks to acquit.

The trial featured 25 prosecution witnesses and 16 for the defense. The Senate gallery was so packed that lawmakers introduced a ticketing system for crowd control, a practice used in later impeachment trials.

Author and journalist Mark Twain observed the frenzy: “The multitude of strangers were waiting for impeachment.” He added that many “did not know what impeachment was, exactly,” but imagined it would come “in the form of an avalanche, or a thunder-clap, or that maybe the roof would fall in.”

For decades, historians judged the episode harshly, noting that the Supreme Court later declared the Tenure of Office Act, which Johnson was accused of violating, unconstitutional in 1926. Yet the procedural rules forged during Johnson’s impeachment would go on to serve as a road map for the Senate trials of Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump.

Impeachment Trap

Republican President Abraham Lincoln arguably made his biggest political miscalculation by selecting Tennessee Democrat and Union loyalist Andrew Johnson as his running mate for the 1864 ticket, which focused on unity.

Johnson proved to be a deeply flawed president and an outspoken racist—even by the standards of his time. While he was lenient toward the defeated South, as Lincoln likely would have been, he also obstructed civil rights and voting protections for freed slaves—measures Lincoln almost certainly would have supported.

By mid-1867, Republicans—armed with more than a two-thirds majority—were openly discussing impeachment but lacked a clear trigger. They created one by overriding Johnson’s veto to pass the Tenure of Office Act, which required Senate approval to remove Senate-confirmed officials.

Johnson walked directly into the trap by firing Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.

The House impeached him on Feb. 24, 1868, by a decisive 126–47 vote.

The Senate trial began March 5, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. Attorney General Henry Stanbery resigned to devote himself fully to leading the president’s defense.

Johnson’s legal team argued he had not violated the Tenure of Office Act because Stanton had been appointed by Lincoln, not Johnson. It also contended that the president sought to test the law’s constitutionality before the Supreme Court.

Skeptical of securing a conviction, Republican leaders scheduled votes on what they viewed as the three strongest of the 11 articles of impeachment. The first vote fell one short of conviction, at 35–19. After regrouping, the Senate returned 10 days later to vote on two additional articles—with identical results.

On May 26, House managers abandoned efforts to vote on the remaining articles, and Johnson was acquitted.

“I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an unacceptable president,” Sen. James Grimes, R-Iowa, said in explaining his vote to acquit.

Evolving Perception

Historical judgment of Johnson’s impeachment has shifted over time.

The 1943 film “Tennessee Johnson” portrayed the 17th president, played by Van Heflin, as a constitutional defender standing against overreaching Republicans in Congress. Similarly, in his Pulitzer Prize–winning 1955 book “Profiles in Courage,” then-Sen. John F. Kennedy praised Sen. Edmund G. Ross, the Kansas Republican whose vote helped secure Johnson’s acquittal.

In “Grand Inquests” (1992), Chief Justice William Rehnquist—who later presided over the Clinton impeachment—argued that acquittal preserved “the American system of government” from congressional dominance.

Other historians dissent. Larry Schweikart, in “A Patriot’s History of the United States,” contends the Senate failed in its duty by not focusing solely on whether Johnson committed the charged offenses.

More recent works, including David O. Stewart’s “Impeached” (2009) and Brenda Wineapple’s “The Impeachers” (2019), emphasize Johnson’s racism and argue he was fundamentally unfit for office.

Culture War Impeachments

The Johnson impeachment, like every presidential impeachment since, unfolded amid deep cultural and political division.

Johnson’s trial came during Reconstruction following the Civil War. The impeachment process against Richard Nixon took shape amid the Vietnam War and anti-war protests; Nixon ultimately resigned after the House Judiciary Committee approved articles of impeachment, but before a full House vote took place.

Bill Clinton emerged from that same anti-war generation. To many Republicans, his 1998 impeachment reflected broader cultural conflicts, as critics contrasted Clinton’s personal conduct with that of his predecessor, George H. W. Bush.

And, of course, the Trump impeachments took place in an era of intense polarization. Many on the left viewed Trump as uniquely dangerous and unfit for office, while his defenders saw the impeachment efforts as politically motivated—resulting in his becoming the first president acquitted twice by the Senate.

Fred Lucas is senior investigative reporter for the Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/  He is also the author of “The Myth of Voter Suppression: The Left’s Assault on Clean Elections.”

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal  http://dailysignal.com/

This series of posts continues the data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia over the last five years. Each Monday, the Long Term Capacity Factor percentages will be updated. They will show two percentages for that Capacity Factor, the first for the most recent 52 week year, and the second percentage for the long term for the overall total number of weeks of data collection.

Link to Post on how these figures for the Wind Generation Capacity Factors are calculated

Link to Introductory Post ***** Link to each of the weekly update posts ***** Link to all earlier Data Posts (1153Posts)

What Is Capacity Factor.

Capacity Factor is the relationship between total generated power and the Nameplate for a power generation source.

That current Nameplate (as at 6 October 2024) for wind in Australia of 13,460MW from 91 Industrial Wind Plants, so, with the current 30% Capacity Factor, then the actual generated power is only an average of 4038MW.

The total Nameplate for all these wind plants changes as each new wind plant comes on line, delivering power to the grid.

As each new Wind Plant comes on line, I will detail that new addition here, and change the data calculations accordingly to reflect that change.

Wind Nameplate change from beginning of data collection on Monday 1 October 2018 – (then) 5301MW – (now) 13460MW – (Change) +8159MW (an increase of 154%)

The Table below shows the current week ending date, the Total Generated Power across that week, the calculated Average Power (worked out from the Total Generated Power) the Capacity Factor for that week, and the total generated power as a percentage of the overall total power consumption used by the Grid.

Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 30.41% (Last Week – 30.12%)

Long Term Capacity Factor – 398 weeks – 29.69% (Last Week – 29.69%)

Comments for this weekly Update.

Wind power generation was almost right on the average for this last week. For three days it was higher than the average, and on three days lower than the average, with one of those low days not much more than a pitiful one third of the average when, yet again, the vast number of wind plants were becalmed under a huge and almost stationary High Pressure weather system.

So, when it comes to that metric used for comparison over time, the important Capacity Factor percentage, there was a change in the most recent 52 week yearly percentage because last years equivalent week was so low, and replaced now with this week’s percentage, then that yearly average showed a reasonably large increase, whilst the full long term average did not change at all.

*****

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

OzWindPowerGenerationTFOb

Legislation that would bar illegal immigrants and non-English speakers from obtaining commercial driver’s licenses is advancing in the U.S. House after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy renewed his push for the measure this week.

Truck driver Rahul Narwal said if the current licensing situation remains, he won’t be able to renew when his license expires in 2028. Photographed at Roadies Inc. in Bakersfield, California, on Nov. 29, 2025. (Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

“Dalilah’s Law would have revoked this illegal trucker’s license,” Duffy wrote on X, responding to reports that an illegal immigrant truck driver was arrested in connection with a hit-and-run that injured two people near Sacramento, California. “Congress must pass Dalilah’s Law NOW.”

Testifying earlier this week before the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Duffy said he is committed to restoring “integrity and safety” to the trucking industry while improving job prospects for American drivers.

“It was the policy of the last administration to allow for unqualified foreign drivers to get behind the wheel of a truck,” he said, criticizing the administration of former President Joe Biden. “Those days are over.”

“We’ve also knocked more than 20,000 drivers out of service for failing to meet basic requirements like reading our road signs or being able to communicate with law enforcement,” Duffy added. “These changes aren’t just keeping you and your family safe on the road—they have the added benefits of boosting wages of hardworking American truckers.”

The bill, introduced by Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind., has been referred to the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and could soon advance to a committee vote before heading to the House floor.

Houchin’s legislation is named after Dalilah Coleman, who was 5 years old when she was severely injured in a crash involving an illegal immigrant truck driver who allegedly ran a stop sign.

President Donald Trump highlighted Coleman and her family during his January State of the Union address as he urged Congress to act on the proposal.

“Many, if not most, illegal aliens do not speak English and cannot read even the most basic road signs as to direction, speed, danger, or location,” Trump said. “That’s why tonight I’m calling on Congress to pass what we will call the Dalilah Law, barring any state from granting commercial driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.”

In the Senate, the companion measure is being led by Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., a close ally of the president.

If enacted, the legislation would prohibit issuing CDLs to individuals who are not U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, or holders of certain work visas. It would also require states to permanently disqualify individuals who are not citizens or lawful permanent residents from operating commercial vehicles.

“If you can’t speak English or read a road sign, you have no business driving a truck in the United States of America. This is common sense, this is basic public safety, and this is why I’m leading The Dalilah Law,” Banks said in a statement to the Daily Signal.

Democrats have opposed the bill, arguing that it “demonizes” illegal immigrants.

Banks, speaking on the Daily Signal’s “Tony Kinnett Cast,” said differing state policies have contributed to safety concerns.

“When you have Gov. Gavin Newsom in California, or blue states like California or New York, [where] they hand out truck driving licenses to illegals like candy, of course you’re going to see them behind the wheel of a semi and tragically killing people,” Banks said.

Banks added that Coleman continues to recover but faces lasting effects from the crash.

“She will never be the same—she’s recovered physically, but she will never be the same,” he said.

Pedro Boccalato Rodriguez-Aparicio is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation  . http://www.heritage.org/

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal    http://dailysignal.com/

Today’s Sunday Music is And I Love You So, and it is sung here by Perry Como. Now while Perry first recorded this song in 1973, this version is from a 1977 video clip. It is introduced by Ann Margret, and features Chet Atkins on guitar.

Link to Video at You Tube

This video was posted to You Tube by Perry Como Magic

There’s something that’s just so amazing about ‘Music’ that has always amazed me.  You go looking for something you think is pretty specific, and you end up going in so many different directions, and this song I’m featuring today is just one of those, and here, I started so far away from this song, you’ll wonder how I finally did come to it, so you’ll have to bear with me while I explain it.

I was looking for some information on Ovation Guitars, and here’s the original link to that, and this is from a time when the actual shapes of electric guitars was just becoming a thing, so that’s why this one looks so strange. Now I knew that Glen Campbell had been playing Ovation Guitars (for around 50 years I think) and here’s an image to Glen and his guitars. So, before Glen’s solo career started, he was a famed session guitarist with what is called The Wrecking Crew, a group of around 40 to 50 of the best musicians gathered together in Los Angeles. So many artists and bands turned up at the huge studio where this group of musicians were located, and this group played backing on so many albums for so long. So now sidetracked onto The Wrecking Crew, I next thought of singer songwriters, and their main location for so long, The Brill Building in Manhattan, New York. One of those many many writers who worked in that building writing hit songs for so many artists at the time was Carole King. She was married to Gerry Goffin, and as a pair, and on their own, they wrote so many hits songs for so many artists. The writers in that one building alone produced more than 100 major hit songs from the 50s to the 70s. After Carole King and Gerry Goffin were divorced, she moved to California, and it took her three years to get her solo career going. That happened with the release of her second album Tapestry in 1971, So now, I went looking for that album, and after typing it into a search engine, I scrolled down a little and there was a second album titled Tapestry, this one released by Don Mclean. That made me wonder why he named an album the same as the album that was a huge hit. So, after checking, it proved to be one of those rare coincidences in music, two artists releasing a song or an album of the same name around the same time.

In fact, Don McLean released his Tapestry album first, in October of 1970. The Carole King album of the same name was released three Months later in January of 1971. While both albums were recorded in Los Angeles, neither of these two artists was aware of the other recording an album with the same name. The Don McLean album barely registered and the Carole King album was a huge monster hit and has (so far) sold more than 25 Million copies and has been certified Platinum 14 times over. Now Don Mclean released his own humungous album American Pie, his second album later on in 1971. His Tapestry album was barely a moderate success. One Single was lifted from the album, Castles In The Air, and while that was also only a moderate success, the flip side of the Single was And I Love You So. I remembered the song, but when I checked it out, that wasn’t the version I remembered. So at the site for that song, I saw that Perry Como had it as a huge hit, and that was in early 1973, and that was the song I remembered so well.

So now, I went looking for that song in the two lists of music charts I have. It was an Australia wide Number Two hit on our music charts here in Australia, and that was in the charts from June till September.

And that’s how I came to construct this Music Post for today. It bears no relationship to what I went looking for in the first place. So, after all of that, there was one stage in all of this where I had 28 separate tabs open on the menu bar at the top of the computer page here in front of me.

Okay, so this Perry Como cover version of this Don Mclean song. It was a surprise hit for Perry Como in 1973. When he first recorded this song, he was 60 years old. He had already had a huge career in music dating from 1932, so almost 40 years in the business with a huge number of hits across that legendary career. This was the last of his hits, and it went to Number One on the Easy Listening Chart for one week.

He kept recording and singing at live concerts for almost another 20 years after this recorded song, and this song was one he always sang at every one of those many concerts later in his 55 year career as a singing artist.

There are so many recorded versions of Perry singing this song, but this one is from a 1977 TV Special, Ann Margret: Rhinestone Cowgirl which was recorded at The Grand Ole Opry in Nashville.

Now, Isn’t music just so wonderful?

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

And the campaign has begun.

Arguably one could say the mid-term elections began the moment the 2024 election was over. But now, at last, the 2026 mid-term campaign is edging into public view.On Friday evening, there was President Trump campaigning in Suffern, New York for GOP Congressman Mike Lawler. Newsmax (where, full disclosure, I am a contributor) carried the Trump appearance in full on its Newsmax 2 streaming channel.

There was the President on live television at a rally, surrounded by thousands of supporters, pitching his cause and making his very serious, occasionally funny, pitch for not just Congressman Lawler but the larger GOP cause and his administration.

The dawning issue for the elitist media now will be: how much of this new Trump campaign will be carried? And when?

While the media is much more attracted to presidential campaigns, mid-term elections are covered as a test of the president’s political appeal as the president of the moment races from one state to another campaigning for this, that or another presidential favorite running for Senate, House or a governorship.

The opening shot in all of this, with Trump campaigning for Lawler and, of course, the GOP nominee for New York Governor, one Bruce Blakeman, the Nassau County executive, was the signal that in the Trump camp, the campaign is on. And appearances will not be, as the Rolling Stones used to sing, helter skelter.

Trump is certainly aware that his last two years as president will need support from Congress — both House and Senate. With back-up from GOP governors. Thus it was no accident that the star of this Trump rally was Congressman Lawler.

It is very safe to say that the media—particularly the liberal, Trump-hating media—is acutely aware of all this. And one can guess that the media coverage from that quarter will be highly selective as the days, weeks, and remaining months of the year in the run-up to the November election present themselves.

It is very safe to say that it will be telling from a media standpoint as to just how much and what kind of coverage there will be from the media. Having participated myself in presidential appearances for mid-term elections, the entire spectacle has long become a considerable circus. And it’s safe to say that when the president shows up in city that’s not as big as New York or Los Angeles, the appearance is quickly the big news in the surrounding area.

And it is also very safe to say that the national media is highly aware of all this. After all, they are ones being shuttled on a campaign plane – notably including but not limited to Air Force One. Then they are shuffled off and on to a bus or stashed in a presidential motorcade to make sure the local media is given considerable view of the local Congressman and the campaigning President.

Not to mention that in the doing the White House and, in this case, the Republican National Committee, are trying to construct a serious media theme and message that gets across the reason why the President wants candidate X elected to the House or Senate in November.

And, while it is often not anticipated, some event X out there can suddenly erupt in the middle of the campaign that can change the political lay of the land completely.

Not to—ahem!—date myself, but back in my literal childhood in 1962 when my geeky self was following the 1962 mid-terms exactly something like that happened. Suddenly, in the mist of the GOP campaigns to win congressional seats – and in California to elect former Vice President Richard Nixon as Governor of California – of a sudden there was Democrat President John F. Kennedy on the nation’s television screens to announce that he had discovered the Russians were in the process of installing long range nuclear missiles in Cuba, a mere 90 miles from America.

Suffice to say the focus suddenly shifted to what became a seriously serious showdown with the Russians, known now to history as “the Cuban Missile Crisis.” After several tense days and JFK’s promise that if any missile were launched on the U.S. there would be a full retaliatory attack from the U.S. on the Russian homeland, the world saw itself teetering on the brink of nuclear war. Everything stopped – and, blessedly, the Russians removed their missiles.

Americans, instantly overwhelmed by a combination of patriotism and fear, rallied to JFK and his Democrats in the mid-term elections. And oh yes, out there in California where JFK’s famous 1960 foe Richard Nixon was running for governor, Nixon’s candidacy abruptly went down in flames.

In 1986 the reverse occurred, as the Iran-Contra scandal exploded on the political scene during the fall campaign. And, as I can attest as a White House staffer at the time, GOP hopes of any GOP congressional gain went down the tubes as a result of all the seriously negative media coverage.

All of which is to say? The midterm election campaign, as seen this last week with a Trump campaign stop in New York, has begun. And without doubt, the media – the liberal media – will be there to inspect every presidential word, thought and grimace while on the mid-term campaign trail.

And as is occasionally noted in this quarter: buckle in. The media deluge is stirring.

Jeffrey Lord is a Contributing Writer for NewsBusters. Lord is a former White House political director in the Reagan White House and aide to HUD Secretary Jack Kemp.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

While even Democrats are mocking the 2024 “Autopsy” report that’s been publicly released by the Democratic National Committee, the most mockable passage may be about the state of the media, complete with the assumption that the media owners are primarily right-wingers (Page 40):

STATE OF MEDIA & COMMUNICATION

In the current media ecosystem, Republicans own and Democrats rent. Democracy pay for seasonal access to the networks, stations, platforms, and newspapers owned by Republicans or right-wing entities, to advertise and communicate with voters.

There’s a reason why the PDF that was shared says in red letters “Sourcing not provided for many claims in this section.” Start with the evidence that newspaper endorsements for president in 2024 were 54 for Kamala Harris and six for Trump, and that’s factoring in that the left-tilting Los Angeles Times and Washington Post were prevented by their owners from endorsing Harris as they had wanted.

A flurry of other newspapers that endorsed Biden in 2020 stiffed Kamala Harris, including the The Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, The Des Moines Register, the Detroit Free Press, the Omaha World-Herald, and the Tampa Bay Times. The most surprising on the list — The Minnesota Star Tribune — in a year when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz was on the ticket.

None of this considers the actual news stories in these outlets, just the presumed conservatism of wealthy media owners. Anyone reading The Washington Post in 2024 was subjective to heavy-handed anti-Trump reports. This “right-wing media” argument continued:

A major share of Democratic fundraising comes from individuals and low-dollar contributions. Within the current approach to paid media, Democrats are essentially raising billions of dollars from retirees, activists, working Americans, and organized labor, and transferring most of it to the pockets of legacy and digital media oligarchs. In a sense, Democrats are funding right-wing media to buy more properties and expand their ability to drive partisan perspectives.

With a free and fair press, Democrats have a shot to make their case. When publishers and owners have a partisan point of view, it’s more difficult for Democrats to break through.

As if Democrats really suffer from media “with a partisan point of view”?

The Autopsy team were upset that their campaigns were squeezed out of the digital ad market and had to dump money into commercial and cable TV, which is not where their younger voters live.

PS: On Page 57, the Autopsy writers were upset about apparent misinformation and those “independent fact checkers.”

There are many organizations dedicated to correcting the record and supporting an affirmative argument for Democrats. In recent years, it’s become apparent how fact-checking can be perceived as counterproductive by bringing more attention to the underlying smear. 

Countering false information comes down to both making an affirmative case and pushing back on the motivations behind the smears, rather than responding to the lack of substantive truth. Research has shown “Fact-checking will not stop the spread of misinformation if the need to signal one’s politics, derogate the opposition, or generate chaos is a more powerful motivator than truth.”

They linked to a report by Aaron Tiedemann titled “Why Americans Crave Fake News,” where he explicitly argued that PolitiFact or Reuters will fail to inhibit Trump because Trump voters do not trust them.

Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Every March and November, Americans dread the notification in their inbox or on the news to “Remember to change your clocks!” Most of us rely on the adage “Fall back in fall—spring forward in spring” to sort out the confusion of which way the clock is moving. But you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who gets excited about the biannual shift.

Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., on May 19, 2026, in the District of Columbia. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

However, many Americans do love the later hours of sunlight daylight saving time affords. With equal fervor, others, particularly older people, dislike the thought of getting up in the dark that accompanies it.

It is this lack of consensus, as well as significant pushback from health experts, that has stalled the Sunshine Protection Act (HR 139) in the House Energy and Commerce Committee since the beginning of 2025. The broader effort to pass similar versions of the bill has been ongoing since 2018.

Now, it looks as if the sun will rise again on an amendment to make DST permanent for all states, and without much notice.

The House Committee on Energy and Commerce late Tuesday night announced a markup meeting for Thursday, May 21, at 10 a.m. On the agenda was a proposal to fold the language of the Sunshine Protection Act into the Motor Vehicle Modernization Act (HR 7389).

This latest attempt would mandate permanent daylight saving time in all states that don’t self-exempt before its effective date, and it would prevent self-exemption after its effective date.

The debate is not whether to stop changing the clocks every March and November. Most people, including members of Congress and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, despise the biannual switch. It’s which “version” of time to keep.

The issue doesn’t fall along traditional party lines. It’s not a Right or Left issue. It’s more of a “north vs. south” battle.

Both aforementioned politicians who want to “lock the clock” on daylight saving time are from states below the Mason-Dixon line, as are many of the supporters of the act. States such as Florida, South Carolina, and Alabama feel the warmth of the sun for more time every day in the winter months.

Although the disparity is flipped in the summer because of the Earth’s tilt, Northern states would really bear the brunt of permanent daylight savings time in winter, with the sun not rising in winter until 9 a.m. in some locations. That’s brutal for school-aged kids and anyone who does not have the luxury of sleeping in until the sun rises, and many Northern state legislatures, including Massachusetts, New York, and Alaska, oppose the change.

This is not merely a geographic issue—it is a fundamental tradeoff between public health and commercial interests.

Congress expanded daylight saving time in two phases: first in 1986, when it moved the start from late April to early April, and again in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which shifted the schedule beginning in 2007 to run from the second Sunday in March through the first Sunday in November.

These decisions were not based on human health, grassroots demand, or even policy to save energy, as some claim. They were made as concessions to the candy and golf industries.

Both major extensions of daylight-saving time were driven by targeted lobbying. In the mid‑1980s, a coalition of commercial interests—retail and Chamber of Commerce groups, outdoor recreation industries, and tourism businesses—pushed Congress to extend DST beginning earlier in April to make more money during the evening hours.

The 2005 expansion was heavily backed by the golf industry as well as retail and outdoor recreation groups. The National Confectioner’s Association also supported pushing the DST calendar past Halloween because its members stood to benefit from an extra hour of trick-or-treating—and candy consumption.

Politicians like Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., claim that it is “better for our physical and mental health” to have more sunshine in the later hours. This is consistently proven false by medical experts. In fact, the data points to the exact opposite.

Misalignment of clocks from the sun’s natural position in the sky has been estimated to decrease sleep duration by an average of 19 minutes every night throughout the duration of the DST observation, per a 2019 study. Such misalignment has been found to decrease productivity and earnings up to 4.5%, per a 2015 study. Even worse, this misalignment has also been observed to increase fatal vehicular accidents significantly, by 21.8%, resulting in an average loss of $1.8 billion annually, per a 2022 study.

According to a position statement from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, permanent standard time should replace daylight savings time due to “evidence [that] supports the distinct benefits of standard time for health and safety, while also underscoring the potential harms that result from seasonal time changes to and from daylight savings time.”

Despite the testimony of experts, many in Congress have unabashedly claimed it is great for communities’ bottom line with “more business” to “boost the economy.” However, one study shows that worker productivity decreases during the transition to daylight saving time.  Plus, the MAHA movement has made clear that sacrificing Americans’ health to boost consumption (particularly candy!) and line industry pockets is not a tradeoff politicians should make.

Jay Pea, founder of Save Standard Time, a nonprofit organization based in Arizona (one of only two states that do not recognize daylight saving time), says standard time is aligned with long-held wisdom.

“When I was a child, my great-grandfather, a farmer, taught me to tell time from the sun’s position in the sky,” Pea says. “Standard time approximates solar time, but daylight savings time works against our circadian rhythms and natural health.”

The push to standardize what is not standard—or healthy—is a mistake, particularly for certain geographic areas that will suffer the most. Public policy should reflect the natural order—not manipulate it for profit.

Jennifer Galardi is a senior policy analyst, Restoring American Wellness at The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation  . http://www.heritage.org/

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal    http://dailysignal.com/

If historical revisionism were an addiction, the pompous charlatans in left-wing media would all be institutionalized.The New Republic Editor Michael Tomasky came out with a bumptious screed lecturing Americans for not voting the correct way in his view: “When Will Americans Realize the Truth? Republicans Wreck the Economy.” Yes, he actually wrote that with a straight face and treated the 4 years of inflationary disaster under President Joe Biden as if they didn’t exist.

Tomasky doubled down on making himself look completely foolish by selling blue pills as if they were red pills: “Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy? I doubt it.”

So are Americans just supposed to memory-hole the then 40-year high inflation crisis brought on by Biden and the Federal Reserve’s multitrillion-dollar spending policies? How about when gas prices hit over $5 a gallon on average in 2022? For context, this spike happened without the massive intercontinental conflict in which the U.S. and Israel sought to dismantle Iran’s Islamist regime — even as Russia waged its regional war in Ukraine while Biden banned Russian oil imports. What’s crazy is that this is public record, and yet Tomasky still maintained the temerity to whine about how the Iran war “has shot gas prices up near $5 a gallon in most places.” Short-term memory or willful ignorance? You decide.

How about when the 30-year fixed mortgage rate went over seven percent at least twice under Biden and completely priced out younger Americans seeking to be first-time homebuyers? The America First Policy Institute noted in January 2025 that “the median age of first-time homebuyer[s] reach[ed] a record 40 years old.”

Tomasky didn’t address any of this, of course, including the damning statistic that more than half of Americans were struggling under Biden to pay their bills and save money, as Bloomberg News reported November 19, 2024. Instead, he had the audacity to spin how “Trump inherited an economy from Joe Biden that was perhaps not firing on all cylinders but was in pretty good shape all the same.” Maybe Tomasky would actually believe this if he had been living under a rock the past few years, and that may have well been the case, as his only apparent beef with Democrats was that they were not being effective enough in telling Americans the “truth” about Republicans:

The idea that the party of big business must surely be more trustworthy on economic policy just seems intuitively right to most, and the Democrats, in their typical way, have done a horrible job explaining this truth to people. Still—the evidence is getting hard to ignore, so perhaps there’s some hope.

The shamelessness here is unreal. In Tomasky’s view of the illusory positives of Bidenomics, “Real GDP grew at 2.8 percent in 2024. Wages were growing at a higher rate, 4.8 percent. Inflation closed out 2024 at 2.9 percent—high, but way down from the 7 percent of 2021.” But as always with narratives churned out from the left, the devil is in the details.  With regards to GDP, Tomasky didn’t mention how much of that so-called growth was caused by a supernova-like explosion in government debt. As economist Daniel Lacalle wrote November 17, 2024, an “unsustainable increase in government spending and federal debt bloated the official GDP, making gross domestic income significantly weaker than headline GDP.”

As far as inflation is concerned, consumer prices had shot up 21 percent higher on average than when Biden first took office. But you wouldn’t know that reading Tomasky’s drivel. With regards to wages, the former Newsweek scribe was just being flat-out deceptive. Data from Statista released Inauguration Day 2025 found that the “largest blemish” on Biden’s legacy was that — *checks notes* — “Wages Haven’t Kept Up With Inflation.” Go figure! His concluding flex reinforced his headline treating Americans who remember the years of Bidenflation as too dumb to know what’s good for them:

The Democrats need a 2028 standard-bearer who will say these things over and over until they get pounded into the heads of those famous low-information swing voters they end up relentlessly chasing after every fourth November. The lie has persisted long enough. If it takes $7 gas for people to realize it, I’ll happily pay it. Democrats—and reality—must bury this myth once and for all.

The Left is always blaming “low-information swing voters” for swinging the wrong way. Voting for the Democrats, in their upside-down world, somehow proves you’re a “high-information voter.”

Joseph Vazquez is the MRC Business Associate Editor for the News Analysis Division. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in 2018. In June, 2019, he completed an exclusive fellowship with the Hertog Foundation, where he participated in their “Nuclear Strategy and World Order” program. For MRC Business, he oversees projects and media coverage concerning dark money, political spending, economics and finance.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

Allegations of salmon recovery grant fraud and mismanagement center on billions of federal dollars in public funds failing to restore declining populations, with critics alleging misused funds, misrepresented projects, and ineffective, self-perpetuating, science-grant ecosystems.Fraud issues include lawsuits over stolen funds, claims of fictitious habitat improvements, and concerns of money being diverted to personal expenses. But waste is the big issue because despite many billions being spent over many years, there has been no recovery. The recovery program has failed.

The Pacific salmon recovery program dominates federal Endangered Species Act (ESA) spending. It accounts for well over half of all federal ESA funding and has done so for many years.

For details on federal ESA spending, see the report referenced in my recent article,”Over $1 billion per year spent on Endangered Species Act.”

The report is “Report to Congress on Federal and State Endangered and Threatened Species Expenditures.” It is for FY 2020 because that seems to be the last time this annual report was published, despite being required by law.

Table 2 of this report supposedly lists federal spending by species ranked from most to least. I say supposedly because there is actually a game being played by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), which does the report.

It does not list the salmon spending by species. It lists them by geographical population. There are many of these so the total spending by salmon species does not appear. All we see are much smaller totals for individual populations.

In fact, the FWS and NOAA repeatedly say they jointly “manage 28 species of salmon and steelhead.” There are only four salmon species under ESA management — chinook, coho, chub, and sockeye. Steelhead is even worse because it is not a species. Steelheads are rainbow trout that happen to spend most of their lives in the ocean, but I digress.

A map and listing titled “West Coast Region Salmon & Steelhead Recovery Domains” can be seen here.

Table 2 uses an even finer population breakdown, so that 51 of the first 66 entries are either salmons or steelheads, and most of the billion plus dollars is gone. In short, most of the so-called Endangered Species Act Program is actually the Salmon and Steelhead Recovery Program, and there has been no recovery.

Here are some articles that speak to this failure as a waste of taxpayer’s money.

“The U.S. Has Spent More Than $2 Billion on a Plan to Save Salmon. The Fish Are Vanishing Anyway” found here.

Actually, the populations are not vanishing, they are just not increasing and may be slowly falling. Most are listed as threatened, not endangered. See the map referenced above for each population’s rating.

Here is an older article: “Failing Salmon Recovery Efforts are Costing Taxpayers Billions”

They say it very well: “Over the last two decades, federal agencies have spent more than $8 billion on efforts to restore salmon to the Columbia and Snake River Basin. But, in spite of this spending, salmon populations continue to decline. In fact, a comprehensive review by the Government Accountability Office found that from 1982-2002 there was no “conclusive evidence” that any of the federal efforts to restore salmon had been successful.”

It is entirely possible that these salmon (and steelhead) populations are mostly exhibiting natural variability such that spending our billions has no effect. (If so, it is very much like the climate change case.)

In fact, the latest newsletter from NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center describes a dramatic, ongoing 16-year collapse in a fishery that appears to be entirely natural. Natural populations can fluctuate hugely over long-time scales.

If the population changes are mostly natural, then the ESA Salmon Recovery Program is a waste of billions of federal dollars.

Dr David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT, working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. His specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment. As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning. This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Hey, sorry readers, I’ve been offline for two days now and I’m back today.

My Sister from Perth is visiting, or as they say ….. ‘Coming East’. I visited her during March of last year, and now she has visited here for 18 days. First up, she visited our Sister in Canberra, then went to Rockhampton to visit her Son for four days, and she spent five days here with our other Sister and me. She was accompanied on this long trip by her Daughter. Now,why they say Coming East is because where she lives in a Northern suburb of Perth in Western Australia, is on the other side of our vast Continent of Australia, so she lives 2,250 miles from me, and the map shows it better, with her home (near the black arrow, and mine near the red arrow) so almost an equivalent distance of Los Angeles to Washington, as you can see, and yes, they are the correct sizes for the two Countries.

The unluckiest part of this trip for her is that for the five days she was here with me and my other Sister, it rained, and here, I’m not talking showers, because this was pretty solid rain. On the Sunday we had around 25mm, and that’s an inch. On the Monday we had around 150mm, so six inches, and on Tuesday, we had another 75mm, so three more inches. So, all up, it’s been the biggest rain dump in a very long time.

Which sort of ruined things a little. I was going to take them for a day visit up to O’Reilly’s Rainforest Retreat, and have some lunch, walk the path to, and then along the fabulous Treetop Walk, and also visit the gift shop. It’s a drive of a little longer than an hour and a half to get there and then the same for the trip home, so it is a full day out in fact. Now here, that word ….. rainforest offers a clue, because on those same days, they actually had more rain up there than we had down here. The roads were closed because of flooding as most rivers and creeks in this area came up in flash flooding, so we couldn’t have made the drive even had we wanted to.

That walk in the Treetops is a ‘bucket list’ thing here in Australia, one that not many people get to experience, as the road to the resort, the last 25 miles from Canungra up the Mountain and into the National Park is marginal to say the best, and they’ve kept it that way so visitors have to really want to go there, and that last 25 miles of road are twists and turns and single lanes, and just that distance can take sometimes an hour. However, any visit to O’Reilly’s is so well worth it. I’ve been there a number of times now over the last 55 years, and the most recent visit was for four days in January of last year. If you want to read about that there are two Posts at these links, (Part One and Part Two) and there are a number of images with each of those Posts, and some detail and images about that Treetop Walk.

So, the blinding rain during our visit.

We got together, the four of us and talked, as you might expect. However, we also played board games, and that’s something I haven’t done for so many years now. We ended up playing four different board games in four sessions across two of the days, and I’d forgotten just how much fun it was playing board games, You get to talk during the games, so it serves a dual purpose.

So, it wasn’t such a let down after all.

And now, I’m back on line here.

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

After years of efforts by radical greens to strangle America’s oil, gas, and coal industries — while forcing the nation to accept costly, land-devouring wind and solar — the U.S. is once again emerging as a global energy superpower.And this time, it’s not just fossil fuels: In fact, nuclear power is taking center stage.

Tennessee is poised to become the world’s leading hub for nuclear innovation, thanks to Trump administration policies and state leaders willing to back real energy solutions over climate virtue-signaling. Public and private investments are now flowing into advanced reactors, uranium enrichment, and next-generation nuclear technologies.

The Kairos Power Hermes 2 salt-cooled nuclear reactor demonstration plant has already broken ground and is expected to deliver 50 megawatts of reliable electricity to the Tennessee Valley Authority grid by 2030.

Meanwhile, GE Vernova Hitachi plans to invest $40 billion in two small modular reactors — one in Tennessee and one in Alabama. These projects will create 2,000 construction jobs, hundreds of manufacturing jobs, 600 permanent plant jobs, and roughly 65 additional local jobs for every 100 jobs at the reactors themselves.

America’s uranium industry, nearly wiped out during the COVID pandemic, is also roaring back. The Trump administration has approved permits for new uranium mining and enrichment projects, while the Tennessee Valley Authority and Centrus Energy partnership plans to invest $560 million in a major uranium enrichment facility at Oak Ridge. That means less dependence on Canada, Kazakhstan, and Russia for critical nuclear fuel.

Even more exciting, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is moving toward construction of a “commercially relevant” nuclear fusion power plant in Virginia capable of generating up to 400 megawatts of electricity later this decade. The plant is expected to produce more tritium fuel than it consumes.

Together with a resurgence in oil, natural gas, and coal production, these developments will unleash American energy, manufacturing, innovation, and job creation while lowering electricity prices and reducing blackout risks for families and businesses alike. They also send a clear warning to America’s blue states: If you cling to anti-energy ideology, you will be left behind.

Democrat-controlled states remain obsessed with eliminating fossil fuels in favor of wind, solar, and battery systems — supposedly to prevent climate catastrophe. In the process, they ignore the devastating economic damage inflicted on working families and the environmental destruction caused by massive wind and solar projects. Worse, the supposed climate benefits from any individual state’s emissions cuts are effectively meaningless — undetectable against constantly changing global climate systems and constantly rising global greenhouse gas emissions.

Forty years ago, blackouts were routine for India’s 950 million citizens. Today, despite adding another half-billion people, it has made power outages a rarity. Why? Because India built hundreds of coal-fired power plants. China is doing the same thing on an even larger scale.

As energy analyst Vijay Jayaraj observes, Africans from east to west to south are rejecting permanent poverty imposed in the name of climate orthodoxy. Across the continent, nations are embracing oil, natural gas, coal, and nuclear power because they know abundant, affordable energy is “the only proven path to prosperity.”

Those policies are lifting billions of people out of poverty, disease, malnutrition, and premature death.

Meanwhile, many Europeans are finally waking up to the disastrous consequences of green energy fanaticism: soaring electricity prices, shuttered industries, destroyed jobs, landscapes marred by wind turbines and solar panels, families unable to heat or cool their homes — and rising deaths linked to energy poverty.

Unfortunately, Europe’s ruling elites remain trapped in their climate obsessions. But perhaps some American blue-state governors and legislators will eventually abandon ideology and start governing responsibly.

Electricity prices in Northeastern states are roughly twice those in much of the Midwest and South — and they are still climbing. Even Democratic governors are now quietly delaying or abandoning once-sacred green energy mandates, or at least hinting they may do so.

Some are cautiously reconsidering nuclear power. A few may even join President Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright in supporting new pipelines from Pennsylvania’s shale fields to deliver abundant, reliable, affordable natural gas for heating, cooking, and electricity generation — and thus for lights, refrigeration, computers, entertainment, and air conditioning.

If they fail to follow through, their residents will remain dependent on overpriced Canadian gas and electricity, fuel shipped from Texas, or extremely expensive liquefied natural gas imports from Norway and Russia.

Residents of New York and other states could also face the nightmare confronting roughly 40,000 angry residents of Co-Op City in the Bronx. New York City climate mandates demand that the entire complex convert entirely to electric heating by 2035. Between the costs of heat pumps, system retrofits, shutting down an efficient combined heat-and-power gas plant, and purchasing expensive wind-solar-battery electricity, monthly fees for a one-bedroom unit could skyrocket from $950 to nearly $4,000.

And then they’d have to rely on wind and solar, which will appear when Mother Nature chooses to cooperate, regardless of when they need electricity or how much they need.

America finally has a chance to reject decades of energy deprivation and economic self-sabotage. Nations that embrace abundant, reliable, affordable energy prosper. Nations that worship Net Zero mandates decline.

Thankfully, America is beginning to choose wisely.

This article originally appeared at The Hill

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” starring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

This series of posts continues the data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia over the last five years. Each Monday, the Long Term Capacity Factor percentages will be updated. They will show two percentages for that Capacity Factor, the first for the most recent 52 week year, and the second percentage for the long term for the overall total number of weeks of data collection.

Link to Post on how these figures for the Wind Generation Capacity Factors are calculated

Link to Introductory Post ***** Link to each of the weekly update posts ***** Link to all earlier Data Posts (1153Posts)

What Is Capacity Factor.

Capacity Factor is the relationship between total generated power and the Nameplate for a power generation source.

That current Nameplate (as at 6 October 2024) for wind in Australia of 13,460MW from 91 Industrial Wind Plants, so, with the current 30% Capacity Factor, then the actual generated power is only an average of 4038MW.

The total Nameplate for all these wind plants changes as each new wind plant comes on line, delivering power to the grid.

As each new Wind Plant comes on line, I will detail that new addition here, and change the data calculations accordingly to reflect that change.

Wind Nameplate change from beginning of data collection on Monday 1 October 2018 – (then) 5301MW – (now) 13460MW – (Change) +8159MW (an increase of 154%)

The Table below shows the current week ending date, the Total Generated Power across that week, the calculated Average Power (worked out from the Total Generated Power) the Capacity Factor for that week, and the total generated power as a percentage of the overall total power consumption used by the Grid.

Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 30.12% (Last Week – 30.06%)

Long Term Capacity Factor – 397 weeks – 29.69% (Last Week – 29.68%)

Comments for this weekly Update.

During this last week, there were four days when wind generation was higher than the daily average, and on two of those days, it was well above average. On the other three days it was below average, and on two of those days, less than half the average. So, overall, across the whole week, wind generation was a little higher than the average for the week. Because of that, the metric used for comparison over time, the important Capacity Factor percentages rose marginally for both the full long term Capacity Factor, and the most recent percentage for the last 52 week yearly figure.

*****

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

OzWindPowerGenerationTFOb

Back in January 2025, during the confirmation process for President Trump’s Cabinet nominees, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso condemned the Biden Administration’s “regulatory rampage” that resulted in “painfully high prices for food and fuel.”Barrasso called energy “the master resource” and linked control of energy production the key to controlling the nation’s future.

And then he said, “Governor Doug Burgum and Chris Wright will treat American energy as the God-given blessing it is.”

According to President Trump, he wanted Burgum for Energy Secretary until Burgum said, “You gotta get this guy Chris Wright…. I’m good, but he’s better.”

Burgum is the one who told Trump to hire Wright for the energy job, the president regularly says. “Doug said, ‘You gotta get this guy Chris Wright,’” Trump said in a January Cabinet meeting. Trump recalled telling Burgum, “But I want you to run energy.” Burgum said, “Well, I’m good at it, but he’s better.”

Burgum became Interior Secretary and Wright was approved as Energy Secretary. The President has praised both repeatedly, while adding EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to the team that is cutting regulations, opening lands and waters for exploration and development, and making deals left and right to stimulate the nation’s energy sector.

Immediately after his confirmation, Burgum signed a series of orders aimed at unleashing the full energy potential of public lands in Alaska and eliminating “harmful, coercive climate policies” from the Biden era.

By April 2025, Burgum was implementing Trump’s executive order “Unleashing American Energy” in announcing alternative NEPA procedures with a review cap of 28 days to expedite approvals for essential energy infrastructure and critical minerals development.

At the same time, Interior revised its policy on offshore drilling to allow an increase in pressure differential from 200 psi to 1,500 psi – a move predicted to enable a 10% increase in oil production (an extra 100,000 barrels per day), and up to 61% more oil over a 30-year period.

Meanwhile, Wright’s first order directed the DOE to “unleash a golden era of American energy dominance.”  One major step was authorizing or reauthorizing more than 17.6 billion cubic feet per day of LNG exports – more than 70% greater than the world’s second-largest LNG supplier.

To make that possible, Energy removed Biden regulatory orders blocking LNG exports, including one banning the use of LNG as a marine fuel to power vessels. That led to a June 2025 commitment by Japanese energy company JERA to procure up to 5.5 million metric tons per year of LNG, adding up to $200 billion to America’s GPD and supporting more than 50,000 American jobs per year.

In October, Burgum aides met with Alaska officials to announce Interior was reopening the Costal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas leasing and completing right-of-way permits for the Ambler Road, projects stalled in the Biden era.

A January 2026 DOE fact sheet reported that U.S. crude oil production set an all-time record of 13.6 million barrels per day in 2025 and that natural gas production was expected to reach an all-time high of 109 billion cubic feet per day in 2026. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve, significantly depleted in the Biden era as a brake on gasoline prices, was being refilled.

Then the U.S. and Israel determined it was necessary to cripple the Iranian regime, a move that eventually resulted in a double blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and crippled Iranian oil production. The move came shortly after the capture of Venezuelan dictator Maduro, which led to U.S. hegemony over Venezuela’s massive oil reserves.

Gasoline prices, which had fallen below $3 per gallon, roared about $4, and Politico declared that Trump’s “Tiger Team” (Burgum and Wright) appeared “flummoxed” by the surge in global oil prices – and, as Biden had done, Trump authorized releases of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. [Now he wants to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the duration of the Iran campaign.]

With the blockade continuing, and Iran’s fractured leadership remaining uncooperative, the fate of oil shipments through the Persian Gulf remains uncertain. But even that “blip” has led to increased demand for U.S. crude, to the delight especially of Gulf Coast refineries.

While Asian refineries were forced to cut production to circa 84% of capacity, U.S refinery utilization moved to 92% and Gulf Coast refineries jumped 5% to 95% of capacity in March – and still going strong.

Meanwhile, Burgum and Wright have kept pushing the envelope – even venturing into unfriendly territory to lower energy prices in the Northeast. On April 14, the Tiger Team was joined by Zeldin in a groundbreaking ceremony for the Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE) pipeline that will transport natural gas from Pennsylvania into New York City and Long Island.

To the consternation of climate activists, New York Governor Kathy Hochul reversed the state’s policy of banning pipeline construction (perhaps in return for Washington allowing an offshore wind project). Hochul would later soften the blow by repealing a rule that allowed gas utilities to charge ratepayers for pipeline expansions.

On April 28, Wright announced billions of dollars of private capital investment in the Central and Eastern European region, including the formal launch of the Trump Peace Pipelines Framework that is aimed at enabling construction of natural gas infrastructure to receive LNG from the U.S. The U.S. needs those markets, as it is now leading the world in LNG exports (so quickly after the Biden ban) and producing as much natural gas as Russia, China, and Iran combined.

Earlier this month, the DOE announced a $36 million grant to the University of North Dakota’s Energy and Environmental Research Center to advance commercial deployment of enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technologies in the Bakken Shale formation. While the Bakken holds potential to unlock billions of barrels of oil, currently only about 10% of the oil in unconventional shale formations is recovered.

And on May 11, Burgum told Breitbart News that royalties from oil and gas and minerals production on federal lands help support conservation, wildlife, and national parks (whereas prior administrations fought against minerals development on federal lands).

Burgum, who doubles as Chair of the National Energy Dominance Council, pointed to the Carlsbad district in New Mexico that had 5,600 unprocessed applications for drilling permits at the end of the Biden presidency despite federal laws requiring quarterly lease sales.

By knocking down 91% of these unprocessed permits, Interior has increased royalty payments and vastly improved its financial position after four years of declining revenues. Actions by Interior to increase production in the Gulf of America and on federal lands enable Interior to improve national parks, forests, and monuments.

By listening to Burgum and choosing Wright to lead the Energy Department, President Trump ensured that his Cabinet would work closely together toward his goal of energy dominance – a critical foundation for achieving Trump’s foreign and domestic policy goals.

But only if the Tiger Team’s work aids the Republican Party’s success in the November Congressional elections will the Trump energy revolution be able to continue unabated.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundations, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Summer is nearly here and a hard-left Los Angeles city council member has proposed something that the people have surely been yearning for: banning backyard barbecues.

Yes, really.

Los Angeles Councilmember Nithya Raman (Maxwell/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who is also running for mayor, introduced a motion on Wednesday to ban backyard barbecues during certain high fire danger days in the city, the California Post reported.

The motion was blocked by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who told the California Post, “the last thing Angelenos need is a ban on hosting a carne asada in their own backyard.” Rodriguez added that the law would have been entirely disconnected from how people live.

“We’re not checking the weather for red flag conditions before planning a backyard barbecue,” Rodriguez said. “This is what families do. Birthday parties. Carne asadas. Family gatherings. A lot of people barbecue.”

No kidding.

That’s common sense. But not to the left-wing busybody overlords who foist these niggling and obnoxious regulations on society while ignoring the massive consequences of their own policies.

And that’s what is so outrageous here in a move that is deeply illustrative of leftist governance.

First, let’s get one thing out of the way. The infamous Palisades Fire that raged out of control and devastated countless homes in Los Angeles didn’t happen because of a barbecue or “climate change.” It was allegedly started by a left-wing agitator who wanted to be a kleptomaniac version of Luigi Mangioni.

Jonathan Rinderknecht, the 20-year-old Uber driver charged with setting the fire was reportedly motivated by his hatred of the “rich.” Then the fire raged out of control because of the LA government’s incompetence.

Southern California isn’t otherwise facing a scourge of fires caused by backyard barbecues.

In fact, as National Review pointed out, not a single big fire can be attributed to the recent big blazes that have rocked the state. Most have been caused by lightning strikes, downed power lines, and arson. They’ve raged out of control often because of poor forest and water management.

But there is another huge cause of fires that LA simply refuses to address.

A far larger problem than barbecues is the fires ignited in the countless homeless encampments that dot the city of Los Angeles and other cities. The LA Fire Department has noted that this is a huge and growing problem that seriously taxes city resources.

According to ABC 7 Eyewitness News, a records request for “Homeless or Encampment Related” fires turned up a staggering 75,000 incidents since 2020.

“The numbers fluctuate month-to-month, but the trend is unmistakable,” ABC 7 reported. “In 2020, LAFD logged 7,165 homeless-related fires. From January through mid-December 2025, that number climbed to 16,982, an average of 46 fires every day in the city of Los Angeles. Most of these fires are small and quickly extinguished, but some spread with devastating consequences.”

Despite this obvious problem, the city refuses to remove the encampments. They insist the issue is housing. Yet despite their programs to increase housing for the homeless, the fire problem increases. In fact, going by this data, the number of incidents more than doubled in five years.

Here’s what one homeowner said of a nearby homeless encampment to ABC 7 in that investigative piece: “I spoke to LAPD to kick them out and they did nothing, and my house burned, and my dogs are dead.”

That fire was caused by homeless squatters allegedly setting fire to a house next door. According to the New York Post, “the police said the squatters couldn’t be arrested without any criminal record.”

Keep in mind that the problem caused by these homeless encampments extends well beyond the deadly fires. The entire emergency response system bends to the consequences.

The New York Post noted that the sheer volume of calls to the homeless encampments is causing slower response times.

“One fire station in south Los Angeles, for example, responded to 78 fires all due to one encampment beneath Harbor Freeway on King Boulevard,” the Post reported. “Ambulances had to be sent for each of those calls.”

If the response of city leaders was merely to fiddle as LA burned, that would be bad enough. But it wasn’t. Instead, they insist on doing nothing, then taking away the liberties of normal, law-abiding people.

This phenomenon is sometimes called “anarcho-tyranny,” and I think the word is apt. Behaviors leftists approve of are given free reign, everything else is tightly (and often ruthlessly) regulated.

These policies defy common sense, but they define left-wing governance. For the cause of social justice we must all suffer and pay the price.

I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to keep my barbecue and the Spirit of ’76.

Jarrett Stepman is a columnist for The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation  . http://www.heritage.org/ He is also the author of the book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.”

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal    http://dailysignal.com/

President Donald Trump said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping has committed to purchasing American energy commodities, soybeans, and jets.

In an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Trump said Beijing would buy 200 Boeing 737 jets, as well as soybeans, oil, liquefied natural gas, and other energy commodities.

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. (Kenny Holston/ AFP/Getty Images)

“We had a very good meeting, but we want things from them,” Trump said. “One thing he agreed to today is he’s going to order 200 jets from Boeing.”

Boeing wanted China to buy 150 jets, but China agreed to exceed that number, Trump said. The CEO of Boeing, Kelly Ortberg, joined Trump on the trip, along with other aerospace and defense, technology, and fintech industry leaders.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had previously said he expected to see “large Boeing orders” as a result of the China trip.

Trump said the investment will create many American jobs. The Chinese leader also promised not to send military equipment to Iran.

“He said he’s not going to give military equipment,” Trump told Hannity. “That’s a big statement. He said that today.”

“He said that strongly, but at the same time he said, you know, they buy a lot of their oil there and they’d like to keep doing that. He’d like to see Hormuz Strait opened,” he continued.

Trump and Xi held a two-hour-and-15-minute bilateral meeting on Thursday.

The two leaders “agreed that the Strait of Hormuz must remain open to support the free flow of energy,” a White House official said.

“President Xi also made clear China’s opposition to the militarization of the Strait and any effort to charge a toll for its use, and he expressed interest in purchasing more American oil to reduce China’s dependence on the Strait in the future,” the official continued.

According to Chinese state media Xinhua, Xi, referring to Taiwan, told Trump: “If handled poorly, the two countries could collide or even enter into conflict, pushing the entire China-U.S. relationship into an extremely dangerous place.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, accompanying Trump in China, confirmed to NBC News that the issue of Taiwan was discussed, saying the Chinese “always raise it on their side, we always make clear our position, and we move on to the other topics.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal . http://dailysignal.com/

Don’t cure cancer because it would devastate the cancer industry! Don’t improve healthcare access because you’ll hurt the funeral industry! That’s the kind of brain hurt logic NPR employed to decry President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as a devastating blow to the U.S. economy.“The economic chilling effect of Trump’s immigration crackdown,” read NPR reporter Greg Rosalsky’s incoherent May 12 headline.

Rosalsky flailed over Trump’s ICE raids in Little Village, Chicago: “Many in the community seemed to be scared to go about business as usual. There seemed to be a clear ‘chilling effect’ on their economic activity — like going to work, shopping, eating out, and so on.” To insulate his argument to make it seem like it wasn’t coming out of left field, Rosalsky relied on the musings of liberal University Colorado Boulder economist Chloe East, who snorted to him that “mass deportations in Trump 2.0 are not helping the labor market overall and not creating more job opportunities for U.S.-born workers.” As late economist Henry Hazlitt put it, “The bad economist sees only what immediately strikes the eye; the good economist also looks beyond.” Jeez-a-loo!

The implication of course is that keeping illegal immigration via cheap labor unchecked is somehow a net positive for the economy. As Rosalsky blurted out in whipping out the tired old leftist hat trick of not treating “immigrant” and “illegal immigrant” as mutually exclusive:

[East] and her co-author find evidence that, if anything, the clampdown has hurt the employment prospects of U.S.-born workers, particularly working-class men who work in industries that are heavily reliant on undocumented workers, like construction … [I]t adds to a large and growing body of evidence that, actually, immigration helps grow core industries and the overall economy, which creates jobs and has other benefits for native workers.

This is stupid on so many levels. Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Research Director Steven A. Camarota testified to a U.S. House Oversight subcommittee hearing in 2024 that the “notion that illegal immigrants do only the jobs Americans don’t want is false.” Camerota analyzed, “Prior analysis shows that out of 474 civilian occupations as defined by [the] Department of Commerce, only six are majority immigrant (legal and illegal). These six account for 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce.” No need to explain further how this completely undercuts Rosalsky’s propaganda and East’s missing the forest for the trees comments.

In fact, Camerota stated unequivocally, “There are no occupations in the United States in which a majority of workers are illegal immigrants.” What Rosalsky (and East by extension) are doing is the equivalent of kvetching over the side effects of chemotherapy while bypassing the long term devastation of Stage Four cancer. Camerota explained the disastrous effects of unchecked illegal immigration, which ballooned heavily under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden:

The negative fiscal impact of illegal immigrants — taxes paid minus benefits received — is primarily due their modest average education level. Some 69 percent of adult illegal immigrants are estimated to have no education beyond high school, which is double the U.S.-born share. This results in relatively low average incomes and tax payments, along with significant use of welfare.

In 2023, the Federation for American Immigration Reform estimated based on a juxtaposition between national, state and local expenditures on illegal immigrants and federal/state tax revenues received from them that the total fiscal burden to U.S. taxpayers was a whopping $150.7 billion. Not exactly chump change. Another analysis by CIS author Eric Gordy in 2024 revealed that “the foreign-born population has increased by 6.6 million since 2021, with 58% of this increase coming from illegal immigration. This massive population influx has increased the demand for housing, worsening the existing shortage.”

To emphasize the ludicrousness of Rosalsky’s argument further, it’s worth considering U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’s recently announced six-month moratorium on hospice care applications to address the widening fraud epidemic happening in that industry bilking the U.S. taxpayer. Using Rosalsky’s logic, addressing fraud risks devastating the fraudulent hospice industry in the same way immigration law enforcement risks “chilling” businesses hooked on illegal labor.

See the problem yet? Frederic Bastiat called. He wants his Broken Window Fallacy back.

CNSNews Managing Editor Craig Bannister contributed to this report.

Joseph Vazquez is the MRC Business Associate Editor for the News Analysis Division. He graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in Political Science from The George Washington University in 2018. In June, 2019, he completed an exclusive fellowship with the Hertog Foundation, where he participated in their “Nuclear Strategy and World Order” program. For MRC Business, he oversees projects and media coverage concerning dark money, political spending, economics and finance.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is barely keeping his head above water amid electoral defeats for his Labour Party, a scandal involving an affiliated nonprofit, and the resignation of a key Cabinet official.

“Keir Starmer is governing like a man who knows his mandate is evaporating,” Paul McCarthy, senior research fellow in European affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal on Thursday.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on May 5 in London, England. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

Troubles have mounted for Starmer, whose Labour Party lost 1,496 seats in regional elections last week—an election somewhat similar to the U.S. midterm elections. The traditional opposition, the Conservative Party, also lost 563 seats, while the new populist conservative party, Reform UK, picked up 1,451 seats. Nigel Farage, a leading force behind Britain’s exit from the European Union and the leader of Reform UK, has aligned his party with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Labour Member of Parliament Catherine West told Starmer’s Cabinet to challenge the prime minister, threatening to do so herself.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting also resigned Thursday, setting up a potential battle for leadership in the party.

Other Starmer Scandals

These latest defeats come after Starmer fired key diplomatic official Olly Robbins in April for insufficiently vetting Lord Peter Mandelson, who was fired after his ties to disgraced financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein became public.

Also that month, Starmer finally pulled the proposal to sell the Chagos Islands Archipelago to Mauritius, a deal that critics warned would undermine the security of the joint U.S.-U.K. military base Diego Garcia.

Meanwhile, the think tank that helped secure Starmer’s 2024 election victory will overhaul its operations and change its name amid scandal. Labour Together, which had endorsed Starmer, had paid lobbying firm APCO Worldwide to conduct secret research into journalists investigating undisclosed donations to the group. APCO’s report reportedly scrutinized one journalist’s religious background and suggested journalists were part of a “pro-Kremlin network.”

The group will not endorse any candidate if Starmer faces a challenge.

Starmer’s Response

When reached for comment, the prime minister’s office referred The Daily Signal to Starmer’s comments in the House of Commons Wednesday following King Charles III’s speech.

Starmer responded to Minister Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, who remains the official opposition leader despite the election results.

“We do have one thing in common: both our parties had tough results in the local elections last week,” he said. “The difference is that she has not noticed. There is another difference: we are in government, and they are no longer even the Opposition.”

This dig at the Conservative Party suggests that Reform UK will be replacing the traditional conservatives as the second major party.

Doubling Down?

McCarthy condemned Starmer for doubling down on failed leftist policies, rather than learning from the elections and from his scandals.

“After these local election losses, he’s not adjusting course—he’s digging in, centralizing power, and clinging to office in a way that looks less like democratic leadership and more like political survival at any cost,” the Heritage expert said. “The local elections confirm what voters across Britain are already signaling: the Labour project under Starmer is running out of road.”

“Keir Starmer looks increasingly like a dictator desperately clinging to power—ignoring voter backlash and tied directly to the Labour Together scandal, which raises serious concerns about political targeting of critics,” he added.

“This isn’t just a midterm setback—it’s a warning shot,” McCarthy argued.

When it comes to Labour Together, he noted that Starmer was the “principal political beneficiary” of the group, and now it is stepping back from political activity.

“That raises a serious question: Was this always a vehicle for consolidating his power—and is it now being shuttered to avoid scrutiny?” he asked.

McCarthy warned the scandal reveals that “Starmer’s Labour will use every lever available—public, private, or quasi-independent—to maintain control.”

“That should alarm everyone who values a free press,” he warned.

Ultimately, Starmer’s losses represent gains for the upstart Reform UK.

“The real story of these elections isn’t just Labour’s losses—it’s the rise of Reform UK as a credible governing alternative,” McCarthy argued. “Reform is tapping into a deep voter demand for sovereignty, accountability, and common sense.”

“Britain is realigning, and the surge of Reform UK shows voters are ready to replace Labour with a government rooted in sovereignty, accountability, and free speech,” he said. “Reform is no longer a protest movement—it’s a government-in-waiting.”

Tyler O’Neil is senior editor of The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/, and he is the author of two books, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal  http://dailysignal.com/

The Endangered Species Act requires a “Report to Congress on Federal and State Endangered and Threatened Species Expenditures.“ It appears that the federal portion alone amounts to well over a billion dollars a year.

Clearly, there is an entire industry here. What the specific spending is for, and who gets it, is a mystery. But there is a lot of fun detail in what each agency spends on each protected species.First, a caveat. I say “appears” because the latest expenditure report I can find is from fiscal year 2020. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service produces this report, and they have an online collection here.

It ends with the 2020 report. They may have the more recent reports in an online database but their big species data system, called ECOS, says there is no occurrence of the term “expenditure.” It even lists its standard reports here.

The 2020 data is good enough to get the feel of what is going on, so let’s go with that. I will point out some stuff that I find interesting, even surprising. Other people might want to look at other aspects that are relevant to them.

The 314-page report consists mostly of several lists that are very long because an expenditure is listed for each of the over 1,600 protected species.

Table 1 lists every species and the total expenditure across all agencies, except land acquisition is not included. The species are listed alphabetically, by common name, within biological groups like birds, fishes, flowering plants, etc. Surprisingly, there are more plants than animals.

Most interesting is the total federal expenditure for the year of $1,135,610,898 or well over a billion dollars. Endangered Species is a very large program that the public knows very little about.

Note that this huge amount does not include the also huge amount that non-federal landowners collectively pay applying for incidental take permits so they can develop their land.

See my “Endangered Species Act regulatory overkill” here.

Table 2 also lists all the species, but they are ranked by expenditure from most down to least. So, Table 1 is the place to look up a particular species, while Table 2 is the place to see where the big bucks are going. Table 1 includes the Table 2 ranking for each species.

Surprisingly, 27 out of the top 30 funded species are fish. Many are various species of salmon and steelhead, but there are others. The three non-fish are the North Atlantic Right Whale, the Desert Tortoise, and the West Indian Manatee. The little-known Razorback Sucker gets more money than any of these three at $14,425,633.

Table 2 includes a running top-down total. The top 30 species, almost all being fish, collectively get $658,328,316 or over half of the program money. Last place is shared by a birch, a chub, and a snail at $100 each. The Red Wolf just beats them at $200.

Appendix B is equally extensive. It lists expenditures by species for each separate federal agency. The big guns are the Army Corps of Engineers and NOAA (especially the National Marine Fisheries Service) with long lists and around $200 million each.

On a fun note, a lot of the little-known species have interesting or even amusing names. Clams seem to specialize in them, and there are a lot of clams. Examples include the Purple Bankclimber, Turgid Blossom, Appalachian Elktoe, Arkansas Fatmucket, Inflated Heelsplitter, and Cumberland Monkeyface. American tax dollars are going to protect all of these rare clams and more.

The Federal Expenditure Reports need to be restored and made publicly available in compliance with the Endangered Species Act. Congress needs to look closely at the allocation of federal funding among the species. We should only list what we can afford to protect.

Dr David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT, working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. His specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment. As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning. This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Democrats on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government sharply criticized a GOP‑led hearing Wednesday that examined concerns about Sharia law and Islamic terrorism in the United States, calling it a “conspiracy theory” rooted in “unconstitutional bigotry.”

A fiery blasts rocks the World Trade Center after being hit by two planes on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“There is no evidence of any plot to impose Sharia law,” Ranking Member Mary Gay Scanlon, D‑Pa., said during the hearing, accusing Republican politicians of “shamefully scapegoating Muslims for political gains.”

“They made up a conspiracy theory about their Muslim neighbors to intimidate voters. Saying lies over and over again doesn’t make them true, and it doesn’t make unconstitutional bigotry legal,” she added.

Sharia law, defined as a religious and ethical system within Islam derived from the Quran and the Hadith, guides Muslims in matters of faith, morality, and aspects of daily life.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D‑Md., argued that extremism is not tied to any one religion, saying the existence of Christian extremist groups shows that terrorism “has no religion.” He accused Rep. Chip Roy, R‑Texas, co‑founder of the congressional Sharia Free America Caucus, of seeking to “demonize and vilify those who adhere to the religion.”

In her opening remarks, Scanlon also sought to discredit the hearing by noting that none of the four witnesses were experts on Islam or Sharia law, even though Democrats were tasked with inviting one of the four witnesses.

“Democrats didn’t want them to go on record—that’s why they didn’t call on them to testify,” Roy told The Daily Signal after the hearing.

Rep. Sydney Kamlager‑Dove, D‑Calif., said the spread of Sharia law is “not a pressing issue” and described the concern as a “manufactured crisis.” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D‑Wash., said the hearing should not be held because “Islam is a very important religion.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R‑Ohio, rejected those claims, saying Sharia law and Islamic extremism “are real issues of concern.”

Roy opened the hearing by raising alarms about what he described as an ideological push by Islamic fundamentalists in Texas who are attempting to impose elements of Sharia law. He cited the East Plano Islamic Center near Dallas—often referred to as EPIC City—claiming it plans to establish radical Islamic rule.

Raskin dismissed the claim, calling the site a “community center,” and said he does not believe Sharia law or Islamist extremism is being promoted there.

During his opening remarks, Roy accused some lawmakers of refusing to call out radical Islamic extremism “by its name” because they fear backlash from their voting base.

After the hearing, Raskin told The Daily Signal that he does condemn “radical Islamic terrorism” and said he would be surprised if his colleagues did not share that view. However, Jayapal; Rep. Max Frost, D-Fla.; and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., have all refused to condemn radical Islam when previously asked by The Daily Signal.

Roy then turned to the witnesses, who included Amy Mekelburg, founder and editor‑in‑chief of the Rise, Align, Ignite, Reclaim Foundation USA; Ammon Blair, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation; Marco Hunter‑Lopez, a student at Wylie East High School in Texas; and Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

Mekelburg testified that she believes radical Islam poses a real threat.

“I have documented Islam’s assault on Europe. They stalked us, they harassed us, they fill us with death threats,” she said. “I feel unsafe when I open my front door. Islam has taken that from me. The hard part of this fight is seeing my friends pay the ultimate price.”

Mekelburg referenced a Christian‑Iraqi friend she said was killed by Islamist extremists in Sweden after speaking out against Sharia law and claimed Sweden enacted laws restricting blasphemy against the Quran.

When Mekelburg accused nonprofit organizations, including the Council on American‑Islamic Relations, of facilitating Islamist extremism, Rep. Steve Cohen, D‑Tenn., began clapping loudly and then left the hearing room.

Hunter‑Lopez criticized public‑school policies he said reflect Islamic influence, including the serving of halal meals.

“Public schools aim to educate, not promote principles that are incompatible with our Constitution and way of life,” he said.

Responding to Raskin’s claim that America has no established religion, Hunter‑Lopez noted that “God is mentioned four times in the Declaration of Independence.”

Tyler followed by arguing that the hearing was promoting “the imaginary threat of Sharia law.” Republican lawmakers challenged that assertion.

Rep. Mark Harris, R‑N.C., cited a reported 2025 case in Washington state in which parents allegedly attempted to carry out an honor killing after their daughter refused an arranged marriage. “This is not compatible with our way of life,” he said.

Rep. Robert Onder, R‑Mo., questioned Tyler about whether religious liberty is respected by groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Taliban, or in countries including Iran, Sudan, and Afghanistan.

“I’m not familiar,” Tyler replied.

She later said the United States protects freedom of religion so citizens “can believe what we want and act on those beliefs.”

When Roy asked whether Islam is compatible with Western civilization, Tyler declined to answer.

Rep. Wesley Hunt, R‑Texas, closed the hearing by arguing that importing belief systems “not aligned with our way of life” erodes the nation’s social fabric.

Probing Sharia law and Islamist extremism “is not racist,” Hunt said. “I’ve been black my whole life—for 44 years.”

Pedro Boccalato Rodriguez-Aparicio is a journalism fellow at The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation  . http://www.heritage.org/

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal    http://dailysignal.com/

The United States rejected a declaration in support of “safe, orderly and regular migration” by the International Migration Review Forum, a United Nations program.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks to the press at the U.S. Embassy in Rome on May 8, 2026. (STEFANO RELLANDINI/Pool/REUTERS)

The U.S also did not participate in the forum, which was hosted at the United Nations’ headquarters May 5-8.

The 2026 declaration says that member states must “respect each other’s needs and concerns over migration.” It asserts that “all migrants, regardless of their migration status, are human rights holders,” and that countries must “protect and fulfill the human rights and fundamental freedoms of all migrants, regardless of their migration status, without any kind of discrimination, while promoting the security, well-being and prosperity of all our communities.”

President Donald Trump, however, is focused on the interests of Americans, not foreigners or “globalist bureaucrats,” the State Department says.

The United States objects to the U.N.’s effort to “advocate and facilitate replacement immigration in the United States and across the broader West,” a State Department spokesman told The Daily Signal.

Trump rejected the forum’s 2017 Global Compact on Migration, as well.

“As Secretary [Marco] Rubio said, opening our doors to mass migration was a grave mistake that threatens the cohesion of our societies and the future of our peoples,” a spokesperson said. “In recent years, Americans witnessed first-hand how mass immigration laid waste to our communities: crime and chaos at the border, states of emergency in major cities, and billions of taxpayer dollars funneled towards hotels, plane tickets, cell phones and cash cards for migrants.”

The use of taxpayer dollars on migrants was largely driven by U.N. agencies and their partners, “which did not just facilitate the invasion of our country, but proceeded to redistribute our own people’s wealth and resources to millions of foreigners from the worst corners of the world,” the spokesperson said.

“There was nothing ‘safe,’ orderly,’ or ‘regular’ about any of this,” the spokesperson said. “And the costs were borne primarily by working Americans forced to compete for scarce jobs, housing, and social services.  The U.N. has little to say about them.”

While the International Migration Review Forum aims to “manage borders in an integrated, secure and coordinated manner,” the United States wants to foster remigration.

”The United States will not support a process that imposes, overtly or by stealth, guidelines, standards, or commitments that constrain the American people’s sovereign, democratic right to make decisions in the best interests of our country,” the spokesperson said.

Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House Correspondent for The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal . http://dailysignal.com/

Anti-trust investigations team up with pressure groups to target producers.

Your casserole went stale and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.Or so you’ve been told.

In reality, green activists operating in the name of “sustainability” have joined forces with corporate interests to increase consumer prices and coerce inferior products into the marketplace. All in the name of combatting plastics — and the motivations are not difficult to understand. Green activists who have lost ground on their climate agenda under President Donald Trump have repackaged that same agenda under a different name. As to the corporations, they are only too pleased to limit competition and charge consumers more, while giving off the appearance of being concerned about the environment.

Here’s the deal

Pressure groups including the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, have joined with heavy hitters like Coca-Cola, Target, Unilever, Mondelez, and Nestle to impose burdensome environmental targets. These include: arbitrary recycled-content quotas and directives to redesign everyday packaging — just to make certain products are as expensive as possible.

Fortunately, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has entered the fray to take on the “sustainability agenda.” Earlier this month, he initiated an anti-trust investigation and issued Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the plastics trade groups and the corporations complicit with their agenda.

In a statement Uthmeier said, “Environmental groups are pressuring corporations to abandon free market principles and raise prices on consumers for products they don’t want.”

Contrary to what green activists would like the public to believe, plastics come with significant benefits as a direct result human innovation. They keep food fresh, alleviate waste, make products lighter and therefore more affordable. They also contribute to life-saving medical devices.

If environmental activists turned government bureaucrats were genuinely interested in environmental improvements, they would focus on more efficient waste management, enhanced recycling infrastructure, and biodegradable innovations. But none of those solutions are on the table. Instead, the radicals push a top-down policy approach that suffocates the free market.

Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, took down the concept of “sustainable development” in an interview with Restoration News, saying:

What needs to be understood about ‘sustainable development’ is that what is being peddled is itself unsustainable. Absent government mandates, industry collusion, and interminable lawsuits, the alternatives to plastics could not stand on their own two feet. The marketplace, which reflects consumer preferences, is the best place to separate the sheep from the goats. Just as the PC vanquished the electric typewriter, and internet transmissions quashed the fax machine, superior products prevail over inferior ones. But this is an arena the anti-plastics lobby does not dare to enter. They know they will lose. Florida’s attorney general sees this game for what it is, and is to be applauded for taking appropriate action. May other state AGs follow his example.

“Sustainability” is an invention of the United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held as part of the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. The agenda aimed to spur action at the international, national, regional and local levels with the common goal of achieving “sustainable development,” which the U.N. defines as an approach to growth and development that satisfies contemporary needs without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.

At a time when the climate agenda is running up against scientific facts and economic realities; let’s not give that agenda new life under a different name.

Time to face facts. The war on plastics amounts to nothing more than a war on modern conveniences made possible by the innovations inherent in the free market. The green cultists would prefer humanity return to a time when casseroles and mayonnaise spoil in hours instead of days, and cell phones use inferior materials and fall apart in months.

Thankfully, Florida AG James Uthmeier has initiated anti-trust investigations to put an end to this nonsense in the corporate world, and to put a stake through the heart of “sustainability.”

This article originally appeared at Restoration News

Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation’s free-market think tank and writes for several national publications.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post

This series of posts continues the data collection and recording for wind power generation in Australia over the last five years. Each Monday, the Long Term Capacity Factor percentages will be updated. They will show two percentages for that Capacity Factor, the first for the most recent 52 week year, and the second percentage for the long term for the overall total number of weeks of data collection.

Link to Post on how these figures for the Wind Generation Capacity Factors are calculated

Link to Introductory Post ***** Link to each of the weekly update posts ***** Link to all earlier Data Posts (1153Posts)

What Is Capacity Factor.

Capacity Factor is the relationship between total generated power and the Nameplate for a power generation source.

That current Nameplate (as at 6 October 2024) for wind in Australia of 13,460MW from 91 Industrial Wind Plants, so, with the current 30% Capacity Factor, then the actual generated power is only an average of 4038MW.

The total Nameplate for all these wind plants changes as each new wind plant comes on line, delivering power to the grid.

As each new Wind Plant comes on line, I will detail that new addition here, and change the data calculations accordingly to reflect that change.

Wind Nameplate change from beginning of data collection on Monday 1 October 2018 – (then) 5301MW – (now) 13460MW – (Change) +8159MW (an increase of 154%)

The Table below shows the current week ending date, the Total Generated Power across that week, the calculated Average Power (worked out from the Total Generated Power) the Capacity Factor for that week, and the total generated power as a percentage of the overall total power consumption used by the Grid.

Long Term Capacity Factor – 52 weeks – 30.06% (Last Week – 29.87%)

Long Term Capacity Factor – 395 weeks – 29.68% (Last Week – 29.66%)

Comments for this weekly Update.

Wind power generation had another of those rare weeks when it had four days with power generation well above the average, and because of that, power generation from wind sources was higher than average for the week.

With this in play for this week, then that metric used for comparison of wind generation over time, that important Capacity Factor was higher for the week, and that led to small rises in both of those long term Capacity Factor Percentages.

*****

Anton Lang uses the screen name of TonyfromOz, and he writes at this site, PA Pundits International on topics related to electrical power generation, from all sources, concentrating mainly on Renewable Power, and how the two most favoured methods of renewable power generation, Wind Power and all versions of Solar Power, fail comprehensively to deliver levels of power required to replace traditional power generation. His Bio is at this link.

OzWindPowerGenerationTFOb

On Friday, The New York Times published what was basically a press release for ABC lawyers headlined “ABC Accuses Government of Violating First Amendment.” They accused the FCC of a “chilling effect” for daring to investigate them on equal-time grounds.That doesn’t take much of a probe. It’s obvious that show is a unanimous hootenanny dedicated to trashing Trump and the Republicans. It has zero interest in equal time as a principle.

On Saturday, The Times posted a more balanced article titled “How ‘The View’ Landed at the Center of a Free Speech Battle.” Times reporter Jim Rutenberg talked to us about the show:

“The View” draws 2.7 million viewers a day, more or less the audience it has had for a decade, according to Nielsen.

“It would be easy for our side to say, ‘Who watches that junk?’” said Tim Graham, a senior leader of the Media Research Center, a conservative group that has long been critical of the show. “But the answer is: Many people.”

We weren’t quoted talking about how the show is a feverish anti-Trump mess with no pushback. There’s no opposing view even saying “I’m not sure Trump is Hitler.” Instead, The Times asserted “The show’s panel has long included a conservative presence to balance the progressivism of its longstanding hosts Joy Behar and Whoopi Goldberg.”

In reality, the most adversarial co-host was Meghan McCain, and they viciously drove her off the set. The Times cited our study as they acknowledged current reality:

The two Republicans on the panel — a first-term Trump spokeswoman, Alyssa Farah Griffin, and the longtime strategist Ana Navarro — are frequent Trump critics. And the anti-Trump critics are even tougher.

Conservatives accuse the show of interviewing mostly Democrats. This spring, the Media Research Center released a report titled, “The View Kicks Off Midterm Year With 27 Liberal Guests to 1 Republican.” (The study included celebrities in its tally.)

In its filing with the F.C.C., ABC noted that guest appearances did not reflect the full range of invitations. The network said the show had invited numerous Trump allies over the past two seasons, including Vice President JD Vance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Senator Lindsey Graham, Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — all of whom declined.

This doesn’t include the point we made to them — that we only count liberal celebrities if they are making political comments. In our last study, we didn’t count Robert DeNiro, since politics didn’t come up in his interview. But it’s a classic defense to say Trump administration figures declined interviews. That doesn’t mean you can’t find conservative pushback all over the place, and we have certainly volunteered to appear.

The Times repeated the ABC lawyers.

“Of course, government officials are free to express their own views about The View,” ABC’s lawyers said in the filing. “But they cannot utilize the coercive powers of the state to punish viewpoints with which they disagree.”

Merely investigating this program’s contents is not “coercive” or punitive. It’s ABC that punishes dissenting viewpoints. The View suggested conservatives usually don’t live up to their “certain caliber of guest.”

These people often don’t live up to being serious. The Times could have included Nick Fondacaro’s routine findings that the show unloads crazy disinformation, like Whoopi Goldberg claiming racists are still siccing dogs on black voters at polls in the South, or their ravings that Donald Trump is going to cancel elections and refuse to leave the White House.

Liberal journalists were fine with Big Tech banning Donald Trump accounts for “disinformation,” and none of them found First Amendment lawyers to scream “chilling effect.” They were fine with the Biden administration censoring opposing views all over the place, even creating a “Disinformation Governance Board.” They’re only free-speech warriors for their own speech.

Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

On Friday’s All Things Considered, NPR aired a seven-minute interview lamenting Republican redistricting with a man who’s rarely considered. They interviewed Rep. Steve Cohen, Democrat of Memphis, who is a white man who’s long represented a majority-black district. The online headline had drama: “Tennessee Democrat speaks about his erased district.”Anchor Ailsa Chang apologized in this question:

AILSA CHANG: Let me ask you — and forgive me for pointing out the obvious. You are a white politician who has been representing this majority-black district. What do you think is the significance of Tennessee losing its only majority-black district?

Rep. STEVE COHEN: Well, it’s going to lessen African Americans’ interest in the election process when they know that their decision in a primary is going to be for a candidate who probably doesn’t have much of a chance to win.

NPR didn’t point out Cohen’s representation undercuts the leftist argument that black voting rights don’t have meaning if they don’t have black representation.

Chang did ask about the tit-for-tat wars:

CHANG: What do you say to people watching all of this, who are like, hey, two wrongs, don’t make it right, no matter who’s doing it? None of this tit for tat between the two sides is good for democracy in general. How do you respond?

COHEN: Yeah, It’s not good for democracy. Donald Trump started this in Texas when he called the Texas governor and asked him to get him four or five new congressmen. [This overlooks that New York did it under Biden, before Trump.]

CHANG: Right, and Democrats are punching back. So now there’s a tit for tat. What do you think of that?

COHEN: If we don’t do it and Gavin Newsom didn’t do it, we’d be dead. We would not be – have a chance at having the majority in the House of Representatives and the authoritarian leader who started this unprecedented action by going to Texas – just like he went to Georgia and said, find me 11,000 votes – he would be a president without any oversight. That’s not right.

Cohen went on to denounce Trump as “basically a gangster” and added: “if the Democrats didn’t respond, they would continue to have the House and have it forever. And that’s just not right. We’ll have authoritarianism. We’ll have Orbán. He’s close to Orbán already.” Chang didn’t take exception, just underlined he was talking about Hungarian president Viktor Orban, who just lost a re-election bid.

Tim Graham is the Executive Editor at NewsBusters, and he is the Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center. His career at the MRC began in February 1989 as associate editor of MediaWatch, the monthly newsletter of the MRC before the Internet era.

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

To read Atlantic magazine’s story about the Supreme Court decision on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — which prohibits gerrymandering congressional districts on the basis of race — you would get the idea that it has been overwhelmingly Republicans who have been gerrymandering the past few years while ignoring more than obvious reality.The fantasy of primarily Republican gerrymandering was presented by assistant editor Marc Novicoff on Tuesday  in “The House of Representatives Is Turning Into the Electoral College.”

Right away, Novicoff lets the readers know who he thinks the gerrymandering baddies are.

The very short list of constraints on partisan gerrymandering has gotten even shorter. Until last week, the Supreme Court had interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act to require states to draw some majority-minority districts. But in Louisiana v. Callais, it overturned that requirement and held that the VRA prohibits gerrymandering only if it’s done with the explicit goal of racial discrimination. If the intent behind disenfranchising minority voters appears to be merely partisan, the gerrymander is now legal. The ruling will allow Republican state legislatures in the South to erase most if not all of the region’s few blue House districts without fear of being blocked in court.

Novicoff creates the fantasy of primarily Republican abuse of drawing up congressional seats by completely ignoring recent past history of Democrats gerrymandering congressional seats to the extent that today there are no Republican congressional representatives in all of New England, only three of seventeen in the Land Of Lincoln, Illinois, and just one of the six districts in Oregon is currently represented by a Republican.

Most egregious of all is Novicoff’s complete avoidance of any mention of the most over-the-top current example of partisan gerrymandering in which Virginia Democrats sought to convert a fairly bipartisan congressional representation of six Democrats and five Republicans to be manipulated into an overwhelmingly Democrat representation of ten to one.

And so the gerrymandering wars, already awful, are poised to get even worse. Democrats will respond to the Republican response to Callais; Republicans will respond to the response to the response; voters will lose in the process. In a few years, almost every seat in the House of Representatives could be safely occupied by a hyper-partisan incumbent, beholden only to primary voters. The chamber could become something like the Electoral College: Whoever wins a state gets all of its representatives, and the winners are there just to vote for or against the president.

Yet somehow it is the Republicans who get most of the gerrymandering blame while the Democrats are portrayed as merely reacting to them in Novikoff’s pessimistic imagination. Last year, he wrote an article cheerfully titled “Welcoming to the Gerrymandering Apocalypse.”

Read more Great Articles at NewsBusters . http://newsbusters.org/

According to a recent report from ETH Zurich (the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, “policymakers should not rely on, or fund, fusion power as a core pillar of future clean energy systems” for the two primary current fusion designs (magnetic and laser inertial) because of their low “experience rates” (economies of scale).Fusion industry professionals already pursuing commercial development discounted these findings. Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Bob Mumgaard says ETH Zurich’s authors are unaffiliated with fusion and never spoke to any industry leaders. Helion co-founder Anthony Pancotti, whose company is developing a pulsed, non-ignition fusion system, “absolutely” believes fusion can be affordable and cost-competitive with other energy sources.

Zap Energy, which has been in the fusion business for nearly a decade, last week announced it was moving in a radical new direction – building the world’s first integrated fission and fusion nuclear energy company. Zap’s principals argue that a false wall exists between fission and fusion, whereas they are two points along the same technological continuum, and developing them together accelerates deployment of both.

Zap’s core mission, according to co-founders Benj Conway, Uri Shumiak, and Brian A. Nelson, remains the commercialization of fusion using the sheared-flow stabilized (SFS) Z-pinch, initially developed in Japan. But, he adds, “We also believe the energy transition cannot and should not wait for fusion alone.”

To jumpstart the company’s new direction, Zap recruited Zabrina Johal from Canadian nuclear firm AtkinsRéalis to serve as CEO. Johal, a former U.S. Navy nuclear propulsion officer, will lead the development of an integrated nuclear platform that brings together fission, fusion, and hybrid systems to deliver scalable, carbon-free power.

In a recent interview, Johal said that she and Zap’s founders had been in discussions for months since they realized they all see fission and fusion as “two sides of the same coin.” It makes so much sense, she has believed for years, to integrate the two into a single business to accelerate innovation across the entire nuclear energy system.

As Conway describes it, “fission and fusion are two expressions of the same underlying physics. By integrating them into a single platform, we can move faster, reduce risk, and build a more enduring company.” Johal calls the union “the perfect marriage” and says that Zap Energy is agile – not bureaucratic – and that she can hardly wait to get up in the morning and get to work.

Zap’s strategy comes as a direct result of its work in developing its fusion power plant, with the key insight that many of the hardest problems in nuclear energy are problems of industrialization and not specific to either fission or fusion.

Both require high-temperature materials, nuclear-grade manufacturing, advanced heat-transfer systems, modular construction, and sophisticated balance-of-plant engineering. Zap’s goal is to build reactors in factories and transport them to sites where they will operate safely for decades, following the expected regulatory revisions at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Johal says that artificial intelligence is driving demand and helping technology develop faster. AI also enables a greater focus on deep tech ideas and concepts because of its expedited computing and modeling capabilities. This enables running thousands of experiments in real time and picking those with the best results for further study– dramatically cutting the time to get new technologies to market.

Johal says that, rather than pursue fusion in isolation, Zap’s integrated platform is designed to deliver near-term, bankable power through compact, modular fission systems and exploit deep technology overlaps between fission and fusion, particularly in liquid-metal power systems (where Zap has developed world-leading expertise), neutron environments, and high power density design that can speed progress across both technologies.

In a Z-pinch system, plasma is produced by applying a high-voltage pulse across an anode-cathode gap of cylindrical geometry that is either pre-filled with gas or bridged by an array of (typically tungsten) wires. The plasma is imploded by the azimuthal magnetic field produced by the axially flowing discharge current, and the kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy and radiation as a hot, dense core is formed at the center.

The Japanese abandoned research on the Z-pinch process after the Fukushima incident. The chief obstacle to the technology was that the Z-pinch plasma would become unstable and thus uneconomic. Shumiak and Nelson, during their research at the University of Washington, developed the sheared-flow stabilization technique in which the plasma particles are made to move at different velocities and cannot “change lanes.”

Johal’s work has primarily focused on fission technologies, most recently AtkinsRéalis’ CANDU (Canada deuterium uranium) heavy-water reactor, but in her earlier work at General Atomics she was involved with fusion from a government program perspective. Like Zap’s founders, she too had long seen the many parallels between the two technologies.

Both, she says, share the concept of a core technology focused on high power density, similar materials, liquid metal cooling, and many business-related similarities. With the growing energy demands of data centers, AI, electrified transport, advanced manufacturing, and national energy security, the need for nuclear energy is escalating rapidly. Meeting that demand requires an expansion of nuclear energy at a scale not seen in generations.

Given the potential for both technologies to supply much needed electricity, it makes so much sense to do both. Zap chose to integrate fusion and fission into a single business, so when its fission reactors go commercial they will pull fusion closer to commercial deployment. Johal says Zap is looking to commercialize fission in the early 2030s – thanks in part to the coming Nuclear Regulatory Commission reforms — and fusion a few years later.

Longer term, working with both technologies places Zap Energy in the pole position for hybrid systems. This can involve fusion-driven neutron sources supporting advanced fission fuel cycles or waste reduction (utilizing rather than storing spent nuclear fuel), both of which have been studied in the scientific community. The Chinese have already been investing in hybrid fission-fusion systems as part of their long-term strategy.

Responding to the ETH Zurich study, Johal says she hopes all the fusion designs become commercially successful – but believes that Zap’s design will produce economies of scale thanks to their modular design.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Duggan Flanakin is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow. A former Senior Fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundations, Mr. Flanakin authored definitive works on the creation of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and on environmental education in Texas.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Another Earth Day has come and gone – number 57, like Heinz steak sauce. Once again, the media, activists and international agencies fed us pablum, exaggeration and alarmism.Our public lands, the Endangered Species Act, biodiversity and environmental justice are under threat, they raged. Oceans are filling with plastic waste. Big polluting corporations are getting away with “climate homicide” and “planetary ecocide.” The Arctic is melting, and polar bear cubs are drowning.

The United Nations took a short break from bashing Israel over “Palestinian genocide” and western nations for the “gravest crime” ever committed against humanity (trans-Atlantic slavery), to proclaim April 22 “International Mother Earth Day” and call for an end to “crimes” that “disrupt biodiversity.”

Activists held the “first multilateral conference” on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. Their “Our Power, Our Planet” theme says further progress will require that communities and individuals pressure governments to accelerate the “clean” energy transition from “dirty” fossil fuels.

Forgive my skepticism. But I was a college organizer for very first Earth Day (1970), back when we had real, highly visible environmental problems: air pollution and toxic smog over cities, industrial water pollution that made it unsafe to swim, leaded gasoline, and more. We largely solved those problems.

Since then, greens have grown in domestic and foreign financing, power and influence, and the ability to conduct ideological campaigns and lawfare on issues of irrelevance to the vast majority of Americans, let alone families in the most energy-deprived, destitute, diseased and malnourished nations on our planet.

Any yet, for days leading up to Earth Day and afterward, virtually nothing was said by the UN, WHO, eco-activists, media screed-meisters or I-care-deeply politicians about these people … or even about people in their own developed countries who bear the brunt of climate-centric, anti-growth, net-zero, de-industrialization, lower-living-standards policies.

It’s as if people don’t exist, and don’t belong, on our planet. The human herd must be culled.

In the developed world, most climate-focused countries and states have the most pseudo-clean energy mandates and subsidies … the highest electricity prices … the highest prices for goods and services. They’re destroying entire industries, leaving thousands unemployed. They have the technologies to utilize their abundant carbon and nuclear energy, but ruling elites don’t want citizens to enjoy jobs and living standards based on that energy. Each year thousands die needlessly during frigid winters and summer heatwaves because families cannot afford or obtain proper heating and air conditioning.

The “climate crisis” is a Hollywood special effects disaster movie. The foundation for any “clean” energy transition is imaginary. Utopian energy is simply not clean, green, renewable or sustainable.

When wind turbines, solar panels, transformers, transmission lines and backup batteries or power plants are included, wind and solar energy require dozens of times more raw materials (and thus mining and pollution) and hundreds of times more land than just building a few nuclear or combined-cycle gas plants close to where electricity is needed – and forgetting about any pseudo-renewable systems.

For families in poor nations, the price tag is infinitely higher.

Worldwide, 730 million people still have no access to electricity. Billions more have minimal, sporadic access. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 600 million have no electricity; hundreds of millions more have minimal, unpredictable electricity from small wind turbines and solar panels here and there. The situation in much of rural Asia and Latin America is little better. Ditto for vehicles and gasoline.

The result is entirely predictable. Almost no wage-earning jobs or mechanized farming, but abundant backbreaking work for parents and children in fields – and plenty of malnutrition, disease and death.

Over half the world’s people (more than four billion) still subsist on $10 a day.

More than 260 million suffer from critical food insecurity and malnutrition, and 35 million children are acutely malnourished, including 10 million with childhood wasting disease – leaving them with weak immune systems and vulnerable to developmental delays, disease and death

Malaria still infects 280,000,000 people annually and kills 610,000. Indoor air pollution from wood, dung, coal and kerosene cooking and heating fires kills nearly 3,000,000 people globally every year. Up to 3.5 million – mostly children – die annually due to inadequate safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Diseases modern western societies never even hear about sicken, disable or kill still more millions.

Do you think any of their grieving families gives a spotted owl hoot that your local temperature climbed a degree since the Little Ice Age ended, or a polar bear cub drowned halfway around the world?

A major reason is rampant corruption. The World Bank found that at least 7.5% (and as much as 15% or more) of total assistance to the most aid-dependent nations ends up in ruling elites’ foreign bank accounts. And yet the WB’s International Development Association received $94 billion for the 2022-2025 period. Multilateral development bank financing to top humanitarian recipients was $12 billion in 2020. Total worldwide Official Development Assistance reached a record $161.2 billion in 2020. Do the math.

Far worse, these banks, US and European foundations, and climate, agricultural and other activist groups work tirelessly to prevent these countries from acquiring or developing the electricity and other energy they need to emerge from squalor, starvation and disease. For decades these virtue-signaling banks have provided loans only for wind and solar projects – almost never for coal or gas power plants.

The result? Expensive, limited, unreliable electricity. No modern hospitals, schools, water purification, factories or shops. Continued pollution from wood and dung fuels. No jobs, improved living standards or reductions in killer diseases.

The same institutions – along with UN and other government agencies – oppose pesticides for eradicating locusts and malarial mosquitoes. They wage campaigns against biotech corn, soybeans, canola, and even hybrid seeds and life-saving Golden Rice. They pressure African governments to ban non-organic fertilizers and crop-saving pesticides that have been approved as safe in wealthy countries. Many even oppose tractors and other mechanized equipment.

To them, the only acceptable farming method is “agro-ecology” – la Via Campesina: the Peasant Way – aka, “traditional,” “organic,” backbreaking subsistence farming.

This, corruption, wars and food-deprivation as a weapon of war is why we still have malnutrition, starvation, disease and astronomical death tolls in African and other impoverished countries.

These global zealots want power over poor countries – not power for the countries’ destitute and desperate people. Their morally depraved policies and practices bring death to millions every year.

Developing countries should avoid doing what rich nations are doing now that they are rich. Instead, they should do what rich nations did to become rich. They should remember that wealthy industrialized countries did not have MDBs to help them; they created institutions to finance the power generation and factories that created jobs, middle classes, health, prosperity, new industries … and taxes to pay for more.

They must chart their own destiny – and take their rightful places among Earth’s healthy and prosperous people. Decent, moral Westerners must help them end the corruption and make this happen.

Paul Driessen is senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and other public policy institutes that promote environmental stewardship, enhanced human health and welfare, and personal liberties and civil rights. He covers climate change, energy and environmental, human rights, corporate social responsibility, sustainable development, and renewable energy issues in articles and research papers, on radio programs and college campuses, and at professional and other conferences.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/

Democrats’ heated rhetoric may have contributed to the Palisades Fire—but not by warming the global climate.

When the Los Angeles-area fire burned 23,707 acres, destroyed 6,833 structures, and killed 12 people, those on the left rushed to blame it on man-made climate change. Only later did we learn that the human causation was far more direct.

A large three-story building engulfed in flames in Malibu in the Palisades Fire on Jan. 7, 2025. (David Crane/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News/Getty Images)

Yes, the Palisades Fire, like the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the attempts on President Donald Trump’s life, and the Covenant School shooting in Nashville, is yet another example of leftist political violence.

A new court filing reveals the mindset of Jonathan Rinderknecht, the 20-year-old man charged with setting the fire. Let’s just say he wasn’t a member of the Proud Boys.

Alleged Arsonist’s Motivations

Rinderknecht allegedly set the fire in the early hours of Jan. 1, 2025, before calling 911 later that evening. Firefighters responded and appeared to have addressed it, but the fire persisted. Drought, extreme winds, and poor forest management enabled the blaze to spread after the initial response.

Rinderknecht reportedly used the ChatGPT AI system as “a confidant and diary.” He asked ChatGPT “to generate and then modify images of a ‘burning forest’ next to ‘a bunch of people running away.’”

The defendant’s Uber passengers described him “as angry, intense, driving erratically, and ranting about being ‘pissed off at the world’ and Luigi Mangione, capitalism, and vigilantism.”

It seems the alleged arsonist was indeed inspired by Mangione, who allegedly murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson because he hated the way the U.S. health care industry works. Many on the left celebrated Mangione as a “modern-day Robin Hood,” and the alleged arsonist appears to be one of them.

Investigators asked Rinderknecht on Jan. 24, 2025, why someone might commit arson in Pacific Palisades. He said someone would do so “out of resentment of the rich enjoying their money as ‘we’re basically being enslaved by them’ and compared such an act of ‘desperation’ to the murder for which Mangione was charged.”

In the weeks and hours leading up to the fire, Rinderknecht “fixated on Luigi Mangione.” He searched the internet for Mangione-related news, using search terms such as “free Luigi Mangione,” “lets take down all the billionaires,” and “reddit lets kill all the billionaires.”

Prosecutors also note that the alleged arsonist “grew up in a devoutly religious household” and was “in frequent conflict with his parents as a result.” In August 2024, he burned a Bible and described the act to ChatGPT as “necessary,” “liberating,” and “amazing.”

Leftist Political Violence

It’s practically a truism at this point to note the uptick in leftist political violence. Lest you forget, dear reader, we’ve seen threats to the lives of Supreme Court justices, the burning of Teslas in protest of Elon Musk, assassination attempts on Trump, the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and transgender shooters targeting churches and schools—and that’s all just since March 2023. The first two months of this year witnessed multiple serious threats against Trump and key administration officials.

Meanwhile, leftist podcaster Hasan Piker—in an interview with The New York Times—suggested that Thompson deserved to die because he “was engaging in a tremendous amount of social murder,” by running a health care company. Last year, Virginia elected Jay Jones as attorney general, despite his previous comments wishing death on the children of his political opponents in order to make them “move on policy.” Jones apologized for his text messages, but only after they became public.

A September YouGov pollopens in a new tab asked Americans, “Do you think it is ever justified for citizens to resort to violence in order to achieve political goals?” Most respondents (72%) chose the option, “No, violence is never justified,” but those who selected “Yes, violence can sometimes be justified” overwhelmingly skewed to the left.

About 25% of respondents who described themselves as “very liberal” said violence can be justified, compared to only 3% of those who identified as “very conservative.” Another 17% of those who said they are “liberal” agreed, while only 6% of conservatives did so. Self-described moderates wound up in the middle, with 9% saying violence can be justified. (YouGov surveyed 2,646 U.S. adults online from Sept. 10 to Sept. 12, and the margin of error is between 2.5% and 3%.)

Hiding the Truth

Yet the legacy media seems bent on hiding this truth.

NewsNation host Batya Ungar-Sargonopens in a new tab recently analyzed the data from the University of Cincinnati’s Prosecution Project—one of the legacy media’s favorite sources for claiming that most political violence comes from “the Right”—and found glaring omissions when it came to leftist political violence.

The Prosecution Project does not mention Trump assassination attempts, nor the successful targeting of Kirk. It also omits: the man who allegedly murdered the Jewish Embassy couple in Washington, D.C., last May; violence from the George Floyd riots in 2020; and threats against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

Meanwhile, it includes as examples of right-wing political violence members of the Aryan Brotherhood charged in connection with meth dealing. It also mentions people who vandalized LGBTQ+ crosswalks and those who blocked access to abortion centers.

Americans aren’t blind. We know our country has a leftist political violence problem, but it seems we have to fight to set the record straight.

Let’s not “both-sides” this debate. The American people need to demand answers from Democrats on how they will dial down the rhetoric.

Tyler O’Neil is senior editor of The Daily Signal at The Heritage Foundation . http://www.heritage.org/, and he is the author of two books, “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” and “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.”

Read more informative articles at The Daily Signal  http://dailysignal.com/

About 60 countries just gathered together to try to kick off a global phase out of fossil fuel use. For now it is more of a show than a threat so it is worth watching with some humor. Planning to achieve the impossible has to be funny.At this point there are just a lot of proposals. By far the funniest is a proposed phase out deadline of 2030 for coal. Do they not know that China is burning over 5 billion tons a year? That India, Indonesia and others are rapidly building fleets of new coal-fired power plants? This madness is the measure of the phase out movement.

The most threatening proposal is for a designing a new Fossil Fuel Treaty (FFT) mandating the phase out that countries can adopt. As a treaty the FFT would be a legally binding instrument enforceable by the Courts. The FFT has  its own promoting organization here.

What is most interesting is that such a Treaty has the potential to destabilize the UN Climate Change Program. The UN Program is based on an existing treaty, the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC).

The FFT could compete with the FCCC such as for financial resources and even for jurisdiction. The FCC might even make the FCCC obsolete.

This is no accident since the FFT was born out of frustration with the FCCC. The annual decision meeting of the FCCC is the well known COP which stands for Conference of the Parties.

It took 28 COPs to finally get the words “fossil fuel” into a decision and it had no teeth. The reason is simple. The FCCC COP rules call for decisions to be unanimous so nothing controversial ever gets said. At COP 30 there was a movement to get a decision calling for national roadmaps for phasing out fossil fuels. It failed but the present phase out Conference was authorized as a concession.

Given that the FFT is not part of the Conference charter it is far from clear what connection this Treaty has to the UN, quite possibly none. So it is certainly possible that the FFT movement could compete with the UN Program for attention, funding and other resources. The UN Program may have spawned its demise.

The Conference itself made some progress down the road to impossibility that the FFT movement can tap into. France claims to have created a model phase out roadmap. I have not seen it but it likely uses a lot of nuclear power. France figures that if the world goes nuclear their companies will get a lot of the work.

There has also been created a so-called “Panel of Experts” to help countries develop national phase out roadmaps. It is described here.

They are described as scientists and economists and I do not see any engineers. More fantasy that.

It is easy to see how developing a phase out roadmap can lead to adopting a phase out treaty to enforce it. All it takes is a strong green government which most countries get from time to time when the political pendulum swings far left.

It is also easy to see this FFT movement replacing the FCCC. Why spend a fortune on huge ten day global meetings where nothing gets decided? Better to operate at the national level picking off one country at a time.

That the goal is impossible and ill informed has little bearing on the political reality. The Fossil Fuel Treaty movement is potentially even more dangerous than the UN Climate Change program. It bears careful watching.

Stay tuned to CFACT as this hatchling monster grows.

Dr David Wojick is an independent policy analyst and senior advisor to CFACT, working at the intersection of science, technology and policy. As a civil engineer with a Ph.D. in logic and analytic philosophy of science, he brings a unique perspective to complex policy issues. His specializes in science and technology intensive issues, especially in energy and environment. As a cognitive scientist he also does basic research on the structure and dynamics of complex issues and reasoning. This research informs his policy analyses. He has written hundreds of analytical articles.

Read more excellent articles at CFACT  http://www.cfact.org/