President Donald Trump said that he plans to make his proposed 250-foot arch in Washington, DC, a “top grade military complex” that holds large stores of weaponry, citing national security reasons and a “strong request” from the US military. 

Trump added in his Sunday post on Truth Social that the planned “Triumphal Arch” near the National Mall would “have the rapid ability to use large numbers of drones, plus Snipers, on both the roof and plaza areas.” 

The president first proposed building the arch last October to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary. The much-criticized project, as currently planned, would tower over most other DC landmarks—the tallest being the Washington Monument, at approximately 555 feet—and block the view of Arlington National Cemetery from the Lincoln Memorial. 

Three Vietnam War veterans sued the administration to prevent construction of the arch based on the view issue, and also because Trump has not secured the required approval from Congress. Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered the administration to provide 48 hours’ notice before doing any work on the project, but has yet to rule on the merits of the case. 

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) called Trump’s new arch plan, “obviously idiotic” as he “clearly expects to lose a lawsuit and therefore wants to set up a pretext to argue that the arch is tied to national security.”

Trump’s latest post represents a significant departure from his former plan for the arch, which included a winged, gilded statue of Lady Liberty and an inscription reading, “One Nation Under God.” The drones and snipers could indeed be a matter of Trump trying to justify the arch as a national security requirement—he applied a similar argument to his unpermitted and unpopular White House ballroom, announcing in March that “the military is building a big complex under the ballroom.” 

As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz has pointed out, Trump has a long history of using the idea of “national security” to do whatever he wants: threatening to annex Greenland, targeting ICE protesters as terrorists, expanding construction of hyperscale data centers, and removing trans people from public life. “If national security is everything, then national security is nothing at all,” Hurwitz noted. Well, except, in this case, an excuse for Trump to abuse his power when no one is willing to stop him.

Ed Sheeran opened his Philadelphia show Saturday night by admitting to “making mistakes”—maybe not quite the apology some people were hoping for. It was the star musician’s first performance since billionaire Robert Kraft pressured Sheeran and his team to remove Macklemore from his stadium tour over the rapper’s pro-Palestinian comments onstage.

Sheeran, who seemed to be reading from a teleprompter, told the audience he has tried to avoid being an “activist musician” or “a political commentator of any kind” throughout his career because he wants his music to be “about unity, not division, about humanity, not politics.” He said he recognized that the October 7 Hamas attack and “what is happening in Gaza,” which he called “catastrophic and unjustifiable and disproportionate,” was a “humanitarian issue.”

“This concert is still a place where everyone is welcome and everyone here can stand beside people that have opposing views,” Sheeran continued.

“I am deeply worried about the idea that venues pre-approve content performers,” he said. “It should never happen in the free world.” He did not mention Kraft by name or comment on the billionaire’s reasoning for demanding Macklemore’s removal.

In a statement last week, Kraft wrote in part: “Based on Macklemore’s recent actions, material shared from the stage during Ed Sheeran’s shows in New Jersey, and a broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community, we determined that his participation in the September 25th and 26th concerts at Gillette Stadium would cross that line.”

Kraft has a long history of donating to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, an organization that raises funds for IDF soldiers, veterans, and families, and the United Democracy Project, a super PAC backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee to elect pro-Israel candidates.  

During shows at MetLife Stadium earlier this month, Macklemore advocated for Palestinian freedom and called Israel’s actions “genocide”—a designation most scholars of the subject would agree with. Shortly after Macklemore was taken off Sheeran’s tour, all four of the remaining opening acts withdrew out of solidarity. 

Just before starting his Saturday show, Sheeran said that the recent developments put him “in the middle of an important and passionate argument about freedom of speech and the most complex political issue on the planet.”

His comments, which echoed a social media statement he made last Tuesday, are unlikely to appease critics who accuse him of complicity with Kraft. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, for one, took issue with his “attempts to ‘both-sides’ Israel’s ongoing genocide.” Sheeran claims to support peace, the group said, “yet fails to even mention its crucial condition—justice.”

All five opening acts took significant financial hits by dropping out of the tour—as of April, Sheeran was the sixth-most streamed artist on Spotify of all time. And Sheeran failed to back them up on a subject where one cannot credibly walk a line down the middle.

At the end of Saturday’s performance, Sheeran told the crowd that he wanted to “apologize for the first bit of the show,” noting that families with children did not buy their tickets to hear him talking about something other than “unity” and “love” and “family.”

“The last week of my life has been one of the worst weeks of my life,” he said, thanking the crowd for their support. “I really didn’t know whether I’d be even getting onstage again, whether I even wanted to be an artist at all.”

This story was originally co-published by Canary Media and the Daily Yonder, and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Jeff Hough did not pull any punches. What his fellow Republican county commissioners were about to do, he said to the packed courthouse, would violate America’s founding ideals. He quoted the Declaration of Independence to make his case. 

The three-person commission was about to vote on an ordinance that would ban utility-scale solar and wind development in Bannock County, Idaho. 

“We cannot deny the entire county the opportunity to exercise their property rights,” Hough said. ​“That goes against the principles this country was founded on.” 

A few minutes after Hough’s emphatic speech, the ordinance passed by a 2–1 vote. Hough was the lone dissenter.

Since that consequential vote in March 2024, Hough has become the chair of the county commission and has dedicated himself to overturning that ordinance. He will soon have a chance to make that happen. This fall, Hough and the other two commissioners are set to vote on an ordinance with new language that would allow the development of solar and wind, along with nuclear energy, in the county.

The Bannock County vote is a test case of whether—and how—a community can revisit its assumptions about the costs and benefits of clean energy and decide to welcome development it once swore off.

In 2025, nearly one in four US counties had some kind of ban, moratorium, or impediment to clean energy development, up from 15 percent of counties in 2023. More than 60 percent of counties with bans are rural, according to a Daily Yonder and Canary Media analysis of data from USA Today and the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

Bucking this national trend and reversing the ban would put Bannock County back in play at a moment when Idaho needs all the energy it can get. Idaho Power, the state’s largest utility, expects electricity demand to grow by 1 gigawatt by 2030, a roughly 26 percent leap from current levels.

“The need to build stuff now is critical to Idaho’s economic future,” said Aaron Menenberg, the Idaho policy manager for Renewable Northwest, a nonprofit working to decarbonize the region’s grid. ​“We can’t afford to say no to anything.”

Bannock County, nestled in a valley a few hours north of Salt Lake City and 100 miles west of Wyoming’s Teton Range, is a prime location for new power plants. It’s home to the Populus substation, a critical juncture for getting electrons onto the grid and into Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and the Pacific Northwest. Building new power plants near a substation is cheaper, and those savings can help bring down costs for utility customers. 

But the biggest opportunity for county residents, as Hough sees it, is not utility-bill savings: It’s economic development. In recent years, Bannock County’s population has grown far more slowly than Idaho’s. The county’s rural communities, meanwhile, are watching essential services disappear, and drought worsened by climate change is making it difficult for family farms to stay afloat. 

Hough believes renewables would bring money into the community. Bannock County’s neighbors offer local proof: In 2024, projects in nearby Power and Bingham counties generated $909,000 and $639,000 in tax revenue, respectively. Hough wants to send a message—to the renewables industry and others—that Bannock County is ​“open for business,” too. 

“Rural America is in a transition state,” Hough said from his office in Pocatello, the county seat, in July. ​“How do we make or help rural America…transition to this new way of life, so that they can thrive and prosper?”

Not everyone shares Hough’s vision of prosperity. In south Bannock County, Hough’s campaign has met with fierce opposition. Two camps exist: On one side are residents who are willing to lease their own land to solar energy developers or stand by their neighbors’ right to do so. On the other are those who are skeptical of renewables and believe that leasing land to developers is equivalent to selling out—many of them do, however, support nuclear.

Steve Criddle, a third-generation farmer and lifelong resident of south Bannock County, voiced his support for solar in 2024 before the ban passed. He described the situation today simply: ​“It’s confrontational.”

Bannock County’s moratorium on solar and wind stemmed from an unlikely source: Hough himself.

It was the fall of 2023, and he had just attended a conference of the Idaho Association of Counties in Boise.

At the conference, the Lava Ridge Wind Project, a 1 GW development slated for more than 57,000 acres of federal land in southern Idaho, dominated the conversation. County leaders from around the state were concerned about clean energy developers running roughshod over their communities. (President Donald Trump’s Interior Department canceled Lava Ridge in August 2025.)

The discussion got Hough thinking. Months before the conference, he had learned that several developers, including Chicago-based Hecate Energy and Moab, Utah–based Balanced Rock Power, were approaching landowners about solar projects in Bannock County.

When Hough returned from Boise, the cautionary tale of Lava Ridge fresh in his mind, he took action. “I realized that we didn’t have any kind of ordinance,” Hough said. ​“So I knew they’d come in and do whatever they wanted.”

On October 12, 2023, spearheaded by Hough, the county commissioners voted unanimously to enact a six-month moratorium on large-scale energy projects. The idea was not to ban solar and wind, but simply to give the county time to regulate the developments and ensure they balanced economic opportunity with responsible land stewardship. A public hearing on the topic was set for the following February, and the commissioners would vote on the future of the moratorium in March.

But Hough’s moratorium took on a life of its own. In the months that followed, a group of concerned residents organized to make it permanent.

Rebecca Falcon led the charge. A decades-long resident of Downey, a town in south Bannock County, Falcon had been approached by Balanced Rock in September 2023 about leasing a portion of her 80 acres for solar. Appalled, she turned the company away. But Balanced Rock’s proposed Harmon Solar Project (aka Harmon I), a 300-megawatt solar facility with a 1,200-megawatt-hour on-site battery energy storage system, included her neighbors’ land. Stopping it would take more than just Falcon saying no.

Falcon and another neighbor, Dez Hauser, who had also turned away Balanced Rock, encouraged other concerned community members to show up to the February 2024 public hearing about the future of the moratorium.

By the time the hearing rolled around, residents had sorted themselves into two groups: for solar and against it. The meeting attracted such interest that it was moved from the county courthouse to a local high school auditorium in south Bannock County. The venue was still packed.

More than two dozen speakers, nearly all of them from south Bannock County, showed up to say their piece. The vast majority testified in opposition to solar. 

The commissioners convened the next month to decide what to do with the moratorium. Hough voted to repeal it. The other two commissioners voted to extend it. The commissioners framed it as an additional pause to study the potential effects of large-scale renewable energy development in the county. Yet as the controversy mounted through the spring and summer of 2024, the county declined to take further action. 

The ban stayed in place. Falcon, Hauser, and the other opponents had won. 

Dale Lish, a grain farmer based in Downey, was frustrated with the decision. Recently retired from a career at the US Department of Agriculture, Lish became familiar with solar while working on projects in Idaho and Washington through the Rural Energy for America Program. He spoke in favor of the energy source at the same hearing where Falcon and Hauser expressed their concerns. 

“The approach was just no to everything, which bothered me,” Lish said of the county’s decision, in a June interview on his property. ​“A straight-out ban—I don’t think that’s American. I think we, as private-property owners, ought to have a chance to do what we want within reason.”

In 2023, Lish signed a one-year contract with Hecate to option about 400 acres of his land for solar development. Hecate declined to renew the contract in 2024 because of the county’s ordinance. 

The company has since pulled out of the county altogether. Representatives from Hecate did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

For the two and a half years since that March vote, Hough has been beating the drum of private-property rights while also trying to educate the community on Idaho’s power needs and how they might be met in Bannock County.

While the commission won’t vote until later this fall on the new ordinance, which is still undergoing public review, at least one of Hough’s colleagues may have changed his tune. Ernie Moser, an incumbent who supported the ban in 2024, said in an interview in June that his fears about solar and wind are ​“not as big” as they were two years ago. Still, Moser, who’s retiring from the commission at the end of this year, stressed that he wants ​“to do it right” when it comes to revisiting the county’s energy policy. The other commissioner, Ken Bullock, declined to comment. 

May’s primary elections offered another indication of the county’s divided views. In the Republican primary, Hough faced a challenger from south Bannock County with an anti-solar platform, and though he won his race by 14 percentage points overall, his opponent captured 70 percent of the vote in Downey. No Democrat is running in the race, so Hough won’t face competition in the November general election. 

This year’s results mirror those of 2024, when former county commissioner John Crowder, who voted for the ban in March of that year, won big in Downey but lost to Ken Bullock, an ally of Hough’s. “In south Bannock County, it’s a supermajority of residents that do not want this,” Crowder said about solar development. 

Steve Criddle can trace his family’s roots in Downey back to 1876, when his ancestors first filed paperwork for water rights. His grandfather farmed grain, including wheat. Criddle’s father did the same. He’s kept the agricultural heritage alive himself, but because of a changing climate, grain farming is no longer enough to sustain him. 

“We don’t get enough moisture anymore,” Criddle said. The fields where he grows crops without irrigation now hardly produce enough to make ends meet. He’s turned some of his land over to cattle grazing and has worked odd jobs over the years to hold on to the farm. 

On a sunny day in late June, Criddle drove me down a dirt road in his wife’s pickup truck. We were headed to one of his alfalfa fields. Three years ago, he said, the field produced some 800 bales of hay. This year, it produced only a dozen.

“The drought’s been tough,” Criddle told me. Before last year, he’d never had to buy hay for his cows. This year, he’ll likely have to buy hay again, as more than 87 percent of the county is now experiencing extreme drought conditions after a winter with record-low snowfall.

Dale Lish, who also grows crops without irrigation, said that wells in the valley are limited. 

“That’s the Achilles’ heel of this area. There’s just a lack of groundwater, and then, of course, sparse rainfall,” he said. To accumulate enough moisture to grow wheat, Lish leaves his fields fallow every other year, allowing the soil to stock up on water. 

While Criddle and Lish have fought to hang on to their land over the past six decades, climate change and the loss of small-scale farming have reshaped their community. “You don’t have family farms anymore,” said Criddle’s wife, Keedrin. ​“The families can’t survive on a farm.”

As neighbors sold their land to corporations or moved out of Downey altogether, the town’s services have struggled to stay open. Over the years, the rural hospital closed, along with the town’s bank, pharmacy, movie theater, grocery store, and farm-equipment shop. Gone too are the dairies and granary. 

So when representatives from Hecate knocked on the Criddles’ door in 2023 proposing a lease for solar development, Steve and Keedrin heard them out. And while the couple didn’t sign a contract, they realized how such a lease could bring them a stable source of income, which they could use to hire help and reinvest in the long-term sustainability of the farm. 

The Criddles now have 11 grandchildren, with another one on the way. Steve thinks often about what he’ll leave for the next generations. “I don’t want my kids to have to work this hard,” he said. 

Lish, who did sign a contract with Hecate, said the decision didn’t come easily. But, he added, it would have been ​“kind of irresponsible” to not consider the opportunity. With solar, the per-acre income projections were four to five times higher than with wheat alone, Lish said.

“Lots of people have lots of opinions on what you’re going to do to your ground. I get that, and I can appreciate it. But we love this land too, and we’re not going to do something that’s going to be harmful,” Lish said. ​“We’re just looking at something that’s going to help us continue on to multiple generations.”

A few years earlier, Lytton Bastian, another farmer in Downey, had found himself contemplating the same questions. 

Bastian, who was born and raised in Bannock County, is a multigenerational farmer and father of six. He owns over 2,000 acres in the valley. Balanced Rock was interested in 840 of those acres adjacent to the Populus substation, a parcel Bastian currently uses as a gravel pit and as cattle pasture for a month each fall and spring. In 2021, he signed a five-year contract with Balanced Rock that includes modest quarterly payments. If the ban lifts and Balanced Rock installs solar, the payments would increase. 

Bastian’s neighbor is Rebecca Falcon. She criticized his decision to lease to Balanced Rock, saying that he sold out to make more money than he could with agriculture.

“My biggest issue is that it’s all ag land,” Falcon said. ​“They’ll take the grain; they’ll take the hay; they’ll take the cattle; they’ll take it all.” 

Bastian said he only went through with the contract because Balanced Rock wanted his ​“least productive piece of ground.” An irrigated parcel would have been out of the question, he said. ​“Any normal farmer will not sell out good prime ground, because that’s hard to come by.”

At the February 2024 hearing at the high school, Bastian was among the few local farmers who spoke in favor of solar.

For Bastian, the stakes are getting higher. His contract with Balanced Rock is up at the end of this year. He thinks the renewal hinges on the county overturning the ban. Otherwise, he fears that the company could go the way of Hecate and look elsewhere.

“If the ban is lifted, the short answer is yes, we will move forward with our project,” said Katarina Bagri, a senior manager of development at Balanced Rock who’s leading the Harmon Solar Project, which includes Bastian’s land. ​“If there’s still a ban, there’s not many options, so we’ll just have to see what are the options left.” 

It’s not just individual landowners who stand to miss out if the ban continues. Property tax payments from solar development would also deliver revenue to help the town bring back much-needed local services, like a grocery store. Balanced Rock, anticipating that the ban would be lifted, offered the city of Downey $100,000 in direct payments last fall via a community benefit program.

If Balanced Rock is unable to build, the city will not receive this money. Hough addressed this directly in an op-ed published in the local paper in February. Counties with bans in place, he wrote, ​“will watch the projects—and the money—go elsewhere.”

Just outside Downey, the northbound portion of Interstate 15 stretches over a pass and opens onto a sprawling valley. Golden fields give way to towering peaks. It’s part of why Falcon, who grew up in Utah, moved to Idaho: The landscape is all mountains and rolling hills. The idea that solar panels could become part of the view is unthinkable. 

“I think, my goodness, why do you have to build it where we live?” Falcon said. 

Falcon and her husband, Rudy, bought their 80-acre parcel of land in Downey more than three decades ago. That was before the Populus substation was built within view of their house. Now, transmission lines crisscross their land and that of their neighbors. 

“It is the ugliest thing on this planet,” Falcon said about the substation. ​“I wish it wasn’t there.” 

In the coming years, two new high-voltage transmission lines will join the existing lines running through Populus. They’re part of the yearslong Energy Gateway project being built by PacifiCorp, one of the largest utilities in the West. The goal is to improve the region’s power transportation and reliability as energy demand grows, said Jonathan Whitesides, a spokesperson for Rocky Mountain Power, a division of PacifiCorp that operates in Idaho. 

As much as Falcon doesn’t like looking at the substation, she understands the need for transporting power. Rudy works for the Bonneville Power Administration and is often on the road in Washington and Oregon building substations himself. But solar, to Falcon, is a different story. She said that she struggles with the amount of land it requires to produce power, a talking point that’s been popularized by the fossil fuel industry.

She and Hauser, her Downey neighbor, have continued to speak out against solar since the 2024 ban. Hauser is active on community Facebook pages, and Falcon runs an email chain to share information with friends and neighbors. ​“I wasn’t willing to be quiet about it,” Hauser said. 

For years, the women have regularly filed public records requests with Bannock County and the federal government. That’s how they discovered that a month after Bannock County voted to maintain its ban, Balanced Rock applied for federal authorization for a second solar project, called Harmon II. The project, like Harmon I, was slated for 300 MW, and its application outlined solar and battery energy storage development on approximately 1,300 acres of public land administered by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Bannock County. Harmon II was proposed on land adjacent to Harmon I, which had stalled because of the county’s ban. 

In July, Bagri from Balanced Rock acknowledged that the company had been sitting on the application. ​“All of our focus is on the private land, [the] initial 300 megawatts. So once we make progress with that, we’ll figure out whether we want to pursue an expansion,” she said. In August, Balanced Rock officially withdrew its application for Harmon II.

Falcon and Hauser saw the second project as evidence of a lack of transparency from the developer. 

“The public has a right to know this will change this valley for 50 years,” Falcon said. ​“We will have left that mess to our children and grandchildren, because who’s going to guarantee who owns it in 50 years to decommission it and clean it up? You can’t make those kinds of guarantees.”

Bagri said the guardrails the county was considering in early 2024—which are now baked into the ordinance the commissioners will vote on this fall—include provisions on decommissioning. The draft ordinance stipulates that in order to get projects permitted, developers must pay into a bond and submit a plan for the removal of all energy infrastructure at the end of the project’s lifetime. Bagri said these plans involve restoring project sites ​“back to as close to preconstruction condition as possible.” Today, project lifetimes range from 35 to 40 years, she said.

Still, for Hauser and Falcon, the feeling of disempowerment persists. Falcon pointed to other counties across the state, including Ada County, home to Boise, that have taken matters into their own hands to ​“put a limit” on development. In Ada County, solar is now prohibited on prime farmland, as defined by the US Department of Agriculture. In southeast Idaho, some of Bannock County’s neighbors, like Caribou County, have also banned utility-scale solar, though others, such as Power and Bingham counties, have embraced it. 

“If you don’t build in the brakes, they will run you over,” Falcon said. 

For all their ire toward solar, Falcon and Hauser see promise in nuclear energy. That puts them in the majority: In January, Bannock County surveyed residents to gauge public opinion on nuclear energy. Over 700 people responded, with 90% indicating favorable views toward the industry. 

Hough was surprised by the results. ​“I didn’t think our community could agree on anything,” he said.

Southeast Idaho is home to Idaho National Laboratory, which leads the nation’s advanced nuclear research. As part of the Trump administration’s embrace of nuclear energy, the lab was given priority in May 2025 to expedite construction of on-site microreactor test beds. The Department of Energy announced in July that INL will receive $60 million as part of a public-private partnership to use AI in nuclear energy development and operation. Buzzy nuclear startup Oklo aims to build its first fission reactor there. 

Plus, next door in western Wyoming, the Bill Gates–backed TerraPower is building what it hopes will be the country’s first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant. The project, now under construction in rural Kemmerer, is expected to be completed in 2030 and will supply PacifiCorp with up to 500 MW of power. 

The excitement around INL and the TerraPower project leave many in Bannock County wondering when their big opportunity might come along. In July, the Bannock County commissioners hosted a public educational forum with INL to discuss how the county could get involved with small modular reactors (SMRs), microreactors, and nuclear manufacturing.

Falcon and Hauser were both in attendance. They said they’d much rather see the development of nuclear energy in Bannock County than renewables. ​“If you can have 30 acres with a semitruck-size nuclear plant on it, why wouldn’t you do that? Why would you give up thousands of acres to solar?” Falcon said. 

But the construction of SMRs and the broader nuclear revival touted by Trump remain highly uncertain prospects. 

Only two next-generation nuclear projects in the U.S. have received construction permits: TerraPower’s Kemmerer 1 and Kairos Power’s Hermes 2 reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Neither has an operating license, however. 

Even if more projects obtain licenses from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission amid Trump’s push to streamline permitting, the SMR industry is far from a sure thing. Most companies are proposing first-of-a-kind projects rife with engineering and economic unknowns. There’s little to no supply chain for the type of fuel many SMRs are designed to use. The United States’ first fully licensed SMR project was canceled in 2023 over cost concerns. Only two commercial SMRs operate in the world today—one in Russia and one in China. 

Dustin Manwaring, a Republican state representative for Pocatello and a land-use and development attorney for Balanced Rock, is an ally of Hough’s. He said the commissioner wants to usher in a future where Bannock County leads Idaho’s burgeoning nuclear industry.

“[It’s] a worthy, noble thing to do,” Manwaring said. ​“If you take a step away, I don’t know how realistic that is. I love that he’s trying.”

In the near term, Hough recognizes that bringing nuclear power to Bannock County could take years. That’s why he doesn’t want to turn down other types of economic development—like solar and wind—in the meantime. ​“Everybody’s claiming nuclear is the future, which it is, but nuclear is 10 years away, maybe, so you’ve got to have something to help get you there,” Hough said.

Some clean energy advocates, like Linda Engle with the Portneuf Resource Council, the region’s environmental nonprofit, are optimistic that the support for nuclear energy could help overturn the ban. ​“With the nuclear piece in there, hopefully it gets passed,” Engle said.

For all the community debate, the future of clean energy in Bannock County ultimately rests on the decision of the three commissioners. To Commissioner Moser, who in 2024 voted in favor of the ban, the choice isn’t black-and-white. 

Hanging on the walls in Moser’s office are two landscape paintings depicting Idaho’s wilderness. In one, a crisp blue stream is flanked by forest and purple mountain cliffs; in another, two people perch on a log, fishing rods in hand, waiting patiently for a catch. Moser has arranged the paintings, which were created by his now-grown son, so he can see them while sitting at his desk. On another wall, a second pair of paintings depicts the American Revolution. In a snowy forest scene, George Washington kneels beside a horse, praying.

Five days before the Fourth of July, Moser sat in his office, considering the paintings. ​“I love our country, the freedoms that we enjoy—250 years is amazing,” he said. ​“God created this for us. I’m a steward now. I’ve been called to take care of it.”

It is this ethos that guides Moser, a south Bannock County native, as he contemplates the county’s new energy ordinance.

Moser’s fears have to do with solar site cleanup and the risks of battery fires. Moser is not alone in these concerns; they are often cited by solar opposition groups, which point to rare but devastating instances of battery fires in California. Such anxieties are also spreading nationwide. In December 2025, the volunteer fire departments in Downey and Lava Hot Springs, another rural community in south Bannock County, sent letters to the county commissioners warning that they were unprepared to fight battery fires and would need special equipment and training to do so. 

Bagri said Balanced Rock has tried to ease concerns about decommissioning and fire risk. During the numerous public hearings in 2024, representatives from both Hecate and Balanced Rock responded to the community’s concerns. ​“They addressed every one of those fears head-on, concisely with facts, and I thought they communicated very well,” said E.J. Zita, a rancher in Robin, Idaho, who’s had residential solar on her property for over a decade. But she said the anti-solar camp had dug in. ​“People didn’t listen; they just didn’t hear it.”

Despite his fears, Moser said he understands the weight of his responsibility. 

That’s why he’s tried to educate himself about Idaho’s energy needs over the past two years. In 2025, Moser visited a 40-MW solar project in neighboring Power County, a 20-minute drive west from Pocatello. The visit was organized for the Bannock County commissioners by Balanced Rock. The same year, Moser and Hough attended the energy academy hosted by Idaho Power in Boise and had conversations with Rocky Mountain Power. Language in Bannock County’s new draft ordinance requires energy developers to help local fire departments with training and equipment for dealing with battery fires. 

In June, Moser said he recognized that there’s a need for growth in Bannock County. He’s not the only one whose opinion has shifted. Wade Egan, the former chair of the county’s volunteer planning and development council, was ​“neutral” about the ban passing in 2024. Egan grew up next door to Dale Lish in Downey and now farms around 5,000 acres in the area. He has friends on both sides of the issue.

This time around, though, Egan is pro-solar. Echoing Hough, Egan said he sees it as a matter of property rights. ​“I really do believe the right to control and own personal property is as fundamental as speech,” he said. 

Moser, meanwhile, is focused on getting things right for future generations. Pointing to the landscape paintings in his office, he spoke about the Idaho wilderness that he wants his son, and grandchildren, to enjoy. 

“It’s not a personal choice. It’s hard choices,” Moser said. ​“We wake up at two o’clock in the morning thinking about them, and it isn’t a simple deal.”

This story was originally published by Capital B and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As a child in the 1950s and ’60s, Regina Martin became so used to the oil pumpjacks near her home that she assumed every child lived beside them. Everyone was made “sick to [their] tummy” by the sulfurous, rotten-egg smell that never seemed to leave, she thought.

Only until she was grown did she begin to see a possible connection between growing up on top of the nation’s largest urban oil drilling field and her own sickness and the asthma that affected her sister. 

For over a century in Los Angeles and across the nation, Black people have been disproportionately likely to live near oil wells, the machinery that draws oil from deep underground. The pollution from these drilling sites are connected to birth complications, child development issues, respiratory illnesses, and cancer. 

Now, a new California state law moves to turn that lived experience into a broader public-policy question: What does a state owe communities exposed to pollution for generations? And what happens when you can’t offer support to every family that has struggled through the harm?

California lawmakers have passed AB 1661, which would steer $5 million collected from penalized oil wells in Inglewood into direct cash aid for 1,000 nearby households with qualifying respiratory or reproductive health impacts. Some of LA’s Blackest suburbs and city neighborhoods, including Inglewood, Ladera Heights, and Baldwin Hills, surround the oil field. 

The legislation, introduced by Assemblymember Isaac G. Bryan, is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom by October. It sets aside enough money for payments of up to $5,000 for 1,000 impacted households under its initial structure. The money would come from the state’s community repair and reinvestment fund for people living nearest the oil field.

For Black communities living nearest to refineries, highways, landfills, and oil wells, this fund may signal something larger than one oil field or payment. It asks whether money can begin to repair harms accumulated across generations: lives cut short by illness, household wealth drained by medical bills and depressed property values, and the anxiety of raising children amid pollution. 

Bryan and other supporters are calling it environmental reparations and say it is a model that could be replicated to make industrial companies help repair the damage borne by people living closest to polluting sites. 

To Tianna Shaw-Wakeman, the environmental justice program director with Black Women for Wellness in LA, the law could provide a national organizing model. “My hope has always come at the community level, at the grassroots level,” she said. “I see how grassroots organizing has created long-term change in our local communities, and I see that that can be and is being replicated all over the country.”

For Bryan, who represents the communities surrounding the Inglewood Oil Field, the cash-assistance program is part of a longer fight over the field’s legacy. Bryan, the first Black legislator to chair the California Assembly’s Natural Resources Committee, said his constituents have faced lower life expectancies and higher rates of asthma and heart conditions for decades.

“The company has essentially just been extracting from the community with no investments in the community, no care in the community and what feels like no regard at times for the broader community,” Bryan told Capital B. “The community [is] due this repair, and it’s been long overdue.”

The measure builds on Bryan’s earlier legislation, AB 2716, which Newsom signed in 2024. That law requires the Inglewood Oil Field to close by 2030 and establish a penalty structure for low-producing wells. Low-producing wells can leak methane and other harmful gases into the air and water. To push operators to curb that pollution and clean up their sites, regulators imposed a penalty on companies that keep such wells operating. Bryan said operators are charged $10,000 per well each month, with the revenue directed into a community repair fund restricted to investments within 2.5 miles of the field.

The fund could eventually support affordable housing, urban greening, park infrastructure, and other community priorities, Bryan said. He described the cash program as a pilot that could help determine whether direct payments are the form of repair residents most want. “We know people are struggling,” he said. “We know one of the biggest tools against an increasingly unaffordable society is to just put more money in people’s pockets.”

As communities nationwide press for stronger environmental protections, California’s experiment could test whether government and industry are willing to move beyond preventing future harm and toward compensating people who have already lived with its costs.

“Community members who have been deeply impacted, whose health have been deeply impacted, have never gotten restitution for that in any sort of way. We deserve more than we have been getting,” Shaw-Wakeman said. “And as we transition our city, as we transition our county, part of that story has to be addressing past harms.”

At the same time, California has passed a law that would shield reparation payments from taxation. “California is actively preparing for the implementation of reparations programs,” said state Assemblymember Tina McKinnor, who introduced the legislation. “We must ensure that recipients receive the full benefit of these efforts.”

Three dozen community groups came together in support of the environmental reparations legislation. There were no groups in public opposition. 

The legislation would not close the oil field or resolve the long-running fight over drilling in Los Angeles County. 

Under the proposal, eligible households within 2.5 miles of the field could seek aid if a resident has experienced respiratory or reproductive health impacts. But the program’s practical reach will depend on how Los Angeles County designs the application process, what documentation it requires, and how it handles demand if more than 1,000 households apply. There are tens of thousands more households in proximity to the oil field.

Bryan said Los Angeles County was still working through how the assistance would be delivered. It could come as a lump-sum payment, monthly payments, or another structure, he said, and county officials were evaluating which approach would best serve families.

Shaw-Wakeman said Black Women for Wellness and its allies pushed for a process that does not force residents to clear burdensome or invasive hurdles to prove harm. The organization has urged officials to consider self-attestation rather than requiring applicants to produce medical records that may be difficult or costly to obtain.

That question of access may determine whether the fund actually proves relief or is another government program that excludes the people it was intended to help. Many families, particularly low-income ones, may be living with these illnesses without formal diagnoses. 

The program also lands amid a larger debate over what should happen to urban oil sites once production ends. Environmental justice advocates have argued that closing wells is only the first step. They want operators held responsible for plugging wells, cleaning contaminated land, and ensuring that redevelopment does not displace the same neighbors who lived with the pollution. 

As oil wells have closed in Los Angeles in recent years, rental prices and home values have risen, threatening to displace longtime Black residents. 

“We can’t replace toxic oil extraction with gentrification,” Shaw-Wakeman said. “There is still a lot more to address beyond those 1,000 households. We’re trying to address the ways in which community members are still being harmed every day.”

President Donald Trump announced on Friday that the United States has reached an agreement with Denmark and Greenland to give the US “permanent control over security, and all other needs,” in Greenland, which is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark home to 56,000 people.

“This is an “Infinite Life” Agreement, there is no end!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “From now on, no U.S. adversary can EVER have a base in Greenland, have a military presence in Greenland, or make sensitive investments in Greenland, without our express written approval.”

The agreement has not yet been signed, and little is known about it beyond Trump’s social media posts. Denmark and Greenland said on Saturday that any ​agreement with the United States would not compromise Greenland’s sovereignty. And Trump’s words about expanding American military presence in Greenland may not mean much, considering that the US military already enjoys sweeping access to Greenland under a treaty that dates to the 1950s. Service members are, in fact, the single largest group of Americans currently present in the territory.

Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, wrote in a post on Facebook that he is pleased with the potential deal. “The agreement recognizes the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our kingdom and ​the right of the Greenlandic people to self-determination,” he said. That suggests the agreement, whatever its specifics, does not involve fully annexing Greenland as Trump has repeatedly threatened to do in the past.

President Trump started floating the idea to annex Greenland in 2019, and he’s been saying that “the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity” since at least 2024. His threats against Greenland ramped up in early 2026. He has claimed that Greenland is “surrounded” by Russian and Chinese ships, and has said he wouldn’t rule out military force or economic coercion as strategies to try and take over the territory.

Why is he so dead set on gaining more access to Greenland? Trump has sometimes said that the US must seize Greenland so Russia or China don’t. Other annexation threats have focused less on military dominion, and more on control over the area’s rare earth minerals and oil reserves. Several US companies already mine in Greenland, and 17 days ago, the US-based company Greenland Mines signed a deal purchasing the Sarfartoq Rare Earths Project in southwest Greenland for over $35 million. As my colleague Schuyler Mitchell wrote early this year, “from Venezuela to Cuba to Greenland, this administration is committed to bolstering the financial interests of US companies through imperial aggression. Political control over a foreign nation is less important than making sure Americans can profit there.”

President Trump, despite his ongoing interest in Greenland, sometimes confuses it with Iceland and once said he “hasn’t spoken to” any Greenlanders, thousands of whom protested against his threats in early 2026. Ninety percent of Greenland’s population is Indigenous, and a majority of Greenlanders support independence from Denmark—to say nothing of the United States.

“My immediate reaction [to the deal] is that it makes me nervous and skeptical,” Ellen Frederiksen, a retired teacher in Narsaq, a town in southern Greenland, told the New York Times.

“The way Trump presents it, it sounds as if he is being given a monopoly over Greenland,” she said. “I sincerely hope that isn’t the case.”

The top Democrats on the House and Senate foreign affairs committees this week announced their intent to block a $2.8 billion sale of 60,000 one-ton bombs to Israel. It’s an unusual move—and one with limited power beyond the procedural sphere. But it shows that even pro-Israel Democrats are concerned that US-funded weapons are being used to commit war crimes.

Congressman Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.)—a longtime supporter of Israel, and ranking member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs—invoked what’s known as an informal committee hold on the bombs sale. This type of hold essentially puts a transaction on pause so that lawmakers have time to acquire more information.

“The Trump administration has not provided sufficient assurances that these weapons will be used by the Netanyahu government in accordance with US law and with appropriate protections for civilians,” he told The Guardian. “I therefore will not clear this sale at this time.”

On the Senate side, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire has been withholding her consent for the arms sale since July. Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “has unresolved concerns about how the bombs would be used in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza—as well as to intensify the war with Iran,” as Semafor reported.

This bicameral opposition does not fully kill the sale, because the President can still override the hold.

But it complicates the path for what would be the largest single taxpayer-funded arms transfer to Israel in years, and it showcases the Democratic Party’s increasingly total break from the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza. At least 73,000 people have been killed in Gaza since October of 2023, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. In April 2026, a Pew Research Center poll found that 80 percent of Democratic voters held an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent in 2022.

“Netanyahu needs to hear from America that we don’t like what he’s doing,” Shaheen told CNN. “We don’t like what’s happening in the West Bank where settler violence is killing Palestinians, sending them out of their homes, disrupting basic infrastructure. And the Netanyahu administration has basically done nothing to address that.”

Netanyahu himself, meanwhile, is preparing for a trip to the United States, where he’s scheduled to speak on September 23rd at the United Nations in New York City. The Israeli Prime Minister will face protests upon his arrival. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who threatened to arrest Netanyahu during his campaign, no longer believes he has legal jurisdiction to do so. However, he has said Netanyahu is “not welcome in New York City.”

After Mother Jones senior reporter Julia Lurie had her IUD removed, she was surprised to find that she felt happier and calmer than she had in years. 

Her experience made her wonder: What does the science say about how hormonal birth control affects mood? And in a moment when contraceptives are so politicized and misinformation is rampant, is it possible to talk about the side effects of birth control without giving ammunition to those who want to get rid of it altogether?

In talking with scientists, doctors, and public health experts, Lurie learns that for years, research has found that people on hormonal contraceptives are much more likely to experience depression, suicidality, anxiety, insomnia, and other effects rarely discussed by the doctors who prescribe them. 

“For some women, it can be an almost overnight change,” says OB-GYN and contraceptive researcher Dr. Ojvind Lidegaard.

This week on Reveal, we explore the gaps in women’s reproductive health, from contraceptives to menopause.

On Friday morning, I hosted a Reddit AMA, in which participants could ask me anything. But the questions were practically all related to my new book: How Russia Won: Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Fight for America. The queries were smart, and none were vituperative—which was surprising given that this topic has become so toxic because of Trump’s BS insistence that “Russia, Russia, Russia” is a Deep State “hoax” and “witch hunt” orchestrated to destroy him. Here’s an excerpt of the Reddit conversation. You can learn more about the book at HowRussiaWon.com.

With Russia’s equivalent of midterm elections happening today, tomorrow, and on Sunday, what do you think the level of US interference in Russia’s election is?

Also, historically—say, from the 1990s to now, if we take Russia’s interference in the US as 100 percent—where would you put US interference in Russia? Are the methods employed similar? Different?

DC: We know that historically, Russia has long accused the US and the West of intervening in its domestic affairs. And indeed, throughout the Cold War, the US ran covert actions around the world that intervened in elections and operations that helped overturn democratically elected governments (such as in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile).

But I’ve seen no evidence that the US is doing anything like that in recent years in Russia. Of course, there are intelligence operations that target Russia and Putin. But given that Russia is a closed society, without free media, in which dissidence is crushed and critics imprisoned and killed, there’s much less opportunity for the sort of information operations that Russia can target at an open society like the US and European nations.

Are there signs that the war with Ukraine has affected their ability to interfere with our election due to the allocation of resources?

DC: After Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, much of the Russian disinformation operations focused on the war.

Two main lines of false narrative were purported corruption (Zelenskyy is using millions of dollars to buy yachts!) and the bogus charge that the US was running bioweapons labs in Ukraine—an allegation that Tucker Carlson, Tulsi Gabbard, and other MAGA/right-wing influencers embraced and amplified (as I detail in my book).

But during the 2024 campaign, Russian intelligence pivoted to direct its disinfo ops toward the US election—to disparage Biden and then Harris and Walz. And in recent days, we have seen one of those disinfo networks—dubbed Matryoshka—which I wrote about in the book, start to target the midterms to disparage Democrats and encourage votes for the GOP.

Do you have specific examples of what these disinformation campaigns looked like, what each of their intents was, and the platforms they used to do so?

The book is full of examples. Here’s one: During the 2024 campaign, a Russian disinformation operator—an American fugitive cop living in Moscow named John Mark Dougan—appeared on a show on Rumble, a conservative video platform, hosted by a QAnoner and presented a man (in silhouette with his voice altered) who claimed he had been a Kazakhstan exchange student at the Minnesota high school where Gov. Tim Walz had once taught and coached football.

This anonymous person said Walz had inappropriately touched him. This baseless allegation—it turned out there were no exchange students from Kazakhstan at the time—was then spread across a network of phony websites set up by Dougan that had real-sounding names: The Boston Times, the New York News Daily, the Miami Chronicle, and was soon picked up by American social media users and went viral across assorted social media platforms.

Eventually, Jack Posobiec, a MAGA influencer who gave us the bonkers Pizzagate conspiracy theory and was then working for the Trump campaign, and Candace Owens, another MAGA influencer, amplified this allegation. It’s a good bet that this baseless charge was seen by over 10 million Americans.

Now, how do you stop something like that? Well, social media platforms could do moderating. More importantly, political operatives and influencers could behave more responsibly. I know. Hah! Not in the world of Trump. But we also can try to encourage everyone to be more discerning in what they pass along. Again, hah! This is a problem. Disinfo ops work best when the phony narratives are embraced and transmitted by real people. How to stop that is a challenge.

When Russia interferes using influencers, are the influencers even aware? Or does Russia just pump money into influencers they believe have the talking points that disrupt or push their agenda?

DC: The best disinformation ops produce false narratives that become embraced and spread by authentic accounts—that is, real Americans.

And we have seen numerous cases in which Russian disinfo slipped into US social media is then widely amplified by MAGA influencers and even Republican officeholders. The book is full of examples of this. And there’s the Tenet Media case, in which RT, the Russian state-controlled propaganda outlet, funneled $10 million to MAGA influencers, including Benny Johnson and Tim Pool, who claim they did not know the exorbitant payments they were receiving—far above normal levels—came from Moscow.

But you have to ask: Why was Russia willing to provide millions to these pro-Trump influencers? What does it say about their role in the information ecosystem?

Trump lifted restrictions on using US-supplied weapons for long-distance strikes inside Russia proper, including providing targeting assistance. The blockade of Venezuela saw a further crackdown on the shadow fleet, further restricting Russia’s export capacity. The Russia-friendly Assad regime in Syria has collapsed, and the Russian forces stationed there have been forced to flee.

Why exactly do you think Putin is a fan of Trump despite all that?

DC: I think the answer is obvious. Putin’s key goal is to weaken and divide the Western alliance. Trump is single-handedly doing that, dumping on NATO, threatening Canada, and declaring his intention to grab Greenland. He has cut back on assistance to Ukraine and provided Putin plenty of leeway in that war. Remember when Trump said he would end that war in 24 hours? Well, he has barely tried.

And most recently, he has sided with Putin, with his son-in-law declaring Ukraine should give up land to end the war—Putin’s position. And Trump has definitely weakened the US. Look at the recent news about countries pulling out of their investments in the US. Our position throughout the world is weaker. Our economy is weaker. Trump denigrates American democracy, which is a key part of Putin’s message: You cannot rely on democracy; you need autocratic leadership to have a strong nation.

True, not everything Trump has done has been to Putin’s benefit. He attacked an ally of Putin: Iran. But that has created such upheaval and weakened the US military that it has had benefits for Putin, including raising the value of Russia’s oil reserves.

Does Russia want a specific party in power? Or just to sow division and chaos?

DC: It’s pretty clear that when Russia started to mess with US elections in 2015, its aim was to sow discord and impede the Clinton campaign. Putin hated Clinton—especially for criticizing the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections as fraudulent (which they probably were).

But as Trump became the nominee, the Russian operation included in its goals boosting his campaign. The evidence for this is pretty solid, as I explain in the book. That was the finding of the intel community in early 2017. And the Senate Intelligence Committee released a massive bipartisan 966-page report in August 2020—which got little attention—on the Russian attack on the 2016 election that concluded Putin’s aims had included helping Trump.

Who was chair of the committee at the time and signed off on this conclusion? A guy named Marco Rubio. And, as I detail in the book, Russia’s subsequent interventions in the 2020 and 2024 elections were all aimed at harming the Democrats and helping Trump. Though they do like to increase discord and conflict, as well.

Did you get to work with Nick Offerman for the video about your book? 

DC: I did, and it was both a joy and a thrill to work with him as he recorded the narration, particularly because he asked for notes on his reading of the lines and generously considered suggestions from me and our producer.

More US military personnel have reportedly died during the ongoing Iran war than the Pentagon has shared publicly, the latest and most serious evidence of the Trump administration’s ongoing cover-up around disastrous military failures in that conflict.

In a Washington Post report released Friday, six US officials with knowledge of internal Defense Department data on military casualties, attested that at least 22 service members have died. The Pentagon’s public database reports 14 military casualties as of Friday as a result of Operation Epic Fury, which began with the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran in February. Four more deaths are labeled in a separate category, “Overseas Operations,” despite the Defense Department previously reporting 18 deaths related to Iran.

In July, the New York Times reported that one reason the Trump administration removed four service members who were killed days earlier from the casualty list—three in Jordan and one in northern Iraq—was that they died after the president declared a ceasefire in April.

One official told the Post that the four additional deaths were not all directly tied to the Iran war, but included military personnel who were separately stationed in the Middle East. 

When a US service member’s death is formally accounted for, the military initiates an investigation to determine whether they died while performing official duties. The evaluation directly affects the amount of benefits their families receive.

The Trump administration also appears to be hiding the extent of damage to US military bases. Earlier this week, CBS News shared photos leaked by active service members of a destroyed Boeing aircraft in an Air Force base in Saudi Arabia. Other photos show destroyed buildings and military barracks at the base. Camp Buehring, a US staging post in Kuwait, had damaged aircraft, as well as armored vehicles, that the administration had not previously acknowledged. 

In addition, the Defense Department’s inspector general released a report earlier this week that the war in Iran “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls and revealed industrial base bottlenecks for munitions resupply.” In the first four months, the inspector general valued the cost of military operations at $33.4 billion, not accounting for costs of damaged facilities, while the Trump administration struggles to accelerate weapons production—a move that the report says has “significant lead times.” 

Trump’s attempts to conceal those failures—with even less believable claims that the US has “wiped every single force in Iran out very completely” or that the war is “pretty much” over—are prolonging a war that the White House seems determined to lose, and that has killed thousands of people across the region.  

I grew up in a highly insular environment, never knowing—let alone interacting with—the outside world, in part due to my family’s history with war and struggle in Vietnam.

I can’t fully understand their experiences, but knowing the world often meant witnessing the violence of military personnel from France, Japan, the United States, and and other countries. They have told me stories of girls and young women covering themselves in mud to try to avoid rape by French soldiers during colonial rule, and people leaving Vietnam by sea in small boats in hope of a life beyond figuring out how to eat that day. My family understandably doesn’t talk about much of it now. Many may have felt like they could only manage to look after themselves and, if they’re lucky, immediate family members.

The result: a geopolitical history of trauma that reverberates with my own.

Music, movies, and television cracked my window a bit, and continue to serve as a way for me to try to peek into the experiences, feelings, and dreams others share with the world. Roger Ebert’s concept of a movie as a “machine that generates empathy” guided me into politics, and eventually to a job writing about it.

The noise rock and metal of the band Chat Pile is one of those bodies of art. Chat Pile makes art that pushes us to confront our world. The band’s 2022 single “Why” was a breakthrough, with the direct opening lyrics of “Why do people have to live outside / In the brutal heat or when it’s below freezing?” The band’s previous album, 2024’s Cool World, is an antiwar record—the track “Shame” decries the ongoing Gaza genocide and the shame of all wars.

Who Loves the Sun, Chat Pile’s latest album, came out Labor Day weekend. The cover art is a photo taken by bassist Stin of a charred building and a tent, with the 50-story corporate headquarters of the oil and gas producer Devon Energy—which is set to move out of Oklahoma City, where the band is from, to Houston, putting local jobs and the future of the building into question—looming in the background. The album challenges apathy to atrocity through tracks on climate change and labor struggle among imagery of vampires and masks.

Chat Pile’s closer suggests that in the event of human collapse, the natural world will continue, even if forever damaged.

But we’re still here now, so I spoke to the band’s lead vocalist, Raygun Busch—who also loves movies—about how we can resist.

I’m curious if you saw that the Oklahoma City Council renewed its contract for Flock cameras, and that N’Kiyla Jasmine Thomas, a more progressive candidate, won the Democratic nomination for Senate in Oklahoma. 

The news about the Flock renewal happened while we were on tour. I am completely disappointed in our mayor, David Holt. If I have anything to do with it, he won’t be our mayor for long. I’d love to see him get voted the hell out of office forever. My good friend James Cooper on city council voted against it. He was one of the few.

Flock is so nakedly dystopian, scary, 1984. I can’t believe—I mean, I can believe that David Holt would be spineless and just mask off. He’s a fascist. He will go with the fascist people. He wants the totalitarian government that watches our every move, run by the billionaire class. He’s all in on that, and I’m not. I’m very against that. 

As for the primaries, shamefully, I need to lock in, engage with what’s going on. I’m sure whoever’s running Democrat won’t be left enough for me, but it doesn’t pay to be pessimistic. We’ll see what happens. We keep saying we can’t do much worse, and then we do a little bit worse.

I think your music makes an attempt to reckon with the political moment we’re in. How do you approach that?

I feel like in terms of art, not being political right now is insane. I can’t believe every band doesn’t have one political [song]. You don’t have to be like the Dead Kennedys, but even “99 Red Balloons” is about world politics.

[I’m] thinking about literacy rates and stuff like that. I don’t have children. I’m not involved in that kind of stuff. Personally, I don’t do enough. It’s hard to live your life and do everything. Got to try your best.

In terms of trying your best, every artist, top to bottom—especially bands at my level—should be talking about politics. Even if I don’t agree with their politics, there should be some reflection of the world we live in now. People need to open their eyes and react and say things.

It’s not like I’m going to write a song that’s going to change the world—that’s not what the point is. We need to all be talking about this stuff to initiate action and change. Clearly, the powers that be want us all to fight each other [but] we’re not each other’s enemies, even though we may disagree about something. We need to focus on these people that are fucking destroying the planet, sucking everybody dry of resources and wealth.

How did you get into framing politics as something you need to participate in, and has that changed over time to where you’re now making music about politics? I ask this because my pathway into politics was through art.

Absolutely, dude. I definitely grew up in a house where CNN and NPR are on all the time. So, in a way, I kind of resented politics. 

And if I’m trying to find common ground with my dad, it would be learning about stuff like that and watching movies like JFK—Oliver Stone, political intrigue, was like a big deal in our house for sure. My dad loved that Clint Eastwood movie In the Line of Fire. 

Aside from that, music for sure. Like Dead Kennedys, The Clash, Propagandhi was a new band. I’m 41, so Today’s Empires, Tomorrow’s Ashes came out when I was in high school. In that time, Michael Moore was a huge deal, so I’m reading his books. I’m reading Crashing the Party by Ralph Nader. I’m pretending I’m reading A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn—getting into leftist politics.

Here’s what activated it completely: 9/11 happened. I’m 17. And then we invaded Iraq when I was 18. I was taking a bunch of history classes, and I was like “I don’t want to fight in Iraq.” People were getting recruited at my school, and [they were] clearly preying on lower-class kids by giving free college and all this shit. 

What was getting into music in Oklahoma City like, and did it speak to the politics that you were seeing?

When I first moved here in 2004 [from Ponca City, Oklahoma], we had our own fake Godspeed You! Black Emperor band. They were called Radio Reception, and they would go on full rants about like “fuck George Bush, fuck war, no blood for oil.” They were radical. It was cool. That was a normal thing. We lived in a bubble, but in the underground, it wasn’t a big deal to be political. We had a band called American Hate. There was even surface-level politics versus what I feel like is nothing now—it’s inscrutable.

We did our song “Why” [in 2022] where I was like: “I’m not going to be artistic with this at all. I’m going to be as blunt as possible, all the way to the back, no mistaking.” There’s no metaphor, analogy, no poetic coding on this. It was sort of a reaction to, if there are politics in music right now, I don’t hear them. I don’t have time to sift through poetry to find what you’re saying. I’d love to see it more while we still can. 

Are you always talking politically to a small group of people in the underground? Or to reckon with the political moment, are you engaging with other people who are not in, or oppose, that niche community—especially given how much you all have grown in popularity as a band?

I mean it is scary, the more you get perceived and stuff. I don’t know how well or how much I want to deal with it. Everyone will be a coward at some point in their life. Sometimes you run into people, and it’s like “All right, man, I’m not gonna sit here and argue with you.”

Sometimes I just don’t want to fucking sit and talk when it comes to face-to-face interaction like that, but at the same time, if I have a mic in my hand and I’m in a big room and I don’t say “free Palestine, free Yemen, free Sudan, fuck war, fuck genocide, fuck AI,” what kind of person am I? I’m afraid, of course, of being beaten up, but I feel like everybody top-to-bottom should be able to speak their mind. There’s been some major celebrities that have said things, which is great. 

Shout out to Dave Matthews, my king. 

If someone becomes interested in politics through music or anything else, what happens after that? How can we actively do something to help our communities? 

You’ve just got to do what you can. It’s like reading, studying, going to the gym: Those who show up and do a little bit will always be ahead of the people who do nothing and never go, never do—even if that’s not enough.

We feel like we’re just so imprisoned by our phones—I am too. We’ve lost our sense of identity and just being in the world and recognizing the things around you. 

I need to do more, personally. What we do in our band, for instance, in a few weeks we’re going to do this benefit show [benefit show happened over the weekend] where we’re going to give all the proceeds to this identity-inclusive youth shelter called Sisu [in Oklahoma City]. So, it’s doing your best. 

Are you “raygun busch” on Letterboxd?

Is it Leprechaun? [The 1993 movie] Leprechaun is my icon.

Yeah, it’s the Leprechaun!