Throughout many months of midterm campaigning, the purveyors of conventional wisdom have rested assured that voters’ anger is motivated primarily by affordability, inflation and the Iran war-stoked “price of gas.”

And it makes sense.

America’s elections often turn on “kitchen table/pocketbook” issues like inflation, jobs and the cost of healthcare. It’s why we still refer to “It’s the economy, stupid” thirty-four years after the Clinton campaign made it their mantra. Predictably, the polling repeatedly confirmed throughout the summer that the midterms would indeed be another “It’s the economy, stupid” election.

Then, in the campaign’s final weeks, the well-respected pollsters at FOX News revealed the biggest surprise of the midterms—corruption suddenly leapfrogged to the top of voters’ concerns, outpacing the economic struggles that have increasingly dominated the political discussion since the pandemic derailed the global economy back in 2020:

After nearly ten years of cronyism, bribery and unabashed self-dealing, an overwhelming 88% of Americans are finally fed-up with the plundering of the presidency.

That’s nearly nine out of ten.

A number that high has to be bipartisan and include a significant number of unaffiliated independents. It must also include some disaffected Trump voters who’ve finally revoked the blanket immunity they granted him for most of the last ten years. The GOP cannot afford to lose those voters if they hope to retain the Senate. Even worse for them, the issue of corruption is also a late-breaking trend that was subsequently echoed in polls by CNBC and The Guardian. It’s not unlike the end of the 2016 campaign when the late movement trended away from Hillary and toward Trump. The GOP desperately needs late-deciding voters to break their way again, if only to limit their losses.

Therein lies the rub.

Convincing those voters with a last-minute barrage of erroneous, histrionically delivered fearmongering may be a stretch when inflation-battered voters—who’d already cast 51 million votes three days before election day—are now putting corruption at or near the top of their concerns. Unfortunately for the GOP, it probably means they’ve been paying attention to more than just the price of gas.

Republicans should brace for a long night if voters are indeed motivated by the stench of corruption wafting off the Epstein Files, tariff-related insider trading, the blatant oil profiteering, Kimberly Guilfoyle’s extortion, the murky world of insider-like trading on the two leading, Don Jr.-linked prediction markets and the $4 billion crypto fortune Trump amassed during his first year back in office.

It’s that last one that might present the biggest problem.

Voters have watched Silicon Valley become increasingly powerful as they’ve embraced Trump and stuffed his pockets with millions of dollars for his inauguration, his military parade, his ballroom, his wife’s movie and, whether directly or indirectly, his cryptocurrency businesses.

Mostly, they’ve watched Trump deliver returns on Silicon Valley’s investment in his plunderbund. It’s been a potent cocktail of regulatory indifference, government assistance and Trump’s patented salesmanship. He’s the Valley’s leading product pitchperson. He’s been hired to promote the Valley’s unpopular and potentially dangerous AI agenda. But I suspect voters are connecting Trump’s ongoing, tech-related windfall with his “see, hear and speak no evil” policy on artificial intelligence … which he is also trying to rebrand on their behalf.

They are definitely coming face-to-face with the potentially job-killing AI being cooked-up in the noisy, resource-sucking, pollution-spewing data centers currently popping up like mushrooms around the nation. In response, Americans around the nation and across the political spectrum have been making their displeasure known at city council meetings and county commissioner hearings. The anger has been mounting throughout the summer and, like the issue of corruption, it appears to be peaking as the nation gets closer to election day.

On any given day I can go to the Google machine and find new reporting on new efforts to ban or restrict data centers at the state, county or municipal level. Here’s a sampling of what I found just over the last three days of October:

Data center developer sues Pulaski County over new regulations (Arkansas)
https://katv.com/news/local/data-center-developer-sues-pulaski-county-over-new-regulations

EXCERPT: A company developing a proposed data center in Pulaski County has filed a federal lawsuit challenging new county regulations, alleging the ordinance unfairly targets its project and was approved following improper communications among local officials.

Urbana data center: What happens if the charter amendment and proposed settlement pass? (Illinois)
https://www.springfieldnewssun.com/local/urbana-data-center-what-happens-if-the-charter-amendment-and-proposed-settlement-pass/article_3820c658-ed1b-5510-9a30-2106f5413689.html

EXCERPT: Citing a lack of transparency from Mayor Bill Bean and the city council, residents launched petitions this past summer to recall the mayor and ban future data centers.

City council has since passed an ordinance placing the proposed charter amendment to ban data centers on the November ballot.

Estherville Planning and Zoning Commission advances data center ordinance recommendations to city council (Iowa)
https://www.ktiv.com/2026/10/30/estherville-planning-zoning-commission-advances-data-center-ordinance-recommendations-city-council/

EXCERPT: The commission considered and approved several restrictions, including capping any data center at a 25-megawatt facility, minimizing environmental impacts, placing limits on noise, and managing infrastructure such as municipal water and electric power consumption.

Settlement reached in Pine Island data center lawsuit (Minnesota)
https://www.kaaltv.com/news/settlement-reached-in-pine-island-data-center-lawsuit/

EXCERPT: According to the release, as part of the settlement, the proposed data center will be the first in Minnesota to undergo a new state environmental review process.

Data center proposed for public land south of Shoshone (Montana)
https://www.mtexpress.com/news/state_regional/data-center-proposed-for-public-land-south-of-shoshone/article_d2665288-8689-4684-b575-aa31ac9c8d5d.html

EXCERPT: The Blaine County Board of Commissioners earlier this month unanimously approved enacting a 182-day emergency moratorium on the issuance of development permits for data centers.

The ordinance disallows county officials from the “receipt, processing and approval of applications” of permits for the construction of data centers in Blaine County for the six-month period, the maximum permitted by law.

The emergency moratorium also mandates that county officials develop a plan for a “permanent solution” to a list of numerous “problems” associated with data centers, including the developments’ typically industrial-scale consumption of water and energy.

Chatham County Commissioners approve two items in special meeting on data centers (North Carolina)
https://www.wral.com/news/local/chatham-county-commissioners-approve-two-items-special-meeting-data-centers-/

EXCERPT: In February, Chatham County adopted a temporary moratorium on data centers. Chatham County residents, along with the nonprofit Haw River Assembly, said on Wednesday that they are pushing for a statewide moratorium on building data centers.

Ohio ‘brothers’ look to disrupt data center blitz one town at a time
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/30/distaste-for-data-centers-brings-bipartisan-ballot-blitz-to-ohio-01140681

EXCERPT: Ohio has emerged as a data center hot spot. A report last month from real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield identified the Columbus area — and specifically suburban New Albany — as among the most active markets.

The report notes, however, that political and regulatory scrutiny is prominent and “local opposition is also intensifying.”

Piqua, Ohio, a city of about 20,000 people a half hour north of Dayton, is one example. There, social media giant Meta is planning a $1 billion data center codenamed Project Klondike on just over 600 acres. Many residents are unhappy with how it unfolded.

A proposal in Lower Merion would restrict data centers to a formerly industrial Bala Cynwyd corridor (Pennsylania)
https://www.inquirer.com/news/pennsylvania/lower-merion-data-center-regulations-20261030.html

EXCERPT: The facilities would be capped at 60 feet in height and would need to be 1,000 feet away from any residential zoning district. The facilities would be required to use a closed-loop cooling system.

The proposed ordinance also sets requirements for thermal impact mitigation, noise studies, water and wastewater capacity studies, drought response plans, and public engagement, and mandates developers provide a decommissioning plan for safely shutting down and removing all equipment should a data center cease operations.

Dauphin County township moves to get ahead of data center development with ordinance (Pennsylania)
https://www.pennlive.com/news/2026/10/dauphin-county-township-moves-to-get-ahead-of-data-center-development-with-a-targeted-ordinance.html

West Conshohocken Data Center Bid Faces Borough’s New Zoning Rules (Pennsylania)
https://philadelphia.today/2026/10/west-conshohocken-data-center-brian-oneill/

Was reaction to a potential data center near Old Town San Diego overblown? (California)
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2026/10/30/was-reaction-to-a-potential-data-center-near-old-town-san-diego-overblown/

San Antonio restricts data centers, requires council approval on new projects (Texas)
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2026/10/29/san-antonio-restricts-data-centers-requires-council-approval-on-new-projects/

Gainesville residents call for 12-month pause on data center applications (Virginia)
https://www.potomaclocal.com/2026/10/30/gainesville-residents-call-for-12-month-pause-on-data-center-applications/

An inside look at the massive data center tearing a Wisconsin community apart
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/25/nx-s1-6011201/data-center-wisconsin-midterms-port-washington

EXCERPT: Port Washington’s gargantuan project has led to angry protests, multiple lawsuits, and opponents arrested for civil disobedience. Supporters say data centers will keep the United States competitive and could bring great wealth to places where they’re built. But many residents feel frightened and helpless as they watch this rapid change

Remember, that’s just a sampling of the sample I gathered from the last three days of October, but I’ve seen and compiled these stories for many months. A similar backlash over Flock surveillance cameras also took off around Labor Day and, like the data centers Trump defended despite his base’s growing unease, he embraced the use of unpopular cameras.

It was yet another disappointment for MAGA supporters who harbor a deep suspicion of government … which he cultivated and exploited on the way to two terms in office. Now that skepticism is being turned on him and his party as he turns away from the concerns of his devotees and focuses instead on the demands and desires of his true constituents … the deep-pocketed tech broligarchs he proudly hosted at the White House just a few months ago.

We won’t know what role the data center backlash will play in the impending election until we start to see exit polling. The same goes for turnout. But there’s little doubt that data centers, AI and Trump’s no holds barred approach to regulation has sparked a strong reaction among Americans who are not in alignment on the two party’s “us or them” wedge issues. Perhaps that’s because it is happening on the ground in the places where people have to live with the consequences of Trump’s national push for AI.

Its that linkage I will be looking for when the exit polls are analyzed. If data centers do play a role and voters did make the link between government corruption and the effort to jam AI down their throats, it may signal the start of a larger social and political rejection of Silicon Valley’s parasitic business model. They want their AI to make itself indispensable before the political system can get past Trump and reign it in. But the counter-movement is throwing sand into the gears and it’s having an impact. Bloomberg reported on a new analysis by S&P Global Ratings that “tracked 146 delayed or canceled projects in the US” and found “about three-quarters of them were tied to local pushback.” All told, “local governments across 40 states” have imposed bans and “delays due to grid capacity constraints, environmental sustainability concerns and zoning shift” threaten to exert “downward pressure on the creditworthiness of data center projects.”

In other words, the public’s reaction is starting to make some of these data centers a bit too risky. On the flipside, Americans may be waking up to a corrupt system that buys off “leaders” and, with their assistance, privatizes gains and socializes the costs, much like the water and energy use that’s driving up utility bills around data centers.

We already know one thing for certain … AI’s pushers are well-aware that they’ve got a growing problem on their hands. Their solution? Here’s Axios with the “scoop”:

Right after Tuesday's midterms, OpenAI will unleash a policy and PR blitz to try to get in sync with the new Washington, including an effort to rebrand data centers as "AI compute campuses."

Sure, that’ll do it. Just call AI “superintelligence,” and call data centers “compute campuses.” And if a hamfisted Jedi Mind Trick is the only thing they have up their sleeves, I’d advise them to call their lawyers because they’re about to spend an inordinate amount of time and energy responding to summons and subpoenas.

Subscribe now

The first Millennials were born during the first year of Ronald Reagan’s first term in office. That was also the year the American economy was set on its current trajectory. And that means everyone who followed those first Millennials did not experience the heyday of demand side economics in the 1950s and 60s, or feel its lingering impact in the oil shocked 1970s. They’ve never known an America of robust unions, robust manufacturing and robust public investment, let alone a nation of defined benefit pension plans or a 70% tax rate on the highest income earners. They also don’t know an America of single-income households, healthy public schools and a growing middle class. And they certainly didn’t grow up in an America where access to its “Dream” could be had with a high school diploma. They have no idea what it’s like to walk out of high school into a thriving economy that actually makes things.

Instead, they were born into an America of dual-income households, lagging wages and a bifurcating middle class. They were told early on that a high school education is not enough. They had to get a college diploma, preferably in STEM, if they wanted a shot at the Dream. Many did just that. But the cost of a college education ballooned and millions of students had to finance their diploma with billions in debt that will weigh them down for years, if not decades.

They carried that debt into an economy designed to concentrate wealth, assets and capital into the hands of a small cadre of financial elites. That’s the supply side economic “revolution” Reagan started in 1981. It’s an economy driven by the speculative bets of investors and financiers rather than the purchasing power of wage earners. It’s an economy that makes deals and exotic financial instruments instead of things. It’s an economy of mergers and acquisitions and hostile takeovers and asset stripping. It’s an economy fueled by debt, which is often packaged and sold as a commodity. It’s also an economy destined to generate speculative bubbles. And now, after a series of wealth-concentrating booms and busts, it’s an economy that’s sorting what’s left of middle class into a K-shaped society of haves and have-nots.

It is the ultimate triumph of supply side capitalism.

Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan lived long enough to see the apotheosis of the neoliberal project he managed for nearly nineteen years. By the time he died in June, the tech-boosted supply side of the economy had grown so flush with capital, assets and wealth that the top 10% became functionally immune to the inflationary pressures currently punishing wage earners sliding down the lower arm of the K-shaped economy.

The oldest Millennials began coming of age when the top 10% first leapfrogged the bottom 80% in 2000. Many more did before, during and immediately after the final flip in 2009. It’s no coincidence that the first flip occurred during the Dotcom Crash and the second during the aftermath of the Crash of 2008. Each time, the liquidity-fueled supply side feasted on bargains, while wage earners lost their purchasing power, their 401ks (Dotcom) and their tenuous hold on the American Dream (Crash of 2008). It’s not a bug, but instead a feature of the economy Greenspan shepherded from Black Monday in 1987 to the eve of the subprime crash in 2006.

The K-Shape of Things to Come

When he retired as Chair of the Federal Reserve in 2006, Greenspan was widely revered as “the Maestro” for his handling of monetary policy during the booming Clinton years. Nominated by four Presidents, the one-time devotee of Ayn Rand served five consecutive terms and enjoyed bipartisan support throughout the time he served as Chair of the Federal Reserve.

But his reputation truly soared throughout the 90s.

When he spoke, markets hung on his every word.

E.F. Hutton listened to him.

In 2002, a pair of economists trumpeted his tenure as “The Great Moderation,” which the Federal Reserve’s official history describes as a “welcome period of relative calm after the volatility of the late 1970s.” The Greenspan era’s unique combination of strong growth, low unemployment and subdued inflation was also called “the Goldilocks Scenario.” Of course, the Fed is convinced that “better monetary policy was key” to getting the porridge “just right.”

“Unfortunately,” the official history continues, ”the financial crisis of 2007-08 and the ensuing Great Recession broke the calm of the Great Moderation.”

“Broke the calm”?

That’s quite an understatement of what was broken by the Crash of 2008.

Similarly, the supposed “period of relative calm” that preceded the Crash was anything but. Black Monday (1987), the Savings and Loan Crisis (1986-1995) and the Dotcom Bubble (2000) not only preceded the Crash of 2008, but they are emblematic of a Greenspan-stoked boom-and-bust cycle that has progressively concentrated assets and capital into the hands of investors and financiers on the supply side of the economy.

The Fed’s official history characterizes the Crash as “unfortunate,” as if it was an act of god or an unforeseen “black swan”. It was not. Instead, it was Greenspan’s willingness—perhaps even his eagerness—to use monetary policy to mitigate the excesses and shortcomings of supply side economic policies that fostered the highly financialized system many now refer to as the Casino Economy.

Aptly dubbed “the Apostle Of Easy Money” by the Policy Circle Bureau, Greenspan’s quasi-religious devotion to re-supplying the supply side after it crashed only emboldened the market’s rampant speculation. He invited the market’s transformation into a casino by eliminating a key component of a properly functioning market—punishment. The “free market” is supposed to punish wild speculation, bad investments and malfeasance. But it didn’t under Greenspan. He handcuffed the Invisible Hand of the free market when it came time for the Hand to punish bad decisions. When the market teetered, Greenspan intervened.

It was a die Greenspan cast just months into his first term atop the Fed when he responded to the Black Monday market crash in 1987 with a flood of liquidity. It quickly “stabilized” the market by putting easy money on the menu and, as the Policy Circle Bureau explained after his death, Wall Street was hooked:

They learned that the Fed would move quickly when asset prices fell. The lesson was reinforced in 1998, when the New York Fed helped organise a private rescue of Long-Term Capital Management, and again after the dotcom bust. The phrase “Greenspan put” was crude, but it captured a real change in market behaviour. Losses would be socialised through lower rates and liquidity support. Gains would remain private.

The “Greenspan Put” lessened or, some might argue, completely removed the incentive to avoid excessive risk. Investors need not worry about crashing a market sector or the entire market if the Fed was sure to bail them out.

And it did under Greenspan. Repeatedly.

But it wasn’t just bailouts.

In 1992, Greenspan responded to short-lived recession by dropping the Fed’s rate down to 3% in September. Although it came too late to reverse George Bush the Elder’s electoral fortunes, it was a propitious time to lavish investors with cheap and easy money. Less than two months later, Bush lost to a self-styled New Democrat who would embrace the Reagan’s supply side agenda and, therefore, sever his party’s long association with demand side economics.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Walter Mondale’s epic 49-state drubbing in the 1984 Presidential Election effectively rubberstamped Reagan’s supply side agenda of tax cuts, deregulation and cuts to public assistance programs. Reagan ran on a sharp economic turnaround stoked by a combination of tax cuts passed in 1981 and the anti-inflationary hawkishness of then-Fed Chair Paul Volcker’s elevated interest rates, which still sat at an effective rate of 9.43% just days before the 1984 election. Economic growth spiked to 7.6% and voters delivered a second consecutive landslide to the Republicans.

That, in turn, convinced a group of “moderate” Southern Democrats their party was losing touch with a changing electorate. They couldn’t beat them, so they decided to join them. That meant embracing Wall Street, corporate America and “market-based solutions,” which they did. Then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton was a founding member of their organization—the Democratic Leadership Council. It was a natural fit. After all, the Clintons were well-practiced in the art of wooing big business thanks to their close relationship with Arkansas-based Walmart. Hillary served them as a corporate lawyer and even sat on Walmart’s board of directors while Bill served as governor.

When Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis suffered the party’s third consecutive landslide loss in 1988, the DLC was poised to prove its concept. And it did so four years later when Bill Clinton weathered a rocky primary in New Hampshire and went on to win the White House. Clinton broke his party’s losing streak by focusing on dissatisfaction with the recession-addled economy, but it was Alan Greenspan who became the biggest winner when the self-described “New Democrat” populated his economic team with willing partners like Larry Summers and Robert Rubin.

Working together, Greenspan’s Fed and Clinton’s economic team continued the supply side agenda, albeit under different names. “Reaganomics” was repackaged and sold as “Rubinomics,” and the politically-loaded term “supply side economics” was rebranded as “neoliberalism.” It marked the functional end of the Democrats’ demand side orthodoxy, which dated back to the New Deal. As Clinton famously said in his 1996 State of the Union address, “the era of big government is over.” In it’s place he established a post-Cold War “neoliberal consensus” with Tony Blair’s “New Labor” in the UK. And it all began in earnest with the Clinton Administration’s defense of global free trade.

The Giant Sucking Sound

President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore championed NAFTA and, despite running against Bush the Elder for cozying up to “the Butchers of Beijing” in the wake of Tiananmen Square, Clinton quickly flipped his position and rubberstamped Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status for China. That, along with the passing of NAFTA in November of 1993, opened the floodgates. Manufacturing flowed to cheaper labor overseas, with Clinton-connected Walmart leading the way into an evermore globalized labor market.

But that’s not all.

Wall Street began tapping into capital from wage earners. The shift from defined benefit pension plans to 401ks in the 1980s meant that wage earners were increasingly invested in the market on the eve of one the great bull runs in economic history. Many of them paid attention to the stock market for the first time. They pored over quarterly statements and switched mutual funds in the hopes of higher returns. And they were joined by the burgeoning internet’s new class of speculator—the day trader.

Wall Street reveled in the new influx of capital.

By the time Vice President Gore gave the keynote address at a Superhighway Summit at UCLA on January 11, 1994, the economy was primed for what quickly became the Dotcom Bubble. In response, Greenspan racheted-up the Fed rate from a low of 3% to 5.75% over the course of 34 months, but nothing seemed to contain what he famously referred to as the market’s “irrational exuberance” in 1996. He often warned of a concomitant rise in inflation—both of assets and wages.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the Dotcom collapse.

Secret Sauce

In the year after Greenspan warned of irrationally-stoked inflation, the US inflation rate dropped from 3.32% in 1996 to 1.70% in 1997! It was an “a-ha!” moment for Greenspan. Veteran business reporter Louis Uchitelle explained it in a February 27, 1997 story for The New York Times:

For months now, the Federal Reserve has been poised to raise interest rates, but has held off. Why?

The answer lies mainly in what the Fed’s chairman, Alan Greenspan, describes as a powerful recent force in the American economy: job insecurity. In his testimony to Congress yesterday, he clearly elevated this insecurity to major status in central bank policy. Workers have been too worried about keeping their jobs to push for higher wages, he said, and this has been sufficient to hold down inflation without the added restraint of higher interest rates.

If you watched Greenspan’s congressional appearances at the time, you may recall his obsession with inflation. Aside from his momentary concern about the price of financial assets, his primary bugbear was the price of labor—a.k.a. wage inflation—which should’ve risen along with the burgeoning Dotcom bubble. This is how Greenspan described it in a speech delivered at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago just eleven months before the bubble burst:

Lower inflation in recent years has altered expectations. Workers no longer believe that large gains in nominal wages are needed to reap respectable increases in real wages. Moreover, incongruously, at the same time that labor markets tightened, workers' fear of job skill obsolescence rose, apparently, as a consequence of the rapid changes in technology that have induced the accelerated churning in the nations' capital stock with which our workforce must interact day by day. Job security has seemingly become more relevant than wage gains as a result. The return of experienced workers for further schooling is remarkable and attests to the surprising depth of worker job insecurity in the face of ever tightening labor markets.

More job insecurity equals low wage inflation … that’s the secret sauce of Greenspan’s tenure. Insecure labor is pliable and less likely to demand an increase in wages, let alone the health and retirement benefits that workers enjoyed during the post-World War II economy. With wage inflation contained by diminishing demands of uncertain and fearful workers, Greenspan realized he could keep the Fed’s rate low without added inflationary pressure.

Frankly, Greenspan was right. The fact that experienced workers were scrambling back to school, perhaps to acquire computer skills, does hint at the depth of insecurity bubbling below the surface of a “booming” economy. But the job insecurity created by new technology was not nearly as daunting as the offshoring, outsourcing and de-industrialization that picked-up steam over the eight years Clinton was in a neoliberal ménage à trois with Rubin and Greenspan. And guess who got screwed?

As good as the Clinton economy may still feel in retrospect, that’s the decade when Reagan’s neoliberal, “supply side” revolution was nearly completed. Clinton embraced welfare reform and he eventually pushed for and signed the U.S.–China Relations Act of 2000, which upgraded China to Permanent Normal Trade Relations status. His administration deregulated telecommunications and Treasury Secretary Rubin’s Wall Street-friendly approach to oversight and deregulation of financial markets accelerated economic financialization. Consumer credit conveniently expanded to fill the gap between stagnant wages and the cost of the American Dream. And because job insecurity dampened their wages, Greenspan was free to give investors and financiers plenty of cheap financial fuel as they passed wage earners on the Information Superhighway.

“POP!” Goes The Economy

When the Dotcom Bubble finally burst in March of 2000, Americans watched their retirement dreams evaporate as their 401ks crashed and Silicon Valley became a graveyard of failed ventures. The bursting bubble only heightened workers’ sense of insecurity, thus paving the way for yet more easy money and, predictably, the next bubble.

Back in 2008, Cato Senior Fellow Gerald P. O’Driscoll Jr. looked back at Greenspan’s tenure in light of the popping Housing Bubble:

As Fed chairman, Greenspan was the architect -- the “maestro” -- of a low-interest policy that flooded the economy with cheap credit after the collapse of the dot-com bubble in 2000-01. Real (inflation-adjusted) short-term interest rates were negative for several years. Risk premiums were driven down to historic lows, indeed they all but disappeared. These were the elements making for a classic asset bubble.

Greenspan predictably followed the easy money-fueled Dotcom Bubble with more easy money. And that helped fuel the next speculative bubble. It also accelerated the financialization of the economy as investment firms on the supply side rolled out exotic financial instruments like credit default swaps that turned risk into a tradable commodity. Not coincidentally, the risk being packaged and sold came from soon-to-fail subprime mortgages made possible in part by then-historically low interest rates, with the average mortgage rate dropping to 5.88% in 2004. By contrast, the average mortgage rate remained north of 10% throughout Volcker’s tenure (1979-1987).

Although Greenspan left the Fed two years before the Crash of 2008, his supply side approach did finally spark criticism when he was called to testify before Congress in late October of that year. This exchange between House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and the then-former Chairman is particularly telling:

REP. HENRY WAXMAN:
The question I have for you is, you had an ideology, you had a belief that free, competitive -- and this is your statement -- “I do have an ideology. My judgment is that free, competitive markets are by far the unrivaled way to organize economies. We’ve tried regulation. None meaningfully worked.” That was your quote.

You had the authority to prevent irresponsible lending practices that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. You were advised to do so by many others. And now our whole economy is paying its price. Do you feel that your ideology pushed you to make decisions that you wish you had not made?

ALAN GREENSPAN:
Well, remember that what an ideology is, is a conceptual framework with the way people deal with reality. Everyone has one. You have to -- to exist, you need an ideology. The question is whether it is accurate or not. And what I’m saying to you is, yes, I found a flaw. I don’t know how significant or permanent it is, but I’ve been very distressed by that fact.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN:
You found a flaw in the reality...

ALAN GREENSPAN:
Flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.

REP. HENRY WAXMAN:
In other words, you found that your view of the world, your ideology, was not right, it was not working?

ALAN GREENSPAN:
That is -- precisely. No, that’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I had been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.

So, he was “shocked” to find the usual suspects on the supply side were engaged in a speculative frenzy? Was he so hopelessly lost in his ideology that he couldn’t see the “flaw in the model”? Perhaps, but his repeated practice of rewarding a failure with liquidity indicates otherwise.

How else can we explain his claim that his neoliberal ideology was working “exceptionally well” despite the Black Monday market crash of 1987, the Savings and Loan debacle, the Dotcom Bubble and, finally, the Crash of 2008?

Each time a bubble burst, the supply side was rewarded with plenty of easy money investors subsequently used to hoard assets and accrue wealth. There are plenty of bargains on offer after a boom goes bust. As Greenspan demonstrated after previous declines, the trick is to have a supply of easy money available when the deflated assets flood the market.

That trick was turned yet again during President Obama’s first term when the newly-elected President brought in Rubin’s boys to “manage” the aftermath of Greenspan’s second major bubble. Obama appointed Rubin’s mentee Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Secretary. Larry Summers was brought back to shape the Greenspan-style response as Director of the White House National Economic Council during the crucial first year of Obama’s presidency. Working with Bush-appointed Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, they picked the winners and parted-out the losers as they flooded Wall Street’s casino with ultra-low interest chips. Mostly, they banked on Greenspan’s “secret sauce” theory that the easy money-stoked inflation of assets on the economy’s supply side would be more than offset by the stagnant wages and increased productivity that comes with widespread job insecurity on the demand side.

They were right.

People lost jobs and homes and they acquired opioid addictions. The employment landscape was grim and China’s domination of manufacturing was nearly complete as its cheap consumer products filled American shelves. At the same time, cheap labor entered the country at a heady pace. Factory farms and slaughterhouses were magnets for small farmers who’d lost their livelihoods when NAFTA destabilized Mexico’s agricultural economy. And Silicon Valley exploited cheap, highly-educated Indian labor, both in India and through H1-B visas here in the US.

While the losers on the demand side of the economy were preoccupied with banks auto-signing away their homes and their lives, Geithner dispersed nearly $500 billion in bailouts under the ironically named Trouble Assets Relief Program, a.k.a. TARP, which is what he essentially threw over the financial institutions responsible for the housing bubble. Sadly, some displaced homeowners are still living under actual tarps today.

Greenspan’s secret sauce was put to the test when Fed Chair Bernanke dropped the federal funds rate to .25%. It stayed there for 7 years and, as Greenspan predicted, overall inflation was dampened by the job insecurity felt by repeatedly shellshocked American workers who’d just lost roughly 8.7 million jobs during the Crash. That downward pressure on wage earners allowed Bernanke to maintain a steroidal version of Greenspan’s easy money policy. The Fed supercharged it with trillions of dollars worth of Quantitative Easing. The combination lavished investors with the liquidity they needed to gorge on the deeply discounted assets lost by wage earners. Institutional investors and the leveraged buyers in private equity feasted on discounted shares in the sagging stock market and venture capitalists fed capital to a herd nascent tech Unicorns that would soon stampede the economy.

Like previous infusions under Greenspan, the supply side’s assets inflated in value, but it was no problem in the post-Crash economy because job insecurity kept wages low and productivity high on the demand side. And the easy money kept coming.

Oversupplied Side

The continuation of Greenspan’s easy money policy was the “secret sauce” both BlackRock and Blackstone slathered on a banquet of Crash-discounted assets. The former partners-in-crime (BlackRock was spun-off in 1994) gobbled-up the spread.

Blackstone infamously bought up tens of thousands of suddenly cheap single family homes and became a major corporate landlord almost overnight. To this day, corporate landlords like Blackstone still “quietly” swoop in to outbid regular homebuyers with all-cash offers. Not coincidentally, more Americans are opting for “vanlife,” while many young Americans have returned to the nest. Homeless encampments are a common sight in every corner of the country.

While Blackstone emerged as a leading asset manager in part by buying cheap homes, BlackRock led the meteoric rise of private equity. They were over-Fed kids in a candy store. They could easily afford to roll-up thousands of small business around the country that simply couldn’t compete in the wake of the Crash … and they did it again after the pandemic. For instance, car washes. Private equity firms are buying mom and pop car washes. And mom and pop HVAC shops, too. And dental practices, veterinary clinics, law firms, bowling alleys, coffee shops, trailer parks, kids’ sports leagues, pest control companies, pool maintenance companies, landscapers, auto body shops and hospitals.

It’s amazing what one can do in the wake of a major asset bubble … if one has the liquidity. BlackRock had the liquidity and it leveraged that into $15.5 trillion in assets under management (AUM).

That amount is equal to half of the US’s $31.5 trillion gross domestic product. And $5.72 trillion of that is currently in the stock market. That’s a bit more than the GDP of Germany ($5.45 trillion). And it’s a bit less than the total assets BlackRock had under management when Bloomberg profiled its post-Crash rise in 2018. At that time, the grand total was $6.3 trillion.

BlackRock’s AUM skyrocketed by $9 trillion in just eight years.

It’s exactly the type of concentrated wealth that supply side neoliberalism is destined to create. Despite the promise of wealth trickling down to wage earners on the demand side of the economy, the reality was laid bare earlier this year when American workers saw their “share of the economic pie” fall to “its lowest level since at least 1947.” As CBS News explained:

As of early 2026, American workers received 54.1% of national income, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. By comparison, that figure topped 65% almost 80 years ago, when the government began tracking the data following World War II. In early 2020, it stood at 57.7%, indicating that workers have continued to lose ground since the pandemic.

So long as American workers’ wages are lagging, stagnant or losing ground, the Fed can continue to avoid the kind of anti-inflationary hawkishness Paul Volcker displayed when he hiked the Fed rate to 22% in 1981. Actual hawkishness is unlikely with a market that moans about quarter- and half-point increases that, under the guidance of newly-installed Chair and longtime Greenspan acolyte Kevin Warsh, recently put the top rate at 4 percent. These tiny increases have done little to ameliorate the inflation wage earners are unable to match, let alone outpace.

This is the K-shaped reality wage earning Millennials and Gen Z Zoomers must navigate in an economy now fully under the control of the supply side. Their prospects are unlikely to change as long as investors flush with capital continue to pour hundreds of billions into the ultimate source of labor insecurity—artificial intelligence.

Sold as a “revolution in productivity,” Silicon Valley’s latest disruptive tech has yet to deliver on its tantalizing promise of a “frictionless” economy managed by agentic AI instead of human beings. Silicon Valley says this will benefit all, but make no mistake, the market’s latest, perhaps greatest speculative bubble is being blown by and for those who do not earn wages. Instead, they fund their lifestyles with tax-free income drawn in the form of loans against the rise in the value of their stock portfolios. That source of income isn’t simply outpacing inflation, it is leaving it in the dust. It allows them to swoop in with all-cash offers on homes, pay exorbitant prices for food at upscale grocers and fly in luxury. They can also afford to pour billions into elections, into survivalist bunkers and, for the supply side’s biggest winners, into space travel.

Unlike many Millennials and Zoomers, they do not have to move into their parents’ basement in a bid to save for a down payment or first-and-last month’s rent.

Instead, they are moving into cities and towns and rural communities to hyperscale the data centers that, if successful, could very well put millions of wage earners out of work. And even if AI fails to deliver in the long run, the looming threat of tech-driven job losses will slather the economy with Greenspan’s secret sauce for the foreseeable future. It portends a particularly bleak tomorrow for younger Millennials and Zoomers who, as The Center for Economic Policy and Research recently explained, are losing ground:

The median net worth for households under the age of 35 fell by 23 percent (from $44,700 to $33,000) between 2022 to 2025, according to the most recent data release from the Federal Reserve’s 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF).

Is it any wonder why only 9% of Zoomers and 15% of younger Millennials have a positive view of “capitalism”?

It’s even more explicable given the fact that, unlike their Boomer and Gen X parents, they were born into and came of age in a supply side economy that is foreclosing the American Dream and jamming a potentially job-killing technology down wage earners’ throats.

Subscribe now

It took six presidents, four boom-and-bust cycles and trillions of dollars of “easy money” to get here, but here we are. The economy is now completely in thrall to the wealthy investors and financial elites who’ve repeatedly used their exclusive access to government sponsored liquidity to capitalize on the aftermath of the speculative bubbles they’ve blown. Each successive boom, bust and bailout has redistributed more and more wealth into the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

Nothing epitomizes the triumph of supply side economics better than the steroidal growth of private equity in the wake of the Crash of 2008. While suddenly bereft homeowners had their houses robo-signed away, the Fed’s easy money whetted the appetites of firms like Blackstone, KKR and Goldman Sachs Alternatives, and they feasted on the smorgasbord of discounted assets served up the the subprime scam that was the housing bubble.

Not coincidentally, those three US-based firms currently sit atop the PEI Group’s just-released ranking of the world’s top 100 firms. Based on annual funds raised, Blackstone is the world’s leading firm with $356.7 raised. Next is KKR with $302.2 raised and then comes Goldman Sachs Alternatives with $215.3 raised. But the real measure of their impact is found in the mindboggling growth in their assets under management (AUM) since 2010.

Goldman Sachs Alternatives has grown from $148.0 billion in 2010 to $215.3 billion in mid-2026.

KKR’s AUM rocketed from $61.0 billion in 2010 to $796 billion in mid-2026.

Blackstone’s AUM has exploded from $131.1 billion in 2010 to $1.35 trillion in mid-2026.

Flush with capital, these firms, along with the 97 other firms on PEI’s list, have been gobbling up anything and everything they can get their hands on—car washes, laundromats, HVAC businesses, trailer parks, bowling alleys … you name it and private equity is probably buying. That’s particularly true of small businesses and “mom and pop” shops of all kinds.

Let’s face it, they have more capital than they know what to do with. It’s probably why the stock market keeps on defying economic gravity … the people on the arm of the K-shaped economy can afford to keep pouring money into the speculative bubble of artificial intelligence, price-to-earnings ratios be damned.

In many ways, they’ve exited the atmosphere and escaped the gravity of the economic situation facing the people on the leg of the K-shaped economy. In fact, there has been such a meteoric rise in the wealth of the top 0.1%, they are now said to be parting company with the top 1%, per Fortune:

The K-shaped split that let high earners pull away from low earners now cuts through the top 1% too, with the ultra-rich far ahead of the rest.

The average household in the top 0.1% is now worth about $204 million, or 7.7 times as much as one in the rest of the top 1%, according to a Fortune analysis of Federal Reserve data. That ratio is the highest in the Fed’s quarterly series going back to 1989, up from 6.2 times at the end of 2019. Currently, the Fed counts 136,779 households in the top 0.1%

The top 0.1%’s wealth has more than doubled since the end of 2019, from $13.4 trillion to nearly $28 trillion in the second quarter of 2026. Over the same period, the rest of the top 1% saw its wealth grow 68%, from $19.3 trillion to $32.5 trillion. The top 0.1% now holds 15% of the nation’s household wealth, up 0.5 percentage point since the first quarter.

“We are talking about continued redistribution upward and further concentration of wealth at the top,” Markus Schneider, an associate professor of economics at the University of Denver, told Fortune.

At least we can see the K-shape of things to come.

Private Equity Has a Problem. Uncle Sam Says Your Wallet Can Fix It. https://www.wsj.com/finance/investing/private-equity-has-a-problem-uncle-sam-says-your-wallet-can-fix-it-726a6749

‘People are feeling the real impacts’: influencers are targeting private equity with satire and rage
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/09/anti-private-equity-comedy-influencers

When private equity came for the clinic where I worked
https://alabamareflector.com/2026/10/07/when-private-equity-came-for-the-clinic-where-i-worked/

McKesson, private equity firm buy home infusion company, Option Care Health
https://www.managedhealthcareexecutive.com/view/mckesson-private-equity-firm-buy-home-infusion-company-option-care-health

Private equity circles equipment providers amid growing surgical demand: 6 deals
https://www.pehub.com/private-equity-circles-growing-surgical-demand-6-deals/

McConnell Labs Acquires Attain Cosmetics, Rebrands As Modern Chemistry Labs Following Private Equity Sale
https://www.beautyindependent.com/mcconnell-labs-acquires-attain-cosmetics-rebrands-modern-chemistry-labs-private-equity-sale/

Mars-based student transportation provider acquired after 76 years by private equity-backed firm
https://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/news/2026/10/09/mars-bus-company-sold.html

How School Choice Opens the Door for Private Equity
https://progressive.org/public-schools-advocate/how-school-choice-opens-the-door-for-private-equity-bryant-20261008/

Sen. Collins, Troy Jackson clash on how to stop private equity from buying Maine homes
https://wgme.com/news/local/maine-senator-susan-collins-troy-jackson-clash-on-how-to-stop-private-equity-from-buying-maine-homes

How City-Funded Organizing Helped Tenants Take on a Landlord
https://shelterforce.org/2026/10/08/how-city-funded-organizing-helped-evanston-tenants-take-on-private-equity-landlord/

How Elizabeth Warren’s Stop Wall Street Looting Act Would Rein In the Private-Equity Vampire
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/private-equity-healthcare-housing-american-economy/

Elizabeth Warren’s Anti-Private Equity Bill is Unfounded and Will Hurt Main Street
https://atr.org/elizabeth-warrens-anti-private-equity-bill-is-unfounded-and-will-hurt-main-street/

Watchdog seeks tighter oversight of private equity-backed insurers
https://www.businessinsurance.com/watchdog-seeks-tighter-oversight-of-private-equity-backed-insurers/

Private equity investments rapidly reshaping CPA firms, creating a gap in accounting education, study finds
https://phys.org/news/2026-10-private-equity-investments-rapidly-reshaping.html

Private Equity Isn’t Slowing Its Poaching of Bankers, Citi Executive Says
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-10-07/private-equity-isn-t-slowing-its-poaching-of-bankers-citi-executive-says

Private Equity’s Great Run Buying Power Plants May Be Ending
https://www.wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/private-equitys-great-run-buying-power-plants-may-be-ending-ac5bff44

Could Law Firms Be Private Equity’s Next Darling?
https://www.law.com/dailybusinessreview/2026/10/07/could-law-firms-be-private-equitys-next-darling/

Outdoor Life Acquired by Private Equity with Plans for AI-Powered Product Sales
https://gearjunkie.com/outdoor/outdoor-life-acquired-eformed-ventures-ai-marketplace

Welcome to the Private Equity Orioles, where even the mascot gets fired
https://www.11alive.com/video/sports/locked-on/lo-baltimore/orioles-show/welcome-to-the-private-equity-orioles-where-even-the-mascot-gets-fired/535-23009946-34ca-4eb5-a48f-3cb56d1dd9a0

Subscribe now

After all, it’s “natural”!

Methane, on the other hand, sounds like a chemical you probably shouldn’t breathe in or release into the atmosphere. The problem is that natural gas is mostly methane. But the industry markets and sells it as “natural gas” because people are far more comfortable with it. Back in 2020, Yale’s Climate Change Communications program “conducted an experiment to investigate the public’s emotions and associations regarding the terms ‘natural gas’ and ‘methane’”:

We randomly assigned respondents to one of four conditions in which each respondent was asked to rate their positive and negative feelings (affect) about one of the following four terms: “natural gas,” “natural methane gas,” “methane,” or “methane gas.”

Not surprisingly, they found:

[T]he term “natural gas” evokes much more positive feelings than do any of the three methane terms. Conversely, the terms “methane” and “methane gas” evoke much more negative feelings than does “natural gas.”

And:

The hybrid term “natural methane gas” is in the middle — it is perceived more positively than “methane” or “methane gas,” but more negatively than “natural gas.” That is, the addition of the word natural substantially increases respondents’ positive feelings about methane, indicating that the positive feelings generated by the word “natural” partially compensate for the negative feelings generated by the word “methane.”

Consequently:

Overall, “natural gas” generated the most associations to themes like energy, clean, fuel, and cooking.

By contrast, “methane,” “methane gas,” and “natural methane gas” generated the most associations to themes like gas, cows, greenhouse, global warming, and climate change.

As Mother Jones reporter Sophie Hurwitz noted earlier this year, that’s the result the industry was aiming for when it started its marketing campaign in 1971:

Throughout the 1970s, the American Gas Association, a trade group, worked with public relations firms to sell gas as a “clean” and environmentally-friendly fossil fuel. The gas industry launched a public relations campaign in 1971 called “GAS, CLEAN ENERGY FOR TODAY AND TOMORROW.” A 1972 report from the American Gas Association (AGA) said the “environmental benefits of an adequate natural gas supply are outstanding,” in that it offered a “very positive answer” to collective concern about the planet.

It’s no coincidence that the American Gas Association felt compelled to offer a “‘very positive answer’ to collective concern about the planet.” It came a year after the first Earth Day, which was a direct result of a catalytic oil spill in 1969 that threatened Southern California’s iconic shoreline. That, in turn, spawned both Earth Day and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Collective concern turned into collective action and, ultimately, into government regulation. It’s exactly the sort of thing Silicon Valley would like to avoid with artificial intelligence.

So, what’s their “very positive answer” to growing questions about rapidly advancing artificial intelligence and data centers upon which AI depends?

Marketing.

A good marketing campaign begins with branding. In this case, with re-branding. It’s a simple matter of taking the “artificial” out of artificial intelligence. In this connotation, the word calls to mind the dark side of human-made stuff, like artificial colors and flavors. It sounds cold and stark and devoid of empathy or sympathy. And it sounds lifeless.

Although the antonym of artificial paired nicely with gas, “natural” intelligence is, at least for now, still the sole provenance of organic life. But it may not be long before we’re confronted with something we collectively discern as “artificial” consciousness. The perpetual adolescents currently attempting to envelop human civilization in their panoptic business model are competing to be the first to formally introduce an artificially conscious computer.

It will be their Mary Shelley moment if and when they do.

In fact, the villagers are already massing outside the castle with their pitchforks and torches. As the nationwide revolt against data centers demonstrates, they don’t like having to bear the costs of hyperscaling the infrastructure Silicon Valley needs to breathe the approximation of life into their megawatt-munching monster. It is particularly galling given AI’s value proposition, which is a job-killing “revolution in productivity.” Even worse, CEOs and whistleblowers keep on warning us that AI could engineer our demise as a species.

That’s not a compelling argument for inviting billionaires to build loudly humming data centers in our backyards.

Who better to make that case than Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant?

Make no mistake, Donald J. Trump is Silicon Valley’s Igor. He’s dutifully attended to their every need, and in return they’ve helped make him and his family very-very rich … much like the Saudis and Emiratis have done since 2016. Investors are the only constituents Trump truly cares about. Just ask Miriam Adelson. In Silicon Valley’s case, they’ve become enthusiastic investors in every one of his self-aggrandizing boondoggles and they’ve laundered money through schemes as fanciful as a $75 million documentary on Trump’s animatronic spouse.

Their return on investment has been on display over the last year as Trump repeatedly chose the Silicon Valley over MAGA nation and the Republican Party. While Texas governor and early data center enthusiast Greg Abbott announced a moratorium after putting his finger to the wind, Trump defiantly endorsed unpopular data centers. He did the same with AI and Flock surveillance cameras … and he did so after Labor Day … in an election year.

Why would Trump, whose main political gift has been an uncanny ability to channel and embody the angst and anger of his audience, go so far as to actually insult voters for rejecting the burgeoning blight of data centers?

And why would a man known for being too vain to admit defeat now torch his party’s chances during an election year?

He knows he’s on the wrong side of MAGA on Iran, Epstein and affordability. And he knows that the careening advance of AI is generating both a growing unease and a nascent anger in Red and Blue states alike. But instead of doing something concrete to assuage his vaunted MAGA base, he just doubled-down with a sales pitch for a worse-than-meaningless pledge by Silicon Valley to “self-police” their monster.

Frankly, if they wanted to “self-police,” it would already be happening. For them, the fact that they can do it is reason enough to do it, warnings of impending doom notwithstanding. That’s why no one took the pledge seriously, including the proofreader of the “morally binding” document Trump was feebly peddling to disillusioned voters on behalf of a bunch of billionaires.

They aren’t likely to buy what Trump was selling.

A Quinnipiac poll released the same day as the pledge found:

Seventy-one percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who supports stricter guardrails for AI development, while 16 percent say they are more likely to vote for a political candidate who supports expanding AI development, with 2 percent volunteering that there is no difference, and 11 percent not offering an opinion.

And that’s not all.

Just 25% of registered voters approve of Trump’s handling of artificial intelligence and 73% say they would “oppose the building of an AI data center in their community,” including a majority (55%) of Republicans. And when it comes to the ‘we must innovate because (gasp!) China’ argument, “nearly eight in 10 voters think safety is more important than staying at the forefront of innovation.” And just 15% of those polled “think staying at the forefront of innovation is more important than safety.”

Simply put, Americans are collectively concerned about the headlong rush into Silicon Valley’s hyperscaled hellscape of surveillance, manipulation and wealth extraction.

And they are ready to vote accordingly.

It probably explains why Trump suddenly began trying to manage the public’s perception of AI, which he kicked-off with an Executive Order (EO) directing the Federal Government to replace “artificial” with “super.” According to the EO, this change ushers in “The Era of Super Intelligence.”

That came a week after he took in upon himself to “welcome” all of humanity “to the new world of Super Intelligence” in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly. He went on to warn the world that the US “totally rejects any attempt to construct a globalist scheme to control for the artificial intelligence,” and he opined on the methane gas-like problem with the word “artificial”:

[U]se of the word “artificial” makes intelligence fake. It makes it sound fake. And it is not fake. It’s actually amazing, but we have to be careful. In fact, it is exactly the opposite of what it purports. From this point forward, all of United States documents and, hopefully the world’s will be changed to use the much more accurate term “super” as opposed to “artificial”

Ironically, Trump appears to have unintentionally mixed some truth into his advertising. Although he appears to be using “super” as either an adjective or an adverb, its use as a prefix, as John Croxton noted on Nextgov.com, dates back over a decade:

[S]uperintelligence is already an established term in AI literature. It was popularized in philosopher Nick Bostrom’s 2014 bestseller Superintelligence, which defines the term as “any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest.”

Oddly enough, using “super” as a prefix is an all-too accurate reflection of the true intent of artificial intelligence. Etymonline describes the prefix “super” as a “word-forming element of Latin origin meaning ‘above, over’ in place or position; also in manner, degree, or measure, ‘over, beyond’."

That’s exactly what the Valley’s panopticon-men seek—an artificially-made intelligence that will rise above, over and beyond the natural intelligence of mere mortals. As The Futurist explained back in 2023, they have lofty expectations for a technology Sam Altman described then as a “magic intelligence in the sky”:

“We’re creating God,” an AI engineer working on large language models told Vanity Fair in September. “We’re creating conscious machines.”

In April, Tesla CEO and OpenAI cofounder Elon Musk — who recently launched his own AI chatbot called Grok, despite warning about the possibility of an evil AI outsmarting humans and taking over the world for many years — told Fox News that Google founder Larry Page “wanted a sort of digital super-intelligence” which would eventually become “basically a digital god, if you will, as soon as possible.”

To get there, AI is being superimposed onto every transaction, every relationship, every system and every institution. They want complete ubiquity, with an agent installed on every gadget. Many devices now come with AI pre-installed, making it harder and harder to avoid. Soon, it will have more than enough data and “compute” power to recursively “evolve” into a superintelligence that can supersede us entirely.

That’s certainly the hope of Peter Thiel, which is why everyone should be alarmed that his smarmy familiar became Trump’s Vice President. We should be equally alarmed by Thiel’s partner in Palantir, the incessantly self-promoting ghoul Alex Karp. His zeal for killing the so-called “enemies” of Western Civilization underscores the folly of inviting his ominously-named company into the Pentagon, the USDA, the IRS, ICE and, if they reach an agreement, the Social Security Administration. The same is true of all the major players—OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Microsoft and Amazon have all signed AI-related government contracts worth billions. By the time Trump shuffles out the Oval Office they’ll be burrowed into the Executive Branch like hungry ticks under the guise of achieving frictionless efficiency.

Perhaps that explains why Trump has done little to mitigate the epic headwinds his party will face come November. Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter to Silicon Valley if voters buy what he’s selling or not. Either way, they’ll enjoy two more years of regulatory indifference and they’ll continue to reap the benefits of rubberstamp permitting and made-to-order polices implemented by executive fiat.

In other words, their investment in Trump secured a crucial regulatory holiday that allows them to accelerate the development of a “superintelligent” technological monster specifically designed to radically disrupt government, business and society. Because Trump appears willing to lose control of the House and the Senate, they can afford to do it in spite of the objections of pitchfork-wielding villagers.

Ironically, many of the regulations they’ve dodged under Trump can be traced directly back to the collective action that led to Earth Day and the EPA. The wholesale gutting of rules and regs governing climate pollution has been particularly beneficial to the power hungry man-children who can afford to build elaborate survival bunkers. But the EPA’s not content to just look the other way. As Hannah Story Brown observed in The American Prospect:

The EPA’s proposed budget for 2027 calls for a 52 percent cut, but requests $202.2 million to “support the United States becoming the global leader in AI.” The budget document also anticipates the EPA “encouraging internal expansion of AI,” including using AI for pesticide evaluations and the federal permitting process, while collaborating with “external industry partners” on powering AI data centers.

Big tech is yet another polluting industry that should be regulated by the EPA, but instead enjoys the EPA’s active cooperation in despoiling the land, the water and the air. Trump’s well-compensated acquiescence only reinforces the helpless feeling of inevitability Silicon Valley has long relied upon to impose its disruptive business model. The key is to make us dependent upon their technology before we recognize the true cost of allowing them to erect tollbooths and place surveillance devices in-between us and everything.

Before you know it, the artificial begins to feel “natural” and each new iteration—whether it’s an iPhone, an app or Agentic AI—appears to be part of a logical, evolutionary progression of technology. It doesn’t hurt that we periodically see reporting on AI’s fundamental inexplicability.

Writing for The New York Times Magazine in April, Oliver Whang explored the persistent failure to “adequately explain the superhuman abilities and strangely ingenuous behavior of A.I. models.” That inadequacy spawned “a growing field of computer science known as interpretability.” The idea is to bridge “the expanding knowledge gap between A.I. models and humans” by treating AI “more like a natural phenomenon than a human invention”:

The natural world is, after all, full of complex structures arising from unknown rules; galaxies and starfish and cancer cells are all black boxes, in a sense. Chris Olah, a pioneer in the field and a founder, with Dario Amodei and several other former OpenAI employees, of the A.I. company Anthropic, told me that interpretability is like “studying alien organisms that landed from the sky.” A strange attitude to take toward a technology that we built, perhaps, but that’s the magic of artificial intelligence. It can baffle its own creators.

There’s nothing baffling about the Zuckerborg’s post-photo op preference for “superintelligence” over both “artificial intelligence” and Trump’s “Super Intelligence,” which amounts to artificial intelligence being recast as a ”super” object or tool.

Tools are made. Beings evolve and arise.

Accepting the latter over the former is a tacit admission that AI’s mysterious cognitive abilities are the inevitable outgrowth of a natural, evolutionary process.

In reality, the version of artificial intelligence they are pushing is NOT inevitable. It has been designed rather intentionally to expand Silicon Valley’s business model, which uses disruption to create new dependencies. That’s why AI is being methodically inserted into every human interaction and endeavor. Before we know it, it will be impossible to live without an omnipresent tool of extraction and control that’s being made in the image of the Valley’s self-appointed gods. As such, it is the offspring of a small cadre of perpetual teenage boys mesmerized by eugenics, feudalism, transhumanism and a fanciful obsession with leaving Earth for Mars even as their monster’s appetite for energy and water contributes to the degradation of this planet—much like the methane that sneaks by consumers under the alias of “natural gas.”

Although it’s difficult to quantify exactly how much the American Gas Association’s marketing campaign contributed to the decades-long failure to address climate-altering gases, it has clearly shaped—and continues to shape—the public’s opinion of a leading climate pollutant.

The same will be true of “superintelligence.

That’s why we, the villagers must resist the pull of marketing and defiantly assert soulless artificiality of their intelligent monster. If we acquiesce and allow it to become a “natural,” unregulated presence in every aspect of human life, a superheated world might end up being the least of our problems.

Subscribe now

That’s when the die was cast.

California has spent the better part of the last quarter century as the poster child for green energy boondoggles that produce nothing but false promises and rolling blackouts. Just last year, President Trump rolled out the poster during one of his diatribes against Joe Biden and California’s climate conscious energy mix:

“They want to go all electric,” Trump said while criticizing the Biden administration, “even though we don’t have enough electricity to cool down California in the summers. Did you see, they had blackouts all over the place this summer? It was a disaster. The winter’s no good … the whole thing is crazy. ‘Let’s go all electric, but we don’t have enough electric to take care of somebody’s air conditioner in California.’”

There’s just one problem.

It isn’t true.

In fact, as KABC reported today, it is the inverse of the truth:

California has not needed to issue a Flex Alert in nearly four years, a development officials attribute largely to significant growth in battery storage capacity that has strengthened the state’s power grid.

Four years. And not just any four years … it’s been four increasingly hotter years marked by prolonged heatwaves. But that hasn’t bedeviled the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) despite a 20,000 megawatt increase in peak demand over the last five years. The reason why they’ve avoided rolling blackouts is clear:

“Batteries are really the story here,” said Jayme Ackemann of CAISO. “In the last five years, we’ve added more than 17,000 megawatts of battery storage.”

Ackemann said batteries play a critical role during the early evening hours, when solar generation begins to decline as the sun sets while electricity demand increases as people return home.

“We say between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. It really is a rolling timeframe where people are arriving home from work and beginning to turn on things in their home,” Ackemann said. “For example, they lower their air conditioning if it’s been a hot day.”

Well, whaddaya know?

Solar power stored on batteries is there at the end of the day for Californians who want to crank up the air when they get home from work.

Sorry, Donald J Quixote … but the windmills you are tilting at in vain are not for losers. Like California’s potent combo of solar and the batteries, windpower is winning in places like Texas and Iowa. Even better, the global move to renewables has re-accelerated since he started a war of choice against Iran.

The disruption did not bring the world to America’s ports to buy its oil and gas. The world has decided to take control over its energy future and not remain beholden to the US-OPEC Axis, which has preoccupied America’s costly military for decades. To wit, the International Energy Agency just reported the impact of the war, which they say “thoroughly upended…global outlook for oil consumption.”

This comes a year after its rosy assessment of oil’s projected dominance over the next decade. Buoyed by Trump’s attack on renewables, the agency predicted rising demand into the 2030s. Now, according the Reuters, the agency “predicts an 80,000 bpd drop in demand growth this year.” Amazingly, a projected “1.5 million bpd drop in demand in the second quarter ​of 2026 would mark the deepest contraction since the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Declining demand is the oil industry’s worst nightmare. Now a combination of high cost and a surplus of attractive, often cheaper alternatives appears to be eroding that demand … and significantly so.

Donald J. Quixote hasn’t buried his lance in the heart of renewable energy … he’s shot himself in the foot.

The US built more grid batteries last quarter than ever before
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/us-built-more-grid-batteries

Trump emergency order casts uncertainty over grid battery growth
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/trump-emergency-order-grid-battery-growth

Aurora Report Maps the Role of Battery Storage in Solving America’s AI Data Center Power Challenge
https://auroraer.com/company/press-room/aurora-report-maps-the-role-of-battery-storage-in-solving-americas-ai-data-center-power-challenge

Google to buy energy from solar-storage project at former coal mine
https://www.facilitiesdive.com/news/google-to-buy-energy-from-solar-storage-project-at-former-coal-mine/829849/

GM, Ford Turn EV Battery Bust Into Energy Storage Bet
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/GM-Ford-Turn-EV-Battery-Bust-Into-Energy-Storage-Bet.html

Volvo plans 70-MW/260-MWh BESS energy park in Sweden
https://renewablesnow.com/news/volvo-plans-70-mw260-mwh-bess-energy-park-in-sweden-1301025/

Norwegian company launches largest U.S. battery storage project in South Texas
https://www.expressnews.com/business/article/equinor-citrus-flatts-battery-harlingen-texas-22417786.php

Lubbock battery energy storage system building now, what to know
https://www.lubbockonline.com/story/business/2026/09/10/lubbock-battery-project-aims-to-lower-energy-costs-bess/91510927007/

Mexico plans 2.2 GW of battery storage for state utility by 2030
https://www.ess-news.com/2026/09/10/mexico-plans-2-2-gw-of-battery-storage-for-state-utility-by-2030/

Wind giant gets green light to plug batteries into turbines at 300 MW project, deliver an Australian first
https://reneweconomy.com.au/wind-giant-gets-green-light-to-plug-batteries-into-turbines-build-australias-first-grid-scale-wind-storage-hybrid/

Tavion starts development of its first battery parks in Poland
https://renewablesnow.com/news/volvo-plans-70-mw260-mwh-bess-energy-park-in-sweden-1301025/

Romanian company to build battery storage at Iron Gate II plant
https://ceenergynews.com/renewables/romania-battery-storage-iron-gate-ii/

India-Finland Partnership for Green Hydrogen and Battery Tech
https://www.mvapulse.com/india-finland-partnership-for-green-hydrogen-and-battery-tech/

Island Green gets nod to build 500-MW Scottish battery
https://renewablesnow.com/news/island-green-gets-nod-to-build-500-mw-scottish-battery-1300905/

Spain’s renewables experience shows battery storage needed for decarbonization
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/environment/2026/09/08/energy/spain-renewables-battery-revolution/

Subscribe now

“Marie Antoinette never uttered these words or anything else along these lines,” said Denise Maior-Barron, an adjunct professor at Claremont Graduate University in California, whose research examines contemporary portrayals of Marie Antoinette’s character.

In fact, Maior-Barron told Live Science, those famous words were put in her mouth long after she’d lost her head to the guillotine in 1793:

“It did not come to be misattributed to Marie Antoinette during the 18th century, but during the Third French Republic starting in 1870, when a careful program of reconstructing the historical past took place.”

That said, the effort to reconstruct the past was largely successful insofar as the misattribution remains a widely-recognized historical cliché 150 years later.

That’s because some things don’t have to be true to reveal an enduring truth, and the truth is that elite contempt for the plight of the poor is as old as civilization. So, too, is the vast gulf between the opulent lives enjoyed by wealthy rulers and the hardscrabble subsistence of the angry peasants who toil to pay them rents and taxes.

Today, we call it “inequality” and the peasants are not serfs tied to the land, but they are often manacled to crippling debt they must service with stagnant or declining wages.

And they are still hungry.

One difference today is the effort to actively deny them cake … and candy, soda or anything else the poor have the audacity to eat or drink because it tastes good. Spurred by the Trump regime’s crusade to push millions of Americans off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), states are using regime-issued waivers to forbid the poor from using food stamps to buy frivolous comestibles.

In Iowa, the state’s Department of Revenue used a particularly expansive waiver to restrict “nearly all taxable food items” with, according to a new story on MassLive.com, “an exception for ‘food-producing plants and seeds’.”

The waiver was rescinded after a court ruled it unlawful. But that hasn’t stopped other states from forging ahead and thereby creating a confusing patchwork of rules and lawsuits:

Of the 23 states approved for waivers, only about a third are actively enforcing them. Five have been blocked by a federal court, such as Iowa, and the rest have yet to reach their start dates.

Ostensibly, this is for their own good. To wit, a new academic working paper reviewed by the Washington Post concludes...

…that banning all sugary drinks from SNAP nationwide would result in savings of about $1.1 billion per year, mostly from an estimated reduction in health care costs stemming from recipients’ weight loss and reduction in Type 2 diabetes.

Fair enough … although it is interesting to see the rationale framed in terms of “saving money” instead of saving lives. There’s no doubt that some of this reflects genuine concern, but the reality is that it also reflects a long-standing desire to not “reward” the poor for being … poor. If they cannot afford nutrition, they certainly shouldn’t use assistance to buy something other than purely nutritious food. Sweet-tooths are reserved for those who can afford ‘em.

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt (R) let the truth slip out during a recent forum hosted by Stateline on the implementation of work requirements for SNAP recipients:

“Maybe it’s going back to the day where there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed,” he told Stateline. “Maybe we should go back to a little bit of that instead of just making it so easy…”

Thus far, adding layers of difficulty has pushed five million Americans off food stamps. Millions more will join them when the One Big Beautiful Bill’s restrictions become mandatory in the new year. The projected savings from that and similar restrictions on Medicaid was flipped into tax cuts for wealthy elites at a time when millions of Americans are either one missed paycheck away from needing assistance or they need assistance because the paychecks they get from Walmart and Amazon are not enough.

The push to make the poor work also comes during an impoverishing inflation of food and an enriching inflation of assets. But asset inflation doesn’t get any attention, perhaps because the people with the assets can afford the food. They can afford housing, too. And a sweet-tooth, of course. They can also afford to give large sums of money to one of the many bribery vehicles Trump and his family have created along the way. And of those, none is more emblematic of the enduring truth of out-of-touch rulers and their contempt for the unwashed masses than his ballroom.

Like many of his ventures, Trump opened the door to donations and claims it will be paid for by wealthy people eager to curry favor for their business or industry. And, according to Public Citizen, it’s working like a charm:

• Over half of corporate ballroom donors – 14 out of 27 – have received new or increased government contracts over the last 6 months totaling over $50 billion.

• Altogether, over two-thirds of corporate ballroom donors – 19 out of 27 – received government contracts over the last 5 ½ years totaling $338 billion.

• Most of the corporate donors – 16 out of 27 – are facing federal enforcement actions and/or have had federal enforcement actions suspended by the Trump administration. These include major antitrust actions or merger reviews involving Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, NextEra Energy, Nvidia, T-Mobile, and Union Pacific; labor rights cases involving Amazon, Apple, Caterpillar, Google, Lockheed and Meta; and SEC matters involving Coinbase and Ripple.

Bribery and corruption. Unabashed and in spite of the fact that people don’t like it. They didn’t like seeing video of demolished East Wing, particularly while they are waiting for him to do something about an affordability crisis that’s pushed people onto food stamps and Medicaid.

Instead, they are getting his gawdy, gold-applique transformation of the Oval Office, a triumphal arch, a botched resurfacing of the reflecting pool, a renovated golf course, a remodeled bowling alley and a new White House helipad.

It’s not quite Versailles, but Trump is working on it.

Donald Trump’s Capital Makeover
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/09/14/donald-trumps-capital-makeover

Trump’s White House makeover keeps rolling — now the bowling alley gets $250K upgrade
https://www.bizpacreview.com/2026/09/01/trumps-white-house-makeover-keeps-rolling-now-the-bowling-alley-gets-250k-upgrade-1657164/

Renovations for White House bowling alley add to Team Trump’s growing list
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/white-house-bowling-alley-trump-renovations-agenda

Another White House renovation? A look at Trump’s new helipad
https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cdx02dw785vo

Controversial renovations may begin Tuesday at DC’s East Potomac golf course
https://wtop.com/dc/2026/09/controversial-renovations-to-begin-tuesday-at-dcs-east-potomac-golf-course/

‘I am not the Lorax’: Judge unloads on Trump golf plan in bizarre hearing
https://www.rawstory.com/i-am-not-the-lorax-judicial-hearing-on-trump-s-golf-course-renovation-takes-odd-turn/

Donald Trump’s renovations spark uproar as he plans to fence off Lafayette Park
https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/donald-trumps-renovations-spark-uproar-2009107

Mile-long stretch of National Mall closed until 2027 for turf renovation
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2026/09/02/mile-long-stretch-national-mall-closed-until-2027-turf-renovation/

Trump Says Reflecting Pool Almost Fixed
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/donald-trump-reflecting-pool-repairs/2026/08/31/id/1267899/

Trump demands a makeover for the Kennedy Center, but his latest legal threat puts the historic landmark on the chopping block
https://www.themarysue.com/trump-demands-a-makeover-for-the-kennedy-center-but-his-latest-legal-threat-puts-the-historic-landmark-on-the-chopping-block/

Bitter Trump razes 40 weeping willow trees outside Kennedy Center commemorating assassinated president
https://www.irishstar.com/news/politics/bitter-trump-razes-40-weeping-37615956

US says it will break ground soon on Trump arch
https://gulfnews.com/world/americas/us-says-it-will-break-ground-soon-on-trump-arch-1.500662707

Donald Trump Openly Admits ‘Nobody’ Will Memorialize Him After His Presidency -- So He’s Doing It Himself
https://perezhilton.com/donald-trump-ballroom-jon-ossoff-memorial-commment/

Subscribe now

Mrs. Hegseth was for years Mr. Hegseth’s producer at Fox News as he built a broadcast career. Now, seven years into their marriage, she is his most influential adviser and his de facto producer at the Pentagon. She has prepped him for appearances, sat in on his meetings with journalists, interviewed potential members of his staff and brainstormed ideas for the Defense Department videos he — and sometimes she — appears in.

You see, Pete’s not the Secretary of Defense. He’s actually the host of an infotainment program, much like you’d see on the weekend at FOX News or on FOX Nation. He’s not managing the war or the defense production deficit or anything else a Secretary of Defense is expected to do. He is the star of a show being produced on the fly by his wife. It has all the gaudy, over-the-top hyperpatriotism and kulturkampf accoutrements you’ll find on many of FOX’s vividly-colored, graphics-laden programs.

It’s the Department of War, starring Pete Hegseth! And Jennifer Hegseth is right there to make sure he hits his marks … and not the bottle. And it explains why everything is being mismanaged. The Iran War has been all but lost. The Navy is mired in a morale morass. The Army’s chain of command has been crippled by purges. And Pete’s busy in hair and makeup, getting ready for his next staged performance.

At least someone—perhaps Jennifer—realized months ago that Pete’s orgiastic glee about blowing up stuff wasn’t a hit with viewers, so they cancelled the “Pentagon Briefing” segment. His orgiastic glee is also why the US shot its kinetic wad all over Iran … and still the regime stands, thus demonstrating the limits of the vaunted US military. Now they are scrambling to invent some new leverage with double secret probation-level economic sanctions.

The Iranians responded by announcing a tentative power and revenue-sharing deal with Oman that would give Iran a far stronger hold on the Strait than it had seven months ago. Sec’y of State Marco Rubio responded by announcing a pause in bombing … until after the midterms. Pete, of course, said bombing could still happen … really … he knows it can happen … he really wants it to happen … hey, is anybody even listening to him?

Meanwhile, the real world consequences of governing like a reality show are piling up like tankers on either side of the Strait of Hormuz. If nothing else, this utterly dysfunctional approach to running the world’s largest military and its most sprawling bureaucracy is defeating itself. I just wonder what Pete’s patriarchal guru thinks about Jennifer wearing the battle fatigues in the family. - jp

A trillion budget but military can't 'afford' to attack mold on bases?
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/military-installations-conditions-gao/

Military buildings need $285 billion worth of maintenance, report says
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-gao-maintenance-backlog/

The Costly Blunders in the Army’s $533 Million Fiasco
https://www.propublica.org/article/army-artillery-factory-fiasco-takeaways

Twenty-One Days to Save the Arsenal? The Pentagon’s Munitions Crisis Meets Reality
https://sofrep.com/news/twenty-one-days-to-save-the-arsenal-the-pentagons-munitions-crisis-meets-reality/

The US Munitions Crisis Goes Back Further than Iran
https://www.cato.org/commentary/us-munitions-crisis-goes-back-further-iran

The US Navy has battled operational tempo ordeals for years. The Iran war exposed the flaws.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-navy/2026/08/20/the-us-navy-has-battled-operational-tempo-ordeals-for-years-the-iran-war-exposed-the-flaws/

Hegseth’s Purge of Top Generals Leaves the Army Rudderless
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/us/hegseth-purge-army-generals.html

‘Tell the General I’m Sorry’: Trump Reportedly Blamed Hegseth for Army Chief’s Firing in Call With GOP Senator
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump/tell-the-general-im-sorry-trump-reportedly-blamed-hegseth-for-army-chiefs-firing-in-call-with-gop-senator/

Before Hegseth fired him, top general was advised to drop Kid Rock probe
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/08/26/before-hegseth-fired-him-top-general-was-advised-drop-kid-rock-investigation/

Trump criticism leads to rare criminal charges for Air Force officer who called for impeachment
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/24/politics/us-airman-charged-trump-criticism-article-88

Billboard campaign in military cities connects Iran war to high prices
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2026/08/24/billboard-campaign-in-military-cities-connects-iran-war-to-high-prices/

Opinion: Trump’s war of choice in Iran is straining the armed forces for nothing
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/uss-abraham-lincoln-sailors-trump-iran-war-deployment-20260820.html

Pete Hegseth blames "tra**ies" for US military troubles in bizarre speech line
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2026/08/pete-hegseth-blames-traies-for-us-military-troubles-in-bizarre-speech-line/

Pete Hegseth-style masculinity is full of downsides | Opinion
https://www.press-citizen.com/story/opinion/contributors/writers-group/2026/08/21/masculinity-role-models/91389680007/

Pete Hegseth is bringing Christian propaganda to schools on military bases
https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/pete-hegseth-is-bringing-christian

'Both Of Them Sinning': Pete Hegseth's Pastor Reportedly Blames Wives in Viral Marital Rape Debate
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/controversy-pastor-marital-rights-rape-1815895

How to Be a Proper Military Wife: Dress Modestly, Smile, and Keep Opinions to Yourself
https://thewarhorse.org/rules-military-spouse/

‘It’s Bonkers’: Jennifer Hegseth’s Hands-On Role in Her Husband’s Pentagon
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/style/jennifer-hegseth.html

Subscribe now

At least, that what they’re supposed to do with the horses.

Instead, horses are being sold to “hard-luck livestock” traders like Brandon Jones. He’s buying ‘em for twenty-five bucks apiece. He quickly turns around and sells them for a profit to … well, he wouldn’t tell reporter Dave Phillipps, but it’s well-established that horses sold to traders like Jones for a pittance invariably end up in slaughterhouses north and south of the border. That’s despite the fact that it is illegal for the US government to sell them to slaughterhouses.

But they can sell them to people who resell them to slaughterhouses.

That’s the “loophole.”

It’s based on a convenient, disingenuous misreading of the letter of the law that utterly disregards the spirit of the law. The spirit of the law is clear—the American people don’t like the idea of iconic wild horses being slaughtered for human or animal consumption. They don’t really like the idea of horsemeat, period. That’s why BLM is forbidden from selling them to slaughterhouses. But the apparatchiks now running all the Federal agencies were put there to find and/or create “loopholes” through reinterpretation of existing statutes and rules, and through widespread regulatory indifference.

In the case of the wild horses, they’re relying on a technicality … they are not *directly* selling the horses to slaughterhouses. It doesn’t matter that they, Philipps and anyone who knows anything about this story knows full-well that the horses are being flipped to slaughterhouses.

Interestingly enough, culling the wild horses was recommended in the Project 2025 “blueprint” for Trump’s second term. But, Philipps noted, even the architects of that reactionary plan said that Congress “must enact laws permitting the B.L.M. to dispose humanely of these animals.”

That’s “must enact laws” … not “must use a disingenuous reading of the law” to ignore it. But disingenuous readings are the Trump Regime’s specialty. That’s how they are gutting the Endangered Species Act … just reinterpret “harm” to only include the physical body of a protected species, but not the ecosystems they depend upon to live. And you have to wonder how this callow brand of revisionism is being used at all the agencies. - jp

The Trump Administration Has Spent Billions Boosting Gas Exports, Spurring More Fracking
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24082026/trump-spends-billions-boosting-lng-exports/

Trump Administration’s New Priorities Put Profits Ahead of Marine Conservation
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/trump-administration-noaa-commercial-fisheries-profits-marine-conservation/

Trump Administration to Rescind Rule Protecting Old-Growth Forests
https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/articles/entry/trump-administration-to-rescind-rule-protecting-old-growth-forests

Paving paradise: Dismantling the Roadless Rule threatens to disrupt wildlife, water and peace in the last quiet places in America
https://theconversation.com/paving-paradise-dismantling-the-roadless-rule-threatens-to-disrupt-wildlife-water-and-peace-in-the-last-quiet-places-in-america-275435

Trump Admin Moves to Expand Access for Hunters to Federal Lands in 32 States
https://www.guns.com/news/2026/08/19/trump-admin-moves-to-expand-access-for-hunters-to-federal-lands-in-32-states

Trump Is Destroying Pristine Public Lands to Build His Border Wall — Again
https://truthout.org/articles/trump-is-destroying-pristine-public-lands-to-build-his-border-wall-again/

Trump Signs Space Transportation Policy Ordering Interior to Find Federal Land for a New Spaceport
https://egamers.io/trump-signs-space-transportation-policy-ordering-interior-to-find-federal-land-for-a-new-spaceport/

Developers Now Targeting Public Lands To Build Huge AI Data Centers
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/08/23/a-data-center-is-proposed-for-public-lands-in-nevada-could-wyoming-be-next/

Subscribe now

Now he gets the honor of wearing the burning tire around his neck.

That said, he’ll probably do a better job of communicating than the hormonally-obsessed Hegseth … although Hegseth’s orgasmic celebration of kinetic force did set the bar awfully low. It’s no accident that Hegseth hasn’t held a presser since the first week of May. But now Trump’s turning to the man who convinced him that the early stages of the current tech bubble was actually sparked by Wall Street’s alleged belief that Trump would win the 2024 election. Therefore, Bessent told Trump (according to a tale Trump told daily on the stump), the stock market’s rise during Biden was Trump’s accomplishment.

In other words, Bessent is a salesman.

America’s “top bond salesman,” said Bessent when he launched his widely panned bond buyback. He was not nearly as confident in his new role as the face of Trump’s failing war. His dry mouth and quavering voice announced the start of “economic D-Day” with a nervousness that shows he knows he’s out of his depth.

Just how deeply he’s in it came through loudly and clearly when he blurted out an unintentional admission to a probing question about decision to announce the sanctions without implementing them:

"Why would I want to blow up the global financial system?"

Why indeed?

Why would Bessent entertain any approach that runs the risk of blowing up the global financial system? That he said it at all seems like he’s tipping his hand and, if Trump’s track record is any indication, it may be just another threat … a bluff … one that Iran quickly laughed off and one that didn’t seem to affect Wall Street.

The reality, though, is that this new-ish strategy—inartfully dubbed Operation Economic Outcast—is more like a surrender than an escalation. It’s a rather explicit admission that the military campaign has failed. Hegseth shot America’s wad, supplies are thin, sailors are suffering and the war is a political disaster. Trump no doubt sees this as way out of the military campaign … one that he can sustain through the midterms.

But therein lies the rub.

Bessent can try to coyly shift the Iran War away from kinetic action and into a post-war version of the sanctions regime that was in place when Trump started his deadly misadventure started, but that political battle is already lost. The war is a sunk cost that’s not nearly as pressing as the issue of affordability … or data centers. The two are intertwined, in fact, with the preferences Trump’s given Silicon Valley looming as a damning example of wealthy oligarchs buying favoritism from Trump while ignoring the concerns of the American people.

It’s all made worse by the mounting evidence that those favors often translate into higher utility bills for wage earning Americans. And it’s all underscored by his renewed trade war with Canada, which means he’s currently got America fighting two costly economic wars of choice.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans have and will continue to lose SNAP food assistance, and millions more are facing the end of Medicaid coverage. In effect, they are and have been fighting an economic war here at home. Wasn’t that a major reason why Trump was elected? - jp

Canada lumber exports to U.S. fall 13% as trade talks collapse
https://www.lesprom.com/en/news/Canada_lumber_exports_to_U_S_fall_13_as_trade_talks_collapse_124215/

Trump’s tariffs on Canadian plywood and laminated wood panels just went into effect—what does it mean for the AEC industry?
https://www.archpaper.com/2026/08/canada-plywood-tariffs/

How increased Canadian tariffs could have impact Maine’s housing market
https://www.wmtw.com/article/how-increased-canadian-tariffs-could-impact-maines-housing-market/73467359

Data Centers Are Sucking Up So Many Construction Workers That There Isn’t Anybody Left to Build Houses, Expert Says
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/data-centers-construction-worker-labor-housing-market

The AI boom made San Francisco so crowded ‘tech bros’ making six figures are scrounging for homes
https://fortune.com/article/ai-boom-san-francisco-tech-bros-six-figures-housing-08-10-2026/

Santa Cruz County housing market stalls, then rebounds as AI wealth boom looms
https://lookout.co/santa-cruz-county-housing-market-stalls-then-rebounds-as-ai-wealth-boom-looms/story

US Housing Markets Face Escalating Affordability and Neighbor Disputes
https://www.readers.id/en/us-housing-markets-face-escalating-affordability-challenges

U.S. Housing Affordability Gets More Difficult
https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/2026/08/24/u-s-housing-affordability-gets-more-difficult/189006/

Manufactured housing’s affordability problem
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/23/congress-made-it-cheaper-to-build-manufactured-homes-theyre-still-expensive-to-buy-01042996

Amid housing crisis, Maine mobile home residents make strides to protect themselves
https://mainemorningstar.com/2026/08/24/amid-housing-crisis-maine-mobile-home-residents-make-strides-to-protect-themselves/

Affordability takes center stage as poll shows Georgia governor’s race locked in dead heat
https://www.atlantanewsfirst.com/2026/08/24/affordability-takes-center-stage-poll-shows-georgia-governors-race-locked-dead-heat/

Affordability concerns loom over New York midterms
https://www.fingerlakes1.com/2026/08/23/affordability-concerns-loom-over-new-york-midterms/

Affordability, healthcare among top concerns for Arizona seniors
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news/279260792/affordability-healthcare-among-top-concerns-for-arizona-seniors

Arizona regulators approve safeguard to keep co-op customers from footing data center grid costs
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/arizona-electric-cooperatives-data-centers-costs/

Trump defends AI data center buildout amid pushback
https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/24/trump-defends-ai-data-center-buildout-amid-pushback/

Subscribe now

The calculus is simple.

Become indispensable to business and government and, therefore, too important to regulate and too necessary to extricate. The sooner business and government adopt and grow dependent upon their AI agents, the better. The trick is to get there before the backlash can stop it.

Trump gave them a significant head start, too.

But that was then, and this is now … and now things are looking a bit less inevitable. It seems the Valley was not able to hyperscale faster than the public could mount challenges at the city, county and state level. Trump’s political capital is long gone, but he’s still cheering on data centers … despite data centers emerging as a top issue in the midterms.

Honestly, Trump is almost as toxic as the data centers he’s associated himself with since his first day in office. But now, data centers are so toxic even Republicans are touting their newfound opposition to ‘em in their advertising.

And that’s not all.

In a related development, Americans are suddenly revolting against Flock surveillance cameras, driven in no small part by a surge in reported abuses by law enforcement. It could be a coincidence that both backlashes are happening now, but I suspect that people are uncomfortable with inevitability … and I suspect that Silicon Valley’s enmeshment with Trump is blowing back onto them.

The bottom line is that all the smarmy Hegelianism in the world cannot hide the parasitic business model that animates all of their “tech.” Agentic AI is just another version of the tollbooth Silicon Valley inevitably installs whenever it uses the next whiz-bang “innovation” to “disrupt” existing transactions or relationships and, therefore, horn its way into the middle of those transactions and relationships with an app or a device or, if AI works out for them, a dedicated minder and toll-taker.

It could be that its dawning on Americans that they are paying for their own imprisonment. - jp

The new kingmakers: Crypto, AI and betting firms fuel record spending on the 2026 midterms
https://www.reuters.com/legal/legalindustry/new-kingmakers-crypto-ai-betting-firms-fuel-record-spending-2026-midterms-2026-08-20/

Are Flock cameras the next bipartisan political issue?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/08/21/are-flock-cameras-next-bipartisan-political-issue/

‘F**k Flock!’ Vandals wage war on AI surveillance cameras
https://www.cnn.com/us/video/flock-camera-ai-meena-duerson

Flock Safety’s CEO Defended His Massive Surveillance Network—But the Facts Tell a Different Story
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/flock-safetys-ceo-defended-his-massive-surveillance-network-but-the-facts-tell-a-different-story/

259 Plate Searches, Zero Warrants: A Cop Turned Traffic Cameras Into Her Personal Stalking Tool
https://theautowire.com/2026/08/20/flock-cameras-stalking-new-bedford/

Chasing a Shiny Thing: How a Florida Deputy Turned Police Surveillance Tech Into a Stalking Tool
https://www.gadgetreview.com/chasing-a-shiny-thing-how-a-florida-deputy-turned-police-surveillance-tech-into-a-stalking-tool

Records detail Arizona officer’s misuse of Flock cameras to find wife
https://www.azfamily.com/2026/08/21/records-detail-arizona-officers-misuse-flock-cameras-find-wife/

South Carolina deputy fired after 2,700+ unauthorized Flock camera searches
https://myfox8.com/news/south-carolina/south-carolina-deputy-fired-after-2700-unauthorized-flock-camera-searches/

Florida Cops Weaponize Flock Cameras to Stalk Women in 355-Search Sarasota Case
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/florida-cops-weaponize-flock-cameras-to-stalk-women-in-355-search-sarasota-case/

Sarasota police arrest raises questions about Flock camera safeguards
https://www.tampabay28.com/news/region-sarasota-manatee/sarasota-police-arrest-raises-questions-about-flock-camera-safeguards

Texas police officer arrested, another placed on leave amid Flock camera misuse investigation
https://www.kwtx.com/2026/08/20/texas-police-officer-arrested-another-placed-leave-amid-flock-camera-misuse-investigation/

Former Deputy Charged For Improper Flock Use
https://www.seehafernews.com/2026/08/21/former-deputy-charged-for-improper-flock-use/

3 deputies’ access to Flock cameras suspended, Harris County Sheriff’s Office says
https://abc13.com/post/3-deputies-access-flock-cameras-suspended-review-underway-harris-county-sheriffs-office-says/19679725/

Georgia school resource officer suspended as Flock camera misuse cases grow
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/georgia-school-resource-officer-suspended-as-flock-camera-misuse-cases-grow-sierra-carroll-houston-county-license-plate-readers-police-surveillance-privacy

2 Mass. police officers on leave after city’s license plate reader system audit
https://www.wcvb.com/article/lynn-massachusetts-officers-on-leave-flock-license-plate-reader-audit/73484480

Stow police officer accused of misusing Flock camera, police databases
https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/stow-police-officer-accused-of-misusing-flock-camera-police-databases/3999797/

Flock license plate cameras under fire as Mass. police misconduct cases mount
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/21/business/flock-safety-police-misuse-massachusetts/

New Britain Township Police address privacy concerns over Flock cameras, license plate reader systems
https://centralbucksnews.com/news/public-safety/new-britain-township-police-address-privacy-concerns-over-flock-cameras-license-plate-reader-systems/

Smart Glasses Are Catching on With U.S. Police
https://gizmodo.com/smart-glasses-are-catching-on-with-u-s-police-2000797054

ICE bans agents from using Meta smart glasses, but wants to build its own
https://mashable.com/tech/ice-agents-meta-smart-glasses-ban

Teen Boys Are Using Meta Glasses to Harass and Bully Girls at High Schools and Middle Schools
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/teen-boys-meta-glasses-harass-bully-girls-school

Did someone wearing Meta Glasses film you today? Are you sure?
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ng-interactive/2026/aug/19/meta-glasses-privacy-surveillance

Subscribe now

But it is also highly volatile.

It vaporizes easily, and it can do so for days after it is applied … particularly in hot and dry conditions. And when it does, it drifts. And when it drifts, it can drift for miles, damaging or destroying nearby crops, trees and other “non-target” foliage along the way. That bug, which a cynically-minded observer could plausibly regard as a feature that forces nearby farms to convert to GMO soybeans and cotton, has fueled a decade-long controversy over “dicamba drift” that’s been largely contained within the agriculture industry.

Until now.

The difference now is that pesticides like dicamba are drifting into classrooms and exposing non-GMO children to the same vaporized poison that’s withered neighboring fields for the last ten years. No doubt, pesticide drift has been going on for decades. Take, for instance, a potent poison called chlorpyrifos. Applied to nearly a dozen food crops, it is also a powerful neurotoxin that’ll shave points off the IQ of young people, which is a significant concern to parents of kids in farming communities. The schools they attend tend to be surrounded by fields targeted by chlorpyrifos and therefore run the risk of exposure to deadly drifts.

That said, a study published in 2025 by researchers from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, and Keck School of Medicine at USC found chlorpyrifos newborns in northern Manhattan and South Bronx, New York. Obviously, the problem stretches well-beyond rural schoolhouses. Lead author Virginia A Rauh, ScD, MSW of Columbia University summarized their findings:

The 270 children and adolescents are participants in the Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health birth cohort study and were born to Latino and African-American mothers. They had measurable quantities of CPF in their umbilical cord blood and were assessed by brain imaging and behavioral tests between the ages of 6 and 14 years. Progressively higher insecticide exposure levels were significantly associated with progressively greater alterations in brain structure, function, and metabolism, as well as poorer measures of motor speed and motor programming. Links between higher CPF and greater anomalies across different neuroimaging measures suggest that prenatal exposure produces enduring disturbances in brain structure, function, and metabolism in direct proportion to the level of exposure.

Study co-author Bradley Peterson, MD, Vice Chair for Research and Chief of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry in the Department of Psychiatry at at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, said this:

“The disturbances in brain tissue and metabolism that we observed with prenatal exposure to this one pesticide were remarkably widespread throughout the brain. Other organophosphate pesticides likely produce similar effects, warranting caution to minimize exposures in pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood, when brain development is rapid and especially vulnerable to these toxic chemicals.”

Of course, Trump’s EPA reversed Obama-Era restrictions on chlorpyrifos at the start of this year. Similarly, Trump’s EPA has embraced dicamba, although with two new restrictions. One mandates maintaining a buffer zone around a new applications and the other is a ban on its use when the temperature hits 95 degrees to minimize vaporization. But, at the same time, the EPA dropped a ban on its use after June, when summer temperatures could “lead to more vapor drift.”

That’s a shell game.

Obviously, the 95 degree restriction is not nearly as effective as a summer-long ban. And, as a new report in the Chicago Tribune shows, buffer zones are easily rendered functionally irrelevant by a stiff breeze:

On her 43 acres of woods and reclaimed native prairie in rural Tazewell County, Katie VandenBerg walked the edge of her property, inspecting a line of oaks bordered by miles of corn and soybean fields.

The oak leaves are curled and stunted — damage she believes is tied to pesticide applications on nearby farms.

Since buying the land three years ago, VandenBerg, whose family has lived in Tazewell County for seven generations, said she has “gone down a rabbit hole” trying to understand how drifting chemicals are affecting her trees.

Then, this spring, that threat reached her 10-year-old daughter, Genevieve.

Hundreds of children had gathered outside Bethel Lutheran School in nearby Morton for a jump-rope fundraiser when a chemical odor swept across the parking lot. Across the street, according to Illinois Department of Agriculture records, farmer Mark Eigsti was spraying pesticides on his soybean fields as wind gusts topped 19 miles per hour. These kinds of conditions are known to increase the risk of drift — when chemicals move beyond their intended targets.

That evening, parents received an unusual message from the school principal: “Showers for All Tonight.”

For VandenBerg, the email was immediately alarming.

“Well, hold on. This is more than just showers for everybody,” she said. “This is a big deal. This is not OK.”

The principal’s recommendation made sense. Testing around the school and of students’ clothing found traces of two other herbicides—Glory 4L and Trifluralin 4EC—the EPA classifies as a possible human carcinogen. It certainly sickened those unfortunate enough to catch that drift:

In the days that followed, students and staff reported headaches, sore throats, skin irritation and red eyes, according to state Agriculture Department interviews. Investigators later concluded that more than 200 children and staff were exposed.

Although they didn’t find dicamba, the controversy around dicamba drift highlights a long overlooked problem with pesticides:

“Dicamba is a notorious bad actor, but so are a lot of the pesticides we’re using,” said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, director of ecological health for Prairie Rivers Network. “They’re traveling (farther) than most people think.”

Erndt-Pitcher denounced a “lack of routine pesticide air monitoring” in Illinois, which leaves citizens “without a clear picture of how frequently agrochemicals move through communities”:

“If the Department of Agriculture and EPA aren’t looking for it and no one is documenting it, how can you say it really exists?” said Erndt-Pitcher. “We’re documenting it, and we’re saying it does.”

They are not alone.

The controversy over dicamba—which has produced a few successful lawsuits against Bayer—has been driven by angry farmers who’ve suffered crippling losses. As Public Harvest Media noted:

Herbicide drift can be a big deal for a grower’s bottom line, he added. If a producer loses 5 percent of their crop and profit margins are around 5 percent, it’s hard to make money.

At the same time, soybean and cotton farmers who’ve made the leap to the GMO versions of those crops want to reap the rewards of switching to costly proprietary seeds … and that has led a stark divide:

The herbicide has been a topic of heated disagreement among growers in years past and can still be controversial, said Aaron Hager, a professor of weed science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The divide between farmers who use dicamba and those who don’t “was like the 2016 presidential election,” Hager said. “You were in one camp or the other. And if you weren’t in my camp, you were wrong — if for no other reason than you’re not in my camp.”

The reality that drift may occur leaves neighbors of those using dicamba in awkward or sometimes contentious situations, said Randall Vos, a horticulture specialist with Iowa State University Extension.

“You don’t want to be the squeaky wheel in the community,” said Vos, who advises Iowa fruit producers.

For the fruit producers Vos works with, reporting drift can also create a conundrum.

It may take the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship one week to investigate a plant that’s suspected of being damaged by drift. By that point, the herbicide levels may be undetectable, so the state agency may not be able to come to a conclusion — and that’s especially problematic for organic farmers, Vos said.

And that underscores the problem of all drifting pesticides. They are impossible to contain and by the time you catch on to the drift, it’s already too late. Only traces and dead plants will be left behind. But eventually, perhaps decades later, the drift will finally catch up with you. - jp

Pesticides make Argentine ants go crazy, sending them roaming or clustering before workers die
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-pesticides-argentine-ants-crazy-roaming.html

Childhood Pesticide Exposure May Shift the Timing of Puberty
https://scitechdaily.com/childhood-pesticide-exposure-may-shift-the-timing-of-puberty/

Illinois Pesticide Drift Sickened 200 at Morton School, Families Demand Warnings
https://hoodline.com/2026/08/illinois-pesticide-drift-sickened-200-at-morton-school-families-demand-warnings/

As study shows pesticides drifting onto Illinois schools and parks, residents push for better tracking
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/08/16/pesticide-drift-illinois-farmers/

Pesticides Can Drift For Miles, Injuring Plants. That Can Hurt Farmers’ Bottom-line
https://www.farms.com/news/pesticides-can-drift-for-miles-injuring-plants-that-can-hurt-farmers-bottom-line-245860.aspx

Farmer Follows AI Chatbot’s Advice About Pesticide, A Million Square Feet Of Crops Die The Next Day
https://brobible.com/culture/article/farmer-ai-chatbot-advice-pesticide-crops-die/

As Temperatures Get Hotter, Pesticides Are More Dangerous to Farmworkers
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/17082026/florida-heat-amplifies-pesticides-dangers-for-farmworkers/

At Bangladesh’s top cancer hospital, the farmers keep coming
https://netra.news/2026/bangladesh-farmers-cancer-pesticide/

Parkinson’s Disease cases are growing worldwide. Is chemical exposure to blame?
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article316662510.html

Gulf War Veteran Parkinson’s Disease Lawsuits Investigated Over Pesticide Use During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm
https://www.aboutlawsuits.com/chlorpyrifos-lawsuit/gulf-war-veteran-parkinsons-disease-lawsuits-pesticide-use-desert-shield-desert-storm/

Is There A Link Between Golf Courses And Parkinson’s Disease?
https://allthatsinteresting.com/parkinsons-disease-golf-courses

Subscribe now

It’s not that the US is exempt … to the contrary, much like the dwindling Danube, Lake Mead and the Colorado River are increasingly in jeopardy and cattle ranchers in South Dakota, Wyoming and Mississippi are struggling to keep their herds alive amid heatwaves and drought. The only difference is that their government pretends that the superheated world doesn’t exist. It does … in fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration quietly announced that July was the hottest month on record. CNN’s climate reporter Bill Weir noted that NOAA put the announcement under a cryptic headline with a picture of a grazing horse … apparently hoping to slip it by Trump’s thought police. It worked, too.

Sadly, it’s a Pyrrhic Victory.

Disappearing grasslands impact bird populations, study finds
https://india.mongabay.com/2026/08/disappearing-grasslands-impact-bird-populations-study-finds/

Extreme weather is pushing birds out of their usual ranges
https://www.earth.com/climate/extreme-weather-is-pushing-birds-out-of-their-usual-ranges/

Study finds extreme weather increasingly predicts North American bird species distributions
https://bioengineer.org/study-finds-extreme-weather-increasingly-predicts-north-american-bird-species-distributions/

A global finding: 80% of butterfly species are changing their distribution due to climate change
https://noticiasambientales.com/science/a-global-finding-80-of-butterfly-species-are-changing-their-distribution-due-to-climate-change/

Climate change helps invasive species spread across South | Exclusive
https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/environment/2026/08/12/invasive-species-in-georgia-and-sc-may-spread-with-climate-change/91245260007/

Climate change helps invasive species thrive in the Mediterranean
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/climate-change-helps-invasive-species-thrive-in-the-mediterranean/video/a7667243be1b5aa0eca686e27309a9b4

Mediterranean Sea Passes 1,000 Invasive Species; Scientists Declare Ecology Gone Forever
https://www.techtimes.com/articles/324170/20260812/mediterranean-sea-passes-1000-invasive-species-scientists-declare-ecology-gone-forever.htm

Conservationists in Europe are racing to stop the next invasive species before it spreads
https://iucn.org/news/202608/conservationists-europe-are-racing-stop-next-invasive-species-it-spreads

Experts warn that stranded cargo ships could cause an invasive species ‘super-spreader’ event
https://cottagelife.com/general/experts-warn-that-stranded-cargo-ships-could-cause-an-invasive-species-super-spreader-event/

What my Maine dock taught me about the threat of invasive marine life looming in the Persian Gulf
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2026/08/12/metro/strait-of-hormuz-barnacle-invasion/

New report finds LNG expansion raises invasive species risks in the Gulf of California
https://safety4sea.com/new-report-finds-lng-expansion-raises-invasive-species-risks-in-the-gulf-of-california/

Invasive crayfish claw their way across America and take over US lakes
https://www.foxweather.com/earth-space/invasive-crayfish-america-taking-over-us-lakes

The US Lakes Overrun By Invasive Catfish
https://www.worldatlas.com/lakes/the-us-lakes-overrun-by-invasive-catfish.html

These fish escaped confinement in the 1970s: 50 years on, they are now massive invasive species threatening the Great Lakes
https://en.as.com/latest_news/these-fish-escaped-confinement-in-the-1970s-50-years-on-they-are-now-massive-invasive-species-threatening-the-great-lakes-f202608-n-2/

Can anything stop invasive golden mussels? A test project in Stockton may provide an answer
https://stocktonia.org/news/environment/2026/08/14/golden-mussels-test-project-stockton/

Texas research lab hopes to curb invasive species affecting prickly pear cacti
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/austin/news/2026/08/10/prickly-pear-invasive-species

Kansas to quarantine invasive Callery pear trees beginning in 2027
https://www.ksnt.com/news/kansas/kansas-to-quarantine-invasive-callery-pear-trees-beginning-in-2027/

Beautiful but vicious: invasive roses a menace to N.S. ecosystems
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/invasive-multiflora-rose-threatening-n-s-ecosystems-9.7304682

Volunteers plant native vegetation at Anchorage park to combat invasive species
https://www.alaskasnewssource.com/2026/08/12/volunteers-plant-native-vegetation-anchorage-park-combat-invasive-species/

It’s time to check trees for invasive Asian longhorned beetle
https://www.michigan.gov/invasives/news/2026/08/10/time-to-check-trees

Tiny invasive snail spreading across north-central Montana — here’s what to look for
https://www.krtv.com/news/tiny-invasive-snail-spreading-across-north-central-montana-heres-what-to-look-for

Toxic hammerhead worms spread across Tennessee: Officials urge residents not to touch them
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/toxic-hammerhead-worms-spread-across-tennessee-officials-urge-residents-not-to-touch-them

Invasive jumping worms are stripping New Hampshire gardens of mulch, compost, and healthy soil
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-home/jumping-worms-new-hampshire-gardeners-fight-back/

This ‘perfect invader’ is spreading across the world. It’s costing economies billions
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/13/science/shot-hole-borer-invasive-beetle-africa-intl

Subscribe now

It’s irony is rooted in the nature of the disease, which causes a potentially deadly allergic reaction to meat and dairy. The ironic coincidence that an allergy to meat was being carried by a tick named after Texas was matched by the irony of a Texas-named tick spreading that allergy thanks in large part to Texas’ climate-altering oil and gas industry.

Seven years later the irony is not nearly as delicious as it once was. Back then, public opinion was trending toward wider public acknowledgement of something the oil companies knew for decades. Against that backdrop, the lone star tick and Alpha-gal Syndrome were ironic harbingers of things to come … things, it seemed, we could still do something to avoid. But the shocking ease with which Donald Trump simply waved away concerns about or mentions of the climate or anything that has to do with the environment showed us how unlikely a course correction was then, and how unlikely it is going forward.

Now, seven years later, the lone star tick is spreading another disease—so-called Bourbon virus. Named after the Kansas county where it was first discovered, the virus is potentially deadly and wholly uncurable. And that’s just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Tick-borne diseases are proliferating.

Waving away the issue may have fired-up his base and rewarded donors, but it did nothing to stop the ticks or the ever-warmer weather that’s opened up most of North America to them. Because climate change no longer officially exists for the US federal government, little else will be done. - jp

What is rabbit fever? Disease you can catch mowing your lawn has infected 3 on Long Island
https://nypost.com/health/what-is-rabbit-fever-tularemia/

Three cases of rare tick-borne disease ‘rabbit fever’ suspected in New York
https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/health/rabbit-fever-tularemia-new-york

Rare Tick Virus Is 'Just the Tip of the Iceberg,' Infectious Disease Expert Says
https://wjactv.com/news/local/rare-tick-virus-is-just-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-infectious-disease-expert-says

No cure, no vaccine: Experts warn of rare Bourbon virus after first NY case
https://www.foxnews.com/health/no-cure-no-vaccine-experts-warn-rare-bourbon-virus-after-first-ny-case

New York, the Bourbon virus and Lone Star ticks
https://outbreaknewstoday.substack.com/p/new-york-the-bourbon-virus-and-lone

Hiker stopped at his tent flap in New York's Catskills and found 20 lone star ticks at 3,000 feet
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/hiker-finds-lone-star-ticks-catskills/

The great tick explosion: a tiny threat tests America’s love of nature
https://www.ft.com/content/16b0f91e-3615-4e77-96cb-f2edb5f36ea6

Lyme disease is becoming one of Canada's defining climate-health challenges
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2026/07/20/news/canada-climate-change-lyme-disease

Tick bites drive global surge in alpha-gal meat allergy with no cure
https://www.dongascience.com/en/news/79225

The Ticks Are Winning
https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2026/08/the-ticks-are-winning/

Subscribe now

Could you ever imagine Trump befriending a dog, cat or a bird, let alone caring for a mouse?

Of course not.

Although it might seem rather picayune to point it out amidst his regime’s rampant corruption and intolerable cruelty, it is indicative of his general attitude toward animals and the natural world. For Trump, ecosystems are merely resources that haven’t been converted to dollars, and animals are just waiting for Eric and Don Jr. to convert them into trophies.

Yes, he’s expressed faux concern for whales and birds, but that’s not because he likes whales and birds. He just hates windmills, and he thinks people will respond to dead birds and disturbed whales. Frankly, he’ll say anything in pursuit of his vendetta against windmills, including the gobsmacking claim they cause cancer.

Ironically, his vendetta is traceable back to his environmentally destructive golf course in Scotland, which was opposed by many Scots. Trump was livid when an offshore windfarm was built within eyeshot of the course. He sued to halt the project, but ultimately lost his case before the UK Supreme Court.

Now, however, he’s got a hand-picked US Supreme Court that’s as hostile to environmental protections as he is … and he’s using that fact to run roughshod on the perennially popular Endangered Species Act (ESA).

Under rules his regime recently rewrote, it is still illegal to kill or directly harm animals listed under the ESA, but the habitat they rely upon to survive is no longer fully protected. That’s the greenlight ranchers, drillers and developers have been dreaming of for decades. The only caveat to the rule is that you cannot harm a species’ “critical habitat” if it literally leads to the extinction of said species.

Here’s new rule as described by a Department of Interior press release:

Critical habitat exclusions (Section 4(b)(2)): Revises the “critical habitat” designation process to follow the law and consider the economic, national security and other relevant impacts following the designation of any particular area as “critical habitat.” The revision also allows an area to be excluded from a “critical habitat” designation if that exclusion will not cause the extinction of the species.

In other words, they draw the line at cutting down a tree that’s hosting the last nest of the last Spotted Owl. Short of that, everything is negotiable. Maybe it’s the economic impact of a proposed sprawling data center, or the national security impact of the AI it’s hosting. So long as the diesel-powered graders do not destroy the last remaining nests of the last Attwater’s Greater Prairie-Chicken, no worries.

But it’s not just the ESA that’s being rewritten to match the President’s priorities. Amazingly, the Federal Aviation Administration just gave itself the power to trump a host of environmental regulations. Per Tech Times:

The Federal Aviation Administration published a proposed rule on Tuesday that would give it the power to waive requirements under 13 federal environmental and natural resource laws for every commercial space license it issues — including the Endangered Species Act, portions of the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Communities living near launch sites, tribal nations with ancestral ties to those lands, and wildlife advocates have 30 days to submit public comment before the window closes — and environmental groups are already vowing legal challenges.

Not surprisingly, the regime is using the rule-making process to create expansive new powers. Also unsurprisingly, that’s what conservative critics accused the ESA’s rulemakers of doing when the law was first implemented. Don’t hold your breath waiting for them to apply the principle universally.

Once finalized, the rule—which does seem to solve a problem SpaceX has in both Texas and California—will likely be tied-up in the courts though the Midterms. Should the Democrats take the House, it’s possible, perhaps even likely they will take up a new bipartisan bill from Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) and Mike Quigley (D-IL) that “would reverse the federal government’s decision to roll back the definition of ‘harm’ under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) to exclude habitat destruction.” As a recent write-up from the Sierra Club noted:

“Habitat destruction is the biggest driver of extinction, and it was squarely in Congress's sights when the Endangered Species Act was passed,” said Ben Levitan, a senior attorney at Earthjustice, who is representing nine conservation groups suing the Trump administration over the change. “Everybody knew, just like everybody still knows, that if you want to save a species, it has to have habitat.”

It’s not going to be an issue in the Midterms, but the Midterms will determine the fates of many species and their habitats. Alas, they don’t get a vote. - jp

Endangered Species Act changes will strip already weak protections for https://www.cfpublic.org/environment/2026-07-27/endangered-species-act-changes-strip-weak-protections-plants

Federal rule cuts Canada lynx critical habitat in Montana by 43%
https://www.livingstonenterprise.com/news/federal-rule-cuts-canada-lynx-critical-habitat-in-montana-by-43/article_f0ce80bb-0352-5058-8bc8-4cc6d50f42be.html

Florida manatees could face greater risk under ESA rollback
https://www.keybiscayneportal.com/news_in_english/florida-manatees-could-face-greater-risk-under-esa-rollback/article_28d12171-41b0-50b6-ac4b-9563eac6ac56.html

NOAA Fisheries denies ESA listing for smalltail sharks
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/noaa-fisheries-denies-esa-listing-for-smalltail-sharks

Experts talk about gopher tortoise threats amid endangered status from wildlife group
https://www.gulfcoastnewsnow.com/article/florida-gopher-tortoise-endangered-status/73288676

Battle swirls around fate of Mexican Grey Wolves
https://www.paysonroundup.com/news/battle-swirls-around-fate-of-mexican-grey-wolves/article_0c79fded-d954-4842-a877-12dae640991d.html

Endangered red wolves rebound in NC with four litters of pups born this year
https://www.thecoastlandtimes.com/news/endangered-red-wolves-rebound-in-nc-with-four-litters-of-pups-born-this-year-de41db02

Formerly endangered ospreys bounce back in record numbers in Pennsylvania
https://www.thedailynewsonline.com/news/formerly-endangered-ospreys-bounce-back-in-record-numbers-in-pennsylvania/article_202dc39c-7286-4986-a14c-c56b069d26ec.html

This Hawaiian Waterbird Is Making A Comeback. Should It Still Be Endangered?
https://www.civilbeat.org/2026/07/this-hawaiian-waterbird-is-making-a-comeback-should-it-still-be-endangered/

Colorado Parks and Wildlife Celebrates Razorback Sucker Recovery Milestone
https://northfortynews.com/category/news/colorado-parks-and-wildlife-celebrates-razorback-sucker-recovery-milestone/

Subscribe now

A perennial winner of the award, the six oil majors faced stiff competition this year from the private prison industry, which is reaping a windfall from President Donald J. Trump’s mass deportation of immigrants living and working in the United States.

Private prison giants CoreCivic and GEO Group were joined by shadowy newcomers like Acquisition Logistics LLC in an impressive effort to wring every last drop of profit out of the suffering of anyone unfortunate enough to be warehoused in deadly hellholes like Camp East Montana in Texas.

But Big Oil’s unparalleled penchant for profiting off human suffering won the day with an impressive one-two punch of recurring war in the oil-rich Middle East and anthropogenic climate change. While profiteering off war has kept Big Oil near the top of the leaderboard for decades, the arrival of ever-deadlier heatwaves in Europe and South Asia is the ultimate realization of the industry’s long-term commitment to the profit motive in spite of knowing full-well what it would trigger. The move that truly set them apart was the pursuit of a new slate of environmentally destructive drilling projects in Africa and South America, thereby demonstrating a willingness or even an eagerness to add more gases to the hothouse currently cooking Europe for the fourth time this year.

It was a masterstroke of unrepentant greed that borders on the sadistic.

And they’ve been richly rewarded for it.

According to newly released numbers by the crunchers at Oxfam:

The projected full-year profits of BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies amount to $147 billion, more than their combined profits over the previous 21 months (Q2 2024 to Q4 2025). Among the biggest winners, Chevron is expected to report that it has quadrupled its profits to $1,200 a second in the last three months, while ExxonMobil’s profits are expected to have tripled to $1,800 a second.

Breaking down to profit per second (pps) illustrates the vast gulf between people struggling to afford fuel and unwillingness of the industry to absorb any of the additional cost of doing their business. In fact, they use crisis as a permission slip to go further. And the future of other people is a sacrifice they are willing to make:

New Oxfam analysis of academic data published in Nature finds that the emissions from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies were sufficient to cause around 1 in 4 heatwaves reported globally between 2000 and 2023 – heatwaves that would have been virtually impossible without human-made climate change.

Oxfam also took note of the “masterstroke” move:

Yet rather than scaling back fossil fuel production and accelerating the transition to renewable energy, the six largest fossil fuel corporations plan to increase oil and gas production by 14 percent by 2030 compared to 2024 levels, equivalent to pumping an additional 2.5 million barrels of oil a day.

Oxfam’s inequality analysts posted their full analysis on the org’s Substack. Yes, it’s daunting stuff. But there’s also no shortage of news detailing a surge in clean energy projects since the Iran War disrupted planet petroleum. Ironically, the Iran War may be enriching the usual suspects now … but it might already be boomeranging on them. - jp

Latin America’s First Solar Train Launches: It Will Travel 26 miles With Zero Emissions
https://www.cronista.com/en/today/latin-americas-first-solar-train-launches-it-will-travel-26-miles-with-zero-emissions/

Pakistan’s 27 Gigawatts of Solar Boom Matches Its Entire Fossil-Fuel Power Legacy
https://www.gadgetreview.com/pakistans-27-gigawatts-of-solar-boom-matches-its-entire-fossil-fuel-power-legacy

Wind, solar and heat pumps offer EU escape from LNG dependence by 2030, study says

In Germany, Wind and Solar Overtake Fossil Fuels
https://e360.yale.edu/digest/germany-wind-solar-power-2025

Spain’s Solaria gets EIS approval for 600-MW Italian solar project
https://renewablesnow.com/news/spains-solaria-gets-eis-approval-for-600-mw-italian-solar-project-1298802/

Britain has approved a 700-acre solar farm in Cumbria, a project so vast it could take nearly two years to build
https://www.vozpopuli.com/indux/en/britain-has-approved-a-700-acre-solar-farm-in-cumbria-a-project-so-vast-it-could-take-nearly-two-years-to-build/7743/

EPC firm SunEarth Solar tapped for 30-MW project in Romania
https://renewablesnow.com/news/epc-firm-sunearth-solar-tapped-for-30-mw-project-in-romania-1298792/

Eureka Gold Mine inaugurates a 5.4 MW solar power plant in Zimbabwe
https://www.financialafrik.com/en/2026/07/28/eureka-gold-mine-inaugurates-a-5-4-mw-solar-power-plant-in-zimbabwe/

SolarAfrica, MPower to build 184 MW solar, 300 MWh storage plant in Mpumalanga
https://www.financialafrik.com/en/2026/07/28/eureka-gold-mine-inaugurates-a-5-4-mw-solar-power-plant-in-zimbabwe/

Algeria’s solar market moves beyond potential
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/07/28/algerias-solar-market-moves-beyond-potential/

As US Residential Solar Industry Craters, Florida Bucks Trend
https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/southeast/2026/07/28/879331.htm

Trinity Energy project takes Florida Costco distribution center off-grid
https://solarbuildermag.com/projects/trinity-energy-project-takes-florida-costco-distribution-center-off-grid/

Texas is Constructing the Largest Coal Plant Solar Project in North America
https://www.tomorrowsworldtoday.com/manufacturing/texas-is-constructing-the-largest-coal-plant-solar-project-in-north-america/

As central Minnesota coal plant edges toward closure, massive solar project keeps growing
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2026/07/28/xcel-energys-sherco-solar-project-near-becker-gets-bigger

Virginia clean energy firm plans 350-megawatt solar plant near Buckeye
https://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/news/2026/07/28/apex-energy-grande-verde-solar-buckeye-az.html

Indiana lands first US factory for high-efficiency bifacial solar cells, creating 1,200 jobs
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/indiana-solar-cell-factory-1200-jobs/

New Solar Cell Design Solves A Problem That’s Plagued Panels for Decades
https://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Solar-Energy/New-Solar-Cell-Design-Solves-A-Problem-Thats-Plagued-Panels-for-Decades.html

Subscribe now

RT’s India desk captured and reposted the segment on the platform formerly known as Twitter, no doubt because it’s a bald-faced admission that the US is plundering Venezuela.

Although Bessent claims the gold and the oil the US is taking out of the beleaguered nation is going back to help the people of Venezuela, his boss told reporters traveling with him on Air Force One (not the mothballed Qatari jet reporters have dubbed “Bribe Force One”) to a Michigan campaign rally that his regime had collected at least $13 billion from sales of the absconded oil. And it might “even more than that,” added the President in an apparent confirmation of the Financial Times’ tabulation in a story published on July 22.

Trump took it even further during the rally. He touted the competitive advantage his blatant act of imperial extraction gives the US over China:

“We have a thousand years, we have more gasoline, we have more oil … now, when you add Venezuela to it, we really have more oil.”

“We” have more oil?

As far as “we” know, their oil is being sold to benefit them. The problem is “we” have no idea where the money goes after the oil is sold, let alone how much oil has been taking and sold. The first half-billion was deposited into a special account in Qatar (the same people who gave Trump Bribe Force One,) but Energy Sec’y Chris Wright said that ended in February. The Financial Times noted that the Venezuelan government, such as it is, has a website up to “track the revenue from US-run oil sales, but it has only one entry — a transfer of $300mn in March.”

That’s chump change compared to the $13 billion total FT came up with and Trump confirmed on Air Force One. And it could be higher. We don’t know because the Trump Regime has (of course) felt no need to tell us. And that’s because Republicans in Congress don’t seem interested in finding out. That would change if the Democrats take the House and/or the Senate.

Until then, we have to rely on reporting. To wit, FT also asked economists for their analysis of the economic impact of the oil revenue supposedly making it back to the earthquake-ravaged nation:

Many economists had expected Venezuela to enjoy a strong economic recovery this year, given that until January the country was forced to sell oil at a significant discount in international markets to get around US sanctions. The government has introduced a new resources law to encourage investment in oil and gas, and production has ticked up this year.

However, Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said the official first-quarter growth rate of 2.5 per cent was the lowest in nearly five years.

“Venezuela likely did not grow more rapidly despite increased oil revenues in the first quarter because the US didn’t transfer to the Venezuelan government the totality of its increased oil revenues,” he said.

José Guerra, a Venezuelan economist and former opposition lawmaker, said oil revenues should be much higher than in recent years. “Where is the money? There is no transparency and the US government does not inform us.”

The same is true of the gold the US has been commandeering without any real oversight. We know that $100 million of gold was shipped to US refiners in March. And, thanks to FOX News’ lower third, we can assume it must still be coming at the same time the cash-starved nation is trying to regain control over $4 billion gold tied-up by British restrictions put in place after Venezuela’s disputed 2018 election.

In the meantime, the Venezuela government has been fighting criminal gangs for control of gold mining in the Orinoco Mining Arc with the intent of ejecting them and replacing them with corporate mining interests.

Hmmm … I wonder what country those mining interests hail from?

Perhaps it’s the country that doesn’t flinch when its President drops all pretense, says he’s going to take the oil … and he takes it, sells it and brags about it. I guess once you’ve crossed that bridge, nothing is too far … not gold, not fertilizer … nada.

Killing Spree: Extrajudicial executions in the U.S. boat strikes campaign
https://www.wola.org/analysis/killing-spree-extrajudicial-executions-in-the-u-s-boat-strikes-campaign/

67 boat strikes. 221 dead. The cocaine hasn’t slowed, officials report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/07/27/operation-southern-spear-has-not-slowed-cocaine-entering-us/

US Southern Command Ends Earthquake Mission in Venezuela as Death Toll Tops 5,000 and Humanitarian Needs Persist
https://www.latintimes.com/us-southern-command-ends-earthquake-mission-venezuela-death-toll-tops-5000-humanitarian-needs-598324

Vultures Circling the Rubble: US Troops and Businesses Descend on Venezuela
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/vultures-circling-the-rubble-us-troops-and-businesses-descend-on-venezuela/

The mysterious "disappearance" of $10 billion worth of Venezuelan oil under US custody.
https://neofeed.com.br/economia/o-misterioso-sumico-de-us-10-bilhoes-do-petroleo-da-venezuela-sob-guarda-dos-eua/en/

‘Blood Gold’, Malaria Tarnish Venezuela’s Newly Liberalized Mines
https://www.theenergymix.com/blood-gold-malaria-tarnish-venezuelas-newly-liberalized-mines/

Subscribe now

The first sordid tale was told by New York Times finance reporter Maureen Farrell under this mind-numbing headline: Donald Trump Jr.’s Investment Firm Posts Staggering Returns of 200 Percent.

And how did 1789 Capital deliver those “staggering returns”?

According to Farrell’s reporting, Donald Trump Jr. and his partner Omeed Malik are “cashing in on the policies of the current administration openly and without apology”:

Many of the companies 1789 has invested in have large government contracts while others, like Polymarket, have benefited directly from new Trump policies or rollbacks of existing laws. The firm bought shares in some of the most coveted private companies before many went public, including SpaceX, Anduril, Cerebras and Reflection AI, often by leveraging their political and business connections to secure a stake or to help boost the companies’ sales.

“Boost” is an understatement:

Just two years ago, 1789 managed a few hundred million dollars. It now oversees more than $3 billion. Its main investment fund generated returns of roughly 200 percent as of June 30, according to a person familiar with the firm’s performance. While still early in its investment cycle, those returns eclipse the average returns of about 21 percent from venture capital firms started in 2023, according to PitchBook, a provider of financial data.

One of the more glaring and troubling “boosts” came from Don Jr.’s association with and the firm’s investment in Polymarket:

In the case of Polymarket, the government had banned it from taking monetary wagers from U.S. residents, but last year a federal regulator granted it an operating license in the United States. Worth $300 million when 1789 invested, the platform is now valued at $15 billion.

Just as amazing as 1789’s massive $14.7 billion gain is the fact that Don Jr. also holds a substantial stake in Polymarket’s main competitor. For some reason (wink-wink), Kalshi gave Trump’s namesake approximately $300,000 in equity back in 2025 when the company was valued at just under $2 billion. Now it’s worth $22 billion, meaning Don Jr. has realized a tenfold increase in his gifted investment as a “strategic advisor” to a company that Trump’s teleprompter operator was using to make “predictive bets” on the speeches the teleprompter operator scrolled for Don Jr’s dad.

The teleprompter operator has been put on leave during the investigation into the latest likely example of insider trading on Trump’s words and deeds as president.

The second sordid story comes from Sam Fortier at NOTUS and in some ways it’s far more demoralizing than yet another Trump grift: Suspicion and Doubt at the National Civics Contest.

At issue is the outcome of the Presidential 1776 Award, which the Department of Education describes as “a national student competition recognizing excellence in American founding history.” It was a spelling bee for civics that culminated in a televised final phase hosted by professional wrestling magnate Linda McMahon.

One of the finalists was a 15 year-old son of Indian immigrants who excelled in the grand finale, but somehow finished out of the top three. His name is Aangad Singh and he got the ultimate lesson in the current state of his parents beloved adopted nation when it dawned on him and his parents that he’d been screwed out of his rightful place alongside the other winners:

Although Aangad nailed most, if not all of his answers, his parents were crestfallen by the inexplicable result. The problem was the lack of any official scoreboard. It was impossible to know who scored what. To make matters worse, numerous other contestants and their families were “shocked” by Aangad’s absence from the top three. The final straw came when one of the youngsters approached Aangad’s mother and said a group of contestants had kept score themselves:

“We thought he won,” the boy said.

When Aangad’s mother approached an official from the Department of Education seeking access to the final scores, the official told her the scores are “proprietary.”

Proprietary?

Or inconvenient?

Still, they thought they’d be able to get their answer when the competition eventually and fittingly aired on CBS.

Nope.

They watched in vain as each round passed by without a scoreboard. And as they tried to keep track themselves, Aangad realized that he’d been dinged on answers that were correct, but may have been misunderstood or misheard by the judges. The other possibility is that Linda McMahon’s “competition” had a preordained outcome in mind, and the judges made sure that the picture in the Oval Office would not have this face in the frame:

Now, Aangad and his family have split into “two factions” over the incident: Aangad and his father thought the judges must just be incompetent or mistaken; Aangad’s mother and uncle suspected a conspiracy. Either way, Aangad and his family may never know what happened or why their son’s stellar performance was not enough.

But they did learn a valuable civics lesson about Trump’s America.

Judge Williams Trump Settlement Ruling: A 56-Page Demolition of Presidential Self-Dealing
https://www.lawnews.co.uk/featured-2/judge-williams-trump-settlement-ruling-a-56-page-demolition-of-presidential-self-dealing/

In New Corruption Report, Senate Democrats Shine Light on ‘Eye-Popping’ Trump Profiteering
https://www.causes.com/post/corruption-report-senate-democrats-shine-light-eye-popping-trump-profiteering

Senators Question ‘Insider’ Access to Trump Truth Social Posts
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-21/senators-question-insider-access-to-trump-truth-social-posts

SEC Asked to Probe Trump’s $100K ‘Truth API’ Over Insider Trading
https://www.cryptotimes.io/2026/07/22/sec-asked-to-probe-trumps-100k-truth-api-over-insider-trading/

Sources: Aide Trump called ‘excellent’ now facing insider trading probe
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/17/us/video/ebof-tom-foreman-trump-teleprompter

How Tether Benefited as Trump Insiders Shaped First US Crypto Law
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2026-07-22/how-tether-benefited-as-trump-insiders-shaped-first-us-crypto-law

Clarity Act Language Would Immunize Trump Digital Asset Ventures from Oversight
https://www.democracydefendersaction.org/news/clarity-act-language-would-immunize-trump-digital-asset-ventures-from-oversight/

Trump Reportedly Made $2.4B in 2025—Equal to 6,000 Years of Presidential Salary—as Family Crypto Ventures Boomed
https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/donald-trump-2025-income-crypto-ventures-1810058

Trump threatens to destroy Iranian infrastructure over Strait of Hormuz attacks, rattling oil and crypto markets
https://cryptobriefing.com/trump-iran-strait-hormuz-infrastructure-threat/

Trump’s escalating trade fights create a strange safe harbor for crypto
https://cryptobriefing.com/trump-trade-fights-crypto-safe-harbor/

Subscribe now

Instead, fraud is primarily perpetrated by unscrupulous Medicaid providers, by opportunistic individuals inside the organizations that administer Medicaid programs and by professional scammers. Despite that fact, enrollees are about to be forced to navigate a Congressionally mandated obstacle course they designed with the expressed intent of pushing people out of the program.

That’s happening right now with the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). So far, nearly 5 million people have been booted from SNAP, and it will accelerate in the coming months. It will also become a perfect storm when people lose SNAP and Medicaid after the new laws fully kick-in after the midterms.

Cuts and work requirements were sold as cracking down on lazy dudes who are supposedly milking the system while they hang out in their parents’ basement playing Call Of Duty, among other Welfare Queen-style tropes they trotted-out before bill passed. That was the all the justification they needed to carve out enough to “pay for” the tax cuts they lavished on their donors. But there is an additional motivation that traces back to the Calvinist roots of the earliest colonists. Here’s Oklahoma’s Republican Governor Kevin Stitt in a recent interview with Stateline:

“Maybe it’s going back to the day where there was a little stigma attached and you had to actually go to a food bank and pick up commodity cheese and commodity groceries, and it had a little stigma so you were a little bit embarrassed,” he told Stateline. “Maybe we should go back to a little bit of that instead of just making it so easy…”

It’s not that Stitt doesn’t realize SNAP helps keep working Americans, military families and the elderly afloat … particularly in this K-shaped economy. Stitt simply wants people who use SNAP and, it stands to reason, Medicaid to feel worse than they probably already do if they have to rely on a foodbank to feed their kids or themselves.

‘Fraud industrial complex:’ Inside Maryland’s homecare Medicaid money trail
https://foxbaltimore.com/spotlight-on-maryland/fraud-industrial-complex-inside-marylands-homecare-medicaid-money-trail

EXCERPT: A months-long Spotlight on Maryland investigation identified roughly a dozen Maryland-based homecare providers billing Washington, D.C.’s Medicaid program that collectively received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars while carrying significant tax liens, facing labor and malpractice lawsuits, operating from seemingly vacant offices or being cited in serious allegations involving patient care.

Thousands of fraudulent Medicaid registrations by foreign crime ring, says OHCA
https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/thousands-fraudulent-medicaid-registrations-foreign-crime-ring-says-ohca

EXCERPT: The Oklahoma Health Care Authority has identified and acted on a foreign crime syndicate’s fraudulent Medicaid enrollment, according to a statement released Thursday.

OHCA did not specify the exact number of fraudulent enrollments, but referred to the claim that the crime ring “fraudulently registered thousands of Oklahomans for Medicaid.”

CT lab and owner to pay $145K to settle allegations of Medicaid enrollment fraud
https://www.fox61.com/article/news/local/new-haven-county/ct-lab-owner-to-pay-145k-to-settle-allegations-of-medicaid-enrollment-fraud/520-54c7b84a-3e2b-4450-8090-5281667997e1

EXCERPT: A Branford lab and its owner have agreed a payout to resolve allegations with the federal government about falsifications on the company’s application to participate in the Connecticut Medicaid program.

Coastal Diagnostics, LLC, a reference laboratory in Branford, and its owner, Tricia Conroy, have entered into a civil settlement agreement with the federal and state governments and have paid $145,720 to resolve the allegations.

Up to 2,000 Native Americans dead or missing in Medicaid fraud scheme: Attorneys
https://www.newsnationnow.com/missing/medicaid-fraud-arizona-sober-living-facilities/

EXCERPT: Under Arizona’s American Indian Health Program, registered providers can bill Medicaid directly for addiction and behavioral health services delivered to eligible Native American patients.

Attorneys John Brewer and Dane Wood told NewsNation’s “Jesse Weber Live” that fraudsters exploited that system by recruiting people from tribal communities in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, Montana and the Dakotas, funneling them into fake “sober living” homes that billed Medicaid for treatment rarely, if ever, given.

“It clearly is a human trafficking [scheme] and not just a Medicaid fraud scheme,” Brewer said. “They were held against their will, they were given drugs, they were given alcohol … their phones were taken away.”

Two Philadelphia women admit they traveled to MN to cash-in on Medicaid fraud
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/investigations/two-philadelphia-women-admit-they-traveled-to-mn-to-cash-in-on-medicaid-fraud/89-77507d1c-b291-4616-a022-a3f8bfd2724b

EXCERPT: Federal prosecutors say Langley, an Essence magazine curvy model, and Allen, a missionary and former Netflix actress, opened [Medicaid-funded Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) ] companies in Minneapolis after learning the program was “easy money”. According to court documents, the pair fabricated client records and inflated billing, ultimately pocketing approximately $3.4 million.

Terrance Darby told KARE 11 he was living in a homeless shelter while Langley’s company billed Medicaid for Housing Stabilization Services in his name.

When KARE 11 Investigates asked Darby about records showing at least $1,600 in claims, he said he received virtually nothing in return.

“What do you think the help they gave you was actually worth?” KARE 11 Investigates asked.

“Zero,” Darby responded. “I didn’t get anything.”

AG: 4 from Greater Cincinnati accused of stealing from Medicaid program
https://www.wlwt.com/article/medicaid-fraud-ohio-cincinnati-indictments/72198887

EXCERPT: The Ohio Attorney General’s Office said 10 Medicaid providers were indicted this week in Franklin County, accused of stealing a combined $563,860 from the program.

Ohio Bhutanese community says broad blame for Medicaid fraud ‘very inhuman’
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/local/2026/07/17/columbus-bhutanese-nepali-community-responds-ohio-medicaid-suspensions/90509110007/

Doctors fear Medicaid changes will force them to decide who’s too sick to work
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2026/07/17/doctors-fear-medicaid-changes-will-force-them-decide-whos-too-sick-work/

Fraud investigations are crumbling this state’s Medicaid system
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/15/medicaid-fraud-minnesota-oz-trump-autism-00993313

NC Medicaid spending nears $42B after 93% growth in 4 years
https://www.carolinajournal.com/nc-medicaid-spending-nears-42b-after-93-growth-in-4-years/

Oregon behavioral health service providers sound the alarm about state’s $421M Medicaid shortfall
https://www.kgw.com/article/news/health/oregon-medicaid-healthcare-funding-gap-shortfall-421m-addiction-mental/283-25f31baa-1c90-4e06-959e-16ebc402cd46

Report: New York Medicaid Spending Surpasses K-12 Education, Raising Long-Term Budget Concerns
https://5townscentral.com/2026/07/17/report-new-york-medicaid-spending-surpasses-k-12-education-raising-long-term-budget-concerns/

Medicaid and SNAP cuts are exacerbating the intertwined problems of hunger and mental illness
https://www.statnews.com/2026/07/16/snap-cuts-mental-illness-hunger-psychiatric-emergency/

9 Leading Civil Rights Groups Predict the Largest Coverage Decline in Modern History—And Black Americans Will Suffer Most
https://www.theroot.com/9-leading-civil-rights-groups-predict-the-largest-cover-2000116695

‘I’m not giving up’: Florida mom battles Medicaid denials for special needs son
https://www.tampabay28.com/news/local-news/im-not-giving-up-florida-mom-battles-medicaid-denials-for-special-needs-son

Military families still struggle with food insecurity, housing, and dwindling savings
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-milspouse/food-insecurity-military-families-housing-savings/

Subscribe now

Over the last year, ultra-wealthy buyers flexed the arm of the K-shaped economy, lifting the median price of a home to an all-time high of $440,600 in June. But June also saw sales of previously owned homes drop 2.4% from May.

This dichotomy is not inexplicable, though, in the K-shaped real estate market.

The Robb Report explained it:

Market activity has picked up, but much of that fast-paced buying is happening at the high end of the market, skewing the average higher, while first-time buyers are largely being left behind. That momentum is heavily concentrated in major coastal hotspots. San Francisco led the country with a 9.2 percent jump in home prices over the past year, closely followed by West Palm Beach at 8.6 percent. Both cities saw the total number of homes sold surge by roughly 23 percent, making them the hottest real estate markets in the country.

San Francisco is experiencing yet another Big Tech-fueled spike, this time from the massive investment pouring into all things artificial intelligence. West Palm Beach’s boom is due to a migration of Big Finance to a town that just slapped Trump’s name on its airport. The arrival of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan has led to the one-time hometown of Jeffrey Epstein now being referred to as “Wall Street South.” That sparked a 187% increase in the price of luxury homes over the last decade.

Meanwhile…

Monthly payments are too expensive for both first-time buyers and families looking to move up to a larger home, but wealthier buyers are in a much different position, with many being able to make large down payments or pay cash, making borrowing costs less of an issue.

Essentially, Americans clinging to the K’s leg are getting kicked to the curb by ultra-wealthy buyers who “can and are willing to spend more” … and that concentration of wealth led to “over one in five homes sold above the asking price in June.”

Lending Tree research released in June found that “fewer than 4 in 10 nonhomeowner households nationwide can afford a starter home.” And a Zillow analysis released in June found that a “record 242 U.S. cities now have entry-level homes priced at $1 million or more, nearly triple the count before the pandemic.”

That’s up from 80 cities in February 2020.

But that’s not all.

Coldwell Banker just released its “Global Luxury 2026 Mid-Year Report,” which found that the “widening liquidity line is splitting the luxury market.” And that means:

Ultra-high-net-worth buyers, insulated by cash and liquidity, are accelerating their real estate activity, particularly for single-family homes and unique properties, while buyers just below that threshold are pulling back, perhaps waiting for rate or economic clarity before committing.

Many of the ultra-wealthy buyers are pouring money into real estate as a “safe haven asset.” The ability to use real estate as a safe haven where the can park their wealth is itself a luxury most American cannot afford.

It’s hard to compete in a market with so much wealth, capital and liquidity in the hands of a small cadre of economic elites, as these datapoints from the Coldwell Banker report illustrate:

• Almost two-thirds (63%) of Luxury Property Specialists say there is an increase in all-cash purchases among their luxury clients, up from 51% who said the same thing a year ago.

• More than a quarter (25.5%) of Luxury Property Specialists identified the wealth divide as an active trend in their markets, up from 20.4% who said the same one year ago.

• In May 2026, the top 5% of all luxury transactions accounted for nearly two-thirds (65.6%) of total dollar volume of homes sold in the single-family sector.

• The top 1–5% bracket alone captured 42.8% of single-family dollar volume and 42.7% of attached properties, with both segments securing larger market shares than in 2025. This lopsided spending power is evident in the median sold price: the top 5% rose 8%, and the top 1% climbed 6.5%, while the top 10% trailed at 4.7% YOY.

The ultra-wealthy’s willingness to pay more for homes, for food, clothing and transportation is not only a hallmark of the K-shaped economy, it’s probably why inflation is so “sticky.” And it likely accounts for another K-shaped survey released this week by Lending Tree detailing Americans growing reliance on “Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) lenders to buy daily necessities:

• More than half of BNPL users say they wouldn’t be able to make ends meet without these loans. Among users, 54% agree that they need BNPL loans to make ends meet. Just 25% disagree. Among users most likely to say they need the loans to make ends meet: 62% of parents with kids younger than 18 and 59% of millennials.

• Twice the rate of users have bought groceries with BNPL than two years ago. 29% of BNPL users say they’ve used the loans for groceries, up from 25% a year ago and 14% two years ago. 38% of Gen Z users have bought groceries with BNPL, as have 34% of users with kids younger than 18 and 33% of users who earn $100,000 or more. Only clothing, shoes and accessories (39%) and tech devices (34%) are more commonly bought via BNPL.

• 1 in 4 BNPL users have had three or more active BNPL loans at one time. That’s up slightly from 23% last year. Gen Zers (29%) and millennials (28%) are among the most likely users to say so. In addition, 68% of BNPL users agree that the loans cause them to overspend, and 54% of BNPL users say they’ve regretted buying with BNPL, including 18% who’ve regretted it multiple times.

• Nearly half of buy now, pay later users say they’ve paid late on a BNPL loan in the past year. 47% of users say they’ve paid late in the past year, up from 41% in 2025 and 34% in 2024. (Another 15% say they’ve paid late before, but not in the past year.) However, 72% of late payers say their most recent late payment was no more than a week or so late.

Not coincidentally, another report—this time from the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia—was touted by MarketWatch as a “glimmer of good news in the story of Americans’ whopping credit-card bill”:

A record percentage of credit-card accounts were fully paying off their balances each month during the first quarter of 2026, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s latest look at how households are using their credit cards.

Almost 37% of accounts (36.93%) were fully paying balances month to month, Philadelphia Fed researchers said Monday.

That sounds great … until you get into the details. One issue is the scope of the survey, which only included “credit-card data from big banks with at least $100 billion in total assets.” That excludes smaller banks, payday lenders and the “But Now, Pay Later” lenders who’ve seen their market grow from $116 billion in 2025 to $157 billion in 2025. No doubt, that number is only getting bigger in 2026.

Another key factor is, according to the Philadelphia Fed, wealth cardholders’ ability to accelerate their repayments to avoid the cost of higher interests rates. Basically, the people who can afford to pay more than the monthly minimum are doing just that … and, as MarketWatch also reported, that is likely distorting the picture of consumer debt repayments:

The Philadelphia Fed’s data appear to fit the theme of U.S. consumers splitting between those who are thriving and those are struggling, [said Grace Zwemmer, U.S. economist at Oxford Economics]. In recent years, fully paid balances have increased, as well as those only paying the minimum.

“That leaves the accounts in between — paying more than the minimum but not the full balance — as a shrinking share of the total, which could suggest the middle is thinning out rather than the typical cardholder simply doing better,” Zwemmer said.

Additionally, banks are likely “tightening their standards, which means more creditworthy accounts are getting counted while nonpaying accounts are charged off or slip into delinquency.” And that, in turn, could be adding to the reliance on BNPL loans for groceries.

It all adds-up to a K-shaped recovery that’s not only become a K-shaped economy, but is now hardening into a K-shaped society.

Ad Spend Data Reveals K-Shape To U.S. Ad Economy
https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/416263/ad-spend-data-reveals-k-shape-to-us-ad-economy.html

Selling in a Bisected Economy
https://www.floorcoveringweekly.com/tise2026/topnews/selling-in-a-bisected-economy-46855

How to strategize with private label in a K-shaped economy
https://www.supermarketperimeter.com/articles/14341-how-to-strategize-with-private-label-in-a-k-shaped-economy

CoBank Quarterly Report: Inflation and High Costs Tighten Margins Across U.S. Agriculture and Food Sectors
https://www.oklahomafarmreport.com/2026/07/09/cobank-quarterly-report-inflation-and-high-costs-tighten-margins-across-u-s-agriculture-and-food-sectors/

Food inflation reshapes animal protein demand across markets
https://www.meatpoultry.com/articles/33772-food-inflation-reshapes-animal-protein-demand-across-markets

‘Biggest hunger crisis in a long time’: NC Food Bank triple match donations
https://abc11.com/post/food-bank-holds-triple-match-day-biggest-hunger-crisis-long-time/19476187/

Help Needed for 100,000 Ohioans Who Lost SNAP after Trump Cuts
https://columbusunderground.com/help-needed-for-100000-ohioans-who-lost-snap-after-trump-cuts-ocj1/

Thousands of Iowans lose food support under One Big Beautiful Bill
https://www.kcrg.com/2026/07/10/thousands-iowans-lose-food-support-under-one-big-beautiful-bill/

14K West Virginians have lost food assistance because of Big Beautiful Bill changes
https://westvirginiawatch.com/2026/07/06/15k-west-virginians-have-lost-food-assistance-benefits-because-of-big-beautiful-bill-changes/

Federal cuts to SNAP benefits causes uptick in food bank usage across central IL
https://www.wandtv.com/news/illinois/federal-cuts-to-snap-benefits-causes-uptick-in-food-bank-usage-across-central-il/article_215e3790-6c2a-4ff5-9457-b626cf723b32.html

Waiting for SNAP benefits, disabled 60-year old VB woman faces hunger
https://www.wavy.com/news/local-news/virginia-beach/waiting-for-snap-benefits-disabled-60-year-old-vb-woman-faces-hunger/

Military families still struggle with food insecurity, housing, and dwindling savings
https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-milspouse/food-insecurity-military-families-housing-savings/

1 in 5 moms are going hungry so their kids don’t have to
https://mother.ly/parenting/moms-food-insecurity-snap-no-kid-hungry/

Subscribe now

So, they did not bring back the dire wolf. Nor did they make much of a case for doing so even if they could. Science noted that “dire wolves were once an important species in ancient ecosystems, the habitats they lived in—and many of the animals on which they preyed—no longer exist.”

What they did do was generate a ton of media coverage and investor buzz for their multi-billion dollar company, which is no doubt why the Trump Regime enlisted them into an effort “to store samples from every animal and plant protected under the Endangered Species Act, which includes more than 2,300 listings worldwide.”

But, as Carl Zimmer and Catrin Einhorn also reported in the New York Times:

As more species face the risk of extinction, scientists see such biobanks as a critical backup. But concerns are also growing that the rise of genetic engineering and efforts to revive extinct species will erode support for on-the-ground conservation, which often requires protecting habitat from drilling, mining and other development.

Of course, that’s the whole point of the “partnership,” as evidenced by a new report by the same duo on Trump’s evisceration of the popular and successful Endangered Species Act:

The Trump administration on Friday moved to open the habitats of imperiled animals to farming, drilling, mining, real estate development and other activities in what environmentalists characterized as the most severe erosion of protections for wildlife in half a century.

It didn’t take much to upend the 53 year-old law. They just redefined the definition of “harm” to exclude anything that doesn’t directly injure or harm an animal. Up to today, the law forbade “any significant ‘modification or degradation’ of habitat that kills or injures animals by impairing their ability to eat, shelter or breed.”

Now, “harm” has been pared down to direct physical injury of a protected species. It’s still illegal to purposefully injure or kill an individual animal, but it’s no longer illegal to destroy their habitat, their nests or the ecosystems that support them. Zimmer and Einhorn gave three good examples of what the change means going forward:

Piping plovers, for instance, need undisturbed beaches to nest and raise their young. They return to the same sites year after year, but only occupy them in the spring and summer. During winter, when the birds have migrated south, a property owner could develop a beach without immediately hurting any individual piping plovers. But come spring, the returning plovers would find themselves without a place to feed, nest and raise their chicks.

Or take red-cockaded woodpeckers, which are not migratory but require mature pine trees to hollow out the cavities where extended families roost. Even if a timber company or developer cut down those trees without causing direct injury to any birds, they could not survive without other unoccupied old trees.

Amphibians like California tiger salamanders begin their lives in seasonal ponds but move into upland burrows after metamorphosis. If a pond were drained during the summer, the salamanders that returned to the spot would not have the water they need to produce the next generation.

And, apparently, that’s where Colossal Biosciences comes in. They will collect the genetic material from piping plovers, red-cockaded woodpeckers and California tiger salamanders just in case some future iteration of our species decides they’d like to revive the species we saw fit to wipe out in exchange for a couple cents knocked-off the price of a gallon of gas. By the way, Colossal Biosciences is not altruistically trying to save species from humanity’s greed and narcissism:

The company will have the right to access the biobanked material for research, including “biotechnology development,” according to the memorandum. The agreement will remain in effect for five years, but can be unilaterally terminated by either party. If the memorandum is terminated, Colossal will retain all the samples it collected with its own funding, equipment, or personnel.

Frankly, that’s exactly what we should expect from this regime. The natural world and its plants, animals, minerals and soil have no intrinsic value to Trump. He’s the first president in some time who doesn’t live with dogs or cats. He never expresses any fondness for animals or the natural world or its awe-inspiring web of life. He doesn’t care about the environment at all … and no, pesticide-soaked golf courses don’t count.

For him and the largely Evangelical base that has long hated the Endangered Species Act, the natural world is nothing more than resources that have yet to be converted into dollars. Well, now they can get busy converting piping plovers into luxury beach homes. If nothing else, Mother Nature will have the final say when the rising seas come to collect on an account that’s badly in arrears. - jp

Trump admin scraps ‘weaponized’ wildlife rule that became ‘burden’ on American families and businesses: Burgum
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-admin-scraps-weaponized-wildlife-rule-became-burden-american-families-businesses-burgum

Nature’s Ingenious Survival Strategies Are No Match for Human Destruction
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/nature-survival-human-destruction-mining-red-list-threatened-endangered-species/

Lax oversight of hog CAFOs harms endangered species, study finds
https://www.thenewlede.org/2026/07/hog-cafos-endangered-species/

Pacific gray whales facing ‘catastrophic’ die-off as climate crisis hits food supply
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/10/pacific-gray-whales-population-climate-change

Environmentalists Demand Endangered Species Act Protections for Pacific Gray Whales
https://www.asatunews.co.id/en/gray-whale-endangered-species-petition

Nonprofit sues Trump administration to learn why it’s modifying right whale speed rule
https://www.seafoodsource.com/news/nonprofit-sues-trump-administration-to-learn-why-it-s-modifying-right-whale-speed-rule

Center for Biological Diversity sues over protections for queen conch
https://www.wmnf.org/queen-conch-lawsuit/

Local Conservation Groups are Set to Sue the Trump Administration Over Its Redefinition of ‘Harm’ in the Endangered Species Act
https://lostcoastoutpost.com/2026/jul/10/local-conservation-groups-are-set-sue-trump-admini/

‘Many species will go extinct’: Feds’ ESA rule threatens habitat
https://www.times-standard.com/2026/07/10/many-species-will-go-extinct-feds-esa-rule-threatens-habitat/

Subscribe now