All federal wind power R&D at the Department of Energy is $0.137 billion. So the government is paying 7x the amount it spends on all wind power R&D just for a fee to kill one wind project. Seems bad.
Screenshotted excerpt from linked article reading as follows: "In public, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has cultivated a reputation for care and caution. The papers reveal a different side of him. At a critical moment for the country and the court, the papers show, he acted as a bulldozer in pushing to stop Mr. Obama’s plan to address the global climate crisis. When colleagues warned the chief justice that he was proposing an unprecedented move, he was dismissive. “I recognize that the posture of this stay request is not typical,” he wrote. But he argued that the Obama plan, which aimed to regulate coal-fired plants, was “the most expensive regulation ever imposed on the power sector,” and too big, costly and consequential for the court not to act immediately."
OOP
New York Times got receipts on John Roberts being like, 'I know this isn't how anything works, but a Democratic president is about to implement a policy!!'
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...
The Democratic Party at large has accepted fossil fuel dependence is a problem. That is why the IRA was trying to turbocharge electric car adoption, fund public transit and build out renewables. California is like directly phasing out gas car sales!
Mamdani hasn't had time to really think about all that space he now has, because he spends most of his time at City Hall and around New York City. He tries to keep a semblance of his old life by getting around the city on foot, by bike or train. "If you spend every single day driving around in a tinted window security detail, you will have a very specific view of the city," he said. "You actually meet other New Yorkers and you break out of the bubble that so many have come to expect of politics, where politicians only seem to be spending time with other politicians or the people who donated to make them politicians."
I'd say that this applies to anyone traveling in a car in any city. Being in a car versus walking, riding, or taking transit fundamentally changes how you view a place and your relationship to it. I wish more leaders set this kind of example.
www.npr.org/2026/04/16/n...
In the supply-shock era, we should revisit a lost industrial policy tool: public factories.
🏭In a new paper, Ganesh Sitaraman & I explore the history & future of US public factories.
⚡️In another paper, I propose public factories for critical energy components
www.vanderbilt.edu/vanderbilt-p...
🧵
It’s a telling indicator of media desensitization that the US government’s ongoing program of murder on the high seas—which according to the perpetrators has killed fourteen (14) people this week— is no longer a subject for much serious or sustained news coverage.
Russ Vought specifically calls out USAID as something he's proud of (illegally) dismantling. The cut foreign aid has likely already killed hundreds of thousands of people and will eventually kill millions.
Deni Avdija
I don’t stan tech CEOs as a matter of policy, but “Dario good Sam bad” continues to be a decent rule-of-thumb for the AI arms race.
IMO, until the federal gov’t does its job and regulates (unlikely), we can’t afford to be precious about it. Having a shorthand/avatar for the better path is helpful.
On Yom HaShoah, we pause to remember the six million Jewish victims of the Nazis’ systematic program of mass murder, along with the millions of others murdered by the Hitler regime. We remember the scale of this horror, and the systems of hatred and dehumanization that made it possible — and that still echo in our world today. In New York City, home to more Holocaust survivors than anywhere else in this country, that memory lives among us and shapes who we are. The resilience of survivors is woven into the very fabric of this city, and it calls on all of us to act with courage and clarity in the face of injustice. Today, as antisemitism rises once more, we are reminded that remembrance alone is not enough. We must confront hate wherever it appears. As we light the yahrzeit candle, let us come together to protect its fragile flame — and shield it from the cold winds of hate and cruelty. “Never again” is a promise. And it is one we must fight to keep.
"When will Democrats finally campaign on economic issues, appeal to swing voters and reject social justice issues!?"
NEW—I got an exclusive excerpt from a USAID whistleblower's new book that made me gasp multiple times. It details Trump's dismantling of the humanitarian aid agency & his team/DOGE's shocking ignorance to public health.
'Into the Wood Chipper' by Nicholas Enrich is out tomorrow. Read excerpt here:
can’t say what i want to happen to these people for legal reasons
France is switching from Microsoft to Linux
"We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny. We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control."
Me in @sltrib.com on Rocky Mountain Power's latest IRP that zeros out wind and solar for the next 20 years in Utah:
“It’s a major missed opportunity, it'll lock us into a more expensive generation mix that’s riskier and exposed to volatile fossil fuel prices.” #utpol
www.sltrib.com/news/environ...
Legal eagles noticed, and there’s been SOME mainstream coverage. But overall the political class has underreacted to this month’s OLC opinion, ordered up by Trump or on his behalf, declaring the Presidential Records Act unconstitutional. Things are likely being stolen and/or destroyed *right now*.
The FY 2027 NASA budget request hides its science cuts by omitting mission names instead of explicitly zeroing them out.
We did the work and found 54 missions cancelled in this proposal.
This is another extinction-level event for NASA science.
Full list: planetary.org/save-nasa-science
Former NASA climate scientist, now Senior Scientist at Project Drawdown, Dr. Kate Marvel, has a fantastic piece in the New York Times today.
This is a must-read if you care about science, the planet, and the future.
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...
I’m no lover of data centers, but local governments have very few tools at their disposal to finance infrastructure and other economic development. TIFs are one of them. This could be a new front for NIMBYs to cement new veto points that then apply beyond data centers
I guess we're just waiting around to see if this demented psychopath kills everyone: defector.com/i-guess-were...
Earth and Moon from DSCOVR NASA's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) aboard the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) satellite captured this unique view of the Moon as it moved in front of the sunlit side of Earth last month. This view shows the fully illuminated “dark side” of the moon that is never visible from Earth. Ian Regan processed this version of the image to account for the Moon's motion. NASA / NOAA / Ian Regan
I hadn't seen this before. This is pretty remarkable.
Earth and Moon in one NASA photo.
ht @astrokatie.com
Long-term studies are vital to understanding how species and ecosystems are responding to climate change and other environmental stressors, but difficult to sustain under typical short-term grant cycles. LTER has been funding these since 1980.
This is breaking something that can’t be replaced.
Constitutional lawyer here. I don't think it would violate the Constitution for the VP/Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, but the intended constitutional remedy for this behavior is impeachment & removal. The fact that that remedy is politically impossible is a scandal and a crisis.
The first women being admitted as undergraduates at Columbia University is something that happened in my lifetime. There’s a lot we take for granted that is ~2-3 generations old, and people in power are actively trying to undo a lot of it.
This is very very big. Like a big deal and massive cuts. These can’t even be seen as budgetary since you don’t get much savings in the context of trillions budget. They want the US out of R&D out of science research.
Not the main point here, but I do not ever recall a federal agency making significant programmatic and personnel changes as a result of the PRESIDENT'S BUDGET PROPOSAL, which does not change any law or funding allocations. Congress hasn't acted yet.
What are we doing here?
Budgets force us to prioritize at the margins, to determine where to use our limited resources. As a result, they reflect our values. Government is supposed to invest in future wellbeing and to ameliorate current suffering. And while life is unfair, and we will never be able to fix that, the role of government is to help make life less unfair so that struggling people can get by and even have a decent chance to get ahead. The president's budget request instead imagines an America that does less for struggling Americans. A
Hot off the press, my op-ed in MSNOW on Trump’s budget request. Proud of this one, but particularly happy they let me keep the final paragraph with only light editing.
www.ms.now/opinion/trum...
the exceptions are, like, port authorities, bond banks, and industrial development authorities that have public enterprise functions that are more powerful than you'd expect but are pretty underutilized
