Thursday, May 07, 2026
The Iran War Is Smashing the Felon's Fossil Fuel Dreams
The Strait of Hormuz is still closed, and it isn’t poised to open anytime soon. Donald Trump signaled on Wednesday that he intends to keep the U.S. blockade in place until Iran cries “uncle” and says, “We give up.” The longer the strait stays closed, the less likely any sort of return to normalcy gets.
Soon, this mounting human and economic disaster will crash into another climate-changed summer. Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency, warned last week that the world faces “the biggest energy security threat in history.” Surging jet fuel prices and shortages threaten everything from commercial air travel in Europe to fighting wildfires in the western United States. Making matters worse, a potential super El Niño could trigger heat waves across Asia, further increasing demand for air conditioning and, accordingly, fossil fuels. Droughts or flooding from that weather pattern could force hydropower stations to shut down or reduce output, compelling hydropower-dependent regions to increase their demand for increasingly scarce, pricey supplies of oil and gas. The combination of extreme weather and shortages of gas-derived fertilizers that typically flow through the Strait of Hormuz stands to exacerbate a looming, climate-fueled global food crisis.
While the Trump administration certainly doesn’t seem too concerned about the crises its reckless, illegal war of choice is exacerbating in other parts of the world, the war is continuing to influence one of the few things Trump genuinely seems to care about: gas prices. In the U.S., they have soared to almost $4.30 per gallon. For the U.S., though, war in Iran risks a lot more than pissing off voters who are paying more at the pump. As the war drags on, more countries are souring on the idea that oil and gas are reliable and necessary ingredients for a thriving economy. The White House, meanwhile, is going to elaborate lengths to safeguard the fossil-fueled growth model its war is endangering.
Some nations are starting to chart out energy futures that depend less on fossil fuels and the U.S. Leaders from nearly 60 countries gathered this past week in Santa Marta, Colombia, to discuss getting off of fossil fuels. Part of the inspiration for the meeting was that powerful fossil fuel producing countries—namely Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States—have made such discussions virtually impossible at U.N. climate talks. . . . three-fourths of the world’s population live in countries that are net importers of fossil fuels. . . . “So today,” Hart continued, “the urgency of transitioning away from fossil fuels is no longer only a climate or environmental imperative. It is a security imperative, an economic imperative, and a development imperative.”
Wars in Russia and Iran, however, have helped underline the urgency of that message. Steep declines in the price of renewable energy—thanks largely to China—have made it much more possible for even fast-growing countries to reduce their reliance on imported hydrocarbons in key sectors like power and transportation. For the first time last year, renewables provided more power than coal worldwide.
The war in Iran has helped accelerate shifts that were already underway—and confirmed any and all suspicions that the U.S. is an unreliable partner for energy security. . . . Whether consciously or not, the Trump administration is resorting to increasingly desperate measures to ward off a future where its carbon-intensive products are less important. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has now spent nearly $2 billion bribing developers to ditch offshore wind projects.
The continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz is driving up fuel and commodity prices, forcing drillers to halt production, pushing governments and consumers alike to consider lower-carbon alternatives, and endangering what not too long ago had been considered promising growth markets for U.S. companies. In attempting to cling onto U.S. hegemony and global energy dominance, Trump might be ending both.
These highlights from the Times piece look at how China is pulling far ahead of the USA in the wind and solar energy industries:
As the war in Iran threatens to choke off oil and gas supplies from the Persian Gulf, China is seizing the moment to extend its dominance in wind power.
Across China, hilltops are dotted with wind turbines, and long rows of them span many miles in western deserts. Ultrahigh-voltage power lines carry electricity thousands of miles to the energy-hungry factories along China’s coast.
Last year, China installed three times as much wind power capacity as the rest of the world combined, even as its turbine exports jumped. The global industry’s center of gravity has shifted decisively: All of the world’s six largest wind turbine manufacturers are Chinese, displacing once-dominant European firms and companies like General Electric.
The war has made China’s investments in wind look prescient. Its Asian neighbors, long reliant on Middle Eastern oil and gas, are struggling to secure fuel supplies. Meanwhile, China, with its massive reserves and modern electric grid, is better positioned to weather the energy crisis
The contrast with the United States is stark. Under President Trump, energy policy has swung back toward oil and natural gas. In the past six weeks, the Trump administration has moved to spend nearly $2 billion reimbursing energy companies for abandoning plans to build offshore wind farms. This week, a leading renewable energy group said the administration has stalled more than 150 wind farm projects by delaying military reviews once considered routine.
The United States, the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas, has the luxury of relying on fossil fuels. China, the largest importer, does not. It is moving to reduce its exposure, motivated by concerns over national security, economic stability and climate change.
With the Strait of Hormuz, a critical artery for oil and gas shipments, largely closed for two months, China’s top leaders have grown more emphatic. “Energy is a strategic issue in development — our pioneering development of wind power and solar technology has proved to be forward-looking,” Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, said in late March, three weeks after U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran began.
Wind supplied 10 percent of China’s electricity last year, a share that is growing about one percentage point annually. Coal still accounts for just over half, but its share is slipping a couple of percentage points each year.
China is ramping up wind equipment exports in a hurry, unnerving competitors in the West and India. Exports of wind turbines and components to the European Union jumped 66 percent last year, while shipments to developing countries in China’s Belt and Road Initiative climbed 74 percent.
Chinese manufacturers, led by Envision Energy, are also gaining ground in India. . . . The standoff in Iran and the resulting spike in oil and natural gas prices have accelerated demand. Global wind turbine orders surged this spring, building on a 40 percent increase last year. Vietnam, for example, canceled plans for a major gas plant to focus instead on wind and solar.
Two decades ago, the wind industry was dominated by non-Chinese manufacturers: Vestas, General Electric, Germany’s Enercon, Spain’s Gamesa and Suzlon.
That began to change in 2005 when Beijing issued a directive, known as Notice 1204, requiring China’s wind farms to source at least 70 percent of their equipment domestically. Beijing’s top economic planning agency warned that projects failing to meet this threshold would not be approved.
Vestas, General Electric, Gamesa and Suzlon responded by building factories in China. Gamesa, which then held a 30 percent market share, localized nearly all its production. By 2009, its turbines for China were assembled with 95 percent Chinese components.
Wednesday, May 06, 2026
The Felon, Rubio and America’s Global Decline
Since 2015 the Felon's mantra has been "Make America Great Again" yet in his second regime, no one has weakened America more than the Felon and his white nationalist policies that have seen America's soft power through foreign aid slashed if not eliminated, openly racist policies at home - the killing of the Voting Rights Act by the Felon's majority on the Supreme Court yet the latest example - that have sullied America's reputation abroad, and the Felon's alienation of long time allies, particularly in Europe. And then there's the Felon's war of choice with Iran that has depleted America's munitions and cause oil and gas prices to soar - and from which the Felon has no exit strategy. Ironically, when a U.S. fighter jet was shot down by Iranians, the Felon reportedly was upset over the potential of the airmen being held hostage. While the airmen were found, the real Iranian hostage is the Felon himself. The war has shown the limits of airpower against Iran and, more importantly, the Iranian leadership appears to understand that all it needs to do is keep the Strait of Hormuz closed and oil prices high to destroy the viability of the Felon and the GOP on the home front. They realize that high oil prices through November could be catastrophic for the GOP and the Felon for whom a Democrat controlled Congress would be a nightmare. A piece at Salon looks at America's decline in the world thanks to the Felon's deliberate policies:
Donald Trump’s war of choice against Iran is a strategic failure that has exposed the limits of America’s power and influence in the Middle East and around the world. In a highly unusual move, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been conspicuously absent from the negotiations with the Islamic Republic that led to a tenuous ceasefire, ceding the diplomatic spotlight to Vice President JD Vance, along with the administration’s “peace envoys” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, and Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real estate developer and Trump friend.
A recent New York Times report detailed how expansive Rubio’s absence has been. In addition to missing peace negotiations with Iran in Islamabad, Pakistan, he did not attend meetings in Doha and Geneva. He has not visited the Middle East since last October, nor has he played a direct role in diplomatic negotiations over Ukraine and Gaza.
But the secretary’s absence on the world stage doesn’t mean he has been idle. As the first person to serve simultaneously as secretary of state and national security adviser since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s, for Rubio “less time abroad means more time at the side of an impulsive president prone to making critical national security decisions at any moment.”
While also attending to Trump’s needs, Rubio has been busy remaking the State Department in the MAGA image — an act that is undermining democracy at home and accelerating strategic failures abroad. What the administration calls “America First” is, in practice, white racial authoritarianism and white Christian nationalism that governs who and what is deemed to be in America’s vital interests.
Historically, the State Department has emphasized cultural pluralism, secularism and inclusiveness in its public messaging and other communications — a deliberate choice rooted in the reality that American diplomacy takes place around the world.
During the Cold War, America’s elites understood that racism at home made America weak abroad. Jim and Jane Crow were an international embarrassment, giving the Soviet Union a powerful counternarrative about American hypocrisy and the color line. How could a nation that oppressed its own Black citizens claim to be the world’s beacon of freedom against communism?
Civil rights activists understood this and used it for tactical and strategic leverage. Presidents from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson were forced to see that Jim Crow was not just a moral catastrophe but a geopolitical liability. Ralph Bunche, the Nobel Prize-winning diplomat and civil rights leader, connected the fight against American segregation to the broader struggle for human rights and peace around the world.
These traditions have been largely abandoned under Rubio at the behest of Trump.
On April 1 the State Department announced a series of “reforms” to the foreign service exam with the aim of eradicating “the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda” that the administration claimed was plaguing the department and diplomatic corps. As Puck’s Julia Ioffe memorably noted, these changes — which included an orientation curriculum centered on “America First” — were nothing short of “ideological screenings” and “political tests,” requiring prospective foreign service officers to “affirm their support for Trump’s executive orders…and demonstrate their ‘fidelity’ at every turn.”
Previous administrations understood that having a diverse State Department was a necessity, given how the majority of the world’s population is not white. Limiting the number of Black and brown diplomatic corps members at a time when China is making great inroads in Africa and other parts of the non-white world through infrastructure development, securing rare earth and other vital resources, and building military bases is a strategic blunder.
The department has also overseen the systematic dismantling of America’s soft power. The gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and related programs that support public health have already contributed to an estimated 762,000 preventable deaths. Experts estimate that these cuts will lead to 14 million preventable deaths by 2030 if funding is not restored.
Before Rubio’s tenure, Voice of America (VOA) served for more than eight decades as one of the country’s most powerful tools for exporting democracy and American values to people living under authoritarian regimes. Once a credible voice, under the leadership of Kari Lake, a Republican who served as Arizona secretary of state and ran for governor, experienced journalists have been fired and VOA now amplifies the administration’s talking points and disinformation.
Since Trump’s return to power, the United States has been repositioning itself as an explicitly Judeo-Christian nation — and government departments and agencies are following suit. On Easter Sunday Rubio shared a video on social media in which he passionately described the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The department’s Instagram account has featured images of Christian crosses and references to “Christ’s sacrifice.” As reported by the Intercept, the account has stopped marking Islamic holidays and other widely observed non-Christian religious observances.
Under Rubio, the department is cutting back on student visas, and it has begun monitoring the social media accounts of immigrants and travelers for material the administration defines as “hateful ideologies” and “hostile attitudes” and other thought crimes.
At White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller’s urging, White South Africans, a group that enforced and benefitted from the white supremacist system of apartheid, are now being given refugee status on the grounds that they now face oppression under Black majority rule. In a cruel historical irony, White South Africans are now working as laborers under the H-2A guest worker program in Mississippi, where they are now displacing Black American farmers whose families and communities survived Jim Crow, America’s own form of apartheid. It is estimated that 25,000 South Africans came to the United States during the 2024-25 farming season alone under that program.
Refugee status is also being revoked for Haitians and Somalis, communities that Trump and his administration have repeatedly dehumanized with racist screeds that have included calling them “poison,” “leeches” and “invaders.” These and other Black and brown refugees and immigrants now live in a state of existential fear from being deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement or targeted by racist vigilantes.
In total, the State Department now serves as an enthusiastic enforcer for Trump’s nativist project and fortress America.
In December 2025, the Trump administration announced its new National Security Strategy, which is based on the premise that Europe is facing a common “civilizational erasure,” a lack of economic vitality, “cratering birthrates” and loss of “national identities” from migrants and other non-whites whose values are deemed incompatible with Western values. To survive, the document holds, Europe must move away from its pluralistic and cosmopolitan values. These are far-right talking points evoking racist books such as Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel “The Camp of the Saints” and Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race.” Previous American leaders would have condemned such a policy as antithetical to America’s democratic norms and values.
Under Rubio’s leadership, the State Department has abandoned this tradition and strategic vision. As a senator, Rubio was a strong advocate for global democracy. He wanted America to be more confrontational with Russia and backed Ukraine in its freedom struggle. Now, while enduring the president’s humiliation rituals — the public debasements Trump uses to test and bind the loyalty of those around him — Rubio has adopted his values.
As secretary, he now sits fourth in the line of presidential succession, and there is speculation that Trump may see him as a potential successor. According to reports, Trump has taken to asking confidantes if they prefer Vance or Rubio as the party’s 2028 nominee, and focus groups indicate that Trump Republicans are also warming up to the secretary ahead of 2028. Many see him as a stabilizing force, as well as a more presentable and traditional representative for their “America First” nationalism and so-called conservative values.
Rubio sacrificed his values and the storied institutional legacy of the State Department itself to be in closer proximity to Donald Trump, a chaos agent — and America’s reputation and power are collapsing.
Tuesday, May 05, 2026
Republicans' Youth Voter Problem
Two years after young voters swung to the right in 2024, helping return Republicans to unified control of Washington, economic concerns are pushing 18- to 34-year-olds back to the left for the midterms, according to a new national survey of more than 1,000 young Americans.
The poll from nonpartisan outfit Generation Lab, shared exclusively with POLITICO, amounts to a flashing warning sign for Republicans. It shows young Americans planning to vote Democratic in November by a margin of 52 percent to 19 percent. Broken down by party, the data indicates that the GOP has a significant base problem: Just 58 percent of young Republicans say they’ll vote GOP — with nearly a third selecting “neither” or “won’t vote.” By contrast, 85 percent of young Democrats intend to show up for their party at the ballot box.
Just as in 2024, deep discontent with the state of the economy is driving anger at the party in power. Now, 81 percent of young Americans rate U.S. economic conditions as bad or terrible — including 68 percent of Republicans. The younger the age bracket, the more optimism diminishes.
[The Felon]
President Donald Trumpshoulders most of the blame among respondents, with 41 percent who rate the economy negatively naming him as the top culprit, plus 9 percent who select congressional Republicans. But it’s not just the GOP: Another 31 percent finger corporate greed/large companies. Just 6 percent blame Joe Biden or congressional Democrats.In many ways, the polling looks like an inverse of Democrats’ struggles in the 2024 cycle, when surveys showed that voters didn’t personally experience the positive economic image projected by the Biden administration.
“We tie this really closely to what people can see and feel and touch in terms of their own personal economic situation,” Cyrus Beschloss, Generation Lab’s founder and CEO, told POLITICO. “Saying that affordability is a ‘line of bullshit’ is definitely not helping — to the extent that young people are clued into that.”
But a caveat remains. “Young people are voting at just obscenely low rates,” Beschloss said. Insofar as this demographic might swing to or from Republicans, “their power’s a lot more concentrated in social force” — as cultural barometers and pace-setters — “than it is electoral force.”
Young people’s social force on GOP politics looks highly negative right now, and not just over concerns about inflation, housing, jobs and gas prices. The survey also finds mass blowback to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran: Seventy-seven percent of young Americans say the U.S. made the wrong decision in striking Iran, and 75 percent say they disapprove or strongly disapprove of Trump’s handling of the military action.
Republicans are keenly aware of voters’ cost-of-living and economic concerns — but they argue that they’re positioned to sway Americans here with a message focused on lower government spending, new tax breaks and blaming Democrats.
The GOP is also addressing bad economic feelings head on by telling voters that they’re cleaning up messes created by Democrats. . . . . But Democrats have built out their own infrastructure to compete, including creator networks for candidates to work with and new resources devoted to communicating via YouTube, podcasts, social media, influencers and Substacks.
And the economic concerns are a lay-up for Democrats’ midterms messaging writ large, they say, which puts affordability front and center — the kind of laser-focused approach that scored the party big wins in 2025. “Young voters’ top concern is affordability, and we’ve been beating the drum on that issue all cycle,” said DCCC spokesperson Aidan Johnson. “Many don’t think they will ever be able to buy a home, or are graduating out of high school and college with not nearly the same kind of opportunities that their parents had.”
Looking beyond the midterms: The Generation Lab also asked young Americans about the 2028 presidential race — and at this early stage, name recognition seems to be paramount.
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