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For Immediate Release
December, 16 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Contact: Pat Marida, patmarida@outlook.com, (614) 286-4851
Connie Kline, klineisfine@aol.com, (440) 946-9012
Terry Lodge, tjlodge50@yahoo.com, (419) 205-7084
Lee Blackburn, leeblackburn@live.com, (614) 216-0010
Kevin Kamps, kevin@beyondnuclear.org, (240) 462-3216
Proposed Ohio Nuclear Power Experiment Legislation Assailed by 108 Safe Energy and Environmental Groups
Dirty, dangerous, and expensive HB 104 contains not only statewide, but also regional and national risks.
WASHINGTON
On December 16, 2020, 108 local, regional and national environmental, public health and safe energy organizations blasted proposed House Bill 104, the "Advanced Nuclear Technology Helping Energize Mankind Act" ("ANTHEM Act") pending in the Ohio General Assembly. Calling the proposal a "radioactive taxpayer giveaway," the groups, representing hundreds of thousands of people, filed written testimony for a December 17 Senate Energy and Public Utilities Committee hearing along with a one-page overview with 10 reasons to oppose HB 104. The activists warn that building state-sponsored small modular nuclear power reactors (SMRs) "will break the bank and destroy Ohio's chances for a clean and safe energy future" especially given COVID-related budgetary constraints and that ANTHEM could cause nuclear weapons proliferation, threats to public health and safety, radioactive contamination, and require huge, undetailed governmental subsidies.
House Bill ("HB") 104 is being pushed by eGeneration Foundation, a Cleveland company that envisions thorium and molten-salt nuclear power reactors, which have never gotten beyond small-scale experiments and show few prospects of commercial success. The company will not say where it would build several full-scale SMRs. There are no provisions for community or public involvement in the creation of an Ohio Nuclear Development Authority (NDA) to issue taxpayer-backed bonds for reactor construction. The NDA would be governed by a board of nuclear industry insiders within the Ohio Department of Commerce.The proposed Nuclear Development Authority within the Ohio Department of Commerce would mean that nuclear promotion, not regulation of health and safety, would be the top priority, and that Ohio taxpayers would be liable for cleanup and dismantling when reactors close - or worse, after spills and accidents. The bill also allows for eminent domain.
In the House committee hearings Rep. Dick Stein, HB 104's sponsor, could not answer the question of who the Authority would be responsible to.
HB 104 has passed the Ohio House and may be discharged from the Senate committee on December 17 for a floor vote in the midst of the legislature's "lame duck" session.
Only New York State has ever set up a state nuclear development agency, which resulted in construction of a disastrous nuclear waste reprocessing plant at West Valley, New York in the 1960's. The venture has so far cost $600 million in cleanup and partial remediation, and tens of billions of dollars more will be needed for future cleanup costs to keep radioactive contamination from spreading downstream, including into Lakes Erie and Ontario over time.
"Enacting this self-inflicted fiscal nightmare in the midst of a pandemic will surely crimp provision of existing services by the government," said Pat Marida, chair of the Ohio Sierra Club's Nuclear Free Committee. "This untried technology will swallow up major financing that must instead be made immediately available to build genuine safe energy options to reduce the worst effects of climate chaos."
"eGeneration won't admit the potential for deadly accidents from operating test reactors and from the dirty, radioactive-waste-producing processes to extract enriched uranium and plutonium (one of the most toxic substances on earth) from radioactive waste," said Connie Kline, past Chair of the Ohio Sierra Club Nuclear Committee. "This bill creates national security concerns about the spread of nuclear weapons. The fuel required by these reactors are literally thermonuclear bomb ingredients that will command hefty prices on global black markets."
"Hasn't the General Assembly learned any lessons from the corruption around HB 6, the coal and nuclear bailout?" asked Lee Blackburn of the Sierra Club's Nuclear Free Committee.
"ANTHEM is a classic corporate welfare response for ideas too risky and half-baked to work in the so-called 'free market," offered Terry Lodge, Toledo attorney. "Why should billions more public dollars be risked on experiments that haven't perfected these dangerous processes in the last 55 years?"
"Reprocessing is environmentally ruinous," said Kevin Kamps, radioactive waste specialist at Beyond Nuclear. "As shown in France, the U.K., upstate New York, and other places, plutonium and uranium extraction from high-level radioactive waste inevitably results in large-scale releases of hazardous, long-lasting ionizing radiation into the air and surface waters, such as the Great Lakes or Ohio River, that threaten people downwind, downstream, up the food chain, and down the generations."
Beyond Nuclear aims to educate and activate the public about the connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the need to abandon both to safeguard our future. Beyond Nuclear advocates for an energy future that is sustainable, benign and democratic.
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Trump Admin Claims of Cuban Plans for Drone Attacks Denounced as 'Ludicrous Pretext' for War
"Like any country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression," said the Cuban embassy. "It is called self-defense, and it is protected by International Law and the UN Charter."
May 17, 2026
Cuban officials said the Trump administration is making "increasingly implausible accusations" against the country as it pushes to justify, "without any excuse, a military attack against Cuba," after an unnamed White House official told the news outlet Axios that the Cubans have been "discussing plans" to launch drones against the US.
"Cuba is the country under attack," said the Cuban embassy in a statement, months into a ramped-up oil blockade by the US that has left the island's electric grid in a "critical state" and forced frequent rolling blackouts as well as causing a healthcare crisis, with tens of thousands of people waiting for surgeries.
But in Axios' article, the Trump administration official took pains to push the notion that the US, with its nearly $1 trillion-per-year military, could face attacks from the tiny Caribbean nation 90 miles south of Florida because officials there have been preparing defensive capabilities.
Axios reported that, according to classified intelligence it viewed, Cuba has acquired more than 300 drones and has been considering plans to attack the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, various US military vessels, and Key West, Florida.
The country has been acquiring drones from Russia and Iran since 2023 and has sought more aid from Russia in recent months, according to the report. Intelligence intercepts have also shown Cuba is "trying to learn about how Iran has resisted us," the official said, referring to Iran's use of unmanned aircraft, its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and its attacks on US military outposts in the Middle East in response to the US-Israel war on the country that began in February.
The Cuban embassy further responded with a reminder that "like any country, Cuba has the right to defend itself against external aggression."
"Those from the US who seek the submission and, in fact, the destruction of the Cuban nation through military aggression and war, do not waste a single moment fabricating pretexts, creating and spreading falsehoods, and distorting as extraordinary the logical preparation required to face a potential aggression," said the embassy.
Journalist José Luis Granados Ceja, who is based in Mexico City and covers Latin America for Drop Site News, emphasized that "Cuba has the right to self-defense."
"It would be arguably be wise for Cuba to incorporate a tool that has proven to be an extraordinary effective weapon and a powerful tool of dissuasion as part of its self-defense strategy," said Granados Ceja.
Axios said the classified intelligence "could become a pretext for US military action" that President Donald Trump has expressed an interest in taking numerous times, before acknowledging toward the end of the article that "US officials don't believe Cuba is an imminent threat, or actively planning to attack American interests."
Rather, the intelligence showed that Cuban officials "have been discussing drone warfare plans in case hostilities erupt as relations with the US continue to deteriorate"—suggesting they could use drones in self-defense if attacked by the US.
The reporting carried echoes of Secretary of State Marco Rubio's rationale for attacking Iran in February. He stunned legal experts days after the war began by explaining that the US had decided to wage war on the Middle Eastern country because it feared Iran would retaliate after Israel began attacking it.
"The imminent threat was that we knew that if Iran was attacked, and we believed they would be attacked, that they would immediately come after us," Rubio said.
The claim that Cuba's reported preparations make the island a threat to US security "is a lie—with purpose," said David Adler, co-general coordinator of Progressive International.
"Marco Rubio and his stenographers at Axios are manufacturing consent for the invasion of Cuba," said Adler. "To fall for this flimsy propaganda is to fail the most basic test of civic literacy. And the stakes are millions of Cuban lives off our coast."
Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, has long sought regime change in the socialist country.
Axios' reporting came days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba to pressure officials into complying with US demands, likely including political and economic reforms, heightening fears that the US could be planning a military attack unless the country complies.
White House officials also told CBS News Friday that the Department of Justice is preparing to criminally indict former Cuban President Raúl Castro for shooting down planes that belonged to a US group that had flown into Cuba's airspace in the 1990s. In January, US forces invaded Venezuela and abducted President Nicolás Maduro, bringing him to the US where he was charged with drug trafficking, and pleaded not guilty.
Former Obama administration staffer and Pod Save America co-host Tommy Vietor said Sunday that "lots of signals pointing towards an imminent US regime change operation against Cuba."
"The latest," he said of the Axios article, "is this blatant effort to launder a pretext for war through the media."
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Public Health Experts Point to Trump Aid Cuts as WHO Declares Emergency Over Ebola Outbreak in DRC, Uganda
"Before the second Trump administration, USAID would have been on the ground," said one public health expert.
May 17, 2026
The World Health Organization's official designation of an Ebola virus outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda as a public health emergency of international concern on Sunday came just a day after the world learned that the disease was spreading at all—a highly unusual chain of events, public health experts said, and one that suggested the virus has been circulating for weeks without the outbreak being detected.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday that eight laboratory-confirmed cases, 246 suspected cases, and 80 suspected deaths had been reported in at least three health zones across Ituri Province in the DRC. In Kampala, the densely populated capital of neighboring Uganda, two lab-confirmed cases and one death were reported within 24 hours of each other.
The victims in Kampala had no apparent link to one another; both had recently traveled from Congo.
The confirmed cases in Congo include some that have been reported in Kinshasa, the capital. The fact that the disease has been able to spread to two large cities with international airports, and the "clusters of deaths across the province of Ituri" point to "a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected and reported, with significant local and regional risk of spread," said WHO.
"At least four deaths among healthcare workers in a clinical context suggestive of viral haemorrhagic fever have been reported from the affected area, raising concerns regarding healthcare-associated transmission, gaps in infection prevention and control measures, and the potential for amplification within health facilities," the agency said.
Dr. Ashish Jha, who served as the White House Covid-19 response coordinator, said the numbers being reported could make the outbreak "one of the 10 biggest Ebola outbreaks in history."
"We're just hearing about this now? That makes no sense. Those numbers take weeks to accumulate," said Jha, adding that the fact that suspected cases have been detected in capital cities as well as Bunia, the provincial capital of Ituri, "matters enormously for spread."
Tedros emphasized that the outbreak is considered "extraordinary" because there is no approved vaccine or therapeutics for Ebola caused by the Bundibugyo virus, as this strain is. WHO sent a team to investigate in Ituri after first being notified of suspected Ebola cases on May 5, but initial samples tested negative, as available field equipment was only able to detect the Zaire strain of the disease.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and global partners "need to surge resources in," Jha said. "A slow response creates unnecessary risks to people everywhere."
WHO, which President Donald Trump withdrew the US from last year, said the public health emergency designation was made to ramp up surveillance and infection prevention in the countries where the outbreak is occurring, enhance preparedness in bordering countries, and spread awareness in the international community.
The Ebola outbreak is the second to hit Uganda since Trump slashed foreign assistance funding, including by dismantling the US Agency for International Development. Earlier this month, CNN reported that the administration plans to divert $2 billion in global health program funding to cover the cost of closing USAID.
US foreign spending dropped by 56.9% after Trump shut down the agency as well as smaller aid programs and pushed Congress to rescind previously approved foreign assistance. USAID played a critical role in responding to the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
In March 2025, when an Ebola outbreak was reported in Uganda, US officials warned that Trump's actions on foreign assistance at that point, including the termination of USAID grants, was impeding the Ugandan government's ability to procure lab supplies, diagnostic equipment, and protective gear for medical workers.
Dr. Herbert Luswata, president of the Uganda Medical Association, told The New York Times at the time that the country's ability to respond to Ebola was notably different than it had been during a previous outbreak in 2022, when dozens of medical workers volunteered to help treat patients.
The lack of funds and protective equipment had "left many afraid to help this time," the Times reported.
“With no USAID money and CDC expertise, it was like Uganda was left to die," Luswata told the Times.
Dr. Craig Spencer, an emergency medicine physician who survived Ebola in 2014, told CBS Saturday that "before the second Trump administration, USAID would have been on the ground" to respond to the current outbreak.
"The CDC would have been on the ground at a moment's notice, maybe even before a moment's notice, of a new outbreak of Ebola because we were in a bunch of countries," said Spencer. "We created relationships beforehand."
Last year, Trump megadonor Elon Musk, who was then leading efforts to slash government spending at the Department of Government Efficiency, said DOGE had "accidentally" canceled US support for Ebola prevention but claimed the funding had been "restored...and there was no interruption.”
But a number of Ebola-related contracts were in fact cut, accounting for $1.6 million out of $2.2 million that had previously gone toward the prevention efforts.
In recent weeks, public health experts have also warned that Trump's cuts to the CDC and other public health programs have left the US ill-prepared to respond to the hantavirus outbreak that originated on a cruise ship.
Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International and former leader on USAID's Covid-19 and disaster relief response work, said the current Ebola outbreak is "very worrying" and appeared to be the result of a "massive surveillance failure."
"It is really unusual for an Ebola outbreak to get to this scale before being detected; particularly in DRC, which has a lot of Ebola experience," said Konyndyk.
"I can't help but wonder," said Konyndyk, "if the drawdown of USAID and CDC health interventions by DOGE undermined some of the surveillance and detection initiatives that might have helped to catch this earlier."
WHO emphasized that the current crisis in DRC and Uganda requires "international coordination and cooperation to understand the extent of the outbreak, to coordinate surveillance, prevention, and response efforts, to scale up and strengthen operations and ensure ability to implement control measures."
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Establishment Attempts to Paint Platner as 'Rich Kid,' Ignoring 'Ultra Wealthy' Susan Collins' Millions
"I get a chuckle out of the fact that a lot of folks in this political system who come from incredible amounts of privilege and wealth are the first ones to be like, 'Are you really working class?'"
May 16, 2026
In an extensive New York Times profile and interview published Friday and Saturday, the newspaper dug into what it called US Senate candidate Graham Platner's "complex class story" and asked how he can consider himself part of the "working class" considering his relatively privileged background.
The presumptive Democratic Maine candidate scoffed at the line of questioning as he pointed to the wide gap between his financial situation and that of people who have questioned his authenticity—as well as that of his opponent, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
"I get a chuckle out of the fact that a lot of folks in this political system who come from incredible amounts of privilege and wealth are the first ones to be like, 'Are you really working class? You’re just out there not making a lot of money and working on the ocean, but your dad was a small-town attorney,'" Platner told Lulu Garcia-Navarro, host of the Times' podcast The Interview. "Does that mean that you can’t actually represent working people?"
As the Times reported Friday, Platner is "the son of a Dartmouth College-educated lawyer, the grandson of a famed Connecticut architect, and a graduate of a private high school," with a mother who owns an "upscale restaurant." His family and his in-laws contributed financial help when Platner and his wife purchased their home and when they pursued in-vitro fertilization in Norway, having found the treatment unaffordable under the United States' for-profit healthcare system.
Platner, who is a first-time political candidate and a Marine combat veteran, owns an oyster farm, and according to his financial disclosure forms, the Times reported, "The bulk of his income appears to come from the nearly $60,000 in tax-free disability benefits he qualifies for each year after serving four combat tours."
The Times noted that both Republicans and Democrats who had supported Platner's primary opponent, Gov. Janet Mills, have attacked him over his background and suggested he is wealthier than he lets on.
One Mills supporter, former Maine Democratic Party chair and corporate lobbyist Tony Buxton, was quoted as saying, “This is not a salt-of-the-earth guy coming up from a hardscrabble existence." Buxton is with the firm Preti Flaherty, which represents a company that aims to build a data center in Maine; Platner supports a nationwide moratorium on artificial intelligence data centers.
Contrary to Buxton's remarks, according to financial disclosures, Platner would be the fifth-least wealthy US senator should he be elected in November. His and his wife's combined net worth is below $100,000.
Ryan Grim, co-founder of Drop Site News, wondered whether the Times would ever send "three reporters to report on the kind of life Susan Collins has lived versus Graham Platner the last 20 years."
"Tally the private planes, very nice restaurants, millions in wealth accumulation, and stack them next to each other and compare," he suggested. "That would be balanced."
According to Collins' financial disclosures, the five-term Republican senator's current net worth is $9.6 million, with up to $1.8 million directly in the bank last year. More than $342,000 of her wealth comes from interest and dividends from one of the best-performing stock portfolios in the Senate—a portfolio that is in her husband's name, a spokesperson told the Times.
Collins has opposed a ban on stock trading for members of Congress and their spouses.
The senator's financial disclosures also show that the $4.8 million she holds in corporate stocks include Amazon, United Health, and Visa—a company that would directly benefit from Collins' vote this past week against protecting consumers from overdraft fees.
“You could make $25 million a year in this country, you’re way closer to any of the billionaires."
While the National Republican Senatorial Committee's (NRSC) recently asserted that Platner is an "out-of-touch rich kid," the Democrat's campaign told the Times that his Republican opponent is "ultra wealthy."
"I don't think you could come up with a better avatar for the long-serving, self-enriching establishment politician than Susan Collins, who raises an immense amount of money outside of the state of Maine," he told Garcia-Navarro. "She takes an immense amount of money from [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee]. She takes an immense amount of money from special interest groups and fossil fuel companies, and she has a very high-performing stock portfolio. I think a lot of people look at that in Maine and say, 'I don't think that that is actually the politics I want representing me."
Despite the NRSC's attack on Platner as a "rich kid," polls and data suggest that many of the 41-year-old candidate's peers can relate to his personal financial background, with millennials reporting in numerous surveys that their lives are more financially precarious than their parents' were at their age, due to rising costs and debt.
“It’s a lot harder for young people today to save up for markers of the American Dream than it was for previous generations,” Joanne Hsu, director of the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers, told CNBC last year.
According to the Times and his detractors in the political establishment, wrote Maine-based writer Andy O'Brien, "Graham is this privileged rich kid, but he needs help paying for healthcare and housing. How is that not relatable?"
"I’ve been to a number of Platner’s town halls and one of the most common themes are older Mainers talking about the lack of economic opportunities for their adult children and grandchildren," O'Brien wrote. "Many of these young people are still living at home, even though they have jobs, because they can’t afford to rent or buy a home in Maine. Many of them struggle without affordable healthcare and childcare to allow them to work. At a recent town hall in Appleton, a local teacher told Platner that she had been teaching for 30 years in the area and still had $100,000 in student loan debt that kept compounding interest."
The Times reporters appeared taken aback by Platner's definition of "working class," one that the newspaper called "an expansive interpretation."
“My definition of working class these days is essentially anybody who makes money from wages,” he told the Times. “If you work for a living and you go out and put in hours and you pay taxes just like everyone else, I think that’s quite fair.”
He alluded to his exchange with the reporters in a conversation with The Lever's David Sirota before the articles came out.
While his grandfather was a successful architect, he suggested, the family's financial prosperity hasn't been carried down through subsequent generations.
"My mom is still working because she has no money," he said. "And we're trying to figure out, quite frankly, if she can't sell her restaurant, she's got no retirement. My wife and I, we're not broke, but there's no money at the end of the month."
"You could make $25 million a year in this country, you are way closer to somebody living in poverty than any of the billionaires," he told Sirota. "And these New York Times reporters were like, 'Well, that's a really expansive vision of 'working class.' I'm like, 'You know what else is expansive? Wealth inequality.' Because all of us don't own anything, and a couple people own damn near everything."
Asked whether he’s “really working class,” @grahamformaine had a blunt response:
“Well they’re fucking not.”
In a new Lever Time interview, Platner argues America’s class divide isn’t about who has the perfect résumé — it’s about who works for a living, and who lives off… pic.twitter.com/L2hgrIW6Qy
— The Lever (@LeverNews) May 13, 2026
To Garcia-Navarro, he said: "You are working class if you make your money from work and wages. The world of wealth disparity has become so intense that there are just so many people now who are sitting on so much money who do not work. They make money off their investments. They make money off their wealth."
"I know it’s an expansive definition of 'working class,'" he added, "but I think you need to have an expansive definition when we have the most expansive margin of wealth inequality in the history of the country."
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