June, 12 2025, 01:15pm EDT
Trump Sides with Oil Industry In Signing Standards Repeal
President Trump signed measures meant to halt the enforcement of existing standards from California and other states that limit the pollution from cars and trucks.
Recognizing the state’s unique air quality challenges, Congress specifically gave California the authority to set stronger tailpipe emissions standards when it passed the Clean Air Act more than five decades ago. Congress later gave other states the right to adopt California’s standards.
The following is a comment from Simon Mui, managing director for transportation at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):
“California’s vehicle standards reduce costs for drivers, increase customer choice, boost domestic manufacturing, improve air quality and help address the climate crisis. The only losers from cleaner vehicles are oil industry billionaires, which is why they were on hand today while the president signed the measures to nix these rules.
“States know best how to strike the right balance and protect their residents from dangerous pollution. There is no reason politicians in Washington should be stepping in at this late date to try and undercut states’ protections for their residents.
“The oil industry may be celebrating today, but the rest of us are going to continue to keep fighting for cleaner air, lower energy bills and a safer climate.”
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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Trump's AI Data Center 'Ratepayer Protection Pledge' Derided as Unenforceable, 'Theatrical Stunt'
"These pledges are nothing more than desperate damage control for companies who only now realize that voters see them as the villains of this story," said one progressive advocate.
Feb 25, 2026
Climate action advocates and energy experts alike said Wednesday that President Donald Trump's "ratepayer protection pledge," introduced during his State of the Union address Tuesday night, will do little to alleviate rising household electricity costs brought on by the White House's mandated artificial intelligence expansion and the construction of thousands of hulking data centers across the country.
During his address, the president acknowledged that many Americans are "concerned that energy demands from AI data centers could unfairly drive up their electric utility bills," as they already are.
A CNBC analysis published last November found that in addition to average electricity prices rising by more than 6% across the country, according to the Energy Information Administration, households in states with high concentrations of data centers—including Virginia, Illinois, and Ohio—have seen their rates climb by as much as 16% in the past year.
The National Energy Assistance Directors Association also said last year that about 21 million American families were behind on their utility bills, with the average overdue amount about a third higher than it was in 2023.
Trump said Tuesday that he had negotiated a deal with major tech companies, ensuring they "have the obligation to provide for their own power needs and can build their own power plant as part of their factory, so that no one's prices will go up."
Energy industry experts told Politico on Wednesday that if enforced, the pledge—which Trump and the White House offered few details about—would still only partially address rising household costs associated with the AI expansion, which are being caused by the AI industry's rapidly growing demand for power lines, fuel, natural wind turbines, and other energy needs to run massive data centers.
The data centers require energy equivalent to that of 186 large nuclear power plants, according to the data firm Cleanview, and some of them have electricity needs that could power millions of homes.
But Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told Politico that in seeking lower costs for consumers, the White House is "putting this pledge on the wrong entities," as the details of how energy costs are distributed among millions of ratepayers are determined by utilities and state regulators—not tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic, which lauded the president's announcement and announced their own pledges to ostensibly protect households from rising costs.
“Most of today’s cost pressure is coming from transmission, distribution, and system readiness, not energy supply,” Brandon Owens, a grid expert and founder of advisory platform AIxEnergy, told Politico ahead of the speech. “Those costs remain even if a data center self-supplies generation.”
With Trump fast-tracking AI data center expansion, utilities are spending far more than they have previously to set up electricity infrastructure. As Politico reported, PJM, which operates the grid for 13 states in the eastern US, has approved $11.8 billion for new transmission projects, with data centers being the largest recipients of new electricity. About 67 million people in the region covered by PJM will split the cost of the new projects, paying roughly double what they did for the company's last two transmission budgets.
Emily Peterson-Casson, policy director for the progressive advocacy group Demand Progress, said in a statement ahead of the State of the Union address that Trump's ratepayer protection pledge amounts "to worthless pinky swears from the multi-billion dollar corporations who are trying to force us to sacrifice our jobs, our children, our privacy, and our communities for an uncertain, AI-powered future that they can control and we won’t."
Rising electricity costs, she said, are just one of many concerns Americans have expressed about AI in numerous recent polls. One taken by YouGov last week found that nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the expansion of AI will reduce the number of jobs available to workers, and another by Bentley University and Gallup found 79% of respondents didn't trust companies to use AI responsibly.
"In addition to providing a dubious balm to skyrocketing electricity bills, these pledges do nothing to address out-of-control AI that caused outages at Amazon Web Services, creates sexualized images of minors, and has led teens in need of help to take their own lives," said Peterson-Casson. "These pledges are nothing more than desperate damage control for companies who only now realize that voters see them as the villains of this story.”
The climate action group 350.org also derided the ratepayer protection pledge as a "theatrical stunt with no enforceable mechanism," and said it would only worsen the ramp up of costly fossil fuel production that Trump has overseen by delaying the closure of expensive, polluting coal plants; blocking solar and wind projects; and approving more liquefied natural gas exports.
Trump said the his address that the US is experiencing a "Golden Age," noted 350.org executive director Anne Jellema, but that's true "only for fossil fuel companies that poured $96 million into the Trump administration."
"For the millions of Americans who cannot afford to pay their energy bills, it is like heading back to the dark ages. The Trump administration cannot claim to stand for American consumers while blocking progress in renewables, the cheapest form of energy available today. It cannot champion affordability while doubling down on a highly volatile gas market and driving conflicts that inevitably increase energy prices everywhere,” said Jellema. “Trump’s bravado cannot disguise the fundamental insecurity at the heart of his administration: Fossil fuels are increasingly unviable, and even businesses want to move on. Around the world, people are demanding and building a clean, affordable energy future, with or without the US government."
350.org also pointed to a recent poll by E3G, Beyond Fossil Fuels, and We Mean Business that showed 97% of nearly 1,500 business executives supported a transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, citing "competitive edge and long-term energy security."
Journalist Ray Locker added on social media, "The best way to protect ratepayers is to not shackle them to using fossil fuels to generate electricity."
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Top Dems Reportedly Working to Sabotage Bill to Stop Trump War With Iran
Rep. Ro Khanna said the Democrats trying to kill the bill were beholden to "powerful interests that are itching to have regime change in Iran."
Feb 25, 2026
Top Democrats are reportedly working behind the scenes to stop a vote that would force them to go on the record about whether they support a Trump administration attack on Iran.
As the president amasses an armada in the Middle East in apparent preparation for an unauthorized military action, Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) planned to force a vote this week on their war powers resolution, which would require congressional authorization for any attack.
The congressmen have emphasized that time is of the essence, as Trump has signaled that a strike may come any day, and Iran has indicated it may retaliate with devastating force.
A war with Iran is overwhelmingly unpopular with the American public: According to a YouGov poll published Tuesday, just 27% said they'd support military force while 49% oppose it. Democrats are even more united, with 76% saying they'd oppose a war and just 9% support.
And yet, as independent journalist Aída Chávez reported in her newsletter Capital & Empire, Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee have tried to "dampen momentum and prevent the Iran war powers vote from advancing."
Multiple sources have told her that "a top Democratic HFAC staffer... deliberately inflated projections of opposition to the bipartisan measure—warning of 20 to 40 Democratic defections" in a bid to indicate the resolution would fail overwhelmingly.
She said a senior Democratic congressional staffer told her it’s “pretty clear” Democratic leadership is working to "delay or potentially sideline" the vote on the war powers resolution. “If you’ve been around the Hill, this is a familiar playbook," the staffer said.
“Leadership rarely comes out and says they oppose these votes outright, because they know the underlying issue is popular with the base,” said the staffer, who works on foreign policy. “Instead, you see process concerns, timing objections, and caucus-unity arguments used to slow things down or keep members off the record. We’ve seen the same approach on past war powers votes and foreign policy amendments that clash with the national security elite consensus.”
Democratic leaders have largely tempered their criticisms of Trump's buildup for what would be potentially the most consequential military action taken by the US in decades.
Schumer, one of the top recipients of funding from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and other pro-Israel donors, has limited his criticisms of Trump's war posturing to questions of procedure rather than policy.
Asked earlier this week about potential US strikes on Iran, Schumer lamented that discussion was being held in "closed-door briefings," saying that "the administration has to make its case to the American people as something as important as this."
Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued a similar statement that did not object to war in principle but rather the fact that Trump's reasons for making war were unclear.
"The president and his administration have not tried to explain whether their goal is to destroy Iran's nuclear program, protect Iranian protestors, pursue regime change, or simply distract from hisfailure to deliver on his promises at home," Coons said in a statement posted to social media. "Congress and the American people need answers about what our objectives are in Iran."
President Donald Trump is reportedly weighing a massive military operation that could entail assassinating Iran's leaders. Meanwhile, Iran has said in the event of a massive attack, it would consider US military bases to be “legitimate targets,” meaning US servicemembers could be at risk.
As Drop Site News reported late last week, based on conversations with an unnamed aide to Schumer back in June—weeks before Trump attacked three nuclear sites in Iran—a number of important Senate Democrats believed that if Trump wants to start a war with Iran, they shouldn't stand in his way.
Not only did these Democrats believe that "Iran ultimately needed to be dealt with militarily," but they "also understood that going to war again in the Middle East would be a political catastrophe."
"That’s precisely why they wanted Trump to be the one to do it," the report continued. "The hope was that Iran would take a blow and so would Trump—a win-win for Democrats."
Other Capitol Hill sources told Chávez that, in the House, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and other leaders have not been whipping support for the Khanna-Massie resolution, while few members have openly endorsed it, even as no other war powers resolutions are up for a vote.
Two leading pro-Israel Democrats, Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ), came out against the war powers resolution on Friday, with Moskowitz deriding it as the "Ayatollah Protection Act."
In a statement, they claimed that Iran was "still pursuing a nuclear weapon," even though US intelligence agencies and the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have assessed the opposite.
Iran's leaders have expressed a willingness to reach an agreement with the United States that limits their ability to develop a nuclear weapon while allowing them to pursue peaceful nuclear technology in line with the terms of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.
The IAEA assessed that at the time Trump pulled the US out of a previous nuclear agreement in 2018, Iran was complying with its terms. Since the deal's collapse, it has begun to scale up uranium enrichment, according to a report by the agency last year.
During an interview on the podcast Breaking Points on Tuesday, Khanna said that the Democrats who have sought to kill his bill were being guided by "powerful interests that are itching to have regime change in Iran."
"This has been a long-term goal of AIPAC and other groups," Khanna said. "So when you stand up and say, 'I'm going to introduce legislation to uphold the Constitution and not get us into another war,' you make enemies."
He said pro-war Democrats were going along with Trump's push for the same reason they've resisted releasing the Democratic National Committee's report assessing that former Vice President Kamala Harris' position on Israel cost her votes in the 2024 election, and have balked at saying Israel is committing a "genocide" in Gaza.
"It's not that they may disagree with it," Khanna said. "It's just that they don't want billionaires and powerful people to be targeting them."
Khanna said he plans to meet with other House Democrats on Wednesday to rally the votes for his resolution. He says he believes he'll have enough support to force a vote on the resolution by next week, but that "it's taking work."
"There are a lot of people in Congress," he said, "who just would prefer that these issues go away."
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'Heavily Armed Secret Police Force': ICE, CBP Amass $144 Million Weapons Stockpile
"In just one year, ICE’s spending commitments on weapons, ammunition, and accessories surged fourfold."
Feb 25, 2026
A report produced by the office of Sen. Adam Schiff reveals that federal immigration enforcement agencies amassed a gigantic weapons stockpile during the first year of President Donald Trump's second term.
In total, the report released by Schiff (D-Calif.) finds that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) committed to spending over $144 million on weapons and ammunition over the last year, a massive increase over these agencies' spending on weapons in years past.
"In just one year, ICE’s spending commitments on weapons, ammunition, and accessories surged fourfold—an increase of over 360 percent—when compared to ICE’s contracts in 2024," states the report. "In 2025, CBP’s contracts for weapons, ammunition, and accessories doubled when compared to CBP’s 2024 contract totals."
The report documents how both agencies have combined to spend tens of millions of dollars purchasing lethal weapons, including "AR-style rifles, pistols, and large quantities of accessories, such as optical sights for firearms and suppressors"; so-called "less-lethal" weapons including "TASERs, pepper sprays, tear gas canisters, and canister launchers"; and assorted kinds of ammunition.
The report adds that "records show that DHS’s procurement of weapons at immense scale is just beginning, as these contract awards contemplate even greater spending moving forward," which it says should serve "as a stark warning to the American public."
Schiff's report concludes with a warning about the US Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) "growing plans to build a heavily-armed domestic police force," adding that federal immigration agents' killings of Minneapolis residents Renee Good and Alex Pretti could only be the first of many tragedies to come.
In an analysis of the Schiff report published Wednesday, the New Republic's Greg Sargent argued that the Trump administration is trying to launch a domestic "war on terrorism" by bringing the kind of violence the US has deployed overseas back to the homeland.
"In a sense, we’re seeing yet more cancerous growth of the post-September 11 national security bureaucracy, but with a more intensified inward focus," wrote Sargent, who described ICE and CBP under Trump as a "heavily armed secret police force" in a Wednesday social media post.
Georgetown University law professor Rosa Brooks told Sargent that the dangers posed by ICE and CBP could outlast Trump's presidency.
"Trump is building up a well-funded, poorly trained paramilitary force that could easily take on a life of its own,” Brooks explained. “Once you have a massive moneymaking machine ginned up, it’s hard to reverse course and turn off the spigot.”
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