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Trump’s Abuse of Emergency Declaration to Force Ratepayers to Prop Up Inefficient Coal Power Plants Is Breathlessly Stupid
President Donald Trump will today sign executive orders that seek to force ratepayers to pay to keep uneconomic coal power plants running, and push a dramatic expansion of coal mining on public lands The move to resurrect coal power, which Public Citizen warned about months ago, is part of the President’s abuse of emergency powers under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, among other laws. As part of the orders, Trump will separately charge Secretary of Energy Chris Wright with determining whether coal used in steel production should be deemed “critical” under federal law. The executive orders will be signed at a 3pm White House event. In response, Public Citizen’s Energy Program Director Tyson Slocum, issued the following statement:
“Apparently the guy that did Trump’s tariff calculations put together this ratepayer-funded coal bailout plan, because it’s just as stupid. Trump’s fraudulent January 20 energy emergency declaration unsurprisingly is heavy on useless rhetoric and devoid of any facts.
“Reviving or extending coal to power data centers would force working families to subsidize polluting coal on behalf of Big Tech billionaires and despoil our nation’s public lands. States planning to move to cleaner, cheaper energy sources could be forced to keep old coal plants up and running for years, forcing nearby residents to breathe dirty air and harming the climate. Trump’s expected use of the threat of power demand growth from AI data centers to ramp up domestic coal mining and consumption is unjustifiable, as Public Citizen recently pointed out to Congress. Trump and his team of incompetents continue to demonstrate their lack of understanding of how energy markets work. Public Citizen is more than happy to meet with Administration officials and walk them through why forcing American families to pay for uneconomic coal power plants is dull-witted and will result in a massive ratepayer-funded subsidy for Big Tech billionaires.
“The future of steel in the United States is utilizing green hydrogen and renewable energy to revolutionize production. Doubling down on dirty coal to make steel sets our economy back decades, and allows the rest of the world to make steel cheaper and greener. Competing to make steel means investing in the technologies that will power steel production in the future, not doubling down on the production from the past.
“The Big Tech firms that are driving energy demand at data centers with their new AI technologies—but which have long claimed to be concerned about the climate crisis—should renounce this Trump diktat immediately.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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Trump Says He's 'Seriously Considering Making Venezuela the 51st US State' as He Brags of Stealing Its Oil Wealth
"Trump's true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters," said one journalist. "Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences."
May 11, 2026
President Donald Trump said on Monday that he is considering trying to annex Venezuela and make it a US state in an imperialist effort to seize more of its oil wealth.
It's one of nearly half a dozen nations or territories Trump has threatened to use US military might to illegally conquer and add to the US during his term, including Greenland, Canada, Cuba, and Panama.
According to Fox News correspondent John Roberts, Trump said in a phone call that he was “seriously considering making Venezuela the 51st US state,” citing the Latin American nation's possession of tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil.
“They were miserable. Now they’re happy. It’s being well run,” Trump recently told Full Measure's Sharyl Attkisson. “The oil that’s coming out is enormous, the biggest in many years. And the Big Oil companies are going in with the biggest, most beautiful rigs you’ve ever seen.”
One poll from the Venezuelan firm Meganálisis in March found that while the public was initially happy to be rid of their autocratic president, Nicolás Maduro—who was abducted by US forces in January—the majority now feel that Trump's action had little to do with democracy or the well-being of the Venezuelan people and more to do with handing control of the country's nationalized oil reserves to American companies, which Trump stated as his primary objective after ousting Maduro.
Trump left Maduro's vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in place as Venezuela's interim leader with the promise that she'd act as a pliant collaborator with the US, whom she allowed to declare control over Venezuela's oil resources "indefinitely" amid market transitions.
The environmental activist group Global Witness has estimated that over the next 10 years, as much as $150 billion in oil revenue that was expected to go to the Venezuelan treasury, which could have funded projects to develop the impoverished country, instead may flow into the coffers of foreign companies.
Trump has spoken about the idea of Venezuela becoming the 51st state before, including after the country defeated Italy in the World Baseball Classic in March, when he posted on Truth Social: “STATEHOOD, #51, ANYONE?”
Last month, during a discussion about his desire to "take" Iran's oil, Trump described his takeover of Venezuela as something akin to the resource-hungry imperial conquests of centuries past.
"I'm a businessman first," he told reporters during a press briefing. "We've taken hundreds of millions of barrels [of oil], hundreds of millions... and paid for that war many, many times over. You know the old days, 'to the winner belong the spoils.' And I said, 'Why don't we use that?' We haven't had that in this country probably in 100 years." He then went on to lament the US-led efforts to "rebuild" Germany after World War II.
While the US has lifted personal sanctions on Rodríguez and some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil and banking sectors, most of the sanctions that have contributed to the country's economic collapse remain in place. "Full unrestricted access to global capital markets has not been restored," explained Roger D. Harris from the Task Force on the Americas and the US Peace Council in Common Dreams last week.
Actually adding Venezuela as a US state would require approval from both Congress and Venezuela itself—and Trump does not appear to have the latter.
Issuing a rare rebuke of the US on Monday, Rodríguez responded that becoming the 51st state "would never have been considered" by Venezuela.
"If there is one thing we Venezuelan men and women have, it is that we love our independence process, we love our heroes and heroines of independence," the interim leader said.
Though wars of conquest are expressly forbidden under international law, it's not clear what leverage Rodríguez would have to resist if Trump attempted to make good on his goal of expanding US territory.
Argemino Barro, a Spanish political journalist and author, said the possibility that he's serious can't be dismissed.
"Yes, of course, we can dismiss it as provocation or delusion, say that it's impracticable for XYZ reasons, etc. But this kind of comment is a window into the mindset of a man who fabricates his own reality, and not only that, but imposes it on others," Barro said. "Trump wants to build the world's largest triumphal arch right in the middle of Washington, overshadowing the Lincoln Memorial; he wants his face on coins and passports; his name appears on institutions, one airport. Annexing Venezuela, in his mind, fits 100%."
"I think Trump's true priority, ahead of absolutely everything else, is to go down in history in big letters. To enter the league of Alexander the Great, Jesus Christ, and Genghis Khan," he added. "Remaking everything, no matter in which direction or with what consequences."
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Watchdog Says Google Alert Over 'Zero-Day' Cyber Attack Proves Better AI Oversight Is Urgently Needed
"It is unthinkable and irresponsible to release technologies capable of destabilizing critical systems and then worry about the fallout afterward," said one expert.
May 11, 2026
Watchdog group Public Citizen is raising alarms after tech giant Google on Monday revealed that a group of criminal hackers used artificial intelligence to detect a previously unidentified software vulnerability.
As reported by The New York Times, Google said that it had "high confidence" that the hackers used AI to discover and exploit the vulnerability.
While Google said that the attack had been thwarted, the Times noted that the company "did not say precisely when the thwarted attack happened, whom it was targeting, or which AI platform the hackers used."
While the discovery of so-called "zero-day vulnerabilities" were once a rare occurrence, the proliferation of AI models has made them much easier for hackers to detect. In fact, AI software vendor Anthropic earlier this year said that it had developed a model that was so good at exploiting these vulnerabilities that it would not be releasing it publicly.
John Hultquist, chief analyst at Google Threat Intelligence Group, said in an interview with Cyberscoop that this kind of AI-assisted attack "is probably the tip of the iceberg and it’s certainly not going to be the last" to occur.
“The game’s already begun and we expect the capability trajectory is pretty sharp,” Hultquist explained. “We do expect that this will be a much bigger problem, that there will be more devastating zero-day attacks done over this, especially as capabilities grow.”
JB Branch, AI governance and technology policy counsel at Public Citizen, said the attempted AI exploit once against showed how reckless Big Tech has been in aggressively pushing this technology out the door.
"Cybersecurity experts are sounding the alarm, yet AI companies continue racing to release increasingly powerful models with little regard for the societal consequences," Branch said. "It is unthinkable and irresponsible to release technologies capable of destabilizing critical systems and then worry about the fallout afterward."
Branch also said it was well past time for Congress to step in and slap strict guardrails on the development of AI.
"We need enforceable AI regulations that require rigorous safety testing, independent review, and meaningful oversight before these systems ever reach the public," he said. "Regulators cannot remain in a perpetual game of catch-up while Big Tech gambles with the safety and stability of modern society."
While calls for more AI regulation have grown in recent months, Silicon Valley elites are planning to spend massive sums of money in this year's midterm elections to prevent candidates who support AI regulation from winning public office.
Leading the Future—a super political action committee (PAC) backed by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and other AI heavyweights—is spending at least $100 million to elect lawmakers who aim to pass legislation that would set a single set of AI regulations across the US, overriding any restrictions placed on the technology by state governments.
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USDA Chief Claims 'Real Support' for Moms, But Trump Budget Would Slash Their Food Aid
The White House budget proposal, said one expert, "would slash WIC’s fruit and vegetable benefit, leaving low-income pregnant women and new moms with only $13 per month to buy fruits and vegetables."
May 11, 2026
The head of the US Department of Agriculture said Monday that she is "proud" to be part of a Trump administration initiative purportedly aimed at promoting maternal health and wellbeing.
But President Donald Trump's budget proposal for the coming fiscal year would do the opposite by deeply cutting fruit and vegetable benefits for new and expecting mothers. If enacted, the White House's budget would reduce monthly fruit and vegetable aid from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) from $52 to $13 for low-income mothers.
"Your budget proposal would slash WIC's fruit and vegetable benefit, leaving low-income pregnant women and new moms with only $13 per month to buy fruits and vegetables," Katie Bergh, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), wrote in response to a social media post by USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, who said she is "proud to be part of the Trump administration’s major push delivering REAL support for expecting and new mothers."
Rollins, who has an estimated net worth of roughly $15 million, was among the top administration officials and lawmakers who took part Monday in a White House event touting "what the Trump administration has done to advance maternal health and support motherhood."
Absent from the event was any discussion of the administration's ongoing assault on food aid, which has had a direct impact on mothers across the country. NBC News on Monday reported the story of an Arizona mother of two young children who "should be exempt" from the 2025 Trump-GOP budget law's expansion of work requirements for recipients of federal nutrition assistance.
"She described being caught in a monthslong paperwork back-and-forth with state employees since February, when her benefits failed to arrive," the outlet noted. "Unable to reach anyone by phone, she finally decided to show up in person at the office in Surprise. On the morning she arrived at 7 am, her second visit that week, she had a backpack full of paperwork she was told she needed to provide to verify her income and expenses to have her benefits restored. But after waiting for four hours to speak with someone, she was told she needed more documentation."
"This administration is taking healthy foods away from children and mothers most at risk for nutritional deficiencies."
The budget proposal that Trump released in early April would strip around $1.4 billion in fruit and vegetable benefits from roughly 5.4 million parents and young children, according to a CBPP analysis. The new White House budget marks the second consecutive year the president has pushed for cuts to WIC fruit and vegetable benefits.
Congressional Republicans are attempting to enshrine the White House's proposed WIC cuts into law through the annual appropriations process, calling for $200 million in total reductions in WIC spending—with most of the cuts coming from fruit and vegetable benefits.
Georgia Machell, president and CEO of the National WIC Association, said last month that “these cuts break with the Trump administration’s support for WIC during the 2025 government shutdown and directly contradict the administration’s stated goal to ‘Make America Healthy Again.’"
"WIC is a proven public health investment during the most critical developmental stages: pregnancy, infancy, and early childhood," said Machell. "By slashing the fruit and vegetable benefits and not ensuring sufficient program funding, this administration is taking healthy foods away from children and mothers most at risk for nutritional deficiencies."
"This plan is short-sighted, hypocritical, and, if passed by Congress, will harm American families," Machell added.
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