Free Republic

Weeks after the Trump Media and Technology Group announced a merger with nuclear power company TAE Technologies, the new organization has unveiled plans for a fusion plant in the US — aiming to make it the biggest power generation site in the world. On Tuesday morning, the company unveiled criteria for selecting the building site of the new project. CEO Devin Nunes tells me they are accepting applications from state and local governments — much like Amazon HQ did — and will make a decision within weeks, with construction to begin later this year. And Nunes is clear about one...

President Trump has made clear he wants to revitalize Venezuela’s oil industry so he can use the cash to make the country great again — but the sector is in shambles after decades of plunder, talent flight and negligence as a result of socialist rule. After capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro over the weekend, Trump vowed that US companies would soon tap into the nation’s rich oil reserves, which Caracas says hold about 303 billion barrels worth of petrol, roughly 17% of the world’s supply. Production has plummeted since hitting a high in 1997 — and the country produced just...

The recent closure of a California oil refinery — and plans to shutter another in the near future — have some experts warning of potential fuel shortages and price spikes in Nevada and other Western states that depend on the Golden State. California supplies roughly 88% of Nevada’s fuel, including diesel and jet fuel. But Phillips 66 closed a refinery in the Los Angeles area in October, and earlier this year, Valero submitted a notice that it plans to close a Bay Area refinery by April 2026. Combined, the two refineries produce 284,000 barrels of oil per day, about 17%...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President of Cyprus Nikos Christodoulides, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis made a joint statement this evening following a trilateral meeting in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Netanyahu began: "This is not our first meeting. It's our tenth meeting. But I said in our discussions that I think it's the most consequential. The last time the three of us met was a short time before the October 7th massacre, before terror once again reminded us that stability in this region is never guaranteed, and that strength, clarity and cooperation are not options. They are a must." "The Middle...

Energy: Oil is rising sharply from two disasters in the Caribbean region — one, a fierce storm, and the other a massive blast at the world's second-largest refinery in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela. Only one was perfectly preventable. When the strongman cracked the whip on Venezuela's oil industry in 2003, firing 20,000 experienced oil managers from state-owned Petroleo de Venezuela (PDVSA) to break a strike he admitted he had provoked, he insisted that merit didn't matter anymore, only political loyalty. "There will be no more meritocracy," he told his cheering red-shirts. That philosophy has been laid out in all its glory...

Maintenance problems affecting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are in the spotlight after oil releases under former President Joe Biden. President Donald Trump pledged to replenish the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve after the Biden administration sold nearly 200 million barrels of its stock — but that won’t be as simple as buying more oil. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Energy this week that SPR drawdowns under former President Joe Biden resulted in structural damage to facilities. More than $100 million of repairs are needed to bring the storage facilities back to full capacity, Wright...

Japan is restarting the world's largest nuclear power plant, after a 15-year shutdown following the Fukushima disaster. Nuclear power used to account for over 30% of Japan's national electricity, so seeing these reactors come back online restores a key pillar of Japan's energy system. Japan's mountainous terrain forced each region to establish large, redundant energy systems; therefore, the return of nuclear power gives Japan surplus capacity and flexibility in an otherwise stagnant environment. With the global energy trade growing more unreliable by the day, Japan is now better positioned than most to weather the storm.

Turkish Energy Minister, Alparslan Bayraktar said on Monday that Turkey intends to seal an energy exploration agreement with Syria in 2026 to assess possible offshore energy resources along the Syrian coast.In an interview with Turkish digital news platform GDH on Monday, Bayraktar said that Ankara and Damascus had already signed a general framework agreement on energy cooperation earlier this year."We plan to sign a specific offshore deal in 2026," he said. "After signing the deal, we may conduct seismic research to see what the field offers us".Bayraktar cautioned that the agreement does not necessarily mean Turkey would carry out drilling...

Europe stands at a crossroads: compete meaningfully in the AI race or stick to its world-leading climate goals. “It’s like a fork in the road moment for Europe,” Wedbush Securities’ Dan Ives told CNBC. The bloc can either “play in the future” or risk “missing a big part of this technology wave.” The dilemma is compounded by the region’s mandates for green energy. Globally, energy is the biggest bottleneck for building out AI-related data center projects. While the U.S. fires up fossil-fuel plants to power its build-out, Europe requires developers to disclose energy and water efficiency measures, adding red tape...

Three Texas men used shell companies to pocket revenues from hundreds of New Mexico oil and gas wells while leaving the state with cleanup costs for abandoned properties, Attorney General Raúl Torrez alleges in a new lawsuit. The suit describes a complex asset-stripping scheme in which profitable wells were placed in certain companies while non-productive wells remained in other companies that filed for bankruptcy. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in 1st Judicial District Court in Santa Fe on behalf of New Mexico and the state Energy, Minerals & Natural Resources Department. The suit names as defendants Everett Willard Gray, Marquis...

“Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”Attributed to Voltaire, this quote holds great significance, even in our modern times. In the twentieth century, we saw absurd ideologies like communism and Nazism take root in modern states and drive civilized people to commit unfathomable atrocities. The popular notion of race-poisoning propelled the Nazi regime on a militant crusade to purge the European continent of inferior peoples, as the regime defined the term. In the second half of the twentieth century, the equally absurd notion of ubiquitous ecological poisoning took hold in the West, spawning a new...

Wyoming's oil and gas producers say Christmas came early last week when the Bureau of Land Management extended the deadline for compliance with bonding requirements that threatened to shutter small operators across the state. The Direct Final Rule delays enforcement of Biden-era regulations that would have increased bonding costs by 1,400% while the Trump administration works toward permanent solutions. "This marks significant progress in addressing the anti-oil and natural gas regulations that were handed down during the previous administration," said Pete Obermueller, president of the Petroleum Association of Wyoming. "While this rule does not cover new bonds and does not...

TAE Technologies wants to start building a commercial hydrogen boron fusion reactor in 2026. Trump Media announces merger with fusion firm TAE Technologies “Friday, 19 December 2025 Trump Media & Technology Group… and US private fusion energy company TAE Technologies have announced an agreement to merge in a transaction valued at more than USD6 billion…. … TAE’s approach to fusion combines advanced accelerator and plasma physics, and uses abundant, non-radioactive hydrogen-boron (p-B11) as a fuel source. The proprietary magnetic beam-driven field-reversed configuration (FRC) technology injects high-energy hydrogen atoms into the plasma to make the system more stable and better confined....

There continues to be a debate among global geopolitical analysts regarding whether the United States and China are engaged in a Cold War or a competition for global dominance.The answer is irrelevant.By anyone's observation, China seeks to dominate the 21st century, and they will do so by "any means necessary." In the process, they will use their military might to create a sphere of influence that is designed to cow nations that range from Japan to Australia to India.Their invasion of Taiwan is almost a foregone conclusion among many military observers, who believe it is not a question of if...

President Donald Trump’s Department of the Interior (DOI) announced on Monday that it is pausing leases for five large-scale offshore wind projects off the East Coast.“Due to national security concerns identified by @DeptofWar, @interior is PAUSING leases for 5 expensive, unreliable, heavily subsidized offshore wind farms,” DOI Secretary Doug Burgum posted on X. “ONE natural gas pipeline supplies as much energy as these 5 projects COMBINED.”President Trump “is bringing common sense back to energy policy and putting security first,” Burgum added.In a separate news release, the DOI stated that the pause was also connected with “national security risks” identified by...

Metro Long Island Politics World News Search Type to Search Search US News San Francisco power outage left 130,000 in the dark as self-driving cars stalled in middle of streets By Nicholas McEntyre Published Dec. 20, 2025, 11:30 p.m. ET Today's Video Headlines 00:22 / 00:49 San Francisco plunged into darkness when nearly 30 percent of the city was struck by a power outage, which brought vital transportation, such as self-driving cars, to a grinding halt on Saturday night. Over 130,000 houses and businesses were left in the dark, largely in the northwest part of San Francisco, including the Richmond,...

We are only now starting to witness the aftermath of the legislation and policies put in place by blue states as a means to control prices. California under Governor Gavin Newsom may have staged its own economic demise (the final nail in the coffin) after laws were passed requiring even greater state interference into oil refineries and gas stations. The Democrat crusade to divert blame for the stagflation crisis triggered during the Biden Administration led them down a path of economic lies. The central theme of their narrative was that corporations were “price gouging” consumers and inflation was actually a...

Rising imports have helped stabilize the fuel market, officials said at a meeting Tuesday.California’s petroleum industry regulators are anticipating that the state’s shrinking oil refining capacity could spur more competition in the gasoline market, potentially reducing the likelihood of price spikes at the pump.What happened: Top state energy officials said Tuesday during a meeting of the Independent Consumer Fuels Advisory Committee that increasing imports of gasoline to California this year are beginning to transform the market dynamics in the state.“It may be oversimplification, but that change from episodic imports after price spikes to steady-state imports seems to have resulted, at...

Lawmakers in California at both the state and federal levels are warning that refinery closures could push prices higher while leaving the state more dependent on foreign oil. At the center of the warning is the planned shutdown of two major refineries: Valero’s Benicia facility and Phillips 66’s Los Angeles plant. Together, the closures would eliminate nearly 20% of California’s in-state refining capacity, according to Reps. Vince Fong and Stan Ellis, both Republicans from Bakersfield. Valero, which has operated its 170,000-barrel-per-day Benicia refinery for roughly 25 years, announced it will close the site in 2026 because of high operating costs...

SunEdison is now eyeing bankruptcy, but Paul Pelosi invested right before a 2014 stock rally House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s husband bought up to a quarter million dollars of stock in a now financially troubled green energy company just weeks before it announced a major 2014 acquisition that sent stock prices soaring, public records show. SunEdison told regulators last week that it is eyeing bankruptcy under the weight of $11.7 million in debt. But in late 2014, investors were bullish on the company, which manufactures and operates solar and wind power facilities. Its 2014 purchase of wind energy company First...