Free Republic

ACCOMPLISHING PERMITTING REFORM IN RECORD TIME: Today, President Donald J. Trump delivered on his promise to fix a broken permitting system, ensuring that burdensome Federal environmental reviews cannot be weaponized to stall the growth of the American economy or halt energy infrastructure construction.The White House, through the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), coordinated a historic effort to dramatically reduce the burdens of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance across the Federal government so that America can get back to building again.In consultation with CEQ, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Commerce (including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), the...

The United States and Venezuela announced Friday they are pursuing the possibility of reestablishing diplomatic relations, coming a week after a U.S. military operation that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in Caracas and extradited him to face drug-trafficking charges in New York.A U.S. delegation, including diplomats and security personnel, visited Venezuela to evaluate the potential reopening of the American Embassy in Caracas, the State Department said in a statement sent to media outlets. The department did not immediately return a request for comment.The embassy has been shuttered since 2019, when ties were severed during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term...

Delcy Rodriguez told lawmakers that Caracas seeks commercially grounded oil and gas ties as Washington asserts oversight and U.S. firms eye investment.Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, said on Jan. 7 that the South American nation is open to establishing new energy relationships based on commercial agreements and mutual benefit, marking a potential shift in policy following the removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro. Rodriguez made the remarks during a meeting with members of Venezuela’s National Assembly of Venezuela in Caracas. “Venezuela is open to energy relations where all parties benefit, where economic cooperation is very clearly defined in commercial contracts....

Antifa militants are circulating a guide that describes how to destroy domestic infrastructure by creating incendiary devices. Journalist Andy Ngo drew attention to the guide in a post on Twitter. “Antifa accounts are sharing a guide on how to make incendiary devices that will burn cables used in infrastructure, like on train tracks,” Ngo posted. “Antifa and anarchist extremists believe that domestic terrorist attacks must be used to destabilize and destroy the state.” Ngo’s post included a photo of an Antifa account, Anarchist Federation News, that was circulating the guide. Since Trump’s return to the White House, it’s become clear...

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...

The White House has told companies they must rebuild Venezuela's crude-pumping infrastructure if they want compensation for assets seized by Caracas. American oil companies have long hoped to recover the assets that Venezuela’s authoritarian regime ripped from them decades ago. Now the Trump administration is offering to help them achieve that aim — with one major condition. Administration officials have told oil executives in recent weeks that if they want compensation for their rigs, pipelines and other seized property, then they must be prepared to go back into Venezuela now and invest heavily in reviving its shattered petroleum industry, two...

The geniuses who are planning New York’s energy future think that they can make intermittent wind and solar generators work to power the electrical grid by the simple device of providing some battery storage. The idea is that when there is abundant wind and sun, they can store up the power for use during those calm and dark periods in the winter. How much battery storage will that take? It’s a simple arithmetic calculation, but none of our supposed experts have taken the trouble to crunch the numbers. Nevertheless, without any kind of feasibility study of whether this will work,...

Power was restored Sunday morning to the bulk of the 130,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco impacted by a massive outage on Saturday that caused major disruptions in the city. Pacific Gas and Electric Co.'s outage map showed more than 20,000 customers still remained without electricity as of 5 a.m. PST, while crews worked to fully restore service. The outage, which occurred shortly after 1 p.m. on Saturday, left a large swath of the northern part of the city without power that began to grow in size. At its peak, the outage represented roughly one-third of the utility company’s...

bout 30% of San Francisco was blacked out Saturday, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said, as a power outage grew to about 130,000 customers. PG&E spokesman Edgar Hoida said the cause of the outage was under investigation. PG&E's online outage status reported 124,555 customers without power, or 30.1% of San Francisco, at 6:44 p.m. Outages were first reported in the Inner Sunset neighborhood at about 9:40 a.m., affecting about 14,700 customers. At 10:10 a.m., more outages were reported impacting about 25,000 customers in the Richmond District, the Presidio, Golden Gate Park, Inner Sunset District, and near the Civic Center. Scattered...

Repaired cracks cover the walls of every large New York Thruway rest stop near Rochester, according to a recent News10NBC investigation. The damage is visible at sites like Clarence, Pembroke, and Clifton Springs — all finished in 2023. The walls were built by Nexii, a Canadian company promoting eco-friendly materials. Applegreen, the Irish firm that rebuilt 27 rest stops with private funding, says the cracks aren’t a safety concern and repairs are ongoing. No toll or tax money funded the construction, officials confirmed.

It's a fine sunny and windy day in God's country we like to call it Texas. Texas is awash in God's power literally raining down from the heavens and across our vast open plains.

..... John Spencer, a leading expert on urban warfare and military history, joins the Tikvah Podcast to discuss this unprecedented military challenge. Spencer holds the chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and is the co-director of the Urban Warfare Project. He has visited Gaza six times since October 7, studying these tunnels firsthand and speaking with the Israeli commanders who’ve had to fight in them. ... 00:00 Intro 03:27 Understanding the Tunnels of Gaza 12:22 The IDF's Response to Tunnel Warfare 15:29 Psychological and Tactical Challenges of Subterranean Warfare 18:20 Innovations in Tunnel...

Until recently, Tim Haugh was among America's top spymasters. The four-star general spent 33 years in Air Force Intelligence and rose to lead America's largest and most advanced intelligence agency. Haugh was also in charge of defending America from computer threats. In his first television interview since retirement, General Haugh is here to warn that China has hacked into U.S. computer networks to an astonishing degree. And he believes he knows why. The surprise, Tim Haugh told us, is that China is targeting not just the U.S. military and industry but also Americans in their homes. Gen. Tim Haugh: I...

Miami Beach’s iconic rainbow crosswalk on Ocean Drive was removed brick by brick Sunday morning — without any notice to the city — leaving residents and LGBTQ+ community members shocked and heartbroken.

Link Above:0:03 now in a little bit of a state of shock. 0:06 Um, I have the past nine years of my 0:08 life flashing before my eyes reading the 0:12 de the classified annex that just got 0:15 declassified. 0:16 I'm still only about five pages into it 0:18 and it's about 29 pages, but I'm already 0:21 so shocked by it. I'm actually not. How 0:23 do I how do I describe it? 0:26 I'm not surprised at all. 0:29 And yet I'm shocked. You know that 0:32 feeling like you're not surprised but 0:34 you're shocked. 0:37...

Over 100 people showed up for Miami Beach’s rainbow crosswalks that are currently in the political crosshairs across the state of Florida. “Our rights are on shaky ground everywhere, but especially here in Florida,” said activist Paul Thomas. Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Florida Department of Transportation has ordered communities across the state to remove colorful crosswalks

Colorado’s infrastructure systems remain adequate but roads, schools and other aging assets require urgent attention, according to a report published by civil engineers. ... In the state's infrastructure report card, Colorado got a D- for roads. ... The state’s infrastructure received an overall grade of C-minus on the 2025 Report Card for Colorado’s Infrastructure published Wednesday by the American Society of Civil Engineers. That is one step below the national average grade of C. ... The American Society of Civil Engineers publishes national and state report cards about every four years. To compile the report cards, civil engineers analyze and...

Every time you ask ChatGPT a question, to generate an image or let artificial intelligence summarize your email, something big is happening behind the scenes. Not on your device, but in sprawling data centers filled with servers, GPUs and cooling systems that require massive amounts of electricity. The modern AI boom is pushing our power grid to its limits. ChatGPT alone processes roughly 1 billion queries per day, each requiring data center resources far beyond what’s on your device. In fact, the energy needed to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing and even crypto mining is rising so quickly that it...

A widespread power outage in the Santa Barbara area caused a major telecommunications disruption and forced the rescheduling of a planned SpaceX launch Tuesday afternoon. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, a regional outage in Santa Barbara disrupted communications of the Los Angeles Air Route Traffic Control center, which manages air traffic over the Pacific Ocean. A spokesperson for the Santa Barbara County Office of Emergency Management confirmed to KTLA that 911 services were also affected throughout the entire county. The disruption came as SpaceX planned to launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in north-western Santa Barbara County, but the...

Governments can’t change the weather, but they can invest in infrastructure that is better able to handle it. A 2024 report from the American Society of Civil Engineers and the Value of Water Campaign estimated that the country is billions of dollars short in investments needed to update water infrastructure for 21st-century needs, including a new normal of extreme rainfall events. You can see strong bipartisan support for trying to prevent flooding and address flooding among local and county elected officials. South Carolina just passed funding to expand data collection related to flooding and resilience. They passed about $1 million...