Free Republic

President Trump declared Sunday that the Strait of Hormuz is open after the US hit 140 targets in Iran over the latest attack on cargo ships in the critical passage. Trump doubled down on US Central Command’s insistence that the key oil choke point was now open following an intense bombing campaign against Iran overnight, which targeted missile and drone sites, naval assets, ammunition storage facilities, communication networks, and surveillance locations. “Yeah, it’s open. We bombed the hell out of them last night,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press,” contradicting Tehran’s warnings that the strait remains closed.The president went on...

Kamala Harris is quietly strengthening ties with one of the Democratic Party’s fastest-rising progressive stars, holding an extended private phone call with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The conversation, which took place last week, focused on the future of the party and served as the beginning of what is expected to be a longer series of discussions between the two, Axios reports. “This is about positioning for the 2028 primary where no candidate knows where the lane for support for Palestinian rights is going to be but they know there’s going to be one,” Republican consultant Mike Madrid told...

WASHINGTON — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decried Apple’s recent $200 price hikes on computers and tablets, which the tech giant blamed on a memory chip crunch — and called for breaking up Big Tech. “We need to break up a lot of these companies that are far, far too big, and we need to be instituting consumer protections for people,” the New York Democrat told Fox News. Most analysts believe the so-called “RAM-ageddon” crisis is a result of the rapid build-out of data centers to power artificial intelligence, which has turbocharged demand for memory chips. Citing memory chip shortages, Apple jacked...

FROM THE top of the slide, which curves into a little backyard pool, the view as recently as April would have been of lush Ohio farmland, dense forest and pretty clapboard houses. Now it is of six giant weatherproof tents of the type more commonly used by the military to house fighter jets or by aid organisers in disaster zones. These will soon contain perhaps $30bn-worth of cutting-edge semiconductors. Along with a clutch of gas turbines to provide power, they occupy a site the size of an airport terminal. If Meta, the site’s owner, stays on track to bring its...

Walmart is signing a long-term contract to buy nuclear power for the first time ever, a promising sign that the industry’s future is supported by more than just the AI data center boom. The retail giant agreed on Tuesday to buy power from a nuclear plant in Illinois owned by Constellation Energy for its operations in the area, including its stores and a high-tech warehouse in Illinois that stores and sorts perishable food. Walmart will buy 176 megawatts of power from the plant over a 15-year period, or enough power to serve around 150,000 homes. The Walmart deal will allow...

ALBANY – Democratic lawmakers are looking to change the state constitution in a power grab that will allow them to carve up congressional maps — and target seven Republican-held seats. A proposed amendment released Monday by the Democratic majority would give its own members authority to change the maps to draw new congressional district lines favorable to their candidates, with insiders saying it could mean flipping at least four GOP congressional seats in the state. Democrats, who control both houses of the state legislature and hold a more than 2-to-1 voter enrollment advantage over Republicans, would need voters to approve...

We are often best defined not by the company we keep, but by our enemies. Having the right—left—enemies tends to be a very good thing indeed, as it’s a reliable indicator we’re doing the right things with the right people and for the right reasons. It’s not always easy, however, to know the motives of people, or nations, when we’re dealing with issues of technology and/or public policy. One such issue is the proliferation of data centers, necessary for the burgeoning AI revolution, but controversial for that and other reasons. Among them is the amount of water and power they...

Climate hysteria, which was always about power and money, finally seems to have peaked, and President Trump helped lead the way. There has been a huge shift within the public and private sectors on climate change as it has dawned on governments and companies that the United States, under President Donald Trump, will no longer be a patsy to a cabal of international elites who seek to impose costly climate restrictions upon American businesses and international climate boondoggles upon nations. Trump’s actions are draining the climate swamp of resources, supporters, spirit, and momentum. These include defunding climate boondoggles across federal...

Lake Tahoe doesn’t know where its power will come from after next ski season—and it’s a major problem for the 49,000 residents who call the region home. The Sierra Nevada tourist hub—home to ski resorts, lakeside casinos, and roughly 25 to 28 million annual visitors—is facing an energy crisis with a familiar culprit: the data centers powering the AI boom. NV Energy, the Nevada utility that has supplied the bulk of Lake Tahoe’s electricity for decades, told Liberty Utilities—the small California company that services the region—that it will stop providing power after May 2027. The reason? NV Energy needs the...

Suppose that you are a large U.S. state with a dynamic modern economy. Here’s an idea for a strategy for powering your electrical grid: Intentionally disinvest in your functioning fossil fuel generation plants; fail to maintain them adequately, and let them age into obsolescence. Meanwhile, encourage and even subsidize the development of solar panels as a replacement. After all, solar power is cheaper! Those who follow the policy of New York State with respect to our electrical grid will recognize this description as covering the essential elements of our strategy. In our case, the strategy was mainly enacted into law...

We’re approaching 60 days of the so-called Iran war, and we’re still getting these loud voices that Donald Trump has failed, that the war’s not going well. It’s completely nonempirical. It’s antithetical to the evidence. Here we are at 60 days, and Iran is losing about $500 million in input per day. It’s running out of storage space in a week or two for its daily output of oil, at which point they either have to stop pumping or they’re going to have—if they don’t stop pumping—their wells will collapse. They either have to stop pumping, or they have to...

They’ve hit the mother lode. We may no longer need to rely on foreign batteries to power our electronics. Geologists have announced that the Appalachian Mountains could be hiding a sprawling multi-billion-dollar cache of lithium that could last the US hundreds of years. “This research shows that the Appalachians contain enough lithium to help meet the nation’s growing needs,” declared US Geological Survey Director Ned Mamula in a statement. According to a map by the institution, this East Coast mountain range houses around 2.5 metric tons of this battery precursor, most of which is concentrated in the Carolinas, Maine and...

A massive hyperscale data centre project tied to investor Kevin O’Leary is moving forward in Box Elder County, Utah after receiving approvals from a state military development authority, with final local authorization now the only remaining hurdle, according to the Salt Lake Tribune. The Military Installation Development Authority, known as MIDA, approved multiple steps on Friday to advance the multibillion-dollar development project, which is being pitched as a major economic engine for rural northern Utah. The project is expected to include 2,000 permanent jobs and large-scale infrastructure tied to military installations in the state. It is expected to consume more...

Coal-fired power plant retirements in the United States dropped to their lowest level in more than a decade in 2025, as operators delayed or canceled closures and federal officials stepped in to keep some facilities running to support grid reliability, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). New data released Monday by EIA shows that the U.S. electric power sector retired 2.6 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity across four plants last year — the smallest annual total since 2010, and a figure below the 8.5 GW of retirements that had been planned at the start of the year. Instead,...

To exactly no one’s surprise, it turns out that a vast leftist network, including the usual communist and socialist oligarchs, is funding the ‘No Kings’ protests. I’m someone who suffers from earworms. As those who have them can attest, they’re no fun. A song gets stuck in your head and refuses to be dislodged. Sometimes, though, it’s not a song; it’s an expression. As I read the latest exposé about the oligarchical leftist funding behind the “No Kings” protests that have been taking place across America today, two earworms clogged my brain: [videos at link] Yes, two classic Hollywood...

No power here in eastern Honolulu. Out all night and continuing this morning. High winds took off part of our plastic lanai roof, uprooted tree in front yard which is currently covering sidewalk. Cable box cover torn off and blown into front yard. You'd think a hurricane came through. No ETA of power return. Ah! Life in paradise.

Gov. Hochul has spent much of her 4 ¹/₂ years in office facing a time bomb left by her predecessor: drastic, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets that the state has no practical means of meeting. The 2019 Climate Act requires New York to cut greenhouse gas emissions by about one-quarter from that year’s levels by 2030. The state has made little progress toward this goal, in part because officials shuttered New York’s largest nuclear power plant in 2021. The law remains on the books, and its defenders balk at revision. If Hochul can’t persuade them to change it, Albany’s...

AI-driven power demand is surging far faster than expected, but a shortage of heavy-duty gas turbines is creating a bottleneck.Turbine makers like Siemens, GE Vernova, and Mitsubishi are ramping up production, but expansion projects could take up to 5 years.Without enough gas capacity, AI growth could slow or grids may turn back to coal, potentially delaying coal plant retirements.The surge in electricity demand in the world’s AI hotspots has prompted a comparable surge in demand for reliable supply. That surge was not expected. There are not enough gas turbines to secure that supply. This means the AI revolution would either...

TLANTA, Ga. (WALB) - Millions of Georgia power customers could see lower electricity bills after the U.S. Department of Energy closed a $26.5 billion loan package for Southern Company, the largest loan in the department’s history. Officials said the deal is expected to save customers more than $7 billion in electricity costs by reducing the utility’s interest expenses. Southern Company has announced plans for multi-year rate freezes as part of the partnership with the federal government.

Yesterday, the Colgate powerhouse pentock failed dramatically off of the Bullards Bar Reservoir right there in Yubi County, not very far from the Blanco Global Headquarters, kind of halfway between Grass Valley and the Orville Reservoir.