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How solar microgrids are bringing power (and quiet) to North Carolina

How solar microgrids are bringing power (and quiet) to North Carolina

Energy News Network reports: Seventeen days after Hurricane Helene devastated Western North Carolina, tearing down power lines, destroying water mains, and disabling cell phone towers, the signs of relief were hard to miss. Trucks formed a caravan along Interstate 40, filled with camouflaged soldiers, large square tanks of water, and essentials from pet food to diapers. In towns, roadside signs — official versions emblazoned with nonprofit relief logos and wooden makeshift ones scrawled with paint — advertised free food and…

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Harris paid the price for ignoring the pleas of Arab Americans

Harris paid the price for ignoring the pleas of Arab Americans

Politico reports: Arab American leaders for months warned Vice President Kamala Harris that she needed to separate herself from President Joe Biden’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza — or face an electoral backlash from this influential community in a key battleground. But those pleas went largely ignored. Instead, Harris made strategic errors that deeply insulted Arab American voters reeling from intense grief as the death toll in the Middle East climbed. She refused to host a Palestinian…

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Congress is about to give Trump sweeping powers to crush his political enemies

Congress is about to give Trump sweeping powers to crush his political enemies

The Intercept reports: Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire for revenge. On the campaign trail, he joked about being a dictator on “day one” in office, pledged to jail journalists, and threatened to retaliate against political foes who he felt had wronged him. Now, just days after he secured a second term in the White House, Congress is already moving to hand a resurgent Trump administration a powerful cudgel that it could wield against ideological opponents in…

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Many in government are worried about Trump’s return. At DOJ, they’re terrified

Many in government are worried about Trump’s return. At DOJ, they’re terrified

Politico reports: A collective sense of dread has taken hold at the Department of Justice, which drew Donald Trump’s rage like no other part of the federal government during his campaign. Some career attorneys at DOJ are already considering heading for the exits rather than sticking around to find out whether threats from Trump and his allies are real or campaign bluster. Those threats range from mass firings of “deep state” lawyers to expelling special counsel Jack Smith from the…

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How blue states are plotting to thwart Trump

How blue states are plotting to thwart Trump

Politico reports: Donald Trump pledged in one of his final campaign speeches to work with Democratic mayors and governors if reelected. But just hours after the former president was projected to win back the White House, some blue-state leaders were actively plotting against him. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, on Thursday called a special legislative session to funnel more resources toward the state’s legal defenses to preemptively combat Republican policies around immigration, the environment, LGBTQ+ rights…

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None of the conventional explanations for Trump’s victory stand up to scrutiny

None of the conventional explanations for Trump’s victory stand up to scrutiny

Ben Davis writes: Why were Democrats unable to counter the idea that Trump was an economic savant? And why did most Americans vote for someone they believe will harm the country but help their own pocketbooks? The answer is the ongoing decimation of working-class institutions and civil society, started by neoliberalism, accelerated by the rise of the internet as a medium of interaction and put into overdrive during the isolation of Covid. The vehicles for building solidarity with others and…

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Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate in Ukraine

Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate in Ukraine

The Washington Post reports: President-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, the first phone conversation between the two men since Trump won the election, said several people familiar with the matter. During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for…

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Netanyahu appoints hardline backer of settlements as Israeli envoy to U.S.

Netanyahu appoints hardline backer of settlements as Israeli envoy to U.S.

The Guardian reports: Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a hardline supporter of the war in Gaza and longtime backer of settlements in the West Bank as his ambassador to the US as Israel prepares for the incoming administration of Donald Trump. Yechiel Leiter, an American-born rightwing publicist and former government aide who immigrated to Israel four decades ago, was announced as Israel’s next ambassador to Washington on Friday. His son, a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, was killed in fighting…

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Human creativity: key to unlocking AI’s potential

Human creativity: key to unlocking AI’s potential

John Nosta writes: Every day, it seems that artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) are winning the battle for both cognition and creativity, dazzling us with their problem-solving prowess and even artistic flair. But a new paper casts a fascinating and unexpected light on this issue: The secret to AI’s most transformative power may lie not in its algorithms but in the creative minds that guide it. This study examined more than a thousand scientists working in a…

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The elites had it coming

The elites had it coming

Thomas Frank writes: Liberals had nine years to decipher Mr. Trump’s appeal — and they failed. The Democrats are a party of college graduates, as the whole world understands by now, of Ph.D.s and genius-grant winners and the best consultants money can buy. Mr. Trump is a con man straight out of Mark Twain; he will say anything, promise anything, do nothing. But his movement baffled the party of education and innovation. Their most brilliant minds couldn’t figure him out….

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Biden and his inner circle betrayed Harris and lied to America

Biden and his inner circle betrayed Harris and lied to America

“Joe Biden’s decision to run for president again was a catastrophic mistake.” – @JonFavsListen to more Pod Save America wherever you get your podcasts. pic.twitter.com/nhtO9hs4aA — Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) November 8, 2024 Jon Favreau, Obama’s former speech writer, said on Pod Save America: [Biden and his inner circle] refused to believe he was unpopular. They refuse to acknowledge until very late that anyone could be upset about inflation. And they just kept telling us that his presidency was historic…

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Musk believes in climate change. Trump doesn’t. Will that change?

Musk believes in climate change. Trump doesn’t. Will that change?

The New York Times reports: Elon Musk has described himself as “pro-environment” and “super pro climate.” But he also threw himself wholeheartedly into electing as president someone who has dismissed global warming as a hoax. Now, as President-elect Donald J. Trump prepares to enter the White House, one big question is how much sway — if any — Mr. Musk’s views on climate change and clean energy might have in the new administration. During the campaign, Mr. Trump noticeably softened…

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Judge hits pause on Trump’s election interference criminal case

Judge hits pause on Trump’s election interference criminal case

NBC reports: The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s federal election interference case has granted a request from special counsel Jack Smith to hit pause on the process and give him a month to formally request how to move forward — likely the first step in ending the prosecution. In a filing on Friday, Smith said that “as a result of the election” the prosecution “respectfully requests that the Court vacate the remaining deadlines in the pretrial schedule to afford the Government…

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The next pandemic?

The next pandemic?

Fortune reports: Almost from the beginning of the spread of H5N1 bird flu among farms and ranches in the U.S. earlier this year, experts and researchers warned that a critical lag in the blood testing of exposed workers might lead to an underestimation of the virus’s potential transmission to humans. Those warnings have proved prophetic. And the federal Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) now finds itself not only trying to blunt the spread of the virus, but also…

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