America’s Suicide Pact
Trump is not an outlier. He is the naked, stripped-down expression of this suicidal pact. He does not pretend the system he inherited works. He lies with less finesse. He crassly enriches himself and his family. He speaks in crude vulgarities. He dismantles any government agency dedicated to the common good, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. But he embodies what came before him, albeit without the liberal façade.
America’s suicidal march began long before Donald Trump. Trump and the buffoons around him are the inevitable final chapter of the decaying empire.
Chris Hedges, May 9, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/09/americas-suicide-pact/
Civilizations, as the historian Arnold J. Toynbee famously argued, “die from suicide, not by murder.” They collapse from within. They fall prey to moral, social and spiritual decay. They are seized by a parasitic ruling class. Democratic institutions seize up. The citizenry is immiserated, wealth is funneled upwards to the ruling class and coercion is the principle form of control.
Our suicidal march began long before Donald Trump and his bizarre court of buffoons, sycophants, grifters and Christian fascists took power. It began when the ruling class, especially under the Reagan and Clinton administrations, set out to harvest the country and empire for personal profit.
There is a word for these people. Traitors.
These traitors, ensconced in the leadership of the two ruling parties, stripped us of assets and power slowly. They used subterfuge, lies and legalized bribery. They pretended to honor electoral politics, checks and balances, a free press and the rule of law while subverting all of these democratic pillars. That old system, however flawed, was hollowed out. It was turned over to the amoral and the idiotic — look at the Supreme Court or Congress — those willing to do the bidding of the billionaire class.
Armed with billions by the mortal enemy of the demos — the oligarchs and corporations — the political elites, Republicans and Democrats, destroyed the careers of those politicians who resisted. They crushed labor unions. They blacklisted honest journalists and consolidated the press into the hands of a handful of corporations and oligarchs. They slashed regulations that constrained unfettered greed and protected the population from predatory corporations and environmental toxins. They passed legislation that created a de facto tax boycott for the rich — Trump famously paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the 15 years prior to his presidency — while stripping the country of its industry and throwing some 30 million people out of work. Wealth is no longer created by producing or manufacturing. It is created by manipulating the prices of stocks and commodities and imposing a crippling debt peonage on the public.
These parasites cut or abolished social programs, militarized the police, built the largest prison system in the world and pumped funds into a bloated and out-of-control war industry. German socialist and politician Karl Liebknecht, on the eve of the suicidal folly of World War I, called German imperialists “the enemy at home.” Our rulers, our enemies at home, mounted a series of futile wars that degraded the empire’s global hegemony and poured trillions of dollars of taxpayer money into their bank accounts. Iran is the most recent example.
Trump is not an outlier. He is the naked, stripped-down expression of this suicidal pact. He does not pretend the system he inherited works. He lies with less finesse. He crassly enriches himself and his family. He speaks in crude vulgarities. He dismantles any government agency dedicated to the common good, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education and the U.S. Postal Service. But he embodies what came before him, albeit without the liberal façade.
“Trump is not an anomaly,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”
He is the grotesque visage of a collapsed democracy. Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels. The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.
The Epstein files, a window into the degeneracy of our ruling class, included not only Trump, but former U.S. president Bill Clinton — who allegedly took a trip to Thailand with Epstein — Prince Andrew, Microsoft founder and billionaire Bill Gates, hedge fund billionaire Glenn Dubin, the former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, former secretary of the treasury and former president of Harvard University Larry Summers, cognitive psychologist and author Stephen Pinker, Epstein’s lawyer and arch Zionist Alan Dershowitz, billionaire and Victoria’s Secret CEO Leslie Wexner, the former Barclays banker Jes Staley, former Israel prime minister Ehud Barak, magician David Copperfield, actor Kevin Spacey, former CIA director William Burns, real estate mogul Mort Zuckerman, former Maine senator George Mitchell and disgraced Hollywood producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein. They all orbited Epstein’s perpetual Bacchanalia.
Anand Giridharadas, who wrote “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” notes that the circle of powerful men, and a handful of women who surrounded Epstein, are emblematic of a privileged caste that lack empathy in the suffering and abuse of others, whether that is sexual abuse, including that of children, financial meltdowns they orchestrate, wars they back, addictions and overdose they enable, the monopolies they defend, the inequality they turbocharge, the housing crisis they milk and the intrusive technologies they refuse to protect people against:
People are right to sense that as the emails lay bare, there is a highly private merito-aristocracy at the intersection of government and business, lobbying, philanthropy, start-ups, academia, science, high finance and media, that all too often takes care of its own more than the common good. They are right to resent that there are infinite second chances for members of this group even as so many Americans are deprived of first chances. They are right that their pleas often go unheard, whether they are being evicted, gouged, foreclosed on, A.I.-obsolesced — or, yes, raped.
“The Epstein emails, in my view,” Giridharadas writes, “together sketch a devastating epistolary portrait of how our social order functions, and for whom. Saying that isn’t extreme. The way this elite operates is.”
“If this neoliberal-era power elite remains poorly understood,” he continues, “it may be because it is not just a financial elite or an educated elite, a noblesse-oblige elite, a political elite or a narrative-making elite; it straddles all of these, lucratively and persuaded of its own good intentions.”
“These people are,” Giridharadas reminds us, “on the same team. On air, they might clash. They promote opposite policies. Some in the network profess anguish over what others in the network are doing. But the emails depict a group whose highest commitment is to their own permanence in the class that decides things. When principles conflict with staying in the network, the network wins.”
You can see my interview with Giridharadas here.
The entire system is rotten. It will not reform itself.
The Democratic Party has hit on the novel campaign issue of reducing taxes to win this year’s midterm elections. It will, no doubt, anoint another vapid, issue-less and genocide-supporting presidential nominee. Democratic donors pumped a staggering $1.5 billion into Kamala Harris’s abridged 15-week celebrity-fueled presidential campaign. She became the first Democratic presidential candidate to lose the national popular vote in two decades and be defeated in every battleground state.
The Democratic Party is not a functioning political party. It is a corporate mirage. Its members can, at best, select preapproved candidates and act as props in choreographed conventions and rallies. Party members have zero influence on party politics.
The more the diminishing power of the empire becomes apparent, evidenced in Trump’s debacle with Iran, the more a confused population retreats into a fantasy world, a world where hard and unpleasant facts do not intrude.
In the final days of a civilization, a population wallows in self-delusional hubris and trumpets false virtues. It looks for scapegoats to explain its failures — Muslims, undocumented workers, Mexicans, African-Americans, feminists, intellectuals, artists and dissidents.
Magical thinking and the myth of American exceptionalism dominate public discourse and are taught in schools. Art and culture are degraded to nationalist kitsch. Science is dismissed, even in the midst of the environmental crisis. Cultural and intellectual disciplines that allow us to see the world from the perspective of the other, that foster empathy, understanding and compassion, are replaced by a grotesque and cruel hypermasculinity and hypermilitarism.
Trump is perfectly tailored for these death throes. He is not a freak or an anomaly. He is the naked visage of our pathological sickness.
War Dividends: Potential U.S. Arms Sales to the Middle East Surge in Q1 2026
On March 19, the U.S. approved $8.5 billion in potential sales to the UAE, split across four potential deals. These approvals included a $4.5 billion sale of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) for integration with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system, a $2.1 billion sale of counter-UAS equipment, a $1.2 billion deal for 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a $644 million sale of F-16 munitions. Kuwait was approved to purchase eight Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars on the same day, at a cost of $8 billion. The U.S. also signed off on $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support for Jordan
– by Jon Hemler and Derek Bisaccio, https://dsm.forecastinternational.com/2026/04/23/us-foreign-military-sales-q1-2026-middle-east-iran-war/
During the first quarter of 2026, the U.S. government approved over $45 billion in potential Foreign Military Sales (FMS) with the overwhelming majority supporting Middle Eastern allies. Of total global approvals, the region garnered 81 percent, or over $36.6 billion in estimated sales value for defense equipment.
Direct comparisons between first-quarter FMS approvals and the combat systems currently being used by the United States, Israel, and allied Arab states are imperfect. Approved agreements do not automatically translate into deliveries. Follow-on contracts, payments and shipments might not materialize for months or years, if at all. Even so, FMS activity can be a meaningful indicator of geopolitical and industrial trends. This is increasingly true given the scale of combat, stakeholders involved, and weapons consumption driven by the Iranian War.
Middle East
Countries in the Middle East spend heavily on defense, devoting some $177.5 billion to military expenditure in their FY26 budgets by conservative estimates. Many of the region’s governments, moreover, possess immense reserve assets that can be leveraged to support procurement when needed.
Over 81 percent of FMS approvals in the first quarter of 2026 covered potential sales to American partners in the Middle East, corresponding with the deterioration in the regional security environment during this timeframe. These approvals can be generally grouped into two tranches, with the first set announced around the end of January. On January 30, the U.S. approved a Saudi request for 730 Patriot PAC-3 MSE missiles, which, together with support equipment, carry an estimated price tag of $9.0 billion. That same day, the U.S. also approved four sales to Israel worth a combined $6.6 billion, with the largest being a potential $3.8 billion sale of 30 AH-64E attack helicopters.
The U.S. and Israel began military operations against Iran on February 28, beginning a weeks-long air campaign in retaliation for the country’s brutal crackdown on protesters the month before and aiming to dismantle Iran’s offensive military capabilities and nuclear program. Iran retaliated with missile and drone salvoes targeting Israel, regional U.S. military bases, and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. According to some estimates, Iran fired as many as 6,400 missiles and drones at the GCC countries and Jordan across 41 days of operations. The majority of these attacks were intercepted, but Iranian attacks did manage to penetrate Gulf air defenses and hit sensitive sites. Amid these barrages, the GCC countries made a series of requests for ammunition and radar systems from the U.S., leading to a group of FMS approvals in mid-March.
On March 19, the U.S. approved $8.5 billion in potential sales to the UAE, split across four potential deals. These approvals included a $4.5 billion sale of a Long Range Discrimination Radar (LRDR) for integration with the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) air-defense system, a $2.1 billion sale of counter-UAS equipment, a $1.2 billion deal for 400 AIM-120C AMRAAM air-to-air missiles, and a $644 million sale of F-16 munitions. Kuwait was approved to purchase eight Lower Tier Air and Missile Defense Sensor (LTAMDS) radars on the same day, at a cost of $8 billion. The U.S. also signed off on $70.5 million in aircraft and munitions support for Jordan
All six of the deals announced on March 19 were approved under an emergency exception to Section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act, waiving the typical Congressional review requirement. That process would normally take roughly 30 to 40 days, during which the sides would be unable to move forward with contract negotiations.
Europe
Around $3.8 billion in FMS approvals in the first quarter of 2026 – 8.5 percent of the overall total – target European requirements. A sizable chunk of this total comes from Spain’s $1.7 billion request for mid-life upgrades to its Álvaro de Bazán-class frigates. The upgrade program will principally include integrating the AEGIS weapon system to expand the warships’ air-defense capabilities.
On March 10, the State Department approved the sale of 20 M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Sweden, with a price tag of $930 million. Should Stockholm move forward with a purchase agreement, it would become the eighth or ninth European customer for the multiple rocket launcher, joining Croatia, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. (Hungary, another potential customer, announced plans to acquire HIMARS on April 9, ahead of the incumbent government’s loss in general elections several days later.)
The U.S. also approved an FMS deal with Denmark, blessing the sale of 100 AGM-114R HELLFIRE air-to-surface missiles at a possible cost of $45 million. Relations between Washington and Copenhagen have become turbulent in the second Trump administration over Greenland’s political future, but beneath the headlines, the two countries remain strong defense partners.
Only one FMS approval for Ukraine (which Forecast International groups in the Eurasia region) was announced in the first quarter of 2026, on February 6. Kyiv requested to buy spare parts for its U.S. Army-supplied vehicles and weapons, at an expected cost of $185 million.
Over time, European countries are aiming to reduce their dependency on the U.S. for military equipment, pursuing various national and intra-European projects to improve the continent’s own defense industry. This process was jump-started in 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and has accelerated over the past year as European capitals increasingly worry that the U.S. may withdraw from the NATO Alliance.
Europe (not including Ukraine and Russia) is expected to spend $508.9 billion on defense in FY26, up from around $300 billion on the eve of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Five years ago, only a handful of NATO countries met the Alliance’s 2 percent of GDP target, but most are now at least at that threshold, if not well exceeding it.
Industry Trends
From a weapons systems standpoint, missiles and related equipment represent the largest category of approved potential sales from the quarter at nearly $16.0 billion and 35 percent of the total. Relatedly, the three highest-cost possible deals involve various offensive and defensive missile and networked electronic systems that have featured prominently in military operations during the war in Iran.
Of these, American defense giants Lockheed Martin and RTX are well-positioned to capitalize on a prospective windfall of over $21 billion in the aforementioned FMS to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE. Domestically, Lockheed Martin and RTX both emerged as beneficiaries of several historic multi-year framework agreements with the Pentagon during Q1 2026, to boost precision munitions and interceptor production for the U.S
Like FMS approvals, these agreements do not indicate signed contracts or solid revenue. However, subsequent large-scale contacts are likely to follow in the coming years as the U.S. moves to surge critical munitions production. Some related contracts are already unfolding. In early April, Lockheed Martin received a $4.76 billion award supported by U.S. Army and FMS allocations for PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement missiles.
Raytheon, an RTX company, also won a handful of LTAMDS contracts from the U.S. government during the first quarter, including a $905 million production contract on April 16 that contributes to an overall $5.36 billion cumulative framework.
Strategic pivot
The awards to Lockheed Martin and RTX, alongside FMS approvals for key systems emerging from the Iranian War, underscore a broader shift in Washington’s approach to weapons deals. On February 6, 2026, the White House issued an Executive Order entitled “America First Arms Transfer Strategy” to reshape priorities for foreign military equipment sale policy.
Though the Trump Administration’s order references arms transfers as a foreign policy tool, the text primarily focuses on strengthening the U.S. defense industrial base. Indeed, the order states that the strategy “will ensure that future arms sales prioritize American interests by using foreign purchases and capital to build American production and capacity.” A deeper read of the subsections signals a reprioritization of strategy – one that emphasizes utilizing arms sales to bolster domestic industry over foreign policy objectives.
With launches slated to grow a hundredfold, Space Force seeks more sites, money, people, and AI
Even today’s accelerated pace strains decades-old launch facilities.
Defense One Thomas Novelly, Senior Reporter, May 7, 2026
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida—The guardians manning screens in the mission-ops center here oversaw the launch of five types of rockets in April, a new record that involved NASA’s Artemis II, the first reused New Glenn booster, and a Falcon 9 lofting the final GPS III satellite. But tomorrow’s Space Force may have no time to mark even epochal missions. Within a decade, service leaders say, Cape Canaveral Space Force Station will be launching hundreds of rockets a year.
To facilitate the Pentagon’s fast-growing demand for orbital capability, the Space Force is looking for more launch sites, more money, more troops, and more AI.
“In 2025, the Space Force saw a drastic increase in mission requirements across space access, global mission operations, and space control. This trend shows no signs of slowing,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, the Space Force’s top uniformed leader, told House lawmakers last week. “The Space Force we have today is not the Space Force we will need in the future.”
Nestled on a thin stretch of land just miles from nature preserves and cruise-ship ports, the historic Cape Canaveral facility launched 36 rockets in 2021, its first year as a Space Force facility. Last year, it sent 110 into the heavens, while its California counterpart, Vandenberg Space Force Base, launched another 65.
This year, Space Force leaders intend to launch more than 200 rockets from their two main launch sites. And by 2036, they project, the pair will launch as many as 3,000 annually, according to a service document released last month.
That’s going to take more launchpads…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Pushing policy
The Space Force’s top brass has been making that pitch as well.
Last month at the Space Symposium in Colorado, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman unveiled “Objective Force 2040,” an ambitious vision with a section on expanding the service’s launch capabilities.
“As the space domain becomes increasingly linked both to national security and to economic prosperity, the importance of space access grows commensurately,” the document said. “This is a significant challenge because the Space Force has supported exponential growth in launch cadence over the past few years using the same physical infrastructure first built decades ago. The future operating environment will only exacerbate this strain, with booming government and commercial demand as well as new mission requirements for responsive and scalable space access.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
People problems
Increasing the number of launches will require more than money. Top Space Force officers have recently called for doubling the service’s end-strength over the next decade.
But even that won’t be enough, they say. Guardians will need to lean on AI to help. ………………………….. The Objective Force document calls for a service that can “operate at machine speed, leveraging artificial intelligence and autonomous systems while maintaining the primacy of human judgment for critical decisions.”……………………. https://www.defenseone.com/threats/2026/05/launches-slated-grow-hundredfold-space-force-seeks-more-sites-money-people-and-ai/413403/?oref=defense_one_breaking_nl&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Defense%20One:%20Breaking%20%285/7%29%20launches&utm_term=newsletter_d1_alert
CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour expresses ‘concern’ over the future of the network, citing ‘idealogical realignment at CBS
Dominick Mastrangelo, Thu, May 7, 2026 , https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/amanpour-expresses-concern-over-future-171317075.html?ncid=redditnewsus&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cucmVkZGl0LmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHVoY-FvEsZDNw98FelEskBLQG1bup54CvssULXm_j7NIF2G4lS4nTZgIgRg7TW1unhwmBehMPDJ92nP0Ge8HQEiYxCZaEHey9RdUVWhQUvjBXQhW4CBjRKIFsNBA-a6eqQwTBIVcFc-wbaf2WviF1SKDvhT-D8aQ0WSKJvWMiua
CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour voiced discomfort with the possibility of Paramount Skydance taking over her outlet if the cable channel’s parent company is allowed to merge with the David Ellison-led media conglomerate.
“Clearly I’m concerned, and I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about a corporate thing that’s underway, but I am obviously as a person as a journalist with a record, concerned,” Amanpour said during a journalism summit this week. “And I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that he’s taken over already, like CBS News, right? I mean do I have to list what’s happening there?”
Amanpour also bemoaned what she called the “ideological realignment of CBS and the destruction potentially of ’60 Minutes.’”
The journalist’s comments were first highlighted by Mediaite.
Paramount Skydance is seeking to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns CNN, a network President Trump has sparred with for years. He said in recent months that he wishes to see the network operate under new ownership.
The president on Wednesday marked the death of CNN founder Ted Turner by saying the news outlet he founded has been “destroyed” by what Trump called the channel’s “woke” coverage.
The president on Wednesday marked the death of CNN founder Ted Turner by saying the news outlet he founded has been “destroyed” by what Trump called the channel’s “woke” coverage.
David Ellison, a media mogul that is seen as an ally of the president, has retooled CBS News in recent months to cater to what he has called a more “diverse” audience, a move seen by many as a rightward shift at the network.
“I would to think we would have the very basic which is editorial independence,” Amanpour said. “And I don’t think I need to say more about that.”
Will the Trump administration’s ‘nuclear campus’ plan break the US nuclear waste gridlock?
The Energy Department’s compressed timeline risks inviting hastily assembled nuclear development plans that may appear viable on paper but lack the stable funding streams, operational specificity, and negotiated community agreements required to succeed.
By bundling spent fuel siting with advanced reactor deployment, the Energy Department’s nuclear campus plan exposes nuclear waste policy to the broader politics of nuclear deregulation.
Bulletin, By Vincent Ialenti | Analysis | May 6, 2026
Imagine a vast industrial landscape taking shape at the edge of a rural community in your region. Survey stakes trace the outlines of future access roads, rail spurs, and transmission corridors. Earthmovers sit beside graded pads where nuclear reactors, fuel fabrication lines, and waste-handling systems are expected to be built. The site is expansive—a terrain engineered to co-locate several stages of the nuclear fuel cycle: uranium enrichment, advanced reactors, reprocessing, and waste disposal. The projections arrive early, years before the infrastructure does. Plans circulate in briefing decks and glossy pamphlets. And the numbers are impressive: 50,000 direct jobs, up to 150,000 more across supply chains and regional services, 10,000 new housing units, and billions in projected annual wages.
In late January, the Energy Department moved to translate this vision into policy when it invited states to express interest in hosting what it calls “Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campuses.” The model draws on industrial clustering strategies used in sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing and petrochemicals. Through voluntary federal-state partnerships, states are asked to compete for the campuses as engines of economic development, workforce training, and infrastructure investment.
But the proposal also serves a second purpose. It reframes a longstanding political obstacle: securing a host for the deep geological disposal of spent fuel from US nuclear power plants.
By bundling nuclear waste management within a larger economic development package, the Energy Department is inviting states to compete for nuclear campuses that include facilities long considered politically untenable on their own. A state willing to include a deep geologic repository in its proposal could allow the Trump administration to claim victory on a policy impasse that has persisted for more than four decades—even as questions of geological suitability, facility financing, and host community consent remain unresolved.
The federal-state partnership approach responds to state-level resistance, which has been an Achilles’ heel of US nuclear waste policy. In 2010, the Energy Department halted the Yucca Mountain repository after sustained opposition from Nevada officials. Soon after, the Skull Valley Private Fuel Storage project was stymied by litigation and resistance from Utah leadership. Most recently, Holtec abandoned its New Mexico interim storage project in 2025 following a 2023 state law barring spent fuel storage without explicit state consent. And despite the Interim Storage Partners’ project in Texas securing a legal victory last June when the Supreme Court ruled that the state lacked standing to challenge its Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license, it continues to face opposition and has yet to translate that ruling into forward progress.
The Trump administration’s nuclear campus plan attempts to lower political barriers like these. But it harbors significant structural vulnerabilities. The history of the defunct Yucca Mountain repository shows how fragile nuclear consent can be. A single misstep in the siting process or safety perception can trigger litigation, political backlash, cascading mistrust, and delays or even the cancellation of projects. Embedding the US nuclear waste program in a financially uncertain, logistically underspecified, fast-tracked campus plan risks further eroding public confidence in the federal government’s ability to sustain a durable, long-horizon spent nuclear fuel strategy.
Fast timelines, uncertain financing. The Trump administration’s nuclear campus plan operates on an unusually aggressive timeline. The solicitation gave states just over two months to identify specific sites and provide supporting details on geology, community engagement, and transportation access. It also expressed a preference for states willing to proceed on “more ambitious timelines,” asking them to identify pathways for regulatory streamlining and expedited permitting. The Energy Department envisions facilities coming online as early as 2027. This ambition is complicated by the initiative’s unresolved financial structure.
A geological repository would, in principle, draw on the US Nuclear Waste Fund, the reactor-operator fee-based account established for long-term storage and permanent disposal of commercial spent fuel. However, the Energy Department asks states to look to the private sector for funding most of the other nuclear campus facilities. The solicitation gave states just over two months to propose financing plans built around private capital—venture firms, technology companies, nuclear industry partners, or private equity—alongside state and local contributions. Federal support is limited to near-term coordination, cost-sharing, technical assistance, and loan guarantees to de-risk early investments.
The Energy Department’s compressed timeline risks inviting hastily assembled nuclear development plans that may appear viable on paper but lack the stable funding streams, operational specificity, and negotiated community agreements required to succeed. Including spent fuel siting in such a fragile arrangement introduces a legitimacy risk to the nation’s nuclear waste program. Prospective host states might reasonably question whether a 25-page solicitation—covering the entire nuclear fuel cycle—constitutes a credible multi-generational development framework or, rather, an overextended political vision vulnerable to market volatility.
The nuclear campus initiative also arrives amid a wave of deregulatory pressure.
In May 2025, the Trump administration directed the NRC to revise its rules to accelerate nuclear licensing timelines, raising questions about the agency’s independence. National policy directives emphasize fixed deadlines for reactor licensing decisions and reduced staff for advisory review. Oversight of nuclear waste has also weakened. In July 2025, the White House dismissed seven members of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, leaving the body with a single sitting member. More recently, the Energy Department expanded National Environmental Policy Act exclusions for advanced nuclear reactors, allowing some projects to proceed without full environmental review. In February, an NPR investigation reported that the Energy Department revised reactor safety rules—reportedly cutting roughly 750 pages of requirements, including protections for groundwater, security, and oversight—for reactors on its property.
By bundling spent fuel siting with advanced reactor deployment, the Energy Department’s nuclear campus plan exposes nuclear waste policy to the broader politics of nuclear deregulation. Prospective host communities may question whether pressures on regulatory independence are being adequately weighed in state proposals—and whether core health, safety, and environmental protections will remain intact.
Policy whiplash and the limits of public trust. The nuclear campus plan is the latest move in a multi-decade saga of nuclear waste policy reversals. After the Obama administration cut funding for the Yucca Mountain repository in 2009, the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future proposed a new siting strategy grounded in voluntary participation and community consent—an approach that had proven effective in Finland, Sweden, and Canada. A consent-based siting model was launched by President Barack Obama, shelved by President Donald Trump, revived by President Joe Biden, and is now sidelined again under Trump’s second administration. Each change of administration introduced new visions before prior commitments had time to mature. The cumulative effect of these recurrent policy resets has been to signal that federal assurances may be short-term and provisional rather than long-term and binding. A prospective host community might reasonably ask: Will the Energy Department’s nuclear campus vision endure beyond the current administration—or is it another turn in a cycle of partisan whiplash?
………………………………………………………………………………………………….From acceleration to endurance. The nuclear campus plan wedges a long-term strategy for managing the nation’s spent fuel into a near-term push for accelerated reactor deployment. This creates three core legitimacy risks: that fast-tracked timelines will exacerbate financial and logistical uncertainty; that deregulatory pressures will undermine public safety perceptions; and that recurrent policy resets will weaken the Energy Department’s credibility in issuing long-term assurances to prospective host communities. This third risk is perhaps the most consequential. Without institutional structures capable of enduring beyond political cycles, the effort risks becoming just another episode in the long-running pattern of stop-start partisan reversals that has defined US nuclear waste governance for decades.
……………………………………………………….In a polarized US political environment, bipartisan enthusiasm for nuclear power is a rare point of convergence. Nuclear energy is increasingly framed as a solution for climate mitigation, grid reliability, national security, economic growth, and the electricity demands of artificial intelligence data centers. But if the nuclear campus plan becomes a quiet pathway for states to advance communities as hosts for nuclear waste repositories—without the level of geological prescreening, institutional trust, and durable local consent that underpinned progress in Finland, Sweden, and Canada—the United States risks reintroducing volatility into nuclear waste siting while allowing federal officials to claim premature progress on a problem that remains politically unresolved. https://thebulletin.org/2026/05/will-the-trump-administrations-nuclear-campus-plan-break-the-us-nuclear-waste-gridlock/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=What%20the%20Pentagon%20s%20missing%20on%20its%20%20critical%20technologies%20%20list&utm_campaign=20260507%20Thursday%20Newsletter
Infant mortality rates in San Luis Obispo County in proximity to the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.
Radiation and Public Health Project (RPHP) Joseph J. Mangano MPH MBA, April 29, 2026
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The two Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors in San Luis Obispo County CA began operations in 1984
and 1985. They have generated enormous amounts of highly radioactive waste. Most is stored at
the site, but some is routinely released into the environment – and into humans through breathing,
food, and water. However, no studies on health effects to the local population have been done.
Exposure to radiation is especially harmful to the fetus and infant. This report analyzes trends and
current patterns of newborn and infant health in San Luis Obispo County, compared to the state of
California. Results show that county rates have shifted from below to above the state:
Infant Deaths. Before Diablo Canyon opened (1968-1984), the county death rate under one year
was 16% below the state. Most recently (2010-2024), the county was 1% above the state, including
11% and 23% higher for white non-Hispanics and white Hispanics.
Premature Births. In the earliest period available (1995-1999), the county rate of premature births
(<36 weeks gestation) was 21% below the state. Most recently (2020-2024), the rate was 3% above
the state (8% and 31% higher for white non-Hispanics and white Hispanics).
Birth Defects. In the period 2016-2024, the county rate of 12 types of birth defects was 114%
greater than (more than double) the state, 3rd highest among the 35 largest California counties.
Other Newborn Health Measures. In addition, the county also has higher current (2016-2024) rates
of common newborn risk factors, including those requiring assisted ventilation, those with low
five-minute Apgar scores (a measure of infant health), and newborns transferred to another facility.
Child Cancer. Child cancer is believed to often be an adverse outcome that began in pregnancy.
Early in Diablo Canyon’s operation (1988-1992), county cancer incidence 0-19 was 26% below
the state; in the 30 years since then (1993-2022), the county rate was just 2% below the state.
No explanation for these findings is apparent, as risk factors in the county are not elevated.
Compared to the state, the county has low rates of minorities, uninsured, foreign born, and
languages other than English spoken at home; and similar rates of income, education, and poverty.
The county rate of the most common maternal birth risk factors are below the state
(overweight/obese mothers, mothers <20 or >35, mothers on WIC or Medicaid, and previous
Cesarean section).
Further review of county health patterns is warranted to assess what role exposures to radioactivity
from Diablo Canyon has played in these trends. Results should be made available to officials and
the public. No major decision on the future of the plant should be made without a thorough
understanding of the impact exposures have had on local health………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………https://radiation.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Diablo-Canyon-report-November-2025.pdf
Epic Nonsense: Trump Shelves Project Freedom
8 May 2026 Dr Binoy Kampmark , https://theaimn.net/epic-nonsense-trump-shelves-project-freedom/
The waxwork figures of the Pentagon recently glowed with excitement with the announcement that the US military would be finally called upon to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. With the ceasefire between Teheran and Washington barely holding, President Donald Trump, as far as his attention span would allow, gingerly put Operation Epic Fury to the side in favour of a new mission. The effort to protect and navigate stranded and blocked vessels with US armed might would be dubbed Project Freedom.
As with everything in this cerebrally cloudy and foolish conflict, descriptions and names are untethered to a discernible reality. Was Project Freedom separate from the blockade of Iran? Yes, said certain administration officials. Was it an annex to Operation Epic Fury? No one quite knew.
Some details were provided on May 5 by the US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, at a press briefing. “To be clear [Project Freedom] is separate and distinct from Operation Epic Fury. Project Freedom is defensive in nature, focused in scope and temporary in duration, with one mission: protecting innocent commercial shipping from Iranian aggression.” Iran had been “the clear aggressor” in the Strait, “harassing civilian vessels, threatening mariners from every nation indiscriminately and weaponizing a critical chokepoint for its own financial benefit, or at least trying to.” No mention, naturally, on why Iran had resorted to such measures in the first place.
Much of Hegseth’s press address was a bleat, a complaint that the Iranians had simply not played by the rules, rules happily broken by the Trump administration and their Israeli allies when they felt necessary. Iran had attempted to “impose a tolling system,” using “a form of international extortion.” Project Freedom was the celebrated antidote. “Two US commercial ships, along with American destroyers, have already transited the strait, showing the lane is clear.”
The account untethered to reality followed on cue. Iran had been “embarrassed” by the successful transit of these two vessels. “They say they control the strait. They do not. So, American ships led the way, commercial and military shouldering the initial risk from the front, as Americans always do. And right now, hundreds more ships from nations around the world are lining up to transit.” With lavish immodesty, the Secretary noted that US Central Command (CENTCOM) had, along with partner nations, “been in active communication with hundreds of ships, shipping companies and insurers.” The US had provided a “direct gift” to the world in the form of “a powerful red, white and blue dome over the strait.”
With the counterfeit, grubby appeal of an advertiser’s pitch, Hegseth went on to declare Project Freedom “humanitarian” in nature. “By breaking Iran’s illegal stranglehold, we’re protecting the lives and livelihoods of sailors from dozens of countries, securing global energy routes and preventing shortages that hit the world’s poorest people the hardest.”
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine was also on hand to explain that CENTCOM had “established an enhanced security area on the southern side of the strait that is now protected by US land, naval and air assets to help defeat further Iranian aggression against commercial shipping.” He noted that Iranian fast boats and attack drones had been defeated. And how could they not be, given the presence of “more than 100 fighters, attack aircraft and other manned and unmanned aircraft, synchronized by the 82nd Airborne Division” engaged in the air for 24 hours a day guarding “the enhanced security area and its approaches.”
With twenty-four hours, this elaborate, exaggerated, purplish vision of American deliverance from Iranian control to an anxious world had collapsed. On May 6, Trump announced that he would be halting Project Freedom. Another round of proposals had been placed on the carousel of confusing diplomacy that might negate the need to resume bombing under Operation Epic Fury. Claiming that Pakistan and other specified countries had wished so, and given “the fact that Great Progress has been made toward a Complete and Final Agreement with the Representatives of Iran,” the blockade would remain in place but “Project Freedom (The Movement of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz) will be paused for a short period of time to see whether or not the Agreement can be finalized and signed.”
Later that day, Trump posted another message. “Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption,” he declared on Truth Social, “the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran.” The inevitable, clownish threat followed: “If they don’t agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before.”
The rapid demise of Project Freedom, more aborted than halted, had less to do with the emergence of a new desire to pursue negotiations so much as logistical inconvenience. The Gulf States, by and large, have not been impressed by the impulsive measure, given the potential resumption of hostilities. Tehran was always going to blunt US efforts to break the blockade of the Strait, a point demonstrated by attacks on the United Arab Emirates on May 4 that left an oil refinery in the eastern emirate of Fujairah ablaze and three Indian nationals wounded.
According to a report from NBC News, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was disgruntled enough by the American initiative in the Strait to inform Washington that it would deny the US military any use of the Prince Sultan Airbase to enforce the mission or permit US aircraft to use Saudi airspace to that end. This was despite a call taking place between Trump and the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
An unnamed Saudi source was cited as saying that Saudi Arabia was “very supportive of the diplomatic efforts” led by Pakistan in aiding Iran and the US terminate the conflict, while a US official put it in simple terms as to why Project Freedom could only dissipate in impotence: “Because of geography, you need cooperation from regional partners to utilize their airspace along their borders.”
From the embers of the Trump administration’s latest bungle emerged a one-page memorandum of understanding Washington has reportedly drawn up for further discussions with Tehran. It reportedly contains 14 points, covering, for instance, a declaration ending the war and the commencement of a 30-day period of negotiations on a detailed agreement that would see Iran reopen the Strait over that duration. This would be complemented by the lifting of the US naval blockade. Restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of US sanctions also feature. Failing all that, the blockade or a resumption of military operations could take place. How chillingly close this is to those remarks of T. S. Eliot in the Four Quartets: “What we call the beginning is often the end/And to make and end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.” This war was a beginning, and an end, we never needed.
A small northern Ontario town refused radioactive waste. It’s gone to Sarnia instead
Decades-old mine tailings in Nipissing First Nation sparked outrage after the province tried to move the material to another community without consultation, but it has quietly moved them again
the Narwhal By Leah Borts-Kuperman (Local Journalism Initiative Reporter), May 6, 2026
Summary
- The Ontario government intended to move radioactive waste from the shore of Lake Nipissing to a former mine site outside Sudbury, Ont.
- A lack of consultation around the new location led to strong local opposition, and delayed the remediation project conducted by Nipissing First Nation.
- The waste has now been moved to a disposal site outside Sarnia, Ont., and Aamjiwnaang First Nation, where emissions from the industrial area known as Chemical Valley have affected local air quality.
For decades, radioactive waste sat near the shore of Lake Nipissing. It looked like an innocuous pile of gravel in what was otherwise a stretch of forest. People began using it to backfill lots, fill spaces under decks and build fire pits. In the 1970s and ’80s, Nipissing First Nation began using it to build roads.
It wasn’t normal gravel, though. It was mine tailings, containing the metal niobium, left there when the Nova Beaucage mine shuttered in 1956 after just seven months of operation.
“The company just walked away and left it with no remediation at all,” Geneviève Couchie, business operations manager at Nipissing First Nation, said. Couchie led a project to clean up the tailings, which first started in 2019. After being interrupted by COVID-19 shutdowns, the remediation resumed in spring 2024 and lasted almost two years.
In the meantime, Couchie told The Narwhal, she fielded concerns about groundwater and lake contamination from residents living close to the site or to a nearby property owned by Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation that also stored the low-level radioactive tailings. Couchie said she struggled to get satisfactory answers from government agencies.
“The workers wore hazmat suits, and I remember saying from the beginning, ‘How can I tell people they have nothing to worry about when these guys are in full on suits?’ They’re literally 20 feet from someone’s window,” Couchie said. The majority of the workers remediating the site were from the nation, and dressed in protective gear so as not to carry radioactive dust home on their clothes.
The plan was to load the waste into trucks to be transported to a tailings management area at Agnew Lake, in Sudbury District. It is the decommissioned site of a former mine, near the Township of Nairn and Hyman, and about 150 kilometres from Nipissing First Nation. The nation first had to excavate nearly 50,000 metric tonnes of the radioactive material — enough to build the Statue of Liberty, twice.
But the project faced another unexpected delay. The province had attempted to relocate the waste without consulting the Nairn community, sparking public outcry. Locals organized public meetings to raise awareness and ultimately stop the transfer.
Eventually, in July 2025 — after nearly a year of advocacy in Nairn, and delay for Nipissing First Nation — the province capitulated, finding another place for the waste to go. This was welcome news for Nipissing First Nation, which is now hoping to transform the scarred land into a lakeside green space for the community to enjoy after years of worry.
“We just wanted to see this material moved off [Nipissing First Nation] lands, and so it was an unexpected disappointment that things were delayed like they were,” Couchie said. “We were pleased that they did end up finding another disposal site.”
“But,” Couchie said, it was “eye opening as well, that there was only one other facility in Ontario that was prepared to accept this.”
That facility is close to another Indigenous community — Aamjiwnaang First Nation, in the Sarnia region, where emissions from refineries and petrochemical plants have earned the area the moniker “Chemical Valley.”
Sarnia facility accepting radioactive waste from Nipissing
The new destination for the radioactive tailings is Clean Harbors, a hazardous waste facility in Corunna, Ont. — 645 kilometres from its original dumping ground. It’s close to both Aamjiwnaang and Sarnia, which have experienced persistent air quality issues related to nearby industry.
Clean Harbors is the only government-licensed hazardous waste management complex in Ontario, and is “uniquely positioned,” its website reads, to offer safe disposal of naturally occurring radioactive material like the niobium tailings.
But the facility’s history is dotted with dust-ups over environmental safety. In 2013, neighbours of the Clean Harbors site won a civil lawsuit over the impact of the waste facility’s emissions on their health and daily lives.
In 2019 the company was fined $100,000 for discharging contaminated smoke after a filter cloth soaked with coolant, oils and metal particles caught fire.
When the province conducted a study on environmental stressors in the Sarnia area in 2023, it found that while the majority of the 870 reports from residents about industrial pollution were related to petrochemical industries and refineries, a significant minority — 219 — were “related to the waste incineration facility in the area (Clean Harbors).”
And in 2025, the Ministry of Environment fined Clean Harbors $100,000 for failing to comply with an equipment requirement for monitoring the excavation of a waste-holding basin.
Clean Harbors did not respond to The Narwhal’s questions about these claims and findings.
In a section of their 2025 annual report on legal, environmental and regulatory compliance risks, Clean Harbors asserted: “We are now, and may in the future be, a defendant in lawsuits brought by parties alleging environmental damage, personal injury and/or property damage, which may result in our payment of significant amounts.”
Aamjiwnaang First Nation Chief Janelle Nahmabin told The Narwhal she had not received any information about the niobium waste that was trucked to Clean Harbors nearly a year ago. Other environmental groups The Narwhal reached out to, including Climate Action Sarnia-Lambton, had not heard of this waste transfer, either.
“The plan now has been executed in a very different way,” said Brennain Lloyd, project coordinator at Northwatch, a northeastern Ontario environmental advocacy group. “It’s moving the waste into the territory of another First Nation that is already heavily impacted by all of the industrial activities.”
‘Under a real nuclear shadow’: radioactive waste in northern Ontario
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://thenarwhal.ca/northern-ontario-radioactive-waste-sarnia/
Korean A-Bomb Victims U.S. Speaking Tour & NPT Engagement Highlights
The Korean Atomic Bomb Victims U.S. Speaking Tour was successfully held from April 20 to May 2, 2026
First- and second-generation Korean atomic bomb survivors visited major cities across the United States in connection with the 11th Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), where they shared their long-overlooked experiences and called for an official apology and compensation for the 1945 atomic bombings. Through powerful testimonies, the speakers highlighted the reality that, although victims exist, responsibility has yet to be fully acknowledged. Their accounts underscored the ongoing, intergenerational suffering that has continued for more than 80 years since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
From April 20 to May 2, 2026, first- and second-generation Korean atomic bomb survivors carried out a nationwide speaking tour across the United States. Held in conjunction with the 11th NPT Review Conference, the tour brought long-overlooked histories of Korean victims into international nuclear discourse.
Throughout the tour, survivors raised international awareness about the more than 70,000 Korean victims of the atomic bombings—many of whose stories have remained largely unheard globally. They also emphasized that Korean survivors have neither disappeared from history nor remained silent, but have continuously struggled for recognition and redress.
The tour was jointly organized by SPARK (Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea), the International Organizing Committee of the A-Bomb Tribunal, and Korean atomic bomb victims. It brought renewed attention to the need for accountability, including an official apology and reparations from the United States for the historical injustice and prolonged suffering endured by Korean survivors.
As part of the program, the delegation visited major cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York, with events held at institutions such as San Francisco State University, California State University, Sacramento, UCLA, and CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice. They also engaged with local civil society organizations and Korean American communities in each city, delivering testimonies on the enduring impacts of nuclear violence and their lifelong efforts toward justice and compensation.
Through this speaking tour, the issue of Korean atomic bomb victims was brought more prominently to the attention of the international community, and significant support, interest, and participation were secured for the upcoming International People’s Tribunal. The success of the tour was made possible by the generous moral and material support of partners in each region, and in particular by the dedicated efforts of the members of the International Organizing Committee.
Building on this momentum, organizers called on global civil society to participate in the upcoming International People’s Tribunal on the 1945 Atomic Bombings (A-Bomb Tribunal), scheduled to be held in Seoul from November 13 to 15, 2026.
Selected photos from each event are included below. [on original]
Trump’s New Iran Negotiator Is Israel Lobbyist Who Denounced Negotiations With Iran
Max Blumenthal, May 5, 2026, https://thegrayzone.com/2026/05/05/trumps-iran-negotiator-israel-lobbyist/
Tapped to advise Steve Witkoff on Iran, Nick Stewart previously condemned dealing with any of Iran’s elected leaders. His presence consolidates military conflict as the Trump administration’s only option.
The latest addition to the Trump administration’s Iran negotiation team, Nick Stewart, has declared his absolute opposition to negotiating with the Islamic Republic of Iran. According to Stewart, “it’s important that we disabuse people of that notion” that anyone among Iran’s current leadership could serve as an “honest broker.”
Stewart aruged that even the reformist President Masoud Pezeshkian must be treated as an inveterate enemy because he is “a part of the theocratic, tyrannical, authoritarian government of Iran.” He insisted that Pezeshkian “is not a reformer and we shouldn’t buy into that narrative, because what it does is it throws us off our guard.”
Stewart made these comments while chairing a panel for the pro-war Vandenberg Coalition in Washington DC on October 4, 2024. He was seated beside Cameron Khansarinia, the Secretariat of self-proclaimed “Crown Prince” Reza Pahlavi, neoconservative ideologue and former Special Advisor for Iran Elliot Abrams, and Behnam Ben Taleblu, an operative at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).
At the time, Stewart functioned as FDD’s top Capitol Hill lobbyist.
When it was founded in 2001, FDD was named EMET, which is Hebrew for “truth.” The think tank described its mission as working to “enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations.”
In 2017, a top Israeli military-intelligence official cited FDD as a partner in a covert Israeli campaign to spy on Americans involved in Palestine solidarity activism. Under Trump, the outfit has dictated the administration’s Iran policy to the point that the White House plagiarized its justification for attacking Iran from a document posted on FDD’s website.
Stewart was reportedly selected by Jared Kushner to advise Steve Witkoff, a real estate mogul and Trump golf buddy who serves as the ironically titled Special Envoy for Peace Missions. Kushner Witkoff’s demonstrable ignorance of Iranian affairs, reflexive deference to Israel and crude profiteering helped inspire Iran’s rejection of the last round of negotiations. With Stewart on their team, it should be obvious to Tehran that there is no honest broker in Washington.
Yukon and Ontario and SMRs – Memorandum of Misunderstanding?
The Yukon public and their elected representatives may not fully understand the implications of introducing small modular nuclear reactors into their electricity mix.
The governments of Yukon and Ontario recently signed a partnership agreement to share Ontario’s expertise about energy development, which includes evaluation of small modular and micro-reactors. The Yukon wants to reduce reliance on diesel while meeting increasing electricity demand.
There are glaring problems with this memorandum of understanding.
First: the Ontario government cannot share what it doesn’t know. There has not been a single successful commercial SMR built worldwide. Construction of the much-touted Darlington New Nuclear Project in Ontario has barely begun.
Second: There is little private investment interest in this technology due to:
- the extraordinarily high cost ($7.7 billion for the first BWRX-300 SMR at Darlington),
- long timeline to completion (nuclear reactors have taken years longer than expected to build.)
- risks associated with accidents
Third: The Ontario public bears the full cost of building and maintaining Ontario’s reactors, remediating environmental damage, the costs of decommissioning reactors at their end of life, and management of the radioactive waste for which there is no feasible solution. Can Yukon afford this expensive electricity source?
Fourth: Nuclear reactors are notoriously unreliable; some are offline for long periods of time, like Point Lepreau in New Brunswick (which operated only 27% of the time in the 2024-2025 fiscal year), requiring diesel or gas backup to meet electricity demands.
The mainstream media is finally beginning to echo Americans’ outrage at Israeli slaughter
Over the past two years, Israel has lost the support of the American public and is now losing one of its last bulwarks in the political arena — prominent voices in the mainstream media.
By Philip Weiss April 29, 2026, https://mondoweiss.net/2026/04/the-mainstream-media-is-finally-beginning-to-echo-americans-outrage-at-israeli-slaughter/
The ‘Cronkite moment’ during the Vietnam War was the night in 1968 when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said the U.S. was stuck in a “stalemate” and that the only honorable path was to negotiate a withdrawal. President Johnson concluded that he’d lost Middle America and soon decided not to run for reelection.
Israel lost Middle America at least a year ago, according to opinion polls, and it is at last losing what is more important to its support, prominent mainstream voices, the Cronkites of our era.
On April 23, Geoff Bennett of the PBS NewsHour did the unthinkable. He sharply questioned the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. over Israel’s (wanton) killings of civilians and journalists in Lebanon.
“How many civilian deaths per Hezbollah target is acceptable? Is it five? Is it 10? Is it 300? Or is there no ceiling at all?” Bennet said.
And this, too: “What military objective is served by killing reporters?”
Ambassador Danny Danon did what any self-respecting spokesperson for Israel does in such a spot . . . he accused Geoff Bennett of antisemitism. He said the charges were a lie and a “blood libel.” But Bennett did what no broadcaster does, and fought back.
“I take issue with that, sir,” he said and cited Committee to Protect Journalists figures on 15 reporters and media workers killed in Lebanon.
The NewsHour surely anticipates criticism of Bennett’s refusal to accept Israeli propaganda (a sharp departure from the Dana Bashes and Jake Tappers of the world). So it has headlined the story, “Israel’s U.N. ambassador says IDF is the ‘most moral military in the world.’” Giving Danon a victory, though Danon is peeved.
Trump attacks Pope Leo again ahead of Marco Rubio’s Vatican visit
by Gerard O’Connell, May 5, 2026, https://www.americamagazine.org/vatican-dispatch/2026/05/05/trump-pope-leo-marco-rubio/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Trump%20attacks%20Pope%20Leo%20again%20ahead%20of%20Marco%20Rubio%20s%20Vatican%20visit&utm_campaign=Daily%205%205%2026
On the eve of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the Vatican on May 7—a visit widely seen in Rome as an attempt to restore more tranquil relations with the White House—President Donald J. Trump publicly attacked Pope Leo, alleging that “he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people” and falsely claiming yet again that for the pontiff, “it’s O.K. for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”
His latest attack came on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” when the host told the president, who is going to China on May 14-15, that he wanted the pope to talk about Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned Hong Kong Catholic businessman and democracy activist, and for Mr. Trump “to bring him home.” Mr. Trump responded: “The pope would rather talk about the fact that it’s O.K. for Iran to have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think that’s very good. I think he’s endangering a lot of Catholics and a lot of people, but I guess, if it’s up to the pope, he thinks it’s just fine for Iran to have a nuclear weapon.” Mr. Hewitt commented, “He’s from Chicago; he’s got to learn a few things.”
Before returning to Rome from Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday, Pope Leo responded to journalists about President Trump’s attack but without mentioning his name.
“The church’s mission is to preach the Gospel and peace. If anyone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let them do so,” the pope said.
“I have spoken about this from the very moment I was elected, and now we are nearing the anniversary. I said [then], “Peace be with you.”
“The church’s mission is to preach the Gospel, to preach peace,” he repeated.
“If anyone wants to criticize me for proclaiming the Gospel, let them do so with the truth,” he said. Then alluding to the fact that Trump had accused him of being in favor of Iran having nuclear weapons—a false charge—Pope Leo said: “For years, the church has spoken out against all nuclear weapons, so there is no doubt about that. And so I simply hope to be heard for the sake of the value of God’s words.”
For his part, Mr. Rubio downplayed the rift between President Trump and Pope Leo over Iran, saying that Mr. Trump’s recent criticisms were rooted in his opposition to Iran potentially obtaining a nuclear weapon, which he said could be used against millions of Catholics and other Christians. Mr. Rubio said the whole world should be opposed to that.
Mr. Trump “doesn’t understand why anybody—leave aside the pope, the president and I, for that matter—[I] think most people cannot understand why anyone would think that it’s a good idea for Iran to ever have a nuclear weapon,” Mr. Rubio told reporters at the White House.
President Trump openly denigrated Pope Leo for the first time on Truth Social shortly after the airing of a segment on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on the evening of April 12, which featured three American cardinals—Blase Cupich, Robert McElroy and Joseph Tobin—who came out strongly against the war by Israel and the United States against Iran, calling it ‘unjust.”
Mr. Trump did not strike out against the cardinals; instead, he publicly disparaged Leo, decrying the pope as “weak on crime” and “terrible on foreign policy.” His attack came hours before Leo set out on a visit to four African countries on the morning of April 13.
On the plane to Algeria, in response to journalists’ questions, Pope Leo said, “I have no fear neither of the Trump administration nor speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.”
On another occasion, Mr. Trump falsely accused Leo of being in favor of a nuclear-armed Iran, ignoring the fact that the American-born pope, like his predecessors, is for the total abolition of nuclear weapons. Pope Francis declared that not only is the use of nuclear arms immoral but also the possession of such weapons. Today, nine states have nuclear weapons: the United States, Russia, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel.
When President Trump threatened to wipe out the “whole civilization” of Iran, Pope Leo on April 7 denounced this threat against the Iranian people as “truly unacceptable” and called on the citizens of the countries involved in the war in Iran “to contact the authorities, political leaders, congressmen—to ask them, tell them, to work for peace and to reject war always.” Moreover, during his visit to Africa, he stated that he “cannot be in favor of war” and said he was not interested in engaging in a debate with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Rubio, a Catholic of Cuban descent, will be received by Pope Leo in a private audience on May 7. The Vatican confirmed this on May 4 and said the meeting would begin at 11:30 a.m. and end at noon. Mr. Rubio and Vice President JD Vance first met Leo on May 19, the day after the formal inauguration of the Petrine ministry of the first American pope. On that occasion, Mr. Vance handed the pope a letter from President Trump inviting him to visit the United States.
Mr. Rubio is the first high-level official from the Trump administration to meet the pope since that May 19 meeting, and there have been major differences between the Holy See and the U.S. administration on domestic and foreign policy issues since then, many of which the pope alluded to in his Jan. 9 speech to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See.
Those tensions are wide-ranging and extend from major differences over the Trump administration’s sidelining of multilateralism, its breaches of international law, the mass deportation of migrants, the gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the wars in the Middle East, the crisis between the Trump administration and the European Union over Ukraine and Iran and much else.
In addition, there is the quite extraordinary fact that President Trump has not spoken by phone with the pope since Leo’s election on May 8, 2025, almost exactly one year ago. But he has invited the pope’s brother Louis, whom the president described as “all MAGA,” to the White House. Moreover, he even claimed that then-Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected pope only because Donald J. Trump was president.
The billion-dollar boondoggle: how Vogtle became the US’s monument to nuclear folly
by Paul Hockenos, 29 Apr 2026, https://energytransition.org/2026/04/the-billion-dollar-boondoggle-how-vogtle-became-the-uss-monument-to-nuclear-folly/#more-30303
In the quiet scrubland of Waynesboro, Georgia, two enormous concrete domes rise from the landscape. Vogtle Units 3 and 4, the first new nuclear reactors built in the US in more than 30 years, were once touted as the rebirth of US American nuclear ambition. Instead, they have become a monument to mismanagement and cost overruns – conclusive evidence that nuclear power is a nonstarter. Paul Hockenos reports.
The story of Vogtle is a cautionary tale illustrating that nuclear power cannot be delivered cheaply, quickly and reliably in democratic societies with up-to-scratch regulatory systems. Time and again, from South Korea’s reactors at Shin Kori and Shin Wolsong to Finland’s Olkiluoto-3 and France’s Flamanville EPR, on-the-ground experience has proven otherwise. Vogtle belongs squarely in that lineage, but with a uniquely US American twist: the financial burden has been shifted almost entirely onto the backs of ordinary consumers.
A promise of renaissance
The Georgia Public Service Commission approved the project in 2009: two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors, at a cost of USD 14 billion in total, online by 2016 and 2017. Clean, reliable emissions-free baseload power – an answer to climate change that didn’t depend on fickle solar output or fossil gas.
But by the time the reactors finally limped into commercial service – Unit 3 in July 2023 and Unit 4 in April 2024 – the price tag had swollen to more than USD 36.8 billion, cementing Vogtle’s place as the most expensive power plant ever built in human history. Not even the notorious cost spirals of European nuclear megaprojects come close: Finland’s Olkiluoto-3 ballooned to €11 billion, meaning that Vogtle surpassed that threefold.
This is not simply a cost overrun but rather a systemic indictment of the nuclear construction model: slow, labour intensive, technologically rigid and utterly incompatible with modern energy economics.
Ratepayers foot the bill
The primary victims of this financial misadventure are Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers, many of whom were compelled to subsidize the reactors long before they produced a single kilowatt-hour of electricity. Thanks to a legislative instrument called Construction Work in Progress, households were effectively forced to act as involuntary venture capitalists, paying roughly USD 1,000 per household in advance charges.
Georgia Power collected USD 17 billion in profits during the construction period, while shareholder losses were capped at around USD 3 billion. Ratepayers, meanwhile, will carry billions in future costs for decades. This is why they pay the highest power bills in the US.
Now that the reactors are online, the financial pressure has only intensified. Residential electricity rates have jumped roughly 24 per cent, with new hikes expected. Analysts estimate that electricity from the new units is five times more expensive than equivalent capacity from solar plus battery storage – an astonishing figure in a region with some of the best solar potential in the US.
A cascade of failures
To understand how Vogtle spiralled into a USD-22-billion cost-overrun fiasco, one must examine the full sequence of missteps – a textbook example of how nuclear megaprojects fail globally.
One of the most consequential errors occurred before construction even began. Westinghouse launched the project without a completed reactor design, a mistake so fundamental it borders on negligence. This error echoed Europe’s nuclear struggles at Olkiluoto and Flamanville, where partially completed designs led to cascading construction problems. In 2017, Westinghouse – burdened by the Vogtle AP1000 debacle – filed for bankruptcy.
That collapse forced Vogtle’s owners to take over the direct management of the project, a role for which they were ill-prepared. What followed was a sprawling mess of renegotiated contracts and design revisions. Independent monitors documented that Georgia Power repeatedly provided ‘materially inaccurate cost estimates’, undermining any possibility of regulatory oversight. Nevertheless, the Public Service Commission allowed construction to continue and rejected its own staff’s recommendations to cancel the project – decisions that are costing Georgians billions.
Then came the workforce crisis. Because the US had not built a nuclear reactor in decades, the skilled labour pipeline had atrophied. Vogtle thus became a crash-course training ground for thousands of inexperienced workers. Attrition among electricians reached 50 per cent. Component failure rates hit 80 per cent at times, necessitating extensive and costly do-overs.
The result is damning: a project lost in its own complexity, burdened by the weight of an entire industry that had forgotten how to build what it claimed to champion.
What Georgia could have had instead
What makes Vogtle’s story especially tragic is not merely what Georgians must now pay, but what they could have had. The nearly USD 37 billion could have financed a diversified portfolio of renewable energy: solar farms, battery storage and energy efficiency upgrades that would have delivered more capacity at lower cost and in far less time.
Renewable energy has evolved into something antithetical to nuclear power: decentralized, modular and increasingly affordable systems that can be scaled rapidly without the all-or-nothing risks of nuclear megaprojects. Just about everywhere in the world, solar and wind are being installed in record volumes precisely because they are nimble, predictable and financially transparent. Nuclear, by contrast, requires vast upfront capital, long construction timelines and political intervention to remain viable.
Georgia, with its abundant sunshine and growing distributed-energy ecosystem, could have led the US South into a new era of affordable clean power. Instead, its utility regulators locked the state into a nuclear future that its customers regret.
The lessons of Vogtle
Vogtle Units 3 and 4 were marketed as a blueprint for America’s nuclear future. In reality, they have demonstrated that the economics of traditional nuclear construction in the US are fundamentally broken. Not broken at the margins, but broken at the core – structurally, financially and technologically.
This project, like so many others, depended not on engineering brilliance but on regulatory leniency, optimistic accounting and public subsidy. Its failures are not the product of unfortunate circumstance, but of a model that no longer fits the realities of modern energy infrastructure.
The legacy of Vogtle is thus a warning to policymakers, regulators and utility executives: nuclear power, in its large-scale conventional form, cannot compete in the contemporary energy economy – not on cost, not on time and not without burdening the very people it claims to serve.
For ratepayers, Vogtle is a generational misfortune. For the nuclear industry, it is another nail in the coffin of the ‘renaissance’ that never arrives. And for everyone concerned about climate change, it is a reminder that the clean energy transition cannot afford fantasies, wishful thinking or vanity megaprojects.
One would think the lessons of Vogtle incontrovertible. But in May 2024, the Biden administration’s energy secretary Jennifer Granholm attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the recently connected units. Her conclusions were very different: she predicted that 198 more such large-scale reactors will join the Vogtle units, which she considered a success story.
What Georgia has built is not a triumph of American ingenuity but rather a fraud that should speak the final word on nuclear power in the US.
Sachs on U.S. Power in Freefall: “The Most Dangerous Country in the World”
May 4, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/05/04/sachs-on-u-s-power-in-freefall-the-most-dangerous-country-in-the-world/
The global economy is no longer wobbling — it’s splintering. In a sweeping, unsparing conversation, economist Jeffrey Sachs describes a world pushed to the edge by Washington’s wars with Iran and Russia, its economic confrontation with China, and its attempt to reassert dominance across the Western Hemisphere. The pillars that held the global system together for decades — stable trade routes, energy flows, technological exchange, and financial integration — are being weaponized or dismantled outright. Europe, Sachs argues, has “cut itself off from its main natural resource provider” and is now “completely adrift economically,” while Asia accelerates toward deeper integration and long‑term advantage. The United States, meanwhile, is “irrational, poorly led, and desperate to keep control over what it no longer controls,” creating a world that is both fragmented and profoundly unstable.
The global economy is entering a period of rupture, not turbulence. That is the central warning from economist Jeffrey Sachs, who argues that Washington’s simultaneous confrontations with Iran, Russia, and China — combined with its efforts to dominate the Western Hemisphere — have pushed the international system to a breaking point. What once looked like temporary disruptions now resemble structural fractures.
Sachs begins with the U.S.–China relationship, which he says is “never going to be what it was 10 years ago,” noting that the era of “dynamic… mutual investments in both directions” is over. The same is true for Europe’s ties to Russia, which he describes as “damaged perhaps to the point of no return in our generation.” These ruptures are not cyclical; they are foundational.
A Fragmented World Takes Shape
According to Sachs, the world is reorganizing into regional blocs because long‑distance trade has become too risky. Asia is deepening its internal economic ties, Africa is likely to follow, and Europe — having severed its energy lifeline to Russia — is “completely adrift economically.” The continent, he argues, is now dependent on an “unstable, nasty and disdainful United States,” a strategic position that leaves it weaker than at any point since the end of World War II.
These shifts are not abstract. They are already reshaping global markets, supply chains, and political alignments. And Sachs warns that the situation could deteriorate rapidly if the United States “resumes the war with Iran,” a scenario he puts at “50% or higher,” with “devastating” consequences for the global economy.
Washington’s New Economic Doctrine: Hegemony First
Sachs traces the current crisis to a profound shift in U.S. thinking. For decades, economics was understood as a tool for mutual benefit — a view rooted in classical ideas about open trade. But as China rose and the U.S. share of global output declined, Washington’s foreign‑policy establishment reframed economics as an instrument of geopolitical control.
He describes how “international relations people… view the world not as win‑win but as win‑lose,” and how economic policy has been reoriented toward “preserving American hegemony.” This shift, he argues, has produced a 20‑year campaign to weaponize trade, technology, and finance — from semiconductor restrictions to sanctions to the freezing of sovereign assets.
The result is a world in which the basic scaffolding of globalization is being dismantled. Sachs rejects the claim that globalization “failed,” insisting instead that it “provided the basis for worldwide economic progress,” especially in developing economies. What failed, he says, was Washington’s expectation that it could remain permanently dominant.
Europe’s Strategic Blindness
Europe, in Sachs’s view, is the biggest loser in this new order. He argues that the continent “played along completely with the U.S.” in severing ties with Russia, despite decades of American pressure to prevent closer German‑Russian integration.
The result is a self‑inflicted wound: shuttered industries, soaring energy costs, and a political class that “bought into a completely failed economic and geopolitical strategy.” Sachs sees no path to recovery until Europe produces new leadership capable of recognizing geographic and economic realities.
The Return of Blockades and Piracy
One of the most alarming trends Sachs identifies is the resurgence of maritime coercion. He notes that Trump recently boasted that the U.S. is “essentially pirates now,” a statement that aligns with years of tanker seizures, sanctions‑driven blockades, and naval pressure campaigns.
Sachs calls this “shocking,” pointing out that freedom of navigation has been a bedrock principle of international order. He warns that if Europe participates in efforts to “contain” Russian shipping, “there will be war between Europe and Russia and Europe will be devastated.”
The United States, he argues, lacks both the naval capacity and the geopolitical support to sustain blockades against major powers. China, in particular, now possesses a “formidable navy” and a rapidly advancing military that makes U.S. dominance in Asia increasingly untenable.
A Dangerous Gap Between Ambition and Reality
Sachs’s most sobering claim is that the United States has become “the most dangerous country in the world” — not because of its strength, but because of the widening gap between its ambitions and its actual capabilities.
He describes a political class that is “irrational, very poorly led, rather desperate to keep control over what it no longer controls,” and a public that overwhelmingly believes the country is on the wrong track.
The danger, he argues, lies in the attempt to enforce global dominance through military and economic coercion at a moment when the U.S. lacks the power to achieve those aims. This mismatch creates instability, escalation risks, and the potential for catastrophic miscalculation.
Asia Ascendant
In contrast, Sachs sees Asia — particularly China — as the likely long‑term winner of the global realignment. Regional integration is accelerating, technological capacity is expanding, and the U.S. has limited leverage to disrupt these trends. “The closer one gets to Asia,” he says, “the less relevant the United States becomes.”
A World in Transition
The picture Sachs paints is stark: a fragmented world, a declining West, and a United States whose pursuit of hegemony is destabilizing the very system it once built. Whether the coming years bring a managed transition or a series of crises may depend on whether Washington can accept a multipolar world — or whether it continues to fight a losing battle to preserve the unipolar moment.
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of the week– Nuclear Reactor Information Task Force
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