Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash
SCHEERPOST, April 26, 2026
Kevin Heath had hoped there would be solar panels by now on his family farm in southeastern Michigan, roughly 50 miles outside Detroit.
About six years ago, he agreed to lease part of his land for a solar project. It would help him pay off debt and keep the farm in the family, he said. But the opportunity was thwarted when, in 2023, following pushback from some local residents, his township passed an ordinance that banned large solar projects from land zoned for agriculture.
In the fight over solar development, Heath said he was bombarded by just about every argument from critics — including claims that solar fields are a health hazard. “I’ve heard them say that, but I’ve never heard anybody prove that,” Heath said.
“The health and safety issue,” he added, “that is just a joke.”
Michigan has big prospects in solar farming — measured by the expected growth in the capacity of its farms to add electricity directly to the grid. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, most of the nation’s new capacity from this type of solar farm is planned this year for four states, including Michigan. The others, with their hot deserts and big-sky plains, seem more obvious: Texas, Arizona and California.
To some, in Michigan and beyond, this growth feels dangerous. They pressure public officials to stop, stall or otherwise complicate new solar projects with an array of arguments that now go beyond just land use to include public health.
There is little reputable evidence to back their claims. But health concerns have helped power a solar backlash that undercuts efforts to broaden energy sources even as customer costs are rising.
Restrictions on solar development are proliferating nationwide, “often rooted in misinformation or unfounded fears,” including ones that involve “potential environmental and human safety risks,” according to an article published late last year in the Brigham Young University Law Review.
To generate electricity, solar projects harvest energy from the sun. “And that’s really not that different from what a field of corn or alfalfa does,” said Troy Rule, the Arizona State University law professor who authored the article. “In fact, arguably, it’s even more environmentally friendly.”
Still, a state board in Ohio rejected an application for a solar project last month, citing local opposition, even though its staff initially said it met all requirements. Along with other concerns, according to the board, opponents “testified about the potential impacts on the health of residents.”
A bill in Missouri would halt commercial solar projects in the state, including those under construction, through at least 2027, as a state agency develops new regulations. The bill’s emergency clause says this is “deemed necessary for the immediate preservation of the public health, welfare, peace, and safety.”
And, on the eastern edge of Michigan, St. Clair County adopted a novel public health regulation last year that set limits on solar development and battery storage. The move was encouraged by the county’s medical director who, in a memo, warned of the threat of noise, visual pollution and potential sources of contamination. Some local residents have long pressed leaders to act, saying that intrusive noise could worsen post-traumatic stress disorder and other ailments.
Public officials don’t always examine the validity of health claims, according to Rule. And local deliberations rarely compare the impact of solar farms to common agricultural practices, which can lead to runoff from fertilizers and herbicides, for example, or waste lagoons from concentrated animal feeding operations.
People have many reasons for taking issue with large-scale solar development, said Michael Gerrard, an environmental lawyer and founder of Columbia University’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law. But as for the feared health impact, he said, “there’s no basis for that.”
“People try to come up with a rationale to justify their dislike of things they dislike for other reasons,” Gerrard added.
President Donald Trump’s administration, meanwhile, is adding to the skepticism that renewable energy is worthwhile. Among other moves, it’s phasing out federal tax credits for the solar and wind industries.
It all takes a toll on the effort to build out solar infrastructure. Last year, new solar installations in the U.S. dropped by 14%.
Fear vs. Science
Large solar developments can transform hundreds, or even thousands, of acres of rural land, paneling them with crystalline silicon and tempered glass.
It’s a big change, and people have questions.
Locals worry that electromagnetism and even glare can pose a health risk. They wonder if toxic materials could leach into the soil and contaminate groundwater, if not while the solar site is operational, then some decades in the future, when it reaches the end of its life. That certainly has been the case with orphaned oil wells, which also were built with promises of safety.
But researchers point out that the most common types of panels have only small amounts of such materials, if any. They are encased and unlikely to leach into the soil. Rather than sitting in landfills when a site is decommissioned, most of the materials used in solar panels can be recycled (though the process can be costly).
Craig Adair, vice president of development at Open Road Renewables, which has pursued renewable energy projects in several states, has fielded a range of concerns over the years — from how soil could be contaminated to the possibility of electromagnetic fields causing cancer.
“Those questions, in just about every case, have an answer,” Adair said. “There is rigorous academic study, and there are examples of projects that have been operating.”
While the future farmability of the land is often a concern, many researchers — and farmers — say that a solar lease will help preserve it.
With proper planning on the front end, equipment can be removed from a decommissioned solar site and green space restored, said Steve Kalland, executive director of the NC Clean Energy Technology Center, which, along with its partners, provides technical assistance to local governments in the Carolinas.
And a person’s exposure to the electromagnetic field, or EMF, from a solar farm is roughly the same as what they would encounter from ordinary household appliances, according to researchers. EMF levels also decrease rapidly with distance.
Chronic exposure to noise is also a recurring complaint from critics. In challenging a proposed project from Adair’s company in Morrow County, Ohio, one woman said in a brief to the state siting board that she was troubled about how noise from the facility might affect people with neurological noise sensitivities, including her daughter………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Intense Battles in Michigan
In Michigan’s St. Clair County, it isn’t just a number of residents who are worried about large solar facilities. The Health Department’s medical director echoed their concerns.
In two memos to other county officials, Dr. Remington Nevin said that large solar sites are a public health risk for the area’s predominantly rural residents. The state’s solar standards, he wrote, weren’t enough to protect them from “environmental health hazards, the spread of sources of contamination, nuisance potentially injurious to the public health, health problems, and other conditions or practices which could reasonably be expected to cause disease.”
Any detectable tonal noise, he added, must be considered an unreasonable threat to public health. He recommended new regulations.
The county administrator at the time, Karry Hepting, noted that Nevin’s initial memo “does not address the question or provide support for what are the potential health/environmental risks,” according to internal emails provided to ProPublica. “It appears we will need to hire an outside expert to get the level of detail and supporting data necessary to consider potential next steps,” she added. Hepting said that she’d begun researching prospects.
But County Commissioner Steven Simasko — now the county board’s chair — wrote in an internal email that he accepted Nevin’s medical opinion “as a good standard for the protection of the public health of our citizens” and disagreed with the need for outside input.
Simasko told ProPublica in an email that he believed it wasn’t the role of the administrator to get involved in a public health matter, and that he objected “to essentially paying for a second public health medical opinion” more to Hepting’s liking.
Hepting, who has since retired from her post at the county, disputed Simasko’s depiction of her motivations in a message to ProPublica. “Nothing could be farther from the truth,” she wrote. “It had nothing to do with shopping for a different opinion. Mr. Nevin’s initial memo did not address the initial question posed by the Board. It did not state what the health risks were and what negative health impacts exist. It basically said it’s a risk because he said so.”
To legally justify the adoption of health regulations, Nevin said in his second memo, it wasn’t necessary for his department “to prove, with a precise scientific or medical rationale, that eligible facilities pose an unreasonable threat to the public’s health.” Instead, expert opinion, public comment and the consent of the local government were reason enough, he wrote.
In the end, county officials were persuaded to act. The commissioners approved the Health Department’s new policy for solar energy and battery facilities, including a nonrefundable $25,000 fee to cover the cost of reviewing a proposed project. It also said that policy violations were punishable by up to six months in prison.
An electric utility promptly sued, and a solar company joined the case. The Health Department, they argued, has no authority to issue what are, in effect, zoning regulations. What’s more, they said in legal filings, the county can’t override the solar standards established by the state………………………………………………..
Solar capacity in Michigan continues to grow, despite local pushback, but so far, only 2.55% of the state’s electricity comes from solar. In Ohio, it’s nearly 6%, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. In Texas, it’s nearly 11%. Michigan is requiring electricity providers to reach an 80% clean energy portfolio by 2035, and 100% by 2040.
Michigan has more local restrictions on renewable energy than any other state, according to the Sabin Center. “Practically nowhere in the country has seen more conflict” about where to allow large solar farms that add electricity directly to the grid than rural Michigan, according to a 2024 article in the Case Western Reserve Law Review authored by a Sabin Center senior fellow………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/26/unfounded-health-concerns-are-powering-a-solar-backlash/
Why Expanded Plutonium Pit Production is Wrong.
30 April 26, https://nukewatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Primer-Pit-Production-is-Wrong.pdf
The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is aggressively expanding the production of plutonium pits, the radioactive cores or “triggers” of nuclear weapons. Their production has been the choke point of resumed industrial-scale U.S. nuclear weapons production ever since a 1989 FBI raid investigating environmental crimes shut down the Rocky Flats Plant near Denver.
In 1996 production was transferred back to the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico, but capped at no more than 20 pits per year. In 2018 NNSA declared it would produce at least 30 pits per year at LANL and 50 per year at the Savannah River Site (SRS) in South Carolina. NNSA now plans to produce up to 205 pits every year for the new arms race.
| Expanded plutonium pit bomb core production is wrong because: |
| • No future production is to maintain the safety and reliability of the existing, tested stockpile. New pits are for new nuclear weapons designs, specifically the W87-1 ICBM and the W93 sub-launched warheads. New designs can’t be tested under the global testing moratorium, thereby perhaps degrading stockpile confidence. Or the U.S. could resume testing, after which other countries would surely follow. • There are existing, lasting pits. An expert 2006 study showed most pit types have minimum lives over 100 years and those that don’t have clear fixes. A 2012 study reaffirmed that. Pits are now around 43 years old. More than 15,000 existing pits are already stored at NNSA’s Pantex Plant near Amarillo, TX. • Pit production is NNSA’s most expensive program ever, with $5 billion to be spent over each of the next six years and at least $60 billion over the next 20 years. However, the independent Government Accountability Office has repeatedly found that NNSA has no credible cost estimates. • The rad waste problem: The New Mexico Environment Department (NMED) is demanding that DOE prioritize LANL’s Cold War wastes for disposal at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico instead of new plutonium pit bomb wastes. NMED is also requiring DOE to look for a new out-of-state dump. In short, there is no certain path for the safe disposal of future radioactive bomb wastes. • LANL’s existing limited pit production capability should be sufficient should stockpile problems arise in the future. It should not be expanded. Pit production at SRS should be vigorously opposed because it could be scaled up way beyond LANL for the new nuclear arms race. In addition, DOE is legally required to remove plutonium from South Carolina, not add plutonium because of pit production • LANL’s pit production facility is outdated and unsafe: Known as “PF-4,” it is 48 years old, not designed for mass production, and has a long history of nuclear safety infractions. Moreover, DOE is “deferring” comprehensive cleanup at the Lab until pit production is done (which in effect means never). • DOE ordered a “special assessment” of NNSA’s troubled pit production program scheduled for completion in mid-December 2025. It is being covered up and should be immediately released. • Planned plutonium pit production for the next 50 years violates the 1970 NonProliferation Treaty’s requirement for nuclear weapons states to enter into negotiations leading to disarmament. • NNSA illegally pursued expanded pit production without completing required National Environmental Policy Act review. However, it is being forced to do so by co-plaintiffs’ (including NukeWatch) successful lawsuit. Hearings for a draft Pit Production Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement are being held this May. We strongly encourage concerned citizens to fully participate. |
State Dept. spills the beans…’Bibi made Trump do it’
“the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally”
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL, 28 Apr 26
Apparently, State Dept. legal advisor Reed Rubinstein didn’t get Trump’s memo to erase Israel’s major involvement in Trump’s failed war on Iran.
It’s bad enough the war is a complete failure, accomplishing none of Trump’s objectives while precipitating global economic decline. If stopped today, it would take months to fully restore the economic calamity engulfing the world. Further delay, currently conducted by Trump desperately seeking an off ramp, spells economic catastrophe.
As horrendous as Trump’s war is, it wasn’t even his idea. Trump was simply following orders from his real boss, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. On February 11, Netanyahu arrived at the White House with Mossad Director David Barnea. They encouraged if not demanded invasion. The Netanyahu-Barnea tag team argued Iran would collapse within a couple of days from a combination of assassinating Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei, massive bombing, Mossad-fomented civil unrest and ground incursions by Kurdish fighters. Not surprisingly, the opposite occurred. The Iranian people rallied around their government in as existential battel to the death. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz choking off a fifth of world oil supply and inflicted massive damage on Israel and US Gulf States bases with thousands of missiles. The Netanyahu-Barnea presentation was a blizzard of lies Trump swallowed whole in spite of Intelligence assessments to the contrary.
Trump blundered into the biggest military disaster in America’s 250 years. But he refuses to tell the truth Netanyahu made him do it because he must maintain the fiction the war is necessary to protect the Homeland from an imaginary Iranian nuke fired from an imaginary Iranian ICBM. Gifting Netanyahu with a favor to obliterate his arch enemy Iran is not in the US rulebook for allowing 13 US servicepersons killed and over 400 injured in furtherance of a lost war.
Of course anyone following the war knows the sordid truth. Under pressure Trump blatantly lied: “Israel never talked me into the war with Iran. The results of Oct. 7th, added to my lifelong opinion that IRAN CAN NEVER HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I watch and read the FAKE NEWS Pundits and Polls in total disbelief. 90% of what they say are lies and made up stories, and the polls are rigged, much as the 2020 Presidential Election was rigged.”
But Rubenstein punctured that fiction with this public statement: “As the United States has explained in multiple letters to the UN Security Council, including most recently on March 10, the United States is engaged in this conflict at the request of and in the collective self-defense of its Israeli ally as well as in the exercise of the United States’ own inherent right of self-defense,”
Good grief. Trump launched a failed criminal war blowing up the world economy because he had to enable an ally rid itself of an imaginary threat. Trump forgot Diplomacy 101 which teaches Allies don’t let allies launch criminal wars, much less take the lead in that murder and mayhem.
Reining In The Pentagon – Can the Military-Industrial Beast Be Tamed?
On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump pledged to drive the “war profiteers” and “war mongers” from Washington, suggesting that they like wars because “missiles cost $2 million each,” while bragging that, in his first term in office, “I had no wars.”
the Golden Dome concept is so delusional that it barely merits a detailed critique
Another reason AI-driven weapons may not be as cheap as advertised is that Luckey, Thiel, and their merry band of unhinged techno-optimists want to eliminate virtually any oversight of their activities.
we really don’t need ever more new weaponry that kills even faster. We need to stop the killing
William D. Hartung, SCHEERPOST, April 28, 2026
Right at this moment, we are witnessing an unprecedented shift of resources from domestic investments in the United States to the military-industrial complex (aka the war machine). The only comparable period in our history was the buildup to World War II, when the United States confronted a powerful adversary in Nazi Germany with designs to control not just Europe, but the world. The current buildup is breathtaking in scope and will certainly prove devastating in its impact — not just on this country’s foreign and domestic policies but also on the economic prospects of average Americans.
When, in 2023, my colleague Ben Freeman and I first conceived of our book, The Trillion Dollar War Machine, we viewed it in part as a cautionary tale about just how high the Pentagon budget might rise in the years to come (absent pushback from Congress and the taxpaying public). By the time our book came out in November 2025, however, the Pentagon budget had already topped the $1 trillion mark and, only recently, President Trump has proposed to instantly add another $500 billion to that already staggering figure and to do so in a single year’s time. And imagine this: such a proposed increase alone is higher than the total military budget of any other nation on Earth. Mind you, the current high levels of spending have already underwritten a provocative, unnecessary intervention in Venezuela and a region-wide war in the Middle East, and the larger costs of all this in human lives and damage to the global economy are guaranteed to shape the lives of the rest of us globally for years to come.
To add insult to injury, the Pentagon announced that it would seek a $200 billion supplemental appropriation to pay for its war on Iran, which has spread across the Middle East. That $200 billion would have been in addition to the $1.5 billion proposed for the Pentagon’s future budget. According to an analysis by Pentagon budget expert Stephen Semler, the Iran war, which started on February 28th with Israeli and U.S. air strikes on that country, cost the United States more than $28 billion just in its first two weeks. And to put that in perspective, $28 billion is more than three times the Trump administration’s proposed annual budgets for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Protection Agency (at a time when the climate crisis and the need to head off future pandemics are essential to the health and security of all Americans). Worse yet, it’s all for a completely senseless war that should never have been started.
As President Trump alternates between engaging in negotiations to end the war and threatening to wipe Iran off the map — or even just walking away to bomb another day — there are reports that the supplemental budget request to pay for the war on Iran will shrink from the proposed $200 billion to $98 billion. And that $98 billion will include other things in addition to war costs, including disaster relief and aviation modernization.
The Garrison State and the Reign of the War Profiteers
On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump pledged to drive the “war profiteers” and “war mongers” from Washington, suggesting that they like wars because “missiles cost $2 million each,” while bragging that, in his first term in office, “I had no wars.”
And his rhetoric as the ultimate champion of peace has continued during his second term, even as he has indeed launched reckless wars guaranteed to fill the coffers of the “war profiteers” he railed against on the campaign trail. He has, however, also pledged to help the weapons industry quadruple production of the same sort of “$2 million bombs” he decried during the campaign, plus — even better for the arms makers — missile interceptors that cost up to $12 million each. Worse yet, the demands of the current war on Iran, coupled with support for Israel’s war on Gaza and Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself from Russia, have left the Pentagon and the giant weapons corporations complaining that, if the U.S. doesn’t radically increase its production of artillery shells, bombs, and missiles, the cupboard could soon be bare.
Of course, filling that cupboard again to the tune of staggering sums of money is exactly the wrong solution. The answer to the current munitions shortage is not to further supersize this country’s arms manufacturing base, but to refrain from supplying the weapons used by Israel to commit genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing in Lebanon, or to fuel unjustified wars like the current conflict with Iran. The best policy to prevent such stocks of military equipment from running low would, of course, be a more discriminating approach to military aid and a more restrained approach to U.S. foreign policy and war-making (writ large).
Washington should, in fact, put diplomacy first and only engage in military action if there is a genuine threat to the United States itself. We need a smarter policy toward military procurement and military strategy, not the garrison state with its “military-industrial complex” that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us against more than six decades ago.
In addition, of course, the Pentagon needs to shift its procurement strategy toward producing more reliable weapons at a more reasonable cost, while avoiding unnecessary complexity so that they can be made more rapidly and spend more time ready to be used and less time down for maintenance. Such a formula was a watchword of the bipartisan congressional military reform caucus of the 1980s, which at one point included more than 100 members of Congress and helped roll back the extremes of the military buildup launched by President Ronald Reagan.
The Diminishing Economic Returns of Pentagon Spending
In a detailed forthcoming study for the Transition Security Project and in her own writings, investigative journalist Taylor Barnes of Inkstick Media has charted the diminishing returns from Pentagon spending. Despite a soaring Pentagon budget, direct jobs in arms production are now one-third of what they were 30 years ago, down from three million then to 1.1 million now, according to the arms industry’s own trade association. Unionization rates in the arms production sector are also down sharply, with some big weapons firms like Northrop Grumman having unionization rates of less than 10%. In keeping with that trend, Lockheed Martin moved the production of its F-16 fighter — a staple of foreign arms exports — to the anti-union state of South Carolina.
Even worse, many states provide special tax breaks and other subsidies to attract or keep weapons factories — and that’s on top of the hundreds of billions the industry receives in federal tax dollars. In Utah, the state government staunchly refused to reveal how many jobs Northrop Grumman had promised in return for state subsidies, with one official claiming it would “compromise” the interests of the company to do so. Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman’s work on the Sentinel, the newest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), has been a poster child for dysfunctional weapons development, with the estimated cost of the program as a whole growing by 81% in just a few years. Part of the problem was that Northrop Grumman somehow managed to ignore the fact that its new missile would be too large to fit in existing silos, creating the need for further costly new construction efforts.
The spending of scarce tax revenues goes to ICBMs that former Secretary of Defense William Perry once labeled “one of the most dangerous weapons we have.” After all, a president might literally have only minutes to decide whether to launch them on being warned of a potential enemy attack, greatly increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war prompted by a false alarm. And there have been many false alarms and nuclear accidents in the nuclear age (even if not yet an actual nuclear attack loosed on the world), as meticulously documented in Eric Schlosser’s essential book Command and Control.
Then there’s the Golden Dome missile “defense” system, a fantasy of President Trump’s that, in reality, could never provide the promised “leakproof” protection against weaponry ranging from ICBMs and hypersonic missiles to low-flying drones. By now, more than 40 years after President Ronald Reagan promised a perfect defense against ICBMs in his 1983 “Star Wars” speech, it should be all too obvious that such a leakproof shield is physically impossible, since enemy ICBMs with nuclear warheads would come in at 15,000 — and no, that is not a misprint! — miles per hour and could be surrounded by large numbers of decoy balloons that would be indistinguishable from a warhead when floating in space. There could be hundreds of such incoming warheads in a full-scale nuclear attack. To even have a chance of intercepting all of them, a defensive system would have to devote as many as 1,600 interceptors to take down incoming missiles. An analysis by the conservative American Enterprise Institute estimates that a full-blown effort to build a comprehensive Golden Dome shield could cost $3.6 trillion just to construct.
In fact, the Golden Dome concept is so delusional that it barely merits a detailed critique, though many such analyses are available. A more reasonable way to deal with it would, of course, be ridicule.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Another reason AI-driven weapons may not be as cheap as advertised is that Luckey, Thiel, and their merry band of unhinged techno-optimists want to eliminate virtually any oversight of their activities, whether through independent testing of their new systems or measures to prevent price gouging by unscrupulous contractors. At present, the motto of the military tech sector is “trust me.” I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to have someone minding the store, so that the tech billionaires don’t simply rob us blind.
Of course, what would it mean if Silicon Valley could deliver cheaper, more deadly advanced weaponry? After all, artificial intelligence systems were indeed used in recent times to accelerate targeting during Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza, and they have been used in President Trump’s disastrous assault on Iran. And neither of those situations has yet had a happy ending. But that’s the point. The truth is we really don’t need ever more new weaponry that kills even faster. We need to stop the killing. And that means blunting the political influence of the warmongers and war profiteers that Donald Trump criticized on the campaign trail in 2024 and then so warmly embraced as president.
And to put all of this in grim perspective, he is now presiding over perhaps the most corrupt, incompetent, repressive regime in the history of this republic. And worse yet, some of his most dismal policies — like unstinting support for Israeli aggression — have, sadly enough, had bipartisan backing in Washington. In short, he has taken what were already some of the worst American policies and accelerated them, even as he destroys positive aspects of the government like the U.S. Agency for International Development’s provision of food, clean water, and public health services abroad or any further engagement in constructive international institutions.
Among other things, he is now narrowing America’s foreign policy options by dismantling civilian tools of statecraft, while doubling down on military approaches that haven’t “won” a war in this century (or the second half of the last one either). Meanwhile, the economic damage and humanitarian costs are spreading globally, including to his own supporters.
The challenge now is to build a movement that not only turns back Trump’s policies, but gets at the underlying economic, political, and cultural forces that have kept the United States in a permanent state of war for so long, while robbing us of opportunities to build a better, more peaceful, tolerant, and just future. Given the pace of destruction and chaos being visited upon us, it’s important to act now and continue to do so until we build enough power to rein in the war machine and begin creating actual structures of peace. https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/28/reining-in-the-pentagon-2/
Genocide—and Complicity: Washington Insider Says the Word They Avoid
April 29, 2026 , Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/29/genocide-and-complicity-washington-insider-says-the-word-they-avoid/
Former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman has delivered a rare rupture in official Washington’s script: accusing Israel of carrying out a genocide in Gaza—and acknowledging that the United States is not a bystander, but a participant in its outcome.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Sherman pointed directly to the policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, arguing they have driven the devastation in Gaza while fueling wider instability across the Middle East. This is not the language of ambiguity or “both sides”—it is an indictment from within the establishment itself.
More damning still, Sherman underscored the uncomfortable truth at the heart of U.S. foreign policy: Washington’s actions are inseparable from its alliance with Israel. That relationship, she suggested, is no longer politically or morally sustainable without serious reassessment.
Her comments carry unusual weight. Sherman is not an outsider—she helped shape U.S. diplomacy at the highest levels. And her warning comes as global outrage grows over the scale of destruction in Gaza and the mounting civilian toll.
According to Gaza health authorities, at least 817 Palestinians have been killed and 2,296 wounded in reported Israeli violations of a ceasefire agreement since it took effect—figures that continue to climb as the violence grinds on.
International pressure is now building to force a reckoning: calls are intensifying to condition U.S. support for Israel on adherence to international law. The question is no longer whether the world is watching—it’s whether Washington will finally be forced to see what it has helped make possible.
In the full interview, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman—no outsider, but a career diplomat and reliable mouthpiece of empire—did not arrive at the word lightly. She is not a campus protester, not an antiwar dissident, not someone who has challenged the foundations of U.S. power. She is a lifelong architect and defender of it. That is precisely what makes her admission so jarring: Israel, she said, has “in essence created a genocide in Gaza,” and the United States helped pave the road that made it possible.
Let’s be clear—this is not an endorsement of Sherman’s worldview. She has spent decades advancing the very system now producing this devastation. But when even a figure so deeply embedded in that machinery begins to name what is happening, it signals something deeper than dissent—it signals rupture.
This is the moral collapse Washington keeps trying to launder as strategy. Gaza has been demolished, civilians slaughtered, hospitals and homes reduced to rubble, and still the political class hides behind euphemism while the dead pile up faster than the truth can be spoken. Sherman’s words matter not because she stands outside power, but because she doesn’t. They expose what official Washington already knows and refuses to confront: this is not an accident, not collateral damage, not a tragic excess of war. It is the destruction of a people—enabled, armed, and excused by the United States.
When a figure like that uses the word “genocide,” it punctures the careful language Washington relies on to avoid accountability. But it also reveals the limits of insider critique: naming the crime without challenging the structure that enables it. Her words expose a truth the political class already understands—that U.S. power is deeply entangled in this devastation—yet still stops short of confronting what that means. And that is the real indictment: not just what has been done, but how fully it has been absorbed into the logic of empire itself.
US NRC Approves 20-Year Lifetime Extensions For St. Lucie Nuclear Plants
Units 1 and 2 at Florida’s two-unit St. Lucie nuclear power station will
now be able to operate until 2056 and 2063 respectively following a 20-year
lifetime extension by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Plant
operator Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), confirmed that its subsequent
licence renewal application made in 2021 had received the green light from
the NRC. The St. Lucie renewals follow the renewal of FPL’s two-unit
Turkey Point nuclear plant, also in Florida, in 2024.
Nucnet 30th April 2026, https://www.nucnet.org/news/us-nrc-approves-20-year-lifetime-extensions-for-st-lucie-nuclear-plants-4-4-2026
What are Palantir’s 22 points?
Palantir’s 22 points summarize CEO Alex Karp’s vision for the 21st century, emphasizing national defense, AI, societal order, and a pro-Western ideological stance.
Palantir Technologies released a 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s book The Technological Republic on April 19, 2026, outlining the company’s ideological and strategic vision for the 21st century. The manifesto addresses the role of technology, national defense, AI, and societal culture, and has sparked significant debate due to its controversial positions.
Palantir’s 22 Points summarize:
1. Moral Duty of Tech Companies: Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the U.S., and tech elites have an obligation to participate in national defense.
2. Hard Power over Soft Power: The manifesto argues that liberal democracies require hard power, particularly software and AI, to maintain security and influence.
3. AI and Military Deterrence: The atomic age is ending, and a new era of AI-based deterrence is beginning. Palantir emphasizes that AI weapons will be built, and the question is who builds them and for what purpose.
4. National Service: The U.S. should consider reinstating universal national service, moving away from an all-volunteer military.
5. Support for Military Personnel: If a U.S. Marine or soldier requires better equipment or software, the country should provide it, reflecting a commitment to those in harm’s way.
6. Governance and Public Life: Public officials should be treated with tolerance, and society should allow room for human complexity to avoid incompetent leadership.
7. Geopolitical Repositioning: The manifesto calls for reversing the postwar demilitarization of Germany and Japan, warning that current pacifism could shift the balance of power in Asia.
8. Cultural Evaluation: Some cultures are described as producing vital advances, while others are labeled regressive or harmful. The manifesto criticizes “vacant and hollow pluralism” and emphasizes the importance of recognizing cultural contributions.
9. Role of Silicon Valley in Crime and Society: Tech companies should actively address violent crime and societal challenges, rather than remaining passive.
Implications and Controversy
The 22 points have been described as a corporate political manifesto, linking Palantir’s software and AI capabilities to national defense, law enforcement, and immigration control. Critics have labeled it “technofascist” or likened it to a supervillain’s vision due to its advocacy for AI weapons, national service, and cultural hierarchies. Supporters argue it reflects a clear moral and strategic stance for tech companies in global security.
Summary
In essence, Palantir’s 22 points articulate a vision where technology, national defense, and societal order are intertwined, emphasizing AI, military readiness, and a pro-Western ideological framework. The manifesto has generated both praise and criticism, highlighting the company’s unique position at the intersection of tech, politics, and global security.
The US Tech Giant Where Employees Wear Israeli Defense Force Uniforms To Work
Nate Bear, Apr 28, 2026, https://www.donotpanic.news/p/exclusive-the-us-tech-giant-where
The American tech giant behind the most popular tax filing software in the US allows employees to wear their IDF uniforms to work and also permits them to take months off the job to fight Israel’s wars.
Last month, Tom Yacobi, a data analyst at financial tech giant Intuit, whose products include the widely-used tax return program TurboTax, showed up to an all-hands company Zoom call in his full IDF uniform.
Yacobi works in TurboTax’s trust and safety team which handles the most sensitive personally identifiable information of TurboTax customers and users.
The whistleblower who provided me with this screenshot told me that since the beginning of the Gaza genocide, Israeli employees of California-based Intuit have, like Yacobi, been allowed to take as long as three or four months off work, often with minimal notice, to serve as reservists in the IDF.
“Intuit has shown no consideration for how these disruptions affect workflows and operations for employees in the US who have had to put processes on hold and postpone meetings to cater to Israeli employees’ army schedules,” PM (not their real initials) told me. “And of course, there has been no concern for the emotional and mental health impact on US employees who have been put in the awkward position of joining Zoom calls with active soldiers implicated in genocide and war crimes.”
Showing up to work in a military uniform, let alone the uniform of a military which has committed genocide and war crimes, and whose former head is an ICC-indicted war criminal, is not only unprofessional and unethical, but clearly an unabashed display of arrogance and impunity.
PM said one senior manager took three consecutive months off work from October to December 2023 to participate in the genocide of Gaza. PM says Israeli employees continue to take two-week stints off work for IDF reserve duty.
PM has never raised the issue with HR or management for fear of the consequences at such an openly pro-Israel and pro-genocide company.
“What discouraged me the most was the shocking depravity of hearing directly from chief information security officer, Atticus Tysen, that the company had selected the Israel office as a ‘strategic growth site’ during the peak of the Gaza genocide, in December 2023. This was announced at the same time as the company was down-sizing certain American and Canadian offices.”
According to PM, Intuit employees are regularly required to think about Israeli feelings. PM says that on numerous occasions since October 2023, Intuit management have posted on the company-wide Slack messaging app “about the need to show our Israeli colleagues extra kindness and grace because of their distressful circumstances.” Needless to say, Intuit management have never posted similar messages concerning the distress of those who may have been affected by the Israeli genocide of Gaza or Israel’s mass murder of civilians in Lebanon and Iran.
PM adds that “many” of Intuit’s Israeli employees have moved to the US on an L-1 visa in the last few years, with the process for approval much easier than for an H-1B visa. An L-1 visa allows multinationals to transfer employees from their overseas offices to their US offices, and is a straightforward pathway to permanent US residency.
Zionists serve in key leadership positions at Intuit.
Marianna Tessel, an executive vice-president and general manager, is an Israeli-American who served as a captain at Mamram, the computing centre and IT backbone of the Israeli military. In 2023 Tessel posted on LinkedIn about her visit to Intuit’s Israel-based R&D centre which is staffed almost exclusively by former Israeli intelligence officers.
In 2023 the Jerusalem Post reported that Intuit’s Israeli employees were going to lead on integrating generative AI into TurboTax software. Tessel said Intuit’s Israel office creates “some of our fintech software, and much of the AI.”
David Hahn, another executive vice-president and general manager at Intuit, is a friend and confidante of Jewish-Zionist venture capitalist Keith Rabois, who he met when both worked at LinkedIn. Rabois is married to Jacob Helberg, an undersecretary of state in the Trump administration and an influential, if little-known Zionist voice in the US government. Rabois is often referred to, alongside Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, as a member of the ‘Paypal Mafia’ for his role in launching Paypal.
Satellites launched for coming war on China
Space Development Agency launches first operational satellites
By Courtney Albon, Sep 11, 2025, https://www.defensenews.com/space/2025/09/10/space-development-agency-launches-first-operational-satellites/
The Space Development Agency launched its initial batch of operational satellites on Wednesday, kicking off a 10-month campaign to deliver more than 150 satellites to low Earth orbit.
The 21 satellites, all built by York Space Systems, flew on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The spacecraft are part of SDA’s Transport Layer, designed to provide fast, secure communication capability to military operators.
The launch represents a new phase for SDA, which since 2019 has been crafting plans for a large constellation of government-owned missile tracking and data transport satellites in low Earth orbit. Its first spacecraft, Tranche 0, launched in 2023 and 2024 and have been used to demonstrate capabilities like laser communication between satellites, with the ground and recently between a commercial partner’s satellite and an SDA terminal installed on an aircraft in flight.
Once on orbit, the Tranche 1 satellites launched today will build on that work. Following initial payload health and safety checks, the spacecraft could start providing operational capability to combatant commands and other users within four to six months, according to acting SDA Director Gurpartap Sandhoo.
“This is the first time we’ll be able to start working with our COCOMs, our joint force to start integrating space into their operations and getting the warfighters used to using space from this construct,” Sandhoo told reporters prior to the launch. “This is the first time we’ll have the space layer fully integrated into our warfare operations.”
SDA’s first user group, whom Sandhoo called “early adopters,” includes military operators in the Indo-Pacific. This initial work is key, he added, to familiarize the services and combatant commands with the capability SDA can provide.
“Doing the warfighter immersion is going to be critical because they have to get trained on this and we have to provide this capability,” Sandhoo said. “That’s what Tranche 1 will start doing.”
Tranche 1 will include 154 satellites — 126 for the Transport Layer and 28 for the Tracking Layer. The first 21 spacecraft will bring a limited coverage and capacity, but that will increase over time as more reach orbit.
Starting with today’s launch, SDA plans to fly a new batch of Tranche 1 satellites each month for 10 months, with six of those missions carrying transport spacecraft and four flying missile warning and tracking satellites. The first few launches will be dedicated transport missions, but Sandhoo said tracking satellites will start to fly early next year.
The next mission is slated for mid-October and will feature satellites built by Lockheed Martin.
By the end of Tranche 1, Sandhoo said, SDA hopes to be providing regional capacity. Tranche 2, scheduled to start launching in late 2026, will further expand the constellation’s reach.
The agency is making headway on future missile tracking capabilities beyond Tranche 2 — which could provide essential support for the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile shield — but the longer-term future of the Transport Layer is uncertain. The effort is fully funded through Tranche Two, but the Space Force has paused work on Tranche 3 amid an ongoing study considering whether the constellation is the best solution to meet the U.S. military’s data transport needs.
Sandhoo said the stalled funding will delay SDA’s plans to expand from regional to global transport coverage.
Trump to America…’No dough for the Commons. I need it for my criminal wars’
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL. 26 Apr 26, https://theaimn.net/trump-to-america-no-dough-for-the-commons-i-need-it-for-my-criminal-wars/
President Trump has a bizarre way of demonstrating his claim of being the Peace President deserving the Nobel Peace Prize
He spent his first term raining down tens of thousands of bombs on 7 countries posing not a whit of danger to the Homeland. He assassinated a top Iranian general in Baghdad, a monstrous war crime. He withdrew from Obama’s Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) which silenced Iran’s nuclear bomb potential and should have ended the isolation of Iran. Instead, it set the table for Trump’s senseless, now failed war on Iran 8 years later that may crash the world economy if not ended soon. That is madness.
Trump’s obsession with murder and mayhem worldwide has collateral damage to every sensible domestic function of government. Trump has spent 10 years trying to demolish Obama’s Affordable Care Act, a relatively meager improvement to America’s failed health insurance system to the less fortunate. He hasn’t spent dollar one to fix it. He’s ignored our crumbling infrastructure. He’s invested zilch in green energy while the world overheats relentlessly.
But Trump sure has invested in war. His last term one National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) budget in 2021 was a massive $740 billion. His first in term two for 2026 crashed the trillion mark by $42 billion. But mimicking Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer’, Trump proclaimed ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ His 2027 NDAA sours to $1,500,000,000, a 44% increase. Combined with massive tax cuts for the billionaire class, Trump’s profligate military spending has goosed the national debt by $10 billion in his first 6 years.
While silent about spending on the Commons to improve life for all Americans, Trump is ecstatic about his trillion and a half bucks for endless wars. “We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of day care. “It’s not possible for us to take care of day care, Medicaid, Medicare — all these individual things They can do it on a state basis. You can’t do it on a federal.”
To paraphrase first predecessor Obama, ‘Yes you can…yes you must.’
On April 7, 1967, exactly one year before he was gunned down, Rev. Martin Luther King courageously spoke out against the Vietnam War at New York’s Riverside Church, ahead of a massive antiwar rally. In ‘A Time To Break the Silence’, King decried, “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
Under Donald Trump’s endless, senseless wars…America’s spiritual death is here.
Jeffrey Sachs: Trump’s Failure in Iran Exposes the Crumbling Myth of U.S. Hegemony
April 25, 2026 , ScheerPost Staff, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/jeffrey-sachs-trumps-failure-in-iran-exposes-the-crumbling-myth-of-u-s-hegemony/
Jeffrey Sachs has been warning for years that the “unipolar moment” was never real — and in this conversation with Glenn Diesen, he lays out the clearest case yet. Trump’s failure in the Iran War, Sachs argues, didn’t just expose the limits of one administration. It exposed the limits of the entire post‑Cold War American project: a foreign policy built on illusions of dominance, ideological entitlement, and a refusal to accept a multipolar world already taking shape.
Sachs traces the long arc of Western hegemony — from the European empires to Washington’s brief moment of post‑1991 triumphalism — and shows how the Iran conflict has become the breaking point. The U.S. could not impose its will on Tehran. It could not bend Russia through sanctions. It cannot contain China’s rise. And yet its political class continues to behave as if history stopped in 1991.
This interview is not just analysis. It’s an autopsy of an empire that still believes it is immortal.
From the 1953 Coup to Today: Jeffrey Sachs Explains America’s Endless War on Iran
April 25, 2026 Joshua Scheer, https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/from-the-1953-coup-to-today-jeffrey-sachs-explains-americas-endless-war-on-iran/
Jeffrey Sachs doesn’t raise his voice — he doesn’t have to. In this wide‑ranging conversation with Tucker Carlson, Sachs lays out a devastating, historically grounded indictment of U.S. foreign policy, the manufactured “Iran threat,” and the decades‑long fusion of American empire with Israel’s regional ambitions. What emerges is not a hot take but a cold, clinical autopsy of a war machine that has slipped beyond democratic control.
From the 1953 coup to the present blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, Sachs traces how Washington’s obsession with dominance — and Israel’s pursuit of permanent military supremacy — has pushed the world to the brink of a conflict that could collapse the global economy in weeks. He dismantles the nuclear‑weapons narrative, exposes the bipartisan addiction to sanctions and covert warfare, and warns that the U.S. is now trapped in a crisis of its own making.
This is one of Sachs’ clearest, most unflinching interviews to date — a map of how we got here, and a warning about what comes next if the “grown‑ups” don’t seize the wheel.
Jeffrey Sachs Warns: The U.S.–Israel War Path Toward Iran Is Leading the World Into Economic and Political Collapse
Jeffrey Sachs has spent decades advising governments, studying development, and watching empires rise and fall. In his latest interview, he delivers a stark message: the United States and Israel are steering the world toward a catastrophic confrontation with Iran — and the window for avoiding disaster is closing fast.
A Global Crisis Triggered by a Manufactured One
Sachs argues that the current crisis is not an accident but the predictable outcome of decades of U.S. interference in Iran, beginning with the 1953 CIA‑MI6 coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister. That single act — the theft of Iran’s sovereignty and its oil — set the stage for 70 years of hostility, sanctions, proxy wars, and regime‑change fantasies.
According to Sachs, the present escalation is driven less by Iranian behavior than by Washington’s refusal to accept that Iran slipped out of U.S. control in 1979. The “Iran menace,” he says, is a propaganda construct — a way to justify endless pressure on a country that has not invaded another nation in more than a century.
The Strait of Hormuz: A Choke Point for the World Economy
Sachs warns that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a direct consequence of the spiraling conflict — has already triggered a global economic emergency. Oil, gas, fertilizers, petrochemicals, and metals flow through this narrow waterway. With it blocked, the world economy is “reeling,” and the clock is ticking.
The off‑ramp exists, Sachs insists: de‑escalation, diplomacy, and reopening the strait. But it requires political maturity — something he argues is in short supply in both Washington and Jerusalem.
Israel’s Parallel Agenda: Regional Dominance at Any Cost
Sachs draws a sharp distinction between U.S. and Israeli motives. For Washington, Iran represents a rebellion against American empire. For Israel, Iran is the last major obstacle to full military dominance across the Middle East and North Africa.
He argues that Israel’s political leadership — backed by a powerful U.S. lobby — has long sought to neutralize Iran not because of nuclear fears, but because Iran resists Israeli hegemony. This, Sachs says, is the real engine behind the push for confrontation.
The Nuclear Lie
One of Sachs’ most forceful points is his dismantling of the nuclear narrative. U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly stated that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon. Iran has sought international monitoring and compliance frameworks — including the JCPOA — only to see the U.S. sabotage its own agreements under pressure from domestic political forces aligned with Israel.
Calling the nuclear rhetoric “Orwellian,” Sachs argues that the real goal is regime change, not nonproliferation.
A War That Would Reshape the World in Weeks
Sachs warns that a U.S.–Israel attack on Iran would not be a limited strike. It would trigger a regional war, destroy infrastructure across the Gulf, and plunge the global economy into chaos. Within weeks, he says, the world would look “profoundly damaged,” with the risk of escalation into a global conflict.
This is not hyperbole, Sachs insists — it is the logical outcome of the current trajectory.
The Real Question: Who Is Steering U.S. Policy?
Throughout the interview, Sachs returns to a central theme: the absence of democratic control over U.S. foreign policy. Decisions of war and peace are being shaped by lobbies, political vanity, and imperial reflexes — not by the interests of the American public.
The result is a government that no longer serves its citizens, a political class insulated from consequences, and a foreign policy apparatus that treats global stability as collateral damage.
A Final Warning
Sachs’ message is clear: the U.S. and Israel are playing with forces they cannot control. The world is at a fork in the road — diplomacy or disaster — and the people making the decisions are the least equipped to choose wisely.
For Americans, the stakes are not abstract. Sachs argues that the economic, political, and moral costs of this conflict will fall squarely on the public, not on the leaders who helped create it.
Poll Finds Just 4 Percent of Democrats Support Increasing Military Aid to Israel
By Sharon Zhang, April 25, 2026 , https://scheerpost.com/2026/04/25/poll-finds-just-4-percent-of-democrats-support-increasing-military-aid-to-israel/
Separate polling found this week that Congress’s disapproval ratings have tied their all-time high of 86 percent.
New polling has found that just 4 percent of Democratic voters support increasing military aid to Israel, marking a massive rift with congressional Democrats at a time when other polling has found that disapproval of Congress has tied its all-time high.
The Economist/YouGov polling released this week found that only 11 percent of American adults say that the U.S. should increase military aid to Israel, including only 4 percent of people identifying themselves as Democrats — and only 23 percent of Republicans.
Meanwhile, the polling found that 56 percent of Democrats say the U.S. should decrease military aid to Israel, including 35 percent who say the practice should stop altogether. Just 19 percent said the U.S. should maintain current levels, while 20 percent said they were not sure.
This is a huge departure from the stance of Democratic leaders in Congress, who support military funding for Israel or even want to increase it.
Last week, for instance, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) was one of only seven Democrats to vote against the advancement of a measure to block the sale of bulldozers to Israel introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont). He was joined by figures like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), one of Israel’s staunchest advocates in Congress.
Even though Sanders’s resolutions didn’t pass, the vote was seen as a major shift among Democrats, with more Democrats voting to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel than ever before — even if the caucus leader disagreed.
Schumer, a longtime supporter of Israel, said in February that supporting aid to Israel is, in fact, a top priority of his.
“I have many jobs as leader … and one is to fight for aid to Israel, all the aid that Israel needs,” he said at a gathering in New York City. He bragged that, under his leadership, U.S. aid to Israel has grown more “than ever, ever before,” and said: “As long as I’m in the Senate, this program will continue to grow.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has also stuck to its positions of backing Israel and its political apparatus in the U.S. Last year, one of its committees rejected a measure for an arms embargo on Israel, while the party also voted down a resolution to limit the influence of dark money on Democratic races, including the spending from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Meanwhile, approval of Congress — which has done virtually nothing to stop or stem the flow of weapons to Israel, despite public opinion — has hit record lows.
Gallup polling released this week found that the proportion of Americans who disapprove of Congress’s job performance has hit a record high of 86 percent — tying the record set in 2015. Meanwhile, Congress’s approval sits at a lowly 10 percent, just one point above its record low of 9 percent.
Is President Trump mentally unstable? (Part 2)
25 April 2026 John Lord , https://theaimn.net/is-president-trump-mentally-unstable-part-2/
In 2017, The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, a book edited by Dr Bandy X. Lee, presented the assessments of 27 psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals, argued that Trump’s mental condition constituted a “clear and present danger” to the nation.
However, it is important to acknowledge the ethical debate within the mental health community regarding the public diagnosis of political figures. On one side, proponents of speaking out argue that when a leader’s behaviour appears to threaten public safety or welfare, mental health professionals have a “duty to warn,” even if it means commenting without a direct evaluation.
They believe that their responsibility to the public outweighs traditional restrictions. On the other side, critics invoke the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Goldwater Rule, emphasising that publicly diagnosing a public figure without a face-to-face assessment and consent undermines professional ethics, risks personal bias, and can erode trust in the profession. This debate remains unresolved, with experts divided over what best serves ethical standards and public interest.
The APA’s Goldwater Rule cautions professionals against offering a diagnosis without a personal examination and proper authorisation. This ongoing controversy reflects broader concerns about professional ethics, public responsibility, and the challenges of analysing the mental health of high-profile leaders.
In 2021, some members of Trump’s own Cabinet, shocked by the violence at the Capitol on January 6 and his slow response, discussed whether to use the 25th Amendment to remove him from office because of concerns about his mental fitness.
During his 2024 campaign, he attacked Kamala Harris and then launched into a wild and confusing rant:
“She destroyed the city of San Francisco, it’s – and I own a big building there – it’s no – I shouldn’t talk about this, but that’s OK, I don’t give a damn because this is what I’m doing. I should say it’s the finest city in the world – sell and get the hell out of there, right? But I can’t do that. I don’t care, you know? I lost billions of dollars. You know, somebody said, ‘What do you think you lost?’ I said, ‘Probably two, three billion. That’s OK, I don’t care.’ They say, ‘You think you’d do it again?’ And that’s the least of it. Nobody. They always say, I don’t know if you know. Lincoln was horribly treated. Uh, Jefferson was pretty horrible. Andrew Jackson, they say, was the worst of all, and he was treated worse than any other president. I said, ‘Do that study again, because I think there’s nobody close to Trump.’ I even got shot! And who the hell knows where that came from, right?”
These persistent displays of paranoia, his continuing ICE raids, his use of the Justice Department to target his enemies, his shameless corruption rage, volatility, delusions, vengefulness, foul-mouthed posturing, his bottomless vengeance toward Iran and the Pope and increasing detachment from reality directly undermine the expectations of mental stability and sound judgment outlined in the thesis.
As such, they provide substantial evidence that calls into question the President’s capacity to fulfil the responsibilities and demands of the office.
Why did Trump and Vance pick a fight with Pope Leo? His exchange with the Pope was unsightly, unnecessary and regrettable.
Despite all these warning signs, his Cabinet members and aides keep their heads down. Republican members of Congress pretend not to notice, and his billionaire supporters dare not speak of his rapid decline. Media coverage of the President’s conduct remains contested.
Some critics argue that significant portions of the media engage in “sanewashing,” thereby downplaying or rationalising the President’s erratic behaviour. Others point out that both partisan and mainstream outlets have at times foregrounded his controversial statements and actions, which suggests a level of critical scrutiny.
This divergence highlights the unevenness of media responses: while certain outlets may frame the President’s behaviour as authentic or a populist connection, others interpret it as evidence of instability and potential danger.
These framing choices shape both public opinion and elite responses by influencing how the general population perceives these actions and how policymakers justify their stances. Ultimately, this complexity in media coverage reflects deeper debates over the press’s responsibilities and the challenges of interpreting signs of instability at the highest levels of government.
But some people on the political right, including longtime Trump supporters, have had enough.
Former Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene says Trump’s threat to destroy Iran’s civilisation is “not tough rhetoric, it’s insanity.” Far-right podcaster Candace Owens calls him “a genocidal lunatic.”
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones says Trump “does babble and sounds like the brain’s not doing too hot.” Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer during Trump’s first term, says Trump is “clearly insane.” Former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham says, “he’s clearly not well.”
The public is starting to notice. Sixty-one per cent of Americans think he’s become more unpredictable as he gets older, while only 45 per cent say he is “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges.”
For the good of the country and the world, we need to face the truth. Based on his actions and words, the most powerful man in the world seems unfit for the job because of mental instability.
We are all endangered. What happens if, in a fit of rage, he presses the nuke button and “chucks a wobbly”? Is hewatching the “football” with the atomic codes in his lap? Who’s ready to stop him to save the world?
It is not as though Congress doesn’t have the power to dismiss this ratbag. They could “Impeach” him now.
In conclusion, the 25th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States explicitly provides a constitutional mechanism for removing a President deemed unable to discharge the powers and duties of the office. This provision underscores Congress’s responsibility to act decisively in the face of clear evidence of presidential incapacity.
However, in practice, there are significant political and procedural barriers to invoking the 25th Amendment. The process requires the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to agree that the President is unfit, which can be difficult to achieve given political loyalties and fear of reprisals.
Even if this initial hurdle is cleared, the President can contest the decision, and ultimately, it falls to a supermajority in Congress to resolve the dispute. These requirements make the real-world use of the 25th Amendment extremely challenging, especially in a polarised political environment.
As such, while the 25th Amendment serves as a critical safeguard for the stability of American democracy and global security, its practical application remains fraught with obstacles.
NBC News Drops Bombshell Report on Trump War Battle Damage: ‘Far Worse’ Than Trump Team Said
Tommy Christopher Apr 25th, 2026, https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/nbc-news-drops-bombshell-report-on-trump-war-battle-damage-far-worse-than-trump-team-said/
NBC News dropped a bombshell report on Saturday that multiple government officials say damage to U.S. military bases was much more extensive than President Donald Trump’s officials have publicly disclosed.
The president is preparing to speak at his first White House Correspondents’ Dinner (WHCD) in office on Saturday night, as will frequent press attackers like Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and FCC Chair Brendan Carr.
Pentagon reporting has been in the administration’s crosshairs, but a parade of anonymous government sources nevertheless contributed to the reporting by NBC’s Gordon Lubold, Courtney Kube, Mosheh Gains, and Natasha Lebedeva.
The team attributed six sources for their report, which revealed that repairs from the Iran War damage will cost billions:
American military bases and other equipment in the Persian Gulf region suffered extensive damage from Iranian strikes that is far worse than publicly acknowledged and is expected to cost billions of dollars to repair, according to three U.S. officials, two congressional aides and another person familiar with the damage.
The Iranian regime swiftly retaliated after the Trump administration attacked on Feb. 28, hitting dozens of targets across U.S. military bases in seven Middle East countries. Those attacks struck warehouses, command headquarters, aircraft hangars, satellite communications infrastructure, runways, high-end radar systems and dozens of aircraft, according to the U.S. officials and an assessment by the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
In the initial days of the war, an Iranian F-5 fighter jet bombed the U.S. base Camp Buehring in Kuwait, despite the base having air defenses, a rare breach that marked the first time an enemy fixed-wing aircraft has struck an American military base in years, according to two of the U.S. officials.
The U.S. bases that came under attack are home to thousands of American troops, and in some cases their families, though they were largely cleared out in the days and hours before the U.S. and Israeli went to war with Iran.
Read the full report here.
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
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