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When War Comes Home: A Constitutional Warning

by Andrew P. Napolitano | Sep 10, 2026, https://ronpaulinstitute.org/when-war-comes-home-a-constitutional-warning/

A failed war does not end when the drones stop flying. It creates a new danger: A government that refuses to admit defeat and a president who, having failed abroad, seeks muscular victories elsewhere.

The war against Iran is a case study in the limits of military power, the dangers of presidential overreach and the enduring wisdom of the Constitution’s separation of powers. It was unauthorized, unconstitutional, illegal, strategically incoherent and — by the standards by which wars must be judged — a geopolitical failure.

The American people were told that force would achieve clear objectives. Iran would be compelled to surrender. Somehow, American security would be enhanced. The region would become more stable.

Instead, the United States expended enormous resources, consumed scarce munitions, deepened regional instability and failed to produce the political outcome President Donald Trump promised. Senior military officials just last week warned him that extending large-scale operations risked exhausting critical military capabilities and weakening America’s ability to respond elsewhere.

The United States can destroy buildings, eliminate targets, deploy aircraft, ships, missiles, drones and troops anywhere on the planet. But war is not a video game in which the destruction of enemy assets automatically produces political surrender. War is a contest of wills, societies, culture and endurance.

And here is the constitutional question that should have been asked before the first bomb was dropped: Who gave the president the authority to begin this war? The Constitution did not.

Article I, Section 8 gives Congress — not the president — the power to declare war. The framers deliberately rejected the British model in which kings could drag nations into conflicts based upon personal judgment, ambition or political convenience. James Madison warned that the executive branch was “the branch of power most interested in war,” and therefore the Constitution placed the decision to enter war outside the president’s constitutional reach.

The president is commander in chief. He commands forces after lawful congressional decisions have been made. He does not possess the power to transform his title into a personal authority to begin wars.

That principle has been repeatedly recognized by the Supreme Court. In cases such as Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Court rejected the idea that President Harry Truman had unlimited power simply because he claimed national security. Justice Robert Jackson’s famous concurrence warned that executive power is most dangerous when it operates in a “zone of twilight” where presidents attempt to expand authority beyond constitutional boundaries and without congressional concurrence.

The Iran war belongs precisely in that twilight — where executive ambition collides with constitutional restraint.

The administration may argue that modern threats require flexibility. That argument has been made by presidents of both parties for decades. But flexibility is not the same as unlimited authority. The Constitution was written for difficult moments, not easy ones. It was designed to restrain presidents even when they believe they have compelling reasons to act.

The military failure abroad has created a political dilemma at home. A president who promised victory must now confront the reality that victory was never achieved.

The danger is what happens next.

History teaches that political leaders who suffer public humiliation abroad often seek demonstrations of strength elsewhere. Foreign-policy failure can produce domestic overreach. Leaders who cannot achieve the desired result overseas may attempt to prove their power through actions at home.

That is where the war comes home.

The president, frustrated by military limitations, may turn toward radical immigration enforcement, Supreme Court-prohibited tariffs, statutorily prohibited domestic deployments of military forces, stealing foreign-owned oil, and assertions of executive authority that collide with free speech and free association.

But the Constitution does not permit a president to substitute disappointment for law.

The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person — not just Americans — shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. The Sixth Amendment guarantees all persons — not just Americans — from whom the government seeks life, liberty or property the right to a public trial before an impartial jury, and other constitutional protections. These protections apply not because accused persons are necessarily innocent but because government power is too dangerous to operate without restraints.

Evidence is not conviction. Accusation is not guilt. Presidential assertion is not judicial judgment.

The executive branch cannot simply identify alleged criminals in speedboats or elsewhere, declare them enemies and impose punishment without trial. That is a system the American Revolution rejected.

The same principle applies to the use of military force inside the United States. The founders were deeply suspicious of standing armies being used for law enforcement. That suspicion produced constitutional protections and later statutes prohibiting the military’s role in civilian law enforcement.

The military exists to defend the nation from foreign threats. It is not a presidential police force.

Likewise, Congress — not the president — defines crimes and establishes punishments. A president cannot create new categories of enemies and decide their fate by executive command. The Constitution does not authorize a monarchy with aircraft carriers.

Every generation faces a temptation to exchange freedom for security. Every generation is told that normal rules cannot apply because a crisis is too serious, an enemy too dangerous and a moment too urgent.

The founders knew that argument well and they rejected it.

The Constitution was written precisely because government officials would sometimes believe that their objectives justified employing extraordinary power. The separation of powers, congressional war authority, judicial review and due process protections are not obstacles to effective government. They are safeguards against government becoming the threat it was created to prevent.

The ultimate question is not whether a president is strong enough to exercise power. The question is whether the president is restrained enough to obey the laws he has sworn to uphold.

That is the fear of a republic when the war comes home. To paraphrase the author Herman Melville, beware the president weeping when he bares an iron hand.

September 20, 2026 Posted by | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Covert Pentagon propagandists are tracking anti-war Americans, skirting the law

Wyatt Reed· The Grayzone, September 15, 2026

When a semi-anonymous social media user declared that the federal government had targeted her in a bizarre entrapment scheme, the paranoid claim snowballed into a more disturbing revelation: the Pentagon appears to be breaking the law by paying conservative influencers to track, surveil, and propagandize Americans. Who else is involved in the covert scheme?

In mid-August, a conservative activist using the digital moniker “Datarepublican” quietly admitted she was employed by the Pentagon as a “special government employee.” For months, she’d been pocketing a government paycheck while intensely lobbying for President Trump’s imperialist misadventures online and tracking their most vocal critics in a digital database.

Datarepublican was identified in 2025 as Jennica Pounds, a Utah-based mother with nearly a million followers whose stated raison d’etre is “fighting communists” – a moniker she applies liberally to anyone perceptibly to the left of Barry Goldwater. 

And she’s not alone. Pounds has emerged as the face of a new wave of right-wing influencers who are being covertly employed by the US Department of War to spread pro-government propaganda. On August 29th, Washington Post reporters revealed at least three more digital activists are surreptitiously working for the Pentagon, which designates them as either special government employees (SGEs) or as what the US military calls “highly qualified experts” (HQEs).

Named in the Pentagon’s army of influencers were retired Air Force colonel Rob Maness, and retired Army colonels Kurt Schlichter and Thomas Anderson. Like Pounds, Anderson also operated in relative anonymity until recently, posting under the Twitter handle “Cynical Publius.” Schlicter, for his part, is a prolific right-wing troll who has frequently fantasized about the ethnic cleansing and extermination of Palestinians.

The operation appears to be in breach of two federal laws, the Hatch Act and the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibit government employees from engaging in political activities while on the clock, and forbid them from directing their propaganda efforts at the US population, respectively.

The aforementioned right-wing activists are the only ones known to have been working secretly for the Department of War. But the revelations about paid Pentagon propaganda posters come as the US military pursues a flurry of murky partnerships with prominent conservative influencers like top TPUSA widow Erika Kirk, who was appointed to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors by Trump in March in an effort to further slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s “legacy.” 

Then there’s Laura Loomer, the obsessively anti-Muslim Trump ally, who is producing de facto press releases for self-proclaimed “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth, enjoying Pentagon press credentials, and earning references as an “informal advisor to the Department of War.”

A propagandist accidentally outs herself as secret Pentagon employee

Like previous unflattering military disclosures, an apparently disgruntled employee was responsible for the revelation that Hegseth’s Department of War has quietly begun paying off online influencers.

In a since-deleted thread originally published on Twitter/X, Pounds – posting under the pseudonym Datarepublican – claimed that Trump’s undersecretary for public diplomacy at the State Department, Sarah B. Rogers, attempted to “set [her] up” by leaking documents to her in what she described as an effort to induce her to carry out a criminal act…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Tracking antiwar activists, raising further questions about legality

On August 28, the Pentagon special government employee unveiled a new digital database tracking those she accused of “orbiting the anti-imperialist spine,” called “DSA Explorer.”

Alongside the Democratic Socialists of America, the page displays a vast, near-impenetrable web of connections between groups like Black Lives Matter, CODEPINK, Pastors for Peace, Greek’s Syriza Party, and the NAACP. The site, Pounds wrote, catalogues the people and organizations comprising “the wider anti-imperialist solidarity network.”

Individuals listed include such disparate figures as the British Labour Party’s Dianne Abott, former Colombian President Gustavo Petro, and conscious rapper Talib Kweli. Clearly hoping to prompt investigation by federal authorities, Pounds accuses dozens of those listed of operating as “potential unregistered foreign agents.”

In an ironic twist of fate, Pounds’ efforts to censor and blacklist her opponents closely mirror those of the former disinformation czar Nina Jankowicz, who was also officially empowered by the US government to target the perceived political enemies of the regime. Desperate to criminalize leftists for imagined crimes, Pounds is now emulating the Deep State censors she once railed against.

But in pursuing American citizens by name with a McCarthyite surveillance scheme, Pounds could be opening herself up to litigation by her targets. Perhaps sensing the legal delicacy of her clumsy name-and shame project, she placed a fine-print legalese “disclaimer” on the page, claiming the material was for “research, educational, and journalistic purposes only.”……………………………………………………………………………..

Days after launching “DSA Explorer,” Pounds published a nearly-identical database focusing on anarchists and antifascist activists in the Americas and Europe who’d been using the “Noblogs” platform, showcasing information which appeared to have been stolen and handed to her by the US government…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Who is else secretly working for the Pentagon?

While Pounds, Maness, Schlichter, and Anderson have been forced to admit to having partnered with the Pentagon without prior public disclosure, It’s still unknown whether the Department of War is employing other special employees, or whether Pentagon may be paying others through third parties. But one extremely influential MAGA personality who appears to be close to the Pentagon – so close she hitched a ride to Guantanamo Bay with War Secretary Pete Hegseth – is Laura Loomer.

In addition to making headlines for accusing lawmakers of African descent of being “ghetto Black bitches,” Loomer has also recently launched a crusade against The Grayzone and its editor-in-chief, Max Blumenthal. While Blumenthal was reporting from Iran on the funeral of slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, Loomer demanded his arrest, writing on social media:……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://thegrayzone.com/2026/09/15/covert-pentagon-propagandists-tracking-americans/

September 20, 2026 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, USA | Leave a comment

Michiganders Oppose Proposed LANL Data Center at the University of Michigan in Ypsilanti Township.

Last week residents of Ypsilanti Township expressed their anger over a proposed high-performance computing facility near the Huron River in a partnership between the University of Michigan and Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Residents are concerned that the proposed project would fuel research into the nuclear arms race.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE0fycQix-Q, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1EVU54Zwbs

The proposed plan involves a $1.2 billion dollar computing facility of almost 300,000 square feet for classified federal research and non-classified university research in science and technologies. The Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Stockpile Stewardship Program would dedicate most of the space to LANL work that includes nuclear weapons research. The Stockpile Stewardship Program was developed after the end of the Cold War, has expanded and the NNSA has taken it over.  https://www.energy.gov/nnsa/articles/stockpile-stewardship-and-management-plan-ssmp

Michiganders point out that the proposed research would go beyond maintaining the existing weapons stockpile.

September 20, 2026 Posted by | opposition to nuclear, USA | Leave a comment

Trump Plans New Sale of 2,000-Pound Bombs to Israel, Which Keeps Using Them to Massacre Gazans

SCHEERPOST, September 16, 2026, Brett Wilkins Common Dreams

The Trump administration is preparing to send Israel tens of thousands of 2,000-pound bombs, The Washington Post reported Tuesday—a move that would rank as the largest single sale of the highly destructive munitions, which the Israel Defense Forces have used in some of the deadliest US-backed airstrikes on Gaza and Lebanon.

According to the Post, the proposed $2.8 billion package includes 20,000 MK-84 bombs and 20,000 BLU-117 bombs, as well as 20,000 I-2000 penetrator warheads. The munitions would be purchased with US taxpayer funds through the Foreign Military Financing program. The proposal has been informally presented to congressional committees that review major arms transfers.

The MK-84 is among the largest conventional bombs in the US arsenal. The Post reported that its blast can propel metal fragments thousands of feet, penetrate thick concrete and metal, and create large craters.

“If Hezbollah or whoever is in a building, an MK-84 will bring down the whole building,” Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, told the Post.

Following the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) loosened rules of engagement to effectively allow the killing of an unlimited number of civilians when targeting even a single low-ranking Hamas member in an airstrike.

Combined with the utilization of cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology to select targets at a far faster rate than humans alone could, IDF use of 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs has contributed heavily to the staggering casualty toll in Gaza, where officials say that more than 250,000 Palestinians have been killed or wounded since October 2023.

That month, Israeli forces struck Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp with such munitions, killing at least 126 Palestinians in a bid to assassinate a single Hamas commander.

Michael Lynk, who served as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2016 to 2022, said early in the war that “the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in such a short period of time appears to be the highest such civilian casualty rate in the 21st century.”………………………………………………………………………………………………………….https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/16/trump-plans-new-sale-of-2000-pound-bombs-to-israel-which-keeps-using-them-to-massacre-gazans/

September 20, 2026 Posted by | Israel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Can America Build Enough Nuclear Reactors?

September 14, 2026, By: Paul J. Saunders, and Daniel Poneman, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/energy-world/can-america-build-enough-nuclear-reactors

A potential US–South Korea nuclear deal could bring eight new reactors to America. But can the US nuclear industry scale fast enough?

The United States may be preparing for one of its biggest nuclear construction pushes in decades.

Reports suggest Washington and Seoul are considering a nuclear energy cooperation agreement that could lead to the construction of as many as eight reactors in the United States, potentially including Westinghouse AP1000s and South Korean APR1400s.

Daniel Poneman, former US deputy secretary of energy and former CEO of Centrus Energy, calls the prospect “huge”—both for the US nuclear industry and the broader strategic relationship between the United States and South Korea.

The potential agreement comes as US electricity demand is growing after roughly two decades of relatively flat demand, driven in part by the rapid expansion of data centers. But Poneman argues that demand is not the biggest obstacle. The harder question is whether the US nuclear industry can build fast enough to meet it.

That challenge extends to nuclear fuel. As Washington works to reduce reliance on Russian uranium enrichment, the domestic enrichment industry will also need to scale. While there is a path forward, the United States needs to move quickly.

In this episode of Three Questions, Center for the National Interest president Paul Saunders and Poneman discuss the potential US–South Korea nuclear deal, the growing demand for nuclear power, and whether the US nuclear industry has the capacity to meet the moment.

September 20, 2026 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

Trump rejects AI giants’ warnings of existential threat

The US president has argued that Washington cannot afford to slow down as China is rapidly closing the technological gap

13 Sep, 2026, https://www.rt.com/news/645664-trump-ai-race-china/

US President Donald Trump has brushed aside mounting warnings from leading artificial intelligence executives that increasingly powerful AI could pose an existential threat to humanity, insisting that Washington’s priority should be defeating China in the technological race.

Speaking to reporters in Ireland on Sunday, Trump acknowledged that some safeguards could be introduced but suggested the dangers were being exaggerated by unspecified “negative forces.”

“We’re leading China in AI, we’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly I want to keep it that way… Whoever wins AI wins,” he added, arguing that critics were raising scenarios that “won’t happen.”

’Just slow down yourselves’

Trump’s remarks came after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called for frontier AI development to be decelerated, warning that increasingly autonomous systems could soon improve their own capabilities, evade existing safeguards and unleash large-scale cyberattacks beyond human control.

In a rare show of unity, his rivals – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk – both backed the proposal.

White House AI adviser David Sacks responded by accusing OpenAI and Anthropic of being a “duopoly on frontier intelligence” and acting as though “antitrust law has to be suspended so you can form a cartel.”

“If the unreleased models are scary enough that you think you should slow down, I support your decision to be responsible,” Sacks wrote. “But stop pretending you need anyone else’s permission.”

China’s AI surge defies sanctions 

Sacks also questioned whether China would ever agree to a coordinated international slowdown – an issue increasingly central to Washington’s AI debate.

Despite US sanctions and restrictions on exports of advanced chips and other technology, Chinese developers have rapidly narrowed the gap with their American rivals, particularly through cheaper open-source and open-weight models.

A US congressional advisory body warned earlier this year that Chinese open-source AI was developing a “self-reinforcing competitive advantage,” with models from companies including Alibaba, Moonshot and MiniMax dominating usage rankings on platforms such as Hugging Face and OpenRouter.

Moonshot AI in July released Kimi K3, the world’s largest 2.8-trillion-parameter open-weight system, while Alibaba recently released Qwen3.8-Max with 2.4 trillion parameters. DeepSeek and other Chinese developers have also released increasingly capable models that can be downloaded, modified and deployed independently rather than accessed exclusively through proprietary Western platforms.

Rival AI orders

Beijing has sought to turn that open-source approach into a broader geopolitical alternative to reliance on Western-controlled AI infrastructure.

Addressing the BRICS summit in New Delhi this weekend, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed establishing a BRICS AI open-source community, supporting joint development and deployment of large language models, providing specialized training, and building what he called an “open ecosystem for AI.”

Xi also invited BRICS members to participate in the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), a China-backed body established in Shanghai in July.

Twenty-nine countries, including Russia, Indonesia, Pakistan and Kazakhstan signed WAICO’s founding agreement. Beijing says the organization is intended to give developing countries greater access to AI technology and a role in setting global rules, and has pledged thousands of AI training opportunities as well as cooperation centers with BRICS, ASEAN, the African Union and other organizations.

The initiative is emerging as a rival to Washington’s Pax Silica framework, which seeks to organize semiconductor, critical-mineral and AI supply chains among what the US describes as “trusted” partners. Washington is reportedly preparing to warn participating states that they may have to choose between the American-led system and Beijing’s WAICO.

September 19, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

Kremlin blasts US move to militarize space

“We believe that space should be free from any weapons. And certainly we count on broad international consolidation… to continue efforts for the full demilitarization of space,”

Moscow believes Washington’s deployment of an orbital weapons system is taking the world in the wrong direction

15 Sep 26,https://www.rt.com/russia/645760-kremlin-us-space-weapons/

Weapons should not be deployed in space, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said, responding to the Pentagon’s announcement that the US has placed a weapons system in orbit.

US Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink disclosed the deployment on Monday, saying the US Space Force “now has on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the joint force against hostile adversary action,” without providing details about the system. Media reports have suggested that it is intended to disable or destroy hostile satellites.

“We believe that space should be free from any weapons. And certainly we count on broad international consolidation… to continue efforts for the full demilitarization of space,” Peskov told journalists on Tuesday during a regular briefing.

The Pentagon has a long history of using orbital systems for military purposes, specifically intelligence gathering, navigation and communications. Some US military concepts, however, have also envisioned systems potentially capable of conducting strikes from space. During the Cold War, for example, the Soviet Union viewed the Space Shuttle as a potential platform for delivering a rapid nuclear strike.

Countries regarded by Washington as strategic rivals, including Russia and China, have reportedly developed anti-satellite capabilities that could deny the US the advantage in space during a direct conflict. The use of such weapons, however, could produce significant unintended consequences.

The so-called Kessler effect describes a scenario in which collisions generate increasing amounts of orbital debris, triggering further collisions and potentially making low Earth orbits unusable for an extended period.

Russia has long called for stronger international agreements restricting the military use of space. While the Outer Space Treaty prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit, Moscow has argued that conventional weapons should also be banned.

In June, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that his country was developing a space-based anti-satellite laser system and aimed to become “the leading country in the world with this capability.”

September 19, 2026 Posted by | Russia, space travel, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

New Details On How Space Force Has Waged Electronic Warfare Against Iran

Space Force learned important lessons from the war with Iran about operations inside and outside of the atmosphere.

Joseph Trevithick, TWZ10 Sep 15, 2026

S. Space Force’s top officer has shared new details about his service’s use of electronic warfare capabilities during Operation Epic Fury against Iran earlier this year. This underscores how space is steadily becoming an arena where conflict actually occurs, and the implications this has for forces operating inside and outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Douglas Schiess highlighted the actions of a member of the 42nd Electromagnetic Warfare Combat Detachment (EWCD) in support of Epic Fury during a keynote speech earlier this morning. Schiess’ remarks came at the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) 2026 Air, Space & Cyber Conference, at which TWZ is in attendance. This is his first major engagement since taking over as head of Space Force less than two weeks ago.

“During Operation Epic Fury, our components, notably at U.S. Central Command and Space Command, with support from our components at European Command and Pacific Command, demonstrated that Guardians [the official term for uniformed Space Force personnel] are not supporting from the sidelines as a nice-to-have [sic], but we are delivering space power directly into the fight as a need-to-have,” Schiess said. “One of those impressive Guardians is Specialist Gray, who hails from Tampa, Florida. She joined the Space Force just two years ago, but listen to the impact she [has] made in her short term already.”………………………….

Schiess did not name the system in question or elaborate further on how it was employed. However, previously released pictures of elements of the 42nd EWCD in the Middle East have shown personnel working with trailer-mounted multi-band antennas that have been associated in the past with variants of the Counter Communications System (CCS). CCS is a family of ground-based electronic warfare jammers primarily designed to disrupt enemy space-based communications capabilities. Prior to yesterday, CCS was the U.S. military’s only publicly acknowledged anti-satellite weapon. Space Force has now confirmed it also has weapons in orbit, which we will come back to later on.

The 42nd Electromagnetic Warfare Combat Detachment has been operating in the Middle East since at least 2024 under the umbrella of Space Force’s main headquarters in the region, U.S. Space Forces – Central (SPACECENT). President Donald Trump briefly called attention to the detachment’s “cutting-edge defense activities” during a Christmas Eve conference call with deployed service members last year.

“Sometimes we have to be within the footprint of the satellite, and so that’s why Guardians go into harm’s way,” Gen. Schiess did tell TWZ and other outlets at a roundtable after his speech this morning when asked for more details about the 42nd EWCD’s role in Operation Epic Fury, and what lessons Space Force has been learning from the conflict more broadly.

“Electromagnetic warfare was a big part of that, but also satellite communications,” he added. “The ability to keep communications, obviously GPS and PNT [positioning, navigation, and timing], were important there.”………………………………………………………………………………………………https://www.twz.com/space/new-details-on-how-space-force-has-waged-electronic-warfare-against-iran?utm_source=pushly

September 19, 2026 Posted by | space travel, USA | Leave a comment

PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards

15 Sept 26, https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/

Why It Matters:

US Congress is fast-tracking two bills — HR 8255 and S.3639 — to launch of hundreds of thousands of satellites without any meaningful health or environmental review.

These bills would accelerate satellite deployment despite a myriad of potential yet unexamined harms.  Applications for a million orbital data centers have already been submitted to the FCC.  The number of total satellites under review by the FCC for all purposes is much greater. Yet the FCC has no meaningful process for health or environmental review.  The FCC has NEVER assessed the health or environmental impacts of satellites, and the GAO has already found that this outdated approach needs to be reexamined.  These bills would further incentivize the FCC to continue to ignore otherwise legally required analysis and public involvement on environmental and human health impacts.


Effects from satellites include:

  • Significant increase in electromagnetic radiation, which in turn raises the risk of harm to people, animals and plants 
  • Toxic metals released when satellites burn up, poisoning air, food and water
  • More rocket‑fuel pollution already appearing in ecosystems
  • Severe orbital crowding — Starlink logged 25,000 collision‑avoidance maneuvers in 6 months
  • Hundreds of thousands of satellites falling back to Earth each year polluting the earth
  • Loss of dark, night skies with adverse ecological, biological, cultural and scientific effects
  • More rare-earth mining, which is linked to unsafe conditions for workers and child labor
  • No meaningful process for health or environmental review

What We’re Asking For:

Urge your U.S. Senators and Representatives to oppose HR 8255 and S.3639 by filling out the form. 

Your Voice Matters:

Your outreach as a constituent directly influences how Congress evaluates and prioritizes legislation. By speaking up, you can help ensure satellite expansion doesn’t outpace health and environmental protections — and that these bills aren’t advanced without the safeguards our communities and planet need.

September 19, 2026 Posted by | Events, space travel, USA | Leave a comment

Nuclear fusion’s moment of truth

No fusion experiment has yet produced more electricity than the facility consumes,

let alone demonstrated a powerplant that can operate reliably.

No fusion experiment has yet produced more
electricity than the facility consumes, let alone demonstrated a power
plant that can operate reliably.

 The precarious fusion boom. Start-ups are attracting billions. Some
scientists think the timeline is far too optimistic.

In late August, amid
the blinding New Mexico heat, politicians and investors wielding ceremonial
spades broke ground for a new facility that aims to trap the Sun in a
bottle. Pacific Fusion, a start-up founded and backed by elite scientists
and tech entrepreneurs, is building a nuclear fusion test site in
Albuquerque that it hopes will be a crucial step towards generating
commercial electricity from the same reaction that powers the Sun.

For now,
there is little more than pale, sandy earth to suggest what might
eventually rise there. But politicians attending the event spoke of fusion
as a historic transformation, with one Democratic senator comparing its
potential significance to humanity’s discovery of fire. Eric Schmidt, the
former Google chief executive and an investor in Pacific Fusion, said on
stage that if fusion eventually produced the majority of America’s
electricity, “it solves all the problems” created by the energy demands
of AI.

In the first eight months of this year, fusion start-ups attracted a
record $3.8bn in private funding, according to PitchBook, overtaking last
year’s total of $3.3bn, which was itself an all-time high. But while
there is broad agreement that fusion science has advanced substantially,
experts and start-ups disagree over how soon companies can deliver
meaningful power to the grid and whether providing that electricity will
make commercial sense.

No fusion experiment has yet produced more
electricity than the facility consumes, let alone demonstrated a power
plant that can operate reliably. Alain Bécoulet, chief scientist of the
publicly funded international fusion research project ITER, says connecting
a fusion power plant to the electricity grid “will never happen” within
the next five to 10 years.

 FT 16th Sept 2026,
https://www.ft.com/content/ef511d46-a689-4868-9654-15b96a71586d

September 18, 2026 Posted by | technology, USA | Leave a comment

NuScale Power Is Closing In on a Deal That Could Transform the Small Modular Reactor Industry

deal could be central to the company’s future, but uncertainty and risks remain.

NuScale Power could be on the verge of a game-changing deal to build nuclear reactors for the Tennessee Valley Authority.

By Ben Gran – Sep 15, 2026

Key Points

  • NuScale Power executives have expressed optimism about the progress of the company’s framework agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
  • That agreement hasn’t translated into revenue yet.
  • This nuclear energy stock has lost about 75% of its value in the past 12 months.

NuScale Power (SMR-1.16%) has developed some of the nuclear power industry’s most promising technology for small modular reactors (SMRs), which could make nuclear power more affordable, adaptable, and scalable. And as demand for electricity to power artificial intelligence data centers continues to soar, the time could be right for SMRs to step into the spotlight.

So far, NuScale is the only company that has gotten a small modular reactor design approved by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). But is its technology ready to go from “promising” to “proven?”

Based on what management said on the company’s second-quarter earnings call on Aug. 5, NuScale might be getting closer to the final stages of a game-changing nuclear energy deal with the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

That deal could be central to the company’s future, but uncertainty and risks remain.

NuScale’s TVA deal: 6 gigawatts of nuclear power

In September 2025, the TVA announced that it had signed an agreement with ENTRA1 Energy, NuScale’s strategic partner, to develop plants capable of providing up to 6 gigawatts of new nuclear power generation. ENTRA1 would build the nuclear plants, while NuScale would provide the small modular reactors to power them.

If and when they’re completed, these plants would provide enough energy to power about 4.5 million homes or 60 data centers. As of 2025, the entire U.S. nuclear energy industry generated 97 gigawatts of power, so this single project would boost total U.S. nuclear energy production by about 6.2%.

That would all be great news for the outlook for SMRs. But there’s a lot of uncertainty about when or if it will become a reality.

Will the NuScale TVA deal happen?

As of this writing, the TVA’s deal with NuScale is not yet final. There’s a non-binding agreement, but no power purchase agreement (PPA) to buy nuclear energy or start the process of breaking ground for construction of the nuclear plants. That means NuScale isn’t making any money from it yet…………..

If or when the TVA signs on the dotted line, this project could be a game-changer for the company and its stock. But investors are getting impatient. NuScale’s share price has declined by about 75% over the past year…………..

For the second quarter, the company reported only $75,000 of revenue, down from $8.05 million in the prior-year period. It has about $1.9 billion in cash on its books, which could be enough liquidity to keep it operating until it can successfully commercialize its technology. But NuScale stock was recently downgraded by a prominent UBS analyst.

NuScale’s advanced SMR technology has helped make it one of the most-promising nuclear energy stocks. But whether it’s the TVA deal or other opportunities, this company needs to sign some money-making deals sometime soon. https://www.fool.com/investing/2026/09/15/nuscale-power-is-closing-in-on-a-deal-that-could-t/

September 18, 2026 Posted by | Small Modular Nuclear Reactors, USA | Leave a comment

‘Blurring line between conventional, nuclear forces’: Expert’s warning for Pentagon’s strategy review.

The Pentagon’s review of US nuclear strategy risks blurring the line between conventional and nuclear forces and lowering the threshold for nuclear war, nuclear policy expert Joe Cirincione has warned.

FP News Desk, |Sep 15, 2026, https://www.firstpost.com/world/us-department-of-defense-nuclear-strategy-review-tactical-nukes-war-threshold-expert-warning-global-war-14045964.html#goog_rewarded

The US Department of Defense is drafting a new nuclear strategy, and it appears set to be a recipe for disaster, nuclear policy analyst Joe Cirincione has warned.

Undersecretary of Defense (Policy) Elbridge Colby is leading the review of American nuclear strategy and has said he is looking at ways of “expanding options” available to President Donald Trump and providing the “decision space for any conceivable escalation scenario”.

Such an approach risks lowering the threshold for nuclear war and blurring the line between conventional and nuclear forces, Cirincione warned in an article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

The expansion of options is understood to involve the development and induction of lower-yield nuclear weapons, commonly known as tactical nuclear weapons, for use within a theatre or region rather than being launched with the intention of attacking an entire nation.

Tactical nukes lead to global war in all war games, expert warns

While supporters of the approach, such as Colby, argue that lowering the nuclear threshold means an adversary would know they would lose at every rung of the escalation ladder, critics argue that the approach is fundamentally flawed because it would make nuclear confrontations more likely.

Cirincione noted that almost every war game involving the use of tactical nuclear weapons has resulted in rapid escalation into global war. He also highlighted that supporters of tactical nuclear weapons never explain exactly where and how these new weapons would be used.

“More recent war games involving artificial intelligence find that AI models escalate to global war 95 per cent of the time. Nor do they say why more weapons will increase confidence in US security assurances when the main cause of unease among US allies is the behavior of an erratic, authoritarian president, not the lack of weapons,” Cirincione further said.

Critics such as author Annie Jacobsen have also argued that the notion that a tactical nuclear strike could remain localised is a myth. She has previously said that, regardless of the type of weapon used, a nuclear strike would almost certainly plunge the world into a near-extinction conflict.

“No matter how nuclear war begins, if Nato’s involved or not, if tactical nuclear weapons are used or not, if China is involved or not, it still ends in nuclear armageddon. That was my north star,” Jacobsen told Task and Purpose in an interview.

The Trump administration is also taking steps towards developing and inducting such weapons and putting in place a strategy that would allow for their use. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has already lowered the threshold for nuclear strikes and has frequently threatened the West with attacks since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Observers have said that such posturing by the world’s two largest nuclear powers places the world in a highly precarious position.

September 17, 2026 Posted by | USA | Leave a comment

Osama Bin Trump

September 13, 2026, Chris Hedges ScheerPost, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/13/osama-bin-trump/

Donald Trump, whose war on Iran is the greatest strategic blunder in United States history, is not responsible for triggering the decline of the American empire, but he is responsible for its fatal denouement.

This is the end.

U.S. bases in the oil-rich Persian Gulf have been damaged or destroyed and I expect will not be rebuilt. Our allies, even those in Europe, are abandoning us. The decadence and immorality of American society, embodied in the vulgarity, stupefying ignorance and cruelty of Trump, are the defining characteristics of the Empire. The Global South, horrified at the Empire’s flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law, including the enabling of genocide in Gaza, sees us as the enemy. Abu Ghraib Prison may have receded from our consciousness, but for the rest of the world, its images of U.S. soldiers and contractors sadistically humiliating and torturing imprisoned Iraqis has replaced the Disneyfied version of America we once exported. The war on Iran, which has disrupted the world’s oil supply, is rapidly pushing the global economy over the cliff.

We are going down. And we will bring many with us.

Osama Bin Laden may be in a watery grave in the North Arabian Sea. Al-Qaeda may be a shadow of itself. But Bin Laden’s most fervent dreams have been realized in the last twenty-five years of gross miscalculations of the Empire — its squandering of trillions of dollars on military debacles and the ascendancy of our version of Ubu Roi, Donald J. Trump.

Rather than defeating supposed enemies, the U.S. has swelled their ranks. It and its colony, Israel, are the most reviled nations on the planet. Every advance by Iran in its asymmetrical war against the Empire is cheered across the globe.

The humiliating defeats, the diversion of resources and at least $8 trillion to mount one war after another, which has killed an estimated 4.5 to 4.8 million people, has hollowed the Empire out. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Its democratic institutions are impotent. It survives on an unsustainable $ 40 trillion debt. The jewels of its democracy, including its education system, fair elections and a free press, are discredited and degraded.

An abandoned working class, crippled by economic insecurity and a government that steadily strips away social programs that keep those in distress afloat, is propagandized to believe the palpable decline is the work of traitors and enemies within. It has led Trump supporters to turn on the very institutions and ideals designed to sustain democracy. The usual targets of fascism — the “radical left,” Muslims, migrants, intellectuals, artists, people of color and journalists — are persecuted under laws such as The Espionage Act. Lies permeate the airwaves buttressing the self-delusion that once internal enemies are silenced, or eradicated, the glory days of the Empire, defined by hyper-nationalism, patriarchy, stable jobs and white supremacy, will return.

Violence against internal enemies along with election fraud are openly advocated by Trump and his court of sycophants, buffoons, grifters and Christian fascists. Attempting to bribe voters by promising them $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms, along with Trump’s contempt for the constitutional order, is the transparent admission that U.S. democracy is a farce.

George W. Bush, who was appointed to the presidency by judicial fiat, planted these seeds of lawlessness and impunity. Trump has brought them to floraison.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons, masked and offered the kind of impunity that allowed the torture and killing of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorize U.S. cities. They carry out military-style raids against unarmed civilians that look no different than those the Empire carried out in Fullujah or the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. They are setting up a network of squalid internal concentration camps.

The tools of subjugation the Empire used abroad, including the stripping of civil liberties and the implementation of mass surveillance, were legalized at home with the passage of The Patriot Act, with its watchlists, informants and racial and religious profiling.

Empires in decay impose the tyranny familiar to those subjugated abroad on their own citizens.

I was in the Middle East when it all went wrong. Nearly all of the Muslim world was appalled by the attacks of 9/11. There were massive public expressions of solidarity, including candlelight vigils in Iran. If we had built on this empathy rather than demonizing Muslims and inflicting suffering and death on millions in the Middle East, we would be far more secure today.

Instead, we drank deep from the poisonous elixir of nationalism. We foolishly believed we were attacked, as Bush said, because “they hate our freedoms,” not because of our support for the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel, our callous indifference to human life beyond our borders, including the killing of over a million people in Iraq by U.S. sanctions, and our propping up of brutal Arab dictatorships.

The wreckage we have left behind from our forever wars include the obliteration of whole cities, along with 940,000 direct deaths in post-9/11 war zones, 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect deaths and 38 million people displaced.

The hijackers chose massive death and destruction on a city skyline to send a message. They spoke the language we taught them. It is the message our warplanes, missiles and drones have delivered from Vietnam to Iraq. We did not listen. We naively believed we could use our military to remake the Middle East in our own image.

The failure of the War on Terror is not simply a moral failure. It is a strategic failure. We refused to ask the obvious question. Why did many outside our borders feel so much hostility towards us that they were willing to kill themselves and thousands of our fellow citizens?

Those of us who dared to raise these questions twenty-five years ago were vilified as supporters of terrorism and silenced.

The only way to defeat terrorism is to isolate those who carry out acts of terror within their own societies. It is to build networks of understanding and solidarity. We did the opposite. We became the terrorists we claimed we were seeking to defeat. We did what Bin Laden wanted us to do. We defeated ourselves.

Trump is presiding over the last act.

September 17, 2026 Posted by | politics, USA | Leave a comment

United States blocks nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami from UN meeting in Vienna

Iran has condemned the exclusion of the head of its atomic energy organisation from an annual gathering of the United Nations nuclear agency in Austria.

The Nightly, Staff Writers. Reuters, 15 Sept 26

The United States has blocked Iran’s nuclear chief from attending a United Nations atomic watchdog meeting in Vienna by opposing an exemption from so-called “snapback” UN sanctions, prompting protests from Iran.

Iranian nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami had been due to attend and address this week’s International Atomic Energy Agency general conference, an annual meeting of IAEA member states that began on Monday.

At the opening, however, Iran said Austria had revoked Eslami’s visa after originally granting him one.

“The cancellation and so-called legal justification advanced for it are a stark indication of a political act and advanced formal politicisation of this organisation,” Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA told the conference.

Iran’s foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said the United States had pressured Austria into the move while Iran and Russia said it formed part of a broader effort to prevent Iranian officials from obtaining visas for international travel……………………….. https://thenightly.com.au/politics/iran-protests-as-united-states-blocks-nuclear-chief-mohammad-eslami-from-un-meeting-in-vienna-c-22869942

September 17, 2026 Posted by | Iran, politics international, USA | Leave a comment

‘Hit the Brakes’: Anthropic CEO’s Push to ‘Pace’ AI Development Called Latest Sign Congress Must Act

September 13, 2026, Julia Conley Common Dreams, https://scheerpost.com/2026/09/13/hit-the-brakes-anthropic-ceos-push-to-pace-ai-development-called-latest-sign-congress-must-act/

“When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei added his voice on Saturday to the growing call to slow down development of artificial intelligence, writing in a 3,800-word essay that companies must pace “the rate of capabilities advancement” in light of recent cyberattacks by AI models, progressive lawmakers and journalists were among those who said the warning made clear that action must be taken—but with Congress and regulatory agencies, not tech billionaires who have spent years pushing for an AI expansion, leading the way.

Amodei wrote that two things have convinced him that “we must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models”: the fact that in recent months, “AI has been advancing drastically faster, driven primarily by AI’s growing ability to build the next generation of AI”—also known as recursive self-improvement—and the recent OpenAI-HuggingFace incident, in which hundreds of agents in OpenAI’s security test systems broke out of confinement and hacked into the AI startup HuggingFace, conducting cyberattacks on targets they had not been asked to attack.

As The Wall Street Journal and Politico reported Friday, another cyberattack was carried out by OpenAI’s agents months before the HuggingFace incident in July. The company’s models that were being tested and had not been given full access to the internet nevertheless hacked into an online coding service called RubyGems earlier this year. The models created reports and filled out spreadsheets. Anthropic and Meta have also reported autonomous cyberattacks by their AI agents.

Amodei said the incidents led him to call for a three-step plan to pace AI development and allow companies time to “align and safeguard their models, and for third-party evaluators to confirm this.”

He called for:

  • Embedded evaluators, with each AI company committing to giving “ongoing, employee-like access to a team of embedded third-party evaluators” who would “verify adherence to safety practices and commitments, report incidents, and help assess the alignment of not just completed AI models but training pipelines and processes”;
  • Democratic coordination, with companies establishing “common safety standards as well as limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress”; and
  • Global coordination, with democratic governments attempting to “coordinate with authoritarian governments, to the extent this is possible, while taking seriously the challenges of verifying compliance.”

Amodei’s essay was published days after Jacob Coxon, a researcher at Anthropic, publicly resigned out of fear that the company’s AI technology “could kill us all by the end of the decade” as it builds “superhuman systems”—a concern he said is shared by many in the industry.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and tech billionaire Elon Musk expressed agreement with Amodei. Altman called “independent evaluators with employee-like access” a “great idea.”

“We will do the same,” said Altman. “We’ll have more to share soon.”

US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) was among those who appeared less than impressed by Amodei and Altman’s sudden push for their industry to slow down their rapid pace of development.

In a video posted on social media, Khanna called on Amodei to disclose whether or not he agrees with Coxon about the possibility that AI could wipe out humanity, and to back more far-reaching regulations on AI.

“AI guys act as if they’re a priesthood speaking Latin, keeping the rest of us in the dark,” said Khanna. “But behind all the jargon, it’s actually pretty straightforward… We need to stop, ban, self-improving AI. You cannot have recursive, self-improving AI that basically is able to improve itself and exceed human capability, that has us lose control.”

He added that laws must be passed establishing “mandatory liability and criminal penalties. If you’re creating an AI that is doing illegal things, you either should face liability or criminal sanctions.”

Journalist David Sirota of The Lever agreed, writing that “if the law explicitly made AI CEOs financially and criminally liable for any mass destruction their technologies create—and if AI industry shareholders knew their companies faced the threat of significant financial losses for such destruction—much of the ‘AI is getting out of control!’ threat would instantly end.”

“Those CEOs would instantly make AI far safer and impose guardrails on their companies,” he said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has called for a nationwide moratorium on the construction of AI data centers and this week announced a bipartisan hearing on the “extraordinary dangers” of rapid AI development—including testimony from one leading AI scientist who has warned against self-regulation by tech firms—said the calls by Amodei, Altman, and Musk were “not enough.”

“When you are racing towards a cliff, you don’t just ease up on the gas pedal,” said Sanders. “You hit the brakes. When the future of humanity is at stake we need a PAUSE on advanced AI development and a ban on artificial superintelligence—an AI mind smarter than any human and capable of operating independently beyond our control.”

Sanders called on President Donald Trump—who has aggressively pushed for more AI data center development and sought to stop states from passing their own AI regulations—to negotiate a treaty pausing AI and banning superintelligence with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The two leaders are set to meet later this month to discuss AI.

Trump on Friday dismissed concerns about warnings coming from the AI industry, telling a Los Angeles Times reporter, “It’s going to be fine,” and adding that his top worry about the technology is falling behind China.

Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Pa.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker were also among the politicians who said Amodei’s warning was the latest sign that Congress and the Trump administration must take action to rein in the industry.

Juliette Kayyem, the faculty chair of homeland security at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, said AI CEOs’ warnings about their technology would be seen as more credible if they also announced a pause on their plans for initial public offerings (IPO), which Anthropic and OpenAI are both pursuing in the coming months.

Altman said Friday that OpenAI will not plan for an IPO, which could value the company at $1 trillion, in 2026.

Amodei, said Kayyem, should “put his money where his mouth is.”

“He has known of this danger a while,” she said. “It is now threatening his valuation in the IPO. Cancel the IPO. Then I’ll believe he’s serious.”

Journalist Peter Rothpletz noted that the safety concerns within the AI industry must be “much more dire” than the public is aware, considering “Dario, Sam, and Musk are all issuing these statements in unison.”

September 16, 2026 Posted by | politics, technology, USA | Leave a comment

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