Did President Donald Trump and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum use a green energy wind project as a bargaining chip to reopen a gas pipeline?
Unfortunately, it seems that way.
In April, Burgum halted Empire Wind 1, a New York-based wind turbine project signed off by Trump in 2017. To justify the decision, he pointed fingers
at President Joe Biden for reportedly “rushing through” signing off on the project.
But a month before, Trump met with
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to discuss the reopening of the Constitution gas pipeline, which was closed in 2020. The pipeline brought gas from Pennsylvania’s drilling fields to New York but was halted due to backlash by environmentalists and politicians.
“Hochul, who’s a very nice woman, she’s coming in tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock to meet on that and other things,” Trump told reporters
.
Wind turbines
Making an eerie half-threat, he added, “I hope we don’t have to use the extraordinary powers of the federal government to get it done. But if we have to, we will, but I don’t think we’ll have to.”
It’s unclear if halting a $5 billion wind turbine project estimated to bring in thousands of jobs to New York counts as “extraordinary powers of the federal government” or not, but once the pipeline reopened, the wind turbine project resumed as well. And, of course, Burgum took to social media to celebrate.
“Energy Dominance is the foundation of America’s economic and national security. I am encouraged by Governor Hochul’s comments about her willingness to move forward on critical pipeline capacity, he wrote on X
Monday.
And—likely for very different reasons—Hochul also celebrated the news.
“After countless conversations with Equinor and White House officials, bringing labor and business to the table to emphasize the importance of this project, I’m pleased that President Trump and Secretary Burgum have agreed to lift the stop work order and allow this project to move forward,” she wrote in a press release
.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul
Daily Kos reached out to the press offices of Hochul and Burgum for additional comment but did not immediately hear back.
Meanwhile, with Norwegian company Equinor backing Empire Wind 1, officials in Norway have found themselves in the crossfires of an energy bargaining battle.
“This is an agreement about natural gas and wind made in the United States,” Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg, former NATO secretary general, told reporters
Tuesday.
And Equinor is no small fish to cast aside. The gas and green energy company has invested
$60 billion U.S. energy projects—primarily in gas and oil.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is back at it with her blatant ignorance toward the U.S. Constitution.
During a hearing of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Tuesday, Noem proved that she has absolutely no idea what the constitutional right to habeas corpus is.
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, a lawyer who graduated from Northeastern University School of Law, asked Noem
to define habeas corpus.
“Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” Noem answered.
Hassan interrupted her and offered a correction, noting, “Habeas corpus is the legal principle that requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people. If not for that protection, the government could simply arrest people—including American citizens—and hold them indefinitely for no reason.”
She went on to praise habeas corpus as the dividing line between authoritarian states like North Korea and free societies like the United States.
Later in the hearing, Democratic Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey asked Noem if she knew how often habeas corpus had been suspended in the past—which she also got wrong—and then asked where habeas corpus is laid out in the Constitution. Noem did not know.
The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.
Habeas corpus has been a part of the U.S. code of law since the Constitution was ratified 236 years ago in 1789. The principle is one of the cornerstones
of U.S. law and is intended as a check on the power of the state.
Recently, habeas corpus has been in the news because the Trump administration has been asserting that immigrants who have been abducted and detained do not have these rights. Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, has
even floated the idea
that the Trump administration is “looking into” suspending the right.
After Noem was confirmed
by the Senate in January, she swore
an oath
to “support and defend” the Constitution. But she has continued to make it clear that she’s disinterested in doing her sworn duty—and doesn’t even understand the Constitution she is tasked with protecting.
Last week,
Noem testified
before the House Homeland Security Committee, claiming that the Trump administration did not have to follow procedures ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court to return the wrongly deported
Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador to Maryland.
Rather than defending the Constitution, Noem seems more interested in cosplaying
for propaganda videos. And when she isn’t engaging in that level of spin, she’s been asking taxpayers
to foot the cost for her new jet.
Likely to Noem’s surprise, neither of those things are in the Constitution.
Republican Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas are pushing a bill that would make the federal government reimburse Texas for its border security costs during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Though Cruz
and Cornyn
both have splashy press releases about it, and though Rep. Chip Roy of Texas is sponsoring the companion bill in the House, neither the House
nor Senate
version has any text. But, of course, there is a breathless Fox News
piece about it.
If we take the press push at its face, the bill would reimburse Texas for border spending from Jan. 20, 2021, onward, and any funds left over at the end of the Trump administration would go toward paying down the national debt. Since we can’t actually read the bill, it isn’t clear whether Texas continues to get reimbursed even now or if it only covers these costs from when Texas was suffering under Biden’s reign of terror.
Even without being able to read the full bill, it’s clear that it serves two purposes, neither of which has anything to do with border security.
Children play along the border wall separating Mexico and the United States.
First, it allows Republicans to keep up the drumbeat that the Biden years were such a catastrophic failure that somehow states still bear the ill effects. And second, it allows Texas to get in on the cash grab. It’s pretty clear that the Trump administration has no ceiling on how much money it will spend on its violent immigration crackdown.
This is especially rich coming from Texas, the state that spent the Biden era arguing to courts that, despite immigration being wholly a federal concern, the state had the authority
to erect wire buoy barriers. And the state spent very handsomely on those barriers, throwing a cool $1 million
at “experts” during litigation. Are federal taxpayers now on the hook for that as well?
While $1 million may be nothing but spare change to the Trump administration these days, it underpins the biggest issue with this bill: How does the federal government decide whether the money spent by Texas was appropriate? Or is it just that any dime spent on the border by Texas from 2021 through 2025 is refundable no matter what?
During President Donald Trump’s first term, Texas spent in the high 9 figures
every year, so does it get reimbursed based on that spending?
You’d think that none of this would be necessary, given how Mexico was going to pay for the wall. But even Texas Gov. Greg Abbott knew that was a lie, which is why he is spending billions
of state money to build a wall instead. Or maybe he was going to crowdfund it
?
Cruz and Cronyn are craven, but they’re not stupid. It’s an excellent time to try to tap the federal coffers by demanding money to make life even more miserable for immigrants. So why shouldn’t Texas get some?
Trump made the wildly out-of-touch and false comment after he held a closed-door meeting with the sycophantic
House Republican conference, which, as of this writing, appears not to have the votes to pass his dog-shit legislation. His visit was an effort to twist arms and get enough of the holdouts onboard to pass the bill.
“We’re not doing any cutting of anything meaningful,” Trump said
, referring to the bill that is expected to cause 13.7 million people to lose their health insurance
, and put nearly 11 million at risk of losing food assistance
. “The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud, and abuse. With Medicaid—waste, fraud, and abuse. There’s tremendous waste, fraud, and abuse. … We have illegal aliens that are multiple killers, with multiple murder records, getting Medicaid.”
In fact, the bill creates Medicaid work requirements
, which experts say will be extremely costly to enforce and will lead people who are eligible to receive Medicaid benefits to lose their coverage because of bureaucratic red tape
. The bill will also let enhanced premium tax credits that help Americans pay for Affordable Care Act plans expire, which would cause more than 4 million people
to lose their insurance.
The bill also shifts more of the costs
of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as food stamps, onto states, which may not have the resources to fund the program at current levels. And it expands work requirements to receive the food aid, which could again cause eligible people to lose their benefits.
After meeting with House Republicans, however, Trump falsely claimed
that no one would lose food benefits because food prices “are coming way down.
“The cut is going to give everybody much more food,” Trump said, an idiotic comment that we won’t even try to understand.
Ultimately, House Speaker Mike Johnson is trying to ram the legislation through his chamber before Republicans flee Washington, D.C., for the Memorial Day holiday.
As of this writing, Johnson plans to hold a House Rules Committee meeting at 1 AM ET on Wednesday
to change the legislation so that it will appease the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, which is demanding deeper Medicaid cuts in order to pay for the bill’s tax cuts.
But it’s unclear whether Trump’s pep talk to his caucus of sycophants will be enough to get the legislation passed. Warring factions within the House conference are still not pleased
, and hard-liners want more spending cuts
.
“We all are here to advance the agenda that the president ran on and that we all ran on. … I don’t think the bill is exactly where it needs to be yet,” Rep. Chip Roy, a far-right Republican from Texas, said
on Fox Business after the meeting with Trump, adding in a post on X, “We need to extend the Trump tax cuts, but we also need to deliver on the spending restraint.”
Meanwhile, a group of Republicans from New York and California want changes to the tax code to allow Americans to deduct more of the state and local taxes they pay—which would add to the deficit. Johnson had been negotiating with this group, which calls themselves the “SALT Caucus,” but no deal has been made so far, and Punchbowl News reported
on Tuesday morning that the members are still pledging to vote against the bill
.
Of course, Republicans almost always cave when Dear Leader demands it, so we are under no pretenses that this reverse-Robin-Hood bill is destined to fail.
But as of this writing, it does not have the votes.
Contact your lawmakers
and tell them
to vote against a bill that steals from the poor to give to the rich.
The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division announced
Monday that it is investigating the city of Chicago and its Mayor Brandon Johnson for allegedly discriminating against white people in forming his administration.
A letter signed by Civil Rights Division head Harmeet K. Dhillon cited Johnson’s Sunday appearance
at the predominantly Black Apostolic Church of God. The mayor, who is Black, emphasized the importance of diversity in his administration,
“In your remarks made yesterday at the Apostolic Church of God in Woodlawn, you ‘highlight[ed] the number of Black officials in [your] administration,’” the letter reads, before listing several of the Black people in current city leadership.
Johnson’s remarks were in response to a question and he said the diversity was a positive step forward in a city where roughly
one-third of the population is Black.
“Two administrations ago, 70 to 75% of the administration was primarily made up of white and white men,” Johnson said. “In my administration, 45% of my administration is Black, 25% is Latine, 30% is white, 8% is Asian. It is the most diverse administration in the history of Chicago.”
As the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was announcing its brand new investigation into so-called reverse racism, Attorney General Pam Bondi made a separate announcement
on Monday unveiling a new “Civil Rights Fraud Initiative.” According to the DOJ, the effort will use the False Claims Act
to “investigate and, as appropriate, pursue claims” involving alleged violations of federal civil rights laws.
“Institutions that take federal money only to allow anti-Semitism and promote divisive DEI policies are putting their access to federal funds at risk,” Bondi said in a statement. “This Department of Justice will not tolerate these violations of civil rights—inaction is not an option.”
These moves by the DOJ are just an extension of the Trump administration’s broader effort to dismantle and weaponize
the federal government by painting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as the dreaded DEI bogeyman rather than an instrument of progress.
Within hours of being sworn in as the nation’s top lawyer, Bondi sent an internal memo
promising to crack down on DEI initiatives and explore ways to prosecute companies with diversity policies.
The fallout from the Department of Justice’s fascist turn has been swift and far-reaching. The department’s Civil Rights Division is losing 70% of its lawyers as a result of the pandemonium exacted by President Donald Trump’s racist executive orders, according to NPR
.
“The Civil Rights Division exists to enforce civil rights laws that protect all Americans,” Stacey Young, a former division attorney, told NPR of the 250 lawyers who have left or are in the process of leaving. “It’s not an arm of the White House. It doesn’t exist to enact the president’s own agenda. That’s a perversion of the separation of powers and the role of an independent Justice Department.”
Chicago’s mayor acknowledging he has hired Black people who have historically been sidelined is not a civil rights violation. You need only look at the sheer volume of deeply unqualified white people who make up Trump’s Cabinet—from the secretary of defense
to the secretary of homeland security
to the secretary of education
—to see blatant favoritism in our government.
