Military service members discharged for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine, or who left because of the vaccine mandate, are eligible for reinstatement with full rank and back pay.
Fulfilling his inauguration speech promise, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday calling the Department of Defense’s 2021-2023 vaccine requirement “unfair, overbroad, and completely unnecessary.”
“[T]he military unjustly discharged those who refused the vaccine, regardless of the years of service given to our Nation, after failing to grant many of them an exemption that they should have received,” the order reads. “Federal Government redress of any wrongful dismissals is overdue.”
The order applies to both active and reserve military members who were discharged solely for refusal to take the vaccine or who voluntarily left the service (or allowed their service to lapse) due to the mandate.
Members who left must provide a written and sworn attestation that they left due to the mandate to return to service without affecting rank and pay.
Praised by conservatives and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the president’s order followed on the heels of two other military-related executive orders that target race and gender initiatives implemented by the Biden administration.
The “Restoring America’s Fighting Force” order abolished all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices or programs within the Pentagon, claiming they “undermine leadership, merit, and unit cohesion, thereby eroding lethality and force readiness,” a theme Hegseth has often invoked.
In the same vein, the “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” order directs the Defense secretary to issue updated directives ensuring that transgender service members meet all objective physical and mental fitness standards.
“It is the policy of the United States Government to establish high standards for troop readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” the order reads.
“This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria. This policy is also inconsistent with shifting pronoun usage or use of pronouns that inaccurately reflect an individual’s sex,” it adds.
Hegseth and others have promised that all of these measures will lead to a “recruiting renaissance” under Trump.
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As recent studies project a big rise in power generation demand from the big datacenters that are proliferating around the United States, the big question continues to focus in on what forms of generation will rise to meet the new demand. Most datacenters have plans to initially interconnect into local power grids, but the sheer magnitude of their energy needs threatens to outstrip the ability of grid managers to expand supply fast enough.
This hunger for more affordable, 24/7 baseload capacity is leading to a variety of proposed solutions, including President Donald Trump’s new executive orders focused on reviving the nation’s coal industry, scheduled to be signed Tuesday afternoon. But efforts to restart the permitting of new coal-fired power plants in the US will require additional policy changes, efforts which will take time and could ultimately fail. In the meantime, datacenter developers find themselves having to delay construction and completion dates until firm power supply can be secured.
Datacenters specific to AI technology require ever-increasing power loads. For instance, a single AI query can consume nearly ten times the power of a traditional internet search, and projections suggest that U.S. data center electricity consumption could double or even triple by 2030, rising from about 4-5% of total U.S. electricity today to as much as 9-12%. Globally, data centers could see usage climb from around 536 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2025 to over 1,000 TWh by 2030. In January, a report from the American Security Project estimated that datacenters could consume about 12% of all U.S. power supply.
Obviously, the situation calls for innovative solutions. A pair of big players in the natural gas industry, Liberty Energy and Range Resources, announced on April 8 plans to diversify into the power generation business with the development of a major new natural gas power plant to be located in the Pittsburgh area. Partnering with Imperial Land Corporation (ILC), Liberty and Range will locate the major power generation plant in the Fort Cherry Development District, a Class A industrial park being developed by ILC.
“The strategic collaboration between Liberty, ILC, and Range will focus on a dedicated power generation facility tailored to meet the energy demands of data centers, industrial facilities, and other high-energy-use businesses in Pennsylvania,” the companies said in a joint release.
Plans for this new natural gas power project follows closely on the heels of the March 22 announcement for plans to transform the largest coal-fired power plant in Pennsylvania, the Homer City generating station, into a new gas-fired facility. The planned revitalized plant would house 7 natural gas turbines with a combined capacity of 4.5 GW, enough power 3 million homes.
Both the Homer City station and the Fort Cherry plant will use gas produced out of the Appalachia region’s massive Marcellus Shale formation, the most prolific gas basin in North America. But plans like these by gas companies to invest in their own products for power needs aren’t isolated to Pennsylvania.
In late January, big Permian Basin oil and gas producer Diamondback Energy told investors that it is seeking equity partners to develop a major gas-fired plan on its own acreage in the region. The facility would primarily supply electricity to data centers, which are expected to proliferate in Texas due to the AI boom, while also providing power for Diamondback’s own field operations. This dual-purpose approach could lower the company’s power costs and create a new revenue stream by selling excess electricity.
Prospects for expansion of gas generation in the U.S. received a big boost in January when GE Vernova announced plans for a $600 million expansion of its manufacturing capacity for gas turbines and other products in the U.S. GE Vernova is the main supplier of turbines for U.S. power generation needs. The company plans to build 37 gas power turbines in 2025, with a potential increase to over 70 by 2027, to meet rising energy demands.
The bottom line on these and other recent events is this: Natural gas is quickly becoming the power generation fuel of choice to feed the needs of the expanding datacenter industry through 2035, and potentially beyond. Given that reality, the smart thing to do for these and other companies in the natural gas business is to put down big bets on themselves.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story”
The White House will ignore all emails from reporters which include preferred gender pronouns in their email signatures according to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“Any reporter who chooses to put their preferred pronouns in their bio clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story,” Leavitt wrote in response to a request for comment from the New York Times.
The practice of citing one’s preferred gender pronouns, which is increasingly prevalent among leftists, stems from gender ideology, the idea that people have a “gender identity” that is distinct from their sex. Thus, for example, women who identify as males may include the gender pronouns “he/him” in their email signature or other identifiers.
Leavitt had previously stated to a NYT reporter who inquired about the potential closure of a climate research observatory, “As a matter of policy, we do not respond to reporters with pronouns in their bios.”
The New York Timesreported that Katie Miller, senior advisor for the Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), had weeks prior declined another question from a Times reporter, for the same reason.
“As a matter of policy, I don’t respond to people who use pronouns in their signatures as it shows they ignore scientific realities and therefore ignore facts,” Miller said in an email. In a separate message, she noted, “This applies to all reporters who have pronouns in their signature.”
