Daily Caller
Key Trump Cabinet Nominees Face A Daunting Energy Policy Mess
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By David Blackmon
Just so we can frame this for everyone in the room, China will build 100 new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race.
After a week spent watching hours of the various Senate confirmation hearings for some of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, one compelling thought lingers with me more than any other: Does Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii have a seat on every Senate committee?
The answer to that is “no,” but it seemed that way as the Senator began her questioning of nominees ranging from Pete Hegseth (Defense) to former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (Justice) to former Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (Interior) to Chris Wright (Energy) by posing some iteration of the following question: “ … since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?”
Sadly, Hirono’s farcical style of questioning turned out to be less of an exception than a rule among the Democratic members of these committees as the week wore on. Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia ended his questioning of Hegseth by literally asking if he had ever beaten his wife, an obvious smear which Hegseth denied.
It was all sad to witness, a troubling indicator of the health of both the Democratic Party and the American Republic. But what it all revealed by Friday is that the Democrats are unlikely to claim any scalps from among this week’s slate of nominees. Where energy policy is concerned, that means that the three departments/agencies that are most impactful in that realm are likely to be led by former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Burgum at the Department of the Interior and Wright at the Department of Energy.
Seldom if ever in this country’s history have three more capable, knowledgeable and effective individuals been in positions of leadership to help reform and recover from the waste and misallocation of taxpayer dollars that have characterized President Joe Biden’s 4-year presidency.
I have written several times here that the inevitable outcome that will result from pretty much every aspect of the Biden Green New Deal policies will be to render America dependent on China for its energy security, due to Chinese dominance of global processing and supply chains for all forms of and raw materials for renewable energy and electric vehicles. This is obviously not a sustainable situation, and it is clear that Trump and his key nominees fully understand that reality.
U.S. dependency on foreign adversaries is not limited to China. One such area involving a different country holds high stakes related to the goal of a renaissance in nuclear power often touted by Republicans and some Democrats alike.
In a revealing exchange, Wright and Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming discussed America’s recent dependence on Russia, of all countries, for imports of enriched uranium. As Wright pointed out, this is a technology first invented in the United States, but our country has virtually no existing capacity for uranium enrichment today. This is, as Wright called it, “a sad state of affairs” that has been caused in large part by wrong-headed federal environmental and permitting policies.
Unfortunately, the Biden cure for this pressing energy security matter could be even worse. As U.S. and NATO sanctions have gradually shut down Russia’s exports of enriched uranium, the U.S. nuclear industry has become reliant on imports from — you guessed it — China.
“As those [sanctions] shut down Russian uranium … we see more imports from China,” Wright testified. “We need to get beyond that … without shutting down the nuclear power plants we have running today. It is an area that requires urgent action.”
In another revealing exchange, Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, disagreed with Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon about the Senator’s claim that the United States is involved in “an arms race on clean energy” with China.
“Senator Wyden, just so we can frame this for everyone in the room, China will build 100 new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race,” Bessent replied. Truer words were never spoken, and it is impossible to win that energy race when the United States is increasingly dependent on China for its very energy needs.
These and other Trump nominees have an enormous mess to clean up from the profligate spending and waste of the Biden years. Fortunately for the country, their work begins Monday. Not a moment too soon.
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.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Audrey Streb
The Department of Energy (DOE) released a new report Monday warning of impending blackouts if the United States continues to shutter power plants without adequately replacing retiring capacity.
DOE warned in its Monday report that blackouts could increase by 100% by 2030 if the U.S. continues to retire power plants without sufficient replacements, and that the electricity grid is not prepared to meet the demand of power-hungry data centers in the years to come without more reliable generation coming online quickly. The report specifically highlighted wind and solar, two resources pushed by Biden, as responsible for eroding grid stability and advised that dispatchable generation from sources like coal, oil, gas and nuclear are necessary to meet the anticipated U.S. power demand.
“This report affirms what we already know: The United States cannot afford to continue down the unstable and dangerous path of energy subtraction previous leaders pursued, forcing the closure of baseload power sources like coal and natural gas,” DOE Secretary Chris Wright said. “In the coming years, America’s reindustrialization and the AI race will require a significantly larger supply of around-the-clock, reliable, and uninterrupted power. President Trump’s administration is committed to advancing a strategy of energy addition, and supporting all forms of energy that are affordable, reliable, and secure. If we are going to keep the lights on, win the AI race, and keep electricity prices from skyrocketing, the United States must unleash American energy.”
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All regional grid systems across the U.S. are expected to lose reliability in the coming years without the addition of more reliable power, according to the DOE’s report. The U.S. will need an additional 100 gigawatts of new peak hour supply by 2030, with data centers projected to require as much as half of this electricity, the report estimates; for reference, one gigawatt is enough to power up to one million homes.
President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day back in the Oval Office and signed an executive order on April 8 ordering DOE to review and identify at-risk regions of the electrical grid, which the report released Monday does. In contrast, former President Joe Biden cracked down on conventional power sources like coal with stringent regulations while unleashing a gusher of subsidies for green energy developments.
Electricity demand is projected to hit a record high in the next several years, surging 25% by 2030, according to Energy Information Administration (EIA) data and a recent ICF International report. Demand was essentially static for the last several years, and skyrocketing U.S. power demand presents an “urgent need” for electricity resources, according to the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), a major grid watchdog.
Wright has also issued several emergency orders to major grid operators since April. New Orleans experienced blackouts just two days after Wright issued an emergency order on May 23 to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the regional grid operator covering the New Orleans area.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Cohen
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon warned on Friday that Republicans would suffer major losses if President Donald Trump’s administration does not move to release documents related to deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes and associations.
Axios reported on Sunday that a two-page memo showed the Department Of Justice (DOJ) and FBI found no evidence Epstein kept a “client list” or was murdered, but public doubts have continued. Bannon said on “Bannon’s War Room” that failure to release information would lead to the dissipation of one-tenth of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and significant losses for the Republican Party in the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
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“It’s not about just a pedophile ring and all that, it’s about who governs us, right? And that’s why it’s not going to go away … For this to go away, you’re going to lose 10% of the MAGA movement,” Bannon said. “If we lose 10% of the MAGA movement right now, we’re going to lose 40 seats in ’26, we’re going to lose the [presidency]. They don’t even have to steal it, which they’re going to try to do in ’28, because they’re going to sit there and they go, ‘They’ve disheartened the hardest-core populist nationalists’ — that’s always been who governs us.”
Bannon also demanded the publication of all the Epstein documents on “Bannon’s War Room” Thursday. He called on the DOJ to go to court and push for the release of the documents or for Trump to appoint a special counsel to manage the publication.
Epstein was arrested in 2019 and charged with sex trafficking. Shortly after, he was found dead in his New York Metropolitan Correctional Center cell shortly after. Officials asserted that he hanged himself in his cell.
However, Epstein’s death has sparked years of theories because of the malfunctioning of prison cameras, along with guards admitting to falsifying documents about checking on the then-inmate. The DOJ inspector general later confirmed that multiple surveillance cameras outside of his cell were inoperable, while others captured the common area outside his door.
Both Bannon and Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson have speculated that Epstein had connections to intelligence agencies.
Former Labor Secretary Alex Acosta allegedly indicated that Epstein was tied to intelligence, according to Vicky Ward in The Daily Beast.
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