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Trump Executive Orders ensure ‘Beautiful Clean’ Affordable Coal will continue to bolster US energy grid

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President Trump signed several executive orders Tuesday that will allow coal-fired power plants to stay online past planned retirement dates, identify coal resources on federal lands, and bolster the reliability of the electric grid. The orders may help the U.S. face an uncomfortable truth: wind turbines and solar panels can’t cost-effectively meet the U.S.’ growing electricity needs.

Coal provides an important source of the reliable and fuel-secure energy needed to keep the lights on. Our organization’s research shows that it is more affordable than wind and solar, too.

Mr. Trump’s executive orders will allow coal operators the flexibility to delay the premature closures caused in part by President Biden’s policies. May 2024 rule from the Biden Environmental Protection Agency would have forced coal plants to spend billions on unproven technology to capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions. If coal plants failed to comply by 2035, they would be forced to shutter by 2039. The Trump EPA has since announced it will reconsider this rule, but the process could take years.

Coal should be allowed to help keep the lights on, especially because U.S. electricity demand is rising. The North American Electric Reliability Council’s 2024 long-term reliability assessment warns that “resource additions are not keeping up with generator retirements and demand growth” in most regions of the U.S. Coal produced 16% of the U.S.’ electricity in 2023, and coal, natural gas and petroleum together produced 60%. Nuclear comprised another 18%. It is folly to believe that the U.S. can meet its growing power demands while kneecapping a significant source of its baseload power.

Not only is reliable baseload power a must for the grid, but electricity generated by coal is less expensive than intermittent resources like wind and solar. It’s easy to understand why: the cheapest source of electricity is from plants that have already been built. Most of the U.S.’ coal fleet is like houses where the mortgages have been paid off. With no loans or interest left to repay, operating costs for existing coal plants typically consist of property taxes, insurance, labor, maintenance, and fuel.

Our organization models the full costs of building enough wind, solar, and battery storage to replace coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants. Powering a grid on wind, solar, and batteries is more expensive than coal because connecting wind turbines and solar panels to the grid entails system-wide costs like constructing new transmission lines. The intermittency of wind and solar means you need more power plant capacity to generate the same amount of power. More power plant infrastructure means more property taxes. More weather-dependent resources means more costs to managing the grid, like turning off wind turbines and solar panels when they are producing too much electricity for the grid to absorb — or conversely, ramping up natural gas generation on cloudy and still days when wind and solar aren’t producing.

Our research incorporates system-wide costs and shows that a realistic midpoint estimate for wind turbines is $72 per MWh. Electricity from new solar can range between $50 per MWh to $85 per MWh. Data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shows that the average coal plant generated electricity for only $34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in 2020 (the last year of available data). It could be even less expensive for coal plants to generate electricity if states and utilities allowed coal plants to operate more often. In 2024, the coal fleet generated electricity only about 43% of the time. If that approached 80%, costs could go as low as $29.

Keeping America’s “beautiful, clean coal” plants online is the right thing for the country and it is good news for consumers that the U.S. has recognized the electric grid’s reliability hole and decided to stop digging.

Isaac Orr is vice president of research, and Mitch Rolling is the director of research at Always On Energy Research, a nonprofit energy modeling firm.

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Scott Jennings Dunks Head In Trash Can Upon Mention Of Trump-Musk Feud

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Republican strategist Scott Jennings dipped his head into a trash can during CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper” on Thursday after host Jake Tapper asked who he would side with in billionaire Elon Musk’s and President Donald Trump’s feud.

A public argument began between Trump and Musk on Thursday after the billionaire continued to rally against the president’s “big, beautiful bill.” While discussing Musk’s and Trump’s fallout, Tapper asked Jennings who he would side with “in the divorce.”

“Let me just tell you what every Republican is doing. I have my, here’s where we are today. We’re literally, heads are in the garbage can right now. That’s the state of everybody I know at the moment,” Jennings said as he placed his head in a black trash can.

“Not going to lie, it’s an ugly day. And, you know, you hate it when your friends are fighting,” Jennings added. “I continue to believe that their partnership last year saved America. I also continue to believe their goals are not mutually exclusive. Trump needs to pass his agenda, which this bill is his agenda. It’s what he ran on.”

With the Senate expected to take a vote on the budget reconciliation package, Republicans like Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky have been vocal about their dissatisfaction with the legislation.

WATCH:

During a CBS News interview in May, Musk called out Republican support of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” arguing that it would contradict the cost-cutting work of the Department of Government Efficiency. Similar to some Republican senators’ warnings, Musk said the bill could potentially increase the deficit.

“Elon wants to save America from going bankrupt, which they can also do if the Republicans in Congress and everybody works together, all of these things can happen,” Jennings said. “When the fights get personal, though, it means the enemy is advancing. And, in this case, it means the Democrats are laughing and advancing.”

“So, hopefully, cooler heads will soon prevail,” Jennings said. “The president can get his agenda, and Elon can convince the Republicans that the debt is a serious problem, but [I’m] not going to lie. Rough day for the Republicans.”

White House officials have pushed back against opponents of the bill, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller writing on X that the bill would save “more than 1.6 TRILLION in mandatory spending, including the largest-ever welfare reform.”

Despite concerns about the bill not being able to pass and head to Trump’s desk by July 4, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said in May that he believes there’s a “workable path” to secure 51 votes.

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Liberals Embrace Islamic Extremism In Canada

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When FBI director Kash Patel condemned Canada allowing Islamic terrorists to gain a foothold in North America, Canadian politicians and pundits, including new Prime Minister Mark Carney, dismissed Patel’s assertions as baseless fearmongering.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the Trump administration is correct: Radical Islamic ideology has become endemic in Canada over the past decade.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service itself has confirmed that, since 2015, radical Islamic ideology has become commonplace throughout Canadian society, as a result of the porous borders and the Liberal government’s unwillingness to effectively regulate the influx of international migration into Canada. Numerous terrorist leaders and those with intimate connections to terrorist organizations such as Samidoun and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine have been permitted to migrate within the Canadian state and promote their own nihilistic ideology over the past decade.

Islamic schools in Canada are not compelled to abide by a standardized curriculum and, consequently, covertly promote radical Islamic ideology and extremism to vulnerable children in Canada. At one prominent Islamic school in Canada, the East End Madrassah, administrators were recently pressured to issue a public apology after it was exposed for “… teaching children that treacherous Jews conspired to kill the Islamic Prophet Mohammed.”

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Since 2015, explicit Islamic terrorist acts have become increasingly prevalent in Canada.

According to data from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, “[N]early a dozen terrorism-related incidents [have occurred] in Canada or abroad involving Canadians” since Oct. 7, 2023, alone. In addition), “The number of terrorism charges laid in Canada jumped 488% last year” and “Canadian police have foiled six terrorist plots in the last 12 months alone, with arrests spanning from Edmonton to Ottawa to Toronto.” The Liberal government recently publicly downplayed a report from the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth, & Development Office that a “terror attack attempt in Canada is very likely.”

The globally renowned Counter Extremism Project has recently reported that “within the past few decades, several hundred Canadian civilians have been killed or injured in incidents related to violent extremism,” and that, in spite of the glib posturing and “apparent policy shifts in the Trudeau government, Canada has historically viewed violent Islamist extremism as one of the leading threats to its national security.”

In addition, the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre recently warned the Canadian government that Canada will likely “experience a lone-wolf terror attack soon … and antisemitism is overwhelmingly the motivating factor.”

And to Kash Patel’s point, over the past decade Canada’s porous borders and the Liberal government’s tolerance of Islamic extremism have functioned in concert to enable various terrorists to transgress from Canada into America to commit crimes and even mass murder.

In 2024, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a longtime resident of Canada, attempted to carry out a mass shooting in support of ISIS in New York City, and Shamsud-Din Jabbar, the ISIS terrorist who committed the horrific “Bourbon Street Attack” in New Orleans, was also previously permitted to travel freely between Canada and the U.S. Furthermore, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service itself has long recognized Canada’s modern transformation into an exporter of Islamic terrorism and for years has attempted to “monitor and respond to the threat of Canadian extremist travellers (CETs).”

According to Director Patel and the FBI, “over 300 known or suspected terrorists crossed into this country last year illegally … 85% of them came through [Canada and] the northern border,” and “This year, 100 known or suspected terrorists have crossed into this country illegally, 64 or so from the north.” Even Justin Trudeau, Canada’s previous prime minister, was recently forced to admit that “bad actors … have been exploiting [Canada’s] immigration system for their own interests.”

Despite all this, the Canadian political establishment and the media have stubbornly denied any suggestion that Islamic extremism has successfully entrenched itself within Canada.

More importantly, it is readily apparent that until the Liberal government starts to earnestly secure Canada’s borders and begins to excise Islamic extremism from within Canadian society, Canada will continue to serve as a womb for Islamic extremism in North America and a constant source of terrorism in the U.S.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
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