Amanda Drennen

Over 40% of corn grown in Indiana is used to make ethanol that cars burn. One acre of corn yields about 16,500 vehicle-miles per year of ethanol, which sounds high until you realize that one acre of solar yields about 2,700,000 vehicle-miles per year: 16,000% more driving for a given plot of land.

“Eggs were the symbol of inflation in the last election. Now, as electricity bills spike, they are becoming a symbol for consumer frustration in 2026.

Eighty million Americans are struggling to pay, four in five feel powerless, and politicians are scrambling for someone to blame."

You know who else scored 41 points on a Bill Belichick coached team in a nationally televised game?

Go Birds

The health burden and racial-ethnic disparities of air pollution from the major oil and gas lifecycle stages in the United States Largest total population health burden is from O&G end-use, but greatest relative disparities are linked to downstream activities.

Each year, air pollution from US oil and gas kills an estimated 91,000 Americans, making it the 8th most common cause of US death, and afflicts ~210,000 US kids with asthma. Pollution-related illnesses disproportionately affect Black and Asian communities.

$3.1B annual cost estimated for fossil fuel plants DOE won’t allow to retire One coal plant owner told the SEC it spent $29 million in the first 38 days of an Energy Department order to keep it online.

According to a new report: "The U.S. Department of Energy’s efforts to prevent large fossil-fuel power plants from retiring could cost ratepayers about $3.1 billion a year in 2028."

It’s pretty simple:

- AI is driving electricity demand up

- The Trump Administration is restricting new electricity supply from being built

- When demand goes up and supply goes down, you pay more for electricity.

I'll say it a thousand times -- any account of the past that only celebrates the good parts of a nation without reckoning with the bad is not what we call "history"

It is propaganda, pure and simple.

Just going to reiterate that in 2016 Trump inherited the lowest murder rate of any president in 50 years. He set reality aside, gave his “American Carnage” inaugural address, and was then the first president in 30 years to leave office with a higher murder rate than when he started.

As electric bills rise, evidence mounts that data centers share blame. States feel pressure to act Amid rising electric bills, states are under pressure to insulate regular household and business ratepayers from the costs of feeding Big Tech’s energy-hungry data centers.

“But growing evidence suggests that the electricity bills of some Americans are rising to subsidize the massive energy needs of Big Tech…”

What is less well understood is how poorly the United States is prepared to match this rise in electricity demand with an equivalent increase in supply. To some degree, American electricity prices are already rising: So far this year, utilities have received or requested permission to increase customers’ bills by $29 billion, according to a July report from PowerLines, a think tank and advocacy group. That’s a large number in its own right, and it’s more than twice as much as had been approved at this time last year. But when you look across the power system, virtually every trend is setting us up for electricity price spikes: The supply chain to build new natural gas power plants is backed up. Virtually all new utility-scale gas turbines are spoken for until the end of this decade, as Heatmap News covered in February. U.S. natural gas supplies will come under more strain in the next few years as fossil fuel companies export more of the fuel abroad. From 2024 to 2028, North America’s liquified natural gas export capacity is projected to double. Many of the key components to build more grid infrastructure — such as copper or steel — have surged in cost due to Trump’s tariffs and self-induced trade uncertainty. The federal government has become a less stable fiscal and financing partner for energy producers and distributors. On Wednesday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright killed a government loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express transmission project. Why? “To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources,” but also because President Trump asked him to.

It’s hard to find a trend in the electricity system right now that *doesn’t* point to near-term rate hikes if not a broad affordability crisis. That’s a serious problem for climate policy, but also the American economy writ large. I wrote about it: heatmap.news/politics/ele...

Trump promised to lower energy costs – his tax bill will raise them for people in red states the most

Household energy bills in some Republican-leaning states could rise by more than $600 every year, analysis of the so-called "big, beautiful bill" finds.

This is a staggering amount of money. It’s bigger than the Department of Transportation spending on all infrastructure. It’s bigger than all of the federal R&D done for both the military and all federal science agencies. Disgusting.

One of my great theories of history is that in 1865 and 1945, the winners of certain wars didn’t do the right thing and we are continuing to reap the consequences of that.

This is their idea of a “free” market: Big government taxing clean and cheap sources of energy out of existence.

Call your representatives and senators and ask them why they want to destroy a booming American industry, raise your electricity bills, and add more pollution to our air and water.

A mad king’s pointless war is where Donald Trump was always heading There is no legal or moral justification for Donald Trump's bomb strike on Iran, just the ego of an increasingly delusional president.

Trump said you can measure a presidency by the wars you avoid, and for once he was right. Saturday's Iran bombing was the exclamation point on his abject failure

Trump is copying dictators from Mussolini to Putin in seeking glory through pointless war. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/dona...

it’s even more demoralizing when the history you’re repeating is history you were around for the first time

COMMENTARY: It takes a great country to admit its mistakes. The Trump administration's new signs at Colorado's National Historic Sites reflect weakness and insecurity.

2025 Infrastructure Report Card | ASCE's 2025 Infrastructure Report Card

This year the American Society of Civil Engineers put out a report card and for the first time since 1998, America had no D- categories in infrastructure. We finally spent four years investing in local communities, building new manufacturing, making our lives easier. No more, we have lost momentum.

“A deranged maniac impersonated a police officer and killed lawmakers but if you’re an immigrant be sure you immediately comply with plain clothes people who won’t identify themselves telling you to get in a van”, what a fuckin country

Trump preparing large-scale cancellation of federal funding for California, sources say | CNN Politics The Trump administration is preparing to cancel a large swath of federal funding to California, an effort which could begin as soon as Friday, according to multiple sources.

not enough said about how, by turning the national government against states on the basis of ordinary political disagreement, trump is undermining the idea that the union is worthwhile. www.cnn.com/2025/06/06/p...

Opinion | Is This the Beginning of the End of America’s National Parks?

“The group estimated that reducing the operating budget by $900 million, as the Trump administration wants to do, would require closing 350 of the 433 parks, monuments, historic sites and other locations overseen by the Park Service… we would be witnessing the dismantling of a century-old system”

Seven County (NEPA) decision, with a helpful concurrence explaining the relationship between the agency’s organic decision making statute and the scope of required NEPA review:
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

The country is about to trade away global leadership on clean energy and advanced technology and health science and literal food for hungry kids, for what, a tax cut for some super rich folks? This deal sucks.

The latest Republican plan is killing all clean energy projects *60 days* after their terrible law is enacted. Hard to believe, but the bill got worse... If it passes the Senate, it will jack up energy bills across the country and put hundreds of thousands of people out of work.

JUST IN: Pittsburgh voters have approved a ballot that bans the city from privatizing the local water and sewers system.

The measure passed by a very large margin.

This was one of my guide of the main races to watch today: boltsmag.org/whats-on-the...

covid threw into high relief how many working class people are absolutely necessary to keeping society functional, and rather than that sparking a renewed commitment to an economy that rewards such workers, we've seen an elite backlash against even modest increases in their market power

The Latest Trump and DOGE Casualty: Energy Data The Energy Information Administration has long provided reliable data on everything from oil and gas to alternative energy. Now one of its signature reports has been slashed and a second one canceled ...

NEWS: Reeling from Trump/DOGE cuts and chaos, energy data agency cancels major international report, deletes analytical centerpiece of its flagship U.S. energy outlook. www.propublica.org/article/the-...

Chart: Trump is killing the country’s clean-energy manufacturing… In the first three months of this year, firms canceled nearly $8 billion worth of U.S. clean energy projects, mostly factories, in a dramatic turn from…

"In the first three months of this year, firms have already abandoned plans to build nearly $8 billion worth of clean energy projects ... per new data from E2." www.canarymedia.com/articles/cle... via @danmccarthy.bsky.social 🔌💡

Meta's data center could be 'transformative' for Louisiana, utility says—as long as customers pay the $5 billion power bill Entergy seeks regulatory approval to shift constructions costs for gas plants needed to power Meta's facility to its entire customer base.

"Meta is building a $10 billion AI data center in northeast Louisiana. Entergy Louisiana says it needs to build a major new natural gas plant to power the facility. The utility wants permission to pass the plant's construction costs onto its entire customer base."

The Loan Programs Office (LPO) is one of the most quietly effective tools the federal government has. It is the center of our industrial policy providing loans that banks won't give for energy innovation. It funds real projects. Battery factories. Nuclear reactors. Geothermal energy. Car factories.