Todd Warren

How solar and batteries help keep lights on during Texas winter storms The recent boom in renewables and storage in Texas means its grid is much better prepared for bad weather than it was when Winter Storm Uri hit five years…

Texas has quietly built a massive renewable energy and battery storage fleet. Its impact is clear in three years of winter storm stability, writes Tam Hunt:

Sowing fear of "ICE at the polls!" could do more to suppress votes than any actual ICE at the polls. Here's an explanation of the right's strategy on this, along with my recommendations for what to do instead of playing along.

katestarbird.substack.com/p/effective-...

Someone has sure already made this observation but the fact they can convert all those empty warehouses into prison camps means they could have converted them into housing, community centers, job training centers or, hell, libraries or schools all along. It’s always a matter of will not resources.

ICE is not doing immigration enforcement, they are targeting immigrants to justify an active coup for which they are Trump's army.

- Without immigrants, US government public debt at all levels would be at least 205 percent of gross domestic product (GDP)—nearly twice its 2023 level."

- Over that period, immigrants created a cumulative fiscal surplus of $14.5 trillion in real 2024 US dollars, including $3.9 trillion in savings on interest on the debt.

- For each year from 1994 to 2023, the US immigrant population generated more in taxes than they received in benefits from all levels of government.

"The government first began gathering detailed information on benefits use by citizenship status in 1994. The data show:

Immigrants’ Recent Effects on Government Budgets: 1994–2023 Our analysis in this paper shows that immigrants generated a fiscal surplus of about $14.5 trillion from 1994 to 2023, that the average immigrant is much less costly than the average US-born American,...

The Cato Institute is not a liberal think tank- one of their founders is Charles Koch of Koch Brothers infamy. TL;DR is there is no sound economic argument for ICE's current reign of terror.

N.J. governor wants residents to record ICE agents, upload videos to new state database “If you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out," New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said as the state plans to launch an online portal.

“We are also going to be standing up a portal so people can upload all their cellphone videos and alert people,” Sherrill said. “If you see an ICE agent in the street, get your phone out. We want to know.”

Sherrill also said she would prohibit ICE from operating on state property.

No Kings AND No Occupying Armies - The American Prospect In 1770, the redcoats were a lot more solicitous of Americans’ rights than Trump’s goons are today.

In 1770, after the Boston Massacre, the British "arrested the eight soldiers who’d fired on the crowd and, under public pressure, withdrew the regiments from city streets, though they remained within Boston. The soldiers were tried before a jury of Bostonians; two were found guilty of manslaughter."

Two Republican senators call for Kristi Noem to resign as DHS secretary Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Thom Tillis are the first GOP members of Congress to call for Noem to step down as secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

BREAKING: Two Republican senators, Thom Tillis and Lisa Murkowski, call for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to resign.

if bovino is out and conservatives are turning on noem then there is a real opportunity to demand that miller resign too.

Gregory Bovino Gets Demoted The Border Patrol chief was the public face of a traveling immigration crackdown on cities governed by Democrats.

BREAKING Greg Bovino has been removed as Border Patrol "commander at large" and will return to El Centro Calif, where he is expected to retire soon. A stunning turnaround after Pretti killing. Bovino's traveling blue city crackdown is over www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Welcome new people in with open arms, provide training and meaningful ways to join and plug-in to your organization, link arms and build solidarity across division, and let's push our way through together.

As scary as this is, I am taking comfort the high level of resistance emerging in Minneapolis and across the country. For organizers, this is go time.

Essentially this means that all persons and institutions not actively in favor of masked, secret police rounding up and shooting immigrants and dissenters in the street are considered enemy combatants.

Apart from the gaslighting about the source of the chaos (there was no chaos in Minneapolis before ICE arrived), it is wild to say that the "far left" is working with local authorities in the same city where Derek Chauvin of the Minneapolis Police Department murdered George Floyd in May of 2020.

Live: Minnesota reels after latest fatal shooting by federal agents Protesters gathered at a park near where a man was shot and killed by federal agents Saturday. Federal officials say the man was armed.

Statement from Pretti's family: "Alex is clearly not holding a gun when attacked by Trump’s murdering and cowardly ICE thugs. He has his phone in his right hand and his empty left hand is raised above his head while trying to protect the woman ICE just pushed down all while being pepper sprayed."

Kudos to the Minnesota @startribune.com for choosing the side of the people.

Everyday people and institutions are making active choices between a descent into fascism where masked, secret police pull us out of our homes and schools or we fight like hell to transform this country into something it has never been: a place for ALL of us and the planet.

As lawmakers meet with health insurance CEOs, our analysis brings together KFF’s most useful polling on the financial challenges Americans face in the health system — from skipping care to medical debt.

Explore the data: https://on.kff.org/45btsuG

After Helene, rural North Carolina turns to solar and battery hubs More than a year after the storm’s devastation, clean-energy microgrids are springing up in remote areas thanks to a program that could become a national…

After Hurricane Helene devastated rural North Carolina, a solar-and-battery microgrid has this community is better prepared for extreme weather to come.

NC Senate Leader Phil Berger trails Sam Page by 5 points in latest primary poll • NC Newsline The most powerful Republican in the North Carolina Senate is trailing his 2026 primary opponent by 5 points in a poll released Tuesday.

oh hello

NC Senate Leader Phil Berger trails Sam Page by 5 points in latest primary poll • NC Newsline The most powerful Republican in the North Carolina Senate is trailing his 2026 primary opponent by 5 points in a poll released Tuesday.

The most powerful Republican in the North Carolina Senate is trailing his 2026 primary opponent by 5 points in a poll released Tuesday, less than two months away from the March 3 contest. ncnewsline.com/2026/01/20/n... By @kingdollar.bsky.social #ncpol #nc

shouldn't need to be said but here we are: noncompliance with law enforcement is not justification for law enforcement breaking laws. and, yes, trained, armed professionals should be held to higher standards and scrutiny than the general public.

Willena Cannon, the fight to free her son Kwame, and her work with the Beloved Community Center were foundational to the struggle for justice for so many that call Greensboro home. Rest easy, Willena. Your work touched, moved, and inspired countless people, myself included. ❤️

There's tons more but, yeah, this is bad and this administration must be stopped.

7a. ...in order to consolidate their authoritarian regime here (which is hella unpopular) they need an outside wartime enemy that creates the pretext for this administration to flout any legal concerns. Think Orwell's 1984, "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."

7. The attack on Venezuela may very well be a distraction related to the Epstein files or Jack Smith or [insert threat to the Trump administration], but it is also its own thing: