We know which Kaiser is the idiot

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On a Berlin streetcorner during World War I, a man is arrested for treason and sedition for shouting “the Kaiser is an idiot!”

The man protests, “You can't arrest me, I was talking about the Austrian Kaiser!”

As they cart him away, the police respond, “You can’t fool us. We know which Kaiser is the idiot.”

The slumpy, grabby Trump machine is destroying constitutional democracy so that private equity can build the post-human fracking-powered data-center economy.

The EPA has erased all evidence of anthropogenic global warming from its website, leaving only discussion of sun spots and other natural variability. Trump’s illegal DOGEing of probationary EPA staff is leaving hundreds of dedicated public servants in limbo.

Many tech billionaires are embracing Trump’s neo-fascism, including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, Peter Thiel, David Sacks, Alex Karp, and Marc Andreessen. Others, like Eric Schmidt and Sam Altman, are starry-eyed apostles of their techno-Moloch. The lords of capital—Stephen Schwarzmann, Jamie Dimon, Larry Fink, David Solomon, Bryan Moynihan, Ted Pick, and so on—are more circumspect but quickly dumped any respect for civilizational sustainability in favor of a trillion barrels of oil worth of universal paperclips.

Schwarzmann’s Blackstone, the world’s largest private equity firm, is trying to take over New Mexico’s public utility for $11.5 billion, and already owns “20 percent of the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, which is reportedly planning to expand its natural gas power plants to meet electricity demand from data centers,” James Baratta writes. Two months ago, Fink’s BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, took over Minnesota’s public utility for $6.2 billion.

The Democratic Party is not in full sway (make sure to read to the end of the newsletter!) to this death cult, despite the best efforts of effective-altruist cultist Ezra Klein, billionaire courtier Matt Yglesias, corporate mouthpiece Matt Bennett, and the Wall Street whisperers running the Congressional minorities, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). Jeffries’ latest feint was announcing an “AI commission” made up of Big Tech’s favorite Democrats, Josh Gottheimer (N.J.), Ted Lieu (Calif.), Valerie Foushee (N.C.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), and Frank Pallone (N.J.).²  

Outside of the Panem Capitol, the people are rebelling. “A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US,” Oliver Milman reports. Memphis activists are fighting Elon Musk’s Project Colossus, a growing fracking-powered mega-data center. State lawmakers are trying to stop the Ted Cruz push for pre-emption of state and local AI regulations.

Many incumbent House Democrats are hoping that they can benefit politically from this popular movement against data centers without actually joining it. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) and Don Beyer have introduced the Protecting Families from AI Data Center Energy Costs Act, which calls for a report from the Trump-dominated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in six months. In other words, it doesn’t protect families from AI data center energy costs.

Friend of Hill Heat Cory Doctorow writes on how to fight the reverse centaur and pop the AI bubble:

The modern-day muckrakers are out there, all focusing on different elements of the same story, and able to see the big picture. Unsurprisingly, I have an affinity for the bloggers and independent journalists—Emily Atkin’s Heated covers polluters and political corruption, Brian Merchant’s Blood in the Machine covers the power of big tech,¹  Pat Garafalo’s Boondoggle how state and local governments bow down to corporations, Matt Stoller’s Big on monopoly power, Matt Levine’s Money Stuff on financial chicanery.

The House GOP plan to push through a suite of anti-renewable gas-grid bills this week is stalling under Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La., no relation) struggles to control his caucus of the Worst People In The World, even though he’s one of them! Most of today was taken up by wrangling GOP votes for the $900 billion National Defense Authorization Act, a bipartisan (by today’s standards) grotesquerie. A package of bills to gut the Clean Air Act sailed through an Energy and Commerce markup, though.

At the last minute, Senate Environment and Public Works chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W. Va.) dropped her scheduled vote this morning on backing Lee Beaman, the corrupt sex-creep landlord of Christofascist pastor Steve Berger, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation), for the Tennessee Valley Authority board. Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called Beaman “not only unqualified but unfit.” Berger, who sat behind Beaman at the nomination hearing, pays him a nominal dollar a year to live in the Capitol Hill townhouse, once owned by Frederick Douglass.

Capito did move forward with the experienced nominee Doug Weaver for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. At the vote, Whitehouse reported that “something weird happened”: Weaver’s responses to questions for the record were submitted to the committee, and then five hours later the responses were resubmitted after being edited “by the White House.” “I’ve never seen that happen before,” Whitehouse said. “I’m pretty upset.” Whitehouse was joined by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) in backing Weaver, even with stark evidence of the White House puppetmasters pulling his strings. Team #Resistance!

In the House Science hearing with Energy Undersecretary for Science Dario “Dr. Nick” Gil today, several Democrats pressed Gil on Secretary Chris Wright’s cartoonish climate denial and destruction of renewable energy research. Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-Ore.) managed to get Gil to admit that “climate change is a real phenomenon that is important to study, understand, and act on,” but he waffled on climate change’s influence on extreme weather, saying it’s a “complicated question.” Under skeptical questioning from Rep. Emilia Sykes (D-Ohio) about the DOE assault on renewable energy, Gil went full fossil fool, saying, “The majority of power generation, not just for electricity, but for heat and industrial production, is natural gas and coal.” Challenged by Rep. Luz Rivas (D-Calif.) about the Trump assault on the national scientific enterprise, Gil unintentionally told the truth: “We are at a real inflection point at how science and technology is going to be practiced.” Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Calif.) pointed out that renewable energy is by far the most reliable and affordable source of electricity. Refusing to accept his equivocations, she reduced Gil to babbling. Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) called out the data center boom—there are already 300 in his district—for the skyrocketing electricity rates battering his constituents.

Team Blue has its foibles and failures, but it’s still trying.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
  Vote on Nominations of Lee Beaman to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Douglas Weaver to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

• 10 AM: House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
  Review of the Department of Energy Re-Organization and the Effort to Build a Private-Sector Integrated AI Platform Using Federal Scientific Datasets

• 10 AM: House Agriculture Committee
  Agriculture Member Day

• 10:15 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
  Limiting Litigation on Behalf of Endangered Species

• 10:15 AM: House Energy and Commerce Committee
     Environment Subcommittee
  Markup of Anti-Clean Air Act Legislation

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.

Lofgren is the only signatory of the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge among them, but has since accepted contributions from the oil and gas industry; Pallone, the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, has pointedly refused to sign.

1  Brian has a leg up as a tech-politics journalist with a background as a climate journalist—he understands that civilization exists within physical limits. Most economic and political writing ignores that essential truth.

2  Relatedly, Lofgren, the ranking member of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, is the only signatory of the No Fossil Fuel Money Pledge among them, but has since accepted contributions from the oil and gas industry. Pallone, the ranking member of the House Energy & Commerce Committee, has pointedly refused to sign.