Living Is Easy With Eyes Closed

Excerpt from this story from The Salt Lake Tribune:

Skeptics of the proposed hyperscale data center in Box Elder County are sweating about a lot more than its energy demands and potential toll on water supplies.

Turn out, it could create a massive heat island capable of devastating the area’s ecology, said Robert Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.

“I suspected it would not be good,” Davies said. “What I’ve found is it’s so much worse than I even thought it would be.”

News of the proposed sprawling data complex, dubbed the Stratos Project, became public last month. The project’s boosters say it will likely need 9 gigawatts of energy at full build — more than double the electricity currently used by the entire state of Utah. That energy will likely come from a pipeline carrying natural gas from Wyoming to Nevada, Oregon and California. The project’s developer, “Shark Tank” celebrity Kevin O’Leary, specifically chose Box Elder County’s Hansel Valley to build the complex because the pipeline spans it, state officials have said.

Davies has done some back-of-the-envelope calculations to better understand the shear scale of what’s proposed. And what he’s penciled out so far has him alarmed.

“Nine gigawatts, that’s a number that’s really challenging to get your brain around,” the professor said. ”Communicating the scale has been a real problem.”

The project will actually produce more than 9 gigawatts of energy, Davies explained, because anytime a gadget consumes power, it also produces energy in the form of heat, whether it’s a toaster, a car or a sprawling rack of computer servers.

All the heat the Stratos Project emits will add up to another 7 to 8 gigawatts of energy in the form of waste heat.

Typically, waste heat is generated far from the power plant itself, in homes, businesses or on roads where it dissipates.

But for the Stratos project, it will get dumped into the local environment of Hansel Valley, in the same geographic bowl as the power plant. That actually makes the data complex a 16 gigawatt thermal load project, the “equivalent of about 23 atom bombs worth of energy dumped into this local environment every single day,” Davies said.

“What happens if you deposit that much energy continuously into a topography like this?” Davies wondered. “Right at the north end of the Great Salt Lake, a watershed that’s in collapse. A high desert environment? A valley?”

The professor predicts dumping that much heat and energy into Hansel Valley will raise local temperatures by five degrees Fahrenheit during the day and up to 28 degrees at night.

“That’s the difference between Utah’s semi-arid climate and the Sahara Desert,” said Ben Abbott, an ecology professor at Brigham Young University who has reviewed Davies’ estimates. “This would absolutely change the landscape.”

Evaporation would spike. The dewpoint could vanish, with devastating consequences on wildlife, plants and the fertility of land owned by other ranchers in the valley, the scientists said. Abbott suspects Hansel Valley would become another dust source on the Wasatch Front, in addition to the exposed and drying lakebed of the shrinking Great Salt Lake.

How Trump Weaponized the DOJ Division That Kept Elections Fair

Molly Sprayregen at LGBTQ Nation:

In a vicious anti-trans rant against her colleague, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) accused Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) of spearheading a campaign to remove photos of women in Congress from a women’s bathroom at the Capitol. McBride vehemently denied the allegations. Boebert was speaking to Alex Stein of Real America’s Voice and explained that there is a women’s bathroom in Statuary Hall that used to have the profile pictures of all the women in Congress hung up on the wall, ranked by seniority. Boebert then deadnamed and misgendered McBride and claimed that this year she was very upset that her photo was not on the wall of women. She then said all the photos had been removed after McBride complained. Deadnaming her again, she said that because of her, “Women are being erased from Congress.” McBride reposted the clip and declared, “This is false — I didn’t complain about photos. But Boebert was the one who harassed a woman in the women’s restroom thinking she was me — only the member was not me. Maybe it was Boebert who ripped all the photos down because she couldn’t tell if one of them might be trans?” [...]

During the Alex Stein interview, Boebert also appeared to agree with Stein’s disgust over the fact that the official tour of the Capitol opens by sharing that it was built by enslaved people. Boebert shakes her head and says, “Oh my goodness.” Stein also said during the conversation that he “should have stormed the Capitol” on January 6th. McBride has long made it clear that her focus in Congress is on advocating for her constituents. She has refused to get swept up in the Republican-fueled anti-trans hysteria surrounding her election to the House of Representatives.

On Real America’s Voice’s After Hours With Alex Stein last Thursday, Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) pushed out the transphobic lie that Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) is part of why “women are being erased from Congress”.

From the 04.30.2026 edition of Real America's Voice's After Hours With Alex Stein:

Qasim Rashid at Let's Address This:

May 3 was World Press Freedom Day—a celebration of free expression and speech. On May 2, Professor Derek Peterson stood before the graduating class of the University of Michigan and delivered an inspiring commencement address, one that will be remembered—not because it was radical, but because it is now censored. Professor Peterson is no ordinary faculty member. He is a historian, an African Studies scholar, a MacArthur Genius Grant recipient, and the outgoing chair of the Faculty Senate. He is, by any measure, precisely the kind of voice a university should be proud to elevate at its most ceremonial moment.

So what did Professor Peterson say at commencement that was so egregious? So egregious that it motivated the University of Michigan President to remove his remarks from the University website, remove the entire commencement ceremony in which he spoke, issue a formal letter of apology to the public, and distance himself and the University from Professor Peterson? The disturbing answer reflects a growing trend of censorship and collapsing press freedom nationally and internationally.

What Professor Peterson Said

Here is what Professor Peterson said—in full—about the students who have spent the past two years speaking up for Palestinian lives:

[Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists who have, over these past two years, opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel’s war in Gaza. The greatness of this institution does not only rest on the shoulders and on the accomplishments of our student-athletes who deserve all the congratulations we can offer them. But the greatness of this university rests also on the courage and the conviction of student activists who have pushed this university down the path towards justice.]

Preceding these remarks, Professor Peterson celebrated three other iconic voices. Sarah Burger — the suffragette who fought to open Michigan’s doors to women. Moritz Levi — the first Jewish professor at Michigan, who opened those same doors to generations of Jewish students fleeing antisemitism at East Coast universities. And the Black Action Movement students who demanded a curriculum reflecting Black identity and experience. But it was Professor Peterson’s additional recognition of all students who spoke up for Palestinians—Jewish and Muslim, Christian and atheist, Black, brown, and white—that enraged the University of Michigan. Professor Peterson dared place Palestinian solidarity and activism in its precise historical context—that of a long and honorable tradition of students refusing to accept the injustices of their time.

[...] Let’s be precise about what just happened. A MacArthur Genius who celebrated Jewish students, Black students, women, and Palestinian solidarity activists in the same speech was publicly reprimanded, had his speech erased from the public record, and was subjected to a university apology that treats the mere mention of Palestinian humanity as something requiring institutional contrition.

[...]

The University of Michigan Is Not Alone

What happened to Professor Peterson is part of a rapidly accelerating national pattern that should alarm every American who believes in free expression, regardless of where they stand on any particular political question. Commencement ceremonies at several universities have undergone a post-October 7 overhaul, with some students saying their free speech rights are being suppressed. There will be no live student speakers at CUNY School of Law or at NYU’s school-specific ceremonies, after former students gave speeches that were fiercely critical of Israel. The restrictions have prompted an ongoing lawsuit brought by CUNY law students who allege violations of their First Amendment rights. “We have our voice taken away in what’s supposed to be our biggest moment,” said CUNY Law’s student government president.

[...] The hypocrisy is not subtle. These are the same institutions that proudly invoke free speech when hosting conservative provocateurs, far-right commentators, and speakers whose records include documented bigotry against a range of communities. The principle of free expression, it turns out, has a very specific carve-out: it ends the moment a Palestinian life is mentioned with empathy.

Greg Sargent at TNR:

Now that the Supreme Court has gutted yet another piece of the Voting Rights Act, this one concerning redistricting, here’s one thing we know for sure: Democrats will have to enter into a new era of procedural total war. That might make many of them uncomfortable, but when it comes to the future of the liberal agenda, the stakes are enormous. With Donald Trump’s active encouragement, Republicans are already seizing on the ruling—which essentially dismantled protections against racial gerrymandering—to threaten to redraw maps in the South to eliminate numerous congressional seats with Black representatives. While it’s largely too late to do so this cycle, Republicans will likely launch mid-decade redistricting in many Southern states heading into 2028, eliminating as many as 19 more Democratic seats in hopes of locking in a near-permanent GOP majority.

In substantive and legal terms, this outcome is awful—see this overview from TNR’s Matt Ford for a full rundown—but in a purely political sense, is this Armageddon for Democrats? Not necessarily. The reason? Democrats can move to redraw maps in time for the 2028 elections in states where they control the legislatures. Which points to one big takeaway from the court ruling: State legislative races—which already attract too little attention—just got a lot more important. Many races underway now will help determine the party’s long-term prospects in the scorched-earth conflict that’s about to unfold.

According to a new analysis by Fair Fight Action, a voting rights group, Democrats could redraw anywhere from 10 to 22 additional congressional seats for the party in time for the 2028 elections if they push hard with redistricting in seven blue and swing states. The analysis—which is circulating among Democratic leadership aides and outside groups and was obtained by TNR—concludes that being aggressive could theoretically offset Republican gains, even in a maximalist GOP redistricting scenario.

“Democrats have a clear path to neutralize this GOP power grab if they want to take it,” Max Flugrath, senior communications director of Fair Fight Action, told me. “This is the ‘break glass in case of emergency’ moment for American democracy.” The range of potential Democratic gains is so broad because so much depends on which party controls key state legislatures after the fall elections. Strikingly, even if Democrats flip zero chambers, they can redraw up to 10 additional congressional districts for the party, the analysis finds, by maximizing gerrymanders in New York, Colorado, Oregon, and Maryland, where Democrats control governorships and state legislatures.

But even more strikingly, Democrats could redraw as many as 22 additional congressional districts for the party overall if they flip legislative chambers in other states and redraw aggressively in them, the analysis finds.

Take Wisconsin, where the governor is a Democrat and Republicans control the state legislature. Democrats think they have a good shot at flipping both legislative houses, due in part to dramatic Democratic overperformances in recent special elections.

Notably, Republicans control six congressional seats in Wisconsin while Democrats control two. But the state is evenly divided, with Democrats winning recent statewide elections there. Ironically, precisely because Wisconsin has long been heavily gerrymandered for the GOP, Democrats can now redraw three additional House districts for themselves, the analysis finds, by unpacking current urban districts and linking up Democratic voters in the north. Then there’s Minnesota, where Democrats control the governorship and State Senate. The State House is tied, but Democrats are bullish on flipping at least one seat, which would mean a trifecta. While the state constitution may bar an immediate redistricting, that could theoretically be amended in time for Democrats to redistrict for the 2028 or 2030 elections.

Another possibility is Pennsylvania. This would require flipping one legislative chamber, the senate—and redrawing aggressively by concentrating Republicans in central rural districts and spreading around urban Democratic voters more, the Fair Fight Action analysis finds. It argues that three congressional seats are gettable in Wisconsin, three in Minnesota, and up to six in Pennsylvania. “Twenty-two House seats across seven states may sound like a heavy lift,” Flugrath told me. “But our analysis shows it’s well within reach if blue-state governors and legislatures squeeze every potential seat out of the maps.”

[...] Flipping more legislatures this cycle is also essential, however. “The only path to ensure communities of color aren’t silenced into perpetuity and Democrats have a shot at a durable U.S. House majority is to win more statehouses,” Heather Williams, president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, told me. “This is an all-hands-on-deck moment.” Meanwhile, contests like the Georgia gubernatorial race have suddenly taken on new importance. Republicans control the state legislature there, and they’re already threatening a gerrymander next year, but a Democratic governor could thwart it. “As governor, I will veto any map that dilutes the voices of Black and Latino voters,” Keisha Lance Bottoms, a leading Democratic candidate in the state, told me in a statement.

To be clear, none of this should have to happen. Though Democrats have gerrymandered themselves over the years, Republicans went full throttle and never looked back after capturing many state legislatures in their 2010 midterm rout. Democrats have attempted for years to model an alternative path with independent redistricting commissions in many states and with federal legislation ending gerrymandering for both sides. The Democratic position, then, has long been that neither side should gerrymander. It disrespects the opposition’s voters and allows lawmakers to insulate themselves from accountability. But if Republicans insist on it, Democrats have no choice but to do the same.

The vain hope of many good-government liberals had been that charting a path toward mutual deescalation just might entice Republicans to join them. But with Republicans openly threatening to maximize their own gerrymanders after the court ruling, such hopes of mutual forbearance are now plainly dead.

The Louisiana v. Callais redistricting ruling by the radical right-wing SCOTUS is more proof that the Democrats must take a maximalist position on getting redistricting maps to their full advantage wherever they can because the Republicans are using it to help rig elections and keep themselves undeservedly entrenched into power.

See Also:

CTRL Alt Delete News (Melissa Ryan): New Rules of Engagement

Adrienne Matei for The Guardian:

In February 2025, Robert F Kennedy Jr began his tenure as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with an unusual message for the federal department responsible for protecting public health. America’s greatest challenge, he said, was not just chronic disease but a “spiritual malaise”, a kind of soul-sickness derived from America’s moral decline. “Spiritual and physical maladies thrive on one another,” Kennedy told HHS employees in his first address. The solution, he said, “must begin with a spiritual question”, of personal responsibility and inward vigilance against the dark forces that would keep Americans “sedated” and “compliant”. Weeks later, the White House moved to cut 20,500 jobs across the very agency tasked with protecting public health. This March, as the US faced its worst measles resurgence in 34 years – one he has largely ignored – Kennedy again warned the nation of the same nebulous threat.

This time, he took a more militant tone. “Malevolent forces”, he told an audience of doctors-in-training, must be met with “spiritual warfare”, waged through the “sacred ritual” of eating dinner together as a family. Now over a year into his tenure, Kennedy champions personal discipline while casting institutional science as a dark force in a cosmic struggle against the light. He has promoted pseudoscientific or unproven remedies, including vitamin A for measles, peptides for longevity and the nutritional benefits of raw milk, while sowing doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

Because of his granola aura as a former environmental advocate, Kennedy’s invocation of the “spiritual” can initially sound benign – more hippy than doctrinaire.

Yet his repeated references to spiritual forces are more than run-of-the-mill wellness vernacular. They are a signal that the Christian nationalist movement that helped propel Trump into office is now reshaping the public health agency from the inside. The effect is corrosive, eroding the nation’s shared epistemological reality – like a worm working its way through brain tissue.

A war from within

“The ‘warfare’ thing is a dog whistle to stoke Christian nationalist ideology,” says Savannah Tate, the daughter of megachurch pastor Benny Tate. Tate grew up immersed in the movement, caught between patriarchal forces and biblical literalism. She left the faith in her early 20s. Now 32 with a doctorate in psychology, she speaks about her experience publicly. Christian nationalists – a sprawling religious-political ecosystem of factions and networks – argue that American law should reflect a singular Christian vision of the country. That project would elevate biblical law, erode the separation of church and state, and hollow out pluralism and democracy.

Some in the Trump regime openly claim the label, such as Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the office of operations and budget and a key author of the ultra-conservative Christian thinktank the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has come to function as a Christian nationalist blueprint for governance. Terms such as “spiritual warfare” and “spiritual attack”, Tate says, are central to the movement’s vocabulary – part of a binary, warcentric and mystical rhetoric leveraging fear and disinformation to keep people on their toes against enemies both tangible and spiritual. Maga Christian nationalism is dominionist, meaning it seeks to place its militant version of Christian authority over institutions, culture and government. Kennedy’s speech, taken together with the rhetoric of other Maga leaders, reflects a broader pattern of strident religious language moving into the highest levels of government.

Trump himself described his second term as “a war from within” against “anti-Christian bias”. JD Vance has courted Turning Point followers by calling Christianity “America’s creed”, advancing the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation, rather than a democracy grounded in equality.

[...] Christian nationalism is not a “normal faith”, he says. Believers are far less concerned about Jesus’s teachings than exercising power from the highest levels of government all the way down to local counties, he adds. It has a more aggressive political vision than traditional streams of Catholic or mainline Protestant faith.

[...] In exchange for the infrastructure of the common good, the administration is using tax incentives to promote inadequate substitutes for insurance that save them money. For instance, Republicans and industry lobbyists are advancing high-deductible health savings accounts (HSAs), which benefit wealthier people but can mean ruinous upfront medical costs to everyone else. Lobby groups are also pushing for subsidies to support more health-sharing ministries – Christian alternatives to health insurance where churches function as their own micro-insurers, with members pooling money to cover each another’s medical expenses – so long as those expenses don’t include abortion or LGBTQ+ care. Under this new regime, healthcare isn’t a shared, national responsibility, it’s an individual purity test: can you work? Can you afford private coverage? Do you belong to a church? Do you cook dinner at home? Can you give birth on their terms? Fail these tests, and you’re shamed and blamed by the righteously smug: isn’t it your own bad choices, your diet, your sexual orientation, your lack of proper faith that put you in this predicament?

[...]

Prophets and profiteers

When health fails, and no help is available, it’s tempting to turn to God, supplements or both. Where Means and Kennedy find their most profitable common ground with the Christian nationalist worldview may not be its fire-and-brimstone zealotry so much as its prosperity gospel tenet: that accumulating wealth and power is divine. The sicker and more desperate Americans become, and the weaker the public health system that might support them, the more lucrative the alternative wellness space grows.

Enter the “Seven Mountains Mandate”, the Christian nationalist get-rich-and-powerful strategy. It outlines how believers plan to occupy top roles across key domains of public life – including media, government, education and the family – asserting authority over every facet of society. Matthew Boedy, a professor and author of The Seven Mountains Mandate: Exposing the Dangerous Plan to Christianize America and Destroy Democracy, says we’re seeing its effects on public health, “which really has not had that attack on it in my lifetime … It’s almost a deep-state health attack.”

The Seven Mountains Mandate recalls a 1990s business executive coaching plan: capture “mountains” (key institutions and social systems), strip them of collective, progressive and public-serving elements, and replace them with free-market, theologically aligned alternatives run by allies. Christian nationalists destroy a system to create a vacuum, Boedy explains. Then they say, “‘OK, well, our friends who are selling this product can move right in to fill that vacuum.’” Health isn’t itself a mountain, but it winds through three others: family (restricting reproductive care, promoting traditional marriage), government (dismantling public health infrastructure) and business, where the $7tn global wellness industry represents enormous profit. Kennedy sits at the center of a financial web. While positioning himself as a vaccine-safety whistleblower, he has earned more than $2.4m in referral fees from Wisner Baum, a law firm litigating against pharmaceutical companies over vaccine safety claims.

Today, Tennessee governor Bill Lee called a special session of the General Assembly to re-district Memphis, the ONLY blue district in Tennessee. It must also be noted that Memphis has a majority black population. This session is only possible because of the recent blow to the Voting Rights Act by SCOTUS. Two years ago, the TN General Assembly did the same re-districting to Nashville, which resulted in a Democratic-held seat being eliminated.

Marsha Blackburn (TN Senator and Governor candidate) and Bill Lee (TN Governor) both cited Trump's agenda as an agent involved in making this decision. Not the people of Tennessee. Not American values. But Trump's "golden age of America."

Tennessee is going to gerrymander Memphis and its people have no say in the matter.

This is bleak. I don't even have words. It amazes me that people can be so openly corrupt and just...get away with it. I don't even know what to do. The best I can offer is my voice.

I've lived in Tennessee my whole life, born and raised. I love it here so, so much. I love the lush summer foliage and how vivid the green looks against a bright blue sky. I love smiling at every stranger I pass and being able to talk about everything and nothing with someone I'll never see again. I love old men in overalls smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk, I love the mean church lady who will talk shit about me behind my back then bring me a casserole when I'm sick. I love deer and turkey in my backyard, I love the jesus saves sign across from the strip club on Church Street, I love how my accent slips through when I'm talking to someone older than me.

I love my home and it feels like it's trying to rip me apart. Tennessee does not belong to Bill Lee, or Marsha Blackburn, or Andy Ogles, or the people who flip me off when I protest on the street, or the people who look up to the heavens so they don't have to acknowledge the hell they're letting happen around them. It doesn't belong to the Cybertrucks or the megachurches or the bars on Broadway owned by whatever star is hottest at the moment.

It sure as hell doesn't belong to Marsha Blackburn or Bill Lee. We can't let them take it away from us.

I, Sexy Ronald Reagan, cannot do much about the hell we're living in. But I can use my voice. And I can implore you to use yours. Don't go silently. Speak up online, find protests to go to, hell, plan them out yourselves. Make them admit they're not working for us. And VOTE. Please vote.

I'll link phone numbers below if you'd like to give these people a piece of your mind. Spread the Woke Agenda or whatever the fuck.

Marsha Blackburn: (629) 800-6600

Bill Lee: (615) 741-2001

Steve Cohen (Memphis Congressman): (901) 544-4131