Authored by Adair Teuton via RealClearPolitics,

In an age when political authenticity is currency, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is making a risky bet: that he can repackage his image from slick, left-coast progressive into pragmatic, media-savvy moderate.

Newsom’s strategy appears engineered to break out of the coastal liberal mold. His new iHeartRadio podcast, “This Is Gavin Newsom,” features guests from across the political spectrum. He’s launched a Substack, plastered Fox News with ads, and even taken his feuds with Donald Trump directly to national audiences. In one episode, he sounded more like a centrist mayor than a San Francisco progressive, defending the rule of law and even nodding to law enforcement concerns around crime and public safety.

But this isn’t just about booking podcast guests. In another instance, Newsom criticized the inclusion of biological males in women’s sports, conceding to Charlie Kirk that their inclusion was “deeply unfair.” The comment was a stark departure from his earlier record as a vocal supporter of expansive transgender rights. Progressive critics immediately pounced, accusing him of pandering to the right. The backlash highlighted the tightrope Newsom is now walking, trying to appeal to moderate voters without alienating his liberal base.

Such maneuvering makes sense. A June survey from the Public Policy Institute of California shows his approval hovering at just 47% among likely voters. More troubling for Newsom, a UC Berkeley-Los Angeles Times poll finds that 54% of Californians believe he’s more focused on national ambitions than governing the state. His shift in tone and strategy doesn’t do much to counter that very perception, but his pivot does allow him to reintroduce himself to a broader electorate before 2028 speculation becomes a reality.

It’s a rebrand as ambitious as it is audacious, and it may be guided by one of the most unlikely figures imaginable: Kimberly Guilfoyle, Newsom’s former wife, Donald Trump Jr.’s former girlfriend – and current Trumpworld operative.

Guilfoyle, a key figure in Republican fundraising and messaging, was once the glamorous first lady of San Francisco. Although she and Don Jr. apparently have parted ways, she has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as U.S. ambassador to Greece. And she remains  a seasoned political operative known for her bombastic speeches, relentless media presence, and deep ties to the MAGA establishment. She served as national finance chair for Trump’s 2020 campaign and has been one of the movement’s most aggressive defenders on cable news and social media. According to The Wall Street Journal, Guilfoyle helped broker introductions between Newsom and hard-right populists Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon, a move that raised eyebrows across the political spectrum.

While she obviously holds no official title in Newsom’s political operation, her behind-the-scenes facilitation marks a surreal twist in California’s ongoing political theater: the governor once hailed as the prince of progressivism now courting the architects of right-wing populism.

Critics on both sides aren’t buying it. Conservatives see a cynical ploy, a progressive in centrist clothing. Some Democrats are equally skeptical, worried that cozying up to MAGA voices lends legitimacy to extremism. And with homelessness, crime, and housing shortages still plaguing his home state, Newsom risks looking like a politician distracted by vanity projects while California struggles.

Still, his media makeover may be more than a branding exercise. By engaging with adversarial audiences, he’s signaling an understanding of political polarization and attempting to do something about it. Whether voters reward him for that courage or punish him for perceived opportunism remains to be seen.

If Newsom’s transformation succeeds, he won’t just have reinvented his image. He’ll have rewritten the playbook for what it means to be a post-woke Democrat in an era where ideological purity often takes a backseat to electability. If it fails, expect both the left and the right to say: We told you so.

When was the last time you heard of federal dollars flowing into overtly conservative programming?  While there may be a tiny handful of outliers, generally speaking this does not happen.  For decades the majority of public funding subsidies for social programs inevitably goes to progressive run organizations.  For anyone who is right leaning in their politics, the idea of their hard earned money being handed over to people who hate them and everything they stand for is disconcerting. 

Why should conservatives support federal funding if that money is being used to propagandize them and indoctrinate their children?  Why isn’t there any requirement for publicly funded programs to remain politically neutral? 

The U.S. Senate this week passed the Trump administration’s proposal to cancel $9 billion in federal funds previously allocated for foreign aid and public broadcasting, and the House of Representatives approved the package after midnight Friday, sending it to President Trump’s desk. 

The Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which administers the funds for NPR radio stations and PBS TV affiliates, is on track to lose $1.1 billion that had previously been budgeted for the next two years.

Both PBS and NPR executives warn they will have to make drastic cuts to media content and will resort to layoffs to stay afloat.  The organizations rely on a mixture of federal funds, public donations and corporate advertising.  Federal subsidies make up around 15% of PBS operating dollars and up to 10% of NPR affiliate dollars.  This might not seem like much, but the institutions function on razor thin margins.  Loss of public cash would immediately put them in the hole. 

But is this a bad thing?  Maybe PBS and NPR deserve to fail.  Both outlets have engaged in some of the most egregious woke propaganda and authoritarian pontificating among all media platforms in the US.  Let’s look at seven reasons why PBS and NPR should be unplugged from taxpayer life support.

1)  Lil Miss Hot Mess

“The hips on the drag queen go swish swish swish…” sings drag performer Lil Miss Hot Mess in a PBS promoted program in New York.  Though PBS did not directly fund the show “Let’s Learn” on WNET, it did provide the platform.  The drag queen episode aired in 2021 and featured a drag performer (male pretending to be female) reading a LGBT children’s about “drag” and gay pride.

2) Sesame Street Stands With BLM

It’s impossible to list the number of times PBS used kids show Sesame Street as a vehicle to indoctrinate children with DEI concepts.  However, in 2020 they truly stepped over the line when the organization partnered with CNN, using Sesame Street characters hosting a town hall to explain to children why America is racist and why the national BLM riots were justified. 

Keep in mind, there were over 600 riots during the BLM protests, with 25 fatalities, thousands of police injuries and billions in property damages, all triggered because of the death of one career criminal hopped up on fentanyl.

3)  Pride Month And Two Gay Dads

In 2021, Sesame Street also featured a Pride Month special called “Family Day” about LGBT inclusion.  The show’s audience of toddlers got to explore the relationship between a girl and her two gay dads, along with concept of “love is love”.  

The network’s popular “Arthur” cartoon series also produced an episode with a same sex marriage and two gay dads.  Why they felt the need to explore the sexual orientation of “Mr. Ratburn” to a bunch of preschool viewers is a mystery, unless child indoctrination was the goal.

4)  Refusing To Watch Porn And Masturbate Might Be Linked To “Extremism”

NPR joined the endless leftist war on the “manosphere” in a 2024 podcast which linked the “NoFap” movement to extremism.  The degenerate Kinsey-esque dialogue admonishes the trend of young men refusing to watch porn and refraining from masturbation as medically and psychologically concerning.  The movement was started due to the near-infinite access young people have to pornography in the digital age, leading to porn addiction and an inability to socialize in healthy ways.  

NPR characterizes the NoFap movement as misleading American youth into a life of misery while they ignore the rising evidence of the negative effects of the porn industry. 

5)  Suspended For Pointing Out Leftist Bias

NPR suspended a 25 year veteran editor Uri Berliner after he criticized the network for leftist bias.  The editor discovered that the NPR newsroom was stacked with 87 registered Democrats and zero Republicans.  He pointed out that NPR prolifically reported on the Russian collusion hoax, and that “[Adam] Schiff talking points” were “the drumbeat of NPR news reports.”  

After exposing NPR staff as utterly partisan, Berliner was removed. 

6)  NPR Helps To Undermine The Covid Lab Leak Theory

The Wuhan leab leak theory, which is now widely regarded as the most logical explanation for the spread of the covid virus from Wuhan, China to the rest of the world, was throttled in the news cycle and banned on social media platforms for years due to the efforts of US and Chinese government officials (and corrupt medical representatives) working to suppress the story.

Why?  To this day it’s not clear but the Wuhan lab’s long running gain-of-function research projects which essentially weaponize viruses were funded by US government interests, the same interests who ended being in charge of the draconian response to the covid outbreak.

NPR repeatedly dismissed the theory that COVID-19 originated in a lab – a conclusion now deemed likely by the FBI, CIA, and Department of Energy.    They published propaganda pieces including:  “Scientists Debunk Lab Accident Theory Of Pandemic Emergence”, and “As Trump Pushes Theory Of Virus Origins, Some See Parallels In Lead-Up To Iraq War”.

7)  Absolute Bias In Election Coverage

A 2024 Media Research Center study found that PBS’s coverage of the Republican National Convention was 72% negative, while coverage of the Democratic National Convention was 88% positive.  

In 2023, a study found that congressional Republicans saw 85% negative coverage while congressional Democrats saw 54% positive coverage on PBS’s flagship news program   

According to a 2024 study, PBS news staff used 162 variations of the term “far-right,” but only six variations of “far-left.”

This all might sound like common sense to most conservatives – Of course NPR and PBS are politically biased, but it’s not supposed to be this way.  The public has been conditioned to accept such bias over time and conservatives have been told to shut up when complaining about their money being used to feed far-left content. 

The above list could go on for dozens of pages; it’s only a taste of NPR and PBS’ trespasses in the past five years. Trump’s defunding of these platforms is long overdue and if they implode in the process, so be it.  They are nothing more than brainwashing campaigns disguised as humanitarian projects.    

Authored by Logan Beirne via RealClearPolitics,

Bitcoin may feel futuristic, but when you peel away its digital veneer, it is just the latest chapter in a 2,600-year story of value, trust, and human ingenuity. Having reached record highs, Bitcoin has been making headlines as nations declare strategic stockpiles and corporate America embraces the new asset class. Why now? 

The answer lies in a pattern as old as civilization itself: When governments corrupt a currency, people innovate their way to something better.

As the saying goes, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” When the first coin clanked into existence in 600 B.C., it was not merely a gold and silver alloy stamped with the face of the Lydian king. It was a financial revolution. For the first time, people could move past the inefficiencies of barter and instead use a medium of exchange to trade. But this value was not in the sparkle; it was the individuals’ collective understanding that these coins have worth.

The integrity of that system has waxed and waned over the ensuing millennia, typically driven by governmental spending policies. The silver-backed Roman denarii enabled the empire to flourish, but as subsequent emperors diluted its value – reducing their silver content to fund wars and build grand palaces – citizens lost faith in their currency. When Emperor Nero reduced silver content from 98% to 83% in A.D. 64, Romans began hoarding old coins and rejecting new ones. By A.D. 260, the denarius contained just 5% silver. Inflation spiraled and commerce crumbled, contributing to the eventual fall of the empire. 

The United States has battled currency crises since our nation’s birth, but unlike Rome, America has consistently innovated solutions along the way. After we declared independence from Britain, the Continental Congress printed the nation’s first paper money. Called “Continentals,” it was backed by neither gold nor silver – simply by belief in its value. While gold and silver are at least relatively scarce metals that constrain supply, paper can be printed. And that is precisely what the first U.S. government did. 

Desperate to pay troops and buy supplies necessary to wage the Revolutionary War, Congress turned to making more Continentals. Bills flooded the market, driving down value as Americans questioned whether the new nation could honor its promises. In 1777, one patriot complained to his father as inflation spiked by an estimated 200%, writing, “America has much more to fear from the effects of large quantities of paper money than from the operations of British Generals.” 

Prices climbed so rapidly that George Washington himself came to refuse Continentals as payment. In fact, it became common to describe something of little value as “not worth a Continental.” The currency became such a laughingstock that sailors paid in the bills would sew them onto their clothes and parade through town to mock it. But rather than crumble like the Roman Empire, the U.S. innovated: This currency crisis was a driving force that led our Founding Fathers to scrap the American government under the Articles of Confederation and draft our current Constitution.

This change represented more than political reform – it was monetary advancement, shifting from discretionary to rule-based money. The new U.S. government adopted a bimetallic standard in 1792, which tied the value of dollars to both gold and silver. The country eventually simplified its approach by shifting to a de facto gold standard in 1834, which lasted until 1971 when President Nixon abandoned it in favor of fiat currency. Like the Continentals before it, the dollar has since been backed by belief in its value: full faith and credit of the U.S. government. 

And then came the 2008 financial crisis. Lehman Brothers fell, banks wobbled, and the public? They started asking: “What is money?” It was then, from the digital shadows, that an anonymous figure – Satoshi Nakamoto – dropped a whitepaper like a patriot dropping a leaflet on the eve of the Revolutionary War: Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System. No emperors. No banks. Just math, cryptography, and an unbreakable record called the blockchain. A new kind of trust was born – not in a ruler, but in code.

What was initially viewed as an interesting hypothetical idea was quickly put to real-world use. Users beget more users. Trust grows. Entrepreneurs dream. It’s a full-blown historical saga unfolding in real time.

Bitcoin has risen above the other cryptocurrencies it inspired, in large part due to its scarcity: no longer could an Emperor add bits of cheap copper to silver coins or Congress print more paper because it is hardcoded that only 21 million Bitcoin will ever exist. Further, all Bitcoin transactions are verified by a decentralized network of approximately 20,000 individuals’ computers across the world, all checking one another beyond politicians’ control. In an age of runaway government spending, investors have turned to those scarce Bitcoin that no government can dilute. A decentralized system that guards the people from government domination – how American is that! 

It is no coincidence that Bitcoin has skyrocketed to a $2 trillion valuation just as the U.S. national debt has reached record highs. Researchers debate how long fiat currencies last on average throughout history, with some placing time of death at between 27 and 35 years. Since the U.S. has been off the gold standard for over 50 years, history suggests the dollar is poised for decline. 

People are simply asking the age-old question: What is money, really? As trust is shaken in paper money due to inflation and ballooning federal spending, many are turning to innovation. Even nations themselves have begun to set up strategic reserves. In fact, the United States is the largest known state holder of Bitcoin – once again positioning America at the forefront of monetary evolution.

As John Adams advised in 1787, “All the perplexities, confusion and distress in America arise not from the defects of the Constitution, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.” It is incumbent upon Americans to arm themselves with knowledge and engage in the age-old American tradition of challenging broken systems with better ideas in the pursuit of liberty. 

Logan Beirne serves as the chief legal officer at Strive and is the bestselling author of “Blood of Tyrants.” He teaches corporate law at Yale Law School. 

With the Trump administration under fire from angry conservatives demanding the release of the federal government’s information about Jeffrey Epstein, increasing attention is turning to a trove that’s in private hands: Steve Bannon’s 15+ hours of videotaped interviews with Epstein.

The interviews took place between 2018 and 2019. That’s prior to Epstein’s July 6, 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges that eventually led to his death in a New York City jail, but after the Miami Herald put a new spotlight on Epstein’s manipulation of the criminal justice system after he was first investigated for sex crimes with underage girls in 2005, with the Herald tracking down scores of his victims. 

In 2021, a trailer was released promoting an upcoming, Bannon-co-produced documentary called, “The Monsters: Epstein’s Life Among the Global Elite.” The trailer includes snippets from the interviews. However, nearly four years later, the documentary has yet to be released. Bannon says we can expect to see it early next year. 

Steve Bannon recorded 16 hours of interviews with Jeffrey Epstein for a film, “The Monsters,” which never went to production

This 2021 trailer is all the public has seen of Bannon’s project

Time to release the full Epstein tapes? pic.twitter.com/weXPgjpXcN

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 10, 2025

According to Epstein’s brother, Mark Epstein, the interviews were part of Bannon’s effort to salvage Jeffrey Epstein’s ruined public image. “[Bannon] told me he has like 15 or 16 hours of videotape of Jeff. He was trying to help Jeff rehabilitate his reputation,” Mark Epstein told NBC News. “They spent a lot of time together.” 

According to Michael Tracey, who’s been diving into this summer’s eruption of Epstein controversy at his Substack newsletter, Bannon and Epstein are believed to have first met in December 2017, by which time Bannon was an alumnus of the first Trump administration and — more significantly — a renowned principal architect of Trump’s stunning, establishment-defying 2016 triumph.

Citing Michael Wolff’s book Fire and Fury, Tracey relates that Bannon participated in a media-strategy meeting with Epstein and others in late 2018 or early 2019. One of those others was former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. “[Epstein] probably can’t be hated any more,” Bannon is quoted as declaring at the planning session. “We’ve flatlined on this. He can’t get deader. While the chances of reviving him are remote, what’s the alternative?”

It remains unclear whether Bannon was helping Epstein as a favor, or as a paid consultant with a recent history of masterful molding of public opinion about a controversial character. At the time, Epstein was shelling out $3 million a month to a British PR firm. Offering another potential insight into the nature of their relationship, Epstein’s Paris butler told Radio France that Bannon was among American guests Epstein hosted in France, with Epstein routinely accompanied by “juenes femmes.”  

‘Epstein is the key that picks the lock’ of WHO REALLY CONTROLS the US — Bannon

Adds that resignations at the Justice Dept shouldn’t be the goal, that only brings turmoil

‘We need to get to the bottom of Epstein’ pic.twitter.com/0bBo7vEgfB

— RT (@RT_com) July 12, 2025

Bannon certainly hasn’t been talking like a man caught in an Israeli-intelligence honeypot, starting with his own public accusations that Epstein was tied to Israeli intelligence: 

“[The Epstein story] goes right to the intelligence services of both this country and Israel. Let’s be blunt about this. That’s why all the Israel First guys — the Tel Aviv [Mark] Levins and all these guys — say ‘nothing to see here’.” 

He’s also been a thorn in Israel’s side regarding the top item on the Zionist state’s agenda. After Israel launched its war on Iran last month and made every effort to maneuver the United States into a major, long-term commitment to conflict, Bannon was among the most outspoken voices on the right calling for Trump to steer clear — for example, telling Newsweek: 

“What [Israel] did is they drew us into a war they knew they couldn’t finish. They drew us into a war they knew they couldn’t defend against. So, this is my problem. We need to reset. We don’t have an alliance with them, just like Ukraine. We’ve got to stop saying they’re allies, they’re not allies.”     

Amid this month’s firestorm over the Epstein files, which includes widespread suspicions that Epstein was an asset of the Israeli Mossad, Bannon has been calling for Trump to appoint a special counsel to navigate the release of information. “Epstein is a key that picks the lock on so many things, not just individuals, but also institutions, intelligence institutions, foreign governments and who was working with him on our intelligence apparatus and in our government,” Bannon said at a Turning Points USA conference. 

Meanwhile, a growing number of people would like Bannon to share his extraordinarily rare asset: More than 15 hours of interviews with a man who’d spent much of his adult life shying away from media inquiries. “Let me see the videotapes. He’s my brother,” Mark Epstein asked, via NBC News.

“We’re going to release the film, the five-part series next year — early next year,” Bannon said last week when asked about the documentary’s status. “You’re going to have to name names, and you’re going to have to understand how the elites of the world but also the intelligence services are inextricably linked in the Epstein story. That’s the key.”

Given the interviews were seemingly done as part of a PR effort on Epstein’s behalf, it strikes us as highly unlikely that Bannon’s videotapes captured anything explosive — but they would certainly make for highly-interesting viewing nonetheless. 

Authored by Chase Smith via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

California sued the Trump administration on July 17 over its decision to revoke $4 billion in federal grants for the state’s high-speed rail project, calling the move politically motivated and illegal.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the lawsuit in a press release, accusing the administration of using the federal grant termination as retribution against California. The state claims the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) ended two grant agreements without cause, despite the project meeting its obligations under federal oversight.

“In reality, this is just a heartless attack on the Central Valley that will put real jobs and livelihoods on the line,” Newsom said in the release. “We’re suing to stop Trump from derailing America’s only high-speed rail actively under construction.”

The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA), which filed the suit, said in a post on X that “canceling these grants without cause isn’t just wrong, it’s illegal.”

CHSRA said it has met every requirement under its agreements, pointing to multiple federal reviews—including one as recent as February—that found the project to be in compliance.

The lawsuit argues that President Donald Trump’s actions are part of a long-running pattern of political retaliation, pointing to his first administration’s attempt to revoke high-speed rail funding the day after California sued to block his emergency declaration for a border wall.

In both instances, California claims, the timing and public remarks show the decisions were driven by personal animus, not project performance.

The state also claims that the FRA ignored its own oversight record. As recently as October 2024, the agency completed an annual monitoring review and “made no findings for which corrective measures were needed,” according to the suit.

The lawsuit says the abrupt reversal in Trump’s second term was unjustified and that CHSRA was given inadequate time to respond.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the termination on July 16, following what the FRA described as an exhaustive compliance review. He said CHSRA failed to meet critical benchmarks, citing a $7 billion funding gap, missed procurement deadlines, and a lack of capacity to deliver the project’s first operating segment by 2033.

“This is California’s fault,” Duffy said in a statement. “Governor Newsom and the complicit Democrats have enabled this waste for years. Federal dollars are not a blank check–they come with a promise to deliver results. After over a decade of failures, CHSRA’s mismanagement and incompetence have proven it cannot build its train to nowhere on time or on budget. It’s time for this boondoggle to die.”

The administration argues the funds would be better spent on projects with clearer timelines and viable completion plans. The FRA said CHSRA’s responses to its findings were inadequate and did not address concerns outlined in a 300-page review.

The lawsuit, however, says the FRA’s case rests on a mischaracterization of CHSRA’s own Inspector General (IG). After the agency cited the IG’s report to support its funding gap concerns, the Office of the Inspector General-California High Speed Rail (OIG-HSR) issued a letter disavowing that interpretation.

“We have identified no citations by the FRA supporting its assertion that the OIG-HSR ever made this conclusion,” the letter said.

CHSRA says it is nearing the track-laying phase, with 171 miles under active construction, more than 50 major structures completed, and more than 15,000 jobs created. Environmental reviews for 463 miles of the corridor are complete, and the agency expects passenger service to begin between 2030 and 2033.

The rail project, initially pitched in 2008 as an 800-mile line connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles by 2020, has since been scaled back to a 171-mile segment from Merced to Bakersfield. Projected costs have risen to an estimated $135 billion, according to the Department of Transportation.

Last month, the department warned that federal funding was at risk if California failed to resolve what it called a pattern of mismanagement and unrealistic projections. CHSRA rejected those claims, arguing the project remained on track with state support and that federal findings ignored recent progress.

In this week’s lawsuit, California asked the court to block the FRA’s termination decision and allow the state to retain the remaining federal grant funds.

The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.

By Brian Martucci of UtilityDive

As the eastern half of the United States baked under record heat late last month and electricity demand reached multi-year peaks, it looked like the grid might succumb. 

Grid operators and public officials scrambled to avoid a disaster, ordering generators to defer maintenance and customers to conserve energy. The PJM Interconnection served about 161 GW of load on June 24, its highest demand since 2011 and not far off its all-time high of 165.6 GW.

But aside from scattered outages caused by heat-damaged electrical delivery equipment in parts of the New York City area, Eastern U.S. grids largely weathered the heatwave. 

Grid experts — and at least one grid operator — say at least some of the credit goes to distributed energy resource aggregations and flexible loads dispatching at higher rates than ever before. Those “virtual” or distributed power plants helped keep the lights on as generator reserve margins plummeted.

“PJM said that demand response was essential,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Mark Christie said in a June 30 press conference focused on the need for resource adequacy amid rising load forecasts. “That 161-GW peak would have been higher without DR, so DR is an important part of the mix too.”

Major virtual power plant operators matched near-record peak loads with unprecedented dispatch activity. Sunrun dispatched more than 340 MW from customer-sited batteries on the evening of June 24. The same day, EnergyHub shed 900 MW of peak load and shifted 3.5 GWh of energy away from the highest-demand periods. Uplight managed about 350 MW of flexible load in 45 dispatch events across 16 utility programs over the course of the heat dome week. 

Supportive state policy, expectations for rising power demand and simple economics are pushing once-skeptical utilities to embrace VPPs, said Hannah Bascom, chief growth officer at Uplight.

“You’re seeing [utility] folks on the supply side saying, ‘Wait, how many megawatts do we have lying around?’ And the light bulbs are starting to go off,” Bascom said in an interview.

Quicker and cheaper than traditional generation

It helps that it costs far less — and takes less time — to aggregate existing customer-sited resources than it does to build new dispatchable generation or storage, Bascom added. 

A new, 400-MW VPP has a net cost of $43/kW-year, compared with $69/kW-year for a utility-scale battery and $99/kW-year for a gas-fired peaker plant, the U.S. Department of Energy said in a January update to its virtual power plant liftoff report. An RMI report released last July said VPPs could be deployed in six to 12 months, quicker than any form of utility-scale generation. 

RMI’s report made a point of saying utilities eyeing VPPs in mid-2024 could have them ready in time for this summer’s heat. 

It’s clear many utilities and other load-serving entities have launched or expanded VPP offerings recently, said Kevin Brehm, a manager in RMI’s carbon-free electricity practice. 

“We’re definitely seeing progress in terms of the number of utility [VPP] programs, and in regulation and policy being implemented to advance VPPs,” he said in an interview.

Last year, RMI and the VPP Partnership published a flipbook featuring 75 U.S. VPPs with 3.9 million enrolled customers and 1.5 GW of capacity. That’s a small fraction of DOE’s 30 GW estimate of total U.S. VPP capacity in 2024.

Brehm cautioned that because VPPs can be deployed so quickly, published figures may underestimate capacity and thus the potential for utilities and aggregators to dispatch it during extreme weather events.

“Actual VPP capacity is what ultimately determines the level of response,” he said. “And [public reports] don’t tell the whole story because there’s a lag.”

Residential smart thermostats are already central to hot-climate VPP programs like Arizona Public Service Cool Rewards, whose 140 MW of thermostat capacity accounted for most of the utility’s 190-MW VPP as of last September. They’ll become even more important as smart thermostat adoption increases from today’s relatively low levels, Brehm said.

Commercial and industrial participation has room to grow

But much of the country’s VPP capacity still comes from manual commercial and industrial demand response programs, where power-hungry facilities agree to curtail load during peak periods, Wood Mackenzie said last year in a report. Another report by Energy Systems Integration Group showed C&I enrollments in wholesale demand response programs ranging from 4% to 10% of total potential capacity in most grid operator territories.

“Given how much capacity prices have risen recently, we’re going to see a lot more [C&I] demand response, and the potential is on the [multi] gigawatt scale,” Brehm said.

With the notable exception of the California Independent System Operator’s territory, C&I demand response enrollment has recently flatlined or declined in most regions due to limited customer awareness, weak financial incentives and barriers to wholesale market participation, according to ESIG. 

Brehm is hopeful that better technology and program design will turn the tide. Some VPP operators, like Voltus and CPower, coordinate multiple customer-sited resources, rather than interrupting power at a facility’s meter and shutting down production lines, he said. During the June heatwave, CPower says it dispatched 18.5 GWh across 120 events in PJM, ISO-New England and the New York Independent System Operator’s territory.

Small and midsize commercial facilities can also provide meaningful support during extreme weather events, said Thomas Flynn, chief administrative officer and general counsel at Budderfly, a commercial energy management provider serving more than 7,000 restaurants, medical clinics, convenience stores, hotels, gyms and other commercial sites nationwide.

Budderfly activated its first VPP on June 1, just in time for the heatwave. Flynn said the initial deployment included capacity in PJM, ISO-New England and the Southwest Power Pool — all hit hard last month — as well as CAISO. Enrollment could expand to NYISO and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas soon.

“We ran events across all of our programs during the week of the heat dome, activating programs from coast to coast,” Flynn said. “The events went well.”

For now, Budderfly’s VPP mainly dispatches HVAC systems via smart thermostats, but Flynn said it will soon expand to include onsite refrigeration systems, lighting, rooftop solar, electric vehicle chargers and onsite battery storage.

Because Budderfly owns those resources, dispatch is simpler than for customer-owned equipment, Flynn said. For local utilities, that simplicity — and the fact that commercial sites generally have larger and more consistent power loads — means more reliable and predictable VPP capacity.  

“Utilities see this model as a more reliable and scalable solution for flexible load capacity, particularly in regions where traditional demand response has been underutilized,” Flynn said. Budderfly can target dispatch in grid nodes without big industrial customers to provide load flexibility on a larger scale, he added.

Like Budderfly, Sunrun generally owns customer-sited resources. Its rapidly growing arsenal of batteries allows it to play a meaningful role in responding to extreme weather events, said Chris Rauscher, its head of grid services.

“We’ve fully embraced a storage-first strategy over the last few years,” Rauscher said. “Nearly 70% of our new installations include battery storage, up from just 10% a few years ago.”

Republican attack on renewables could help VPPs

Despite the recent U-turn in federal policy around renewables, the Trump administration’s preference for dispatchable power and declaration of an energy emergency create an opening for distributed asset owners like Sunrun, Rauscher said.

“Dispatchable energy is a top priority for this administration, and critical for grid stability,” he said. 

At the same time, Rauscher added, utilities are waking up to the fact that they need more electrons as fast as possible. Sunrun operates 17 VPP programs across the U.S., including utility-run programs like ConnectedSolutions in the Northeast and state programs like Demand Side Grid Support in California.

“The narrative is shifting [and] utilities are starting to see VPPs not just as pilots, but as core infrastructure,” Rauscher said.

Uplight’s Bascom agreed. While the rollback of clean energy tax credits will likely slow the deployment of distributed energy resources, that will also make it more expensive to build utility-scale generation, likely netting out to a boost for VPPs, she said.

“We still haven’t hit mass-market penetration,” she said. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity to leverage these resources for way, way cheaper than any type of new generation.”

Via The Libertarian Institute

The Russian Foreign Ministry said any troops from third countries deployed to Ukraine will become targets. European nations have discussed plans to send their soldiers to Ukraine if a ceasefire with Russia is reached. 

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova explained that any country that joins a coalition of the willing and deploys troops to Ukraine will become targets. “We have repeatedly stated that a deployment of armed forces of other countries in Ukraine under any pretense would be absolutely unacceptable,” she said.

“We regard this as preparations for foreign military intervention. We will consider these so-called ‘multinational forces’ as legitimate military targets,” she added.

Several European countries have said they would be willing to join a “coalition of the willing” to deploy soldiers to Ukraine after a ceasefire with Russia is reached. Earlier this month, UK Defense Minister John Healey said, “The prime minister has always been clear that he’s ready to put troops into Ukraine to help reinforce a ceasefire.”

“The coalition of the willing” is an infamous phrase used by the George W. Bush administration to try to sell the Iraq War. 

Moscow says it is unwilling to enter into a ceasefire with Ukraine and is seeking a permanent end to the conflict that addresses the Kremlin’s security concerns. 

Multiple leaks throughout the war have exposed that a small number of American and NATO troops are inside Ukraine. However, Europeans are now discussing a large-scale deployment meant as a deterrent to a future Russian invasion. 

The escalating support for Kiev has led some in the Kremlin to argue for Moscow to take a more aggressive position against Ukraine’s Western backers. Dmitry Medvedev, former Russian President and current deputy head of the National Security Council, suggested launching preemptive attacks. 

“What is happening today is a proxy war, but in essence it is a full-fledged war,” Medvedev, who is now a senior Russian national security official, told the Tass news agency. “We need to act accordingly. Respond in full. And if necessary, launch preventative strikes.”

However, Medvedev also acknowledged that Russian President Vladimir Putin had ruled out attacking more European countries. “Let me remind you that our president stated unequivocally: Russia does not intend to go to war with NATO or ‘attack Europe’. Such claims by Western politicians are utter nonsense.”

He continued, “I would also like to add that this kind of drivel is deliberately injected into the information space to destabilize an already difficult situation. It is yet another front in the West’s open war against us.”

According to a new report by Axios, Mossad director David Barnea visited Washington this week to seek US support for Israel’s efforts to persuade regional countries to accept large numbers of Palestinians which Israel plans to forcibly remove from Gaza.

Citing two sources familiar with the discussions, Axios reported that Barnea informed White House envoy Steve Witkoff that Israel has been holding talks with Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya about taking in Palestinian refugees. This as there’s been on and off negotiations with Hamas, which haven’t produced any truce settlement, and the war with Hamas has continued to spiral.

While Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that any relocation of Gaza’s population would be “voluntary,” many international legal experts and war monitors argue that such a plan would amount to ethnic cleansing and should be deemed a war crime.

The sources cited in Axios said Barnea told Witkoff that the three countries showed a willingness to accept substantial numbers of Palestinians, and that he suggested the US provide incentives to encourage their cooperation.

In the case of two of the countries, Ethiopia and Libya, there are long-simmering clashes and the potential for renewed civil war present. Libya in particular is actually controlled by at least two rival governments and powerful warlords have sway over the east.

It doesn’t appear that Witkoff has committed to supporting the proposal, and representatives from the three named countries have not issued public statement.

Back in February, President Trump put forward an ultra-controversial proposal to expel all two million Palestinians from Gaza, paving the way for Israel transform the strip into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

It was at that time that US officials reportedly began to pressure Prime Minister Netanyahu to identify countries willing to take in large numbers of Palestinians displaced from the Gaza Strip as a result.

The McAmericanization of ancient Gaza?

Gaza will not be free until it has casinos, strip clubs, Chick-fil-As, and Starbucks… pic.twitter.com/LaEja79eRk

— Glenn Diesen (@Glenn_Diesen) July 19, 2025

As it stands, nearly the entire population of Gaza, of over two million people, has been internally displaced, as Israeli airstrikes have devastated much of the region, including the destruction of homes, hospitals, mosques, schools, and even churches.

Chaos erupted outside an East Hollywood nightclub early Saturday morning after a vehicle plowed into a crowd, leaving at least 20 people injured. 

The Los Angeles City Fire Department stated, “Initial reports of an unknown vehicle into a crowd, 20+ patients. Estimated 4-5 in at least critical condition, 8-10 in serious condition, 10-15 in fair condition.”

AP News quoted Capt. Adam Van Gerpen, who said dozens of people were waiting along Santa Monica Boulevard in East Hollywood, waiting to enter a nightclub, when a Nissan Versa struck them. 

NEW: A car plowed into a crowd near Santa Monica Blvd and Vermont in East Hollywood, injuring over 20 people.

Driver reportedly lost consciousness, hit a taco cart, then slammed into a crowd outside a club.

At least 3 critical, 6 serious. pic.twitter.com/lkllOL6Ipk

— Christopher Webb (@cwebbonline) July 19, 2025

Van Gerpen said first responders discovered one patient had been shot, but details remain scant. 

He said, “They were all standing in line going into a nightclub. There was a taco cart out there, so they were … getting some food, waiting to go in. And there’s also a valet line there,” adding, “The valet podium was taken out, the taco truck was taken out, and then a large number of people were impacted by the vehicle.”

“This is under police investigation,” Van Gerpen. “This will be a large investigation with the LAPD.”

Local authorities have not confirmed whether the crash was a car ramming attack or triggered by a medical episode. 

Authored by Evgenia Filimianova via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Meta’s chief global affairs officer, Joel Kaplan, said on Friday that the U.S. tech giant will not sign the EU’s new voluntary code of practice for general-purpose AI, citing legal uncertainties and measures that go beyond the scope of Europe’s main AI law.

In a statement posted on LinkedIn, Kaplan said the company will not be signing the Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI (GPAI), a set of nonbinding guidelines covering AI transparency, copyright, and security.

Designed for developers of general-purpose AI models, the code aims to help them prepare for, and comply with, the AI Act, which takes effect in stages starting Aug. 2.

“Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” Kaplan said. “We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI models and Meta won’t be signing it. This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”

The EU’s AI Act creates one system for all EU countries, dividing AI into four risk levels: unacceptable, high, limited, and minimal. High-risk systems, like those in critical infrastructure or hiring, face strict requirements, including safety checks and documentation.

It covers the regulation of large language models and foundation models built by companies such as Meta’s Llama, OpenAI’s GPT-4, Google DeepMind’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude.

Companies failing to comply could face fines ranging from 7.5 million euros ($8.7 million) or 1.5 percent of turnover, to as much as 35 million euros ($38.2 million) or 7 percent of global turnover.

Businesses Voice Concerns

The release of the GPAI Code was delayed several times before the European Commission published the final version on July 10.

The EU said companies that voluntarily sign the GPAI will face a lighter administrative burden and gain more legal certainty compared to proving compliance through other methods. Last week, ChatGPT-maker OpenAI announced its intention to sign the code.

Kaplan pointed to industry uncertainty over the EU’s AI regulation, citing concerns by 44 of Europe’s largest companies, including Bosch, Siemens, SAP, Lufthansa, Airbus, and BNP.

In an open letter, dozens of top European business leaders earlier this month urged EU officials to postpone key parts of the AI Act by two years, warning that the current rules are too complex and risk undermining Europe’s competitiveness in artificial intelligence.

The group said the AI Act, set to impose new obligations on both high-risk AI systems and general-purpose AI models starting in 2025 and 2026, could stifle innovation if implemented too quickly.

“We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them,” Kaplan said.

New Guidelines

Meta’s announcement came on the same day the European Commission published new guidelines explaining how general-purpose AI companies must comply with the EU’s AI Act.

The guidelines list several key requirements, including writing clear technical documentation, explaining what data was used to train the models, setting copyright policies, and protecting AI systems from misuse or hacking.

For the most advanced AI models that could pose risks to public safety, human rights, or society, developers will also need to run safety tests, reduce potential harms, and report serious incidents to EU regulators.

“By providing legal certainty on the scope of the AI Act obligations for general-purpose AI providers, we are helping AI actors, from start-ups to major developers, to innovate with confidence, while ensuring their models are safe, transparent, and aligned with European values,” the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy, Henna Virkkunen, said in a statement.

To support innovation, the commission said companies making significant modifications to existing models will only need to document the changes and the new training data used, rather than provide full documentation of the entire model.

Officials said this approach is designed to enable most developers to build on existing models without facing excessive regulation.