Republican Lawmakers Move On Legislation To Build And Fund Trump’s $400 Million Ballroom
Two days after a gunman tried to breach security at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner at the Hilton hotel, Republican lawmakers got straight to work pushing for President Donald Trump’s $400 million White House ballroom.
The president and First Lady Melania Trump were ushered out of the dinner after the gunman pulled a Leeroy Jenkins past security and shot a Secret Service agent near the security checkpoint.
The moment President Trump was evacuated from the White House Correspondents dinner after loud noises were heard. pic.twitter.com/RnbIumNR3A
Not only was the security atrocious considering how many high-profile individuals were at the event (where Reagan shooter John Hinckley, who shot Regan there, said it was a dumb place to keep holding high-profile events), Trump was evacuated a full 10 seconds after JD Vance.
🚨 WATCH: Trump — escorted by the arms, Vance — grabbed by the scruff
CNN has released footage showing the evacuation of U.S. leadership.
And now, the push to get Trump’s ballroom completed…
“Let’s get it done,” Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-MT) said on X, announcing that he would introduce legislation this week and move for unanimous consent of “express approval for construction of a Presidential ballroom” – while over in the House Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) will introduce the “Build the Ballroom Act” and file for explicit statutory authority.
“While the lawsuits attempting to stop this privately-funded gift to the country are nonsense, last night makes it clear that we need it—and we need it now,” he posted on X. “I look forward to Democrats repudiating their violent rhetoric against President Trump by cosponsoring and supporting this bill. Mr. President, build away.”
Boebert’s on it too – with the Colorado Republican announcing that she ‘and her team’ are in the process of drafting legislation to guarantee the project’s completion.
“I don’t believe congressional approval is required for the project, but if it’ll keep activist judges on the sideline, so be it,” she posted on X. “More to come this week.”
Even Sen. John Fetterman, who was there on Saturday, (D-PN) is onboard.
“We were there front and center. That venue wasn’t built to accommodate an event with the line of succession for the U.S. government,” he wrote on X. “After witnessing last night, drop the TDS and build the White House ballroom for events exactly like these.”
As the Epoch Timesnotes further, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche also joined the calls to allow the ballroom to go ahead.
“It’s time to build the ballroom,” he posted on social media.
Trump said on Truth Social that the project was ahead of schedule and well within budget, arguing it’s necessary for security purposes.
He criticized a lawsuit by historic preservationists as based on the “passing aesthetic gripe of a single person” that is no justification for delaying a secure facility.
The ballroom project, envisioned by Trump for years as a classical addition to the executive mansion, has faced repeated legal hurdles. A federal judge ruled in March that construction requires explicit congressional authorization, halting above-ground work while allowing limited underground activity to continue. Appeals courts have issued temporary stays, but litigation from the National Trust for Historic Preservation continues.
Trump once offered to fund a ballroom privately during the Obama years but was turned down. Construction moved forward in Trump’s second term after demolition of parts of the East Wing. The administration described it as a privately-financed upgrade needed to bring the White House up-to-date to accommodate modern events.
Architects called the design “classical, beautiful, and long overdue,” as court cases mulled whether the executive branch required legislative sign-off for such a considerable alteration to the historic complex.
Preservation groups contend the project goes around lawful reviews and risks the White House’s historic character. The Justice Department on April 26 asked for the case to be dropped to ensure the safety of the president, his family, and administration officials.
A federal committee remade by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on April 28 published proposals to revamp diagnosing and treating people with autism spectrum disorder.
The Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee said in one proposal that a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) should make clear that doctors should be prepared to recognize and treat new issues that occur in autistic people, such as seizures and difficulty sleeping.
The committee said that despite evidence showing new symptoms require treatment, “clinical care remains inconsistent and fragmented across settings.” The symptoms “can be overlooked, deferred, treated as secondary to behavior, or not systematically elicited at all,” it said.
Among the specific recommended changes is treating observations from caregivers of autistic people who are unable to speak, or speak well, as medically relevant information, rather than anecdotal context.
The Health Resources and Services Administration should develop training for doctors to identify and address gastrointestinal changes and sleep disturbances, among other problems, in autistic people, the committee said.
Another proposal suggested that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, another CMS component, clarify that when screening, diagnosing, and treating children with autism, doctors should seriously evaluate conditions such as developmental regression and allergic disease.
“When such triggers are present, further evaluation should be pursued or arranged as clinically indicated,” the proposal said, adding that the evaluation “should not permit these signals to be dismissed solely on the basis of an autism diagnosis.”
The committee said that there is much clinical evidence describing medical conditions that occur among autistic people, but “this evidence is not consistently integrated into clinical assessment, resulting in gaps in recognition, evaluation, and follow-through, especially when these conditions present atypically.”
It added later: “The result has been delayed identification, fragmented care, and preventable morbidity—reflecting a translational gap rather than an absence of evidence.”
The proposals were published as the committee met in Washington to discuss them. It was the first meeting since Kennedy removed existing committee members and selected new ones in January, including some who said vaccines cause autism.
The committee could end up changing the proposals during the meeting.
Dr. Sylvia Fogel, a psychiatry instructor at Harvard Medical School and the committee’s chair, said at the opening of the meeting that focusing on treating autistic individuals is imperative because many of the individuals suffer from undiagnosed psychiatric and pain-causing conditions.
“It is unacceptable,” said Fogel, who said her son has what she described as profound autism.
A third proposal would recommend that officials adopt the term profound autism as a reference for autistic people “with the highest and most persistent support needs.”
Fogel said the proposals aim to “address clear and correctable gaps in safety and policy.”
Watch: Small Earthquake Registered After IDF Blows Up Largest-Ever Hezbollah Tunnel
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday destroyed a major Hezbollah tunnel in southern Lebanon on Tuesday evening, minutes after issuing an unusual warning that the blast would be heard across wide areas.
The tunnel is being described in regional media as the largest one ever discovered thus far in the war in southern Lebanon. Israeli N12 News reporter Amit Segal has written that “the force of the explosion caused a small earthquake to be felt along the northern border.” The below footage has been confirmed in Israeli media:
The IDF destroyed a massive Hezbollah tunnel; the force of the explosion caused a small earthquake to be felt along the northern border. pic.twitter.com/symjrjk7bT
Very shortly before the huge blast, an alert went out to Israeli communities from Rosh Hanikra to the Golan Heights, forewarning of the large explosion – telling people not to panic.
The tunnel was located near the village of Qantara, which is a heavily Shiite Muslim town. The Israeli ground operation has seen Muslim and Christian villages alike razed to the ground in some instances.
Amid the fragile Iran and Lebanon ceasefires, sirens sounded in the Galilee area just minutes before the planned detonation, reportedly also based on potential inbound aerial threats.
Amazingly, the Times of Israel reports in the explosion aftermath that the “Geological Survey of Israel says the massive controlled explosion was picked up by the seismic warning system. However, no earthquake sirens were activated.”
“The military told residents earlier it would ensure that the controlled blast would not set off the earthquake sirens, which has happened in the past,” the report adds.
The blast was filmed and photographed even from miles away, where smoke was seen reaching many stories into the air.
Lebanon has been denouncing such controlled demolition activity, given that in some cases entire villages and abandoned towns have been destroyed in similar fashion.
Israel has sought to utterly raze any village it deems a Hezbollah weapons depot or safe area. But this has also included targeting Christian towns in the south of Lebanon, as the below image shows.
The Christian village of Yaroun in southern Lebanon, before and after it was destroyed by the Israeli army. pic.twitter.com/Rg77dlbuCJ
Western media has tended to present these Mideast conflicts involving Israel as coming down to “Jewish vs. Muslim” wars – but the Israeli army doesn’t discriminate in terms of also attacking Lebanese and Palestinian Christian enclaves.
Ahead of the gubernatorial election this fall, pundits are buzzing with something Californians haven’t heard in years: a real chance to flip the Golden State red – at least with a new governor in Sacramento. Thanks to its top-two primary system, in which the top two finishers advance to November regardless of party, this is more than possible.
This election cycle matters more than most for the Republican Party, and for the people of California. The Golden State has suffered under one-party Democrat rule for more than fifteen years, and the results are shocking. Despite some recent dips in violent crime, years of soft-on-crime policies have left neighborhoods scarred by retail theft waves, open drug markets, and a homelessness crisis that defies solution.
Businesses keep fleeing – California led the nation in net out-migration again in 2025, with roughly 216,000 residents packing up and leaving, many taking jobs and tax revenue with them. Housing remains wildly unaffordable, earning the state an F grade from Realtor.com for sky-high prices relative to incomes and regulatory barriers to new construction.
Paychecks don’t stretch, education rankings lag (California sits around 24th–37th nationally, depending on the metric), and the state’s aggressive green-energy mandates have driven up electricity and gas costs while water infrastructure struggles to keep pace.
Then came the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. Fire hydrants ran dry, water pressure failed in Pacific Palisades and elsewhere, and critics slammed the response for poor preparation and coordination – exactly the kind of governance failure that leaves residents wondering who’s in charge.
All of this flows from Blue authorities: sanctuary-state policies that shield illegal immigrants at the expense of public safety, endless fights with the Trump administration, and a relentless push for DEI and woke ideology over practical reforms. Californians have paid the price.
But this November, the tide may finally turn. There is a genuine opportunity to deliver what Californians truly deserve – crisis resolution, safer streets, affordable living, and an economy that works again.
Two Republicans, both with strong Trump backing, are posting surprisingly strong numbers in recent polls. Former Fox News host and Trump-endorsed Steve Hilton and Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco have led or tied for the top spots in multiple surveys, while a crowded Democrat field – Katie Porter, Xavier Becerra, Tom Steyer, and others – splits the vote and often trails.
Voters are clearly fed up with reckless Blue policies that prioritize ideology over results.
The GOP hopefuls’ platforms speak directly to the pain points. Hilton’s “Califordable” agenda promises no state income tax on earnings under $100,000, $3-a-gallon gas, electricity bills cut in half by slashing regulations, aggressive single-family home construction to restore the California Dream, and real education reform – ensuring kids can actually read by third grade. He also vows to crack down on government waste and fraud while enforcing laws against street encampments. Bianco emphasizes public safety first – fully resourcing law enforcement, ending sanctuary policies, cutting taxes and over-regulation, and unleashing California’s energy resources to drive down costs and create jobs.
These are concrete plans, not slogans – targeted fixes for the very problems Democrats have ignored or worsened.
Even amid the political trench warfare between Red and Blue, we must never forget one simple truth: the people living in California are no less American than those in Texas or Florida. Every legal citizen, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, shares the same unalienable rights that our republic exists to protect. It must be our common goal to strengthen this country and improve lives for all Americans – no matter the ZIP code.
That is precisely the mistake the Left keeps making. They treat the nation as two separate countries, portray their political opponents as enemies rather than fellow citizens, and stoke division that too often edges toward violence. This is basically one of the reasons Republican candidates lead the polls now.
Californians deserve better. This November, they just might get it. The dream of a Golden State that works again is alive – if Republicans seize the moment.
Mike Robertson is a contributor to American Thinker. Follow him on X at @Mike_for_MAGA and Reddit.
Trump Tells Aides US Preparing For Extended Blockade, But Could Be Open To Interim Deal With Iran
Summary
Trump prepares for ‘extended blockade’ – WSJ reports he has informed aides of risky planning.
Trump TS claim: Tehran has informed Washington they are in a “state of collapse” and that the Iranians want the US to “open the Hormuz Strait” – as ‘tank tops’ loom.
Trump doesn’t appear open to Iran’s proposal which hinges on US naval blockade ending & nuclear issue being pushed to future negotiations (CNN). Tehran working on revised plan to be sent in ‘few days’.
First crude-laden Japanese tanker from Saudi port exits Hormuz Strait successfully without Iranian interference.
Iranian analyst describes that Tehran believes it can outlast Trump & the standoff with US in Hormuz, citing “munitions, markets, and the midterms.”
Will Donald Trump announce that the United States blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has been lifted by May 31, 2026?
Yes 66% · No 34% View full market & trade on Polymarket
* * *
Trump Preparing for Extended Blockade: WSJ
If confirmed, this constitutes another huge gamble by Trump – on both the economic and political fronts, and with the lingering potential for escalation (towards some kind of ground action as well). According to the WSJ Tuesday evening, the president has told aides and his staff that he’s prepared to implement an extended blockade:
President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused.
In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said.
Yet continuing the blockade also prolongs a conflict that has driven up gas prices, hurt Trump’s poll numbers and further darkened Republicans’ prospects in the midterm elections. It has also caused the lowest number of transits through the Strait of Hormuz since the war began.
However, it remains that this could also be some classic Trump signaling of a ‘maximalist’ position, in order to get Iran to capitulate at the negotiating table. Just as the WSJ report hit, there was this headline over the news wires based on fresh comments:
TRUMP SAID IRAN WANTS THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ REOPENED AND MAY ACCEPT AN INTERIM DEAL TO END THE US NAVAL BLOCKADE WHILE BROADER WAR-END NEGOTIATIONS CONTINUE.
The new threat of prolonged military action was accompanied late Tuesday by this from the Treasury Secretary:
The Treasury Department, through Economic Fury, has targeted Iran’s international shadow banking infrastructure, access to crypto, shadow fleet, weapons procurement networks, funding for terrorist proxies in the region, and independent Chinese “teapot” refineries that support…
— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) April 29, 2026
And per Bloomberg latest:
In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried more risk than maintaining the blockade, officials said.
Revised Plan Coming in ‘Next Few Days’
So at least there is some back-and-forth. Trump is said to have rejected an initial proposal from Iran, which centered on the US opening up the strait, but pushes the nuclear issue to future talks – and only after an end to the war. Tehran is reportedly revising, and is expected to submit a revised draft deal in the coming days. CNN has the latest in the following:
Mediators in Pakistan expect to receive a revised proposal from Iran in the next few days to end the war, after US President Donald Trump indicated that he would not accept an earlier version, sources close to the mediation process told CNN. The sources say Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi was due back in Tehran today after a visit to Russia, adding that he is expected to consult with regime leaders. That process is slow, the sources say, because of the difficulty in communicating with Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, whose location is being kept secret.
Currently there’s much speculation and armchair quarterbacking regarding ‘hardliners’ vs ‘moderates’ in Iran and who is actually in charge, amid reports the IRGC doesn’t want engagement with untrustworthy Washington at all. Meanwhile there’s no question Iran is using the extended ceasefire interim to rearm and regroup militarily.
Trump claims Iranians in ‘State of Collapse’
Literally one minute before market-open, and President Trump issues the following big claim: he says that Tehran has informed Washington they are in a “state of collapse” and that the Iranians want the US to “open the Hormuz Strait”. Of course, even if it were true, why would the Iranians admit such a thing to their enemy during a state of war?
There have been some signs of political fracture – especially tensions between IRGC and civilian leadership – but so far the evidence has been anecdotal at best. Currently the internal Iranian government debate seems to be on whether to talk to the US or not – but again, amid the fog of war… all Western MSM can do is speculate, aside from the rare Iranian ‘anonymous’ source that might whisper in a reporter’s ear.
Oil Rises to 3-week High as Trump Doesn’t Appear Open To Iran Proposal
Reporting from Monday evening and overnight says President Trump doesn’t appear open to Iran’s latest proposal to end the war, which hinges on the US naval blockade being lifted but pushes the nuclear issue off to later negotiations. As a result, oil prices have continued to rise, climbing above $110 a barrel Tuesday morning – a first in three weeks, amid concerns of a prolonged strait closure. As for the latest tankers to actually make it through, CBS describes:
Four civilian ships appeared to leave the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday without Iranian interference, including a Japanese oil tanker carrying some two million barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia.
The Panama-flagged crude oil tanker Idemitsu Maru called at Saudi Arabia’s Juamyah industrial port in early March, according to open source data from the MarineTraffic ship tracking website. For the past week it had remained anchored off the coast of Abu Dhabi in the Persian Gulf, until late Monday, when it sailed toward Iran’s Larak island in the Strait of Hormuz.
On Tuesday morning, tracking data showed the vessel passing south of Iran’s Larak island, which analysts say the regime had used as a “toll booth” to collect fees from some ships before military authorities declared the strait entirely closed again last week.
The White House has insisted that there would be no scheme for Iran collecting tolls as part of any future deal, but the Iranians appear to be forcing the issue, and have said the funds will help with the country’s reconstruction after the devastation wrought by US-Israeli bombing raids.
Independent news organization Drop Site says that Iran is now setting its own terms for ending the war as President Trump’s narrative on negotiations flails. One Iranian analyst has said that Tehran believes it has the three M’s on its side: “munitions, markets, and the midterms.”
The report cites Hassan Ahmadian, a well-known Iranian analyst and associate professor at the University of Tehran, who explains: “The Iranians are saying time is working in our favor for the three Ms: munitions, markets, and the midterms. These three Ms help Iran in its position and weaken US positions.”
“Obviously in the U.S., they want something to say, ‘We squeezed Iran and we got this.’ My perception is that the Iranians are keen to deny the United States that – they wouldn’t give what Trump wants as a victory,” he added.
A separate Iranian official, privy to negotiations and so remaining anonymous, stated: “We’re currently moving forward with our own design, and we feel continuing negotiations doesn’t make sense until the U.S. government lifts the maritime blockade.”
“The scope of the conflict has expanded, and naturally the issue is no longer purely nuclear,” the official added. Indeed, the latest proposal for ceasefire out of Tehran focuses on the US Navy ending its blockade, and leaves the nuclear issue for future consideration, given it has proven an impasse in the prior Islamabad talks.
But Washington as been asserting its own leverage:
New reporting from Bloomberg shows Iran has 22 more days of available storage.
“The Islamic Republic has enough unused storage capacity to last another 12 to 22 days, Kpler analysts wrote in a report Monday.”
But even more importantly, they highlighted the time horizon until…
President Trump explained – in his own inimitable manner – what we described last week: time is running out for Tehran… as oil blockade stalls the flow state of Iran’s economy permanently…
Trump toldFox News on Sunday that the US blockade on traffic to and from Iranian ports is putting major pressure on the country’s export infrastructure:
“When you have, you know, lines of vast amounts of oil pouring through your system, if for any reason that line is closed because you can’t continue to put it into containers or ships, which has happened to them — they have no ships because of the blockade — what happens is that line explodes from within, both mechanically and in the earth.”
“It’s something that happens where it just explodes. And they say they only have about three days left before that happens. And when it explodes, you can never, regardless, you can never rebuild it the way it was.”
“Iran’s oil system is not built to pause. It’s built to flow. It’s a flow system.
Oil cannot simply sit in the ground while strategists argue over maps and how much uranium dust to give over. It has to move. Iran and its system has to move continuously from the rock underground to the tanker in the harbor to the Chinese buyer in Asia.
Pause long enough, and the whole machine breaks.
Interrupt that flow. And the problem isn’t just lost revenues of like forty, fifty, sixty billion dollars. It’s the least of your concerns. The problem is physical and is irreversible.
Because when you suddenly shut the well, remember there’s no physical storage. They pump, they load, they ship.
If they can’t load, if they can’t ship, they can’t pump. And when you suddenly shut the wells, the pressure underground drops fucking fast.
Do you know what happens?
The heavy, sticky crap in the oil, it gums up, gums up in the tiny holes within the rocks and becomes like glue. It traps the oil. It makes it really fucking hard to extract. And once that damage is done, it’s permanent. You lose a big chunk of the oil.
The more Iran is actively either through theater or through bluff, the more that it sits in a standoff, the more it is actively destroying the one thing that it actually depends upon.
That’s the trap. And you’re not reading in in the press, but you’re damn well reading it on your screens.
Because this is where the gap between the narrative of the media and the price stops being subtle and irrelevant, and it’s why stock markets have priced something entirely differently.
The Iranian system, the adversary, cannot afford to stay disrupted without hurting itself. That’s what’s in the equity market’s price.”
The failed second round of Pakistan talks, which fell apart before they even began, was supposed to see Vice President JD Vance heading up the US side. This was reportedly something the Iranian side desired to see, and is likely still what its negotiating team would rather be dealing with. On the other hand, per Drop Site, “Iran has total disdain for Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and views him as both oblivious of diplomatic processes and totally ignorant of technical issues.”
This is because “Kushner is viewed by Iran as Israel’s man at the table.” This has led to the following view and alleged conclusion: “Iran, the senior official said, does not see any reason to deal with these two without a figure like Vice President JD Vance present.”
Bombs have grown quiet across the Gulf amid the extended ceasefire, with the exception that fighting in southern Lebanon still rages, despite the US-mediated ‘Lebanon ceasefire’:
⚡️Hezbollah publishes footage of them striking 2 Merkava tanks belonging to the Israeli army in southern Lebanon with FPV drones pic.twitter.com/daqtTEqA4q
Last week as an avalanche of headlines said that a second round of talks were imminent, and after the Iranian foreign minister had already landed in Islamabad for bilateral discussions with Pakistani mediators, there were premature reports that Vance was en route to Islamabad. The mainstream media claimed that it was Iran essentially begging Washington for negotiations. “But Vance, it turned out, was not on a plane, and Iran continued to deny it had any intention of meeting with U.S. officials in Pakistan,” Drop Site underscores.
Global data center power demand is projected to hit 84 GW by 2027—a 50 percent jump from 2023 levels—with AI workloads accounting for 27 percent of that total, according to Goldman Sachs Research.
The grid cannot keep up with AI. For decades, electricity demand grew slowly and predictably, giving utilities comfortable margins to plan capacity years in advance. That model broke almost overnight. Between 2023 and 2024 alone, utilities’ five-year summer peak demand forecasts jumped from 38 GW to 128 GW, a more than threefold increase in a single planning cycle.
Unlike traditional server loads, which are relatively flat and predictable, AI inference and training jobs generate sharp, near-instantaneous power spikes. Large-scale GPU clusters can produce fluctuations of hundreds of megawatts within seconds. That’s a load behavior utilities have no historical model for.
Energy companies are no longer treating hyperscale data centers as large customers to be served from the grid, but rather as anchor infrastructure to be co-built with.
What follows is a look at what that shift actually demands at the systems level — why natural gas is currently the only tool that can fill the gap at the required speed and scale, what that means for emissions commitments already being made today, and what the longer path to balancing this with storage, transmission, and cleaner alternatives realistically looks like.
Why natural gas is filling the gap today
The US currently generates around 40 percent of its electricity from natural gas, with coal and renewables making up most of the rest. However, neither can meet the requirements of AI data centers, which require firm, uninterrupted, gigawatt-scale power available around the clock. The present US grid is already under strain before data centers even enter the equation.
Renewables hit a hard wall here. Interconnection requests for new solar and wind projects face median wait times of over four years. In contrast, natural gas is cheap, abundant, and already flows through an extensive pipeline network across the country. And unlike new solar or wind projects, gas plants can be up and running in three to five years.
Even so, three to five years is not immediate. Demand is here now, and the gap between what the grid can deliver today and what data centers need is already being felt. Energy companies are trying to figure out how to keep up with this demand in different ways.
Entergy is spending $3.2 billion to build three natural gas plants totalling 2.3 GW specifically to power Meta’s new Louisiana data center, which requires 2 GW for computation alone. These plants carry a typical operational lifetime of around 30 years.
Others are hedging their bets that the infrastructure will attract the tenant. NextEra Energy, the US’s largest renewable developer, is partnering with ExxonMobil to build a 1.2 GW gas plant in the Southeast. CEO John Ketchum summed up the industry’s new posture: the AI sector is shifting toward “BYOG” — build your own generation.
Rethinking the engineering playbook
Power grids are engineered for predictability. Seasonal peaks, industrial cycles, and population growth are modeled to plan generation capacity for the future. Fitting AI into this picture requires much more than just scaling.
Training a large language model means thousands of GPUs running simultaneously, sustaining enormous power draws for days or weeks, then dropping off sharply. These spikes are unpredictable and can be extreme. Dispatch curves determine which plants run when, whereas reserve scheduling ensures backup capacity is always available. AI workloads stress both in ways utilities have no historical model for. The forecasting crisis this has created is visible in the numbers, with a threefold increase in peak demand between 2023 and 2024.
Developers routinely file speculative interconnection requests for projects that never get built, flooding queues with phantom demand. ERCOT, Texas’s grid operator, developed an entirely new Adjusted Large Load Forecast methodology to account for exactly this — the gap between projected data center load and what actually materializes.
At the plant level, this is forcing a redesign of how generation assets are dispatched. When an AI model responds to a user query, it triggers a sudden, large power surge known as an inference spike. Gas peakers — plants designed for short, high-output bursts — are now being co-located with data center campuses specifically to absorb these inference spikes that baseload plants can’t respond to fast enough.
The physical grid is buckling under the same pressure. Transmission investment in many regions of the US declined steadily after 2015, leaving a system already running close to its limits. Now it’s being asked to absorb demand at a scale it was never designed for.
In Texas, CenterPoint Energy reported a 700% increase in large load interconnection requests between late 2023 and late 2024. In Virginia, another 50 GW of data center projects sit active in the queue. The costs reflect the strain.
Combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGTs) capture waste heat to generate additional electricity, making them efficient enough for round-the-clock demand. Installed costs for new CCGTs have nearly doubled to around $2,000/kW compared to plants built just a few years ago.
The market data tells the same story. The capacity market clearing price, which is the rate utilities pay to secure guaranteed power reserves for peak demand, has also increased. In PJM, the grid operator covering much of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, capacity market clearing prices for the 2026-27 delivery year jumped to $329/MW — more than ten times the $28.92/MW price from two years prior.
The gas plants being built today aren’t just a bridge to the AI boom; they’re a commitment. With an average operational lifetime of 30 years, they will still be running well past every major net-zero target on the books.
A natural gas plant emits around 490g of CO2 per kilowatt-hour over its lifetime. Scale that across the gigawatts of new capacity being greenlit today, and the emissions math becomes difficult to ignore.
Across the southern US, utilities are planning around 20 GW of new gas capacity over the next 15 years, with data centers accounting for 65 to 85% of projected load growth in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia alone. The methane problem compounds this.
Natural gas infrastructure (drilling, pipelines, compression) leaks methane continuously, both accidentally and through intentional venting. Methane traps around 80 times as much heat as CO2 over a 20-year horizon, making the emissions from a buildout of this scale difficult to quantify but impossible to ignore.
It’s the policy fault line that’s now opening up between energy companies, hyperscalers with net-zero commitments, and regulators who are only beginning to grapple with what AI’s energy appetite actually means for decarbonization timelines.
Policies and incentives
Several structural mechanisms are being put in place to eventually shift the balance, though none of them work fast enough to solve the immediate problem.
It’s the policy fault line that’s now opening up between energy companies, hyperscalers with net-zero commitments, and regulators who are only beginning to grapple with what AI’s energy appetite actually means for decarbonization timelines.
Policies and incentives
Several structural mechanisms are being put in place to eventually shift the balance, though none of them work fast enough to solve the immediate problem.
On the storage side, the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 offers a 30% tax credit for standalone energy storage systems and zero-emission generation facilities placed in service after 2024. The credit applies not just to generation technologies like solar but also to storage infrastructure itself. This gives data center operators and utilities a financial reason to invest in battery systems needed to make renewables work around the clock.
On the generation side, nuclear is emerging as a leading zero-carbon option for AI data centers, given its ability to deliver firm, always-on power. Google is already moving in this direction, striking a deal with NextEra to restart the 615 MW Duane Arnold nuclear facility for 24/7 carbon-free power.
Transmission remains the hardest problem. A study by the Department of Energy identified significant transmission capacity gaps across nearly every US region — gaps that predate the AI demand surge and will take years of coordinated investment and permitting reform to close.
The path forward
AI’s power demands are arriving faster than the infrastructure built to serve them. The gas plants, the transmission upgrades, the storage credits, the nuclear restarts, none of it is moving at the speed the technology is.
At some point, that gap has to close. The question is whether that gap closes through deliberate investment and policy coordination, or through something more painful. Power shortages, delayed data centers, and electricity bills that reflect the true cost of building a grid that wasn’t designed for this moment. Engineers and policymakers are working on the former. The clock is running on the latter.
Homeowner Floats Mansion Swap For Anthropic Equity
A LinkedIn profile for a luxury property in Marin County, just north of San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge, states that the homeowner is open to exchanging the 14-acre estate for Anthropic equity.
“I own a 14 acre estate in Mill Valley, CA (See link below) and would like to exchange the property for Anthropic equity (understanding in advance that this would be substantially above the valuation of Anthropic’s last financing round, in the $800+ BB range),” the LinkedIn profile for the profile located at 114 Inez Place, Mill Valley, stated.
The owner’s proposal is aimed at an Anthropic shareholder who wants liquidity or diversification without fully giving up future upside. The seller says the equity holder would retain 20% of the upside in the shares during the lockup period, receive potential tax advantages, and pay no legal or real estate closing costs, as the property owner would cover them.
The sales pitch to Anthropic equity holders:
1. The Anthropic Equity Holder Keeps Upside in Shares: Post exchange, the current Anthropic equity holder will continue to retain 20% of the upside value of the shares exchanged for the duration of the lockup period (until final transfer of shares can occur legally).
2. Tax Advantaged: Can either defer taxes on sale of shares, or reduce taxable basis, whichever is preferred (tax advisors will detail this for the Anthropic equity holder).
3. Transaction Costs: I will cover all legal and real estate closing costs so there are no out of pocket costs for the Anthropic equity holder.
4. Provides diversification into a solid real estate asset with significant appreciation potential
The proposal concluded:
Objective: Provide liquidity, diversification, and a luxury estate for an Anthropic shareholder on a highly tax advantaged and cash free basis, while still allowing retained upside in shares for the current share owner.
The timing of a proposed private transaction to exchange a 14-acre luxury estate for Anthropic equity comes as the AI startup is reportedly valued at around $800 billion.
However, an overnight report about peer OpenAI missing revenue expectations reinforces bear-case fears that the AI bubble may be showing cracks. This should give the homeowner reason to reassess the deal’s structure and seek downside protection if Anthropic’s valuation stalls or reverses.
Electric air taxi developer Joby Aviation stated on April 27 that it will begin a weeklong testing campaign in New York City, having successfully completed three days of test flights across the city’s heliport network.
Joby’s electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) air taxi launched from John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK) and made stops at Downtown Skyport on the southern tip of Manhattan, West 30th St. heliport on the West Side, and E. 34th St. Heliport on Manhattan’s eastern waterfront.
The routes are potential commercial flight patterns for Joby Aviation’s electric air taxis that could quietly and with zero operating emissions traverse Manhattan in less than 10 minutes, the company stated.
According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, travel times across Manhattan average 32 minutes or less, but rush hour traffic significantly slows travel times. Traveling the roughly 17 miles from JFK in Queens to midtown Manhattan can take travelers up to 90 minutes or longer.
“This week, flying between JFK and Manhattan, we showed what the White House-backed eIPP initiative makes possible and offered New York a look at what’s coming,” said JoeBen Bevirt, Joby founder and CEO.
Joby Aviation was one of eight proposals picked in early March by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to participate in the DOT’s Advanced Air Mobility Program and eVOTL Integration Pilot Program (eIPP). The program, part of President Donald Trump’s Unleashing American Drone Dominance Executive Order announced in June 2025, is aimed at accelerating commercial adoption of electric air taxis and drones for urban transportation, logistics, emergency services, and autonomous flight.
The New York City Economic Development Corp. (NYCEDC), along with heliport operators Vertiports by Atlantic and Skyports Infrastructure, stated that it will begin electrifying the city’s heliport charging infrastructure ahead of potential commercial air taxi service.
“NYCEDC is thrilled to usher in New York City’s transition to electric flight, and these flights mark a real milestone in that journey,” Jeanny Pak, NYCEDC interim president and CEO, said in a statement.
The three days of test flights required close coordination between Joby Aviation, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
“These demonstration flights are one data point in a larger body of work we’re building around next-generation electric aviation, and it reflects our conviction that responsible exploration of these technologies now is how we prepare this region for the future,” said Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority.
Joby noted that it will leverage its existing partnerships with Delta Airlines and Uber to create an end-to-end transportation solution from JFK to destinations throughout Manhattan that include air and ground transportation and could reduce travel times from one to two hours to less than seven minutes.
Delta in 2022 made a $60 million equity investment in the electric air-taxi startup, which could eventually ramp up to $200 million if Joby hits certain development milestones. Uber announced in late February that it would begin Joby eVOTL-powered passenger flights in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, later this year.
Joby noted that it is also working through the final stages of obtaining FAA certification so that pilots can begin for-credit testing, a crucial step for commercial flight operations.
“The government should be afraid of the people, the people shouldn’t be afraid of the government.” ― Edward Snowden
“The freedom of a country can only be measured by its respect for the rights of its citizens, and it’s my conviction that these rights are in fact limitations of state power that define exactly where and when a government may not infringe into that domain of personal or individual freedoms that during the American Revolution was called “liberty” and during the Internet Revolution is called “privacy.” ― Edward Snowden
None of what is happening is an accident or happenstance. Everything that has happened since 2019 is part of their diabolical plan to impoverish, cull, and enslave you in a technological gulag, sold to the ignorant masses as technological advancement, improvement of our lives, and protection from whatever bogeyman they designate. They want to digitize and electrify your entire existence, so they can control you, milk you like cows, and slaughter you at a time of their choosing.
The financial system began to unravel in September 2019 and the ruling class needed to accelerate their Agenda 2030 Great Reset plan. The Fed balance sheet, which had surged from $1 trillion in 2008 to over $4 trillion after the Wall St./Fed created financial crisis, was being reduced slowly to $3.8 trillion, but that was too much for our decrepit debt dependent system, and the repo market froze up.
The Fed panicked and started printing again. Conveniently, Gates and the WEF tested their fake pandemic plan at Event 201 in October 2019. They worked out the kinks and rolled it out across the globe in January 2020. Maximum fear and the greatest PR campaign in history for the annual flu resulted in a global shutdown, allowing the Fed to increase their balance sheet to $9 trillion, a 140% increase in a matter of months. Meanwhile, the politicians did their part by driving the national debt from $23 million to it’s current level of $39 trillion, a 70% increase.
It now requires more and more new debt to service the old debt ($1.3 trillion per year of interest on the debt), so the Fed was only able to get their balance sheet to just below $7 trillion, before the system started to break again. They have begun increasing it once more. Nothing like an unnecessary war on behalf of Israel to drive the national debt to above $40 trillion and keep the printing presses humming. They know this empire of debt is unsustainable and in imminent danger of collapse, so they are accelerating the AI based technological prison phase of their plan.
Does anyone in their right mind believe the thousands of data centers they want to build are to benefit the average person? Of course not. These data centers will power your enslavement. And if you think one of the political parties will save you, then you aren’t paying attention. The uni-party is designed to screw you and benefit themselves. Electric cars to save the planet was, and still is, a ridiculous idea, unless those controlling the levers of power want an easy way to automatically keep you from traveling. Since the electric car boondoggle has petered out, both parties cooperated to install kill switches in all gas powered new cars starting in 2027. How exactly is that beneficial to the average person. They hate you and do not care what you think or want.
It is the same story with the CBDCs. How do they benefit the average person? They don’t. They will be able to track and tax every transaction you make. They will be able to create a profile based upon your spending. They will then use their AI tools to determine pre-crimes and arrest you in advance. If you make a social media post or comment offensive to the empire, your social credit score will be downgraded and you will be denied travel and grocery privileges. This is the techno-gulag these billionaire psychopaths in suits dream about. And they are accelerating these plans at breakneck speed. When they decide to pull the rug on this teetering financial system, the CBDCs will be the lifeline they offer.
Ed Dowd, former portfolio manager at BlackRock: The COVID vaccines “were designed to take care of a pension problem with the boomers, and then bring in 10 to 15 million younger, mostly male folks as replacement population.”
Ed Dowd’s suspicions about the Covid scamdemic are entirely accurate. It was the lynch pin of the depopulation phase of the Great Reset. With the average age of death during Covid of over 80 (from remdesivir and ventilators), they relieved the financial pressure from Social Security and Medicare. The Covid “vaccine” has been the more insidious method of depopulation. Some batches murdered their injectees immediately. Other batches are killing people through myocarditis and turbo cancers. It caused pregnant women to lose their babies. And it has reduced fertility rates across the board.
Replacing native white Americans with low IQ third world dregs is alive and well. Trump is not deporting the tens of millions of illegal invaders, like he promised. Young foreign males commit an inordinate amount of crime and these lowlifes accelerate the destruction and bankruptcy of our welfare system. Both parties cooperated to not pass the SAVE Act, meaning they want illegals to vote in our elections and do the bidding of those pulling the strings.
The billionaire overlords want chaos, economic suffering, and the destruction of the traditional family. And they appear to be winning. If the citizens of this country had a backbone, this KILL SWITCH moment would trigger our current day BOSTON TEA PARTY. But, I’m afraid we are too far gone, too soft, too sedated, too distracted, too cowardly, and too dumbed down to notice. So it goes.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Citadel’s Griffin To Meet With NY Gov. Hochul After Mamdani’s Socialist Games
Citadel’s Ken Griffin told the audience at the Norges Bank 2026 Investment Conference in Oslo earlier on Tuesday that he is planning to meet with left-wing New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday to discuss the “future direction” of the state after far-left NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani singled out Griffin in a promotional video stunt to push his proposed new tax on luxury second homes.
“Here’s the real question: Is New York going to put its fiscal house in order and run itself from a position of a strong government that’s pro-business?” Griffin told the audience. “Why do Americans think we can do socialism? We have none of that in our DNA.”
Griffin continued, “I think the willingness of a mayor of New York to make this policy debate a personal attack just demonstrated a profound lack of judgment.”
In a recent promotional video, Mamdani attempted to turn Griffin’s Manhattan penthouse into political ammunition for his tax-the-wealthy, anti-capitalist crusade to fund socialist experiments through a proposed pied-à-terre tax.
Citadel’s CCO, Gerald Beeson, fired back at the far-left mayor in an internal memo to employees, which was conveniently leaked to The Wall Street Journal, in which he warned that Mamdani’s political games against Griffin threaten to halt Citadel’s $6 billion redevelopment plan in Manhattan, which would create thousands of jobs.
Why Mamdani’s team of socialists decided to launch an info-war operation against Griffin and Citadel is a very good question, and it appears not to have been well thought out. This is evident because Mamdani immediately attempted to defuse the situation last week by saying the new tax on pricey second homes isn’t “motivated by any one individual.”
So why take the political abuse from a bunch of socialist kids running City Hall, Ken?
Remember how easy it was to leave Chicago for Florida?
