The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on October 23 affirmed a district court order blocking President Donald Trump’s June 2025 federalization of 4,000 California National Guard troops for Los Angeles, ruling 2-1 that neither statute the administration relied on covered it. Sung’s opinion, filed October 23, says the order “exceeded the President’s statutory authority and encroached on Congress’s calling forth power,” which made it “ultra vires and unconstitutional.”

Sung, a Biden appointee, was joined by Judge Eric Miller, a Trump appointee, who wrote separately only to say the government forfeited its argument that no cause of action exists. Judge Mark Bennett, also a Trump nominee, dissented. Military.com reported that the Justice Department did not respond to its request for comment.

The panel’s own June 2025 stay order had found Trump likely acted within 10 U.S.C. § 12406(3), which lets a president federalize the Guard when he is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws.” That changed after the Supreme Court’s December ruling in Trump v. Illinois, decided over dissents from Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch. Under that ruling, a president must first show he has authority to use the regular military to execute the laws, and that he is unable to with those forces. The panel held the administration made neither showing.

That left the administration’s fallback, § 12406(2), which covers “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Relying on dictionaries from when the statute was written, the court read rebellion as “a violent, armed, organized, open and avowed uprising against the government as a whole,” not opposition to a single law or policy. It noted that an 1897 dictionary set rebellion apart from insurrection, which it said may be “a rising in opposition to a particular act or law.”

The panel did not wave away the violence. It cited the district court’s findings that on June 6 about 800 protesters gathered at two sites, with some throwing concrete chunks and bottles at federal officers, and that on June 7 protesters in Paramount and Compton set a vehicle on fire, looted a gas station and threw a Molotov cocktail. About 11 people were arrested that night. By June 8 the crowd had grown to about 3,500, and at least 42 were arrested.

Even so, the court found “no evidence of organized, as apart from sporadic or impromptu, violence” and no evidence, as of the June 12 hearing, “of any protesters carrying firearms.” Hundreds of civilian law enforcement officers, including a team trained for civil unrest, had brought the early clashes under control. Quoting the district court, the panel said the protesters “gathered to protest a single issue – the immigration raids.” A rebellion finding on that record, it concluded, fell outside a “range of honest judgment.”

Bennett’s dissent is mostly procedural. After the Supreme Court acted, the administration moved on January 23 to dismiss its own appeal; the panel denied that motion in a separate order. Bennett argued the court should have granted it and instead relied on “outdated briefs prepared amid a shifting legal landscape.” He also warned that the published opinion “will bind future three-judge panels, absent intervening precedent from the Supreme Court or an en banc panel,” and said California’s Tenth Amendment claim, which the parties “barely briefed,” is unlikely to succeed.

The ruling matters mainly as precedent, because the troops are already home. California’s attorney general says that after the Supreme Court’s decision the administration let the district court’s order take effect, returning command to Gov. Gavin Newsom. Two other pieces of the fight are on separate appeals: Judge Charles Breyer’s September 2025 permanent injunction under the Posse Comitatus Act, which followed a bench trial, and his December 10, 2025 injunction against the extensions of the federalization.

Newsom called it “a crucial day for the rule of law,” and Attorney General Rob Bonta called the deployment “a clear example of federal overreach,” in statements Military.com carried and Bonta’s office published.

Authored by Jeremy Lott via The Epoch Times,

Former economic advisers from the Obama and Trump administrations have issued a roadmap for what they see as a way forward on future data center construction across America.

Democrat Robert Wolf and Republican Stephen Moore pitched a “bipartisan framework” to navigate the current controversies surrounding AI data centers in a report released last week.

They call for a middle ground approach based on federal guidelines that address five key areas, including ratepayer protection, energy security, environmental stewardship, transparency and community engagement, and local authority over land use.

“America should neither surrender data center development to a regulatory free-for-all nor freeze it through blanket moratoriums,” the advisers say.

Some aspects of their pitch are at odds with ideas that President Donald Trump has shared as he stumps for candidates around the country.

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote in an Aug. 31 Truth Social post that the report highlights.

“If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

Trump also wants to use the federal government’s public lands for future data centers, in response to successful efforts by many community activists to halt data center projects in other areas.

Wolf and Moore label the lack of a regulatory framework for data centers as the “Wild West” approach, which forms part of the title of the policy paper: “Beyond the ‘Wild West’ and Moratorium: A Bipartisan Framework for Smart and Responsible Data Center Investment.”

They offer some words in defense of the “Wild West” approach while ultimately disagreeing with it. It has worked well in the past, such as for the development of the internet, the report says.

Wolf and Moore point out that Congress and President Bill Clinton used a “relatively light-touch regulatory framework for the emerging digital economy,” giving some evidence of the benefits of that approach.

“Over the following decades, American companies – including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, Meta, and Amazon – became global leaders in the digital economy,” they write.

Moore is a former economic adviser from Trump’s first administration who was nominated to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2019, though he later withdrew his nomination. He co-founded the organization Unleash Prosperity Now, which published the report.

Wolf served on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board in the Obama administration and in other advisory roles. He is the current chair of Archie Comics.

Mapping the Backlash

The report’s authors size up the American backlash to data centers that allow the American AI industry to function and grow, which the Trump administration has said is crucial to staying ahead of AI rivals in less free countries like communist China.

On July 18 there were 142 coordinated protests across 42 states against data centers. About 500 communities have adopted local moratoriums against building data centers. Thirteen governors – seven Republicans and six Democrats – have pushed for more stringent data center regulations and moratoriums.

At a time when Congress is seen as intensely polarized on party lines, that is not true of electricity demands and data centers.

The Ratepayer Protection Act is legislation that would pressure state-level regulators and utilities to consider new standards that would make sure “certain large-load customers” are not able to pass their energy costs on to other businesses and homeowners in the form of increased utility bills.

The legislation received bipartisan, nearly unanimous support in the House of Representatives in September, passing that chamber of Congress by a vote of 417-3.

The broader public appears to be in an anti-data-center frame of mind. Polls show a new and potentially growing majority of Americans against the building of more data centers.

For instance, the Pew Research Center found the percentage of Americans who thought data centers were “mostly bad” for the environment climbed from 39 percent in January to 54 percent in August.

About 60 percent of Americans also indicated that they do not want a data center opening up close to their neighborhoods.

Allowing Community Input

Wolf and Moore say that dismissing community activists for impeding progress in this new technological frontier is itself impeding progress.

“Not in my backyard ‘NIMBY’ concerns must be respected and addressed if we are to build the public support necessary to move forward,” they write.

At the state level, Virginia’s Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, has been trying to do something similar to what Wolf and Moore advise. To thread the needle of continuing data center construction while giving more say to local residents, she signed an executive order in September that created a framework to give more power to those communities.

This will allow residents “to have a meaningful voice in data center development and the tools to protect local resources, quality of life, and long-term interests,” according to the order.

Whether or not that will be a workable solution allowing for the building of more data centers in the commonwealth remains to be seen. In the meantime, other Virginia Democrats are pressing for a broader stoppage of data center construction.

“A statewide data center moratorium now has support from both parties,” wrote state Sen. Glen Sturtevant on Oct. 14 in an X post.

“I’ve been pushing for it since July, and now Sen. [Russet] Perry has a bill too. So the question is whether Democratic leadership will let it move forward, and whether Governor Spanberger will sign it.“

A mounting financial burden costing American families thousands of dollars a year is emerging as an overlooked issue in the 2026 midterm elections as new polling suggests that the expense of caring for aging relatives could influence voters in some of the nation’s most competitive congressional races.

While inflation, the Iran War and border security dominate the national debate, the growing cost of family caregiving has attracted comparatively little attention.

An estimated 59 million Americans provide unpaid care for an adult relative, friend or neighbor, according to AARP. A recent Edward Jones study found that financial caregivers who are not fully reimbursed spend an average of $8,737 annually out of pocket, forcing difficult decisions about household budgets and long-term savings.

The financial strain is also evident in retirement accounts. Research from the Employee Benefit Research Institute found that 34% of caregivers have less than $10,000 in savings and investments, compared with 25% of non-caregivers.

Moreover, the AARP survey conducted across 43 competitive congressional districts found that 77% of likely voters age 50 and older said they would be more likely to support a candidate advocating tax credits for unpaid caregivers. Additionally, 75% expressed greater support for candidates backing assistance that allows relatives to remain in their homes rather than enter institutional care.

Older Americans also appear especially motivated ahead of Election Day. The same survey found that 83% of voters age 50 and older described themselves as extremely motivated to vote, compared with 66% of younger voters.

Trump Tax Credit When?

President Donald Trump pledged to address the growing issue during his 2024 campaign, promising a tax credit for Americans caring for aging parents and other loved ones.

“It’s about time that they were recognized, right?” Trump asked during a Madison Square Garden rally at the time.

However, the proposed caregiver tax credit was ultimately left out of Trump’s sweeping tax-and-spending legislation signed in July 2025, while bipartisan legislation that would provide eligible working caregivers with a tax credit of up to $5,000, has gone no where in Congress.

The Department of Defense is preparing for a potential “doomsday” scenario in which America’s power grid collapses, supply chains grind to a halt, and military installations are forced to operate for three months without outside support, according to Fox News.

The unprecetended plan, branded FORTRESS by Pentagon planners, aims to make major military bases across the continental United States capable of functioning independently for at least 90 days, according to documents obtained by the news outlet.

“We don’t want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense. We just simply can’t. It’s an intolerable risk,” DoD spokesperson Sean Parnell said.

The Pentagon is exploring portable nuclear reactors, massive battery installations, and independent microgrids that would allow bases to disconnect from civilian power systems during prolonged blackouts. Officials have long feared that the lose of electricity could cripple communications, logistics, weapons production, and military command structures.

FORTRESS also reportedly calls for stockpiling ammunition, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, spare parts, and medical supplies, while preparing civilian factories to rapidly transition into wartime production.

The Pentagon also plans recurring industrial stress tests and mobilization exercises, alongside measures to protect military communications and navigation systems from satellite disruptions and GPS jamming.

“I realized that a lot of the way we think about homeland defense was built around the antiquated assumption that two oceans would protect us,” Parnell said. “President Trump understands that world is gone, and he’s already paved the way for new thinking: Golden Dome, a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, Greenland, Panama.”

“The next conflict will likely be fought on multiple fronts. Look at the geopolitics behind any major war. When that happens, global supply chains will break,” the official added. “You don’t want to be making these decisions in the middle of a global multi-front conflict. We have to have a plan.”

The ongoing threats to America’s power grid come from both foreign adversaries and domestic saboteurs.

In February 2024, the NSA and other federal agencies warned that Chinese state-sponsored hackers linked to Volt Typhoon had compromised critical U.S. infrastructure networks, including energy, water, transportation, and communications systems.

In December 2022, gunmen attacked two electrical substations in North Carolina, plunging roughly 45,000 customers into darkness and leaving some without power for five days.

* * *

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times,

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Iran and its allies might try to disrupt Tuesday’s elections in Israel with attacks, warning Tehran that Jerusalem would respond with overwhelming counterstrikes.

“We have intelligence signs that our enemies, Iran and its proxies, could challenge us with attacks in order to disrupt the elections,” Netanyahu said in a video released by his office on Sunday.

“Don’t test us. You will suffer disproportionate blows,” he said, adding that the Israeli military was postured for defensive and offensive operations.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei said on Monday it “makes no difference” who wins the Israeli election. At a press briefing in Tehran, he was asked about reports in Israeli media that Iran might launch a preemptive military strike to disrupt the vote.

“I do not think there are elections there in the true sense of the word,” Baghaei said, according to Iranian state-run media IRNA. “It is a race among individuals, each trying to prove that they can commit more crimes, aggression, and killings than the others.”

Baghaei’s remarks came as Tehran prepared to host senior officials from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey – the three signatories of the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement – to discuss regional security and de-escalation of the conflict between Iran on one side and the United States and Israel on the other. Netanyahu’s warning came as Israelis on Monday entered the final 24 hours of an intense election season, as reports circulated that Netanyahu may have tried to pressure Israeli military leaders into initiating a possible escalation with Iran on the eve of the vote.

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz denied the reports.

“The reports about gaps between the political echelon and the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] on the Iran issue are entirely baseless and false,” Katz said in a Monday post on X.

“I state unequivocally that there was no intention on Israel’s part to initiate an attack on Iran before the elections in Israel – when we made clear that if Iran attacks Israel, we will respond with great force.”

He also accused opposition figures of exploiting these reports for political gain.

Israel’s opposition candidates seized on the reports to criticize Netanyahu, accusing him of putting regional stability at risk in order to boost his chances at the ballot.

Netanyahu’s main rival, former military chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot, took to social media to criticize him for putting his “political interests above the state’s security.”

“We will not allow you to endanger Israel’s future in order to preserve your rule,” he wrote.

Avigdor Lieberman, head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party, said he sent a letter to Israel’s attorney general demanding a criminal investigation into Netanyahu on charges of treason.

“The attempt to drag the State of Israel into war on the eve of elections, together with the willingness to sacrifice IDF soldiers solely due to fear of losing the elections, constitutes treason against the state, its security, and the IDF soldiers,” Lieberman wrote in a post on X.

Trump Endorses Netanyahu

U.S. President Donald Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Monday that a vote for Netanyahu would “finish the job” of stopping Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon.

Describing Netanyahu as an “outstanding Warrior Prime Minister,” Trump wrote, “There can no longer be the chant heard around the World of ‘Death to America, Death to Israel,’ and there won’t be.”

As Israeli voters head to the polls on Tuesday, Netanyahu’s party is neck and neck with Eisenkot, his strongest rival, in a campaign that has largely revolved around security.

Calling Trump a “true friend” of Israel, Eisenkot said on social media that he appreciates the U.S. president’s actions and commitment to Israel’s security. At the same time, he downplayed Trump’s endorsement of Netanyahu, saying that he is convinced Trump would work “in full cooperation with any leader” chosen by Israelis.

Meanwhile, senior Israeli security officials told Epoch Magazine Israel that any potential future Israeli military action against Iran could include the assassination of senior regime figures, most notably current Iranian leader Mojtaba Khamenei and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander General Ahmad Vahidi.

The officials said credible intelligence indicates that Khamenei remains involved in the regime’s most critical decisions. They added, however, that targeting Iran’s top leadership would not in itself be enough to bring the regime down, and that further measures, particularly strikes against Iran’s energy facilities and nuclear sites, would be necessary.

Authored by Haley Zaremba via OilPrice,

A geothermal startup aiming to source energy directly from undersea volcanoes just hit a major milestone that could bring round-the-clock clean energy to cities on the northwest coast of the United States and serve as a critical proof of concept for other regions, with particular relevance for the other 14 countries situated along the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Seattle-based energy startup Endurance Energy just announced that it successfully created net-positive energy from its underwater geothermal plant in a world first. The company successfully demonstrated a full operations cycle from drilling to electricity generation in a major breakthrough for next-gen clean energy tech. Although the demonstration created less than 10 seconds of positive energy production, the implications of those ten seconds are hard to overstate.

“On Sept. 27, we put a power plant on an active underwater volcano and made power,” said Andrew Redd, founder and CEO of Endurance Energy. “This historic milestone is also our first end-to-end test. We now know, firsthand, what works at depth, what needs to be improved, and how to build the next system for sustained commercial generation.”

Not only does the brief achievement serve as a critical proof of concept for the technology, the project also “showed that operators in Seattle could control the system from an offshore location, remotely starting and stopping the equipment, monitoring temperatures and pressures, and collecting data without being underwater,” according to a recent report from Interesting Engineering.

Putting a geothermal plant on the seafloor presents some key benefits as compared to traditional models, but also yields critical trade-offs. The cool water of the seafloor acts as a natural cooling system, and the pressure of the water acts as a natural pressurizer that allows for the plants to be designed compactly, according to Redd. The company’s next milestone, building a larger 2-megawatt commercial generator in the Pacific island nation of Tonga, will be a test of these more productive, but still compact, generator systems.

“The 2 MW commercial generators will be about the size of a shipping container, and we are deploying up to six of these generators [to] offshore Tonga,” Redd told Ars Technica. “The physical footprint of this project will be relatively small.”

However, building a geothermal plant underwater presents extra challenges that could incur prohibitively high upfront costs as compared to on-land models. “It’s probably technically feasible, but it would undoubtedly be more expensive than to do it on land,” Roland Horne, professor of energy science & engineering at Stanford University, recently told Ars Technica.

Underwater geothermal is just one of many next-gen geothermal technologies being developed and tested today, as the urgency of shoring up new, clean, and indigenous forms of energy production becomes an ever-more urgent imperative against the backdrop of the artificial intelligence boom. Big Tech companies are bullish about investing in enhanced geothermal energy as part of their clean energy portfolios, while the Trump administration has also thrown its weight behind the sector’s development.

Indeed, one of the biggest benefits of geothermal energy is that it is one of the vanishingly few clean energy technologies that enjoy broad bipartisan support. By borrowing drilling techniques from the oil and gas industry, the United States could position itself as a global leader in advanced geothermal energy in coming years, a goal which aligns itself with the decarbonization priorities of the left and the energy dominance aims of the right.

“The U.S. has a number of different superpowers, and putting holes in the ground and taking things out of those holes is one of them – and doing so more economically and more efficiently than basically any other place on Earth,” Drew Nelson, vice president of Project InnerSpace, was quoted by Cipher News.

Accordingly, the Department of Energy has high hopes for the emerging technology, estimating that enhanced geothermal projects could provide an impressive 90 gigawatts of clean energy in the United States by 2050, or about enough to power at least 65 million homes.

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a direct appeal to Cubans on Friday, encouraging them to partner with the CIA if they want to see change in the communist country.

“To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba – now is the time,” Rubio said in an Oct. 23 post on X. “The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete partnership with the CIA.”

The CIA followed up Rubio’s post on the same platform with the same message in Spanish and included instructions on how to contact the agency. It urged Cubans to use non-personal devices and VPNs.

Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel attends a rally in Havana on May 22, 2026. Norlys Perez/Reuters

Cuban-born Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R-Fla.) said in a post on X that the Cuban regime must be “relegated to the ash heap of history.”

U.S. President Donald Trump hinted at a new American intervention in Cuba, potentially with military force, as he addressed supporters at a midterm campaign rally in Florida on Oct. 23.

He made the comments about Cuba after touting investments in the U.S. military and in military operations this year in Venezuela and Cuba.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran will tell you that we have the best equipment,” Trump said, before appearing to respond to comments about Cuba from someone in the crowd. “He wants to know ‘what about Cuba?’ Give me a break. Give me a break. Don’t worry. We’ll take care of Cuba on our way back from Iran.”

Cuban Deputy FM Carlos Fernández de Cossío mocked Rubio’s direct bid to the island.

“Now the U.S. is resorting to public recruitment campaigns for the CIA,” he said in an Oct. 23 post on X. “There must be a lot of desperation or a serious lack of resources within the agency if it has to market its offers like toothpaste.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced earlier this month that state authorities had secured an arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro Ruz.

Castro was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue over international waters.

“The Castro regime’s spies operated in our communities, fed intelligence to Havana, and helped put civilian pilots in the crosshairs of Cuban MiGs,” Uthmeier said. “Thirty years later, we are still fighting for justice for Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr.”

Castro, then minister of the Cuban armed forces and first vice president of Cuba, was a final decision-maker in the chain of command that authorized the shootdown, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit stated that Castro gave senior military leaders standing orders that said, “Fine, shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone.”

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez described the arrest warrant against Castro as a “disgraceful act” with no legal, ethical, or practical value, during a press conference on Oct. 21, Spanish news agency EFE reported.

Trump issued an executive order in January that said the government of Cuba had “taken extraordinary actions that harm and threaten the United States.”

It said that the regime aligns itself with, and provides support for, numerous hostile countries and organizations, including Russia, China, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

It noted that Cuba hosts Russia’s largest overseas signals intelligence facility and also continues to build deep intelligence and defense cooperation with the Chinese communist regime.