by Jake Johnson | Dec 12, 2025 | AI, big tech, California, data centers, Donald Trump, Gavin Newsom, Google, Microsoft, News, Regulations
US President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aimed at preventing state-level regulation of the burgeoning artificial intelligence industry, a gift to tech corporations that bankrolled his inauguration and are currently funding his White House ballroom project. Trump’s order instructs the US Justice Department to establish an AI Litigation Task Force with a single mandate…
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by Dan Ross | Dec 11, 2025 | AI, Climate Crisis, data centers, Emissions, New Mexico, News, Pollution, Water
At the very Southeastern tip of New Mexico bordering Texas and Mexico, a new artificial intelligence (AI) data center is gearing up to be a greenhouse gas and air pollution behemoth, an additional water user in a drought-afflicted region, and a sower of community discontent. Project Jupiter is one of five sites in the $500 billion Stargate Project, a national pipeline of massive AI systems…
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by Derek Seidman | Nov 28, 2025 | AI, Authoritarianism, big tech, Billionaires, Climate Crisis, data centers, Donald Trump, Fascism, Fossil Fuels, News Analysis, Wall Street
Billionaire executives have long been lauded by the corporate media as unfettered heroes advancing human progress. But the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidential term should dispel any notion that wealthy CEOs will save us from the twin crises of creeping authoritarianism and intensifying global climate chaos. Today, many of these supposed icons have wasted little time groveling to…
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by Juan Cole | Nov 25, 2025 | Bill Gates, Category 5, Climate Crisis, data centers, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Fossil Fuels, Hurricane Melissa, Op-Ed, silicon valley
In late October, Hurricane Melissa (that should have been called “Godzilla”) battered western Jamaica with 185-mile-an-hour winds. It tossed the roofs of buildings about like splintering javelins, demolished municipal buildings and hospitals, snapped telephone poles like matchsticks, flattened crops, and dumped torrential floodwaters everywhere, leaving $8 billion in damage. That Category 5 storm’…
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by Basav Sen | Nov 22, 2025 | AI, Climate Crisis, data centers, Deregulation, Emissions, Energy, Fossil Fuels, Op-Ed, Pollution, Renewable Energy, Trump Administration, utilities
A bipartisan group of 13 governors is pushing to deregulate the permitting of energy infrastructure in the U.S., arguing that doing so is necessary to “win the AI race, lower costs for consumers, and responsibly develop the advanced energy sources of the future.” But in reality, deregulating energy infrastructure construction would be a disastrous mistake that would increase greenhouse gas…
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by Derek Seidman | Nov 11, 2025 | BlackRock, Climate Change, Climate Crisis, data centers, electricity, Minnesota, News Analysis, Private Equity, public utilities
Ratepayers across the U.S. are facing rising electric bills — a trend that could be turbocharged by Wall Street’s growing effort to capture the electric utilities we all depend on. A critical turning point in this development occurred in October when Minnesota state regulators greenlit the acquisition of Allete by asset management behemoth BlackRock — set to become Allete’s majority…
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