By Irina Slave of OilPrice.com,

The U.S. Department of Energy has canceled $7.6 billion in funding for previously approved energy projects on the grounds that they would not produce any palpable benefits for Americans.

The canceled projects are 223 in total, approved by various agencies from the Department of Energy during the previous administration. Per this one, however, “these projects did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

“On day one, the Energy Department began the critical task of reviewing billions of dollars in financial awards, many rushed through in the final months of the Biden administration with inadequate documentation by any reasonable business standard,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.

The Department of Energy reported that 26% of all the projects canceled were awarded between Election Day, in November 2024, and Inauguration Day, in January this year.

“President Trump promised to protect taxpayer dollars and expand America’s supply of affordable, reliable, and secure energy. Today’s cancellations deliver on that commitment. Rest assured, the Energy Department will continue reviewing awards to ensure that every dollar works for the American people,” Wright added.

This is not the first project cancellation since the new administration took over. Earlier this year, the DoE canceled another 24 energy projects worth over $3.7 billion in government funding. The list, by the way, included a project proposed by Exxon for the production of low-carbon hydrogen at a petrochemicals facility.

Meanwhile, the government shutdown that began yesterday has paused approvals for new wind and solar projects, although oil and gas leases are still on schedule, according to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The agency said it would use carryover funds to maintain work on “priority conventional energy projects,” including offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska, even as more than 70% of its staff are furloughed.

Copper futures on the London Metal Exchange rose above $10,500 a ton – the highest since May 2024 – driven by a mix of investing themes, macro tailwinds, and worsening supply outlook. 

Freeport-McMoRan’s (FCX) recent force majeure declaration at Indonesia’s giant Grasberg mine, the world’s second-largest copper source, adds to mounting disruptions already squeezing the market. Add growing demand from AI data centers and grid upgrades, and the shiny industrial metal looks poised for further upside.

Last week, Goldman’s commodity specialist James McGeoch called the Grasberg mine incident a “black swan event”… The full note can be read here. 

The Grasberg mine incident highlights the copper market’s vulnerability to global supply shocks and is just the latest disruption to the industry. It follows Hudbay Minerals’ disclosure last month that it was shutting operations at a mill at its Constancia mine site in Peru due to ongoing social unrest.

Supply woes for the industrial metal are colliding with rising demand for “The Next AI Trade” and “Powering Up America” themes, and more recently, Goldman told clients that the power grid is a “vulnerable link in energy security.”

In other words, analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven told clients last week, “The need to invest in the power grid – a vulnerable link in the energy supply chain – and the associated metals demand boost are becoming more acute with the rise of AI, geopolitical tensions, and the shift to hybrid warfare.” 

Both analysts pointed out that with AI and defense putting the power grid at the center of energy security, copper is the new oil. 

“Such grid upgrades are metals-intensive: we expect grid and power infrastructure to drive ~60% of global copper demand growth through the end of the decade, adding the equivalent of another US to global demand and underpinning our bullish copper price forecast of $10,750/t by 2027,” they said. 

With that being said. Copper prices are marching higher.

. . . 

Authored by Andy Jackson via RealClearWire,

The United States is in the middle of another round of the redistricting wars. 

This latest battle began in late August. The Texas legislature approved maps that will likely result in five additional Republicans being elected to Congress. In response, the California legislature passed a plan that would likely result in five Republicans being replaced with Democrats. The California plan is subject to voter approval in November.

Those appear to be just the opening salvos in the mid-decade redistricting fight, as other states look to jump into the fray. 

It is time for a ceasefire.

But how?

Many redistricting reform advocates have focused on changing who draws the maps. They have called for redistricting commissions to take that responsibility away from state legislatures.

Commissions are not a panacea, however. They are often unaccountable, with members usually serving temporarily and not subject to being fired, recalled, or defeated for reelection. They can also be manipulated by partisan groups that infiltrate hearings pretending to be ordinary citizens.

Nor do commissions guarantee states protection from lawsuits. For example, a group of citizens successfully sued the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission for racial gerrymandering in 2023. 

More important than the “who” of redistricting is the “what.” What are the standards being used to draw districts?

On the heels of the last midterm election, I co-authored a comprehensive report on limiting gerrymandering for North Carolina, but its criteria can be applied to any state.

Those criteria can be divided into two broad categories. The first is that districts should be tied to local communities. Statewide considerations, such as creating maps with the “correct” partisan balance, should not subsume local interests. To that end, states must be required to minimize splitting counties, municipalities, and voting precincts. Districts should also be as compact as possible, consistent with keeping political communities whole. Many states follow those criteria in word but bend them to partisan considerations in practice.

Second, the use of partisan data, such as voter registration numbers and election results, should be banned. Partisan data is helpful only for those seeking to reach some predetermined goal regarding the partisan distribution of legislative seats or to ensure that certain districts elect candidates from a favored party. While gerrymandering has been with us for centuries, the advent of computer mapping programs and the data fed into them made gerrymandering the precision weapon it is today.

Additionally, maps should be drawn openly on computers that the public can view in person and online, and mid-decade redistricting should be banned absent a court order.

Redistricting reform should also be implemented nationwide. That can be done in two ways. The first is through an act of Congress, putting conditions on how states draw congressional districts.

One weakness of that approach is that the Elections Clause of the Constitution permits Congress to alter the rules only for electing U.S. representatives, so redistricting for state legislative districts would be unaffected.

Another approach would be an interstate compact. The compact would have a trigger clause to go into effect only if states representing a majority of congressional districts join and those districts are roughly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.

Either approach would involve federal courts as an enforcement mechanism. While the United States Supreme Court pointed out in Rucho v. Common Cause that “federal courts are neither equipped nor authorized to apportion political power as a matter of fairness,” they would have an appropriate role in ruling on violations of federal law or liability for breaking interstate compacts. That court presence would force states to adhere to redistricting standards, including those they are already supposed to be following.

However we arrive at a truce in the redistricting wars, we should seek it before the 2028 presidential election. The president’s party usually suffers in midterm elections. The last pre-redistricting midterm election in 2010, during Barack Obama’s first term, led to Republican dominance of the redistricting process. 

We have little idea of how that pendulum might swing before 2028. That uncertainty should incentivize both sides to reach an agreement out of fear that the other side could dominate redistricting in 2031 without such a deal. 

It won’t be easy to convince partisan politicians to put down their map-drawing arms, but it is worth the effort to get the high-tech redistricting wars behind us.

Andy Jackson is the director of the Civitas Center for Public Integrity at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, N.C.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the FBI, has announced the results of Operation Twin Shield, a large-scale fraud detection effort conducted across Minneapolis-St. Paul from September 19 to 28. Minneapolis is home to one of the largest Somali communities in the U.S., reflected in the election of Ilhan Omar, a Somali-American who became the first refugee and one of the first Muslim women elected to Congress.

The operation marked the first targeted surge of its kind, with immigration officers investigating more than 1,000 pending cases flagged for fraud or ineligibility concerns, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration.  USCIS said officers carried out over 900 site visits and interviews, uncovering fraud, non-compliance, or security issues in 275 cases—about 44 percent of those reviewed.

As of now, USCIS has issued Notices to Appear or referred 42 cases to ICE, with four individuals taken into custody. The agency expects those numbers to increase as administrative investigations are completed. The effort focused on marriage and family-based petitions, employment authorizations, and certain parole requests, in line with Executive Order 14161, which emphasizes protecting the United States from terrorist, national security, and public safety threats.

USCIS announced in a release this week that officials said the operation exposed a wide range of schemes. In one case, a man admitted to paying $100 for a falsified Kenyan death certificate to claim a marriage had ended; his spouse, still alive and living in Minneapolis with their five children, was very much present.

Another case involved the son of a known or suspected terrorist who overstayed his visa and had previously been denied multiple immigration benefits for marriage fraud. A petitioner confessed to marriage fraud only hours after swearing during a USCIS interview that her marriage was genuine. In yet another case, an immigrant manipulated an elderly U.S. citizen spouse in a fraudulent marriage that also involved elder abuse.

“USCIS is declaring an all-out war on immigration fraud. We will relentlessly pursue everyone involved in undermining the integrity of our immigration system and laws. With help from ICE and the FBI, USCIS’ Operation Twin Shield was a tremendous success—hundreds of bad actors will be held accountable,” said USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow.

“Immigration fraud undermines the integrity of our lawful immigration system, harms those who follow the law, and poses risks to national security and public safety. Under President Trump, we will leave no stone unturned.”

According to USCIS, this is the first time the agency has deployed resources at this scale in one geographic region. Officials emphasized that, unlike during the Biden administration, immigration officers are now empowered to thoroughly vet applicants as required by law and to pursue immigration fraud wherever it is encountered.

Authored by Daniel McAdams via The Ron Paul Institute,

On Tuesday we observed one of the strangest spectacles of our time. President Trump and his “Secretary of War,” Pete Hegseth, called a mandatory meeting of all the top brass in the US military. Some 800+ general officers, admirals, and the like gathered at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia for a doubleheader talk from Hegseth and Trump.

Because such an event is nearly unprecedented – at least in peacetime – the days leading up to the meeting were increasingly filled with speculation and even dread.

Tensions between the US and Russia are soaring over reports that the Trump Administration may provide and assist in the launching of Tomahawk missiles – capable of both hitting Moscow and of carrying nuclear weapons. The Putin Administration pointed out the obvious: such weapons would require the active participation of US intelligence as well as trained US or NATO personnel and should they be used would bring Russia and the US/NATO to a state of war. It is a war that, given both US and Russian nuclear doctrine, could very quickly rise to the level of an exchange of nuclear weapons and total destruction.

Likewise, media reports and observers of the movement of military equipment have been raising a red flag over the past several days on the massive movement of US fighter jets and aerial refueling tankers from the US toward the Middle East. Observers point out the similarity to the days leading up to the US attack on Iran in late June, just over three months ago. With Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu in town earlier this week, has President Trump been talked into again joining Israel in its war on its neighbors?

Additionally, US warships have been gathered off the coast of Venezuela for weeks and at least three speedboats accused of running narcotics have been blown out of the water by the US military. The New York Times reported on stepped up US efforts to overthrow the Venezuelan government and install a new leader (as the Trump team attempted and failed in his first term). Media outlets are reporting that the Trump Administration is even considering military strikes deep inside Venezuela, which would of course be unprovoked acts of war.

What to expect of the gathering of the generals? Many of us waited at the edge of our seats.

What we were able to see was a pair of not particularly well-prepared – and less well-received – speeches by Trump and Hegseth on transforming the US military into a “MAGA” force and the evils of late middle-aged rotundity among senior military personnel. The crass treatment of America’s tip military officers – whether some deserved criticism or not – will likely have an effect opposite of what was intended.

The pauses in the pre-prepared speeches meant to allow for applause were met with stony silence.

Fat-shaming and chest-pounding is not the way to go about building esprit de corps in the US military. Especially when such a dressing-down was broadcast to the rest of the country via live video hook-up.

But what if some of our initial sense of dread was not misplaced? In his essential Sonar21 blog, former CIA officer Larry Johnson wonders whether there was a (very) public message delivered to conceal a secret and more dangerous message.

First Johnson quotes Yves Smith of the Naked Capitalist blog:

After Charlie Kirk, perhaps I have become too fond of complicated theories.

But it’s ludicrous to have called so many senior guys in for such a silly agenda. A stern memo and/or video sessions would have done. 

So the big stoopid meeting, IMHO was to cover for a smaller gathering that had to be done in person. And where whoever was summoned would be a big tell as to what the focus was.

Johnson then signals his agreement with the speculation:

No, Yves… I think you nailed it. Besides the massive US naval force parked off the coast of Venezuela, we are now hearing that US tanker aircraft are flying to the Middle East via England. We saw the same phenomena in the days preceding the June 24 attack on Iran.

If the Trump administration is planning a coordinated attack on Venezuela and Iran, the commanders of USCENTCOM and USSOUTHCOM would be involved. While the plans for such attacks could have been discussed over a SVTCS (i.e., Secure Video Teleconferences), those sessions usually have dozens of straphangers watching. If you want to keep close hold on such planning, you do it in person. If the CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM commanders had been called to Washington alone, the odds are high that someone would have reported this. With the presence of the US naval force off the coast of Venezuela and the movement of US aircraft towards the Persian Gulf, this likely would have attracted unwanted attention…

What Larry Johnson writes here makes a good deal of sense. Even in Trump World, spending millions of dollars to publicly dress-down the US military makes little sense. A memo or video hook-up would have been far more effective and less disruptive.

Was the real purpose of this spectacle to hold a secret side meeting to give orders for an impending, multi-continental war? We’ll know soon…

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