Combined NextEra-Dominion Would Have 130-GW Large-Load Pipeline

Combined NextEra-Dominion Would Have 130-GW Large-Load Pipeline

By Robert Walton of UtilityDive

Summary

  • NextEra Energy plans to acquire Dominion Energy in an all-stock transaction announced Monday, potentially creating the largest regulated electric utility in the world — with 10 million customers in four states — if the deal passes muster with three state and two federal regulatory commissions.

  • The companies have proposed $2.25 billion in bill credits for Dominion customers in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, and they say all customers would see benefits from “enhanced scale in operations, procurement, construction and financing.”

  • The combined company would have a more than 130-GW large-load pipeline of projects and a rate base of $138 billion, which it expects to grow at approximately 11% through 2032, according to the deal announcement.

Company officials frame the deal as a win for customers by maintaining operating stability and putting downward pressure on rates while allowing the combined utility company to grow faster and more efficiently. Customer advocates, however, warned of the deal’s potential impact on consumers, and analysts say it could signal shifts in the utility operating model and wholesale markets.

“The Dominion Energy name isn’t changing, nor is how we operate locally, serve our customers or engage with the community,” NextEra Chairman, President and CEO John Ketchum said in a statement.

NextEra Chairman, President and CEO John Ketchum speaks during a panel at the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit in March 2026, in Washington, D.C.

The merger has been approved by the boards of directors of Dominion and NextEra, and the companies say they expect to close the transaction in 12 to 18 months subject to approvals from a host of regulators. The deal must be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Virginia State Corporation Commission, North Carolina Utilities Commission and the Public Service Commission of South Carolina.

Customer advocate group Clean Virginia called for state officials to subject the proposed merger “to the most rigorous scrutiny possible.”

“This deal would hand control of Virginia’s electric grid to a company with a deeply troubling track record,” Brennan Gilmore, executive director of Clean Virginia, said in a statement.

“Before Virginia ratepayers are locked into a relationship with NextEra Energy, every policymaker and regulator in the Commonwealth needs to understand what NextEra has done in Florida,” he added, pointing to rate hikes and scandals around dark money political advocacy.

The companies say they plan to maintain dual headquarters in Florida and Virginia. NextEra owns Florida Power & Light, which serves 6 million customer accounts. Dominion serves 3.6 million electric customers in its three-state territory, and about 500,000 gas customers in South Carolina.

The combined entity would have an almost $250 billion market capitalization, which the companies said would make them the “world’s largest regulated electric utility business by market capitalization and one of the world’s largest energy infrastructure companies.”

Consensus data from S&P Global Visible Alpha paints a picture of two growing companies. Analysts expect NextEra to have total operating revenues of $30.6 billion this year, up 11.68% year over year; Dominion is expected to see total operating revenues of $18.4 billion, up 11.5% year over year.

Limited energy capacity remains a vital issue for the broad adoption of AI.

“This deal may support increased scale and efficiency in the space to support the ramp in data center compute,” Melissa Otto, head of research at S&P Global Visible Alpha, said in an email to Utility Dive.

The deal would combine “two well-run utility franchises,” Alex Kania, BTIG managing director and utilities and power analyst, said in a statement. There is some question about how the combination could impact operations in the PJM Interconnection, he noted.

“We believe [the deal] could mark a step to a return to the integrated utility model that has largely been abandoned over the past 10 years — but we think that model may end up being one of the better ways to address PJM resource adequacy. Stay tuned,” Kania said in a research note.

Dominion’s pipeline of contracted data center capacity now stands at about 51 GW, the company said earlier this month in its first-quarter earnings. And in Virginia, its largest utility market, Dominion sold 4% more electricity year over year in the first quarter of 2026. 

Dominion’s position in Virginia’s “data center alley” means the utility is “very well situated for large load growth,” Kania said. Its large load pipeline and PJM interconnection portfolio would pair with NextEra’s “vast generation development platform” of gas, renewables and storage.

The combined entity would be “one of just a few players in PJM that could readily offer comprehensive grid and generation solutions to large load,” Kania said.

The deal “makes much sense for NextEra to rebalance its business mix,” Jefferies equity analyst Julien Dumoulin-Smith said in a Monday note. NextEra’s unregulated business has been growing faster than its utilities, “a trend expected to continue,” he said. “Buying a regulated business has been important for years.”

The combined business would be “anchored by a more than 80% regulated business mix, with approximately 11% regulatory capital employed growth across four fast-growing states with constructive regulatory environments,” Dominion and NextEra said.

Officials expressed confidence in getting the merger across the finish line.

“We have some experience getting deals done,” Robert Blue, Dominion chair, president and CEO, said in a call with analysts. “We feel very good about the way the deal has come together, with the focus on customers and communities, and that gives us a high degree of confidence.”

Under terms of the deal, Dominion shareholders will receive 0.8138 shares of NextEra Energy for each share of Dominion they own. The companies say this will result in NextEra and Dominion shareholders owning approximately 74.5% and 25.5% of the combined company, respectively.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 05/18/2026 – 20:05

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The Missing Part of the State Court Mangione Suppression Ruling?

The state trial court handed down its ruling in People v. Mangione, on whether to suppress part of all of the contents of the backpack Luigi Mangione was carrying at the time of his arrest in the state prosecution against him.  In the federal case against Mangione, the federal court back in January denied the motion to suppress the contents of the backpack. But today the state court suppresses some of the contents for the state court prosecution (in particular, the magazine, cellphone, passport, wallet and computer chip) and allows the government to use other contents (in particular, the red notebook).

I found the new opinion a little odd. There’s a part I was expecting that wasn’t addressed. I thought I would explain what it is.  [UPDATE: See below for what appears to be the explanation, rooted in New York state constitutional law.]

First, the opinion.  The court begins by concluding that the relevant law is the federal Fourth Amendment and the New York Constitution, even though the actions were those of Pennsylvania police in Pennsylvania. So the heightened restrictions of New York law apply to the Pennsylvania officers, even though they presumably didn’t know (and maybe couldn’t know) they would be governed by New York state search and seizure law.

Second, the court concludes that New York search and seizure law settles what I have called the “moving property problem”: If someone has a backpack, and it is moved away from a person, New York law says it can’t be searched incident to arrest because the exigency is gone and the backpack is no longer in the area of the suspect’s control.

Third, the court turns to the search at the police station, where the items in the backpack were searched. This search was fine, the court says: although the search at the McDonalds can’t be allowed as an incident-to-arrest search, the search at the police station was valid as an inventory search. In particular, this allows admission of the notebook found in the backpack that wasn’t searched at the McDonalds.

Fourth, the court says that the warrant the government obtained later that today to search the backpack does not make the contents admissible under the independent source doctrine, as this wasn’t an independent source.

Beyond the part about New York law applying—a matter of the scope of New York law that I don’t have a view of myself—I’m puzzled as to why there’s no inevitable discovery argument based on the inventory search.  That’s the main argument that the federal court rested on in denying the motion to suppress, based on the same facts: the police were going to inventory everything anyway and find everything anyway, so everything they found in the backpack was going to be discovered anyway in the inventory, regardless of whether they initially searched it lawfully or not.

As far as I can tell, the state court does not address this argument, although I would think it’s the key argument to address. Did the state not raise it? Or is there something about New York state law that makes that an improper argument?  I don’t know, as I haven’t followed the case closely enough to say.

UPDATE: A New York lawyer writes in that it’s an issue of New York law, where the inevitable discovery exception is a lot narrower than it is under federal law.  See People v. Stith, 69 NY2d 313, 318–19 (1987):

When the inevitable discovery rule is applied to secondary evidence, as in Payton, Fitzpatrick and Nix, the effect is not to excuse the unlawful police actions by admitting what was obtained as a direct result of the initial misconduct. It is not the tainted evidence that is admitted, but only what was found as a result of information or leads gleaned from that evidence. The rationale is that when the secondary evidence would have been found independently in any event, “the prosecution [should not be] put in a worse position simply because of some earlier police error or misconduct” (Nix v Williams, supra, at 443; emphasis in original). In contrast, when the inevitable discovery rule is applied to primary evidence, as was done here, the result is quite different. It is the tainted evidence itself and not the product of that evidence which is saved from exclusion. Permitting its admission in evidence effects what amounts to an after-the-fact purging of the initial wrongful conduct, and it can never be claimed that a lapse of time or the occurrence of intervening events has attenuated the connection between the evidence ultimately acquired and the initial misconduct. The illegal conduct and the seizure of the evidence are one and the same.

In the case before us, the suppression court and the Appellate Division, in holding that the illegally seized weapon should not be suppressed, hypothesized that the gun would inevitably have been discovered through a source that was independent of the initial taint. Viewing the situation at the moment of the illegal seizure, the courts below simply assumed the chain of events which would customarily have been set in motion following defendant Newton’s failure to produce a registration certificate: that a radio check would have revealed that the truck was stolen, defendants would have been arrested, the truck would have been impounded and the gun would have been found in an inventory search.

We hold that applying the inevitable discovery rule in these circumstances, and effecting what would amount to a post hoc rationalization of the initial wrong (see, Nix v Williams, supra, at 448), would be an unacceptable dilution of the exclusionary rule. It would defeat a primary purpose of that rule, deterrence of police misconduct (see, People v Bigelow, 66 N.Y.2d 417, 427, supra). 320*320As noted by the Oregon Court of Appeals in State v Crossen (21 Ore App 835, 838, 536 P2d 1263, 1264), in declining to apply the inevitable discovery rule to primary as distinguished from secondary evidence, failing to exclude wrongfully obtained primary evidence “would encourage unlawful searches in the hope that probable cause would be developed after the fact” (see, United States v Massey, 437 F Supp 843, 852-854; Stokes v State, 289 Md 155, 423 A2d 552; State v Williams, 285 NW2d 248, 256-257 [Iowa]; contra, Clough v State, 92 Nev 603, 555 P2d 840; for a discussion of the distinction between primary and secondary evidence, see, 3 LaFave, Search and Seizure § 11.4, at 620-628).

So here the decision to apply the limits of New York state constitutional law to the Pennsylvania search ends up being critical, not only because it answers the moving property issue but also because it limits inevitable discovery.

I have thought about writing an article on the extraterritorial application of state constitutional search and seizure rules, as it presents a fascinating issue.  But it comes up so rarely that I couldn’t find much on it.  This is a particularly interesting application of the issue.

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Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Long, Slow Death of the Tea Party


An illustration of Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Donald Trump | KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI/Newscom/Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom/Yuri Gripas - Pool via CNP/CNP / Polaris/Newscom

In one of Tuesday, May 19th’s most-watched primaries, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) will go up against an opponent backed by President Donald Trump. The winner of the primary will almost certainly win the general election in Kentucky’s 4th congressional district. As Reason‘s Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward opined in The New York Times last week, “Congress, and the Republican Party, would be worse off without the friction and clarity Mr. Massie provides.”

I share her estimation, adding only that the country would be worse off, too. Since arriving in Congress in late 2012, Massie has been a reliable advocate for smaller government, lower spending, and abstention from foreign conflicts. More of all that, please.

But as important: What kind of country have we become if unlikely characters like Massie no longer haunt the halls of power? By his own account, he’s equal parts country boy and tech genius, and his “gateway issue into liberty was gun rights” when he showed up at the urbane, liberal Massachusetts Institute of Technology after growing up in the wilds of Kentucky. As he told me a decade ago, “I grew up in a rural area where everybody had guns. And then I went to college and realized people in college wanted to ban these things.” As an engineer, he went from that insight to building a mental system that consistently puts him on the side of a federal government that does less and controls less.

But if Massie loses, it’s not just the end of his career. (He told Mangu-Ward that if GOP primary voters send him packing, he’s going back to his plow and “nobody will ever hear from me again”). It would also effectively be the end of what used to be called the Tea Party, a loose conglomeration of Republican representatives and senators who rode a wave of anti-Barack Obama and anti-George W. Bush sentiment to office in the early 2010s.

Although some said that the tea in Tea Party stood for the “taxed-enough already,” the rallying cry of the early Tea Party movement was “stop the spending.” For a brief, shining moment, the populist right was fully in favor of actually reducing government spending across the board, full stop.

Covering the movement for Reason, including a truly massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2009, what was striking to me about the Tea Party back then was that it pulled in many types of people from all over the country. As Reason‘s Matt Welch observed:

The general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush’s spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a “throw-all-the-bums-out” strategy. All but one did not care about Obama’s birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.

As our early video coverage suggested, this was a movement that was pretty tightly (though not exclusively) focused on spending and debt issues. Recall that under the self-styled compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, the federal budget grew by about 50 percent over eight years, including huge increases in domestic programs such as prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare and the No Child Left Behind education initiative. Bush was a big-government disaster, and, taking office at the start of a major recession with a large Democratic majority, Obama kicked spending into even higher gear, first in the name of stimulus and then in the name of health care for all.

The 2010 and 2012 elections swept dozens of Tea Party candidates into office, including such high-profile senators as Ted Cruz (R–Texas), Marco Rubio (R–Fla.), Mike Lee (R–Utah), and Rand Paul (R–Ky.), and representatives such as Justin Amash (R–Mich.), Mick Mulvaney (R–S.C.), Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), and Massie himself.

In 2011, Amash and others created the Liberty Caucus, which was very much in keeping with Tea Party principles and explicitly libertarian. By 2015, Tea Party Republicans still had enough swagger to create the Freedom Caucus, a wider-ranging coalition still committed to Tea Party ideals and focusing on procedural rules to ensure even a GOP-led Congress allowed for fair hearings of pending legislation.

At its peak, the Tea Party could claim credit for electing dozens of people to the House and the Senate, and fueling the 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). But even as all that was happening, leaders in the movement, including veteran House members such as Reps. Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) barely kept their seats or lost them like Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), while rookies like Reps. Allen West (R–Fla.) and Joe Walsh (R–Ill.) were sent home.

Often discussed as a “leaderless” and “decentralized” movement, key organizations claiming to speak for Tea Party voters started to include anti-immigrant appeals in their communications and call for defense exemptions to spending cuts. The dramatic failure of Mitt Romney not only to beat an eminently beatable Barack Obama in the 2012 election but also to seriously advance a small-government agenda didn’t energize the GOP to get more principled as much as it opened the door for Donald Trump, who promised all things to all people.

With Trump’s ascendance, whatever energy was left in the Tea Party was pure populist rage and tribal animus rather than anti-government in character. Senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz rarely cross Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio continues to fill more and more roles in his second administration. Members of Congress like Mark Meadows and Mick Mulvaney joined the first Trump administration, only to face his wrath and get cashiered, even after pledging fealty to his big-spending ways. Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, drew rebukes from the Freedom Caucus, and left Congress in 2021 in the face of a very difficult primary. His 2024 bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Michigan put him at odds with a Trump pick who lost the general election.

The only consistent, libertarian-leaning Tea Party politicians left from the early 2010s are Rand Paul, who seems to be tapping into his small-government bona fides with renewed vigor, and Thomas Massie, who may be on his way back to civilian life. Indeed, even if he wins his primary and reelection, the GOP of which he is part is very different from the one he belonged to when he first arrived in Washington.

And the question remains: What might jumpstart the next broad-based political movement to challenge and reduce the size, scope, and spending of government that is also capable of electing dozens of people to office?

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Almost All Non-Iran Tankers That Entered The Persian Gulf During The War, Have Successfully Exited With A Cargo

Almost All Non-Iran Tankers That Entered The Persian Gulf During The War, Have Successfully Exited With A Cargo

Despite a near-halt in daily Hormuz traffic, Bloomberg reports that almost all large non-Iranian tankers that have entered the Persian Gulf during the war appear to have successfully exited with a cargo, underscoring the emergence of a small group of shipowners willing to risk crossing the Strait of Hormuz.

At least 19 oil- and liquefied petroleum gas-carrying ships without Iranian links have both entered and exited Hormuz since March 1, according to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. In contrast, about 100 such tankers that entered the Gulf before the conflict remain stuck for fear of attacks, the data show.

As noted above, merchant shipping through the vital energy chokepoint has – for the most part – ground to a halt since US-Israeli attacks at the end of February triggered a wave of Iranian retaliation and led Tehran to tighten its grip over the waterway. Yet a handful of vessels have been managing to cross under an array of schemes, including deals arranged at a government level (with payment in bitcoin) in some cases (and keep in mind that the numbers, both for ships stranded in the Gulf and those making the crossing, could be higher in reality, given many vessels in the region are switching off their satellite signals to protect against strikes).

Of the 19 ships to cross, seven have been linked to Greece’s Dynacom Tankers Management. The company has been one of the main firms to continue using the strait since the conflict began. In true honey badger form, the company is known to turn off its ship transponders and then to quietly make the Hormuz crossing usually under the cover of night. It is unclear if Dynacom had arranged any special arrangement with Tehran ahead of its crossings.  

The cargoes the vessels were carrying have largely been from the United Arab Emirates and Iraq. Of the rest, three were transporting oil from Saudi Arabia or a mix of oil from the kingdom and other Arab Gulf nations.

Only one large tanker that entered the Gulf after the war started hasn’t left, the data show.

The crossings are only a fraction of the typical Hormuz transits before the war, which accounted for about a fifth of the world’s oil supply.

 

 

Tyler Durden
Mon, 05/18/2026 – 19:40

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The Great American Squeeze Of 2026

The Great American Squeeze Of 2026

Authored by MN Gordon via Economic Prism,

Does your American dream feel like it’s being put through a hydraulic press?

If so, you’re not alone. Between rising rent and gas prices, escalating grocery bills, and sky-high health insurance premiums, Americans are feeling a relentless squeeze from all directions. That’s the painful reality.

Recent economic numbers point to a weary consumer. In fact, consumer sentiment is at a 74-year low. To put that in perspective, Americans feel more pessimistic about the economy today than they did during the 2008 financial crisis, the stagflation of the 1970s, or the height of the 2020 lockdowns.

What’s going on?

Why does it feel like your paycheck is evaporating before it even hits your bank account, while the S&P 500 is hitting record highs over 7,400?

The answer has to do with the K-shaped reality of 2026.

For years, economists have tried to gaslight American workers and consumers. They blamed social media and partisanship. They reasoned that if your preferred politician isn’t occupying the White House, you complain a bit more to a pollster.

Several years ago, Kyla Scanton coined the term “vibecession” to describe a situation where the data looks fine on paper, but people feel bad in their souls. But what about when the data looks bad on paper?

Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, recently pointed out today’s reality. The vibes have officially been replaced by cold, hard financial pain. When the University of Michigan sentiment reading drops to 49.8, it’s not just because people are grumpy on Twitter. It’s because the cost of basic survival has outpaced the ability to pay for it.

What’s more, as middleclass families drown in debt, the wealthy flourish. This creates a highly visible divide that presages social instability.

A Tale of Two Americas

The fact is you likely took a pay cut last month. Even if your boss gave you a 3 percent raise this year, you’re still losing ground. With inflation rising at an annual rate of 3.8 percent, per this week’s CPI report for April, your real wages are in the red. Thanks to the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran the energy component of the CPI is increasing at an annual rate of 17.9 percent.

When consumer prices rise faster than your income, that’s not a vibe. That’s the real time erosion of your income. And this is just the beginning…

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RSM, warns that as the supply shocks from the Middle East filter through the system, May is going to be even worse. We are essentially footing the bill for global conflicts through higher prices.

Yet the effects of inflation are felt differently throughout the economy. Those in the higher income brackets are benefiting from an inflating stock market. Retail sales are up 4 percent year over year. So, too, Disney recently confirmed that its domestic park bookings and cruise reservations remain strong through the second half of 2026.

Then there are those in the middle- and lower-income brackets who can’t keep up. They don’t own stocks. They don’t own a house with a 3 percent mortgage. For this group, personal loan applications are spiking. Credit card debt is at an all-time high. They’re also being forced out of their cars and onto the bus because they literally can’t afford the commute.

These diverging stories are both true. This is the tale of the K-shaped economy.

The top line of the K is heading toward the moon. These are the households earning $150,000 or more. For them, the squeeze is a gentle love pat. Their homes have skyrocketed in value, and their stock portfolios are thriving as the S&P 500 bubbles up.

The bottom line of the K, however, is a steep slide downward. This represents the bottom 50 percent of the income distribution. For these families, the resilience everyone has talked about for the last few years has finally hit a wall.

Quiet Desperation

When wages don’t cover the bills, people don’t stop eating. They reach for the plastic. Hence, there’s been a massive increase in people turning to personal loans and credit cards just to make it from one Friday to the next.

This is the latent phase of a recession. It doesn’t show up in the unemployment numbers (which are still a steady 4.3 percent) or the payroll data (115,000 jobs added in April). It shows up in the quiet desperation of an ascending balance on a 24 percent interest credit card.

When people finally get to the end of their credit card rope, we enter the demand destruction phase. This is when people are too broke to buy stuff. Lower-income households are forced to cut back on gasoline and non-essential spending.

There’s also a big picture issue coming into focus that Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic advisor at Allianz, has zoomed in on. Specifically, labor’s share of GDP has hit its lowest level in BLS history.

What that means is that of all the wealth being generated in the USA, a smaller and smaller piece of the pie is going to the people who actually do the work. In other words, more and more of the economy’s capital is being directed to the people who own the stocks, land, and the companies.

This is why the stock market is hitting record highs while the average worker feels like they’re drowning. The market likes muted wage growth because it means companies keep more profit. But for the person trying to pay rent, muted wage growth is a disaster.

Beyond the Siren

Regardless of whether the economy enters a full-blown recession, a large segment of workers and consumers are suffering a painful squeeze. For those being squeezed it adds insult to see people booking luxury cruises when they’re having to choose between buying gas or buying groceries.

As households max out their credit cards, we can expect to see a wave of defaults. If this persists, the banks may get nervous and tighten credit. This will make it even harder for the bottom half to get the loans they need to survive.

Also, with the cost of living so high, middle-class families are raiding their 401(k)s or stopping contributions altogether. People are trading their future security for today’s gas and bread.

The American worker and consumer have proved to be resilient over many years. They persevered through pandemic lockdowns, supply chain meltdowns, and years of inflation. But even the strongest rubber band snaps if you stretch it far enough.

The current sentiment data isn’t a vibe. It’s a warning siren. While the top earners continue to power the retail numbers and fill up the Disney parks, the foundation of the economy – the working and middle class – is being hollowed out by a combination of geopolitical shocks and a declining share of the nation’s wealth.

Until wages outpace the cost of a gallon of gas and a bag of groceries, the American consumer will continue to get squeezed. Alas, there appears to be no relief on the horizon.

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively shuttered, this squeeze will only intensify. As global energy flows cease, surging crude prices will inevitably bleed into your grocery bill. From the diesel powering delivery trucks to the fertilizers growing our crops, the cost of survival is headed for a painful, sustained peak.

*  *  *

Get a free copy of an important special report called, “Cash Machine – Why You Should Own this Mineral Royalty with a 12% Yield,” when you join the Economic Prism mailing list today. If you want a special trial deal to check out MN Gordon’s Wealth Prism Letter, you can grab that here.]

Tyler Durden
Mon, 05/18/2026 – 19:15

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The Missing Part of the State Court Mangione Suppression Ruling?

The state trial court handed down its ruling in People v. Mangione, on whether to suppress part of all of the contents of the backpack Luigi Mangione was carrying at the time of his arrest in the state prosecution against him.  In the federal case against Mangione, the federal court back in January denied the motion to suppress the contents of the backpack. But today the state court suppresses some of the contents for the state court prosecution (in particular, the magazine, cellphone, passport, wallet and computer chip) and allows the government to use other contents (in particular, the red notebook).

I found the new opinion a little odd. There’s a part I was expecting that wasn’t addressed. I thought I would explain what it is.

First, the opinion.  The court begins by concluding that the relevant law is the federal Fourth Amendment and the New York Constitution, even though the actions were those of Pennsylvania police in Pennsylvania. So the heightened restrictions of New York law apply to the Pennsylvania officers, even though they presumably didn’t know (and maybe couldn’t know) they would be governed by New York state search and seizure law.

Second, the court concludes that New York search and seizure law settles what I have called the “moving property problem”: If someone has a backpack, and it is moved away from a person, New York law says it can’t be searched incident to arrest because the exigency is gone and the backpack is no longer in the area of the suspect’s control.

Third, the court turns to the search at the police station, where the items in the backpack were searched. This search was fine, the court says: although the search at the McDonalds can’t be allowed as an incident-to-arrest search, the search at the police station was valid as an inventory search. In particular, this allows admission of the notebook found in the backpack that wasn’t searched at the McDonalds.

Fourth, the court says that the warrant the government obtained later that today to search the backpack does not make the contents admissible under the independent source doctrine, as this wasn’t an independent source.

Beyond the part about New York law applying—a matter of the scope of New York law that I don’t have a view of myself—I’m puzzled as to why there’s no inevitable discovery argument based on the inventory search.  That’s the main argument that the federal court rested on in denying the motion to suppress, based on the same facts: the police were going to inventory everything anyway and find everything anyway, so everything they found in the backpack was going to be discovered anyway in the inventory, regardless of whether they initially searched it lawfully or not.

As far as I can tell, the state court does not address this argument, although I would think it’s the key argument to address. Did the state not raise it? Or is there something about New York state law that makes that an improper argument?  I don’t know, as I haven’t followed the case closely enough to say.

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Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Long, Slow Death of the Tea Party


An illustration of Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, and Donald Trump | KEVIN DIETSCH/UPI/Newscom/Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom/Yuri Gripas - Pool via CNP/CNP / Polaris/Newscom

In one of Tuesday, May 19th’s most-watched primaries, libertarian-leaning Rep. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) will go up against an opponent backed by President Donald Trump. The winner of the primary will almost certainly win the general election in Kentucky’s 4th congressional district. As Reason‘s Editor in Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward opined in The New York Times last week, “Congress, and the Republican Party, would be worse off without the friction and clarity Mr. Massie provides.”

I share her estimation, adding only that the country would be worse off, too. Since arriving in Congress in late 2012, Massie has been a reliable advocate for smaller government, lower spending, and abstention from foreign conflicts. More of all that, please.

But as important: What kind of country have we become if unlikely characters like Massie no longer haunt the halls of power? By his own account, he’s equal parts country boy and tech genius, and his “gateway issue into liberty was gun rights” when he showed up at the urbane, liberal Massachusetts Institute of Technology after growing up in the wilds of Kentucky. As he told me a decade ago, “I grew up in a rural area where everybody had guns. And then I went to college and realized people in college wanted to ban these things.” As an engineer, he went from that insight to building a mental system that consistently puts him on the side of a federal government that does less and controls less.

But if Massie loses, it’s not just the end of his career. (He told Mangu-Ward that if GOP primary voters send him packing, he’s going back to his plow and “nobody will ever hear from me again”). It would also effectively be the end of what used to be called the Tea Party, a loose conglomeration of Republican representatives and senators who rode a wave of anti-Barack Obama and anti-George W. Bush sentiment to office in the early 2010s.

Although some said that the tea in Tea Party stood for the “taxed-enough already,” the rallying cry of the early Tea Party movement was “stop the spending.” For a brief, shining moment, the populist right was fully in favor of actually reducing government spending across the board, full stop.

Covering the movement for Reason, including a truly massive demonstration in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2009, what was striking to me about the Tea Party back then was that it pulled in many types of people from all over the country. As Reason‘s Matt Welch observed:

The general vibe was that they were conservative, and then either Republican, formerly Republican, or independent. Every single one had unkind words to say about George W. Bush’s spending and governing record, though none had protested him. None expressed trust in Republicans, and most preferred a “throw-all-the-bums-out” strategy. All but one did not care about Obama’s birth certificate controversy, and those I asked thought it was foolish to bring guns to political gatherings.

As our early video coverage suggested, this was a movement that was pretty tightly (though not exclusively) focused on spending and debt issues. Recall that under the self-styled compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush, the federal budget grew by about 50 percent over eight years, including huge increases in domestic programs such as prescription drugs for seniors on Medicare and the No Child Left Behind education initiative. Bush was a big-government disaster, and, taking office at the start of a major recession with a large Democratic majority, Obama kicked spending into even higher gear, first in the name of stimulus and then in the name of health care for all.

The 2010 and 2012 elections swept dozens of Tea Party candidates into office, including such high-profile senators as Ted Cruz (R–Texas), Marco Rubio (R–Fla.), Mike Lee (R–Utah), and Rand Paul (R–Ky.), and representatives such as Justin Amash (R–Mich.), Mick Mulvaney (R–S.C.), Mark Meadows (R–N.C.), and Massie himself.

In 2011, Amash and others created the Liberty Caucus, which was very much in keeping with Tea Party principles and explicitly libertarian. By 2015, Tea Party Republicans still had enough swagger to create the Freedom Caucus, a wider-ranging coalition still committed to Tea Party ideals and focusing on procedural rules to ensure even a GOP-led Congress allowed for fair hearings of pending legislation.

At its peak, the Tea Party could claim credit for electing dozens of people to the House and the Senate, and fueling the 2013 government shutdown over the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). But even as all that was happening, leaders in the movement, including veteran House members such as Reps. Michele Bachmann (R–Minn.) barely kept their seats or lost them like Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), while rookies like Reps. Allen West (R–Fla.) and Joe Walsh (R–Ill.) were sent home.

Often discussed as a “leaderless” and “decentralized” movement, key organizations claiming to speak for Tea Party voters started to include anti-immigrant appeals in their communications and call for defense exemptions to spending cuts. The dramatic failure of Mitt Romney not only to beat an eminently beatable Barack Obama in the 2012 election but also to seriously advance a small-government agenda didn’t energize the GOP to get more principled as much as it opened the door for Donald Trump, who promised all things to all people.

With Trump’s ascendance, whatever energy was left in the Tea Party was pure populist rage and tribal animus rather than anti-government in character. Senators like Mike Lee and Ted Cruz rarely cross Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio continues to fill more and more roles in his second administration. Members of Congress like Mark Meadows and Mick Mulvaney joined the first Trump administration, only to face his wrath and get cashiered, even after pledging fealty to his big-spending ways. Justin Amash left the Republican Party in July 2019, voted to impeach Trump in December 2019, drew rebukes from the Freedom Caucus, and left Congress in 2021 in the face of a very difficult primary. His 2024 bid for the Republican nomination for Senate in Michigan put him at odds with a Trump pick who lost the general election.

The only consistent, libertarian-leaning Tea Party politicians left from the early 2010s are Rand Paul, who seems to be tapping into his small-government bona fides with renewed vigor, and Thomas Massie, who may be on his way back to civilian life. Indeed, even if he wins his primary and reelection, the GOP of which he is part is very different from the one he belonged to when he first arrived in Washington.

And the question remains: What might jumpstart the next broad-based political movement to challenge and reduce the size, scope, and spending of government that is also capable of electing dozens of people to office?

The post Donald Trump, Thomas Massie, and the Long, Slow Death of the Tea Party appeared first on Reason.com.

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Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie?

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch are joined by Reason Senior Editor Robby Soave to discuss Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R–Ky.) competitive Republican primary challenge and why President Donald Trump has made him one of his top political targets. The panel examines Massie’s opposition to the Iran war, his push to release the Epstein files, his longstanding focus on spending, and why his brand of libertarian-style politics has become increasingly rare inside today’s Republican Party.

Next, the panel turns to the economy, where inflation continues to rise, the U.S. debt has surpassed gross domestic product (GDP), and working-class voters appear increasingly frustrated with Trump’s economic agenda. The editors then examine New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s claim that he closed the city’s massive budget gap without cutting services and whether the plan relies more on gimmicks than serious fiscal reform. Finally, a listener asks how to develop political confidence without losing intellectual humility.

 

0:00—Massie’s primary challenge

20:57—Inflation and the national debt

40:31—Listener question on intellectual humility

51:15—Mamdani’s $12 billion budget gap

57:41—Weekly cultural recommendations

 

Mentioned in the podcast:

“Thomas Massie’s Moment Has Come,” by Robby Soave

“Thomas Massie’s Enemies Are Attacking Him With an Unfair Accusation,” by Robby Soave

“The War Comes for Your Wallet: Inflation Hits 3.8%, Highest Level in 3 Years,” by Eric Boehm

“When Businesspeople Run Government, the Government Doesn’t Become a Business,” by Veronique De Rugy

“Pete Hegseth Can’t Explain Why America Needs a $1.5 Trillion Military Budget,” by Eric Boehm

“Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Estimated To Cost $1.2 Trillion, New Report Reveals,” by Meagan O’Rourke

“Mamdani ‘Balanced’ New York City’s Budget—With a Bailout From Albany,” by Joe Lancaster

The post Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie? appeared first on Reason.com.

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Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie?

This week, editors Peter Suderman, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Matt Welch are joined by Reason Senior Editor Robby Soave to discuss Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R–Ky.) competitive Republican primary challenge and why President Donald Trump has made him one of his top political targets. The panel examines Massie’s opposition to the Iran war, his push to release the Epstein files, his longstanding focus on spending, and why his brand of libertarian-style politics has become increasingly rare inside today’s Republican Party.

Next, the panel turns to the economy, where inflation continues to rise, the U.S. debt has surpassed gross domestic product (GDP), and working-class voters appear increasingly frustrated with Trump’s economic agenda. The editors then examine New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s claim that he closed the city’s massive budget gap without cutting services and whether the plan relies more on gimmicks than serious fiscal reform. Finally, a listener asks how to develop political confidence without losing intellectual humility.

 

0:00—Massie’s primary challenge

20:57—Inflation and the national debt

40:31—Listener question on intellectual humility

51:15—Mamdani’s $12 billion budget gap

57:41—Weekly cultural recommendations

 

Mentioned in the podcast:

“Thomas Massie’s Moment Has Come,” by Robby Soave

“Thomas Massie’s Enemies Are Attacking Him With an Unfair Accusation,” by Robby Soave

“The War Comes for Your Wallet: Inflation Hits 3.8%, Highest Level in 3 Years,” by Eric Boehm

“When Businesspeople Run Government, the Government Doesn’t Become a Business,” by Veronique De Rugy

“Pete Hegseth Can’t Explain Why America Needs a $1.5 Trillion Military Budget,” by Eric Boehm

“Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ Estimated To Cost $1.2 Trillion, New Report Reveals,” by Meagan O’Rourke

“Mamdani ‘Balanced’ New York City’s Budget—With a Bailout From Albany,” by Joe Lancaster

The post Why Is Trump Trying To Purge Thomas Massie? appeared first on Reason.com.

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Be Very Afraid: The Hantavirus And Suicide Dolphins

Be Very Afraid: The Hantavirus And Suicide Dolphins

Authored by Donald Jefferies vis substack,

Bend over and keep smiling

Our incomparably bad leaders appear ready to foist another “pandemic” on the always unwary public. They proved in 2020 that the entire world could be shut down in a matter of days. With no troops or police needed. Just a corrupt, kept press, and compromised political “representatives.” They know that nothing sells like fear porn.

The latest potential “pandemic” is called the Hantavirus. Authorities, who are always telling us something, tell us it’s been around for a while. It is spread primarily by contact with an infected rodent. Well, don’t we all routinely have contact with rodents, infected or not? Specifically, the CDC informs us, by contact with rodent “urine, droppings, and saliva.” That’s not a scenario I can easily picture. I didn’t even know rodents had saliva. Just how does one get close enough to come in contact with it? Hantavirus symptoms can include: fatigue, fever, chills, muscle aches, headaches, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. To a novice, those symptoms sound pretty generic. Like the flu. Or the common cold. Or the never isolated COVID-19. Just read the information on these contrived maladies, provided by the discredited CDC and WHO, with a little discernment. The Medical Industrial Complex in all its splendor. And oh, yes- “Conspiracy theorists” claim “Hanta” means fraud. In Hebrew.

The “experts” also inform us that the primary way the Hantavirus spreads from human to human is through sexual intercourse. Well, we should all be breathing a sign of relief over that. I am not exactly in the loop, but it’s my distinct impression that people, especially young people, are having less sex than perhaps any time since when the Puritans and Calvinism reigned supreme. If you’re looking for a real epidemic, forget rodent excretions. How about the Incel Virus? We have more 30, 40, and 50 year old male virgins in America than this country has ever seen. I think that’s the case in other areas of the world. Young women have been indoctrinated to “not need” men, and thus they don’t really want them. Young men have been forced to the extreme of “going their own way” without female companionship. It’s all very sad, but good news for a virus that is spread through sexual contact. Just stop having sex and there will be nothing to worry about. And refrain from intimate contact with rodents.

It appears as if Donald Trump is once again going to play the dastardly villain here, as he did during the incredibly successful COVID Psyop. He is already being blasted in the state controlled media for “downplaying” this dire threat, and for cutting funding to study the Hantavirus last year. Exactly how would they “study” it? Use prisoners, mental patients, and orphans to test what happens if you French Kiss a rodent? Our government has historically used prisoners, mental patients, and orphans for all kinds of hideous experiments. I covered this in detail in my book Crimes and Coverups in American Politics: 1776-1963. We’ve seen this movie before. Remember, Trumpenstein “downplayed” the seriousness of COVID, as well. But he signed the lockdown orders, and pushed the dangerous warp speed vaccine, He mocked Fauci, but refuses to prosecute him. Naturally, The Simpsons saw it coming. The Hantavirus was referenced on the X-Files in the 1990s. They should have an Emmy for Predictive Programming.

Much as he did during COVID, Trump dismissed the concerns of “journalists” who have been assigned to peddle fear porn, by proclaiming: “We should be fine.” Then, asked by these laughable representatives of a “free press,” if the public should be worried about the “outbreak” spreading, Trumpenstein replied, “I hope not.” Scientific American was among those most alarmed, as they explained, “In 2025 the Trump administration eliminated funding for a group that had been running a pilot project aimed at studying the type of hantavirus that has been confirmed to be behind an ongoing outbreak on a cruise ship.” This project was “conducted through the West African Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases (WAC-EID), one of 10 centers that comprised the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID) network.” All these centers “were shuttered last year after the National Institutes of Health decided the research was ‘unsafe.’” Wait, so they’re upset that he stopped funding research that was determined to be “unsafe?” And why are cruise ships always involved in these productions? Have you seen the video of the very, very gay passenger on the Hantavirus cruise? Assuring us it’s “real?” He invited immediate comparisons to Erika Kirk. I went on one cruise in my life. That was before that guy got knocked off on his honeymoon. And fake “pandemics?” None for me, please.

I’m certainly not predicting that this big, beautiful fake virus is going to become a worldwide, or even just American psyop. I’m not suggesting that they will sell it like they sold COVID. They’ve made doomsters believe that SARS, and the monkey virus, and so many others, were going to shutdown society, just like COVID. They always pulled back, and the potential “pandemics” came and went without anyone noticing. But they really upped the ante during the COVID Psyop, and there was zero pushback from the world’s population. And the same front man- Trumpenstein- is in the Oval Office. Ready to send out conflicting signals, as always. I do think there would be less compliance with their ridiculous “mandates,” which are not laws and definitely not based on “science.” But it’s clear we’re still outnumbered. Actress Jean Smart has spoken out, claiming that her husband died from the Hantavirus in 2021. No disrespect intended, but it was unheard of then, at the peak of COVID. Did he come into questionable contact with rodents? Who was he having sex with? Gene Hackman’s 65 year old wife, we are now told, died from the Hantavirus. Recall how they both were strangely found dead at home in 2025. Who was she having sex with?

As if all this wasn’t enough to worry a befuddled public, Iran is now being accused of using mine-carrying “Kamikaze Dolphins” to attack US warships in the Strait of Hormuz. The poor Suicide Dolphins probably aren’t being promised any virgins in the afterlife, either. The whole Strait of Hormuz confuses me. I don’t know if the Suicide Dolphins are being used to blow it open, because the United States is blocking it, or if they’re assigned to blow up the US ships that try to pass through the Strait that Iran has opened to everyone but America. And Israel, I guess. But it doesn’t look like Israel is doing much fighting. Just bombing civilians, as usual. They’ve already told Trumpenstein that there will be no non-Irish boots on the ground. Psycho Pete Hegseth cryptically told the press, “I can’t confirm or deny whether we have kamikaze dolphins, but I can confirm they don’t.” Well, I’m sure that our Suicide Dolphins would be better than anyone else’s. Where are all the animal rights protesters?

Really, shouldn’t this absurd story about kamikaze dolphins make us all question the whole “suicide bomber” claims? I’ve never found such stories credible. But it plays into the whole “terrorist” mythos. What is the source for the promise of 72 virgins after death (the number seems to vary) which seemingly motivates suicide bombers? Such outlandishness isn’t found anywhere in the Quran, leading reasonable people to suspect it originated from the Mossad or the CIA. By dehumanizing Muslims, they have managed to convince too many good people that they are willing to kill others, with the belief that Allah will reward them for doing so. Primarily through gratuitous sex with a whole lot of different females. That sounds more like the fantasy of a nonbelieving incel than a religious “fanatic.” What is the difference between “devout” and “fanatic?” If there were Muslims whose goal was to be a suicide bomber, wouldn’t they be offended by being replaced by Dolphins, doing the work fanatics won’t?

Remember when the beloved Hillary Clinton claimed that Qadafi/Kadafy/Gaddafi had loaded his troops with Viagra, so that they could become literal raping machines? Talk about projection! If you’ve read my aforementioned Crimes and Coverups book, and/or my latest, American Memory Hole, you know just how much raping our young men in uniform have been guilty of, going back at least to Sherman’s genocidal march through Georgia. And they didn’t need any Viagra. They didn’t discriminate, either. The Union boys loved violating the Black females. During the “good war,” the “greatest generation” raped lots of Germans, and so many Japanese that they had to build a special brothel to accommodate them. During our forever war in Iraq, we all saw the photos of the naked male Iraqi prisoners, with fluorescent bulbs and the like shoved up their anuses. With a pretty, smiling female U.S. soldier beside them. And if Seymour Hersh can be believed, they raped a bunch of boys in front of their mothers.

My friend Tony Arterburn tells me that during WWII, the Allies tried using bats, with little explosive devices strapped on their tiny backs. So I don’t doubt for a second that our government would, if they could, utilize kamikaze dolphins. Or sharks. Or whales. Or shrimp. How far removed was the MKULTRA mind control research, in particular the idea of Manchurian Candidates, from a suicide bomber? It wasn’t “terrorists” who developed those programs. And the “terrorists” didn’t invent “COVID-19” either, and falsify all those statistics to make it appear that it was a new Black Plague. Maybe they can figure out a way to strap vials containing the Hantavirus to the backs of these patriotic dolphins. Unleash the Hantavirus on the Iranians. If they don’t like that, we can send some pretty female soldiers, or even better some transitioned soldiers, to deliver fluorescent light bulbs to lonely Iranian males. Think of how humiliated they’ll be, with transwomen violating them like that. Wage war on us for 47 years, will you?

COVID demonstrated that nothing motivates a society, indeed a world, to become obedient more than fear. The fear of an invisible virus which could kill them. Feeling okay? You’re just asymptomatic. You could still have it! Get the PCR test right away. You know, the one with the 90 percent false positive rate. The one repudiated by the man who developed it, who had the proper sense of drama to die right on the eve of “COVID-19” commanding the attention of the entire world. And call your doctor. Always call your doctor. Don’t decide for yourself. Be responsible and think of others. Did I mention that you should call your doctor? The PCR test isn’t the only discredited one you can take, you know. You may think you’re healthy, but we’ll determine that. If this new Hantavirus whipper snapper requires a vaccine, get it. Get every booster. There may be variants. Endless variants. For years. You’ll have more things stuck in you than Madonna did at the height of her incomprehensible fame.

We are hearing the same codewords that we heard repeatedly during the Greatest Psyop in the History of the World. America, especially under the rudderless leadership of the stupid, orange, micro-penis Trumpenstein, is “unequipped” to deal with the next pandemic. Or unprepared- that works just as well, and isn’t a juvenile pun. The honorable Bill Gates, renowned for catching a venereal disease from Russian babes on Epstein’s Lolita Island, is being lauded now, for his warning about the “next pandemic” in an interview last year. And his website named the Hantavirus as the next pandemic. In 2021. Insider information? Gates is forever warning about future pandemics. It excites him even more than anything Jeffrey Epstein could offer. As a lifelong eugenicist, Gates is obsessed with millions, even billions of human beings dying. He pretends that he would be horrified by this; that he is, in fact, opposed to such a culling of the herd. But his perpetually inappropriate smile suggests otherwise. And his answer to everything is more fear, more vaccinations, and more boosters.

It’s funny. I rarely recall hearing the word “pandemic” throughout the course of my life. I knew about the Black Plague in the Middle Ages. I knew that there had been an exceptionally bad flu during the WWI era. But there was never a sense that we should be “preparing” for some devastating national, or international health crisis. Since “pandemics” appear to be pretty common now, where were they from 1920-2020? Sure, you had Bill Gates and the WHO and the CDC staging a series of “simulations” which prophesized “COVID-19” with eerie accuracy. But the idea that people could be conditioned to wear ludicrous looking masks everywhere, and stay six feet apart, was unthinkable. To be fair, if a real scourge like cancer can be pretty much unknown before 1900, and no one question where it came from, why can’t “pandemics” just pop up every few years, to fulfill one of Bill Gates’s numerous predictions of them? Most people now think “COVID” is a permanent thing.

I wrote the only book that exposes the entire “COVID” fraud from the very beginning, Masking the Truth: How COVID-19 Destroyed Civil Liberties and Shut Down the World. They’ve done everything they can to stop people from reading it. It’s the most shadow banned book in the world. I don’t want to write one about a Hantavirus psyop. I really hope this turns out to be just another monkey virus. No one with a huge platform has ever told the whole truth about “COVID.” It wasn’t created in a Wuhan lab by the dastardly Chinese. It was the flu. Period. Just like Hantavirus will be, if they decide to stage another worldwide production. And I don’t believe “suicide bombers” are any more real than “COVID.” They lie to us all the time. To distract us from the misery so many of us are enduring. To distract us from their continuous crimes and corruption. To distract us from the potholes in the streets and our inadequate wages. To distract us from skyrocketing autism rates and plummeting life expectancy.

The people have to bear some blame here. I don’t care how many indoctrination classes you sat through in public school and college. How many films and TV shows with obvious messaging you watched. I sat through them, too. So did the millions of people who, against all odds, have awakened to the corruption and tyranny. They didn’t perform frontal lobotomies on you. You have the capacity to critically think. To ignore the cultural programming. How stupid would you have to be to fall for another “pandemic?” Or to believe in suicide dolphins? We should all tremble at the prospect of having our fate in the hands of a jury of our peers. Maybe they’ll go too far, with something like a fake alien invasion. But after “COVID,” can they go too far? They shut down the entire world! Don’t let it happen again, even if they back off with the Hantavirus.

Be prepared, as Bill Gates says. But not for a “pandemic.” Be prepared for authoritarian overreach. Remember, opposition to tyranny is obedience to God.

Tyler Durden
Mon, 05/18/2026 – 18:25

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