Trump nominees, COVID dissenters launch science journal to restore 'open scientific discourse' - Greg Piper

 

by Greg Piper

Journal of the Academy of Public Health, whose founders include NIH and FDA nominees, goes against the grain with paid peer review, transparency, absence of gatekeeping. Critics call it a "grift," hypocritical.

 

Before President Trump nominated them to lead the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration, Jay Bhattacharya and Marty Makary, respectively, laid the groundwork for an academic journal on public health that would stand athwart the squelching of scientific dissent and narrative policing endemic to academic publishing around COVID-19.

Now awaiting confirmation, the Stanford and Johns Hopkins medical school professors are handing the reins of the Journal of the Academy of Public Health to their collaborators, including founding editor-in-chief and epidemiologist Martin Kulldorff, who endured social media censorship for his COVID views and firing from Harvard Med for his medical choices.

The house organ of the newly formed Academy of Public Health, JAPH stands apart from similar journals not only in its enthusiasm to challenge COVID-19 dogmas and bite the federal hand that feeds researchers, as evident in its first crop of articles Jan. 30, but in its business model, peer-review process and transparency practices.

APH is an international nonprofit organized under the RealClearFoundation, a sibling to RealClearPolitics and itself a donor-financed 501(c)(3) nonprofit, which announced the journal Wednesday and called Bhattacharya and Kulldorff its cofounders.

While at least one author must be an APH member, received papers are published immediately and reviewers are each paid a $500 honorarium and publicly credited, and reviews are published alongside the papers – unusual practices in academic publishing. 

JAPH will even publish "external article reviews" of influential papers published in journals without the "same philosophy of open peer-review and scientific discourse" – an unsolicited, public layer of peer review – and invite the authors to respond.

More common: Its open-access model makes JAPH free to read, while authors pay $2,000 to publish research, "literature syntheses" and history articles and $500 for unreviewed "perspectives," though the honorarium for reviewers may be applied to their own publications.

Each APH member gets one free research, synthesis and history article, and an annual free perspective, while authors without research grants or institutional funds can also apply for waived publication fees on a case-by-case basis.

Kulldorff elaborated on the problems in science journals, which in "some ways" are now "hampering rather than enhancing open scientific discourse," and called JAPH a "proof of concept" for proposed solutions in his opening perspective Jan. 30.

Beneficiaries of the new model include funding agencies, which are "not allowed to see the reviews they paid for" but "will get an external evaluation of the research they fund" through JAPH's model, he said.

Other first-issue articles include a study that found no "significant" differences in COVID case rates or "incidence rate ratios" between neighboring K-12 school districts when one had a mask mandate or when neither had one, and Kulldorff and Bhattacharya's analysis of the "fundamental design flaws in the Covid vaccine trials" contrasted with polio vaccine trials.

Another spotlights the feds' disinterest in enforcing clinical trial reporting requirements despite 2017 regulations adding penalties for noncompliance, with three-quarters of "post-mandate trials not reporting within 12 months and 50.8% not reporting within 36 months." 

Failure to enforce appears to be responsible for Moderna hiding a child's death in its COVID booster trial.

The editorial board is a who's who of scientists who have challenged the COVID magisterium, including Oxford epidemiologist Sunetra Gupta, co-author of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington Declaration with Kulldorff and Bhattacharya, and Stanford meta-research pioneer John Ioannidis, one of the first to question the data behind early COVID interventions.

Also serving: Stanford's Scott Atlas, the odd man out among President Trump's first-term coronavirus task force; University of Southern Denmark global health professor Christine Stabell Benn, whose research found Pfizer and Moderna vaccines didn't reduce all-cause mortality; and Oxford's Tom Jefferson and Carl Heneghan, whose systematic review of mask research survived an attempted purge by a New York Times columnist.

A dozen involved scientists are in the top 1% of their fields by citations, according to the journal.

COVID catechists are eager to paint the journal as a "grift" and its leaders as bad scientists and hypocrites, with anti-herd immunity author and New York University neurologist Jonathan Howard flooding X on Friday with attacks on scientists associated or aligned with the journal.

He made multiple critical posts on Stabell Benn as well as Bhattacharya and Makary, who are on leave from the editorial board, for alleged complicity in early Trump administration moves Howard dislikes at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by virtue of accepting nominations.

Bhattacharya was a target soon after his nomination, building on predecessor Dr. Francis Collins' dismissal of the Great Barrington Declaration coauthors as "fringe epidemiologists" whose growing influence in 2020 – including endorsement by Nobel Prize winner Michael Leavitt – merited a "quick and devastating published take down" from the feds.

Former Senate Finance Committee investigator and science journalist Paul Thacker elaborated on the importance of paying peer reviewers in an essay concurrent with RealClearFoundation's announcement, calling the $500 honorarium higher than "any other similar journal."

"Scientists now grumble that peer review is 'free work' they provide to journals, which then charge them high fees when it comes time for them to publish their own studies in that same journal," wrote Thacker, a late participant in the Twitter Files reporting collaboration.

"We feel this will incentivize good and prompt reviews," editor-in-chief Andrew Noymer, University of California Irvine influenza pandemic researcher and member of the World Health Organization Technical Advisory Group on COVID-19 mortality estimation, told Thacker.

The current system of peer review "meaningfully" improves about a third of papers, leaves most "largely untouched" and "can be biased, slow, and driven by non-scientific priorities at times," Ioannidis told Thacker.

Greg Piper

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/trump-nominees-covid-dissenters-launch-science-journal-restore-open

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Israeli Cabinet set to discuss second phase of Gaza truce - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

Israel is reportedly seeking to prolong the first stage of the ceasefire, based on estimates that Hamas will reject its demands for the second phase.

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the Security Cabinet following the missile attack by Iran on Oct. 1, 2024. Photo by Avi Ohayon/GPO.

The Israeli delegation currently in Doha, Qatar is focused only on the continued implementation of the first phase of the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, with Israel’s Cabinet set to deliberate on Tuesday regarding Israel’s position regarding phase-two talks, according to Hebrew media reports.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu coordinated Israel’s position on the second phase with U.S. President Donald Trump, according to Ynet. Jerusalem will demand the expulsion of Hamas’s leadership from Gaza, the dismantling of its terrorist army and the release of all the remaining hostages, according to the report. Officials in Jerusalem estimate that Hamas is likely to reject these demands.

Three more male hostages are expected to be released by the terrorist group on Feb. 15 as part of the ceasefire’s first phase.

On Saturday, Or Levy, 34, Eli Sharabi, 52, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, were freed after 491 days in captivity following their abduction during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

Trump on Sunday expressed his shock at their condition, comparing them to Holocaust survivors.

Hamas’s list of demands for the second phase are a total end to hostilities, a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the beginning of the rehabilitation of the enclave.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism Party stated on Sunday that anyone agreeing to Hamas’s terms “does not deserve to be a leader.”

His party has threatened to exit the coalition if the war against Hamas is not resumed after the conclusion of the first phase of the ceasefire, which could potentially bring down the government.

Israel’s working-level team in Doha includes Coordinator for the Hostages and the Missing Brig. Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch and officials from the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), Mossad and Israel Defense Forces. They were authorized to travel to the Qatari capital for technical discussions following the Gaza-based terrorist group’s release of three hostages and Israel’s release of 183 Palestinian terrorists on Saturday.

According to Israeli estimates, there are 76 hostages still in Hamas captivity in Gaza, including 73 abducted during the Oct. 7 attacks.

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/israeli-cabinet-set-to-discuss-second-phase-of-gaza-truce/

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Hamas suspends Gaza hostage releases until further notice, citing Israeli violations - Yuval Barnea

 

by Yuval Barnea

Hamas blamed Israel for violating the agreement by delaying the return of displaced people and blocking supplies from entering Gaza.

 

Illustrative image of Hamas terrorists.

(photo credit: ABED RAHIM KHATIB/FLASH90, Canva, REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM)

Hamas announced they were canceling the release of hostages on February 15 until further notice due to an Israeli violation on the terror organization's Telegram account on Monday.

Egyptian mediators fear that the statements will lead to a breakdown of negotiations. At the same time, Hamas told US mediators that the ceasefire was no longer in place due to Trump's comments about displacing Palestinians.

The Hostages and Missing Families said, following the announcement, that it has reached out to all countries mediating the agreement, demanding "swift assistance in finding an immediate and effective solution to restore the implementation of the deal." 

"We call on the Israeli government to refrain from actions that endanger the execution of the signed agreement and to ensure its continuation, securing the return of our 76 brothers and sisters," the statement continued.

"The hostages are out of time, and they all must be rescued from this nightmare urgently," the forum added.

They said they have officially contacted the government and the intelligence coordination unit to "clarify the situation and provide updates to all concerned families who fear for their loved ones' fates."

Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami, hostages held in Gaza since the deadly October 7, 2023 attack, are released by Hamas militants as part of a ceasefire and a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, February 8, 2025. (credit: Hatem Khaled/Reuters)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is consulting with top security officials in light of Hamas's announcement and intends to move the security cabinet meeting on Tuesday to the early morning hours.

One Israeli official told The Jerusalem Post that, in his view, Hamas did not attempt to sabotage the deal in its latest statement.

Another official told the Post that Hamas’s allegations of Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement are “fake,” further arguing that the terror group could be attempting to reignite the conversation over a second phase.

Hamas's argument

Hamas said Israel had violated the ceasefire agreement by delaying the return of displaced peoples to the north and blocking supplies from entering the Gaza Strip.

"During the past three weeks, the resistance leadership has monitored the enemy’s violations and failure to abide by the terms of the agreement," Hamas said.

The violations include "delaying the return of displaced people to the northern Gaza Strip, targeting them with shelling and gunfire in various areas of the Gaza Strip, and not allowing relief supplies of all kinds to enter as agreed upon, while the resistance has implemented all its obligations."

"Accordingly, the handover of the Zionist prisoners who were scheduled to be released next Saturday, February 15, 2025, will be postponed until further notice and until the occupation commits to and compensates for the entitlements of the past weeks retroactively."

"We affirm our commitment to the terms of the agreement as long as the occupation commits to them," Hamas said.

Defense Minister Israel Katz responded to Hamas's announcement, calling it a "complete violation" of the agreement. He said he has instructed the IDF to be at the highest level of alertness for "any possible scenario in Gaza." 

"We will not allow a return to the reality of October 7," he added. 

Trump's comments on Gaza

The cancelation comes amid comments from US President Donald Trump that the US will "own" the Gaza Strip and that it will be cleared of Gazans.

He later announced that the Gazans would not have the "right of return" to Gaza following the clearing.

His comments have caused waves across the world, with most world leaders condemning them.

Amichai Stein contributed to this report.

This is a developing story.

Yuval Barnea

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-841505

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China Tests Trump's Resolve - Lawrence A. Franklin

 

by Lawrence A. Franklin

The Trump administration immediately needs to short-circuit all "exploratory" moves by China.

 

• If the US fails to support its ally by treaty, the Philippines, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda machine and Chinese diplomats will likely seek to sow doubts about US resolve into the capitals of America's Pacific allies.

• China seems to claim a lot of waters, such as "almost all" of the South China Sea, as well as land, including Tibet; Arunachal Pradesh in northern India; the "near-Arctic," and Taiwan, which has never been part of mainland China.

• The Trump administration immediately needs to short-circuit all "exploratory" moves by China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might order Seventh Fleet and US Pacific Command's air assets to strengthen their presence near the Philippines and the Pacific. Any firm message to China that America will stand by its allies throughout free Asia would be of help.

The Trump administration immediately needs to short-circuit all "exploratory" moves by China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might order Seventh Fleet and US Pacific Command's air assets to strengthen their presence near the Philippines and the Pacific. Any firm message to China that America will stand by its allies throughout free Asia would be of help. Pictured: J15 fighter jets on China's Liaoning aircraft carrier during a drill at sea, in April 2018. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

The "Tariff Wars" have begun.

China's State Council Tariff Commission released a list of 72 items that would fall under the 10% tariffs. Much of that list was related to agriculture, including several types of tractors, harvesters and other large pieces of farming equipment.

The list of U.S. imports that will be subject to 15% tariffs was far shorter, listing just eight types of coal and natural gas.

Chinese Communist Party (CCP) President Xi Jinping might gin up further crises to test the mettle of President Donald J. Trump, just as he has tested the resolve of all recent incoming administrations.

Most have tried to defuse these confrontations by accommodating China, rewarding it with "incentives" and "concessions," and mostly backing down. Intellectual property theft and fentanyl poisoning have been out of control for some time. In addition, the Biden administration cancelled the China Initiative "to counter Beijing's theft of American intellectual property;" permitted (after a name change) the continued operation on US soil of Confucius Institutes -- which had been closed down under the prior Trump administration for being "soft power propaganda missions"; allowed illegal CCP police stations throughout the US, and the "spy balloon" to gather intelligence from America's most sensitive military sites. Xi may be more careful with Trump, who has already successfully rebutted a few attempts to impose his will.

The US also has a history of apologizing.

George H.W. Bush's decision to dispatch National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft to China shortly after the June 1989 Tiananmen massacre was meant to reassure CCP leaders that, after a decent interval, things would return to normal. This turned out, unfortunately, to be the wrong move. Bush himself crafted the humiliating US posture by informing China only days after Tiananmen, "now is the time to look beyond the moment to important and enduring aspects of this relationship, vital to the United States."

President Bill Clinton, after campaign charges that Bush had been soft on China, did an about-face. Clinton promised that if China improved its human rights record, he would endorse its request to join the World Trade Organization (WTO). Clinton also provided Communist China with rocket technology, ostensibly "to give China incentives to honor their commitments," according to a White House official at the time. Of course, a rocket launcher that can launch a communications satellite can also launch ballistic missiles.

Clinton, furthermore, bypassed Congress by issuing an executive decision in support of Beijing's WTO application, and followed up this policy by rewarding China with a Most Favored Nation trade status.

President George W. Bush apologized to repatriate 24 American servicemen who had crash-landed on China's island province of Hainan. The reason for the US reconnaissance plane's emergency landing, however, has been reckless behavior by the pilot of a Chinese J-8 interceptor aircraft. The Chinese pilot had flown within 20 feet of the US plane, before clipping its wing, resulting in the death of the China's pilot. After 11 days, the Chinese finally released the US personnel, but not before Bush had apologized twice, once for the death of the Chinese pilot and a second time for violating Chinese airspace. CCP propaganda outlets circulated throughout the world "The Letter of the Two Sorries".

President Barack Obama, during his initial meeting with Xi, seemed confident that he had elicited a pledge from the Chinese dictator not to militarize several artificial islands that China had built in the Pacific. Xi then wasted no time militarizing them. Several of these artificial islands now have air defense missile batteries, naval gun sites and long-range bomber airfields. Obama's administration, after issuing a few verbal denunciations, appeared to accept China's fait accompli. When China seized the Scarborough Shoal, an island also claimed by the Philippines, a US ally, Obama again did nothing.

President Donald Trump, in his first administration, finally broke this cycle of allowing the US to be deceived and humiliated. He cancelled Defense Secretary James Mattis's planned trip to Beijing after the Chinese destroyer Lanzhou came within 45 yards of the destroyer, USS Decatur in September 2018.

China's latest manufactured crisis appeared to be already in its opening act. The aggressor was China; the victim, the Philippines, again.

Throughout 2023 and 2024, Chinese Coast Guard boats were harassing Philippine fishermen and research vessels that were searching for hydrocarbons and natural gas deposits in waters claimed by China, which seems to claim a lot of waters, such as "almost all" of the South China Sea, as well as land, including Tibet; Arunachal Pradesh in northern India; the "near-Arctic," and Taiwan, which has never been part of mainland China.

In another maneuver, a Chinese vessel fired water cannons at three Philippine boats, one of which suffered major engine damage. Still another incident reportedly involved Chinese personnel attacking Filipino sailors with lasers.

China's most recent maneuvers appear to be trying to signal to Washington that China will not back off its exorbitant claims of territorial and maritime sovereignty, despite the recent opening of additional US bases in the Philippines.

Second, Chinese strategic planners may be trying to see if the US is willing to risk a military clash with China over its incursions into the Philippines' Economic Exclusion Zone (EEZ). If the US fails to support its ally by treaty, the Philippines, the CCP propaganda machine and Chinese diplomats will likely seek to sow doubts about US resolve into the capitals of America's Pacific allies.

China might also want to check if a coalition of Asian nations backed by the United States will be able to derail it from realizing its hegemonic ambitions in the Western Pacific.

Third, if the CCP sees that the new Trump administration is found wanting in its commitment to defend the Philippines' sovereignty, China might be tempted to engage in adventurous behavior against Taiwan, as well as other properties in the Pacific. China has already effectively taken over the Solomon Islands.

The Trump administration immediately needs to short-circuit all "exploratory" moves by China. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth might order Seventh Fleet and US Pacific Command's air assets to strengthen their presence near the Philippines and the Pacific. Any firm message to China that America will stand by its allies throughout free Asia would be of help.

Dr. Lawrence A. Franklin was the Iran Desk Officer for Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. He also served on active duty with the U.S. Army and as a Colonel in the Air Force Reserve.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21378/china-tests-trump-resolve

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In battle for AI dominance, Chinese corporate espionage creates an uneven playing field - Steven Richards

 

by Steven Richards

A Sputnik moment or not, Chinese economic espionage could undermine U.S. competitive advantage.

 

New charges in an alleged artificial intelligence trade secret theft by a Chinese national is a warning about how Chinese economic espionage unfairly tips the scales in the battle for technological dominance. 

The new Chinese AI platform DeepSeek shook Silicon Valley last month when it claimed engineers had developed artificial intelligence capabilities comparable to U.S. firms at lower cost and with less advanced chips. 

AI investors and creators labeled the announcement as a “Sputnik moment” for American technology—referring to the Soviet Union’s successful satellite launch in 1957 that lit a fire under the American space program—despite the possibility that the China-based firm is inaccurately reporting its investment or the technology it possess.

Nevertheless, President Donald Trump called the release of DeepSeek “a wake-up call for our industries that we need to be laser-focused on competing to win.” Yet, the president says he still believes in the United States’ ability to outcompete China and remain first in the field. 

“We always have the ideas. We’re always first. So I would say that’s a positive that could be very much a positive development. So instead of spending billions and billions, you’ll spend less, and you’ll come up with, hopefully, the same solution,” Trump said to reporters aboard Air Force One last month.  

But, competition with Chinese companies rarely take place on a level playing field. 

In fact, earlier this week the Justice Department, in a superseding indictment, charged a Chinese national with economic espionage for an alleged plan to steal trade secrets from Google related to AI development, highlighting the American industry’s ongoing vulnerability to Chinese efforts to appropriate American research advancements for themselves.

Google engineer charged with AI secrets theft

The Chinese national, Linwei “Leon” Ding was hired by Google in 2019 as a software engineer. While working for the American technology company, Ding involved himself secretly with two China-based technology companies and later founded his own technology company in 2023 focused on AI and machine learning technology. 

During this time, from May 2022 to May 2023, the DOJ alleges Ding transferred 1,000 files from the Google network to his own personal Google Cloud account that contained the company trade secrets detailed in the indictment. 

The superseding indictment filed on Tuesday followed the original indictment, which was filed against Ding in March of last year. 

According to that indictment, the trade secrets Ding allegedly stole relate to the building blocks of Google’s "advanced supercomputing data centers,” which are integral components for training and hosting large AI models. 

"Large AI models and the AI applications they supported could make predictions, find patterns, classify data, understand nuanced language, and generate intelligent responses to prompts, tasks, or queries,” the indictment reads. 

In other words, the trade secrets Ding allegedly stole from Google could help a China-based company produce a similar model, much like DeepSeek AI, whose model has been compared to other American platforms like OpenAI. 

There is no reported connection between Ding’s alleged theft from Google and DeepSeek’s advancements, but suggestions its new models could be based on technology appropriated from American industry leaders swirled after the company’s announcement. 

Indeed, OpenAI raised concerns that the Chinese company appropriated OpenAI’s API to integrate into its own systems. OpenAI told the Financial Times it had evidence that DeepSeek may have used distillation—a developer technique that trains a new model to “mimic” a more advanced one—to train its new AI program off of OpenAI’s models. 

DeepSeek’s AI model is just the latest Chinese application that has raised national security and data privacy concerns. Much like the social media platform TikTok, some lawmakers are concerned by DeepSeek’s immediate popularity in America and warned that it could present another avenue for China to collect massive amounts of data on U.S. citizens.

China’s economic espionage

Both the FBI and independent experts have consistently warned about America’s vulnerability to corporate espionage from companies and individuals connected to the People’s Republic of China that may undermine the United States’ comparative advantages. 

“The United States is locked in a long-term competition with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Even though that competition need not turn to conflict, it will almost certainly continue to see a network of operatives linked to the CCP wage a systematic cyber espionage campaign designed to gain an intelligence advantage and steal intellectual property,” Benjamin Jensen, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies testified to a House Judiciary Subcommittee about AI in 2023. 

“Put simply, China is trying to cheat its way to the top of key industries in the 21st century. Their quest to achieve dominance in artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) is unlikely to be any different,” he said. 

Former FBI Director Christopher Wray concluded, “The greatest long-term threat to our nation’s information and intellectual property, and to our economic vitality, is the counterintelligence and economic espionage threat from China.”

According to FBI data, 80 percent of its economic espionage prosecutions involved conduct that would benefit China and there is some connection to to China in about 60 percent cases of trade secret theft. 

U.S. attempts to throttle China tech

The United States under both the first Trump and Biden administrations has attempted to curtail both China’s economic espionage activities and ability to compete by restricting access to the most advanced U.S.-designed semiconductors. 

The Trump administration implemented the China Initiative in 2018 at the Justice Department, which was designed to address the national security concerns around China’s economic espionage and intellectual property theft. 

After assuming control, the Biden Administration reversed the initiative over concerns of looking like China and Chinese people were specially targeted. However, the department insisted that while the program was going away, it would not halt its fight against national security threats from China, but would instead do it through regular channels. 

The Biden administration also implemented sweeping export controls on China designed to exploit U.S. dominance at certain chokepoints in the AI supply chain to restrict its access to advanced semiconductors. Shortly before leaving office, President Biden proposed further export controls specifically targeted at slowing China’s AI development and that would aim to close some of the loopholes left open by previous actions. 

Congress have moved to revoke Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China over its unfair trade practices, including corporate espionage.  PNTR is a legal designation used by the United States to classify those countries that are subject to preferential tariff treatment. 

After taking office, President Trump also signed an executive order directing the Secretary of Commerce and the Trade Representative to assess any legislative proposals to revoke the status. 

Steven Richards

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/technology/battle-ai-dominance-chinese-corporate-espionage-fuels-uneven-playing-field

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Big Pharma’s Armageddon Battle - Rob Wasinger

 

by Rob Wasinger

RFK Jr.'s HHS nomination faces fierce Big Pharma opposition, but GOP grassroots support for MAHA reform may override Senate lobbying efforts to block his confirmation.

 

“There’s going to be pushback,” said Donald Trump Jr. after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was tapped as his choice for Secretary of Health and Human Services. “There’s going to be a lot of money spent. It will all be artificial, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have to deal with it because that’s how Washington, DC works.”

The president’s son was referring to the massive lobbying effort, in which “Big Pharma is going to spend money like you wouldn’t believe,” to prevent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services.

The effects of the pharmaceutical industry’s well-funded campaign were already apparent from the tone of last week’s confirmation hearings. The objective is clear: peel away just enough Republican senators to keep Kennedy from taking control at HHS and implementing a Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda that represents an existential threat to the health establishment status quo.

Big Pharma, Big Food, and Big Ag and their lobbyists on K Street are dead set on preserving that lucrative status quo at all costs. It is a measure of President Trump’s bold audacity this time around that he gives less consideration to offending Big Pharma and the ire of their lobbyists than he does to the intensity of his own voters’ desire for sweeping reforms. Not only would RFK Jr. potentially slam shut the revolving-door capture of government agencies by the very industries they ostensibly regulate, but he also knows where the bodies are buried. The potential exposure of the corrupt process by which “science” has been invoked as a magic mantra to undermine public health in the name of protecting it is rightly regarded by the existing players as a catastrophic threat.

The Senate GOP presents K Street with a target-rich environment. The pharmaceutical and health-device manufacturing industries alone have spent upwards of $400 million in just the year 2024 lobbying Congress (about twice as much as a decade ago), and industry contributions to individual Republican Senators will likely exceed $5 million in this cycle. A recent analysis from The National Pulse showed Senators on the Finance Committee, which will first assess the Kennedy nomination, received more than $6.7 million in contributions from Big Pharma between 2019 and 2024, with the majority going to committee Republicans. And, as Kennedy pointed out, Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren were among the top lifetime recipients of Big Pharma money on the other side of the aisle. In applying the screws to deny Kennedy’s confirmation, those industries—as well as Big Food and Big Agra—will be wanting to cash in their chips and get a return on their long-term investment.

The strategy to discredit Kennedy coming from the health establishment claims that RFK Jr. is a “conspiracy theorist and vaccine skeptic” who supports “dubious and unproven therapies,” and if Trump follows his dangerous agenda, “preventable diseases like measles and polio could make a comeback.” The same rhetoric was echoed in this week’s hearings, and not only by those on the Democratic side of the aisle. Republican HELP Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-LA) essentially conducted a struggle session with Kennedy, pressing him to renounce any skepticism he has expressed about vaccine efficacy and safety, and insisted that the scientific data is already conclusive on these matters, despite the egregious conflicts of interest that Kennedy and others have pointed to in the vaccine approval process.

The well-funded campaign to kill the Kennedy nomination will be difficult to pull off because of the public’s disillusionment with the health establishment as a result of the COVID debacle and because RFK Jr. won a mandate in the sweeping electoral victory that is arguably second only to Trump—who himself campaigned explicitly on the MAHA agenda. It is hard for GOP politicians to openly argue that sweeping reform of a corrupt health establishment and removing conflicts of interest is not an enormously popular idea after Kennedy delivered the MAHA coalition that may have tipped the balance. So pharma-backed senators are taking the line that while the goals of the MAHA movement are laudable, Kennedy must responsibly use his considerable public influence to reassure the public about the “settled science” showing vaccine safety and efficacy. Possible GOP defectors have been given cover by the institutionalist Right at the Wall Street Journal and National Review, who have joined in the campaign to smear Kennedy as a leftist quack and a fraud.

That will be a tough sell with so many credentialed figures in the health establishment itself who agree that sweeping reform is long past due, including Trump’s nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary; his choice to lead the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya; and Trump’s own former Director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Robert Redfield. They are in complete agreement not only with the aims of MAHA but also with Kennedy’s stated aim of ending the DC revolving door culture in which nine out of 10 FDA commissioners went on to work for Big Pharma companies, and approximately 75 percent of the FDA’s budget for drug review comes from the pharmaceutical industry.

Indeed, Cassidy evidently heard from his constituents on the matter as the HELP committee chairman voted RFK Jr. out of committee (after a floor speech assuring his pharma backers that he had secured a series of promises from Kennedy not to act precipitously against the existing vaccine schedule without close consultation with his office). While that may have been simple window dressing for his yea vote, RFK Jr. is not yet out of the woods: any number of GOP senators might be convinced by pro-Pharma colleagues to take the constituent heat with an unexpected no vote to deny him the appointment.

But odds are that won’t happen, given the popular support for the MAHA agenda from the GOP grassroots. Now that so many Americans in the post-COVID era have awoken to the reality of this corruption, the tried and true tactic of attempting to marginalize reformers like Kennedy by claiming that they contradict the findings of “settled science” no longer retains its former power. The curtain has been pulled back. The vote to confirm RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary is now merely a question of whether the special interests arrayed against the express will of the people still control the U.S. Senate.

***

Rob Wasinger is co-founder of The Ragnar Group. He was director of Senate relations for the Trump transition team in 2016 and the first White House liaison at the State Department during the Trump administration.

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/10/big-pharmas-armageddon-battle/

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Huckabee: ‘Hamas cannot exist—that’s a done deal’ - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

"I think we will see something of biblical proportion happen with his leadership in the Middle East," said the U.S. ambassador-designate of President Donald Trump.

 

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee moderates a roundtable discussion with then-Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Drexelbrook Catering & Event Center on Oct. 29, 2024 in Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

U.S. ambassador-designate to Israel Mike Huckabee said that “Hamas is not going to be able to exist,” calling it a “done deal”

Speaking during an interview on Fox News‘ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo,” the former Arkansas governor said that under U.S. President Donald Trump, the Middle East would see change of “biblical proportion.”

Mike Huckabee: 'I think we will see something of biblical proportion' happen with Trump's leadership in the Middle East

'Gaza could have been Singapore. Instead, Hamas turned it into Haiti and, in fact, maybe worse, far worse than that' @GovMikeHuckabee @MariaBartiromo… pic.twitter.com/zVyc0OSdhd

— WorldNetDaily (@worldnetdaily) February 9, 2025

Huckabee, whom Trump has tapped for the role of U.S. ambassador to Israel, gave a brief history of Gaza and the 2005 Israeli disengagement.

“A lot of people forget that Gaza was once a place inhabited by both Jews and Palestinians, until 2005 when [former Israeli prime minister] Ariel Sharon decided to give it all away. He did. They [Israel] militarily marched 10,000 Jewish people out of Gaza. Turned it into a complete Palestinian state, and the result we saw was [the Hamas-led attack on] Oct. 7” 2023, he said.

President Trump, he continued, “did something bold. He looked into the future and said kind of a what if. We don’t know exactly what might happen in Gaza, but here’s what could have happened in Gaza: Gaza could have been Singapore. Instead, Hamas turned it into Haiti. And in fact, maybe worse, far worse than that.

“The only time we’ve had real, significant peace in that region was the four years that Donald Trump was president, and I’m very optimistic that with his leadership, his bold and innovative thinking—he doesn’t think like the other politicians and diplomats have thought, and thank God he doesn’t because we get results.”

Trump, he continued, doesn’t think outside the box. “He throws the box away and says, let’s start with a blank slate and see where this could go. That’s leadership, and that’s what we have with President Trump,” he said.

“I’m personally optimistic that we’re going to see something bold. I will use this term, Maria: I think we will see something of biblical proportion happen with his leadership in the Middle East.”

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/huckabee-hamas-cannot-exist-thats-a-done-deal/

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How To Commit Democratic Party Suicide - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

The Democrats' radical overreach, election losses, and Musk-fueled government exposés have left them flailing, doubling down on failure instead of recalibrating for a political comeback.

 

 

The Democratic Party is polling about 31 percent approval, a near-historic low.

Despite enjoying a huge lead in fundraising, legacy media favoritism, and incumbency, in the 2024 election, Democrats lost the White House to Donald Trump. Ever since, they have offered nothing new, no novel agenda, no innovative policies—nothing other than screaming that they are loudly against everything and anything that the president is for.

In the past, what did they accomplish by following their prior two impeachments with attempts to de-ballot Trump? Who thought sending an FBI swat team to raid Trump’s home or waging five lawfare civil and criminal suits and issuing 91 felony indictments against him would win over the public?

Was conducting a media barrage of Hitler-Trump invectives, or lowering the bar of demonization that likely led to two assassination attempts of Trump a good way to win an election?

Apparently not, given the Democrats have now lost the presidency, the House, and the Senate. The Supreme Court is conservative. They have no power to subpoena anyone; they cannot block any nomination. Much of their old administrative state control is eroding. All the main issues—the economy, energy, border security, illegal immigration, crime, DEI/woke, and foreign policy—poll against the Democrats. The more they shouted that biological men must be able to compete as transgendered females in women’s sports, the more that 80% of the public disagreed, women were turned off, and the absurd idea was exploded by Trump.

The power of the administrative state, the legacy network news, print media, and Silicon Valley’s social media and search engines, the billions that poured into the Biden and Harris campaign all went for naught.

The efforts of moderators to warp debates, of network news to edit out unfavorable Harris or Biden comments, of leftists to cancel, deplatform, ostracize, censor, and shadow ban their enemies have failed. More likely to succeed now are numerous lawsuits against leftwing media for chronic defamation and censorship.

Given that collective meltdown, what would a sane Democratic Party do?

If they were stable, then they might renounce political suicide and perhaps return to something akin to the Clinton efforts of 1992 and 1996. Then the once self-destructive Democrats finally gave up on disastrous out-of-touch McGovernism, Carterism, and Dukakism. Instead, they began to embrace legal-only immigration, secure borders, balanced budgets, support for law enforcement, and meritocracy.

The result?

After twelve years in the wilderness (1980-1992), the Democrats regained power for the next 16 of 24 years—only in the second term of Barack Obama to go full radical Jacobin and soon lose it.

The current self-destructive obsessions with DEI/woke racialism, bi-coastal talk-down elitism, boutique transgenderism, and nonstop America Lastism all came to fruition during the Biden years. A shameless conspiracy to use an enfeebled John Biden as a prop to masque an otherwise unpalatable radical, neo-socialist agenda ensured the MAGA counterrevolution.

But instead of postmortem autopsy and introspection, since Election Day, the Democrats have doubled down on their veritable collective self-destruction.

On immigration, after wiping out the border and allowing in 12 million illegal aliens, including more than 500,000 suspected felons, they seem deliberately to be alienating public opinion even further.

So, thousands of leftists swarm and block the freeways of Los Angeles to protest the deportations of criminals. And how exactly?

By enraging middle-class commuters, while burning the flag of the country that they demand must allow them to stay, while chauvinistically waving the flag of the country to which under no circumstances they wish to return?

New Jersey Democratic governor Patrick Murphy idiotically virtue-signaled that he would defy the law, as he bragged that he was harboring an illegal alien living above his garage.

Then, when apprised that such performance-art showboating was a felony, in theory entailing a long prison sentence, the now buffoonish governor changed his narrative that the occupant of his garage was not really illegally living above his garage.

Democratic governors and mayors vie, bragging that they will be foremost in breaking the law by impeding the efforts of the federal immigration services to find and deport illegal aliens—for now, half a million criminals. Other activists are tipping off criminal illegal-alien gang leaders to avoid US government efforts to apprehend such dangerous criminals.

Is that the way to win back the working classes? By ensuring that the felons of M-13, Norteños, Sureños, and Tren de Aragua can flee and put in danger fellow American police officers?

Elon Musk has been appointed by Donald Trump to create a new government agency, DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency), to find waste, fraud, and abuse in the government spending of taxpayers money.

He and his young team of tech standouts have exposed shocking waste and fraud, but mostly insanity, in the USAID’s $50 billion of foreign aid grants.

Why are Americans paying for overseas drag shows or gay and trans advocacy in culturally imperialist fashion in traditional and conservative societies abroad? Why are we paying eight percent of the budget of the hardcore left-wing BBC? Is that a way back to the White House?

Do Politico, the New York Times, or the Wuhan gain-in-function virology lab and birthplace of COVID-19 really need millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars?

Do Democrats really think the middle class will hate Elon Musk for exposing that their government may well have handed the communist Chinese the necessary cash to birth a manufactured killer virus that took one million American lives?

Is that a winning strategy—to scream in Congress that Musk is a Nazi, a dictator for showing that Biden’s USAID under leftist Samantha Power was a clearing house to enrich and empower well-off leftist organizations that only weakened their own country abroad?

Do we really wish to spend $20 million to bequeath a woke Sesame Street to Middle East television?

Is it smart to gin up hatred of Elon Musk, who revolutionized space travel, the auto industry, and social media?

Is the Democrats’ message something like “We hate Elon Musk and will stop his free internet service to Americans ruined by fires and hurricanes and abandoned by their government?”

Or do Democrats despise Musk for providing free internet to Ukrainians battling for their lives against Russians?

Or is the key strategy to loathe Musk for crafting a risky rescue mission to save the lives of American astronauts virtually abandoned by the incompetent Biden government space program?

For Democratic officials to scream that Musk has no right to ferret out fraud is historically ignorant. He was selected by the president with the same powers that such appointees enjoy that are by statute not required to be approved by the Senate. The DOGE head is as legitimate as the National Security Advisor, who likewise needs no confirmation but also serves at the wishes of an elected president and likewise can do nothing without his approval.

Is Musk’s position in the Trump administration new?

Hardly.

Musk certainly has more legitimate legal authority via his DOGE position than that of FDR’s in-house informal advisors—such as Harry Hopkins—who from within the White House directed much of World War II foreign policy with the Soviets.

Financier Bernard Baruch held no major position for years under Woodrow Wilson and FDR and yet rebooted America’s wartime economy in two wars.

DOGE head Musk is more akin to FDR’s appointed war production board—similar to the likes of the unelected and unconfirmed Henery Ford, Henery Kaiser, and William Knudson, with the caveat that the latter three exercised far more power than does Musk.

During the confirmation hearings on Trump’s cabinet and agency nominations, Democratic senators did not question nominees like Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, and Kash Patel so much as scream, interrupt, and insult them on live television.

Rather than ask the nominees questions about their policies and agendas, almost all the interrogatives were ad hominem.

All this came from a party that oversaw the greatest weaponization of our government in modern history while leaving us with two theater wars abroad, a scary and dangerous DEI/woke destruction of meritocracy, hyperinflation, $7 trillion more in debt, 12 million illegal aliens, the erasure of the border, and a vast shortfall in military recruitment.

During the recent Democrat Party convention elections, the voting turned into a virtual DEI tutorial on why the public is repulsed by Democrats.

The Party’s carnival-like elections were overseen by race/gender/orientation censors. In incomprehensible, jargon-filled lectures, they droned on about the correct quotas—trans, non-binary, female, black, Hispanic, Native American—that would override simple democratic voting.

When one looks for sanity among the Democrat Senate and House leaders, there is only madness to be found. Sen. Corey “Spartacus” Booker is back again, now screaming and playacting as if he were Winston Churchill willing to fight Trump-Hitler on the beaches, hills, fields, etc.

Rep. Al Green was wheeled out on spec to bellow and bluster that he was introducing articles of impeachment—is it for the fourth, fifth, or sixth time against Trump?

House Minority Leader Hakim Jefferies boasts he will fight Trump “in the streets”—alongside whom? The despised Antifa? The utterly corrupt and discredited BLM?

I doubt Rep. Jefferies himself will replay the 2020 summer of destruction. More likely he will parrot Kamala Harris’s 2020 bragging of the then ongoing four months of violent protests: “They’re not gonna stop before Election Day in November, and they’re not gonna stop after Election Day, and they should not.”

Maxine Waters is back, trying to trump her earlier threats to birddog and harass Trump supporters in her usual racialist fashion.

AOC—the supposed future of the Jacobins—drones that Musk is “one of the most unintelligent billionaires” she has met. This putdown comes from the nincompoop who claimed Trump’s low unemployment rate was due only to people holding two jobs.

Does AOC think catching a rocket with a mechanical arm is proof of dumbness, and the rants of Mazie Hirono and Elizabeth Warren display wisdom?

What the Democrats don’t realize is that they staged a French-style cultural, political, and economic revolution and tried to destroy their enemies by weaponizing government and the media—and they have now lost.

This current counter-revolution is a return to centrist normalcy and just beginning. It is deemed wild only by feral Democrats, whose high crimes and misdemeanors, and various conspiracy theories over the years of their madcap rule are now being revealed every day.

Victor Davis Hanson

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/10/how-to-commit-democratic-party-suicide/

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Democrats go on offensive to protect subsidies for ‘cheap’ renewables that Trump’s orders froze - Kevin Killough

 

by Kevin Killough

Democrats on the House Energy Committee blasted Trump's freeze on federal funding for renewable energy programs, saying it may be low-cost energy but the industry can't grow without ongoing taxpayer support.

 

During an Energy Committee hearing Wednesday on how to return the U.S. to President Donald Trump’s vision of “American Energy Dominance,” House Democrats argued that increasing wind and solar farms on the grid are key to achieving that vision. 

While arguing that renewable energy is the lowest cost technology available, Democrats also criticized Trump for freezing taxpayer funding for the industry, which they say is going to prevent this low-cost industry from expanding.

The concerns Democrats raised in the hearing echo those coming in the wake of Trump’s executive orders he signed upon taking office, which declared a national energy emergency and revoked much of former President Joe Biden’s climate agenda. Last month, Trump ordered a freeze on federal funding going toward “financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”

Memorandum-Funding-Freeze.pdf

Democrats in the Senate introduced legislation this week to terminate Trump’s energy emergency, arguing that only oil companies will benefit from it, and a coalition of renewable energy groups and companies are initiating a lobbying blitz to protect the subsidies they say their low-cost industries need to survive. 

Clean energy economy

During Wednesday’s hearing, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., said that nothing in the executive orders Trump signed upon taking office would lower energy costs or help “hard-working Americans.” 

“Instead, across the board, the actions are a gift to big oil companies. They’re designed to boost their profits at the expense of working families across the country,” Castor said. 

She said the country has an opportunity to build on the “successes” of the Biden-Harris administration’s energy policies that have been advancing “lower-cost, clean-energy grid resilience, innovation and efficiency.” 

However, this lower cost grid powered by renewables, she said, requires ongoing taxpayer support, including the trillions of dollars from Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act. 

Castor criticized the president for declaring an energy emergency when the U.S. was producing more oil and gas than any country in history and leading the world in nuclear and renewable energy. She said his freeze on funding was hurting renewable energy projects, the transmission construction they need, and jobs in the industry. 

“Frankly, when you look at what's going on, it's illegal, and we're not going to stand for it. We're going to fight back to make sure that these dollars get to where they're supposed to go and build the clean energy economy that is important to all of us,” Castor said. 

Democrat gaslighting

Rep. John James, R-Mich., disputed the claims that the Biden-Harris administration’s energy policy was lowering costs for Americans. 

“Apparently Democrat gaslighting produces zero emissions. But what does their radical agenda mean for constituents in my districts and your districts who pay more for pump, who pay more for groceries, folks in Southeast Michigan have experienced their jobs being extinct [and] being shipped to other states, being shipped to other countries? Because Green New Deal, woke policies do not work in the real world,” James said. 

The Republicans on the committee generally agreed with an “all of the above” approach to energy, but they argued that natural gas and nuclear would be needed to ensure grid reliability and affordability. 

“Intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind have a role to play in a diverse energy mix. However, we must maintain our base load power that is delivered from fossil fuels, nuclear and hydro power,” said Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio. 

Rep. Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., talked about the increasing demands for energy and how the changing nature of the U.S. electricity generation mix was struggling to keep up. 

“We all have seen the increasing strains on our electric grid, including failure to provide reliable power utilizing coal, natural gas and nuclear when it is needed. Most grid and energy experts warn the frequency of these outages will only increase if state and federal renewable energy policies continue to drive their premature retirement of traditional base load generation,” Guthrie said. 

Brigham McCown, senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, pointed to Europe’s experience with a green energy transition, which has gone much further than America’s policies. Europe’s economy is now struggling with crushing energy costs, and its industries are shutting down. 

“The retirement of nuclear plants and the removal of cheap Russian fossil fuels has been devastating. I'd like to point out, too, that their carbon emissions, if you're keeping score, have gone up, not down, despite all these investments. It is not the way to do things,” McCown said. 

McCown compared an “all of the above” energy strategy that doesn’t include plenty of fossil fuels and nuclear power to a carpenter who uses only a hammer and no other tools. 

“This energy mix is going to change over time, but we have to lead with what is reliable, efficient and affordable. Because otherwise we can bankrupt ourselves and be in a position like Europe, where they have none of the above,” McCown said. 

Lobbying blitz

Democrats in Congress are gearing up to fight Trump’s “American energy dominance” executive orders, which they say will only benefit “big oil.” Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., and Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., drafted legislation that will terminate Trump’s declaration of a national energy emergency. 

“While Donald Trump focuses on repaying the corporate polluter executives who donated to his campaign, it is the American people who will pay the price of his sham ‘energy emergency.’ His autocratic and unlawful attacks on clean energy investments will kill American jobs, raise costs on families, weaken our economic competitiveness, and erode American global energy dominance,” Heinrich said in a statement. 

Power the Future, an energy advocacy group, criticized Heinrich and Kaine for introducing the legislation when recent reports show inflation continues to be a problem. 

“The truth is they are simple partisans who didn’t think it was an emergency when Americans were paying record gas prices and Joe Biden was begging Saudi Arabia for more oil. Make no mistake: These two Senators were key votes for the failed Inflation Reduction Act so when it comes to knowing which laws will help working families, these two should sit it out,” Daniel Turner, executive director of Power the Future, said in a statement. 

On Thursday, a broad coalition of renewable energy groups and companies initiated a “lobbying blitz,” which includes a letter writing campaign and 100 meetings with members of Congress and staff from both parties. 

“Solar can be built faster and cheaper than almost any technology, and it’s clear that we can’t meet our nation’s energy challenges or President Trump’s energy vision without a robust American solar and storage industry,” Abigail Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said in a statement announcing the blitz. 

According to the statement, this cheap form of energy won’t be able to grow without federal energy tax credits. Absent taxpayer support, clean energy deployment would fall by 237 gigawatts over the next 15 years, according to Aurora Energy Research.

With 24/7 backup from coal, natural gas, nuclear or hydroelectric, 237 gigawatts of solar power delivered for a month could help power nearly 8 million homes. 

A Democratic reaction to Trump’s agenda, which has radically reshaped energy policy in a very short period of time, was expected. And their actions this week are unlikely to be the last. 

Kevin Killough

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/democrats-go-offensive-protect-subsidies-cheap-renewables-trumps-orders

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Obama-backed Ivanpah solar project cost taxpayers much but delivered little - Kevin Killough

 

by Kevin Killough

The plant promised to demonstrate technologies to help with the so-called energy transition. It received a $1.6 billion loan guarantee, which hasn't been paid, on top of other subsidies. Now it may close 14 years earlier than planned.

 

When the Ivanpah concentrated solar project went online in 2014, it opened to great fanfare. Then-President Barack Obama was making climate change an important issue in his second term, which included replacing coal-fired power plants with renewable energy. The plant was expected to further that goal. 

Initially advertised to last 25 years, the plant owners, including NRG Energy Inc., and Pacific Gas and Electric announced recently that they are seeking to terminate their contracts with the units 1 and 3 at the plant. The decision, according to PG&E, would save customers money compared to the cost of keeping the contract through 2039. 

A cautionary tale

From its beginnings, the project’s critics had been skeptical that Ivanpah would deliver benefits that justify the subsidies being poured into it. Now that the project appears to have failed to deliver on its promises, critics say it provides a cautionary tale for other expensive green energy projects that require massive taxpayer support for small reductions in energy-related emissions, such as offshore wind and green hydrogen. 

“What we're doing in our country with these trillion-dollar subsidies and tax breaks out of the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] is probably the most enormous government cost misallocation of capital in world history. And it's going to take a long time to recover from it. It's really a heck of a detriment to our society,” David Blackmon, an energy analyst who publishes his work on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack. 

Costly demonstration 

Unlike typical solar farms, which use solar cells to convert sunlight into electricity, Ivanpah utilizes 347,000 mirrors spread over five square miles to direct sunlight to heat water in 450-foot towers. The steam produced is then used to turn turbines, just like a typical thermal power plant. 

The capital costs to build the plant were $2.2 billion, which was supported with a $1.6 billion loan guarantee, and according to E&E News, that loan hasn’t yet been repaid. NRG Energy didn’t respond to questions from Just the News about when or how the loan would be repaid. 

One of the plant’s early critics was Benjamin Zycher, senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute. In 2014, he detailed how the costs to taxpayers was only the beginning. The program administering the loan requires that the credit subsidy cost be paid for by the owner of the project or a Congressional appropriation. This subsidy is about 10% of the underlying guarantee. 

Zycher ran the math and determined it would be $160 million over the expected 25-year life of the project, or $6.4 million per year. The annual payments at an assumed rate of 5%, Zycher estimated, would be approximately $11.4 million per year. Zycher notes that the federal government understates the cost of the subsidy and to the economy. 

“Greater federal debt obligations must increase the interest rate that the federal government pays, whether by an amount small or large, and the marginal excess burden (“deadweight loss”) created by the tax system means that the private sector shrinks by more than a given increase in federal spending,” Zycher explained. 

The project qualified for a 30% investment tax credit, as well as other taxpayer supported incentives. California’s Renewable Portfolio Standards also forced the state’s utilities to purchase power produced at Ivanpah. 

For all that support, Zycher estimated that Ivanpah’s electricity in 2014 cost three times more than a conventional gas-fired generator. The PG&E announcement noted that since the plant was built, the costs of solar photovoltaic today rivals concentrated solar power in costs. 

“I wish there was more skepticism about these things. It certainly is true that much of the media fails to ask the obvious question, which is, if these things make sense economically, if they're really so cheap, why do they have to have massive subsidies and guaranteed market shares and all this?” Zycher told Just the News. 

Experience gained

The plant also suffers from the shortcoming of all wind and solar energy — intermittent power. In the cold desert nights or on cloudy days, the water in the tower cools down. Rather than use valuable daylight hours to heat up the water again, the plant utilized natural gas-fired generators to heat up the water. Originally, Zycher writes, those units were expected to run only one hour per day. Shortly after Ivanpah began operating, the operators asked regulators to increase that to about 4.5 hours per day. The natural gas burned at the plant, according to Utility Dive, produced enough emissions that the plant was required to participate in California’s cap and trade program.

“The experience gained during commercial operations indicates that more boiler steam would be needed than previously expected in order to operate the system efficiently and in a manner that protects plant equipment, and to maximize solar electricity generation,” the operators explained to regulators at the time. 

If the plant averted any emissions for the electricity produced, it would likely be fairly small. Zycher said that there’s no evidence that climate change is causing anything that could be reasonably characterized as a crisis, and that makes it hard to defend the project on the merits of emissions avoidance when one considers the costs. 

“If you actually apply the EPA climate model and ask, what is the effect of these subsidies and everything in this energy transition, and all the rest in terms of global climate phenomena, on temperatures by the end of the century? The answer is it would be virtually unmeasurable,” Zycher said in an interview. 

In addition to the emissions the plant produced, the plant reportedly killed birds, many of which were scorched to death in mid-air. Environmentalists sued the plant owners over its impacts to desert tortoises, and in the settlement, the plant owners agreed to take mitigating measures to protect the reptiles. 

Successful demonstration

Regulators will still need to approve the agreement to terminate the contracts on units 1 and 3. Southern California Edison, which is contracted to buy the power from unit 2, is in discussions with NRG and the DOE about a potential buyout of that contract, according to E&E News. 

In a statement, NRG called the project a “successful demonstration of CSP [concentrated solar power] technology,” but said it was no longer competitive with solar farms. Once the site is deactivated, NRG said, the site can be used for solar photovoltaic. 

 
Kevin Killough

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/energy/ivanpah-solar-cost-taxpayers-delivered-little-which-typical-renewable

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