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President-elect Donald Trump announced Wednesday that he wants Jacob Helberg to serve as his under-secretary of State for economic growth, energy, and the environment — the highest-ranking State Department economic policy position available. A former supporter of Democrat Pete Buttigieg, Helberg reportedly “fell in love” with Trump (and became a major donor, to the tune of $1 million) partly because of the Biden administration’s move to regulate artificial intelligence, which he considered burdensome.
At 34, Helberg is notably inexperienced — he “has never built a successful tech company or led a major fund,” Forbes writes, and he currently serves as an adviser to the CEO of the defense contractor Palantir. But Helberg has earned his reputation as a China hawk, having thrown his weight behind Congress’ TikTok ban, calling the app a “weapon of war.” Helberg has broadly called for the United States to “reindustrialize” to “secure its supply chains and information networks against Chinese attacks.”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to cut off the province’s electricity exports to the United States if President-elect Trump follows through on his proposal to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian imports next year. “Depending how far this goes, we will go to the extent of cutting off their energy, going down to Michigan, going down to New York State, and over to Wisconsin,” Ford said. “I don’t want this to happen, but my number one job is to protect Ontario, Ontarians, and Canadians as a whole.” Roughly 85% of U.S. electricity imports come from Canada, with Ontario responsible for about 13.9 million megawatt-hours of electricity, powering about 1.5 million American homes. Most electricity generated in Ontario is from renewable sources, primarily nuclear and hydropower, with the province’s exports helping New York, Maryland, and Illinois to meet their clean energy commitments.
A Washington State ballot measure that would hamper efforts to transition buildings away from natural gas is “unconstitutional,” according to a group of activists, who filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to overturn it. The ballot measure, Initiative 2066, passed with 51.7% of the vote in November after being pitched by its sponsor, the Building Industry Association of Washington, as protecting consumer choice by preventing a hypothetical “gas ban.”
“But the text of the measure goes much further,” according to the activists, since it affects “several state laws and codes designed to reduce carbon emissions and regulate air pollution,” Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo reported Wednesday. As such, the plaintiffs argue that Washingtonians were not fully informed about I-2066 when they voted on it — in violation of the state’s constitution, which requires ballot measures to be limited to a single, accurately represented subject.
Executives at Amazon and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer described Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., as potentially amenable to tackling climate-related health risks if the Senate confirms him as Trump’s Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services next year. “Some of the comments [Kennedy has] made I’m really optimistic about,” Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Vin Gupta said while speaking at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Wednesday, adding that “the ways in which air and … dirty water” impact health are concerns that transcend party lines. Caroline Roan, the chief sustainability officer at Pfizer, who appeared on the same panel as Gupta, agreed. “We’re going to roll up our sleeves and we’re going to find common ground,” she said.
Separately this week, more than 75 Nobel laureates signed a letter saying that Kennedy would “put the public’s health in jeopardy” if he were confirmed to lead HHS.
200% — That’s the increase in dengue fever deaths in the Caribbean and the Americas this year compared to last. The jump in the mosquito-borne disease is “linked directly to climatic events” like warmer temperatures and flooding, according to Jarbas Barbosa, the director of the Pan American Health Organization.
Hurricane Beryl flooded Kingston, Jamaica this year. Joe Raedle/Getty Images
