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Sparks

Trump’s Climate Sneak Peek in Iowa

Sprinkled throughout Trump’s victory speech were a few anti-climate lines you’re likely to hear again.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

On Monday night, former President Donald Trump handily won what will officially go down as the coldest caucus in Iowa’s history.

The global warming jokes, naturally, wrote themselves. But in his freewheeling, name-dropping, teleprompter-free victory speech in Des Moines, Trump showed uncharacteristic restraint in avoiding the low-hanging comedic fruit.

Perhaps it was because Trump’s mind was on other things: his civil damages trial that begins in New York City on Tuesday, say. Or maybe, as I suspect, it was part of a larger trend that has come to shape Trump’s third presidential campaign — that he’s honing his attacks on climate science and the energy transition for the 2024 race.

Certainly, Trump’s Iowa speech featured some of his favorite one-liners from the campaign trail. “He comes all the way from Missouri, which isn’t that far,” Trump said at one point in an apparent reference to Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, one of numerous surrogates who’d helped with a ground game Trump hadn’t seemed terribly interested in trying himself. “Couldn’t drive an electric car that far, though,” Trump added to laughs — a variation of a jab about range anxiety that he’s been trotting out at his rallies. (Des Moines to the Missouri border is 76 miles, which even the least efficient EVs could make without stopping; most new EVs on the market could also make it to the capital, Jefferson City — 255 miles away — on a single charge).

Trump also made enthusiastic references to “drilling,” promising we’ll do a whole lot of it if he gets the White House back. “We have to stop the invasion, we have to bring down the energy — you know, I say all the time, we have more liquid gold under our feet than any other nation anywhere in the world — and we have to stop the crime and we have to help rebuild our cities,” Trump went on, distracted from his usual script, which typically involves an additional story about President Biden “begging” Venezuela for oil.

Trump had also spoken in specifics earlier in the evening when he’d told would-be voters that “I stood up for ethanol like nobody has ever stood up for it” — another dig at Biden’s climate agenda, which has aimed to limit liquid fuel in vehicles, a sensitive issue for Iowa voters during their primary season.

But if Americans could agree on anything this week, it’s that it’s cold. Between the Iowa caucuses and Tuesday night, more than three-quarters of the country will experience temperatures below freezing — weather that will shatter over 200 winter temperature records, all told. And while that might lend itself to unoriginal jokes among conservatives, scientists say the arctic blast is exactly the kind of extreme event we can expect more of in a climate-changed world.

On Sunday, Trump mocked any alarm that might instill in people — including his own supporters — by telling a group of climate protesters that interrupted his rally to “go home to mommy. Your mommy’s waiting.”

But nowhere is safe, and there are a long 11 months and three seasons to go before the next election. Still, some things can grimly be assumed to be forgone: Trump will almost certainly be the Republican candidate. And whatever comes next, it will be worse.

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Sparks

China’s DeepSeek Ends the Party for U.S. Energy Stocks

It’s not just AI companies taking a beating today.

The Deepseek logo.
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It’s not just tech stocks that are reeling after the release of Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek’s open-source R1 model, which performs similarly to state-of-the-art models from American companies while using less expensive hardware far more efficiently. Energy and infrastructure companies — whose share prices had soared in the past year on the promise of powering a massive artificial intelligence buildout — have also seen their stock prices fall early Monday.

Shares in GE Vernova, which manufactures turbines for gas-fired power plants, were down 19% in early trading Monday. Since the company’s spinoff from GE last April, the share price had risen almost 200% through last Friday, largely based on optimism about its ability to supply higher electricity demand. Oklo, the advanced nuclear company backed by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, is down 25%, after rising almost 300% in the past year. Constellation Energy, the independent power producer that’s re-powering Three Mile Island in partnership with Microsoft, saw its shares fall almost 20% in early trading. It had risen almost 190% in the year prior to Monday.

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Trump in North Carolina: Let’s Overhaul FEMA

The president is on his way to Los Angeles next.

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

On his fifth day back in office, President Trump is making the rounds to recent disaster zones —- North Carolina, which is recovering from Hurricane Helene, and later Los Angeles, where fires are still burning. In the immediate aftermath of both catastrophes, Trump was quick to blame Democrats for their response. Touching down in North Carolina earlier today, he sounded the same tune as he proposed overhauling or even eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which is responsible for disaster preparation and recovery nationwide.

On the tarmac, Trump told the press that his administration was “looking at the whole concept of FEMA,” saying he would rather states be solely responsible for disaster recovery. Later, at a hurricane recovery briefing, Trump said that he planned to sign an executive order that would “begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA — or maybe getting rid of FEMA.” Trump dodged questions on details of the order or a timeline for implementation.

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Trump Pauses Permitting for All Renewables on Federal Lands

A newly released memo from the Department of the Interior freezes the pipeline for 60 days.

Solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Department of Interior has issued an order suspending the ability of its staff, except a few senior officials, to permit new renewables projects on public land. The document, dated January 20, suspended the authority of “Department Bureaus and Offices” over a wide range of regular actions, including issuing “any onshore or offshore renewable energy authorization.”

The suspension lasts for 60 days and can only be overridden by “a confirmed or Acting official” in a number of senior roles in the Department, including the secretary.

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