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Via Robert J Ellingsworth

More than 200 environmental groups demand halt to new US datacenters

The Guardian - A coalition of more than 230 environmental groups has demanded a national moratorium on new datacenters in the US, the latest salvo in a growing backlash to a booming artificial intelligence industry that has been blamed for escalating electricity bills and worsening the climate crisis.

The green groups, including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Food & Water Watch and dozens of local organizations, have urged members of Congress to halt the proliferation of energy-hungry datacenters, accusing them of causing planet-heating emissions, sucking up vast amounts of water and exacerbating electricity bill increases that have hit Americans this year.

“The rapid, largely unregulated rise of datacenters to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening Americans’ economic, environmental, climate and water security,” the letter states, adding that approval of new data centers should be paused until new regulations are put in place.

San Francisco Will Sue Ultraprocessed Food Companies

New York Times  - The San Francisco city attorney will file on Tuesday the nation’s first government lawsuit against food manufacturers over ultraprocessed fare, arguing that cities and counties have been burdened with the costs of treating diseases that stem from the companies’ products.

David Chiu, the city attorney, told The New York Times that he will sue 10 corporations that make some of the country’s most popular food and drinks. Ultraprocessed products now comprise 70 percent of the American food supply and fill grocery store shelves with a kaleidoscope of colorful packages.

Think Slim Jim meat sticks and Cool Ranch Doritos. But also aisles of breads, sauces and granola bars marketed as natural or healthy.

It is a rare issue on which the liberal leaders in San Francisco City Hall are fully aligned with the Trump administration, which has targeted ultraprocessed foods as part of its Make America Healthy Again mantra.

Ukraine

NPR - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is expected to meet with European leaders in London today as they vie for a role in the peace talks with the U.S. This comes as Trump continues to push Ukraine to accept a U.S.-backed plan to end Russia's war. Ukrainian officials have been calling for changes in the proposal, which they say favors Russia. 

The goal of today’s meeting is for the leaders of Britain, France and Germany to demonstrate that Europe remains very supportive of Ukraine, Mujtaba Rahman, Europe managing director at Eurasia Group, tells NPR’s Lauren Frayer. Last week, the Trump administration released a revised national security strategy that claimed that immigration is leading to “civilizational erasure” in Europe. The document also suggested that the U.S. would support far-right parties in the region. The document was met with praise from the Kremlin, raising concerns in Europe that the Trump administration might be more aligned with Russia than with its European allies in general, Frayer says. 

Health

NPR - A Democratic proposal to extend current Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years is scheduled for a Senate vote on Thursday. The enhanced health care subsidies are set to expire at the end of the month. The plan Democrats put forth isn't expected to get the 60 votes it needs to advance. 

 Senate Republicans are divided on extending subsidies. While some support it, others want income caps and reforms to limit eligibility, NPR’s Deirdre Walsh says. House Speaker Mike Johnson plans to release a health care bill this week and promises a vote this month, although he is not negotiating with any Democrats on it. Trump has not endorsed any legislation regarding ACA tax credits yet. Members of both parties believe that if the president doesn’t get involved in negotiating a deal soon, Americans will see major cost increases next month. 

AI boom fuels environmental justice fears

Axios - Civil rights groups are increasingly concerned that AI's rapidly spreading physical infrastructure is deepening climate burdens for communities of color.

Massive data centers require vast quantities of water, energy and land.

• Many of these centers are clustered in regions where marginalized communities already face higher levels of air pollution, industrial zoning and climate vulnerability.

Civil rights groups say these impacts resemble earlier patterns seen with highways, refineries and manufacturing: pollution concentrated where political resistance is weakest and property values are lowest.

• Data centers can also consume millions of gallons of water per day and use as much electricity as a small city, driving up energy and water use costs for poor residents.

A supercomputer data center built by Elon Musk's xAI in southwest Memphis, a historically Black neighborhood, faces a legal challenge from the NAACP. The group says the site's gas generators are violating the Clean Air Act...

In Amarillo, Texas, advocates are fighting what developers call the world's largest AI data center, warning it could drain the Ogallala Aquifer, a shrinking water lifeline for the Texas Panhandle and southern Great Plains. Latino residents and rural water advocates fear losing access to groundwater already stretched thin by agriculture and drought....

Northern Virginia — site of the world's largest data center hub — is seeing mounting resistance in Loudoun and Prince William counties, where Black families say the build-out is overwhelming their communities.

Near Tucson, Ariz., a majority-Latino city strained by megadrought, a proposed "Project Blue" data center could consume millions of gallons of water per year.

"Data centers by design do not have a lot of jobs. It's predatory. They target cities desperate for economic development," LaTricea Adams, CEO of the Memphis-based Young, Gifted & Green, tells Axios....

As AI data centers expand across the West, Indigenous nations say the industry is accelerating resource extraction without tribal consent. Full story

The NAACP announced it's bringing together advocates, researchers and regional leaders for a two-day strategy summit in Washington this week to discuss AI data centers.

Meanwhile. . .

NBC News  -More than a third of the roughly 220,000 people arrested by ICE officers between Jan. 20 and Oct. 15 had no criminal histories, according to new data.

China’s trade surplus for the first 11 months surpassed the $1 trillion mark, at nearly $1.08 trillion. That’s a record high for any single year and is more than the $992 billion surplus in all of 2024. 

Politics

Trump criticized Rep. Henry Cuellar for a "lack of loyalty" for running as a Democrat after receiving a presidential pardon.

Bad ideas

MS NOW -  Democrats have been overperforming in off-year and special elections in 2025 and may be poised for a huge win in the midterms in 2026, but they know they face a deeper problem: Their party isn’t particularly well-liked, and voters don’t have a good sense of what Democrats stand for.

Worry not, because House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has the answer in a new slogan. Are you ready for it?

“Strong floor, no ceiling.” 

Try to contain your excitement. Not only will nobody have any idea what that means unless it’s explained, it doesn’t even describe well what Democrats ought to want.

Towards a dictatorship

MS NOW - President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he intends to expand his military campaign against alleged drug traffickers from operations at sea to land, building on recent boat strikes in the Pacific and Caribbean that have drawn sharp criticism from lawmakers and legal experts.

Citing a decrease in illegal narcotics entering the U.S. by sea, Trump said the U.S. is “going to start that same process on land.” “We know every route, we know every house, we know where they live,” the president continued. “We know everything about them. They kill 300,000 people this year, and that’s like a war.”

The remarks, made at a celebration for recipients of the annual Kennedy Center Honors, come as the administration has faced mounting criticism over the missile strikes on boats off Venezuela’s coast that are suspected of carrying drugs. 

Some lawmakers and legal scholars have suggested that those strikes may violate both American and international law. That debate has intensified over the last week amid a raging controversy about a Sept. 2 double-tap strike that targeted two survivors of an early missile attack. 

Republican-controlled Supreme Court considers granting a Project 2025 wish

MS NOW - Monday’s case, called Trump v. Slaughter, is the court’s latest opportunity to empower the Republican president, though its ruling will last beyond Donald Trump — unless and until a future high court majority reverses whatever this one does in its forthcoming decision.

The 1935 precedent is named for a lawsuit brought by the estate of William Humphrey. He was on the Federal Trade Commission, the five-person consumer protection agency whose members are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate; commissioners’ staggered terms span administrations; and no more than three of them can be from the same political party. President Franklin Roosevelt sought to fire Humphrey in 1933 before the commissioner’s term was up, and his executor sued for his salary from the time that Roosevelt said he was fired until his death in 1934. 

The high court sided with Humphrey while stressing the importance of the agency’s independence. The court noted that the law establishing the FTC said presidents can remove commissioners for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” and that the government hadn’t made such a claim against Humphrey. “The commission is to be non-partisan; and it must, from the very nature of its duties, act with entire impartiality,” the court said.

Splitting life between the technological and the human

Sam Smith - One of things I find hard to deal with these days is technological progress. No one warned me of this but my days are now filled with problems such as stuff that doesn't come up right on the screen, sites you can't find, lists that have to be completely redone,  as well as attempting to solve a problem and coming up with answers like this:

• Convert Pdf To Jpg Free such as
• Systems Thinking
• Cloud & Data Center
• SD-WAN, SASE & SDN
• Ssd Imac
• Enterprise Storage

Or this:

Grammarly’s free AI humanizer makes writing sound natural without changing your meaning. Combine AI humanizer with citation and plagiarism tools — because clarity builds trust. Over 500K websites & apps · Eliminate grammar errors · Works where you write · Check for typos

Journalism used to be a lot easier. I started out in radio news in the 1950s - covering the capital and writing newscasts with the worst technical interruption being an unwanted phone call. Back then, there were even only about a dozen of us reporters in DC who even had battery operated portable recorders. These days I find life much more unpredictable in how my work will be interrupted - often by a minor but time taking  technical issue. Yet I still believe that the answer to life's real meaning is not @53@GTR. Having to waste even ten  minutes in order to stay up to date makes me feel more like a device than a real human. 

And having moved from Washington DC to a small town in Maine some years ago I am reminded  on a daily basis what  life  used to be like. I've come to realize that I now live in two worlds each day - one the traditionally human and the other a self-promoting system  that is meant to improve our existence but has created all sorts of new problems. 

Fortunately, technology is not all that important on the coast of Maine. In my town, it features a few things like solar charged  stop signs that flash little red lights at night. And people here are typically in jobs and activities like boating or farming where  you actually have to solve  problems and not just come up with a new password. 

I haven't found any satisfying way to deal with our new standards, but I sure feel better living in a small Maine town which hasn't bought into the idea that technological efficiency has replaced the need for decent human living.

Politics

Citizens for Ethics  - 

•  1. In April, Trump announces 46% tariff on Vietnam
• 2. In May, Eric Trump attends groundbreaking for new $1.5 billion Trump golf resort in Vietnam 
• 3. In July, Vietnam becomes only the second country to reach a tariff deal, cutting its rate to 20%

The Hill -  Democrats face dwindling options to move forward with redistricting after the Supreme Court handed Republicans a major victory this week allowing them to use a redrawn map in Texas next year. While Virginia Democrats are signaling they’ll move forward with redrawing their congressional lines, Democrats in other states have expressed opposition, posing a challenge for those in the party who want to net as many additional seats as possible before the midterms.

MS Now - Trump’s decision to pardon former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving a 45-year sentence for funneling hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States, is baffling enough. But it comes at a time when his administration is killing people on suspected drug boats and threatening to depose the president of Venezuela over supposed drug trafficking, writes Zeeshan Aleem. The disconnect calls into question Trump’s real motives and emboldens corrupt political leaders in Latin America. Read more.

 

Education Department wants some staff back to handle discrimination cases

USA Today -  Facing a backlog of school discrimination cases, the U.S. Department of Education has asked hundreds of employees it fired months ago to temporarily return to work.

A Dec. 5 email obtained by USA TODAY shows the agency ordered a significant portion of staffers in the Office for Civil Rights to come back later this month. In the "return to duty" directive, officials acknowledged they're facing a sizable caseload of civil rights complaints, and they underscored a need to utilize every resource at the government’s disposal to work through them.

The agency said the request applies to roughly 250 workers who've been on administrative leave for months amid legal challenges to their March firings. Julie Hartman, the Education Department's press secretary for legal affairs, stressed there still aren't any plans to fully rehire those workers permanently.

Elon Musk

Polls

Washington Post -  More than 40 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed last month said they are struggling or just getting by, and one-quarter believe they’ll be worse off financially than their parents. Many distrust the White House and Congress, both major political parties and, to some extent, each other. And while most reject political violence, nearly 40 percent say it is acceptable under certain circumstances.

Newsweek -  U.S. President Donald Trump's approval rating has improved among millennial voters, new polling shows.Accor ding to polling by The Economist/YouGov, Trump's net approval rating among this demographic, roughly those born from 1981 to 1996, has increased from -19 percentage points in September to -16 points in December. While his approval rating among this group remains underwater, it is up three percentage points.

Data for Progress -   In a new survey, Data for Progress finds that 65% of voters support a Medicare for All system — described as a “national health insurance program…that would cover all Americans and replace most private health insurance plans.” This includes majorities of Democrats (78%) and Independents (71%), and a plurality of Republicans (49%)

Donald Trump

 Action Network -  Donald Trump’s military occupation of U.S. cities has already cost the American public $473 million, according to an expert estimate provided exclusively to The Intercept. The expenditures come as Trump and Republicans have cut more than $1 trillion from domestic services, instead funneling tax dollars toward tax cuts for the rich and Trump’s crackdown on dissent....

Through mid-November, the estimated cost per city for Trump’s National Guard deployment is:

    $270 million – Washington, DC
    $172 million – Los Angeles, CA
    $15 million – Portland, OR
    $13 million – Chicago, IL
    $3 million – Memphis, TN

Newsweek - Donald Trump has scolded a Texas lawmaker's "lack of LOYALTY" for announcing he will seek election again as a Democrat only days after the president issued a “full and unconditional” pardon.

“Only a short time after signing the Pardon, Congressman Henry Cuellar announced that he will be ‘running’ for Congress again, in the Great State of Texas [...], as a Democrat, continuing to work with the same Radical Left Scum that just weeks before wanted him and his wife to spend the rest of their lives in Prison—And probably still do,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday morning.

President Trump added: “Oh well, next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”

People  -    Kaitlan Collins became the latest target in Donald Trump’s streak of lashing out at female reporters when the president called her “stupid and nasty” for inquiring about the cost of his sprawling White House ballroom project.

Trump, 79, kicked off a Truth Social post shared on Saturday, Dec. 6, with an attack on the 33-year-old journalist, who is CNN’s Chief White House Correspondent and host of The Source with Kaitlan Collins.

He seemingly targeted Collins, whose name he spelled incorrectly in the post, because she inquired about the controversial project, though it is unclear when the interaction occurred.

“Caitlin Collin's of Fake News CNN, always Stupid and Nasty, asked me why the new Ballroom was costing more money than originally thought one year ago,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I said because it is going to be double the size, and the quality of finishes and interiors has been brought to the highest level. Also, the column SPAN has been substantially increased for purposes of viewing.” 

Are wealthy students getting a health break?

Axios - A growing number of students at wealthy high schools and colleges are receiving academic support designed to help students with disabilities — including more time on tests, flexible deadlines and single dorm rooms.The rising share of students qualifying for these "accommodations" is raising concerns about overuse, and whether they're being siphoned from the students who need them most.

Professors and psychologists fear this special help is becoming yet another advantage disproportionately available to students from wealthier families. "The increase is driven by more young people getting diagnosed with conditions such as ADHD, anxiety and depression, and by universities making the process of getting accommodations easier," The Atlantic's Rose Horowitch writes.

38% of Stanford undergraduates are registered as having a disability this year. 20% of undergraduates at Brown and Harvard and 34% of students at Amherst College are registered as disabled.

• The number of UChicago students qualifying for support has more than tripled in the last eight years.
• But at public two-year colleges, just 3-4% of students receive accommodations.

Keep reading

Winner Take All Economy

Axios - Everything is becoming more concentrated — from merging streaming giants, to a stock market powered by a handful of AI winners, to an economy increasingly driven by the spending of the wealthy.

With fewer participants, winning is harder, whether you're an investor looking for returns, a consumer looking to build wealth or a business trying to compete.

Netflix's victory in bidding to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming assets, potentially combining two of the world's largest streaming platforms, is part of a larger trend of dealmaking soaring under the Trump administration — due in part to its friendlier regulatory practices.

In streaming, scale has become one of the only viable strategies for growth. (Netflix can't increase its subscriber count forever, which may be why the company stopped reporting that figure in earnings releases.)

The same forces driving consolidation in media are playing out across the economy.

A tiny cluster of AI stocks accounts for 40% of the S&P 500. They've delivered a bull market with back-to-back years of double-digit gains. But a wobble in AI could take down the broader market.

The top 10% of earners in America now make up half of all consumer spending — and any pullback by that small group can drag down growth. Share this story.

For the First Time This Century, Child Mortality Is Likely to Rise

Time -  For the first time in 25 years, child mortality rates for preventable diseases are projected to increase, after having declined for 25 years.

The new estimate comes from models created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington and was released for the first time in the Goalkeepers report from the Gates Foundation. It shows that an additional 200,000 children under age five may die this year of a disease that modern medicine can prevent, either with vaccines or other treatments. The deaths can be traced to a number of economic and political factors, the most important of which are significant cuts to spending in global health from the world’s largest donors, including the U.S., according to the report.

Why did ATT kill its DEI programs?

Congressional Insider -  AT&T’s recent decision to terminate all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs has ignited a national debate regarding corporate motives and the evolving landscape of American business values. Citing a shift towards merit-based policies, the telecommunications giant made its announcement concurrently with seeking crucial FCC approval for major transactions. This move, which mirrors a broader industry trend influenced by the Trump administration’s anti-DEI stance, raises critical questions: Is this a genuine policy overhaul or a strategic maneuver to satisfy federal regulators while preserving some internal inclusion efforts?

Maryland's free bus service

Truthout  - The largest free bus program in Maryland by ridership is in Montgomery County, a suburb north of Washington, D.C. Montgomery County first made its “Ride On” buses free to all riders under 18 in 2019. Then on June 29, 2025, it made all of its buses fare-free for all passengers. The system has a fleet of nearly 400 buses, 80 routes, and provided 19.2 million rides in the 2025 fiscal year. In the three months since free fares were instituted, ridership has increased by 5.4 percent.

Word

Via Robert Hubbell  

 

Trump regime

The Hollywood Reporter -   If it’s not one thing at the Kennedy Center these days, it’s another. Even before Democrats opened an investigation into alleged “cronyism and self-dealing,” the Trump-era leadership was already fending off reports of plummeting ticket sales and internal dysfunction. Now add a fresh headache: Several artists say the center has been stiffing them on their fees.

Representatives for three performers tell THR they’re still waiting on checks months after their shows. Veteran booking agent Wayne Forte — whose roster includes the Tedeschi Trucks Band and former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett — says two of his developing acts, Ashes & Arrows and Brazilian guitarist Lari Basilio, played the Millennium Stage back in September and have yet to see a dime. The Kennedy Center staffer who handled their bookings was let go in October, Forte says, and efforts to reach a replacement apparently have gone nowhere. 

The role of arts in medical healing

Arts Journal -  There was a report from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) last month .... concerning the power of the arts literally to heal. 

Across Canada, these issues have been in play for years. In the CBC report, for example, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra has partnered with Médecins francophones du Canada to allow doctors to prescribe the symphony as medicine to “reduce loneliness, improve health outcomes, ease the burden on the healthcare system, and build much-needed trust between doctors and their patients.”

 “Physicians will give prescriptions to patients. The patients will call us. We give each patient that calls us two tickets, free of charge. And they can select the concert they want.” - Mélanie La Couture, CEO of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra 

 ... It’s important to lean on the doctors and scientists to make the call on the power of music to heal the body. It’s important (and more impressive) to society-at-large when an arts organization chooses to bring people out of their self-imposed isolation chambers and electronic mind-control machines with activities prescribed by those same doctors and scientists.

Your arts organization can do this, too. Actually, it should. Regardless of your financial strengths or weakness (whether you’re swimming in cash or holding a going out of business sale), this is a way to prove to your community that you can help them. To some, it will be a revelation that your company might not be a toxic luxury for the rich, but indispensable to all. 

The Somalis in Lewston, Maine

Kathleen Sullivan - How did you feel reader, when you read a few days ago what that nasty man called the President said about our Somali population? When he called them “garbage” and said they were destroying our country and wanted them sent “back to where they came from?” Or when Vice President JD Vance banged the table in agreement and the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called his remarks “amazing” and an “epic moment?”….

The city of Lewiston [Maine] has a large population of Somali immigrants. I did a little research about how the Somalis in Lewiston are being treated and what I discovered gives me hope and helps me to refocus on the good that exists in the world…

The very good news is that in the last twenty years, by all accounts, the city has successfully begun to address racism and discrimination. Several organizations and political leaders support the Wabanaki and French Canadians who were once so vilely treated. Stories are being told. Art is being made. Music is being played. Many Franco Americans and Wabanaki in Maine are reclaiming with pride, and now without fear, their heritage.

When the Somali’s fleeing civil war, drought and famine first arrived in Lewiston in the early 2,000, things did not go well. The mayor at the time, Laurier T. Raymond Jr.’s, addressed a letter to the Somali community asking them to stop coming and to stop bringing their families. In 2003 a white supremacist group hosted a rally in support of Raymond Jr.’s request. The governor, John Baldacci, attended that rally. But a rally in support of the Somali population was organized at Bates College and over 4, 000 people attended. Only 39 attended the white supremacist rally.

In the twenty years since that time, Lewiston has, by all accounts proven to be a model city for immigration. In August 2010, the Lewiston Sun Journal reported that Somali entrepreneurs had helped reinvigorate downtown Lewiston by opening dozens of shops in previously closed storefronts. Amicable relations were also reported by local merchants of French-Canadian descent and Somali storekeepers.

Earlier this year I was fortunate to have been in a group of women who came together to consider how we could respond to the harms of this administration. There I met Catherine Besteman, a professor of anthropology at Colby College and a lifelong advocate for social justice…

I contacted Catherine a few days ago. She told me that the Somalis’ have formed strong organizations of advocacy and support for the community. “I guess I would just offer that the Somali community IS the Lewiston community now. They are elected officials, small business owners, EDs of organizations, college students, nurses and doctors and pharmacists, farmers who provide a TON of food to local food banks, and much, much more.”

In a piece in the Christian Science Monitor she had this to say: “These small American towns are being transformed quietly without ruckus or violence – they are stories we don’t pay attention to…. When people are screaming and fighting about immigration, they aren’t looking at places like Lewiston and saying, ‘Huh, this is working.”

Take that Donald Trump, JD Vance, Karoline Leavitt.

 

Meanwhile. . .

The Hill  Rep. Adelita Grijalva says ‘very aggressive’ ICE agent pepper-sprayed her during Tuscon raid

 

Brian Allen - The Trump administration has quietly removed MLK Day and Juneteenth from the list of national holidays that grant free entry to U.S. national parks and replaced them with Trump’s own birthday.  

With Mortgage Rates Declining, Should You Refinance?

Polls

 Pew Research 

• Americans are following the news less closely than they used to 
• 55% of Americans say most people can be trusted, while 44% say the opposite. Across 25 countries, public trust ranges from 83% in Sweden to 14% in Turkey. 
• Americans’ trust in one another | How connected do people feel to their neighbors.

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Via Quienton

The US city with the worst traffic

Independent,UK -  Chicago has the worst traffic in America, according to a new analysis, overtaking the previous year’s number one, New York City.  Drivers in the Windy City lost at least 112 hours a year in traffic on average, up 10 percent from the previous year and more than double the U.S. average of 49 hours lost to congestion, according to this year’s Global Traffic Scorecard report from transportation metrics firm INRIX.