In a sweeping move that halts billions in spending, President Trump’s administration has frozen the Department of Energy’s (DOE) activities pending a comprehensive review of its alignment with his priorities. According to a memo from acting Energy Secretary Ingrid Kolb, the freeze affects grants, loans, procurement, studies, and even personnel decisions, effectively bringing the agency’s $50 billion budget to a standstill.
Beyond bureaucratic tinkering, the halt is a direct shot at dismantling Biden-era climate policies. The DOE’s Loan Programs Office, holding $41.2 billion in conditional commitments to energy technology companies, now finds its purse strings tightly cinched. Other critical missions, like nuclear waste cleanup and maintenance of emergency crude reserves, are similarly on pause.
The order mirrors an earlier Trump directive freezing funds tied to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and a bipartisan infrastructure law, both of which allocated billions for clean energy initiatives. Trump, who has championed fossil fuels as a cornerstone of his energy policy, has made it clear that climate-focused spending is no longer a federal priority.
The Interior Department issued a similar freeze on wind and solar project leases on federal lands and waters.
While the Trump administration’s goal is to “unleash” American energy by cutting red tape, critics argue that freezing investments in innovative technologies jeopardizes long-term energy security. For now, the DOE and the clean energy sector are left in limbo pending the results of a review that could redefine the nation’s energy landscape.
While critics—including US oil companies—have highlighted Trump’s seemingly contradictory approach to oil markets: pressuring OPEC to lower global oil prices while promoting a “drill, baby, drill” mantra domestically, his regulatory rollbacks and anti-renewable agenda appear to be a bone tossed to U.S. oil companies, clearing the way for fossil fuel development and potentially boosting their bottom lines, even as global oil dynamics remain a tug-of-war.
The Trump administration’s energy strategy is trying to walk a fine line between prioritizing American energy independence and responding to market realities.
Nuclear energy stocks are experiencing a resurgence due to increased demand from AI and data centers.
The Trump administration’s $500 billion AI infrastructure venture further boosted nuclear stocks.
Nuclear power is seen as a solution to meet the growing energy demands of AI and data centers while reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Over the past couple of years, the nuclear energy sector has enjoyed a renaissance in the U.S. and many western countries thanks to the global energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, high power demand and nuclear’s status as a low-carbon energy source. Uranium demand has soared thanks to a series of policy “U-turns” with governments from Japan to Germany revising plans to phase out nuclear power. Uranium spot prices hit an all-time high of $81.32 per pound in February, double the level 12 months prior. According to the World Nuclear Association, demand from reactors is expected to climb 28% by 2030, and nearly double by 2040. Not surprisingly, the sector’s popular benchmark, VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NYSEARCA:NLR), recently hit an all-time high.
However, last month, nuclear energy stocks started pulling back sharply, mostly because the sector was seriously overheating. One of the biggest losers was NuScale Power Corp. (NYSE:SMR), with the stock crashing nearly 30% in a matter of weeks. The selloff kicked off after the company disclosed an agreement with several brokerage firms in which the company may offer and sell from time to time as much as $200M in common stock. NuScale says proceeds from the sale will be used for general corporate purposes, including operating expenses, capital expenditures, R&D costs and working capital. NuScale is a developer of modular light water reactor nuclear power plants. Small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) are advanced nuclear reactors with power capacities that range from 50-300 MW(e) per unit, compared to 700+ MW(e) per unit for traditional nuclear power reactors.
Thankfully, nuclear stocks are on fire again after President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a $500 billion joint venture with Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL), OpenAI, and SoftBank (OTCPK:SFTBY) to build AI infrastructure in the U.S. The companies have pledged to commit $100 billion to start, and as much as $500 billion over the next four years toward the initiative, with Trump calling it “largest AI infrastructure project in history.” OpenAI, ChatGPT maker, said it expects the project, called Stargate, to help support American leadership in AI, and that it could create “hundreds of thousands” of jobs in the U.S. Other tech giants including Nvidia Corp.(NASDAQ:NVDA) Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)) and Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM) are also expected to be technology partners in the project.
NuScale stock has rocketed 1,175% over the past 12 months; Oklo Inc. (NYSE:OKLO), which is backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has surged 299%, Vistra Corp. (NYSE:VST) has soared 386% while Centrus Energy (NYSE:LEU) has jumped 73% over the timeframe.
Meanwhile, shares of Nano Nuclear Energy (NASDAQ:NNE) have jumped 1,017% since its May 2024 IPO. The shares made further gains on Thursday after the company was awarded patents related to its designs for a modular transportable nuclear generator. Nano Nuclear is developing ZEUS, a solid core battery reactor, and ODIN, a low-pressure salt coolant reactor.
Yet another big mover is Baltimore, Maryland-based Constellation Energy Corporation (NASDAQ:CEG), a power utility that sells natural gas, energy-related products, and sustainable solutions. CEG shares have soared 200% over the past 52 weeks. The company owns approximately 33,094 megawatts of generating capacity consisting of nuclear, wind, solar, natural gas, and hydroelectric assets.
Long-Term Bullish
The big nuclear rally kicked off last year after NuScale signed an agreement with Standard Power to supply the data center provider with SMRs. Standard Power–a developer of modular data centers–will use NuScale Power’s power solutions at two separate sites, where up to 12 SMRs (at each site) would be used to provide power for new data centers. Suddenly, the market took note of SMRs as a viable solution for data centers struggling to keep up with surging power demands by artificial intelligence (AI) computing. The International Energy Agency has projected that global data center electricity consumption will jump from 460 terawatt-hours in 2022 to 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2026.
The long-term outlook for the nuclear sector remains bullish, with nuclear power expected to meet surging AI demand and lower greenhouse gas emissions. According to Goldman Sachs, escalating electricity needs from running AI data centers will generate downstream investment opportunities that will benefit utilities, renewable energy generation, and industrial sectors. The investment bank has forecast that data center power demand will grow at 15% compound annual growth rate from 2023-2030, with data centers consuming 8% of total U.S. electricity output at the end of the forecast period compared to ~3% currently. Analysts estimate that ~47 GW of additional power generation capacity will be required to meet the growth in U.S. data center power demand by 2030.
Last year, a total of 34 countries, including the U.S., pledged to increasingly deploy nuclear power to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) report Electricity 2024, nuclear power generation is forecast to reach an all-time high globally in 2025, exceeding the previous record set in 2021 as new reactors begin commercial operations in multiple markets, including China, India, South Korea, and Europe; output from France climbs and several plants in Japan are restarted.
President Donald Trump announced the $500 billion AI project, Stargate, earlier this week.
Stargate’s first data center is under construction in Abilene, Texas, said Oracle CTO Larry Ellison.
Public filings for an Abilene development matching Ellison’s description shed some light on costs.
Construction on what appears to be two buildings on Stargate’s first data center campus, now underway in Texas, is expected to be complete by the end of the year and cost an estimated $1.1 billion, according to public filings.
President Donald Trump announced the formation of Stargate, a joint venture between Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank, at a White House press conference on Tuesday. He pledged to spend $500 billion building AI data centers in the US.
Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison, who joined Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son at the briefing, said the first Stargate data centers are currently being built in Abilene, Texas.
“We’ve been working with OpenAI for a while and Masa for a while. The data centers are actually under construction — the first of them are under construction in Texas,” said Ellison. “Each building is a half million square feet. There are 10 buildings currently being built, but that will expand to 20 and other locations beyond the Abilene location, which is our first location.”
Little else has been revealed about Stargate. Registration forms filed with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation for a data center development in Abilene matching Ellison’s description of Stargate give some insight into the cost of building the data centers.
The development is registered with the TDLR under the name “Project Ludicrous,” located at an address attached to the Lancium Clean Campus — a 1,000-acre site in Abilene owned by energy tech company Lancium. The owner of Project Ludicrous is listed as Abilene DC 1 LLC, an affiliate of data center development startup Crusoe. According to the Texas state comptroller’s records, Oracle is the occupant of the data center owned by Abilene DC 1, LLC, located at the Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene. A Texas-based Oracle employee is also listed as the tenant contact for Project Ludicrous in the TDLR filings.
Between July and December 2024, agents for Project Ludicrous filed four different TDLR filings for two buildings.
Construction on the first building, a 482,000-square-foot one-story “data hall” estimated to cost $292 million, began in June 2024 and is scheduled to be completed by May 30, 2025. The estimate also includes plans for a guard house, fire pump building, and mechanical and electrical enclosures. A second filing for the building, made in September, indicates that tenant improvements costing $140 million began in December and are expected to be completed by September 15, 2025.
A second building registered under Project Ludicrous, a 484,960-square-foot “1-story data center” with a cost estimate of $292 million, went under construction in September and is expected to be completed in one year, the filings said. Tenant improvements, expected to begin in March and be completed by December 24, are estimated at $384 million.
The San Antonio Express-News previously reported on these filings.
Lancium, the landowner, first struck a development deal with the city of Abilene in 2021 for what it calls the Lancium Clean Campus. The site was initially meant to power bitcoin mines with renewable energy generation, although that never came to fruition.
In November, Crusoe announced plans for a $3.4 billion data center development on the Lancium Clean Campus and said it had already fully leased the space to a “Fortune 100 hyperscale tenant,” with occupancy expected to begin in the first half of 2025.
The Information first reported Oracle’s plans to lease a data center site in Texas from Crusoe, intending to eventually rent servers to OpenAI.
In a post on its website, OpenAI said that the Stargate “buildout is currently underway, starting in Texas, and we are evaluating potential sites across the country for more campuses as we finalize definitive agreements.”
“Lancium is excited to be building its Lancium Clean Campus in Abilene, Texas, in partnership with Crusoe and the Development Corporation of Abilene (DCOA) and to be at the forefront of the growth of the AI infrastructure industry in the US,” a spokesperson for Lancium wrote in response to a request for comment from Business Insider. The spokesperson said the company could not “provide any new commentary about Abilene or any of our other Clean Campuses.”
Oracle, OpenAI, and Crusoe did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Source: Contact Ellen Thomas via the secure messaging app Signal at +1-929-524-6964.
ENB Pub Note: The New York legislators and Gov Hochul are not looking at things in a “what is best for my constituents” type of model. This article points out that this will trigger a mass exodus, or in my opinion, speed up the exodus of businesses and tax-paying consumers leaving New York. We just have to watch what is happening in real-time in the EU, UK, Germany, and California to see that New York will be failing with the same green policies.
Albany’s rainmakers have found a new way to shower cash into the state’s dwindling coffers.
The day after Christmas, Gov. Hochul signed Bill S2129A into law, deputizing the Department of Environmental Conservation to fine fossil fuel companies billions of dollars for past greenhouse gas emissions.
The money will go into a Climate Change Slush — er, “superfund” that will be used, ostensibly, to prepare for and manage adverse weather events, like floods.
Sponsored by five Senate Democrats — Liz Krueger (28th Senate District) Joe Addabbo (15th), Neil Breslin (46th), Jabari Brisport (25th), and Samra Brouk (55th) — and following on the heels of a law Vermont passed last year, the Climate Change Superfund will retroactively levy a fee on firms that “engaged in the trade or business of extracting fossil fuel or refining crude oil” during a “covered period” from Jan. 1, 2000 to Dec. 31, 2018; that exceeded 1 billion metric tons of emissions; and that sold their products into the Empire State — big foreign producers like China National Petroleum Company and Rosneft needn’t worry.
The scheme sets a target of $75 billion to be collected from such firms over a 25-year period. From that (arbitrary) dollar starting point the scheme will portion a “cost recovery demand” to the big American energy players that constitute the “responsible parties” based on their historic emissions tallies. Where will the money go?
As Manhattan Institute legal fellow and cities director John Ketcham has pointed out, the fund will dole out cash to well-connected trade unions working on infrastructure projects, “disadvantaged” communities, and special interest groups under a system of “poorly defined preferentialism.”
The new scheme styles itself in the fashion of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s 1980 superfund law, but bears little resemblance to that law in reality.
The EPA superfund holds polluters liable for the direct environmental damage they have caused by releasing hazardous waste — harms that are specified, local, particular, and attributable.
Big oil companies could be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars for past fossil fuel pollution.Getty Images
The climate superfund idea simply slaps retroactive fees onto a group of companies that sold products the state no longer views favorably. While in aggregate global fossil fuel use has amplified the greenhouse effect, these companies have emitted just a sliver of the world’s total.
The state can’t credibly say Company X’s emissions caused damage Y, which is why it’s not troubling itself with this necessary specificity.
The scheme doesn’t even hold the decision-makers from the “covered period” accountable; it is today’s company shareholders who are on the hook.
In the end, these companies’ customers, the everyday users of fossil fuel products, will bear the cost of the superfund in the form of higher prices on heating bills, at the gas pump, and on all the myriad goods to which oil and natural gas contribute.
The Climate Change Superfund is a carbon tax shorn of economic logic. At least a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system levied fair and square across an economy would give emitters an incentive to abate emissions.
That the state’s time-machine taxation targets only firms with a legal tie to New York sets an obvious and different incentive: to flee.
Fossil fuel companies, the alcoholic beverage industry, Big Tech, and anyone else in a line of business that might find itself afoul of the public mood now have reason to consider leaving the state.
The retroactive nature of the law will sow deep concern about the state’s commitment to the rule of law itself.
The practices in which so-called responsible parties engaged were entirely above board and they have not been found liable for any particular harm. In a very real sense, “cost recovery demand” is a euphemism for the expropriation of justly earned profit.
Russian oil firm Rosneft is another major petroleum producer that could also be hit at the bottom line by the new law.SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Though signed into law, what happens now with the superfund remains uncertain. On paper, Gov. Hochul is required to publish a report providing compliance guidance for companies before the end of April and companies are required to begin paying their bills next year. In practice, challenges in federal court are sure to draw out the process.
At issue is whether states like New York, Vermont, and Hawaii can impose liability on interstate and international greenhouse gas emissions or are preempted by the US Clean Air Act.
Regardless of what the courts say, though, New York has made it clear to businesses that the state isn’t worthy of trust. Meant to mitigate flood damage, the Climate Change Superfund will prompt an exodus.
Jordan McGillis (@jordanmcgillis) is the economics editor of City Journal.
New Delhi’s role as a counterweight to China solidifies its status as Washington’s’ key partner in South Asia, outweighing short-term concerns over Russian oil revenues
The year 2025 had barely started when the outgoing Joe Biden administration presented a belated ‘holiday gift’ to Russian oil exporters. Washington announced a new sanctions package – the “most significant” yet, according to US officials.
This time, it affected Russian oil giants Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz. These companies already face restrictions on access to American financing and technology, but now it seems that the US and UK are about to impose more severe sanctions on the Russian oil giants.
The sanctions target 183 vessels – primarily the so-called “shadow fleet” tankers that transport Russian oil – as well as support vessels. According to US estimates, these vessels carry about one-third of Russia’s oil exports, and this move is intended to suffocate Russian oil producers. While this will likely trigger a surge in oil prices, US and EU authorities believe they can hold out until prices stabilize and decline.
India, one of the key purchasers of Russian oil, swiftly responded to the announcement. A senior Indian official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Bloomberg that state-owned refineries will no longer process oil brought in by sanctioned tankers. They are negotiating with alternative suppliers from the Middle East and considering other strategies to avoid secondary US sanctions.
This situation is certainly concerning, but how critical is it?
Indian politicians often use Bloomberg as a means of conveying their intentions to overseas partners. Right after the price cap on Russian oil was implemented, Bloomberg quoted another high-ranking Indian official who claimed that although India wouldn’t officially join the “price cap,” it would unofficially adhere to the restrictions.
The current sanctions package demonstrated that there wasn’t much truth behind those words: tankers from the “shadow fleet” were sanctioned precisely because they transported oil purchased in violation of the price cap. It appears that India is sending a similar message this time, attempting to reassure the US – at least until US President Donald Trump’s new administration clarifies its stance on sanctions and in general on relations with Russia.
New Delhi and Moscow have plenty of ways to navigate around sanctions. The very concept of a “shadow fleet” allows for significant flexibility when it comes to flags, ownership of vessels, and operators (and sometimes even the use of AIS transponders). Moreover, India has a number of private oil refineries, and there are serious doubts about whether the US will actually impose sanctions on both government-owned Indian companies and the oil tycoons closely aligned with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The main concern isn’t even the potential spike in oil prices for European consumers – the stability of European economies isn’t exactly a top concern for the US. In the eyes of the Washington elites, India remains the most valuable partner in South Asia, as its mere existence complicates China’s economic and political expansion. Therefore, the Americans are unlikely to risk their relationship with New Delhi just to temporarily reduce Moscow’s oil revenue.
The real question is how long India is willing to keep circumventing these sanctions. After the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict, New Delhi faced intense pressure from the US and EU, which urged it to align with other Western democracies, condemn Russia, and cut off all cooperation with it.
At that time, Indian diplomats managed to deftly navigate these pressures – largely because neither the Americans nor the Europeans were ready to sever ties with such an important partner – and waited for tempers in the West to cool down and politicians to realize that India’s neutral stance, along with that of some other countries, helps the global economy function as a unified system, even if it comes with certain challenges. This position allowed India to secure a steady supply of inexpensive petroleum products and a modest flow of technology and investments from Russia.
However, recently, New Delhi has increasingly signaled its willingness to act as a peacemaker. Under these circumstances, India’s stance on sanctions may eventually change.
This article was first published by the magazine Profile and was translated and edited by the RT team
The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
The entrepreneur has reaffirmed his support for the right-wing Alternative for Germany party ahead of the February vote
The SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk expressed his “full support” for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) at a campaign rally held by the party in the city of Halle on Saturday. The US-based billionaire called on party backers to “go all out” to convince Germans to vote for AfD, arguing that the upcoming snap parliamentary elections could be key for the future not only of Germany but of the world.
The tech entrepreneur addressed the crowd that gathered for the event in Halle via video link. The party chose the central German city for its opening election campaign rally, which was attended by party co-leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, who is also the AfD candidate for chancellor. Some 4,500 people joined the event, according to AP.
“This election is extremely important. I do not say it lightly when I think the future of civilization could hang on this election,” Musk told the cheering crowd. “I think it could decide the entire fate of Europe, maybe the fate of the world.”
The businessman has said he was convinced that people in Germany wanted “something different” from what they have had over the past decade. Voting for the AfD was the only way to bring about this much-desired change, he stated, calling on party supporters to do everything possible to convince their “friends and family” to join them, one person at a time.
Musk also praised the policies proposed by the AfD as the “common sense” ones and compared them to the approach advocated by US President Donald Trump. The businessman emerged as Trump’s close advisor during the latter’s election campaign last year. “You have my full support,” he told the rally, adding that the AfD seeks to get “government out of people’s ways” and give “people back personal freedom” and protect them from “dangers.”
The right-wing party has long been known for its harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric, with many German media outlets referring to it as far-right. Until recently, all other major German political parties refused to cooperate with AfD. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), however, recently said that he would be willing to accept AfD support for his own party’s immigration policy proposals, even if it would be the only other political group to back them.
Musk has been active in his support for AfD over the past months. In December, he called it the only party capable of “saving Germany” and praised its anti-immigration stance while calling German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “incompetent fool.”
Earlier in January, the businessman also hosted a livestream with Weidel on his social media platform X, reiterating that “only AfD can save Germany.” The livestream was closely monitored by some 150 EU officials and technical specialists as Brussels suspected it could give the right-wing party an “unfair advantage” ahead of the February 23 vote.
Musk’s activities have provoked unease in Berlin. Scholz had previously accused the SpaceX and Tesla CEO of seeking attention online and urged people to not “feed the troll.” Later, he also called him a “threat” to democracy and stated that although people in Germany and Europe enjoy freedom of speech, it cannot be used to support “extreme-right positions.”
On Saturday, Musk accused the German government of “suppressing [free] speech very aggressively” and said that “true democracy” is impossible under such circumstances.
The DOGE people in the Trump administration are considering shedding a big portion of the massive office space that the government owns or leases nationwide, managed by the General Services Administration (GSA), including selling two-thirds of the office space the government owns and terminating three-quarters of the leased office space, according to the WSJ.
Much of this office space is vacant or underused and poorly maintained due to lack of funding, according to GSA testimony before Congress in 2023, cited by the WSJ, which further noted:
“A recent report from Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa who chairs the Senate DOGE caucus, found that not one of the headquarters for any major agency or department in Washington is more than half full. GSA-owned buildings in Washington, D.C., average about a 12% occupancy rate. The government owns more than 7,500 vacant buildings across the country, and more than 2,200 that are partially empty.”
The office sector is already in a depression, with default rates that exceed those during the worst moments of the Financial Crisis. Putting this inventory on the market for sale is going to weigh on the already collapsed prices of older office buildings – prices of 50-70% below the last sale before the pandemic are now common.
And terminating leases is going to stress office buildings, their landlords, and their lenders even more, likely entailing more defaults and foreclosure sales. This is a much needed but very bitter medicine to alleviate government waste.
What office landlords and their lenders are facing.
Here we look at the leased office space, where those buildings are, and what portion of the leased space the GSA has the right to terminate in 2025, and also through 2028 (Trump 2.0), based on an analysis from Trepp, which tracks commercial real estate debt and CMBS.
GSA leases 149 million square feet (msf) of office space around the US.
GSA pays $5.2 billion in annual rent to private-sector landlords.
Through 2028, GSA has the right to terminate 53.1 msf of leases, or 35.5% of its leased space, spread over 2,532 properties.
In 2025, GSA has termination rights on 21.2 msf spread over more than 1,000 properties,
If GSA terminates all possible leases during Trump 2.0, it would save the government $1.87 billion in annual rent after 2028.
In the vast Washington DC metro, GSA leases nearly 10% of the entire office market, 35.8 msf in 446 buildings, and can terminate 9.6 msf of that in 2025.
In the Washington D.C. metro, GSA currently pays $1.47 billion in annual rent.
GSA leases nearly 6% of the office space in the Kansas City metro (DoD, USPS, Treasury, VA, and USDA), 4.3 msf, of which it can terminate 1.0 msf in 2025.
Here are the top 10 metros in terms of government office space. GSA leases 66.3 msf of office space in them and has termination rights in 2025 on 18.9 msf (28.5%):
Metropolitan area
Number of buildings
Office space msf
% of total market
Annual Rent, Million $
Space with termination rights in 2025, msf
Washington DC
446
35.8
9.7%
$1,470
9.59
New York City
223
5.0
0.7%
$249
1.53
Hagerstown-Martinsburg
60
4.8
N/A
$210
1.58
Kansas City
78
4.3
5.8%
$99
1.03
Philadelphia
124
3.0
2.9%
$97
0.71
Atlanta
90
3.0
1.9%
$68
1.35
Los Angeles
168
3.0
1.0%
$134
1.04
Dallas-Fort Worth
86
2.8
1.4%
$82
0.57
Chicago
113
2.4
1.0%
$92
0.93
Denver
74
2.3
2.3%
$77
0.58
Total
1,462
66.3
$2,576
18.9
Office CRE would be stressed enough without this.
The office sector of commercial real estate is in a depression, and office debt just keeps getting worse: The delinquency rate of office mortgages across the US that have been securitized into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) spiked to a record 11% at the end of 2024, blowing by the Financial Crisis peak, having exploded over the past 24 months from an everything-is-just-fine 1.6% at the end of 2022, to a disastrous 11.0% at the end of 2024.
The motto in 2024 was “survive till 2025” via extend-and-pretend. But now it’s 2025, and here comes the government’s vacant office space.
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The Russian leader believes the Ukraine conflict might have been avoided if Donald Trump had become US president in 2020
Russian president Vladimir Putin has said the 2020 US presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump, and that had the Republican won, the Ukraine conflict might have been avoided.
“I cannot disagree with him that if he had been president, if his victory hadn’t been stolen in 2020, perhaps the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022 wouldn’t have happened,” Putin has said in an interview published by Russia 1 TV journalist Pavel Zarubin on Telegram on Friday.
In 2023 Trump claimed to American radio host Hugh Hewitt that the Ukraine conflict would never have begun if the 2020 US elections hadn’t been “rigged” and Joe Biden hadn’t replaced him in there Oval Office.
“[Putin] would have never done it if the election weren’t rigged, our election. It was rigged and stolen. If that election wasn’t rigged, if I were president, you would right now have millions of people living that are dead,” according to an interview transcript.
Trump has never admitted that he lost the 2020 election, despite courts failing to find evidence of widespread voter fraud. He eventually stepped down as president after a crowd of his supporters stormed the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, interrupting the certification of Biden’s victory.
The Democrats accused Trump of inciting the riot and impeached him in 2021. Trump has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the accusations as a “witch hunt.”
He has consistently alleged the 2020 election was blighted by irregularities, and that he lost despite winning 10 million more votes than Biden.
Hours after he was sworn in for his second term Trump pardoned around 1,500 people involved in the storming of the Capitol building. He described the defendants as patriots and hostages, insisting that their prosecution was politically motivated.
The incident looks like a “textbook example” of a scheme used to punish dissenting governments in the West, Slovakia’s Robert Fico has claimed
A massive cyberattack targeting Slovakia’s state General Health Insurance Company (VSZP) was orchestrated by foreign forces that were also active in Ukraine during the 2014 Maidan coup, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Foco has claimed.
Speaking at a joint news conference with the country’s Health Minister Kamil Sasko on Friday, Fico claimed the operation sought to paralyze the nation’s healthcare system.
The attack involved a “huge number of attempts to obtain sensitive information from the VSZP,” including patients’ personal data, the prime minister said. If successful, it could disrupt the operation of the healthcare system on a nationwide scale, he warned. Administration of drugs to cancer and cardiology patients could be affected, according to Slovak media reports.
Sasko stated that the VSZP was able to withstand the attack, which began on Friday afternoon, adding that both the insurance firm and the National Health Information Centre (NCZI) were “in crisis mode” and being closely monitored by the authorities.
Fico branded the incident a “textbook example” of a scheme used to punish a “disobedient government that has a different view on some things.” The prime minister has long been a staunch critic of the EU’s approach to the Ukraine conflict.
Fico has also refused to provide arms to Kiev and called for the conflict with Russia to be resolved through negotiations instead.
The prime minister has also called for dialogue with Russia and pledged to attend the 80th anniversary WWII Victory Day celebrations in Moscow this year, expressing his commitment to honoring the sacrifices of the Red Army and the Soviet people in defeating Axis powers.
Most recently, Fico clashed with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky over Kiev’s refusal to extend a natural gas transit agreement with Russia after it expired late last year.
Fico linked the Friday attack to a similar incident targeting the national information system of the Geodesy, Cartography and Cadaster Office, which faced a significant cyberattack last week. A few days after the incident, the nation’s interior ministry suggested that it could have been orchestrated from Ukraine, a Slovak ‘Pravda’ news media outlet reported.
The group involved in both attacks was also active in Georgia and in Ukraine, particularly during the 2014 Maidan coup, the prime minister claimed.
Earlier this week, Fico warned about a group of operatives supposedly plotting a coup in Slovakia. Citing a confidential report compiled by the Slovak Information Service (SIS) intelligence agency, Fico said that the group was “strictly monitored.” The country’s opposition has dismissed the report as a compilation of “conspiracy theories.”
The Bank of England said government climate requirements issued by the UK govt. are hindering efforts to boost economic growth.
The Bank of England should be freed from burdensome net zero rules to help grow the economy, Rachel Reeves has been told. [emphasis, links added]
Sam Woods, the head of the Bank’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA), said the thicket of climate requirements imposed by Westminster was impeding efforts to boost growth.
In a letter to the Chancellor and Sir Keir Starmer, Mr. Woods said the requirement for the Bank to “have regard” for dozens of different “climate and the environment” issues made it harder to encourage risk-taking in the City and take a more light-touch approach to regulation.
The Bank of England’s main instructions from the Government are to keep inflation at 2pc and maintain a stable financial system.
However, the Government can also advise the central bank to “have regard” for other issues when making decisions. This means the issues covered by the notices have to be factored into decision-making.
“The number of principles that the PRA is required to ‘have regard’ to has substantially increased in recent years, increasing the complexity of the analysis required when making or amending regulation. Depending on how they are counted, the PRA currently has around 25 such ‘have regards’.
“There is scope to rationalize some of these ‘have regards’ where they form a cluster, for instance in the set of ‘have regards’ which relate to climate and the environment.”
For example, the Prudential Regulation Committee, which effectively governs the PRA and on which Mr. Woods serves, must “have regard to … leading the world in sustainable finance, including by unlocking the full potential of the financial services sector to fund the green transition.”
Requirements to focus on climate change ramped up under the Conservatives in the era of Governor Mark Carney before being cut back under Jeremy Hunt, the last Tory chancellor.
