Plugged in, checked out: The Dept. of Energy needs a reality surge



The Department of Energy needs a complete overhaul.

Congress established the DOE in 1977 in response to the 1973 oil crisis, consolidating a patchwork of energy-related programs under one roof. The department took over the management of nuclear programs, national research labs, and a variety of alternative energy efforts. Its 2025 budget tops $50 billion. It supports 14,000 employees and a staggering 95,000 contractors across 83 field locations.

The Department of Government Efficiency should scrutinize the DOE’s effectiveness like any other federal agency. But this department demands a different kind of review. The issue isn’t just waste or mismanagement. It’s mission.

Energy is the lifeblood of any advanced society. The DOE should pursue one overriding goal: making America energy-independent with a long-term strategy for cheap, abundant power. That’s not what it’s doing.

Yes, the energy sector should remain a free-market enterprise. But it’s also a national asset. Energy production and distribution are essential to American sovereignty, economic security, and global influence. That makes the DOE more than just another bloated bureaucracy — it’s a strategic liability unless restructured with purpose.

If the DOE can’t define that purpose, the DOGE must.

Rapid population growth, AI, crypto mining, robotics, and automation will all drive explosive demand for electricity.

One of the department’s core missions should be to secure American energy independence. This is not just good policy — it’s a national security imperative.

Wars are won or lost based on the ability to fuel military and industrial operations. If America can’t meet its own energy needs, it risks becoming dependent on hostile regimes that can — and will — weaponize energy supplies against us.

Previous administrations have sabotaged this mission. The DOE should not focus on environmental goals like reducing carbon emissions. Those objectives often conflict with the department’s strategic purpose. “Climate change” is not a scientific certainty — it’s an ideological construct. Sea levels have risen 400 feet over the past 20,000 years, submerging the ruins of countless ancient civilizations, and none of that was caused by human industry.

Yet the Energy Department continues to throw billions at preventing a hypothetical sea rise of just a few feet — this time supposedly caused by human activity. That’s not just wasteful; it’s dangerously off mission. Nearly 40% of recent DOE budgets have gone to renewables and carbon capture. That funding should be powering the country — not chasing climate fantasies.

It’s absurd. America holds vast fossil fuel reserves — thanks to innovations like hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling — that can provide cheap, reliable energy. These resources can make us energy-independent and globally competitive. The DOE should clear the way for fossil fuel extraction and pipeline construction, starting with permitting on federal lands and aggressive deregulation.

At the same time, the department should end all spending on alternative energy development — except nuclear.

The free market, not the federal government, should drive innovation. The DOE needs to stop subsidizing every corner of the energy industry, fossil fuels included. Government handouts distort markets, discourage competition, and reward political connections instead of performance. Cronyism, fraud, and corporate capture follow wherever subsidies go. A healthy, well-capitalized U.S. energy sector doesn’t need government favors — it needs government to get out of the way. Let consumers, not bureaucrats, decide the winners.

To sharpen its focus, the Department of Energy must shed every responsibility not central to its mission. Environmental policy belongs with the Environmental Protection Agency. Government-run electricity operations, such as the Tennessee Valley Authority, should be sold to private firms.

The DOE has no business in genomics. It should transfer its Human Genome Project work elsewhere. The Pentagon — not the DOE — should manage the nuclear weapons stockpile. The department should also end its subsidies for synthetic fuels like ethanol, which distort agricultural markets and drive up food prices. Many of its remaining research functions should be reassigned to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or the National Science Foundation.

The department should also abandon appliance efficiency mandates that degrade performance, frustrate consumers, and increase costs.

It must reject the Biden administration’s bloated Green New Deal agenda, which has dragged the DOE into a fantasyland of bureaucratic overreach. The department should withdraw from the energy-related provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and related executive orders. These distractions must be repealed and the associated spending eliminated immediately.

The DOE needs to recognize the direction the world is headed: toward an electricity-dominated future. Electric vehicles are only the beginning. Rapid population growth, AI, crypto mining, robotics, and automation will all drive explosive demand for electricity. We’ll need fossil fuels to supply the grid for now — but that supply will become harder to access just as demand surges. The DOE must plan accordingly, not wander off chasing green illusions.

The coming surge in electricity demand cries out for a modern-day Manhattan Project — this time led by the Department of Energy. The DOE should lead a national effort to radically expand, modernize, and harden the electric grid. It must accelerate the development of small-scale nuclear fission reactors and push to make nuclear fusion commercially viable.

Nuclear energy — especially fusion — is clean, powerful, and virtually limitless. While the private sector should continue optimizing fossil fuel and alternative energy technologies, the DOE must draw up the blueprint for America’s energy future. It should clear regulatory obstacles that block meaningful progress.

So what should the DOGE do with the DOE? Strip away every distraction and narrow its mission to one goal: ensuring America has cheap, abundant, reliable energy. Everything else belongs on the chopping block.

Smoke-free surge stalled by feds clinging to old habits



The U.S. nicotine market is undergoing a historic shift — one that should be celebrated as a major public health breakthrough. A new Goldman Sachs report forecasts that smoke-free nicotine products will surpass cigarettes in consumption by 2025 and come close to matching them in revenue and profit by 2035.

This shift isn’t the result of government policy. It’s happening because consumers are making better choices. Yet federal regulators appear determined to stand in the way.

Nicotine may be addictive, but it isn’t what causes cancer, heart disease, or emphysema. The culprit is combustion.

The data couldn’t be clearer. Millions of smokers are abandoning cigarettes for reduced-risk products like vaping devices, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco. Cigarette sales are plummeting — from 12.9 billion packs in 2016 to a projected 2.7 billion by 2035.

This trend should give public health agencies a reason to cheer. Instead, the Food and Drug Administration is dragging its feet, imposing policies that make it harder — not easier — for adult smokers to switch to safer alternatives. The FDA’s obstruction risks slowing one of the most promising developments in decades for reducing smoking-related deaths.

Free market for the win

Despite the flood of misinformation, the market is succeeding where decades of public health campaigns have failed: It’s making cigarettes obsolete. Given the choice, consumers are ditching smoke for safer alternatives that deliver nicotine without combustion’s deadly byproducts. This isn’t just progress — it’s a landmark victory for harm reduction.

The free market deserves credit for this shift. While government anti-smoking efforts have leaned heavily on punitive tactics — higher taxes, grotesque warning labels, and outright bans — real declines in smoking have come where reduced-risk nicotine products are legal and accessible. In the United States, this transformation is unfolding not because of regulators, but in spite of them.

At the heart of the problem lies the FDA’s Pre-Market Tobacco Application process. Supposedly designed to vet new nicotine products, the PMTA system has become a bureaucratic bottleneck. It’s opaque, glacial, and unreasonably strict. The result? A legal market riddled with uncertainty — and an illegal one thriving in its place.

Today, more than 60% of e-vapor sales come from illicit, unregulated products. That’s not because consumers prefer them. It’s because the FDA has made it nearly impossible for legitimate companies to get reduced-risk products approved and onto shelves. The agency has created a regulatory vacuum — and the black market has filled it.

Federal foot-dragging

The dysfunction doesn’t stop with vaping. Heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches — both widely recognized abroad as effective harm reduction tools — face the same bureaucratic purgatory. Meanwhile, traditional cigarettes remain widely available and profitable. If public health were truly the FDA’s goal, it would fast-track reduced-risk alternatives, not prop up the very products causing the most harm.

But the FDA’s foot-dragging has real consequences. More Americans will stay hooked on cigarettes longer than they otherwise would. The data is in: Alternative nicotine products help people quit smoking. Blocking legal access to them doesn’t protect public health — it prolongs addiction and guarantees more smoking-related deaths. By stalling the shift to safer products, the FDA is effectively locking millions into a habit that kills roughly half its users.

Regulatory inertia also risks stifling competition in the industry. Cigarettes still generate 66% of industry revenue and 70% of profits. The companies leading the charge toward a smoke-free future — those that don’t sell cigarettes — face the stiffest regulatory headwinds. In effect, the government is shielding the cigarette market rather than accelerating its collapse.

A better way exists. Federal regulators could champion this shift instead of obstructing it. The FDA should fast-track approvals for products with significantly lower health risks than cigarettes. Doing so would give consumers legal access to safer options while shrinking the black market.

The public also deserves the truth. Nicotine may be addictive, but it isn’t what causes cancer, heart disease, or emphysema. The culprit is combustion. And the longer that confusion persists, the more smokers the FDA leaves behind.

Outcomes or optics?

Federal regulators should stop protecting the tobacco industry and start supporting companies that are moving the U.S. away from combustible cigarettes. That means giving independent vape makers and harm-reduction innovators a fighting chance, instead of letting Big Tobacco tighten its grip through regulatory capture.

Regulation should make cigarettes less appealing — not safer alternatives harder to get. Risk-proportionate rules would prioritize public health by nudging smokers toward lower-risk products, not driving them into the black market or back to Marlboro.

Goldman Sachs’ latest data shows the market is doing what public health campaigns never could: making smoking obsolete. If regulators got out of the way — or better yet, helped — the fall of Big Tobacco could come even faster.

Cigarettes are dying. The FDA can either help bury them or keep dragging out their final act. The question is whether public health officials care more about optics or outcomes. The market has already chosen. It’s time for the government to catch up.

Despite PR Pivot, Meta Is Still A Monopoly And A Threat To A Free Society

The FTC is not suing Meta for its past leftism or current MAGA-ism but for its longstanding, documented monopolism.

Exclusive: Republicans huddle with FCC chair in closed-door meeting to dismantle DEI, liberal media machine



House Republicans met with FCC Chair Brendan Carr and Republican Study Committee Chair Rep. August Pfluger (Texas) on Wednesday to discuss the evolving media landscape under President Donald Trump's administration.

During the closed-door meeting that Blaze News was given exclusive access to, both Pfluger and Carr addressed concerns about the liberal bias in publicly funded platforms like NPR, as well as the importance of empowering local media.

Carr, who has been an FCC commissioner since 2017, homed in on the importance of free speech and the First Amendment and also of applying existing regulations evenly rather than to advance a political agenda.

'The RSC is committed to working alongside Chairman Carr to dismantle the censorship cartel, strengthen America's digital infrastructure through free-market principles, and restore free-speech rights for everyday Americans.'

"For too long in this government, particularly the last couple of years, your last name dictated how the government treated you," Carr said. "If your last name was Soros, the commission bent over backwards and gave you a special, unprecedented commission-level shortcut to buy 200 radio stations. If your last name was Musk, then you lost $800 million contracts that you lawfully got."

"Everybody now is going to get a fair shake going forward," Carr added.

In the meeting, Carr laid out a four-step plan to reduce media bias and restore the FCC's core principles, which include reining in Big Tech censorship, reinvigorating trust in national and local media, putting forward both economic and permitting reforms, and bolstering aspects of our national security.

With the support of Pfluger and RSC members, Carr is confident that he can accomplish these directives.

"We thank Chairman Carr for his bold leadership in confronting malign influences like George Soros that corrupt our media and silence conservative voices, and the committee fully supports his efforts to restore truth to our public disclosure while expanding broadband access to rural communities," Pfluger said.

"The RSC is committed to working alongside Chairman Carr to dismantle the censorship cartel, strengthen America's digital infrastructure through free-market principles, and restore free-speech rights for everyday Americans," Pfluger added.

Carr also spoke about some of the reforms he has already enacted. Prior to his becoming chair, Carr noted, DEI was the second-most highly prioritized core value of the FCC. Since then, Trump has issued an executive order uprooting DEI from all federal entities, and the FCC has followed suit.

"We've ended the FCC promotion of DEI," Carr said. "You would be outraged if you realized how much promoting DEI had been embedded in FCC work. ... We were spending millions and millions of dollars promoting DEI. Meanwhile, what fell by the wayside was the FCC's actual core work — and doing it competently — of connecting Americans."

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I am thankful for X-rays and washing machines



It is truly a remarkable thing for Americans to make a holiday out of gratefulness, and it is very fitting for us, as we are among the most fortunate of people on the face of the Earth.

We have so much to be grateful for in this country. We are incredibly wealthy compared to most countries; we have more freedoms afforded to us by our constitutional traditions; we have more opportunities for success and for failure.

She excitedly asked if she could press the buttons on the machine. Then she sat in front of it, watching it work as if it were entertainment.

It is a recognition of these blessings that made me a conservative and continues to sustain my belief in conservative values despite the constant challenges to that understanding of the world.

At the top of that list is the free market, which is the source of so many of the blessings we have to be grateful for. And this is not to say that the free market should be unfettered or that there are no abuses of this system. Of course there are abuses, and the causes for those abuses run a spectrum from lack of personal responsibility all of the way to systemic failures.

If anything, the free market brings us so many blessings that we take them for granted and forget quickly how our lives have improved in such a short time.

I have a great example showing this tendency. A while back I had a dental check-up, and the youngish assistant notified me that we were going to take X-rays of my teeth. I got ready to go to the X-ray room. Of course, she just pulled over the X-ray machine, put it up to my face, and snapped a few images.

“That machine is so amazing,” I said to her.

She didn't understand what I meant.

I explained that just a few years back, X-ray machines were much bigger and more expensive and it was not as convenient to take them. She had no clue.

I felt like that meme of an aged lady telling some young person about the olden days and young person responds by saying, “That’s great! Let's get you to bed, Grandma.”

Now part of the reason that story happened is simply because I am getting older, but it’s also because things get better and better every moment of every day through the invisible hand of the free market, and we benefit from it and take it all for granted.

It simply blows my mind that people are born on Earth in this age after thousands of years of incredible technological and scientific advancements, and instead of looking around in overwhelming wonder and gratefulness, they look for the problems and call for it all to be wiped away.

I’ll bother you with one more example that I always refer to when challenged on this subject, if you’ll indulge me. There is a Ted Talk that can be viewed on YouTube about the laundry washing machine and how it absolutely revolutionized women’s lives and changed human society.

Swedish academic Hans Rosling details the day when he was a child and his parents finally were able to save enough money to buy a washing machine. His grandmother, who had spent a lifetime heating water over a wood fire and washing the laundry of seven children by hand, excitedly asked if she could press the buttons on the machine. Then she sat in front of it, watching it work as if it were entertainment.

“To my grandmother, the washing machine was a miracle,” he explained.

He goes on to explain how that one technological advancement that we all take for granted allowed women to have more leisure time, and that allowed for some of them to read, and even more advancements gave them the freedom to work and find their own careers.

Go watch it. It’s worth your time, and it only has 736,000 views, shamefully, after being available for 10 years.

It really is worthwhile to stop and consider just how much freedom we have been given, for good and bad, because of all the advancements invented and developed in the free market — and to remember those blessings when we decide whether to be on the side of policies that increase freedom or on the side of those designed to stomp it out.

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Woke Economists’ Kamala Endorsement Prioritizes Ideology Over Reality

Despite all existing data exposing Harris as an economic disaster, more than 400 economists are turning to misinformation to hurt Trump.

Tech legend DESTROYS Kamala’s plan to fight ‘price gouging’ as socialist policy that will result in BREADLINES



Kamala Harris’ plan to fight “price gouging” with price controls may be enough to fool low information voters, but it’s not fooling America’s best and brightest.

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” is one of them, telling his audience “I don’t like her very much.”

Tech legend David Friedberg from the “All-In Podcast” is another one — and he has a warning for those who blindly believe what Harris is saying about the supposed “price gouging” taking place at the grocery store.

“I unequivocally hate socialism. Socialism destroys innovation, destroys productivity, and destroys individual liberties,” Friedberg said in response to her plan.

“The free market works in that everyone is always competing with each other, creating new productivity improvements, and as a result, over time, prices come down. Except when the government intervenes and gets involved,” he continued.

“I would argue that the real cause of price inflation in food is not the supposed price gouging by corporate players in the AG and food industry, all of whom are deeply competitive with one another, but rather is the result of the inflation associated with government spending and stimulus coming out of COVID.”

Friedberg then pointed out that the FED balance sheet from COVID until today has grown from 4.2 trillion to 7.2 trillion, which is a growth of 70%.

“The Federal Reserve went out and they bought assets and they issued debt to banks and introduced liquidity into the system,” he explained, noting that the result of this was that the M2 money supply increased from 15 trillion to 21 trillion since COVID, which is a 40% increase.

“So, now there is more money in the system, so the cost of everything should go up. Which is exactly what we’ve seen,” he said, before sending a warning.

“Every socialist experiment in human history has started with caps on food, and it has resulted in breadlines,” he said. “This is a mistake, it is a problem, it is anti-American, it is anti-free market, it is anti-innovation, it is anti-productivity, and ultimately, it’s anti-liberty, and I cannot stand it.”


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Media Are Waging An All-Out War On JD Vance Because Of His Pro-Family Policies

Vance believes that the tax burden should be lighter on young parents, who are rearing the next generation of social capital.

Watch: Mark Levin educates Marxist Democrats on basic economics



The left desperately needs a lesson in economics, and Mark Levin is here to supply it — because Marxists like Robert Reich are failing to do the job.

Reich claims that the “crises” Republicans are concerned about are “totally made up” in order to “distract from the real crises facing Americans” like “growing concentration of wealth” and the “worsening climate crisis.”

“I’m tired of this Marxist claptrap with class warfare,” Levin says, before destroying Reich’s argument.

“According to the Marxists,” he begins, “there’s only one pie. And the more somebody takes out of that pie, the less pie you have to eat. That’s not how market capitalism works.”

“Under capitalism,” he continues, “the pie gets bigger and bigger and bigger except when these masterminds Bernie Sanders, Biden, Reich jump in. And they try and decide who will and who will not succeed.”

This is precisely why the attack on entire industries like automobiles — by “Democratic socialists” like Biden — is going to hurt the economy more than help it.

“The more the government rules over the economy, the harder it is for the economy to grow. And sometimes it begins to shrink,” Levin explains.

Leftists also seem to operate under the belief that there is no middle class in this country.

“We have a massive middle class in this country. Why? Because the government dictated it? No. Because the Industrial Revolution,” Levin says, noting that the Industrial Revolution “was the greatest period of economic growth mankind has ever experienced.”

“Ever since, the Marxists, the Democrats, have done everything they can to it. They hate capitalism,” he adds.


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Oh. My. Gosh. His AOC impression is HILARIOUS



Oh. My. Gosh. Pat Gray makes the best impression of Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez.

In this clip, Pat read the transcript from an episode of "Influencers" with Andy Serwer. The Congresswoman from New York had some rather vague things to say about why she believes capitalism no longer suits America.

Ocasio-Cortez attempted to define "capitalism": "Capitalism at its core, what we're talking about when we talk about that is the absolute pursuit of profit at all human, environmental, and social cost. Many of these price increases are potentially due to just straight price gouging by corporations. If we allow a full just continuation of student loan payments, we are talking about a catastrophic development for millions."

"Listen to this sentence," Pat laughs, "What we are talking about when we talk about that." You have to hear Pat read this story in his best "AOC" voice. "And that is people who have so much money that their money makes money and they don't have to work, and they can control industry," Pat mocked.


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