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Carville blasts Dems amid Platner scandal, warning they ignored a classic rule of politics and paid the price
James Carville blasted Maine Democrats for failing to vet Platner, saying opposition research on your own candidate is the most important step.
Carbon capture continues to expand globally despite mounting opposition
Carbon capture continues to expand globally despite mounting opposition Global energy and research consulting firm Wood Mackenzie reports that carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS, is expected to expand significantly, with global capacity projected to grow from roughly 91 million metric tons per year today to about 3 billion metric tons annually by 2060, […]
Trump's support for Venezuela opposition head Machado wanes
Venezuelan opposition leader and Nobel Peace laureate María Corina Machado says she wants to return to her earthquake-ravaged homeland. Yet neither Venezuela's government nor the United States thinks that's a good idea.
Venezuelan aftershocks: How the quakes made political change more urgent
Venezuela’s earthquakes have created a new test for its political opposition and movement leader María Corina Machado.
As Israel becomes Democratic litmus test, Jewish progressives warn about a tilt into antisemitism
For many liberals, longtime policy priorities like universal healthcare or stopping climate change are now intertwined with opposing Israel. An ascendant faction of the left argues there’s no such thing anymore as “progressive except for Palestine” — a phrase that took off in the years following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack and the ensuing war in Gaza — and sees opposition to Israel as a Democratic litmus test.
U. of C. scientists call for halt to Quantum Shore construction, citing contamination and energy concerns
A group of graduate students, research staff and scientists, many affiliated with the University of Chicago, is joining the opposition to the Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, arguing that their
As Trump commands 250th stage, Democrats offer their vision of patriotism
They want to show opposition to Trump without looking like they’re unwilling to celebrate the United States.
EDITORIAL: Bennet, Hick play politics with the judiciary
Facing spirited challenges from the left — in the final hours of races each thought would be a walk in the park — Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators are doing what comes naturally to politicians. Pandering. How else to explain their opposition, reported Sunday, to the pending nomination of respected and rock-solid U.S. District Judge […]
French election politics bring surrogacy back into Europe’s spotlight
The former prime minister's call to legalize surrogacy has drawn opposition from across France's political spectrum, including within his own party, with possible consequences across Europe.
National City weighs business tax overhaul amid mounting budget pressures
Council to hear proposal June 30. It faces significant opposition from business community.
Days Ahead to Show If Burnham Plays Politics Better Than Starmer
Standing across from Keir Starmer in the Commons chamber this week, opposition leader Kemi Badenoch drew on a particularly violent metaphor for how the Labour Party had ditched him when she conjured up an image of “400 knives stuck in the prime minister’s back.”
Trustees hear Glencoe neighbors who blast possibility of street parking near business district
Facing opposition from residents living adjacent to the Village’s business district, the Glencoe Village Board has adopted the findings of a long-in-development parking study without three areas that multiple residents spoke against during a recent Village Board meeting. In a 5-0 vote, with Trustee Dudley Onderdonk abstaining, the Glencoe Village Board on Thursday, June 18, […]
Proposed Changes to Grant Rules Threaten the Future of Research: Scientists Must Act Now!
The Trump administration is seeking to politicize US federal science funding, but collective action can stop this grantpocalypse from happening.
Blue state leaders erupt after Supreme Court’s decision ending TPS protections for Haitians, Syrians
Supreme Court rules 6-3 in favor of Trump administration in two key immigration cases on Temporary Protected Status and asylum, drawing opposition from blue state Democrats.
Here’s What It Means to Be a Democratic Socialist
Universal health care, taxing the wealthy and opposition to military aid to Israel are among the movement’s key tenets.
Senate Republicans reject war powers resolution after Trump-Cassidy clash
The late-night vote came hours after a fractious meeting that included a shouting match with President Donald Trump over some senators’ opposition to the conflict.
Chicago’s Bike Lanes Don’t Hurt Businesses, City Report Finds
As protected bike lanes face opposition in some neighborhoods, city-backed case studies found lanes in a half-dozen corridors have not contributed to a negative impact on economic activity.
Mamdani and AI industry flex political power in New York, plus more to watch in Tuesday's primaries
Two factions in the AI industry are clashing in a Democratic primary for a U.S. House seat. New York Assemblyman Alex Bores, a pro-regulation candidate, faces opposition from a group funded by OpenAI investors. The group spent over $7 million on ads against him. In response, groups partly backed ...
Can America’s data center backlash stay bipartisan?
Opposition spans party lines as communities resist AI infrastructure's impact on energy costs and resources.
America’s data center backlash is bipartisan — can it stay that way?
As opposition mounts, some experts wonder how long AI infrastructure can steer clear of the partisanship that defines U.S. politics.
The Big Ten and SEC don’t like the college sports bill in Congress. Can they break away?
The Protect College Sports Act took a step forward Thursday with a Senate committee approval. Plenty of potential pitfalls remain ahead, including opposition from the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences.
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement conviction of opposition politician
Rong Chhun, a senior adviser to the Nation Power Party, was convicted last year of inciting social unrest after meeting villagers displaced by government construction projects.
Guinea-Bissau: Opposition leader house arrest raises stakes
Opposition leader Domingos Simoes Pereira remains under house arrest months after the Guinea-Bissau coup, deepening a political crisis and raising tensions with international partners.
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement conviction of opposition politician in charged case
Cambodia’s Supreme Court has upheld the incitement conviction of prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun but suspended the remainder of his prison sentence, allowing him to remain free while barring him from politics for years | TALK 980am
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement conviction of opposition politician in charged case
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia’s Supreme Court on Friday upheld the incitement conviction of a prominent opposition politician while suspending the remainder of his sentence, keeping hi…
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement conviction of opposition politician in charged case
Cambodia’s Supreme Court has upheld the incitement conviction of prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun but suspended the remainder of his prison sentence, allowing him to remain free while barring him from politics for years | WBBM Newsradio 780 AM & 105.9 FM
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement conviction of opposition politician in charged case
Cambodia’s Supreme Court has upheld the incitement conviction of prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun but suspended the remainder of his prison sentence, allowing him to remain free while barring him from politics for years | Newsradio 1140 WRVA
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement of opposition politician in politically charged case
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia's Supreme Court on Friday upheld the incitement conviction of a prominent opposition politician while suspending the remainder of his sentence, keeping him out of prison but unable to practice politics for years.
Cambodian Supreme Court upholds incitement conviction of opposition politician in charged case
Cambodia’s Supreme Court has upheld the incitement conviction of prominent opposition politician Rong Chhun but suspended the remainder of his prison sentence, allowing him to remain free while barring him from politics for years
Big Ten, SEC commissioners ripped by key senator for continued opposition to Protect College Sports Act — 'People have to wake up'
Protect College Sports Act passes Senate committee amid continued Big Ten, SEC opposition
The next step for the bipartisan college sports bill would be a vote on the Senate floor
College sports bill clears key Senate hurdle despite SEC, Big Ten opposition
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bill that top lawmakers and athletic leaders have described as the best chance to stabilize college sports cleared a key vote in the Senate on Thursday with bipartisan support after weeks of input from schools, conferences and athletes.
Packers voice opposition to major changes to Sports Broadcasting Act
The Packers have come out against any significant changes to the Sports Broadcasting Act in a statement on Tuesday.
Packers voice opposition to major changes to Sports Broadcasting Act
The Packers have come out against any significant changes to the Sports Broadcasting Act in a statement on Tuesday.
Roy Hattersley, Frontline Warrior of British Politics, Dies at 93
A Labour Party deputy who spent years in opposition, he criticized Conservatives and members of his own party, and was at the heart of major political moments.
Prominent Cambodian opposition politician seeks Supreme Court reversal of incitement conviction
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A prominent Cambodian opposition politician emerged Monday from his Supreme Court appeal to a crowd of cheering supporters, telling them he was anxious for judges to ove…
Prominent Cambodian opposition politician seeks Supreme Court reversal of incitement conviction
A prominent Cambodian opposition politician has appealed his conviction on incitement charges to the Supreme Court
Prominent Cambodian opposition politician seeks Supreme Court reversal of incitement conviction
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — A prominent Cambodian opposition politician emerged Monday from his Supreme Court appeal to a crowd of cheering supporters, telling them he was anxious for judges to overturn his incitement conviction so that he could get back into politics.
Cambodia Politics
Supporters of Rong Chhun, a prominent Cambodian opposition politician, shout slogans outside the Supreme Court in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Monday, June 15, 2026. A banner, front, reads "Granting freedom to
In Retrospect: Poland, Russia, Europe
In April I spent a few days with Zryw, a Polish non-profit organization that recruits young people to enter politics and public life. Their aim is to build a new generation of civic leaders in Poland. I’ve followed their evolution from the beginning; my son is one of the founders. (“Zryw” means “impulse” or “burst of speed” in Polish). Julie Chmielewska, one of Zryw’s leaders, interviewed me at the event. Here is the conversation, lightly edited for grammar and context: Julia Chmielewska: Assuming that culture shapes institutions, could we conclude that some cultures are more prone to authoritarianism? Anne Applebaum: I don’t think so. Every culture, every nation, and every country has the potential for change. When we look at history, we can see that nations do change. Poland has changed, for example, from the 1980s to today. There’s a completely different mentality here than the one I encountered when I first visited, in 1988. The current generation sees the world through a different frame. So no, I don’t believe that certain nations are doomed to authoritarianism, or to anything. Of course, there are political and cultural traditions, but they can always be challenged. JC: So do you think there’s something intrinsic in human nature that pushes people to democracy, freedom? AA: I think there is something in human nature, a deep instinct, that pushes people towards freedom, yes. People who live in authoritarian countries – and I’ve heard this from them over and over again – sooner or later find themselves angered by a feeling of helplessness. They can see the unfairness of crooked courts, irrational political decisions. They naturally dislike the fact that somebody has all the power while they have none. In those circumstances, people who have no political background at all sometimes are politicized just by that frustration. I’m thinking of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, for example, who was a Belarusian housewife, until the circumstances of her husband’s arrest forced her to become a politician. I met a woman who is a Uyghur from China, and who had come to live in Turkey. After several of her family members were arrested, she too was propelled into a political role. These kinds of experiences make people interested in democracy or political reform, even if they thought they didn’t care. I also think that the opposite is true: some people instinctively prefer homogeneity, order, hierarchy. They don’t like the confrontation of opinions or the noise of debate, and they lean towards a single leader or a unified regime. I think that most of modern history is shaped by the clash between those two different sides of human nature. JC: Which force do you find more powerful today? AA: I think they both have a lot of power and there’s no way of predicting who wins. Even in countries that seem very shut off or stuck in an authoritarian system can change. We’ve seen that happen. And vice versa, I think democracies can also begin to fail and slide into authoritarianism. So it’s very important not to be complacent in either direction. JC: I want to go into your history and your experiences. You’ve lived in Russia during a time of incredible change in the late 80s, and then you came back to do research in post-Soviet Russia. AA: I was a student in Russia just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I then traveled and worked there extensively in the 1990s, and I met people who really were full of hope. They hoped that Russia could become a democracy, or at least a place that guaranteed freedom of speech, freedom of the press. These weren’t ideas that came from Washington. Although now the narrative in the Kremlin is different, I met many people who were working towards exactly that kind of transformation. A friend of mine ran a series of seminars – once a year, and then later several times a year, in cities all over Russia – designed to get people to discuss politics in new ways. She invited young politicians and journalists, as well as foreigners. I went to many of them, in Moscow as well as Volgograd and Novosibirsk. Over two decades, hundreds of people came to these seminars, and all of them wanted Russia to be different. I remain convinced that many Russians still want Russia to be different. It’s just that the old system, in the form of Putin, a representative of that system, returned. The KGB reimposed their power. And this wasn’t because of something to do with culture, this was to do with money and politics, and who was in charge. JC: You’ve partially answered my question... I wanted to ask whether that excitement of the 1990s was an exception from the Russian historical norm which has been rather authoritarian? AA: Of course, if you look at the history of Russia since the 18th century, there have always been liberal groups, reformers and revolutionaries. There were the Decembrists, in the early 19th century, and the rural populists later on, who tried to organize the peasantry. A significant group of liberal Russians appeared at the turn of the 20th century, people like the father of the writer Vladimir Nabokov, who was a Russian politician before the revolution. These groups were small in number, but sometimes had a broader significance. The Russian dissident movement in the 1950s and 1960s actually invented the modern human rights movement. It was their idea to hold the leaders of the Soviet Union accountable for the language they used, to remind them of the treaties they had signed and the promised they had made. They created the Helsinki group, for example, that held Soviet leadership to the language of the Helsinki Treaty, which formally ended the Second World War and which contained guarantees of human rights, at least on paper. That idea spread to Eastern Europe, and similar tactics were used here in Poland. (Benjamin Nathans recently wrote a great book about the Soviet dissidents, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause) JC: But seemingly, even if they do ever get power, they could never hold on to it. AA: We don’t know, because they have never really had power. But in any case, we also don’t know what will happen in the future. There is no reason to assume that Russia will forever be condemned to totalitarianism. Even during the first fifteen years of Putin’s regime there was some form of democratic politics. Only when the full-scale war began did he bring everything to an end: he shut down all remaining independent organizations and killed his most important opponent, Alexi Navalny. But does that mean he is popular, that he enjoys legitimacy? Even now, we don’t really know what Russians think about him, or about the war. There is no way of doing real polling in Russia because nobody will answer an independent pollster over the phone. JC: Do you think that the flock of young people, especially young men, who fled Russia after the start of the war represent a continuation of liberal movements that refuse to partake in the authoritarian state, or do you think they are moving for the sake of self-preservation – “I don’t want to go to the army, so I leave”? AA: I’m sure it’s both. I actually know many people who left Russia for political reasons either in the very last years before the war, or else just after the war began. JC: And do you see a change in the young generation versus the old one that have fled? AA: It’s hard for me to say because the people who I know were mostly already politicized. I do know some younger people who left, but most of them were already either active in the opposition, or working as journalists. Many of them very self-consciously think of themselves as maintaining Russian culture abroad, just as in the 20th century the Soviet dissidents or the anti-communist White Russians once thought of themselves as people who maintained the true Russian culture, outside of Bolshevik Russia. JC: Let’s move on to Poland. One of your first experiences with Poland was reporting on Margaret Thatcher’s first state visit, in the autumn of 1988. You followed her around the farmers’ market. AA: She was making a symbolic gesture. She wanted to welcome free markets, but the only one she could really visit was the farmers’ market at Hala Mirowska. JC: And I want to talk about this area because today you can look out of any window in that district, Mirów, and see rows and rows of skyscrapers. How does it feel to see a country built from the ground in such a short time, both politically and economically? AA: You know, when you’re living in a period of dramatic change, it’s always hard to know whether the change is positive or negative. The transformation in Poland created winners and losers, as well as new classes of people, new political movements of different kinds. At the time, it sometimes just felt like turbulence. Now, we can look back at the 1990s and early 2000s in Poland and see in retrospect that the country was headed in towards prosperity and European integration. In around 2009 or 2010, I remember speaking to a woman who worked cleaning government offices, and who asked me if her daughter should study in Amsterdam or in London. This seemed to me to be a real transformation, and it happened very fast: within a few years, Poles stopped feeling like second-class Europeans, and a generation of younger Poles appeared who had no qualms about crossing borders. JC: We again live in turbulent times. Do you think we’re heading towards positive outcomes? AA: I can’t make predictions, because everything that happens tomorrow depends on what people do today. Also, history doesn’t have a trajectory. It doesn’t move in a particular direction. You only think it does afterwards. As I said, you can look afterwards at Poland in the 1990s and you could say this was a period of great progress. But not everybody at the time saw that. Sometimes people are very wrong about a given country’s trajectory. I remember people writing about Ukraine in the 1990s, about how dangerous it was that Ukraine was independent, that this was going to be an anti-semitic state, that Ukrainian nationalism was going to come back... and although you can say many bad things about Ukraine, the country made many bad choices, actually it became a pretty tolerant state which now has a Jewish president and until recently a Muslim defense minister. JC: In the 1990s Poland’s and Ukraine’s GDP were roughly similar. Ukraine was even a bit richer. So the starting point was similar for both of these countries, but they’ve turned out very, very differently. Even if we stop in 2014. Why do you think Ukraine “chose East”? Was it external influence? AA: No, I think Ukraine was in a different position. First of all, central and eastern Ukraine had been part of the Soviet Union since the 1920s, and had therefore experienced a longer period of occupation, repression, Sovietization and even Russification. Ukraine did not have, as Poland did, an alternative elite: a large cadre of economists and politicians, who already had some experience in opposition politics and in independent thinking. In Poland, the transformative finance minister, Leszek Balcerowicz, had already thought about how an economy might be decentralized before he took office. We can argue about how successful he was, but at least he was prepared to try something new. In Ukraine, people weren’t prepared. For one, there hadn’t been much space even for an illegal opposition in the previous couple of decades. Ukraine was also in many ways still emerging from colonial occupation. For the previous couple of centuries, many of the most capable Ukrainians had moved to Russia, and the first generation of leaders in independent Ukraine tended to be former Soviet apparatchiks. They didn’t immediately seek to become closer to western Europe. Instead, they looked for some kind of economic and political “third way” and an accomodation with Russia. Ukraine became stuck in this position, half-in, half-out and became pretty profoundly corrupt. JC: The Polish alternative elite had a vision of where they wanted the country to go. I think the general perception now is that this vision ends with the next election, right? Is this a natural process of gaining power? AA: Their vision, and it was shared by the time by politicians who now call themselves both left and right, was that Poland should join the EU and NATO, as fast as possible. My husband (Radek Sikorski) was in the very first government that said it wanted to join NATO. At the time this was taken very badly in Washington: the demand for NATO membership absolutely came from Poland, not from the US. But even then, in the early 1990s, many Poles already understood that the Russian sphere of influence would grow once again, that it was important to become part of the transatlantic alliance and an integrated Europe as fast as possible: NATO, the EU, the Council of Europe, all of the trading and security alliances. That consensus lasted through several different governments and over many years, even governments containing former communists. For twenty years, right, left and center disagreed about many things, but they all agreed on the direction that the country should go. In retrospect, that consensus created the basis for prosperity in Poland. JC: And regarding the Polish-Ukrainian relations. We know that antagonisms, e.g. the myth of Wołyń [a massacre of Poles that took place in what is now Western Ukraine, in 1943] are increasingly used in Polish political discourse today. In Ukraine, nationalist historians make heroes out of UPA, the Ukrainian revolutionary army, which is held responsible for this tragedy. Where do you see a start for burying the hatchet? Is the reconciliation of our nations possible? AA: So here’s a strange thing: For more than a decade after they both gained independence, Poland and Ukraine participated in a number of projects that were designed to solve exactly these kinds of Polish-Ukrainian differences. Books were published that were jointly written by Polish and Ukrainian historians, monuments were built. These projects were successful: If you’d asked me this question in 2010, I would have said that there are no real historical issues between Poland and Ukraine, that the two countries had mostly reconciled. For a number of reasons, this began to shift. In Poland, children and grandchildren of victims of the Wołyń massacre felt their tragedy hadn’t been fully recognized. In Ukraine, nationalist groups wanted the UPA partisans who had fought against the Soviet Union recognized for their heroism, despite the fact that some in this broad and not well-defined group were also linked to Wołyń. In both eastern Poland and western Ukraine, the memory of the ethnic cleansing that took place there in the late 1940s - Poles were moved West, Ukrainians East - to accomodate new borders has left feelings of displacement and bitterness. The wave of Ukrainian immigration, which started before the war, may have provoked some of this. But don’t underestimate the role played by Russia, which has always wanted to create discord between Poland and Ukraine, and pumps out propaganda to that effect in both countries. Vandalism on both sides of the border, damage done to cemeteries and monuments, is sometimes carried out by provacateurs working for Russia, just to create bad feelings. The Polish-Ukrainian conflict also hides a different reality: although there are real grievances and bad memories, the truth is that the biggest tragedies both nations experienced in the twentieth century were inflicted by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. That should unite these two countries, not divide them. JC: This week (19.04.2026 – Ed.) in Hungary we saw that using historical narratives to create grievance has no longer worked. Are you optimistic about the direction after Orban’s loss? AA: The Hungarian election was really important because it shows that people can actually resist powerful, dominant propaganda. The ruling party Fidesz controlled all of the TV, 90% of the newspapers, the constitutional court, the bureaucracy... and yet people had the nerve to vote against it and resist it. It’s also an important election because Hungary created a huge network of well-funded think tanks and foundations that were funding other far right groups and projects. So that loss is going to have a knock-on effect in other places too, maybe even in Poland. JC: What you’ve said about resisting propaganda reminds me of one of the interviews you did about talking to Russians in the post-Soviet era who claimed that people knew that the system was lying. Why do people choose to believe in these regimes anyway? AA: Because it’s useful. Stephen Kotkin, an American historian, once described how people would learn how to “speak Bolshevik”: It was just a language that you needed to use in order to get by in society. If you didn’t talk the way the regime wanted you to talk, then you might have problems, or lose your job, or your kids would not get into university. It was a way of getting along. Communist Poland was similar, at least in the early years. When I was writing a book about the Sovietization of Eastern Europe after World War II, I met a lot of people who wanted to talk a lot about the war, when many of them had done really heroic things. But almost nobody wanted to talk about the decade afterwards, between 1945 and 1956. This was when you had the short period of terror, violence and Polish Stalinism. To stay safe, people felt the need to just go along with what others were saying, or stay out of politics, or use communist jargon without necessarily believing it. I don’t judge them for it, and I wouldn’t describe all of those people as collaborators. It’s easy to feel moral certainty in retrospect, because we know that communism ended. But if you were living in 1949, it might not have been clear to you that communism was going to end. In very repressive societies, maybe about 10% of people who are really evil – collaborators, torturers. Maybe 10% of people are really brave and who find ways to resist. And then around 80% of people have kids, they have parents, they have to have jobs and they’ve had to get through it somehow. Strange though it may sound, I’ve found that the work I did on that book is now very useful in explaining some of what’s going on in the United States today. There are plenty of members of the Republican Party in Congress who know perfectly well that Donald Trump says many things that aren’t true. But they avoid criticizing him because it’s inconvenient, because they would get in trouble, because someone would attack them on the internet. So actually you don’t even need mass terror to get people to conform. JC: Is Gen Z reinventing agency? AA: We’ll see. In any generation you can find groups of people who want agency. If you live in a society that’s unfair, for example where a tiny number of people have captured most of the wealth, then at a certain point people rebel. This is always easier for younger people, who have you have less to lose. The question now is how the internet will affect the relationships between citizens and the state, and how it will change organizations. The “Twitter revolutions” people spoke about as early as 2008-9, mass protests organized online, have often proved to be very superficial. Although you can easily join something just by clicking, the work of creating a real movement requires physical participation. Successful mass movements of the past, for example the Civil Rights movement in the United States, were built by people who had spent many years together. They had participated in non-violent workshops together. They practiced and prepared. Just using the you can get everybody to show up at a certain moment, but then when the protest is broken up, nothing happens. It’s also true that the repressive regimes have more recently learned how to use the internet to undermine leaders and movements. Most of all, they now understand how to make people cynical. The form of propaganda that most modern authoritarians use - and I think the Russians really pioneered this - deploys sneering cynicism. Instead of praising the rulers, the regime propagandists mock the opposition movement leadership for being supposedly corrupt or sexually degenerate, with the goal of undermining any kind of idealism. JC: MAGA grew on the internet? AA: MAGA is a real grassroots movement. They had symbols, red hats, they showed up at rallies. But you’re right that the cynicism, the sarcasm and the distrust that the movement embodies came originally from the internet, and this is different. Fifty years ago, most European political parties had a social base in real organizations, in trade unions for Social Democrats, in church groups for Christian Democrats. As people stopped going to church and as the trade unions became smaller, the social base of these parties disappeared. Now people who wouldn’t have known one another in the past meet on the internet and create new movements, many of which don’t last. JC: Is history ending? Going in stale circles? AA: History never ends. In truth, human beings want contradictory things at the same time: order and freedom, stability and change. These things are never resolved, and when a society swings too far in one direction, people always push it the other way. But each time that happens, the result is different. Certainly it is true that we are now in a period when old philosophers and ideas from the 1930s are undergoing a revival. Carl Schmitt, who was a philosopher who was very influential on the Nazis, is back as an influence on both the far left and the far right, once again inspiring people to think that all politics has to be existential, that all politics is about defining and defeating enemies. In the US, some are also bringing back dominionism, the idea that we need a Christian and not a secular state. It’s also true that we are living through a more fundamental shift. The old left-right divide, which was mostly about the size of the state, is much less important now. Instead, we are arguing about more fundamental things: what are our rights, what protects our freedom. Or how much power do we want to give small elites, versus how much power to give ordinary people. In America a small group of very wealthy people now control information, because they control the social media platforms and AI, which means they determine what people will read and learn. Finding a way to preserve preserve zones of autonomy and independent thinking, this is going to be the main task for the next generation. JC: What is the one book that a person interested in Central Europe should read? AA: You could read my book “Iron Curtain: the Crushing of Eastern Europe” which tells the story of how the Soviet Union imposed its culture on the region. Or read Tim Snyder’s history of the region, “The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus 1569-1999.” And everyone should read “The Captive Mind” by Czesław Miłosz, which describes exactly the phenomenon we were talking about: why do people collaborate? I joined Scott Galloway and the brilliant Fiona Hill in a discussion about the wars in Ukraine and Iran, the future of global power, and what these conflicts reveal about America's role in the world. Scott told us that this was the 400th edition of his podcast, which is quite a number: My friend Francesco Chiamulera runs a brilliant series of literary events, Una Colline di Libri, A Hill of Books, in the Prosecco Hills, a region of vineyards and elegant hill towns in the Veneto, north of Venice. We did an event in Vittorio Veneto and also drove and biked around the countryside. Buy Autocracy Inc Buy Iron Curtain Open Letters, from Anne Applebaum is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
Lake Geneva business leaders establish city's first-ever Pride celebration despite some online opposition
Lake Geneva is the latest community with its own LGBTQ+ Pride celebration. The weekend event has family-friendly activities like chalk drawing, a vendor fair, and a community worship celebration.
Huge ‘8647’ etched into grass on the National Mall, aerial images show
The numbers “8647” — a phrase generally used to signal opposition to President Donald Trump — appeared etched into the grass on the National Mall on Thursday, days before massive crowds are expected in the area for a UFC match on Trump’s birthday on Sunday.
‘Bad policy and even worse politics’: DeSantis spurns potential White House AI preemption
The Trump administration’s longstanding opposition to state AI laws ultimately killed legislation in Florida, and now Gov. Ron DeSantis fears policies in other states could fall by the wayside.
Albania’s Flamingo Revolution Spreads From Kushner Resort to Political Elite
As protests in Tirana extend into a second week, they have escalated from opposition to two €5 billion ($5.7 billion) planned resorts in ecologically sensitive areas linked to Jared Kushner into demands for the entire Albanian political establishment to step aside.
Trump admin axes ties to dozens of progressive groups in 'direct opposition' to mission: 'Decisive action'
The Interior Department is cutting 43 partnerships and over $4 million in funding for groups tied to DEI, environmental justice and immigration.
Cruz sets aggressive timeline on college sports bill - Live Updates
The Senate Commerce chair laid out a plan to get his legislation through the Senate this summer, but House opposition remains.
Looming Medicaid Cuts Supercharge California’s Latest Labor-Industry Fight
One of California’s largest healthcare unions is sponsoring two initiatives that would regulate community clinics and cap executive and managerial pay at hospitals and physician groups. In the most recent eruption of a long-standing feud, the measures have drawn fierce opposition from a wide swath of the medical industry.
India Opposition Leaders Meet to Project Unity After Poll Losses
Leaders of India’s top opposition parties met in New Delhi in an effort to project unity, their first major gathering since the May state elections, which dealt significant blows to several regional parties.
Minneapolis finally confronts school closures amid new political opposition
An organized parents group and a powerful teachers union backing new school board candidates fiercely oppose any closures to schools in the urban district.
Entertainment Workers Oppose Paramount-WBD Merger in Town Hall
Writers, actors, crew members and small business owners expressed their opposition to the $111 billion transaction in Beverly Hills on Saturday: “It may be the final domino that knocks everything down.”
Democrats’ midterm ‘blue wave’ dreams face an icy challenge
Negative partisanship rules as voters mildly like their own party but detest the opposition.
Sen. Coons on the College Sports Crisis in Congress
Senator Coons on the college sports bill, athlete rights, SEC Big Ten opposition, and the path forward.
Armed clashes erupt in Somalia’s capital ahead of a planned anti-government demonstration
Opposition figures say the rally planned for Thursday was intended to protest what they call constitutional violations and efforts by President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud to extend his tenure. The government has rejected those allegations.
Wu, a Collins foe, endorses his Senate challenger Latoya Gayle
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Riverhead Votes to Proceed with Science Center Condemnation
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Tunisian court sentences Ennahdha leader Rached Ghannouchi to life in prison
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Democrats raise doubts about proposed hikes to homestead exemptions
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Nigeria’s Obi to Run for President in 2027, Splitting Opposition
Nigerian politician Peter Obi will run for president in the West African nation’s January elections, ensuring that the opposition to incumbent Bola Tinubu will once again be fragmented.
Utah tightens rules for Kevin O'Leary's AI data center after backlash
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Lisett Hanewicz re-elected to St. Pete City Council without opposition
'Serving St. Petersburg has been one of the great privileges of my life. I remain committed to working hard for the people of our city.'
Richie Floyd re-elected to St. Pete City Council without opposition
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European Academics Shun U.S. Business Conference
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Thai court acquits opposition politician accused of royal insult
A Thai criminal court has acquitted a prominent Thai opposition political figure charged with cybercrimes and insulting the royal family during a 2021 Facebook livestream, his lawyer said on Thursday.
Fort Hall Business Council announces opposition to data center development in response to proposed facility near former Hoku site
FORT HALL — The Fort Hall Business Council of the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes has issued a formal resolution and public statement opposing data center development on the Fort Hall Reservation, as
South Carolina’s redistricting effort fails in the state Senate amid GOP opposition
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Israeli opposition leader Lapid says Trump’s emerging deal with Iran is 'bad for the region'
The deal being discussed between the U.S. and Iran fails to achieve any of Israel’s goals for the war, Israel’s opposition leader Yair Lapid said on Monday, as he accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to influence a better agreement.
Cambodia’s Leader Pardons Top Opposition Politician Kem Sokha
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WATCH: Trump speaks at N.Y.'s Rockland Community College, campaigning for Rep. Lawler
President Donald Trump, from a toss-up congressional district in New York on Friday, began testing his midterm-year message that was ostensibly on the economy. But he veered off-topic right from the start, going off on tangents about voter identification, crime in cities, transgender women in sports and “Dumocrats,” his new chosen moniker for the opposition party.
Opposition research: Rhys Hoskins
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Turkey opposition vows to resist court ruling ousting leader as political crisis deepens
Analysts said the ruling, seen as a test of Turkey’s shaky balance between democracy and autocracy, could further prolong President Tayyip Erdogan’s 23-year rule.
Turkish court ousts leader of main opposition party
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Scalise: Democrats' Politics of Hatred and Division Need to Stop
WASHINGTON, D.C.—Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Fox Business Network’s Kudlow to call out Democrats’ increasingly dangerous rhetoric, failure to confront rising antisemitism on the left, and continued opposition to commonsense election integrity and border security measures.
Senate GOP delays vote on reconciliation bill amid opposition to DOJ fund, White House ballroom
Republicans expected to abandon $1B security proposal for White House and Trump's ballroom
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republican leaders on Thursday are expected to abandon a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump’s ballroom amid backlash from members of their own party. Pressured by the White House, Republicans tried to add the money to a roughly $70 billion bill to restore funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. But the security proposal met with opposition
OpenAI’s Legal Win Against Musk Still Stings | AI & Business for May 19
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Whoa! Netflix is Sending Narnia Heading to Theaters...What This Means for the Future of Film
(Welcome to the “Most Important Story of the Week”, my bi-weekly strategy column analyzing the most important (but often not buzziest) news story of the last two weeks. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. Please subscribe.) Here’s a funny thing about the debate over whether streamers should release their movies in theaters first: Both sides think the other side represents the “conventional wisdom”. If you’ve been reading me for any amount of time, or even just scanned my front page, you know I think movies make more money by having a robust theatrical window compared to going straight-to-streaming. I’ve published thousands of words on this topic. And for years, I felt like I was standing up to a wave of opposition. See, while the “put your films in theaters to make money” take was obvious at any point before 2019, post-streaming revolution, most of the trendy thinkers took the opposite point of view. Big names argued that Netflix putting their film straight-to-streaming (“S-to-S” from here on out) actually made more money. Netflix was “disrupting” theaters, just as they disrupted Blockbuster Video, and since innovation is always good, this too was a great idea. This thinking then leaked into the mainstream business outlets like the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. I read many articles whose take boiled down to “Netflix makes tons of money from S-to-S releases” and “theaters were in structural decline” anyways. Covid-19 shutting down theaters and the 2023 strikes shutting down film production seemingly justified this point of view, as the box office struggled to return to 2017-2019 heights. Yet I’ve also read folks arguing the opposite point: the conventional wisdom says to put films in theaters! From some writers’ points of view, “everyone” actually agrees/agreed with my “send your films to theaters” take—especially the stodgy traditional studios—and folks still didn’t understand Netflix’s genius. I feel like, for the last two years, many people have argued this point as if it’s conventional wisdom. You know what? I may have been wrong. At this point, the “S-to-S strategy makes money” might be the minority viewpoint. Especially with the news this month that Netflix will put at least one film—Greta Gerwig’s Narnia film The Magician’s Nephew—in theaters in 2027 for a full 49-day run is big news. So that’s the story of the week, but I’ll also explain why they’re making this move now and why Netflix may not completely embrace theaters, along with other topics, like how I don’t buy Disney’s “super app” strategy, the latest good news out of the unions, my take on the latest attacks against free speech, and a whole lot more. Let’s get started. Subscribe Most Important Story of the Week - Netflix Goes to Theaters! Listen, I promise not to victory lap too hard today. As I just wrote, I’ve argued against sending films straight-to-streaming for—checks calendar—eight years now. Since 2018. Yikes. That’s a long time. And for years, others painted my thinking as “conventional” in that I was standing up for the status quo against trendy, cool disruption. And that’s not cool! But math is math, and I never could make the S-to-S numbers work. The only thing that ever enabled that model was Wall Street’s brief exuberance for it. It seems like the heads of Netflix now agree with me. (There were always rumors that former head of film for Netflix Scott Stuber argued internally for theatrical releases as well.) As they announced: “The Magician’s Nephew_—the first film in a Narnia series of films—will open on 12-Feb-2027, with a 49 day theatrical exclusive run.”_ I’m a little surprised at how little coverage this big change actually got. Credit to Bloomberg for leading with it and Matt Belloni’s The Town for highlighting it with the provocatively titled podcast “Hell Hath Frozen Over”. But after that? Instead of getting as much coverage as, say, the FCC’s latest egregious crackdown on free speech, this news story got crickets. But it’s massively more important for the future business of entertainment. So let’s start with the obvious question… Why Put Your Movies in Theaters? So…why should Netflix put (some!) of their movies in theaters? Well, I’ve already written that in a very, very, very long article from 2022: [ ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) [ The Data Is In: Theatrical Films Massively Outperform Straight-To-Streaming Films ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) Entertainment Strategy Guy · April 5, 2023 [ Read full story ](https://entertainment.substack.com/p/the-data-is-in-theatrical-films-massively) To summarize, theatrical runs make much more money, especially blockbusters, because they earn more money per viewing,1 and that helps boost home entertainment sales. Theatrical films also perform as well or better than the streaming-only films. Now, partially this is driven by increased marketing for said films, but said marketing ultimately boosts the awareness of the movies and drives improved streaming and library performance as well. Again, I’ve made this case after reviewing the economic models and streaming data for years. Just last week, Emily Horgan also made the case for kids films! Yes, it is probably conventional wisdom, but that’s also because it’s true! I’d also argue we’ve seen a lot of data in the various studios’ behavior. As I’ve noted before, the more a studio needs to make money, the likelier they are to put films in theaters. As such, Disney, Universal, Warner Bros., Paramount and Sony all send their major films to theaters. Even if they once made a big S-to-S push (*cough* Disney *cough*), they’ve since relented and returned to theaters. The tech companies don’t need to make money, per se, so it took them years to embrace theaters. Apple doesn’t need to make money because it doesn’t disclose their (likely) Quibi-sized losses each year. (They fear bad press more than losing money.) Amazon announced two years ago that they planned to make Amazon-MGM Studios/Prime Video profitable on its own, and guess what? Now they’re putting films in theaters. That leaves Netflix. They’re in between the “no need to make money at all” and the “desperately need to make money to offset linear TV declines”, so they had less pressure to put some films in theaters. Plus, for years, they were the sexy disruptor, and Wall Street rewarded them for that. (Honestly, they still do.) Yet, even Netflix likely saw the money they were leaving on the table (I’ve estimated it at an easy billion dollars before) so they changed their course. I heard one pundit argue that, because Netflix already makes so much money, they don’t need to make more money, which sort of goes against everything I’ve ever learned about business and economics. Again, to be super-nuanced, sending “films to theaters” does not mean EVERY film. TV movies have been a thing for decades. Lifetime films, Hallmark holiday films, Disney Channel Original Movies, and so on, don’t need theatrical runs. But films above a certain budget level (say $25 to 50 million) almost certainly need theaters to maximize their revenue. The Scenarios (with a Dose of Skepticism) Now time for some skepticism: it won’t surprise me at all if Netflix re-changes course. Specifically, Netflix announced that their Narnia film will go to theaters. And I’d bet anything we see KPop Demon Hunters 2: The Huntering2 also goes to theaters, cause it’s the surest hit outside of a Disney animated sequel right now. But how much does Netflix truly commit to theaters? They’ve already tried to emphasize that this is a one-off move. I see three broad scenarios:
Despite retribution, Cassidy attempted to make amends with Trump after impeachment vote
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — When Charles Wandfluh voted in Louisiana's Republican primary over the weekend, he could only conjure the unflattering image of a panicked rodent when talking about Bill Cassidy's desperate attemp t to cling to his U.S. Senate seat despite opposition from President Donald Trump. “He’s just a squirrel running around the tree, chasing nuts to find whatever he can get to benefit him,” said Wandfluh, 57, in a suburb of New Orleans.
Now What? With Carbon Pricing Eroded and Pipeline Politics Advancing, Here Are the Pathways for Climate Success
At the end of a whirlwind week of news on carbon pricing and electricity strategy, capping a madcap year of pretty much non-stop, dramatic change, the word across much of Canada’s climate and energy transition community is that climate policy in this country has been shredded. Eviscerated. Hit with a sledgehammer by policy rollbacks that have pushed the country’s 2050 net zero target “well out of reach”. That means it’s never been more important to look for the rays of hope and glimmers of possibility. To glimpse the seeds of the next set of strategies to get Canada’s climate pollution under control and the country into the accelerating global dash away from fossil fuels. And then, once we’ve spotted those possibilities, get on with the hard, day-to-day slog of trying to make them a reality. Nothing takes away from the frustration and the deep disappointment so many climate and energy hawks are expressing, the sense of betrayal by the author of Value(s) and the former UN special envoy for climate action and finance. But we knew two things as the week drew to a close. We’re looking at the world as it most definitely is. And we don’t get to give up finding the pathways to confront climate change and deliver faster, deeper carbon cuts that leave no one else behind. So really, the first question we all have to ask ourselves is: What’s next? Subscribe All the Oxygen in the Room The outpouring of anger and grief over the carbon pricing deal between Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has been absolutely understandable. So much of the climate community poured years, more than a decade, into dragging the current federal pricing regime across the finish line, then defending it from a deluge of three-syllable rhymes after the Trudeau government proved utterly incapable of delivering its own message. The policy foisted on us by neo-classical economists took up all the oxygen in the room, burned through years of climate response time that we won’t get back, while cornering climate hawks into the position that the best response to the crisis of our lifetimes is a new tax…in an era of historic anti-tax sentiment. I mean, really—what could possibly have gone wrong? Against that history, let’s appreciate columnist Max Fawcett’s point that even a modest carbon pricing agreement with a government as off-the-wall libertarian/conspiracist as Danielle Smith’s—those adjectives are mine, not Max’s—is a win worth savouring (as long as Smith keeps her promises for a change). But part of living in the world as it is (no, I’m not letting that go) is to be clear-headed about what we can and can’t control. And one thing we get to decide, after seeing this week’s carbon price festivities take up all the oxygen yet again, is whether we want to keep letting that happen. Particularly when success down that road depends on a factor that no one with a climate agenda can control or influence—a provincial carbon pricing mechanism that has been manipulated and eroded beyond its lowest possible denominator. Thankfully, that’s not the way it has to go. Not when we have so many other powerful, practical tools at our disposal, including the ones still available to us through this abominable Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Canada and Alberta. Tools In Our Toolbox When I started roughing out this list, I didn’t expect it to grow to nearly a dozen bullet points. It’s probably still incomplete. Some of the greatest hits in today’s climate solutions toolbox include: • No Carbon Capture, No Pipeline: On Friday, Prime Minister Mark Carney explicitly stated that there’s been no change to the MOU provision that there will be no West Coast pipeline without an industry commitment to build its massive, $16.5-billion carbon capture and storage (CCUS) hub in Northern Alberta, and vice versa. The two megaprojects were joined at the hip when the MOU was signed Nov. 27, and the implementation agreement this week affirmed that they still are. A parade of independent analysts have spent years pointing to the economic and technical flaws in CCUS, while the industry kept postponing its investment decision until it could arm-twist the government for more “clarity” (by which it meant even more lavish taxpayer subsidies) on the project. Now the industry itself is running away from the CCUS hub and insisting the pipeline should proceed without it, but Carney doesn’t seem to be budging from a central tenet of the MOU to which Smith has signed on. • No Subsidies, No Investors: Climate analysts and advocates have quite rightly been hammering away at Carney and his team, insisting that any new capacity the industry wants to build must proceed without new subsidies. The government has responded with a growing collection of funding and financing mechanisms for the very wide menu of industrial development and nation-building projects they say they want to take on, and that menu always includes fossil fuel infrastructure. But it’s hard to see how even the combined fiscal clout of the federal and supportive provincial governments will deliver the financial backing private investors would need when the business case for new fossil fuel development is evaporating before their eyes. Particularly when… • No Market, No Demand, No Investors: As our friend Markham Hislop at Energi Media (our apparently sleepless friend, given the massive volume of great material he’s been churning out) points out this morning, the biggest vulnerability in any pipeline deal is the assumption that Asian buyers will want the oil or liquefied natural ga that our fossil industry is so keen to send them. Hislop writes in part: Ottawa and Alberta are effectively betting that countries like China and India will continue increasing oil imports for decades as their economies grow and energy consumption rises. That assumption underpins the entire economic rationale for expanding oil sands production and building billions of dollars in new export infrastructure. But Asian energy systems are changing rapidly… China, India, South Korea, and other major hydrocarbon importers are now investing hundreds of billions of dollars into electricity systems built around wind, solar, batteries, nuclear, hydro, and expanded transmission infrastructure. Domestic “energy sovereignty” is increasingly replacing the old energy-security model based on stable oil and gas imports. Those investments are expected to sharply slow oil demand growth and eventually reverse it, even as overall energy consumption continues rising. There are also refining constraints. Many Asian refineries and petrochemical complexes are already optimized to process discounted heavy crude from the Middle East and Latin America. That raises serious questions about how much additional Canadian bitumen Asian markets can absorb at profitable prices. Small wonder that there’s still no private sector investor for the project, despite Smith’s government desperately beating the bushes to put together a deal. For now, Alberta is acting as proponent and covering early start-up costs for a pitch to the federal Major Projects Office, which could actually turn into the next tough hurdle for Smith and her pipeline to jump. • Canada Day Looms: How ironic that Canada’s birthday this year could become a major chokepoint for the provincial premier who’s been working so diligently to tear the country apart! The July 1 target date for Alberta’s pipeline proposal is baked into the MOU, was reaffirmed by the implementation plan, but it hadn’t dawned on me that it cuts both ways. As one very smart colleague wrote in an email yesterday, “they’ve thrown the ball into Alberta’s court to get the project proposal on the table really quickly and to have to do a whole pile of work to put together a massive, complicated project that would typically take years to assemble, and they’ve given them weeks to do it.” That makes July 1 a looming deadline that Smith won’t be able to run away from politically, especially with the separatists in her party and her caucus breathing down her neck. (See previous ref to off-the-wall.) But if Alberta comes in with a sloppy, incomplete submission, even after Carney bent over backwards to simplify the application process and the rules that govern it, it may be harder for the province or the industry to blame Ottawa and insist on the faster process they claim their investors are demanding. (Oh, wait—which investors would those be??) • We’ll See You In Court (Then We’ll See You Again): If Carney did cave, that would be just one more reason for Indigenous and other affected communities to take the government and the process to court—Just as Alberta First Nations did, successfully, in response to Smith’s half-baked separation referendum. Veterans of the Harper era have been warning that a shoddy process around fossil fuel infrastructure or other major projects will be a recipe for the very delays that process seeks to avoid. And now more than ever, with renewable energy and energy storage eating fossil fuels’ lunch in import markets around the world, a delayed pipeline or LNG terminal may be as good as a cancelled one. • Charged Up, Ready to Go: With its goal of doubling Canada’s electricity supply to meet a doubling of demand by 2050, the national electricity strategy that Carney unveiled Thursday has a lot to like. With its explicit language about speeding the shift from fuels to more efficient and affordable electricity, global investment and deployment patterns that already favour that shift, an emerging bidirectional power grid, the role of front-line options like rooftop solar and heat pumps, the emergence of electric vehicles as behind-the-meter energy storage, and the domestic jobs and manufacturing to make it all happen, the document doubles down on the essential cornerstone of a faster shift off fossil fuels. The strategy envisions a more prominent role for gas and nuclear power. But some of those provisions were already in the Clean Electricity Regulations that climate hawks are now fighting so hard to defend, inserted as a compromise in a futile attempt to mollify the industry and its political representatives in Alberta and Saskatchewan. But once again, gas will be a tougher sell when it’s more expensive and now so much more unpredictable than the clean alternatives. The new nuclear technologies are still speculative and deeply vulnerable to cost overruns. Increasingly, utilities, developers, and investors know it. Carney declared Thursday that “it doesn’t do us good to be sitting in court all the time with provinces. It doesn’t do us good to be talking past each other. What does do us good is to come together with specific projects.” There are no guarantees, but so much of the language and narrative-building in the electricity strategy suggests the lion’s share of those projects will be renewable. • The Party Has Already Started: The electricity strategy only rarely digs down to specific projects, but provinces representing three-quarters of Canada’s population are already embracing a faster transition. Hydro-Québec is working on a 10-year, $185-billion renewable energy and grid buildout by 2035. Ontario recently brought 10 provinces and territories together in a National Energy Corridor Agreement to boost interprovincial and -territorial transmission infrastructure. And the MOU implementation agreement commits Alberta to facilitate investment in renewable energy projects, a big step back from its continuing, punitive restrictions on renewables development. The electricity strategy envisions much of the financing and infrastructure that will be needed to pull those advances together into an integrated whole. • Delivering on Affordability: The MOU implementation plan has little or nothing to say about affordability (are you surprised?), but the electricity strategy does, with a top-line pledge to reduce home energy costs for seven out of 10 Canadian households by 2050, a total saving of $15 billion across the board. It’s just a start, but it puts affordability on the government’s narrative map. If they’re serious and deliberate about patching together a least-cost energy strategy, it’ll have little if any room for oil, gas, or nuclear—not with powerful evidence, for example, that electricity prices are higher when those prices are set by gas. • Smith Proves that Canada Works: By signing a deal that makes it harder to claim the federal government is blocking a new pipeline, Smith has helped prove Carney’s constant anti-separatist refrain that “Canada works”—incurring the rage, no doubt, of her own political base. Canada also needs to work for anyone who depends on a clean environment, healthy and thriving ecosystems, and safe, stable climate. But with Smith and her separatist constituents setting up as a fifth column for annexation by Donald Trump’s United States, let’s set aside any notion that 51st state status for Canada is a recipe for anything other than climate disaster (and so much else). Resisting and withstanding Trump (just 170 more sleeps until mid-term elections, which is a damn sight better than the 730 we started with) doesn’t mean a free pass for a pipeline, but we can still appreciate it that keeping Canada whole and sovereign is still Carney’s Job One. • The Words Not Spoken: Apart from a commitment to export a million barrels of “low-emission” Alberta bitumen per day (memo to Smith and Carney: You realize that that’s less than the industry is already exporting??), the MOU implementation plan says nothing about the international trade and economic sovereignty deals that Carney has been travelling the world to negotiate. It didn’t have to. Carney doesn’t need permission from Danielle Smith, her American enablers, or her separatist allies to continue building the alliances that will ratchet down our economic dependency on our unstable, unreliable neighbour to the south. But every connection he builds with countries outside North America helps align our economy and our future with a faster shift off fossil fuels. Little if any of this was on our bingo cards a year or two ago. But it’s the pathway that has opened up to us. And if it gives Canada any climate or energy gains at all in an era still dominated by Trump and his increasingly ridiculous tariffs, his loutish trade negotiations and his continuing annexation threats, we have to take the wins. Not least because they’ll be the point of departure for what we can achieve in 2027, 2029, and beyond, as Trump’s grip and this era begin to loosen and then fade. What is Carney Doing? If this line of thought is right—and it’s a possibility, not a prediction—it means that Carney’s actions and decisions are largely about buying time. Time for Trump’s power to wane. Time for Alberta’s separatist/conspiracist virus to spread, mutate, die out, or at least die back, with help from a vaccine of federal steadiness and calm (appropriate enough, for a movement populated largely by vaccine deniers) that no conspiracy theory can dismiss. And time for the government’s trade and investment agenda to deliver results—even knowing that some of those results will bring impacts that front-line communities will not and should not accept. In the immediate moment, none of this changes the way the wider climate community has to respond, from campaigners to investors to front-line practitioners. All of our voices are still essential. But those voices will be stronger and more confident if we have a clearer sense of the brutal game we’ve been pulled into, and a plausible path (or two it three) for playing it to the win we need. This conversation also underscores our biggest task for the remaining years of what was supposed to be the “decisive” decade for climate response: if we can shift the energy narrative in Canada, make it a mainstream view that the country’s preoccupation with oil and gas has us falling farther behind a changing world, we’ll see far better results in the 2030s and beyond. For many veteran climate advocates, taking on that part of the fight will begin with recognizing that most of our friends and family, neighbours and colleagues already understand that climate change is real and right in front of us: they’re looking away and staying silent because they don’t have what climate communicator Katharine Hayhoe calls “efficacy”. As Hayhoe recently pointed out in a feature interview with The Energy Mix, it amounts to science denial to keep hammering away at the dire news about global warming without also helping audiences understand what they can do about it, with multiple studies telling us why that won’t work. Far better to open those conversations with the dominant crises like energy security, food security, emergency preparedness and business continuity, affordability, and financial security that have knocked climate change far lower on the list of public priorities, and will likely keep it there. We Knew This Would Happen Climate hawks have always known this day would come. For decades, we warned that everyone had to pay attention to climate change right now, because it would be much tougher to respond once the crisis itself started affecting our daily lives. We were right, and here we are. But now, thanks to decades of hard work, communities and countries have an alternative to doubling down on fossil fuels. “In 10 years everyone will have ‘always known’ that solar and batteries were going to win,” Morgan Solar Executive Chair Mike Andrade writes on LinkedIn. With the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz roiling energy priorities around the world, Canada and the United States are among the shrinking number of countries that are still very keen on fossil fuel development. Understanding that gap is a first, essential step in spotting the opportunities ahead, and averting the deep economic as well as environmental and social risk we face if we don’t seize them. Thanks for reading The Energy Mix Weekender! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support our work. Subscribe Mitchell Beer traces his background in renewable energy and energy efficiency back to 1977, in climate change to 1997. Now he and the rest of the Energy Mix team scan 1,200 news headlines a week to pull together The Energy Mix and The Energy Mix Weekender. Chart of the Week BYD Eyes 20 Dealership Locations After Canada Greenlights Chinese EV Imports ‘Sledgehammer’ Carbon Price Deal Boosts Emissions by 230Mt, Aims for Fall 2027 Pipeline Approval ‘Worse Than Harper’: Regulatory Rollback Would Stop Canada from Assessing Project Impacts, Critics Warn Electricity Strategy Aims for Doubling by 2050, Allows ‘Flexibility’ for Gas Power Plants Opposition Mounts as O’Leary’s Data Centre Approved in Drought-Stricken Utah Diluted Carbon Price Misses ‘Reality of the World We’re In’, Could Impede Diversified Trade: Climate Institute $200B in Clean Energy Investment Will Need On-Time Delivery, Reliable Policies, Trade Association Says ‘Sovereign Pipeline’: CEO Pitches to Keep Trans Mountain in Government Hands What a Supercharged El Niño Could Mean for Canada Canada’s future is electric, and here’s how a power grid superhighway would get us there (Toronto Star) The Perilous Waters of Hecate Strait (Globe and Mail) Saudi Aramco profits jump despite conflict in Middle East (The Guardian) Farmers confront rising cost of fertilizer and fuel as spring seeding under way (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Clarkson forecasts 24% decline in offshore oil, gas capital expenditures (Oil & Gas Journal) Pipe Dreams: How Oil and Gas Fail to Deliver Economic Development in Africa (Oil Change International) Developing countries must hold the pen to script the fossil fuel transition (Climate Home News) Iran war threatens the dream of a post-oil economy in the Gulf (Washington Post) U.S. Oil, Gas Work Force Hits Lowest Level Since 2022 (Rigzone) Why Polestar Is Doubling Down on Net Zero as Rivals Pull Back on EVs (Bloomberg) Why this Michigan utility plans to sell its hydro dams for $13 (E&E News/Politico) Levees can no longer save New Orleans (Vox)
Latvia’s president asks opposition leader to form new government
If opposition leader Kulbergs were to form a government, the cabinet lineup would need to be approved by parliament.
Opposition research: Marcell Ozuna
The Pirates are playing well, but their new DH hasn’t been a big part of it
More taxes on sports betting? NC lawmakers discuss the possibility as industry pushes back
Lawmakers have weighed increasing tax rates on sports betting operators and an additional tax on lottery sales and individual sports bets, sources tell WRAL. No decisions have been made. And the proposals could pose enormous hurdles — and industry opposition.
Angus Taylor’s tough talk on migration puts politics over policy and risks feeding damaging stereotypes
If the opposition leader is serious about fixing the migration system, he should start by creating clearer pathways for people already contributing or stuck in limbo indefinitely
Both sides of political aisle react to budget surplus deal failure
The bill passed with bipartisan support in the Assembly, but failed because of bipartisan opposition in the Senate.
Boston-black-politics-opposition-Wu
I’m skeptical, but that’s certainly the impression being given by a group of longtime community activists waging a high-profile battle against City Hall.
Open Primaries Have Their Fans. The Parties Are Not Among Them.
New research claims that bipartisan primaries have broad societal benefit, but opposition is growing, and Louisiana voters this weekend will participate in the state’s first closed primary since 1978.
Opposition research: Trevor Story
The Phillies and Red Sox have a lot in common this season, including disappointing showings from their shortstops
Colorado needs a sane, viable opposition party
If you are upset with the increasing regulatory burden in Colorado, the exodus of too many large employers, accelerating property taxes, the condition of the roads, and all of the funding for transit schemes with low demand, of course, you can lay the blame on Democrats who control all levers of state government. The same […]
Opposition forming against radiologist nominee for surgeon general
“Dr. Saphier would be a catastrophic mistake on messaging and communicating with MAHA at a time where the coalition is very fragile,” one opponent says.
Commission requests more info on proposal to paint Eisenhower building white
More than 2,000 comments were sent in from the public about the proposal with messages appearing to be heavily skewed in opposition
Analysis: GOP politics — and Little — have changed since 2018. This election proves it.
Gov. Brad Little faces no prominent hardline opponent in the May 19 GOP primary, and it's no accident. For eight years, Little has sought to neutralize opposition from the right — while stepping away from the centrist coalition that helped elect him in the first place.
Officials advance expanded tax district for Downtown Chesterfield development despite business opposition
A divided Chesterfield City Council needed the mayor to break a tie Monday night to approve an expansion of the Downtown Chesterfield Special Business District, despite objections from business owners now being pulled into it. The expansion, which would bring Drury Inn & Suites, Hyatt Place Hotel, Stoney River Steakhouse and Grill, Bishop’s Post, and […]
Wisconsin’s largest sports complex moves forward — but not without opposition
The Breck Athletic Complex is set to be built at the intersection of Highway 164 and I-43 in Waukesha County.
Data center opposition is 'catching a fire' across North Carolina politics
As North Carolina localities consider data center projects or halt development with moratoriums, their decisions are having political repercussions.
Former IDF commander Wajdi Sarhan launches first Druze political party in decades
'Brotherhood Alliance' aims for Knesset seats and kingmaker role as Druze frustration with major parties grows; no clarity yet on alignment with coalition or opposition blocs
House Passes Stalled Homeland Security Funding Bill, Ending Shutdown
Republicans were forced to use a special maneuver to steer around opposition in their own party and speed the measure to the floor, relying on Democrats to push it through.
Trump says surgeon general nominee will continue to fight for MAHA health movement
U.S. President Donald Trump said his nominee to become surgeon general, Casey Means, will continue to fight for the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement despite opposition from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana to the nomination.
Internet Restrictions Spur Russians to Openly Question Putin’s Moves
From beauty influencers to the token political opposition, Russians are openly questioning President Vladimir V. Putin’s moves to hamstring access.
Sen. Bill Cassidy says he has delivered for Louisiana as he campaigns to win a third term
Can Cassidy overcome President Donald Trump’s opposition?