WND

A Texas judge has ordered New York abortionist Margaret Carpenter to stop shipping abortion pills into the state, while also issuing her a fine of over $100,000.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Carpenter in December, after she mailed a Texas woman the chemical abortion drugs in violation of state law. The woman suffered serious complications after taking the pills, and required emergency care. Carpenter is the same abortionist who was later indicted in Louisiana for mailing the abortion pill to a teen in that state; that teen, too, was injured and required emergency treatment.

Due to the December lawsuit, Carpenter was to appear before Collin County District Judge Bryan Gantt for a February 12 hearing. As expected, she did not comply. Gantt ruled the next day that Carpenter had violated state law by practicing in the state without a license and by facilitating an abortion, and “that an unborn child died as a result of these violations.” He issued a permanent injunction prohibiting Carpenter from prescribing abortion-inducing drugs to Texas residents, and ordered her to pay the $100,000 fine as well as $13,000 in attorneys’ fees and court costs plus interest.

“In Texas, we will always protect innocent life and uphold the laws that protect mothers and unborn babies,” Paxton previously said. “Radical out-of-state doctors will not be allowed to peddle dangerous and illegal drugs in Texas to kill unborn babies. Any doctor attempting to do so will be punished to the full extent of the law.”

While Carpenter is facing legal ramifications in states like Texas and Louisiana, officials in her own state of New York have vowed to protect her. The state’s “shield law” was designed specifically for the situations which Carpenter is now facing, and is intended to protect abortionists who violate pro-life laws in other states, even if women are injured at the hands of these abortionists. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has promised to “fight like hell” to protect Carpenter and those like her.

According to the New York Times, Texas may file a petition in a New York state court to try to collect Carpenter’s financial penalty, assuming Carpenter does not pay the fines. New York would likely argue against that penalty with its shield law, which could propel the case to the United States Supreme Court.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]

Russia’s war against Ukraine has long since morphed into a war upon Europe to prevent it from helping Ukraine in any way. The Kremlin’s newest target in this long war is the transfer of Bulgarian nuclear reactors to Ukraine. This process for Ukraine to acquire the nuclear reactors, which the Ukrainian parliament intelligently approved earlier this week, is critical to expanding Ukraine’s nuclear power generation as quickly as possible. Moscow knows this and is deploying its agents on payroll in Bulgaria to stop the Bulgarian parliament from greenlighting the transfer of the nuclear equipment while flooding the information space with systematic disinformation about the deal. Ukraine’s efforts to acquire nuclear reactors from Bulgaria is the Kremlin’s newest assault on truth.

At issue is the plan to sell unused nuclear equipment from the erstwhile Soviet-built nuclear power plant (NPP) in Belene to Ukraine to expand Ukraine’s Khmelnitsky NPP, bringing reactors no. 3 and 4 online with U.S.-made fuel from Westinghouse. Seeking to discredit the deal, the pro-Moscow “Rebirth” party (Vazrazhdane) has tabled a resolution in Bulgaria’s Parliament blocking the transfer of the reactors for the incomplete Belene power plant to Ukraine, deploying blatant disinformation that the reactors are incompatible with U.S. fuel. There can be no doubting of Vazrazhdane’s Russian connections. Indeed, party leaders openly flaunt them. So in this respect, Vazrazhdane is the Bulgarian analogue of Germany’s Alternativ fur Deutschland (AfD) party and France’s National Rally (Rassemblement National) party that also publicly display their pro-Russian stance. Apart from subsidizing the French and German pro-Russian parties, and others as well, Moscow uses them to conduct its disinformation and influence campaigns across Europe.

Obviously, we are seeing a similar Russian-led campaign in Bulgaria against helping Ukraine. Bulgaria, which has a long history of vulnerability to corruption and pro-Russian influence, has been and remains a particularly inviting target for Russian disinformation and influence operations. The renowned Bulgarian journalist Christo Grozev has reported that, “a large number of Russian agents operate in Bulgaria throughout politics, media, and institutions, working to advance Russian interests.”  They reportedly see Bulgaria as “easy prey” and even attempted a coup’d’etat there in 2016. Moreover, Vazrazhdane is not the only pro-Russian party operating in Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) is another such pro-Russian party. And they both conduct political operations aimed at turning Bulgaria into a Russian client state ruled along similar lines as is Russia. Thus Vazrazhdane is also championing a Russian-inspired foreign agents law that is intended to break Bulgarian ties with foreign democratic institutions and isolate the country from the EU.

In its attempt to prevent the transfer of Bulgaria’s excess nuclear power equipment to Ukraine Khmelnitsky’s NPP units 3 and 4, which, to be completed after being partially built years ago, need that increasingly scarce kind of Soviet-design equipment, Vazrazhdane has come up with the argument that Bulgaria – an EU and NATO member state – must expand the Belene plant using the Soviet-designed reactors, rather than build Western-designed reactors. The Belene NPP in Bulgaria, unlike the Khmelnitsky NPP in Ukraine, has not started construction using the Soviet-designed equipment and still has a choice as to the equipment used; Ukraine, unless it simply wants to abandon the partially completed units 3 and 4 at Khmelnitsky NPP and lose that power generation potential in the coming years, does not have a choice—it either installs Bulgaria’s excess nuclear equipment or forfeits this critical electricity generation.

Russian proxies are simultaneously employing disinformation that the Khmelnitsky NPP units 3 and 4 will be unsafe if run off U.S. fuel made by Westinghouse. As is generally the case with such Russian-inspired maneuvers, these claims are utterly mendacious. Westinghouse has officially confirmed, after a long assessment period, that Bulgaria’s VVER-100 reactors from the Belene nuclear power plant can operate safely on U.S. fuel and that the excess equipment from Belene can be safely installed at Khmelnitsky NPP, which would likely be done with the technical support and best-practices of Westinghouse. And let there be no confusion, if Bulgaria were to install these reactors at Belene, Vazrazhdane and other Russian proxies in the country would see to it that the plant runs off Russian nuclear fuel from Rosatom, dealing a powerful blow to American and European nuclear energy companies.

Other Russian spun disinformation claims that Ukraine does not need large, new nuclear power units, and that there are no trained personnel in Ukraine to operate the nuclear reactors. These are both categorically false. Ukraine needs new nuclear power capacity, especially given Russia’s scorched earth campaign to take out its energy production facilities. The completion of Khmelnitsky NPP reactors 3 and 4 would help compensate for the losses caused by these Russian attacks, and they would replace power units due to reach the end of their lifetime after 2030 while reducing Ukraine’s dependence on electricity imports – even allowing Ukraine to be a net electricity exporter over time. Regarding the nonsense that Ukraine cannot maintain this equipment, there are currently over 5,000 highly trained nuclear workers in the country who can ensure the full and safe functioning of Khmelnitsky NPP. In other words, Vazrazhdane, like other Russian-influenced parties, is conducting a campaign of arrant disinformation and mendacity in order to frustrate Ukraine’s regeneration and economic sustainability to benefit its Russian masters.

There are numerous instances of Russian “hybrid war” in Europe, and this is by no means the only front in Russia’s war on the West – it is simply the latest.  However, its potential to wreak havoc in Ukraine and across Europe cannot be understated. The Bulgarian Parliament must resist these Russian probes and transfer the equipment in question to Ukraine – Ukraine’s energy security depends on it. Doing so will not only defeat this malign Russian influence and disinformation campaign, but it will demonstrate that the West can muster the will to withstand these relentless attacks in order to protect its interests and those of its allies.

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Dr. Stephen J. Blank is a Senior Fellow at Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is an internationally renowned expert on Russian and Chinese defense policy. He is the author of “Light from the East: Russia’s Quest for Great Power Status in Asia” (Taylor & Francis, 2023). He was a Professor of National Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College.

Pope Francis was in critical condition after suffering an asthmatic respiratory crisis, The Associated Press reported, citing the Vatican.

“The Holy Father continues to be alert and spent the day in an armchair although in more pain than yesterday. At the moment the prognosis is reserved,” the Vatican said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press.

The 88-year-old pontiff has been hospitalized for over a week due to a respiratory infection. Doctors later diagnosed Pope Francis with pneumonia.

Another money pit that is sucking millions of taxpayer dollars will soon be on the market.

President Trump is selling the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San Francisco.

The administration says it will save money by avoiding the constant maintenance on the building.

 

The Nancy Pelosi federal building is located at 90 7th Street, San Francisco, California.

 

Maybe if Pelosi sells a few of her hot stocks she could the buy the building for herself and her family?

Crooked Nancy’s stocks more than doubled in value in the last month!

When will DOGE look into Pelosi’s hot stock buys?

[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit.com]

The Department of Education launched an investigation into Maine’s compliance with Title IX laws just hours after the governor sparred with President Donald Trump over men playing in women’s sports.

Democrat Maine Governor Janet Mills clashed with the president at a meeting of the National Governors Association (NGA) on Friday.

The fight was over Trump’s landmark executive order signed on February 5, which ensured that biological men could not compete in women’s sports. States that allow it will be subject to losing federal funding from the Department of Education.

Mills released a statement on Friday vowing not to follow the order and asserting, “The State of Maine will not be intimidated by the President’s threats.”

Meta’s recent deal with Entergy would power its $10 billion Louisiana data center with 2,300 megawatts (MW) of combined-cycle gas and 1,500 MW of new solar plus storage – not enough to offset the gas usage.

Like many hyper-scaling peers, Meta committed to supplying its operations with 100% clean electricity – but the 100% clean energy math isn’t adding up.

A data center powered by three new gas power plants and new solar-plus-storage conflicts with corporate commitments to 100% clean energy, and Meta’s gas powered deal should leave Louisiana consumers and utility regulators scratching their heads.

Thankfully, clean solutions abound for data center demand. Large consumers like Google are investing in portfolios of variable and baseload clean energy resources where utilities and their regulators allow it. A wider solution set wherein data centers bring entire energy portfolios to the party obviates the need for so much firming capacity and aligns with public policy goals of affordable, reliable, clean power for all.

Regulators should prioritize interventions that unlock these innovative configurations, including co-location and energy parks, enabling faster load growth while mitigating customer risk and pollution.

What’s in a 100% clean commitment?

Meta’s negotiations with Entergy exemplify the dilemma facing utilities, power-hungry data centers, and regulators grappling with growing demand. Most utilities and AI companies have adopted corporate sustainability goals pledging “net-zero” or 100% clean electricity. But off-the-shelf 100% clean solutions to meet this demand aren’t easy to find off the shelf.

Credit where it’s due: Meta and other technology companies have been mega-procurers of clean energy – in Meta’s case more than 11 gigawatts (GW) of carbon-free projects. This voluntary commitment to reducing pollution and supporting U.S. technological leadership deserves praise.

Meta’s Entergy deal highlights a systemic problem – utilities gatekeep market access, slowing clean energy additions and mostly limiting corporate procurement to transactional offset arrangements that encourage new gas as a reliability backstop. Corporate customers shouldn’t take responsibility for grid reliability, but they can help develop solutions that minimize locking in new infrastructure that also locks in price volatility, if the option exists.

 Meta inks a mega gas deal – but who pays?

Regulators’ primary duty here is allocating the cost of equitably serving customers and ensuring utilities plan for grid reliability – not mediating corporate sustainability goals. But these objectives come into conflict when large customers pull investments into the utility rate base.

Large customers can pay costs associated with data centers and leave consumers unharmed. Regulators certainly intend this. But costs can be difficult to attribute to specific customers, especially when they pay for some new resources and not others. And once built, new infrastructure stays in the rate base even if customers leave.

In its public filing, Entergy’s contract with Meta includes provisions to pay full revenue requirements for $3.2 billion worth of gas plants for the first 15 years of operation. Some transmission assets are also covered, while others will go into the general rate base. Presumably, Meta is also bringing the storage and solar plant to the party under its own purchasing arrangement, with the intent to sell this power to Entergy’s market zone, netting the difference.

However, gas power plants are designed to operate for 30 years or more, and transmission lines last even longer, which is out of sync for corporate consumers. And what happens if the data centers’ power demand doesn’t pan out? The recent news and market reaction to DeepSeek, a more efficient Chinese model for AI training, indicates we’re far from done realizing efficiency gains. For context, Bain & Company predicts data center growth will only increase costs 1% annually for all customers.

The best laid plans

It’s indisputable we’ll need more electricity, but just how much by when remains an open question. Electric Power Research Institute projections exemplify the uncertainty, ranging from 5-9% of U.S. electricity demand being taken by data centers in 2030 (up from 4% today). And demand projections have been wrong before – journalist Michael Thomas notes 2007 Energy Information Administration modeling predicted 4,700 terawatt-hours of demand by 2023…which didn’t happen.

Considering this uncertainty, utilities must pursue least-regrets solutions, and new customers should bear risks of accelerated investment. But for now, breathless claims from institutions like the North American Electric Reliability Corporation predicting catastrophic grid failures boost utility shareholders by presuming this load will materialize.

The conventional solution to “explosive” demand growth and the preferred path of incumbent utilities will be capital investment with risk spread over all customers, as well as preservation of remaining dispatchable generation. Regulators feel this pressure and utilities are pressing them to adjust capital plans including new gas builds.

Georgia Power’s unusual 2024 update to its integrated resource plan is early evidence, where the utility proposed and won hasty regulatory approval for 1.4 GW of new gas and oil-fired power to meet new load growth forecasts. At least Meta had the fortitude in Louisiana to take financial responsibility for new gas.

Deals like this will only heat up as the pressure builds to grant grid access to large, powerful consumers. Thoughtless inter-utility competition to rapidly supply demand risks a race to the bottom where existing customers provide corporate welfare becoming buyers of last resort for new infrastructure.

Utilities and their regulators are not powerless. If the name of the game is shifting risk to large consumers that want access to clean power, we must get more creative than Meta’s deal. But that requires long-overdue changes to the utility business model.

BYONCE, meet Energy Parks and Clean Portfolios

The Meta deal does allow data center access to significant additional solar resources, an incremental benefit to consumers and in-state pollution if Meta also pays for it. This deal represents a growing trend towards “bring your own new clean energy” (BYONCE).

BYONCE can take many forms. Meta’s represents a low bar – a contract with the incumbent utility or directly with generation selling into a wholesale market. This allows corporate customers to claim “clean” energy attributes for accounting purposes while offsetting costs if the energy delivers to the same market as the consumer.

More innovative arrangements include Nevada’s proposed “clean transition tariff” to supply Google with 24/7 clean electricity from a new enhanced geothermal project, along with others that may follow. These offerings typically include one or more generation sources, but could expand to include portfolios including demand-side resources like efficiency that better match inflexible demands. They could be structured to incent flexible behavior from large consumers if such behavior can avoid infrastructure investments, and be extended to groups of multiple customers.

But another model is emerging wherein large consumers bring their own onsite clean energy portfolios to the party: “energy parks.”

Rather than working clean energy deals through the utility rate base, an energy park allows large consumers to invest in and co-locate large clean energy developments behind a single interconnection point, serving the large load and the grid.

It also enables large consumers to spend their own capital on generation and other infrastructure to serve their needs, shifting risk from existing customers to new ones and reducing strain on the existing grid.

These solutions have real commercial interest. Intersect Power recently announced its strategic partnership with Google and TPG Rise Climate to provide renewable-plus-storage solutions co-located with new data centers. With data centers as “anchor tenants,” energy parks can add other flexible sources of demand to increase renewables utilization and add more economic development opportunities to the site.

 A moment of leverage

If gas-heavy deals like Meta’s become the default, data center-driven load growth won’t be met without risking customer costs, grid reliability, and clean air. It shifts risk to consumers and won’t scale quickly enough to meet new demand or bring the most affordable, scalable resources to market.

Creative solutions like energy parks or BYONCE broaden the solution set for large consumers and utilities, empowering more equitable risk allocation. While incumbents won’t go easily, utilities need this growth to continue creating shareholder value. Energy parks can attract new loads with what they want: faster access to cleaner, cheaper power. Regulators must bring these solutions to the table to protect consumers while meeting the load growth challenge.

 

Mike O’Boyle is Senior Director of Electricity Policy at nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation and has had dozens of opinion columns published in outlets like The New York Times, Forbes, Greentech Media, and Utility Dive. 

The United States should consider the creation of a ‘Gaza Canal’ between the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba.

Such a project could have myriad benefits, including:

• alleviate maritime traffic congestion and decrease shipping times between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea;
• lower regional transit costs due to direct competition with the Suez Canal;
• spur growth in southern Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia;
• improve Israeli-Arab relations; and
• provide a strategic alternative to the Suez Canal if it were compromised during potential great power conflict or terrorist attack.

Furthermore, due to the benefits to be incurred by Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia, the five countries involved could jointly fund and develop the project to expedite development and lower the cost to taxpayers—a cost which would already be mitigated by the potential return on investment from canal profits collected in U.S.-controlled Gaza, and southern Israel.

The Gaza Canal

A potential route for the Gaza Canal could follow Israel’s shelved plan for the Ben Gurion Canal. This project was drawn up in the 1960’s to create an alternative to the Suez. The original conversations even included American proposals to use nuclear weapons to carve the canal. However, with Gaza on the drawing board, a more direct route is possible.

A straight route from Gaza to the Gulf of Aqaba would stretch close to 130 miles through the Negev Desert, just 10 miles longer than Suez but would need to cut through some elevated territory. A route like that of the original Ben Gurion Canal could trace a route between mountainous terrain and empty through the Arabah Valley. This option would be longer, at around 160 miles, but still a good deal shorter than the original Ben Gurion route by cutting directly through Gaza. With modern means, the project would face far fewer setbacks than de Lessep’s 1869 endeavor and provide benefits at an improved pace.

Financial, Logistical, and Developmental Benefits

A U.S.-co-owned canal running through Gaza and southern Israel would provide several benefits.

First, it would provide an outlet for traffic buildup at the Suez Canal, which already takes an approximate 12-16 hours to traverse by convoy. This would lower maritime shipping times and operational costs. It would also alleviate the Suez Canal’s current monopolization of the maritime chokepoint and allow for competition to drive passage rates down from their current increased rate of $400,000-$700,000 per vessel. Both factors would provide for greater savings to be passed on to American consumers.

Furthermore, increased maritime traffic would bring greater investment to the Gulf of Aqaba, which Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia all border. For Saudi Arabia, this would improve the plausibility of economic diversification through tourist development along Red Sea towns. The same could be done in the remaining countries, or greater investment could promote the development of new towns for regionally displaced populations. Alongside organic investment from increased maritime traffic, passage fees would help to recoup costs incurred by the countries involved.

In 2023, total revenue for the Suez Canal was $9.4 billion. Even with increased pressure from Houthi attacks, the Canal still generated over $7 billion in 2024. With an American administration willing to take a more aggressive approach to secure the Red Sea, revenue would likely increase, and a portion of this total could redirect to the owners of the Gaza Canal.

Strategic Benefits

Perhaps the greatest benefit to the United States of a Gaza Canal would be the greater reliability of one of its most vital sea lines of communication (SLOC).

As demonstrated in the 2021 Ever Given crisis, the Suez Canal is vulnerable to closures, produced by mistake or malice. As the United States has effectively entered a new era of great power competition, it must consider the strategic costs of delayed logistics of both its naval assets and its merchant marine. The Chinese have already considered this vulnerability, prompting their dual-use development on the Panama Canal and the Trump administration’s recent efforts to mitigate this risk in the Western Hemisphere.

The Chinese have prepared for the future disruption of Western transit through Suez. Their only foreign military base is, very literally, down the street from the United States’ Red Sea base in Djibouti. Anticipating a future rerouting of maritime transit from Suez around the Cape of Good Hope, the Chinese have effectively consolidated unilateral influence over this alternative sea route, developing increased military relations and infrastructure development in South Africa, Comoros, Madagascar, Tanzania, and Namibia. These developments include naval exercises, military academies, and dual-use port infrastructure similar to their investments in Panama.

To mitigate this, the United States can either attempt to reverse decades of Chinese advances in southern Africa or shore up the security of its North African sea routes. A U.S.-controlled alternate option to the Suez Canal would serve the latter while a strategy to stem the tide of further Chinese expansion in Africa is developed and implemented.

Another strategic advantage to a joint venture between the United States, Israel, and bordering Arab states would be the furthering of symbiotic relationships between Israel and its neighbors. Such a venture would complement a renewed effort by the Trump Administration to further the Abraham Accords and stabilize the region. By creating more points of economic integration and codependence between Israel and Arab states, avenues toward sustained peace become more tangible and effective.

Although many of the details surrounding the United States’ role in Gaza remain undeveloped, a potential Gaza Canal should be an included consideration. As Gaza will need to be rebuilt from the ground up, the sad situation presents an ideal opportunity for the development of a large-scale project like the Canal as rubble and ordnance are removed and the future of Gaza begins to take shape.

By securing such a project, the United States would put America first by lowering costs on American consumers, help stabilize a region prone to drawing in unsustainable levels of American blood and treasure, and secure itself against the malicious acts of geopolitical competitors.

 Ashton Earl is the Director of Graduate Recruitment at Institute of World Politics. 

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, is facing backlash for introducing a budget recommendation that changes the word “mother” to “inseminated person,” and “paternity” to “parentage” in certain parts of state law.

The Evers administration’s budget recommendation for the 2025-2027 fiscal period advises several other gendered terms be changed, as well. References to “wife” or “husband” are changed to “spouse” in the proposal. In other places, the word “father” is changed to “parent,” and “mother” is swapped out for the phrase “parent who gave birth to the child.”

The budget was introduced by the state Senate’s Joint Committe on Finance on Tuesday.

Feb. 21, 2025: 8:46 p.m.:

USAID and CIA had ties to Trump’s 2019 impeachment, Pete Hegseth suggests holding them accountable

BREAKING: USAID and the CIA played a role in impeaching Donald Trump. This is a major discovery!

Should we hold them accountable?

YES or NO?

If YES, Follow my new account. pic.twitter.com/BNn1YR2sf1

— Pete Hegseth – Secretary of Defense COMMENTARY (@PeteHegsethSec) February 21, 2025