Zerohedge

Authored by Richard Samuelson via RealClearPolitics,

Our political class is aflame, and our lawyer-ocracy is up in arms over President Trump’s executive order limiting the scope of “birthright” (or “soil-based”) citizenship to children of permanent legal residents. Children born to tourists, students from other countries, and others here on a short-term basis, plus people here illegally, are no longer to be regarded as citizens of the United States merely because their mothers happened to be on American soil when they were born.

Is that constitutional? Does the U.S. Constitution demand that virtually everyone born on our soil (basically everyone except for the children of diplomats who, by convention, are under their home country’s laws) be considered a citizen by birth?

Most lawyers and law professors think that the answer is yes. But is it quite so clear? The 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Most of the discussion of this question thus far has focused on the meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and the prevailing view is that it was meant to include everyone who was, generally speaking, subject to American law. Although the Supreme Court has never ruled on the case of a child born to foreigners who are only here briefly, it has suggested that it would include them in the set of people who are citizens at birth.

Critics of this position hold that the amendment applies to cases in which the U.S. has complete jurisdiction over the person and note that there are ways that the scope of American jurisdiction over citizens and permanent residents is different than for people who are merely passing through – in being subject to the draft (and there had been a draft shortly before the amendment was ratified), to jury duty, and to many taxes (particularly since the people increased American jurisdiction by adding an income tax to the constitution in 1913), among other ways.

These discussions often turn to the debates in the Senate when they were drafting the amendment before sending it to the states so that the people, via their state legislatures, could decide if they wanted to add it to the Constitution. That’s a useful exercise, and it also would be helpful to see more discussion of what the people understood the amendment to mean when they had their state legislatures ratify it. Constitutional law is not legislation. The Constitution, including the amendments to it are the supreme law of the land because we, the people, made them so; so what we understood ourselves to be doing when we approved a text carries more weight than what senators understood themselves to be recommending to the people for approval. Our lawyers tend to think that’s too complicated. But it is not our job to make life easy for lawyers.

As a logical and grammatical matter, the full sentence “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside” only applies to people who already reside in a state. “And” in a sentence, per basic rules of grammar and logical construction, means both parts must be true for the full statement to be true. A person who does not reside in a state is not included among the set of people described by the language of the sentence. That is the strict reading of the text. If we are to take the sentence as one having a coherent meaning as a sentence in the English language, it implies that “the jurisdiction thereof” is limited to the kind of jurisdiction that only applies to people who “reside” in a state. Thus far, our discussion has barely considered this aspect of the text. (As I was finishing up the essay, I finally happened upon one article by Andrew Hyman, hot off the press in late January, that takes this into account, but that’s a rare exception.) Can that be a logical reading? It’s actually a fairly clear line. Tourists and others here on a temporary basis are not subject to U.S. jurisdiction in many ways. They don’t have several of the responsibilities of citizens – being subject to the draft, jury duty, paying income taxes, etc. Full-time residents who live and work here are a much closer call. The Civil War era draft included aliens who intended to become citizens. They are subject to more jurisdiction than tourists. And those here in violation of our laws are yet another category.

What is the implication of this? Can it be correct, given the lawyerly majority on the other side? Does it even make sense? Such a reading means that the text would not include people who resided in the Colorado territory before it became a state in 1876. The article Could they have meant that? Hyman finds that the issue was raised in debates over the text of the Amendment in Congress, and a change to include territories was rejected. It would not be unusual for judges, faced with the case of a person born in a federal territory, to decide that the text is imperfect and, therefore, to decide that those who reside in federal territory would also be included. (Implicitly, they would be adding “or territory” to the phrase “state wherein they reside.” Judges often do that sort of thing.) But when they do that, they are adding to the text, bringing what they take to be the spirit of the law, and using it to add to or modify the actual text. Adding those merely passing through the U.S. would be a much larger judicial edit to the text.

As noted above, the key precedent on this subject is an 1898 case, U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark (decided 7-2 by almost exactly the same majority that gave us the execrable “separate but equal” doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896), brought by the child of full-time residents of the U.S. who were Chinese nationals. They resided in California when Wong Kim Ark was born; hence the question of how far the line went and whether it included people who don’t reside in a state at birth was not under the court’s consideration in the decision.

Since at least the middle of the 20th century, or perhaps the Civil Rights era of the 1960s, the 14th Amendment has been read to mean that everyone born in the U.S., except those born to diplomats, is a citizen by birth, and as noted, there is a strong consensus among our lawyers that that is the most natural, and therefore correct, reading of the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. Interestingly, a Google search finds that the term “birthright citizenship” was almost completely absent from public discussion until roughly 1980. The term may very well have been brought into common use to rebrand the 14th Amendment, and did its work so well that it’s now taken as the common constitutional term. Before that, the law might not have been understood to apply to quite so many cases, and perhaps our language has followed.

According to John Eastman – a leader of the move to limit the cases in which soil makes a U.S. citizen – when we ended a massive guest worker program in the 1920s at the beginning of the Depression, we sent children born to the temporary workers out of the country with their parents, and, apparently, no one said it raised a constitutional problem, implying that people in that era read the 14th Amendment as not including the children of temporary workers among the people who are citizens at birth due to the location of their mother when she gave birth to them.

Lawyers also like to say that our law follows British common law in making all people born on our soil U.S. citizens. We, like the British, follow the Roman jus soli – the law of soil. Yet that term is entirely absent in Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” the leading British legal treatise of the 18th century. It’s also absent in the basic edition of writings of Edward Coke, the leading English jurist of the 17th century, even in Calvin’s Case (1608), a central precedent in this area of English law. To call it jus soli is likely a category error, imposing Roman law logic on Britain’s common law. British law is about allegiance, not citizenship. A Briton by birth has obligations to the king and has no right to choose to cease to be the king’s subject without the king’s consent. As all land in England belonged, per a legal fiction, to the king, being on the king’s soil was a sign that one was under the king’s protection. But location at birth was not the only such sign. Coke’s language in Calvin’s Case seems to deride the notion that soil is fundamental. It’s about being under the king’s protection, and therefore owing him personal allegiance, in a quasi-feudal sense. America, by contrast, began by rejecting that very concept. Recall that that case was about a person born in Scotland after King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, making him king of two kingdoms at the same time. The court held that because allegiance was to the person of the king, not to England per se, a Scot born after James became King of England can inherit land in England.  In America we don’t begin with the premise that lands belong to the government first, and to individual owners second. Moreover, from the start, as a matter of principle, we have embraced citizenship instead of subjecthood, a change that includes the right to choose one’s nationality, the very right the king denied us. It was an act of treason to sign the Declaration of Independence. Someone born on the king’s soil did not have the right to do that without the king’s consent. America has always rejected the law of allegiance. Every American, unlike every Briton then, has had the right to choose not to be an American citizen anymore.

Presumably, changes in the metes and bounds of who is a national by birth follow from that change from subject to citizen, meaning it’s wrong to assume we presumptively follow the common law of allegiance in all other regards. If the principle at the heart of our regime is republican, not monarchical, it follows that the law of citizenship will have a connection to free republican principles in a way that the king’s law allegiance did not. No one disputes that being born on U.S. soil is, generally speaking, an indication that someone is an American citizen by birth, and no one denies that being born on the king’s soil made one a British subject. Similarly no one denies that the child of an American citizen is generally a U.S. citizen. The question is how far the rules extend.

Our first Naturalization Act, passed by the First Congress in 1790, declared that “the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens: Provided, that the right of citizenship shall not descend to persons whose fathers have never been resident in the United States.” That’s very interesting language. It rejects allegiance and the false binary law of soil or law of blood (jus sanguinis) when constrained by republican principles that are equally “natural.” (In other words, when people tried to claim that Sens. John McCain, Ted Cruz, or Barack Obama were not eligible to be president due to the circumstances of their birth, real or imagined, they forget that the laws of the founding era suggest otherwise.) The child of any American citizen is, per the First Congress, a natural-born citizen, and eligible to be elected president. Note that it says citizenship only follows blood for one generation. It only applies to the children of active citizens, not those who have implicitly repudiated their nationality by living permanently abroad. It is a law for citizens in that sense, not a law based upon blood. That’s where “fidelity” comes in. A law of blood makes that irrelevant. The same logic would likely apply to the nature and extent of the case of soil – hence those who have chosen to “reside” in the United States.

After drafting the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson returned to Virginia and worked on a comprehensive revision of the laws to make them accord with the change from monarchy to republic. His new law of citizenship, approved by Virginia’s legislature, ensured that all children born to current citizens are citizens, and he added, “and all who shall hereafter migrate into the same; and shall before any court of record give satisfactory proof by their own oath or affirmation, that they intend to reside therein, and moreover shall give assurance of fidelity to the commonwealth.” Note the language: Those who make it clear that they intend to reside in and who renounce their fidelity to other lands (not an explicit requirement of the king’s law, according to which the king made you an offer of subjecthood you could not refuse) are citizens, and their children are citizens at birth. That’s the very distinction the Civil War era draft law made, interestingly.

In other words, ascertaining the limit of the law is not a question that can be addressed by the simplistic question of whether we follow a law of soil or a law of blood. The logic of the rule is itself part of the rule. Under the king’s law of allegiance, one set of metes and bounds follows to describe the set of people who are born his subject, and under a law of citizenship, it’s likely that there might be a different set of metes and bounds regarding who is a citizens at birth. It might be, however, that we never really worked through the full implications of that until we were working on the 14th Amendment.

All of that might, on the other hand, have only a limited amount of relevance to the question of children of tourists and of others who don’t “reside” in a state or on U.S. territory (if we expand it to that). Why not? Because we are talking about an amendment, not a full statement of principles or of law. The 14th Amendment was designed to ensure that black Americans were U.S. citizens. In the Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that black Americans, slave or free, were not and could not be U.S. citizens. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment overturned that decision. No one disputes that.

Legal language is general. Did the language securing citizenship to black Americans also secure citizenship for a child born to people who are merely passing through the United States on a short trip? Or when working here on a short-term basis? How far does language guaranteeing citizenship to all who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S., even if only in the manner of those who “reside,” extend? And beyond that, nothing in the text says that’s a limit. If U.S. law in 1868, when we ratified the 14th Amendment, already held that children born to people in the U.S. as tourists or on a brief business trip were citizens at birth, the 14th Amendment would, obviously, not change that. If some states followed a broader rule and other states followed a narrower rule before then, it presents a complicated question. There is one case from New York state that declares that a child born to parents who were briefly in New York on a trip is a citizen by birth.

But given how federal our republic then was, it’s likely there was no one single federal common law at the time on this subject, so one precedent from one state, or even a couple of states, would not be definitive. One or two precedents in one or two states in the decades between the founding and the Civil War is not enough to definitively prove much of anything. That is why the actual language that we the people approved when we ratified the 14th Amendment matters. It is not the last word on the subject, but the full first sentence of the 14th Amendment, read as a coherent sentence, is certainly worthy of more consideration than it has been given thus far.

Richard Samuelson is an American historian and associate professor of government at Hillsdale College, Washington, D.C., campus.

It’s been three full years since the full-on Russian invasion of Ukraine kicked off on February 24, 2022. At this point, it’s become clear to all that Russian forces control the battlefield, amid steady ongoing gains in the Donbass region.

Even as talks with the US progress, Moscow has made clear on Monday that it will only accept a peace settlement which “suits” its interests.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov issued the words while on an official visit to Turkey, and warned that European countries are trying to sabotage Trump efforts at peace.

He he emphasized that Moscow stands ready and willing to negotiate with Ukraine, Europe or “any representatives who in good faith would like to help achieve peace.”

“But we will stop hostilities only when these negotiations produce a firm and sustainable result that suits the Russian Federation,” he said alongside his Turkish counterpart Hakan Fidan.

Among the proposals that might stymie progress on negotiations is the possibility of a European army of some 30,000 to patrol a buffer zone inside Ukraine. Moscow has consistently rejected that NATO troops would be present along the war-torn border.

Trump himself has shown interest in such a peacekeeping force, especially as US troops would not be part of it. Put Putin will likely fear this is just recipe for another potential future showdown.

In separate statements Monday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday charged Europe with obstructing good faith peace efforts.

“The Europeans continue on the path of a sanctions nosedive, on the path of conviction in the need to continue the war,” Peskov said in reaction to the EU imposing a new round of sanctions on Moscow.

“This conviction of the Europeans completely contrasts with the mindset of finding a settlement on Ukraine, which we are now doing with the Americans,” he added. Reuters reviews of the new punitive action:

The European Union’s latest sanctions against Moscow include a ban on third-country airlines flying to the 27-nation bloc if they carry out domestic flights in Russia, the European Commission said, opens new tab on Monday.

The EU’s 16th sanctions package against Russia includes a ban on primary aluminum imports and the sale of gaming consoles, while also listing a cryptocurrency exchange and dozens of vessels of the so-called shadow fleet used to evade sanctions.

At this point both the US and Russian sides plan to continue conducting the talks which began last week in Riyadh. Presumably neither Ukrainian nor European representatives will be at the table for the next rounds.

.@EmmanuelMacron: Mr. President, first of all, allow me to commend you on your decision to work with President Zelenskyy and to conclude this agreement that’s so important for the U.S. and Ukraine, on rare earth critical minerals… We also have a shared desire to build peace. pic.twitter.com/FAwQ4KBpr6

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 24, 2025

Each side appeared satisfied with how the first engagement went, with the Kremlin hailing the ‘successful’ betterment of relations, which has involved more staff returning to each respective embassy.

While the left clutched pearls over one of Elon Musk’s DOGE employees who went by the name ‘Big Balls’ online a few years ago, they’ve been dead silent over a bombshell report from Chris Rufo revealing secret NSA “sex chats” that involved at least one CIA employee that go back two years – featuring discussions involving “sex, kink, polyamory, and castration.” And butthole zapping.

Both current and former NSA employees “provided chat logs from the NSA’s Intelink messaging program,” revealing all sorts of insane shit.

One popular chat topic was male-to-female transgender surgery, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it into an artificial vagina. “[M]ine is everything,” said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery. “[I]’ve found that i like being penetrated (never liked it before GRS), but all the rest is just as important as well.” Another intelligence official boasted that genital surgery allowed him “to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it.”

These employees discussed hair removal, estrogen injections, and the experience of sexual pleasure post-castration. “[G]etting my butthole zapped by a laser was . . . shocking,” said one transgender-identifying intel employee who spent thousands on hair removal. “Look, I just enjoy helping other people experience boobs,” said another about estrogen treatments. “[O]ne of the weirdest things that gives me euphoria is when i pee, i don’t have to push anything down to make sure it aims right,” a Defense Intelligence Agency employee added. –City Journal

Yeah…

Oh my…

These trans employees discuss hair removal, estrogen treatments, and breast implants. “Getting my butthole zapped by a laser was . . . shocking,” said one trans-identifying DIA official. “Medical science is gonna give me tits one way or another,” said a Navy intel employee. pic.twitter.com/qXLtq0nk45

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 24, 2025

Both the CIA and NSA have confirmed the authenticity of the report…

BREAKING: The CIA has released a statement on the trans sex chats, claiming it “will be taking immediate action on this matter.” pic.twitter.com/iK33aLidai

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 25, 2025

BREAKING: An NSA spokesman has confirmed the authenticity of the secret sex chats and claims that the agency is taking administrative action against employees who “abused this system.”

This story is ongoing. More revelations coming tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/q822rMWjx6

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 24, 2025

Reminder that the Biden CIA was actively recruiting people with mental illnesses https://t.co/YnIGjef2ay pic.twitter.com/nFkoeIT0T9

— Lomez (@L0m3z) February 25, 2025

What in the cinnamon toast fuck?

Well … at least we know what they did last week 🤣🤣 https://t.co/C6vZeUTGSg

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 25, 2025

 

Only two months ago Governor Gavin Newsom proclaimed that he was going to “Trump proof” California with a $50 million “litigation fund” designed to frustrate the President’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants.  Today, Newsom is asking the federal government for over $40 billion in relief funds for aftermath of the Los Angeles wild fires.  The question is, should Newsom get those dollars no questions asked?  Or, should California be forced to make concessions on some of their more destructive policies?  

The “Golden State” has a long history of gorging on federal funding, often with an attitude of entitlement.  California has the highest rate of debt in the nation – It tops the list with over $500 billion while the next closest state in New York with around $300 billion.  And though Newsom has often cited the state’s large tax revenues as a rationale for federal expenditures, the state still runs an average deficit of $30 billion per year and around 35% of the state budget is built on federal funds.  In other words, they are far more reliant on the federal government than they let on.

Democrats love to claim that red states are “supported by California tax dollars”, but in reality California can’t even support itself. 

Which is why Newsom is back and begging for money yet again; this time to fix a calamity that could have been avoided had Democrats listened to Donald Trump and others years ago and adapted their water management protocols to better prepare for fires.   

Newsom sent a letter Friday addressed to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.); House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.); Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), the House Appropriations Committee chair; and Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the lead Democrat on that committee, asking for their support. 

“Los Angeles is one of the most economically productive places on the globe, but it can only rebound and flourish with support from the federal government as it recovers from this unprecedented disaster,” Newsom wrote.  A total of 16,251 structures were destroyed as the fires tore through a combined 37,400 acres of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Pasadena and Altadena.

Republicans have suggested linking aid to certain policy changes, such as altering California’s water policy or imposing new voter ID requirements. 

As with the wildfires in Maui in 2023, Democrat leaders are full of excuses and deflections on the disaster in LA.  The strategy seems to work well for them – They simply stall for a few weeks until the issue is forgotten by the public, then beg for money.  Trump’s offer of federal funds in exchange for policy changes is perhaps the only accountability that could be squeezed from progressive governments without arduous litigation.

Dems will argue that this kind of bargaining with government funds is “hurting the victims of the fires”; but the truth is that such bargaining is necessary to prevent future disasters.  Leftist state governments continue to make the same mistakes over and over again because they are always rewarded and never punished.  Changing this dynamic is the only way to convince them to reform.  

Texas is positioning itself to aggressively install next-generation nuclear reactors on its electrical grid to power artificial intelligence data centers and other electrification trends meticulously outlined in “The Next AI Trade.” 

*    *    * 

Authored by Dylan Baddour of Inside Climate News (emphasis ours),

The small West Texas city of Abilene is better known for country music and rodeos than advanced nuclear physics. But that’s where scientists are entering the final stretch of a race to boot up the next generation of American atomic energy. 

Amid a flurry of nuclear startups around the country, Abilene-based Natura Resources is one of just two companies with permits from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to construct a so-called “advanced” reactor. It will build its small, one megawatt molten salt reactor beneath a newly-completed laboratory at Abilene Christian University, in an underground trench 25 feet deep and 80 feet long, covered by a concrete lid and serviced by a 40-ton construction crane. 

The other company, California-based Kairos Power, is building its 35 megawatt test reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the 80-year capital of American nuclear power science. Both target completion in 2027 and hope to usher in a new chapter of the energy age. 

“A company and school no one has heard of has gotten to the forefront of advanced nuclear,” said Rusty Towell, a nuclear physicist at Abilene Christian University and lead developer of Natura’s reactor. “This is going to bless the world.”

The U.S. Department of Energy has been working for years to resuscitate the American nuclear sector, advancing the development of new reactors to meet the enormous incoming electrical demands of big new industrial facilities, from data centers and Bitcoin mines to chemical plants and desalination facilities. 

Leaders in Texas, the nation’s largest energy producer and consumer, have declared intentions to court the growing nuclear sector and settle it in state. The project at Abilene Christian University is just one of several early advanced reactor deployments already planned here.

Dow Chemical plans to place small reactors made by X-energy at its Seadrift complex on the Gulf Coast. Last month, Natura announced plans to power oilfield infrastructure in the Permian Basin. And in February, Texas A&M University announced that four companies, including Natura and Kairos, would build small, 250 megawatt commercial-scale reactors at a massive new “proving grounds” near its campus in College Station. 

“We need energy in Texas, we need a lot of it and we need it fast,” said state Sen. Charles Perry, chairman of the Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs. “The companies that are coming here are going to need a different type of energy long term.”

During this year’s biennial legislative session, state lawmakers are hoping to make billions of dollars of public financing available for new nuclear projects, and to pass other bills in support of the sector. 

“If we do what we’re asked to do from industry groups out here, if we do what we think we should do and we know we should do, we could actually put a stake in the ground that Texas is the proving ground for these energies,” Perry said, speaking this month in the state capitol at a nuclear power forum hosted by PowerHouse Texas, a nonprofit that promotes energy innovation. 

But, he added, “Texas is going to have to decide: At what level of risk is it prudent for taxpayer dollars to be risked?”

The first new reactors might be commercially ready within five years, he said; most are 10 to 20 years away. 

Dozens of proposed new reactor designs promise improved efficiency and safety over traditional models with less hazardous waste. While existing nuclear reactors use cooling systems filled with water, so-called “advanced” reactor designs use alternatives like molten salt or metal. It enables them, in theory, to operate at a higher temperature and lower pressure, increasing the energy output while decreasing the risks of leaks or explosions.

“Texas is going to have to decide: At what level of risk is it prudent for taxpayer dollars to be risked?” — State Sen. Charles Perry

Before it can be built, each design is extensively reviewed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in a yearslong process to ensure they meet safety requirements.

“We understand how much work we’re facing and getting that done means finding every appropriate efficiency in our reviews,” said Scott Burnell, public affairs officer for the NRC. 

The commission is also reviewing a permit application by Washington-based TerraPower, founded by Bill Gates in 2006, to build a full commercial nuclear power plant in Wyoming. It expects to receive a construction permit application for the X-energy reactor at Dow in Texas this year, Burnell said.

After construction, the companies will require a separate permit to operate their projects. None have sought an operating license for an advanced nuclear reactor, but Natura plans to file its application this year.

For Towell, an Abilene native and the son of two ACU faculty members, this moment was a decade in the making. In 2015 he founded the NEXT Lab at ACU for advanced nuclear testing, got a $3 million donation from a wealthy West Texas oilman in 2017, entered into partnership with the Energy Department in 2019 and formed the company Natura in 2020. Construction finished in 2023 on NEXT’s shimmering new facility. And in 2024, the NRC issued a permit to build the first advanced reactor at an American university. 

What are Advanced Nuclear Reactors?

Towell, a former instructor at the U.S. Naval Nuclear Power School, said these new projects represent the first major advancement in American nuclear power technology in 70 years. While layers and layers of safety systems have been added, the basic reactor design has remained unchanged. 

It uses a cooling system of circulating water to avoid overheating, melting down and releasing its radioactive contents into the atmosphere. The system operates at extremely high pressure to keep the water in liquid state far above its boiling point. If circulation stops due to power loss or malfunction, a buildup of pressure can cause an explosion, as it did at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan in 2011. 

In contrast, new “advanced” reactor designs use alternatives to water for cooling, like liquid metal or special gases. 

Natura’s design, like many others, uses molten salt. It’s not table salt but fluoride salt, a corrosive, crystalline substance that melts around 750 degrees Fahrenheit and remains liquid until 2,600 degrees under regular pressure.

As a result, the reactor can operate at extremely high temperatures without high pressure. If the system ruptures, it won’t jettison a plume of steam, but instead leak a molten sludge that hardens in place. 

“It doesn’t poof into the air and drift around the world,” Towell said. “It drips down to a catchpan and freezes to a solid.” 

Rather than solid fuel rods, Natura’s design also uses a liquid uranium fuel that is dissolved into the molten coolant. According to Towell, a former research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, that decreases the amount of radioactive waste produced by the reactor and makes it easier to recycle.

The Kairos reactor design uses molten salt coolant with hundreds of thousands of uranium fuel “pebbles,” while the X-energy design uses fuel pebbles with a gas coolant. 

Critically, many new reactor designs are also small and modular. Instead of massive, custom construction projects, they are meant to be built in factories with assembly line efficiency and then shipped out on truck trailers and installed on site. That will allow large industrial facilities or data centers to operate their own power sources independent from public electrical grids. 

Natura president Doug Robison, a retired oil company executive who worked 13 years as an ExxonMobil landman, said small reactors could run oilfield infrastructure in the Permian Basin, from pumpjacks to compressor stations.

“By powering the oil and gas industry, which uses a tremendous amount of power for their operations, we’re helping alleviate the grid pressure,” he said. 

He also wants to power new treatment plants for the enormous quantities of wastewater produced each day in the Permian Basin. In January, Natura announced a partnership with the state-funded Texas Produced Water Consortium at Texas Tech University aimed at using small reactors to purify oilfield wastewater, most of which is currently pumped underground for disposal.

“It Always Gets Back to the Funding”

The new reactor projects fit into plans by state leaders to establish Texas as a global leader of advanced nuclear reactor technology. In 2023, Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s Public Utility Commission to study the question and produce a report. 

“Texas is well-positioned to lead the country in the development of ANRs,” said the 78-page report, issued late last year. “Texas can lead by cutting red tape and establishing incentives to accelerate advanced nuclear deployment, overcome regulator hurdles and attract investment.”

The report made several recommendations, and state lawmakers this year have already filed bills to enact several of them, including the creation of a Texas Advanced Nuclear Authority and a nuclear permitting officer. Most significantly, the report also recommended two new public funds to support nuclear energy deployment, including one modeled after the Texas Energy Fund, which was created in 2023 and made $5 billion in financing available for new gas power plants.  

“When I talk to folks, it always gets back to the funding,” said Thomas Gleeson, chairman of the Public Utility Commission, during the PowerHouse forum. “All of those issues are somewhat ancillary to: How are we going to fund this?”

Gleeson said developers will expect the state to put up at least $100 million per project through public-private partnerships in order to help reduce financial risk. 

“Given the load growth in this state that we’re projecting, if you want clean air and you want a reliable grid, you have to be in favor of nuclear,” he said.

Critics of the plan oppose the use of public money on private projects and worry about safety. 

“We don’t use tax dollars to fund a bunch of experimental and pie-in-the-sky designs that should be the responsibility of private industry,” said John Umphress, a retired Austin Energy program specialist who is evaluating the nuclear efforts on contract for the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen. “Nobody has really penciled out the cost because there’s still a lot of proof of concept that’s going to have to be pursued before these things get built.”

Umphress raised concerns over materials in development to withstand the astronomical temperatures and extremely corrosive qualities of molten salt coolants. 

He also noted that the U.S. still lacks a permanent repository for nuclear waste following decades of unsuccessful efforts. Most waste today is stored on site in specialized interim facilities at nuclear power plants, which wouldn’t be possible if small reactors were deployed to individual industrial projects. 

“That’s the big issue that we still haven’t solved, but it’s not stopping some of these developers from pushing forward with their designs,” he said. “They’re hoping the federal government will take ownership of the waste and be responsible for its storage and disposal.”

During the PowerHouse forum, officials expressed hope that the private sector would develop a solution after new reactor projects create demand for waste disposal. 

The Energy Proving Ground

Those reactor projects are still many years away. So far, the NRC has only authorized advanced reactor construction for university research. Next it will issue permits for larger commercial reactors before they can be deployed. 

Perhaps the largest early deployment of commercial advanced reactors is set to take place at Texas A&M University. In February, the school announced that four companies had committed to install their commercial reactor designs at a new 2,400-acre “Energy Proving Ground” near its College Station campus. 

The site is an old Army air base, currently home to vehicle crash test facilities and an advanced warfare development complex. 

The university will build infrastructure there and help streamline permitting for the reactor projects, said Joe Elabd, vice chancellor for research at the Texas A&M System. The university is requesting $200 million in state appropriations to help develop the site, he said.

“We’re providing a little bit more of a plug-and-play site for these companies, as opposed to them going to a true greenfield and having to do everything for themselves,” he said. 

Reactors on the site will be connected to Texas’ electrical GRID, Elabd said. 

A&M began seeking proposals from companies to build at the site last August, and a panel of university experts selected the four finalists, which include Natura and Kairos. 

A Kairos spokesperson, Christopher Ortiz, said the company is building a manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which will produce the reactors deployed to Texas A&M. He said the company is currently working to identify sites for future commercial reactors, evaluating factors like workforce availability, existing infrastructure and community support. 

“The Texas A&M site presents a unique opportunity to site multiple commercial power plants in one location, which makes it particularly attractive,” he said.

The site will also include Terrestrial Energy, a Canadian company. And it will include Aalo Atomics, a two-year-old investor-funded startup that is currently building a 40,000-square-foot reactor factory in Austin, which it plans to unveil in April. 

More than modular reactors, Aalo plans to produce entire modular power plants, called Aalo Pods, including several reactors, a turbine and a generator, which are designed to be installed at data centers.

“It’s made in the factory, shipped to the site and assembled like Legos,” said Aalo CEO Matt Loszak. 

He estimated five to 10 years for deployment at the A&M site but said that depended on continued financial support from investors. Aalo is developing its reactor design at the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, a 70-year-old national nuclear research center. 

But Loszak, a former software engineer from Canada, decided to locate his factory in Texas, he said, to be close to massive incoming energy demands and to take advantage of the state’s business-friendly approach to regulation. 

“Politicians here are really pro-nuclear, they want to see nuclear get built, and that’s not the case in other places across the country,” he said. “From a regulatory and permitting perspective, it’s a great place to build stuff.”

On Monday the Pentagon sent a US Air Force B-52H Stratofortress strategic bomber and a formation of supporting fighter jets over Estonian airspace, very close to Russia’s doorstep.

Crucially the large bomber is capable of carrying nuclear weapons, and reports say the accompanying F-35A Lightning II fighter jets approached the Russian border during the flight. Watch the provocative flyover of Baltic territory below:

After Russia flies bombers near Alaska last week, U.S. Air Force sends one over Estonia.pic.twitter.com/dPYkbuj76F

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) February 24, 2025

The air traffic monitoring site FlightRadar24 confirmed and tracked the bomber flight group’s path, also at a moment NATO has been sending increased air patrol missions over the Baltic region, which Moscow has complained about.

These flights have been supported by NATO’s Joint Expeditionary Force, and come amid months of controversy over allegations that Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tankers are damaging telecom cables under the Baltic Sea.

This also appears a response to Russian aircraft buzzing the Alaskan air defense identification zone (ADIZ) just days ago.

North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) tracked Russian aircraft off Alaska on February 19. It was an unspecified amount and type of Russian aircraft, according to a NORAD statement, but typically Russia sends its own long-range bombers on such flights.

As part of the aforementioned NATO integrated mission, the US recently deployed a pair of B-52H Stratofortress strategic bombers to Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base in Romania, which is not far from the Ukrainian border.

This means that even as the Trump administration rapidly pursues a peace deal with Moscow related to the Ukraine war, tensions between Russia and the Western alliance continue to soar and be on edge.

While Russia semi-regularly flies bombers off Alaska in international airspace, it has not actually stationed bombers on the ground at bases in the vicinity of North America. Certainly the US parking bombers in NATO ‘eastern flank’ member Romania has set off alarm bells at the Kremlin.

Authored by Ken Silva via Headline USA,

Jury selection started Monday for the man accused of slaughtering seven people at a suburban Chicago Independence Day parade nearly three years ago. But a day before trial proceedings began, a trustworthy researcher released compelling evidence suggesting there were multiple shooters at that July 4, 2022, massacre.

The research comes from Becca Spinks, whose past work has helped put child predators behind bars. Spinks is working on a multi-part series on the Highland Park shooting, which she’s generously allowed Headline USA to run in its entirety.

Spinks’ full series is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the entire context of the Highland Park shooting and its alleged perpetrator, Robert Crimo III, also known as Bobby.

👀 https://t.co/ovvP4iPE3g pic.twitter.com/hPM6YrvHBD

— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) February 24, 2025

However, perhaps the biggest revelation from her series is worth emphasizing in a standalone article: It looks like there were multiple shooters at Highland Park.

Indeed, Spinks noted that the official story has Crimo committing the entire shooting from atop the Ross Cosmetics building, a local store on the northwest corner of Central Avenue and 2nd Street. While the evidence clearly shows that Crimo was certainly near Ross Cosmetics armed with an AR-15, two of the shooting victims were totally out of his vantage point, as well as that of the Ross Cosmetics rooftop, according to Spinks.

“The two victims at the far back of Port Clinton Square were completely obscured by the side of Walker Bros,” she noted, also publishing a photo of the scene she described. “Both victims were grievously injured and covered in massive quantities of blood, indicating they died on the spot. This theory was further supported by the absence of blood trails that might indicate they were dragged.”

Further supporting the multi-shooter theory are witness statements.

“Some saw a person dressed in black on top of Ross Cosmetics, some saw a person dressed in white wearing a hat. More than one witness described a man with a yellow backpack running away from the scene (Bobby was not carrying, nor did he even possess, a yellow backpack.),” Spinks noted. “Some eyewitnesses were clearly wrong about their descriptions of the shooter and at least one seemed to be purposefully lying.”

Spinks focused on someone she found to be particularly credible, witness and near victim Michael Schwartz.

“I saw this guy shooting, I saw where he was, I saw his eyes, and there was no question this was the only shooter and he was on the ground. I don’t know where they’re getting this roof stuff,” Schwartz told the media, describing an athletic man positioned in a “true military crouch” and whose demeanor was “military style methodical.”

“Mr. Schwartz is a uniquely reliable witness because of the amount of detail included in his testimony. Studies have shown that eyewitnesses who include the most detail are usually the most reliable. Strengthening his credibility even further was his refusal to adjust his memory of the incident, even under the influence of external suggestion,” Spinks noted.

Part 3 of my investigation into the Highland Park shooting and alleged gunman Robert Crimo is out now! pic.twitter.com/1JfphkcJAN

— Bx (@bx_on_x) February 24, 2025

“But there’s another reason that his memory of the event felt like the most important one: it made the most sense. A shooter standing at the corner of 2nd Street and Central Avenue, directly in front of Port Clinton Square, would have had a direct line of sight to the two victims laying at the back of the plaza next to Walker Bros, a position that was completely obscured from Ross Cosmetics.”

The Crimo trial is expected to last for months. Headline USA will continue to provide coverage as it develops.

Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.

Alarm bells are sounding over the biosecurity threat posed by the illegal alien invasion as concerns mount over the spread of infectious diseases across the Homeland. Millions of migrants were dumped into the country by the Biden-Harris globalist regime without proper vetting—leaving citizens to bear the burden of what a retired CIA officer describes as the “public health consequences of Biden-era open border policies.”

Legal migrants and refugees must have a medical examination for US entry. Yet the Biden administration recklessly dumped millions of illegals into the US through open borders and a complex web of NGOs. These illegals have had no proper medical evaluation of skin test/chest x-ray examination for tuberculosis (TB). They may expose citizens in the first world to third-world diseases eradicated a generation ago. 

“Put simply, the Biden administration’s actions allowed millions of individuals to enter the country illegally and bring with them all of the diseases to which they had been exposed. We invited every microbe on the planet onto our soil,” former CIA operations officer Sam Faddis wrote on his Substack. 

“Now we are facing the consequences,” Faddis warned, pointing out: “Epidemics don’t start as roaring fires. They start slowly and then expand, gathering speed as they go. Multiple such epidemics are already underway, and we are far behind in our efforts to control them.” 

What the heck is happening in Kansas? 

And Texas! 

Faddis continued:

Tuberculosis, however, is not the only disease with which we need to be concerned. There are current outbreaks of measles and varicella (chickenpox) on both sides of the Texas-Mexico border. In Piedras Negras, Coahuila, the border city across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass, Texas at least 60 young children have tested positive for varicella. In South Plains, Texas there have been at least 90 cases of the measles. That outbreak has apparently now spread to New Mexico.

According to a Concho Valley News report, sixteen patients in Texas have been hospitalized. Five of the cases are reported to have been vaccinated against the disease. The remainder of the cases were unvaccinated or had a vaccination status listed as unknown.

Keep in mind that this is what has been reported to date. We detect outbreaks of a disease when people seek medical care. That means they are already sick and they have likely already passed on the disease to others, who themselves have already infected yet more individuals. We are always running behind even as the rate at which the disease is spreading is increasing.

Biden and his cronies opened the nation to attack by every disease on the planet. We are only now beginning to see how much damage they did. Deporting illegals is a good first step, but unfortunately, the microbes they brought with them will stay.

A consequence of open borders is now being realized not just as a national security threat but also as a biosecurity threat, as once-eradicated diseases in the first world remerge at an alarming rate. This is unacceptable and was only made possible by globalist Democrats. 

Submitted by Samantha M of Sports and Nonsense

“END RACISM.” The NFL has had these ridiculous two words displayed in giant font across every end zone in every stadium and at every game throughout the season since 2020. It has since decided to stop doing it after the 2024 season concluded. Remind me, what happened in 2020-2024 that stopped happening in 2025?

In case you forgot, Donald Trump won the election in landslide fashion and the NFL made a business decision to once again go with the tide. “Biden bad. Trump good.” This is presumably how the NFL front office decide things based on how quickly they seem to change their entire ethos. They didn’t really change though. If a player openly supports President Trump, it is kind of quietly frowned upon instead of being outright cancelled as it would have been in 2020-2024.

My question is if the NFL blanket agrees with and is seemingly subservient to a political party instead of what would be best for their fans and investors, then why are we the U.S. taxpayer having our money given to them? Why are we allowing them to maintain antitrust protections? Why is there no increase in oversight or contractual revenue sharing? Why are we not more selective in allowing them to choose who their sponsors are? Why are we not getting more for our money aside from unreliable economic models? Why are they not mandated to stay politically neutral? All of these are fair questions that you, the NFL investor, should have answered.

Let’s look first at how ridiculously easy it was for the left to infiltrate the NFL, which is a multibillion-dollar organization by the way. “END RACISM.” Does anyone else find it absurd that the NFL is painting “end racism” in ten-foot-tall letters at stadiums filled with tens of thousands of white fans who paid an average ticket price of $216 each to watch teams that are 70% black play on one of the two days they have off from work? Does the NFL think these people are mostly racist and paid $216 dollars to show up and celebrate their racist ways with one another?

They of course do not think that. They don’t really seem to think anything. They seem to allow influence from the left to decide what they think and what they tell their fans to think. This is where we start to get into a problem area. Like it or not the NFL has major influence over people, especially youth, in this country. I for one would like the NFL to stop telling all the kids in this country that white people are evil, and that racism is this very real monster that people of color face 24 hours a day 7 days a week in America. Stop telling everyone that because of white people and institutional racism, every black and brown person in America can’t get an education or be successful. A league that allowed “race norming” up until 2021 (that is the practice of assuming that blacks have a lower cognitive function than whites from birth,) to be used as a defense by the NFL to have to NOT PAY retired black players with head injuries (really, they did that) now wants to tell us that we are all racist? Doth protest too much, Mr. Goodell. Maybe the NFL does need to “END RACISM” …. in its own offices.

Let us for a second put aside the 4 years of annoying marketing campaigns that the NFL spent tens of millions of dollars on (that could have helped a lot of inner-city kids go to college by the way,) and let us look at some quick stats. While the Democrat party and former President and leader of said party does not think that black and brown people know how to use the internet or (checks notes) know how to get to a Walgreens…

“Not everybody in the Hispanic and and African American community know how to get online”

This racist fool really just said that. pic.twitter.com/mhfbn3Q2m4

— •Nic• (@AsTheWorldBurnz) February 17, 2021

I actually do think all black and brown people know how to use the internet and go to Walgreens. If they would like they can go to census.gov and look at the stats I just found there. One stat in particular stood out to me. In 1940 the percent of black people with a high school diploma was around 7%. In the year 2000 that number had increased to 72%. Every decade it went up. The NFL has assured me that America does not care about black people, and they are left behind in institutions like the public school system because of institutional racism. This is objectively false, and we have metrics that prove it. Saying things are mostly fine doesn’t get hate clicks though. It doesn’t sell shirts that show your support for a problem that does not exist. If you are not wearing your BLM shirt to your kid’s game how will all the other upper middle-class parents know you are not a racist?!

You can go into any restaurant and ask to be served by an ally or trans positive person.

And you can leave if the restaurant is playing Fox News. Most importantly, you can smugly eat chips while you make a video. pic.twitter.com/lq3lcmy5LS

— Dr. Jebra Faushay (@JebraFaushay) February 11, 2025

Why are you having your tax dollars handed over to these assholes? You are having BILLIONS of your tax dollars given to the NFL, even if you are not a fan. The NFL gets tax funding from the states they put teams in. They are given billions to build stadiums, but they also receive hidden subsidies in the form of heavily discounted utility services or police security services. They sell club boxes for millions of dollars to major companies who can write these purchases off at tax time. The rich get richer and continue to align themselves with the guy who said black people can’t get to Walgreens because they don’t know how to use google maps. What do you get? Oh, well you get called a racist bigot for wearing a red hat and told to go fuck yourself.

Now let’s look at the antitrust protection.  Per a Bing search I did while in line at Walgreens: “The NFL has an antitrust exemption that allows it to operate under certain legal protections. This exemption was granted by President John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, permitting the league to collectively negotiate television broadcast rights as a single entity, which is a significant advantage in the sports industry. However, the NFL has faced challenges regarding this exemption; for instance, the Supreme Court has ruled that the NFL must be considered as 32 separate teams when selling branded merchandise, indicating that the exemption is not absolute. Additionally, while the NFL has secured some limited antitrust exemptions, it does not have a blanket exemption, which has influenced its operational history. Overall, the antitrust exemption allows the NFL to classify itself as a “sports entertainment” business, which has implications for how it conducts its business.”

The supporters of the NFL antitrust protection and tax money payouts will say “But the NFL will provide jobs and revenue to these cities.”

The NFL adds five billion dollars annually to the U.S. economy. That is what the study conducted by the (checks notes) NFL players association has discovered.

Now let’s look at a little thing I like to call reality. There are almost never actual profit-sharing agreements between an NFL team and the local economies they profess to care so much about. They instead rely on unreliable economic models of what the NFL team will in theory bring to the local economy by way of jobs and local business revenue increases during event day. They rely on local and state politicians to spread this message to their constituents in order to get the votes needed to secure the funding.

“But Samantha surely the owners have good reasons for why the fans should pay them tax dollars for new stadiums?” you may be saying to yourself at this point in the story. Well, let’s ask billionaire and Panthers owner David Tepper. Hey Dave, why do you even need a new stadium? Your current stadium is not even that old. “You know, at some point that building will fall down,” Tepper said. “I said it before, and I’ll say it again. I’m not building a stadium alone. The community’s going to have to want it.”  That is a real quote by the way. Go and look it up. Tepper said that his stadium may just fall down. His reasoning for why it will fall down is “trust me bro.”

I am sure that we can all trust the economic models used by the NFL as well as trust the local and state politicians the NFL has gotten to agree with them on said studies in order to get your vote and ultimately your tax money. I for one can never think of a time a politician lied to me. I am sure it is the same for you, dear reader. Now go quickly and vote for a new stadium before your house falls down!

You work hard for your money, and you should not allow your political leaders to just give it away to whoever can make them wealthier and better off. Demand more of them and of the companies you choose to give you money to. If you don’t, who will? Why are we giving our tax money to an organization that has deep ties to a single party and who continue to spread that party’s message? It has to stop. I would suggest the next time the NFL wants to hit you up for some tax money to build a new stadium you tell them to agree up front for a full revenue sharing program and 3rd party oversight of all funding as well as 3rd party reviews of profit and loss. If they refuse kindly tell them to find the nearest Walgreens, go there, and then fuck all the way off.

While the NFL and scam networks like MSNBC lie about racism day in and day out to profit off of hate and self-loathing, I think that it is important to recognize that racism and awful things like slavery did exist in this country and those things were awful. Racism in all forms is awful. There was a very real fight by very evil people to prevent civil rights for all in this country. Pretending that these atrocities are still the mainstay practice of everyday Americans so you can get hate clicks and sell t-shirts to retarded upper middle class wine moms is grotesque. Most all Americans are like me and think that racism, bigotry, and sexism are bad. We think that everyone no matter what color or gender they are should be afforded the same rights and constitutional protections. 99% of the time this is the case. So, can the two historically racist organizations, the NFL and the Democrat Party please stop telling all of us that we are racist? Oh, and stop taking our tax money for bullshit reasons to make yourselves richer.

Thanks, signed every normal person in America

The Trump administration plans to sell two major federal buildings in San Francisco, including the recently renamed Nancy Pelosi Federal Building, according to Fox News.

Formerly the San Francisco Federal Building, the 18-story tower sits in a crime-ridden area plagued by drug dealing and illegal markets.

How apropos for a building named after a woman who helped oversee the decline of San Francisco. 

Also up for potential sale is the 1930s-era federal building at 50 United Nations Plaza, home to the GSA’s regional headquarters.

Local reports, citing a GSA document, list both properties as “non-core” assets.

Federal employees at the Nancy Pelosi Federal Building were ordered to work from home in 2023 due to worsening safety concerns, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, had called for its closure over rampant drug dealing at its doorstep.

Former Rep. Jackie Speier accused Trump of political retaliation, telling KGO, “It’s another example of how he is coming after Democrats. He’s coming after California, and it’s all about payback.” She warned that leasing the building could become more costly, as taxpayers would cover property taxes instead of benefiting from federal ownership.

Originally opened in 2007 as a $144 million energy-efficient “green” project, the 7th Street federal building was labeled by Trump in a 2020 executive order as “one of the ugliest structures in their city.” Developer Andy Ball, who worked on the project, called it a “waste of taxpayer money from day one,” estimating costs were “50% greater” than if privately funded. “No investor would have built this building,” he added.

The Fox News report wrote that the potential sale aligns with the Trump administration’s broader effort to shrink government bureaucracy through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Meanwhile, San Francisco faces a commercial real estate crisis, with downtown vacancy rates hitting 37% last year, including 55% in the Mid-Market area.

Security at the Pelosi building was increased after its December renaming, yet locals told KGO-TV that crime simply shifted a block away, leaving federal employees protected while ordinary citizens remained vulnerable. The 2,000-worker-capacity building houses offices for Pelosi, HHS, Social Security, Transportation, Labor, Agriculture, and HUD.