đ€Ż Trump Ticker đ±
I was wrong, and woefully so. I want to apologize for that and let you know how remorseful I am: I dearly, dearly wish that I was right. But alas âŠ
See, back in November I wrote a dispatch about what to expect from the incoming Trump administration, particularly concerning public lands and the environment. It actually turned out to be fairly accurate on the public lands stuff, but there was this one offending paragraph that, I fear, may have lulled some of my readers into complacency (when they should have been preparing to resist). Here it is:
Oh, boy. Trump has been in office for less than nine months, and already heâs checked off all of the boxes that naive little me figured (and hoped) he would never dare even attempt. He and Goebbels-clone Stephen Miller and friends are going full-on fascist and trampling on the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution in general, they are prosecuting political opponents, they are using the âDepartment of Warâ to target the âenemy within,â they are suing and bullying the media for reporting the truth and making fun of him, and they have engaged in a brutal â and performative â intimidation and terror campaign against immigrants and anyone who âlooksâ like they might be an immigrant. Making it even worse, the President of the United States treats it all like some sort of joke, acting like a pre-pubescent middle school bully while posting stupid videos portraying he and Russell Vought (a primary architect of Project 2025, which Trump disavowed during the campaign) as the grim reaper out to destroy Americaâs democracy (and the economy).
So, yeah, I was way off. Apologies for my naivety.
But I was right about one thing. I predicted Trump would practice governance by spite. He has, and done it to the extreme. Not only are his words malicious, but so are his policies, fueled by a lust for vengeance. His tariffs are aimed at punishing other countries (even though they ultimately only punish American consumers and businesses â even his beloved oil and gas industry).
His quest for âEnergy Dominanceâ is anything but that. Sure, heâs trying to help out his fossil fuel tycoon buddies, but I think heâs even more interested in retribution against the âlibsâ and the environmentalists that takes the form of an all-out assault on the environment, the climate, public lands â and everyone who cherishes or depends on these things. If he wanted to bolster energy, he would have at least stood aside and let the burgeoning solar and wind do their thing alongside fossil fuels by taking an âall of the aboveâ approach. Instead, he has done everything possible to stifle these energy sources, simply because they are cleaner than coal and gas. He shut down the Solar for All program, thus denying thousands of low- and middle-income families access to rooftop solar and a smidgeon of their own energy independence and lower utility bills. Whereâs the dominance in that?
And now the Trump administration has canceled some $8 billion in federal funding for clean energy, efficiency, and grid reliability projects across the nation, many of them in the West. And while one might think that this is just another assault on clean energy (which it is), or maybe a way to slash expenses to pay for tax cuts for billionaires (that, too), itâs primarily motivated by, yet again, revenge: The cuts were limited to states that voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
Yes, you read that correctly. While funding was zeroed out for blue states, identical projects in neighboring red states were left untouched. He is doing this to punish Democrat-leaning states, but the victims end up being small and large businesses that banked on those funds, the folks who work for those firms, the environment, and ultimately folks like you and me who will see our utility bills increase (because someone has to pay for those grid upgrades). And guess what? You wonât be saved just because youâre in a red congressional district.
This is not normal, nor is it politics as usual.
In fact, the funding that the Trump administration is taking away from individuals, organizations, and businesses, was allocated by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, both of which Congress passed during the Biden administration. The vast majority of the funding from those bills went to Republican states and districts that voted for Trump in 2024. The funded projects created thousands of new jobs across the country and added up to billions in investment in communities in the Phoenix area, along Coloradoâs Front Range, in Nevada, and elsewhere.
Iâm not saying all of these projects were wonderful, or that theyâd all succeed. Some were full on boondoggles, others would inflict more harm than good. But the funding was approved by Congress, and the organizations that received them were banking on them, had invested a great deal of their own money into the funded projects, and had built up workforces. For the administration to then take back the money, some of which had already been spent, for purely political, vindictive reasons, is both wrong and cruel.
And if you think that this is just for a bunch of solar panels, think again. Hereâs a list of some of the biggest projects that were defunded (which includes some funds that Trump had previously cancelled).
$2.2 billion: Amount rescinded for hydrogen fuel production and distribution hubs in California and the Pacific Northwest.
$250 million: Amount clawed back from the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon to fund transmission and power grid upgrades.
$70 million: Amount rescinded from Xcel Energy to install 1,000 megawatt-hour iron-air battery energy storage systems in Colorado and Minnesota.
$50 million: Amount rescinded from the Tribal Energy Consortiumâs Ignacio, Colorado-based program aimed at reducing methane emissions from tribal owned and operated oil and gas wells and facilities located on tribal lands.
$326 million: Amount rescinded from Colorado State University for a project designed to develop methods for reducing methane emissions from oil and gas wells.
$15 million: Amount rescinded from Kit Carson Electric Cooperative in northern New Mexico for a grid resilience project.
$6.6 million: Amount rescinded from Navajo Transitional Energy Company for studying and developing a carbon capture retrofit project for the Four Corners coal-burning power plant in New Mexico.
Hundreds of millions of dollars more are being clawed back from Portland General Electric, Southern California Edison, Tri-State Generation and Transmission, the Imperial Irrigation District, and the Electric Power Research Institute â the list goes on and on. But it never extends to similar projects in red states.
Even as Energy Secretary Chris Wright was announcing the funding cuts, for example, his department went forward with a $2.23 billion loan for Lithium Americas and its contentious Thacker Pass mine in Nevada (which voted Republican in the last presidential election). In exchange, the administration took a 5% equity stake in both the company and in the firm. Never mind that the project is opposed by the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, the Burns Paiute Tribe, and the Summit Lake Paiute Tribe, as well as by numerous environmental groups, and that the price of lithium is lower than itâs been since 2021. Go figure.
đ” Public Lands đČ
As expected (and as I correctly predicted would happen), the Trump administration is busy unraveling environmental protections and resource and travel management plans for public lands around the West. The most recent targets include:
The Bureau of Land Managementâs Rock Springs resource management plan which covers about 3.6 million acres of public lands in southwestern Wyoming, including the Red Desert. A solid, common-sense plan was first released about two years ago that aimed to push energy and other development away from the most sensitive areas. It was years in the making, and was a compromise. And yet, Wyomingâs right-wing was up in arms, saying it was too restrictive. That prompted the BLM to go back to the drawing board and incorporate more public input. They came back with a far less restrictive plan, a compromised compromise, I guess you could call it. Thatâs not enough for the current administration and their industry donors, however: The BLM is going to revise it again, this time to bring it in line with Trumpâs âUnleashing American Energyâ agenda. More details and commenting instructions here.
The BLM is âreassessingâ the off-road route designations in its Labyrinth/Gemini Bridges travel plan that includes about 300,000 acres of slickrock-covered public lands near Moab. The new plan was issued late in 2023, and left a whopping 800 miles of roads and trails opened to motorized travel. The off-road-vehicle lobby sued to overturn the plan, but were shot down in court. You have until Oct. 24 to comment on this one.
đ„” Aridification Watch đ«
The 2025 water year has come to an end (on Sept. 30), and while we know it was a fairly lousy one for most of the Western U.S., the data is now beginning to come in letting us know just how lousy it was. Some of the stats arenât updated yet, and may not be for a while, thanks to the government shutdown and the Trump administrationâs fear of the word âclimate.â
For the most part, the water year started out quite nicely, precipitation wise, with above ânormalâ amounts of rain and snow falling in October and November. But that was followed by a severe lack of snow, a dry, warm spring, and a late-to-arrive monsoon. The snowpack deteriorated, spring runoff was weak, and drought intensified under the hot, dry sun of summer, with only a bit of relief finally arriving in September.
Resulting low streamflows led to a 33-foot drop in Lake Powellâs surface level during the water year. Here are the charts and the numbers:
8.08 million acre-feet: Total Lake Powell inflows, water year 2024 (Unregulated inflows = 7.98 MAF)
3,578 feet: Lake Powellâs surface elevation on Oct. 1, 2024
5.14 million acre-feet: Total flows into Lake Powell during the 2025 water year. (Unregulated inflows = 4.69 MAF)
3,545 feet: Lake Powellâs surface elevation on Oct. 1, 2025
11.96 MAF: Inflows during water year 2023
21.65 MAF: Inflows during water year 1984 (the highest since Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1963).
9.85%: Percent of the Western U.S. that was experiencing severe to exceptional drought at the beginning of the 2025 water year.
44.12%: Percent of the Western U.S. that was experiencing severe to exceptional drought at the end of the 2025 water year.
đ€Ż Annals of Inanity đ€Ą
You just canât make this stuff up. MAGA-world is rife with conspiracies about the Charlie Kirk killing last month, which is hardly surprising. I guess itâs tough for some folks to believe that some 22-year-old Mormon kid from a Republican, gun-loving family could assassinate a right-wing entertainer and provocateur on his own. He must have had help from that ever-elusive Antifa (which is not an organization, but simply a shortening of the term anti-fascist). Or maybe it was Mossad â a favorite theory among a certain sect of the right wing.
But then thereâs Candace Owens, MAGA podcaster and Crazytown mayoral candidate. Sheâs raising the possibility that Phil Lyman was involved in the plot to assassinate Kirk. Yes, that Phil Lyman: the former San Juan County Commissioner who gained notoriety after leading an ATV ride â with Ryan Bundy and his âmilitiaâ buddies making a cameo â down Recapture Canyon just days after the Bunkerville standoff. Lyman has since swerved further and further into MAGA-land, served as a Utah state representative, received a pardon from Trump, and hurled some conspiracy-laden accusations of his own after losing the gubernatorial election to Gov. Spencer Cox.
I tried to listen to Owensâ argument and alleged evidence (including the link, with a suggestion not to click on it) regarding Lyman and couldnât make any sense of it. But I guess Owensâs following is big enough for folks to take it kind of seriously. Even Cox, whom Lyman has assailed with accusations of his own, took to social media to defend his right-wing rival. Meanwhile, Iâll be making some popcorn while I wait to see how this one plays out.