You are all rich enough, he said, to raise a billion dollars to bring me back to the White House. At the dinner, he pledged to rescind dozens of President Biden’s environmental regulations and policies and prevent new ones from being passed, according to other people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe a personal conversation.
Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxes and regulation that would be imposed through it, other people say.
El LedeReport and comments on what you want to know today.
The leaders responded. A fracking king named Harold Hamm (who had supported Ron DeSantis in the primary in the first place) took the lead, manning the phones diligently. “All Harold has to do is stick his finger in the dirt and the oil will gush out,” Trump said admiringly at an event. But in this case he put his finger in the phone and what came out was money. The Post again: “Hamm is working ‘incredibly hard to raise the most cash imaginable from the energy sector,’ said a Trump campaign aide. “We earned max checks from other people we had never earned a dollar from before. »
As I said, no one shakes their head at all this anymore. This is corruption, but a type of corruption legalized through the Supreme Court, in Citizens United and other decisions; We are beginning to assume that government force will be used on behalf of the bidder.
Language corruption, however, is slightly different. Trump – a master at directing attention where he needs it – also used Monday’s signing sessions to call for a “national power emergency. ” According to one advisor, this will “unlock a variety of other authorities” that will allow you to make those adjustments more easily; however, the main effect is simply to muddy the waters. Because there is no electrical emergency. The United States is generating oil and fuel at record levels. In fact, those in the oil industry have emphasized in recent weeks that they do not need to see more drilling because that would drive down prices. (Trump’s executive orders, ending the leasing of federal waters for offshore wind farms, would well restrict the amount of energy the country could potentially produce. )
This emergency of force would arise from the desire to supply more force to the centers of knowledge, so that we can beat China in the search for the Holy Grail of synthetic intelligence. “The emergence of national strength is because we are in an era of AI. “We are in a race with China, and our ability to produce American domestic strength is so that we can produce the electrical energy and strength that we need to remain at the global forefront of technology,” one official said of Trump, speaking without mincing words. . to present it to journalists. the morning of the inauguration.
But—all doubts about the utility and urgency of developing A.I. aside—if this were the new Administration’s real goal it would actually want to leave fossil fuels behind. At the end of 2024, a Silicon Valley team that included researchers from Stripe, Anthropic, Tesla, and elsewhere produced a report showing that solar microgrids are by far the fastest way to build the power that data centers need. “Estimated time to operation for a large off-grid solar microgrid could be around 2 years (1-2 years for site acquisition and permitting plus 1-2 years for site buildout), though there’s no obvious reason why this couldn’t be done faster by very motivated and competent builders,” the report states. That’s because essentially all you have to do is put up a bunch of solar panels and some batteries and run a wire to your data center—not build a huge centralized power plant and connect it to the grid. The report continues, “Off-grid solar microgrids offer a fast path to power AI datacenters at enormous scale. The tech is mature, the suitable parcels of land in the US Southwest are known, and this solution is likely faster than most, if not all, alternatives.”
The real emergency, of course, takes into account the weather. The last two years have been the most remembered. In 2023, fires in Canada filled the U. S. skies with smothering smoke; In 2024, Hurricane Helen devastated the southern Appalachians; 2025 dawned with the hell of Los Angeles. For years, activists have tried to convince Joe Biden to call for a climate emergency, basically in an effort to draw attention and action to the crisis. Instead, Biden has strived to expand blank power through the Inflation Reduction Act, virtuous cadres that have earned him, as well as the climate crisis, almost no attention.
We are now in an Orwellian, maximum Seussian moment. Our leader declared a false energy emergency, so we could do more (oil and fuel exploitation) that is causing the real emergency that is recently devastating our most populated city. It is perfectly imaginable that Trump’s ploy will confuse voters, and it will almost certainly confuse much of the media, which is accustomed to following whatever squirrel he follows. let out of the cage.
But it’s unlikely that he will fool the Chinese, who are building renewable energy faster than anyone. And it is almost certain he will fail to confuse the planet’s glaciers and ice caps, which will go on melting, or its forests and grasslands, which will go on burning, or its seas, which will go on rising. When we want to describe the folly of our leaders, we often invoke the example of King Canute, smiting the sea with his sceptre to hold back the waves. Canute, however, was wilier than our usual version of the legend—he was actually trying to show his flattering courtiers that there were limits to his power. The twelfth-century English historian Henry of Huntingdon says that, as the water swept past, Canute declared, “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings, for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.” He then hung his gold crown on a crucifix and never wore it again, “to the honor of God the almighty King.”
Trump, of course, conveys the opposite of this pious and humble message. He confuses attention with truth (just as Biden confuses truth with attention). It’s an emergency, that’s fine. ♦
Has an old Soviet mystery been solved despite everything?
Why the rules of mustard and spaghetti sauce don’t apply to ketchup.
How the Unabombers have avoided the death penalty.
The actress who magnified her fame by renouncing it.
Calvin Klein Shared Party by Jeremy Allen White.
Fiction via Jamaica Kincaid: “Girl”
Sign up for our newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker.
Sections
Further
© 2025 Condé Nast. All rights reserved. The New Yorker may earn a share of sales from products purchased through our site as part of our partnerships with retailers. Curtains from this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast. Ad Options