How much can a city take?
How much can a city take?

I live in Minneapolis. I grew up not far from here, in a suburb of St. Paul; after stints on both coasts, my wife and I settled here to raise our daughters in a freezing state that had always welcomed us warmly. As the ongoing occupation by over 3,000 ICE agents stretches into its third […]

The Short-Sighted, $27 Billion U.S. EV Retreat

This week’s Current Climate newsletter also looks at Brightline’s rising bullet train costs and how Ecolab is solving the data center water problem.

What it’s like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate

It was early evening in Berlin, just a day before Christmas Eve, when Josephine Ballon got an unexpected email from US Customs and Border Protection. The status of her ability to travel to the United States had changed—she’d no longer be able to enter the country.  At first, she couldn’t find any information online as…

Why Coinbase derailed the crypto industry’s political future
Why Coinbase derailed the crypto industry’s political future

January was going to be a landmark month for the crypto industry. The Senate would start negotiating the finer details of the CLARITY Act, a major law that would finally enshrine the fundamental structure of how the crypto market could legally operate in the United States: what digital assets counted as a security versus a […]

7th Day Of NYC Nurses Strike Highlights Ongoing Healthcare Problems

On January 12, around 15,000 nurses walked off their Mount Sinai, Montefiore and NewYork-Presbyterian health system jobs in the largest nurses strike in NYC history.

Minnesota wants to win a war of attrition
Minnesota wants to win a war of attrition

As masked and armed men in combat armor swarmed throughout the Twin Cities, Gov. Tim Walz took to primetime television to ask Minnesotans to film ICE. The videos, he said, would “create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans – not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.” […]

Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling
Google is appealing a judge’s search monopoly ruling

Google is appealing a federal court’s decision ruling it an illegal online search monopolist. The company filed a notice to appeal on Friday, requesting a pause on the court-ordered remedies meant to restore competition to the online search market. “As we have long said, the Court’s August 2024 ruling ignored the reality that people use […]

Trump and Mid-Atlantic governors want tech companies to pay for new power plants
Trump and Mid-Atlantic governors want tech companies to pay for new power plants

The Trump administration and a bipartisan group of governors are pressuring the PJM Interconnection, the biggest electricity market in the US, to hold a power auction meant to spur a massive buildout of new power plants. Together, they’re “urging” PJM to hold an “emergency” auction for companies to procure electricity over 15-year contracts. The unusually […]

Canada is going to start importing Chinese EVs — will the US follow?
Canada is going to start importing Chinese EVs — will the US follow?

Is the North American blockade on Chinese EVs softening? Today, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a deal with China to slash tariffs on electric vehicles in exchange for lowering duties on canola products. Canada will initially allow up to 49,000 Chinese EVs at a 6.1 percent tariff, Carney said, though the exact timeline was […]

600,000 Trump Mobile phones sold? There’s no proof.
600,000 Trump Mobile phones sold? There’s no proof.

Where’s the Trump phone? We’re going to keep talking about it every week. We’ve reached out, as usual, to ask about the Trump phone’s whereabouts. As usual, we’re still waiting for a response. In the meantime, some impressive alleged sales figures have gone viral – but they might be too good to be true. This […]