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Daily Caller

Key Trump Cabinet Nominees Face A Daunting Energy Policy Mess

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By David Blackmon

Just so we can frame this for everyone in the room, China will build 100 new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race.

After a week spent watching hours of the various Senate confirmation hearings for some of President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees, one compelling thought lingers with me more than any other: Does Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii have a seat on every Senate committee?

The answer to that is “no,” but it seemed that way as the Senator began her questioning of nominees ranging from Pete Hegseth (Defense) to former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (Justice) to former Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (Interior) to Chris Wright (Energy) by posing some iteration of the following question: “ … since you became a legal adult, have you ever made unwanted requests for sexual favors or committed any verbal or physical harassment or assault of a sexual nature?”

Sadly, Hirono’s farcical style of questioning turned out to be less of an exception than a rule among the Democratic members of these committees as the week wore on. Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia ended his questioning of Hegseth by literally asking if he had ever beaten his wife, an obvious smear which Hegseth denied.

It was all sad to witness, a troubling indicator of the health of both the Democratic Party and the American Republic. But what it all revealed by Friday is that the Democrats are unlikely to claim any scalps from among this week’s slate of nominees. Where energy policy is concerned, that means that the three departments/agencies that are most impactful in that realm are likely to be led by former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Burgum at the Department of the Interior and Wright at the Department of Energy.

Seldom if ever in this country’s history have three more capable, knowledgeable and effective individuals been in positions of leadership to help reform and recover from the waste and misallocation of taxpayer dollars that have characterized President Joe Biden’s 4-year presidency.

I have written several times here that the inevitable outcome that will result from pretty much every aspect of the Biden Green New Deal policies will be to render America dependent on China for its energy security, due to Chinese dominance of global processing and supply chains for all forms of and raw materials for renewable energy and electric vehicles. This is obviously not a sustainable situation, and it is clear that Trump and his key nominees fully understand that reality.

U.S. dependency on foreign adversaries is not limited to China. One such area involving a different country holds high stakes related to the goal of a renaissance in nuclear power often touted by Republicans and some Democrats alike.

In a revealing exchange, Wright and Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming discussed America’s recent dependence on Russia, of all countries, for imports of enriched uranium. As Wright pointed out, this is a technology first invented in the United States, but our country has virtually no existing capacity for uranium enrichment today. This is, as Wright called it, “a sad state of affairs” that has been caused in large part by wrong-headed federal environmental and permitting policies.

Unfortunately, the Biden cure for this pressing energy security matter could be even worse. As U.S. and NATO sanctions have gradually shut down Russia’s exports of enriched uranium, the U.S. nuclear industry has become reliant on imports from — you guessed it — China.

“As those [sanctions] shut down Russian uranium … we see more imports from China,” Wright testified. “We need to get beyond that … without shutting down the nuclear power plants we have running today. It is an area that requires urgent action.”

In another revealing exchange, Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, disagreed with Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon about the Senator’s claim that the United States is involved in “an arms race on clean energy” with China.

“Senator Wyden, just so we can frame this for everyone in the room, China will build 100 new coal plants this year. There is not a clean energy race. There is an energy race,” Bessent replied. Truer words were never spoken, and it is impossible to win that energy race when the United States is increasingly dependent on China for its very energy needs.

These and other Trump nominees have an enormous mess to clean up from the profligate spending and waste of the Biden years. Fortunately for the country, their work begins Monday. Not a moment too soon.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

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Daily Caller

‘The One Place We Really Need To Change Policies’: One Of RFK Jr.’s Top Priorities

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Thursday evening on Fox News that the “one place” he wants to see policies changed is within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Kennedy was confirmed as the new HHS secretary on Thursday, with the Senate’s final vote hitting 52-48. On “The Ingraham Angle,” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham said his critics will call his new plan a “nanny state.” She asked if he would ban food items like McDonald’s Big Mac.

“Oh, we’re not going to take [that away]. That’s what I’m saying. If you want to eat a Big Mac, you ought to,” Kennedy said. “But you ought to. But, you know, McDonald’s ought to be incentivized to use beef tallow when it’s cooking its Big Macs. So that they’re good for people rather than using seed oils or some other cooking oils that are actually going to probably make you sicker.”

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“So we want to do a number of things but not take away choice from people,” Kennedy added. “The one place that I would say that we need to really change policies is in the SNAP program and food stamps and in school lunches because there the federal government in many cases is paying for it. We shouldn’t be subsidizing people to eat poison.”

SNAP, a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) program, provides food benefits to low-income families. Within a 2021 USDA report, the study said that nearly nine out of 10 SNAP participants faced barriers in “providing their households with a healthy diet throughout the month.”

During his run for president, Kennedy called out his concerns for Americans’ health, as Centers for Disease Control data states that over 100 million adults in the U.S. suffer from obesity and over 22 million adults have severe obesity. After withdrawing from the race and endorsing then-candidate Donald Trump for president, the term “Make America Healthy Again,” also known as MAHA, was coined.

WATCH:

Kennedy told Ingraham he believes in “freedom of choice” and wants to bring “radical transparency” so Americans can understand the effects of what they’re consuming.

“If you want to eat Twinkies, you ought to be able to eat them, but you ought to know what’s in them,” Kennedy said. “So a lot of what I’m going to do is about radical transparency, about making people understand, allowing people to understand and empower them with understanding that if you eat that, it may seem cheap, but it’s going to cost you in the long run. You’re going to get diabetes.”

“There are certain additives. We have 10,000 additives in our food,” Kennedy said. “The Europeans have 400. Many of the additives that we have are just illegal in Europe. We need to move more and more toward the European standard.”

Kennedy has previously addressed his concerns about seed oils in American food, telling Fox News during an October 2024 interview that the “unhealthy ingredients” are in the country’s foods due to being “heavily subsidized” despite “very serious illnesses, including body-wide inflammation.”

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Trump, Putin have begun negotiations to end Russia-Ukraine war

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Wallace White

President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that negotiations to end the Ukraine-Russia war are underway following a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump said Putin agreed to begin negotiations over Ukraine during the call, with the president saying he would inform Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of the negotiations imminently, according to a Truth Social post. Since the war began in February 2022, the U.S. has spent over $130 billion aiding Ukraine.

“We both reflected on the Great History of our Nations, and the fact that we fought so successfully together in World War II, remembering, that Russia lost tens of millions of people, and we, likewise, lost so many!” Trump said on Truth Social. “We each talked about the strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together. But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine. President Putin even used my very strong Campaign motto of, “COMMON SENSE.” We both believe very strongly in it. We agreed to work together, very closely, including visiting each other’s Nations.”

Zelenskyy said Friday that he was open to a peace deal amid Trump’s request for Ukraine to supply the U.S. with rare earth elements and other minerals in exchange for aid. During his campaign, Trump vowed to bring peace to Ukraine and the world.

Earlier on Wednesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Ukraine joining NATO and returning to its 2014 borders, when it retained control over Crimea and the currently disputed Donbass and Donetsk regions, was not “realistic.”

The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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