Daily Caller
‘Landman’ Airs A Rare And Stirring Defense Of The U.S. Oil-And-Gas Industry
Actor Billy Bob Thornton portraying the character Tommy Norris in an official trailer for the Paramount Plus series “Landman.” (Screen Capture/Landman, Official Trailer, Paramount+)

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By David Blackmon
Oil companies have always presented easy targets for demonization by the news and entertainment industries. Their operations are highly visible — the flares from a shale well can be seen from many miles distant — the prices they charge for their products can strain family budgets, and they have generally done a lousy job of engaging with the media and defending themselves.
Thus, they typically present the proverbial low-hanging fruit to be exploited by lazy script writers in Hollywood. Those who were in the industry in the early years of the Obama presidency will well remember that pretty much every TV drama series aired at least one episode centered on some highly improbable, often impossible, scenario in which people were killed by a hydraulic fracturing — or “fracking” — accident. Such stuff never happened in real life, but it sure made for compelling entertainment for audiences who did not know that to be the case.
Given this history, it came as no small surprise when the lead character in the new Paramount series “Landman”, the newest offering from “Yellowstone” creator Taylor Sheridan, delivered a stirring 2-minute monologue in defense of America’s oil and gas producers in Episode 3 of the show’s first season. Set in the aftermath of a tragic, fatal Permian Basin oilfield accident that actually could happen in real life, the scene features lead character Tommy Norris, played to near perfection by Billy Bob Thornton, schooling a young, environmentally conscious lawyer who is looking for someone to blame for the accident on the reasons why oil and gas are highly unlikely to be replaced by wind energy in her lifetime.
“You have any idea how much diesel they have to burn to mix that much concrete or make that steel and hold this **** out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane,” Norris says, pointing to a nearby group of 400 ft. wind turbines. “You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that ****ing thing or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your Tesla battery.”
The monologue goes on for another minute and a half, with Norris detailing all the myriad products made with oil and natural gas, and the fact that, “if Exxon thought them ****ing things right there were the future, they’d be putting them all over the ***damn place.” He isn’t wrong about that last part, by the way. ExxonMobil and its fellow major oil companies like Shell and BP have proven themselves to be pretty much agnostic about the nature of the energy-related projects they’re willing to pursue in recent years.
Those companies and many other traditional oil companies are willing to invest in most any project they believe to be profitable, sustainable and able to deliver strong rates of return to investors. Where wind energy is concerned, both Shell and BP spent years investing heavily in such projects but have been backing away from such investments over the last year as they have failed to produce adequate returns. ExxonMobil, meanwhile, is investing heavily in carbon capture, hydrogen, and even lithium production as part of a growing portfolio of projects in its Low Carbon Solutions business unit.
Back to the Tommy Norris monologue: When I re-posted the clip on LinkedIn and at my Substack newsletter, it went viral, indicating a high level of interest in what Thornton’s character had to say. That may be indicative of a rising recognition of the reality that the US government and global community have in recent years thrown away trillions of dollars in failing attempts to subsidize non-viable, unsustainable, and unprofitable alternatives to oil and natural gas to scale.
Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that Episode 3 of “Landman” aired on the same day when the media widely reported the COP29 climate conference in Azerbaijan had ended in failure. It also came amid continuing reports that the Trump transition team is developing detailed plans to refocus US energy policy back to Trump’s promised “drill, baby, drill” orientation.
The times are a-changing, and guys like Tommy Norris will look like prophets 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.
Daily Caller
Trump Orders Review Of Why U.S. Childhood Vaccination Schedule Has More Shots Than Peer Countries

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Emily Kopp
President Donald Trump will direct his top health officials to conduct a systematic review of the childhood vaccinations schedule by reviewing those of other high-income countries and update domestic recommendations if the schedules abroad appear superior, according to a memorandum obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“In January 2025, the United States recommended vaccinating all children for 18 diseases, including COVID-19, making our country a high outlier in the number of vaccinations recommended for all children,” the memo will state. “Study is warranted to ensure that Americans are receiving the best, scientifically-supported medical advice in the world.”
Trump directs the secretary of the Health and Human Services (HHS) and the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to adopt best practices from other countries if deemed more medically sound. The memo cites the contrast between the U.S., which recommends vaccination for 18 diseases, and Denmark, which recommends vaccinations for 10 diseases; Japan, which recommends vaccinations for 14 diseases; and Germany, which recommends vaccinations for 15 diseases.
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HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been a critic of the U.S. childhood vaccination schedule.
The Trump Administration ended the blanket recommendation for all children to get annual COVID-19 vaccine boosters in perpetuity. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Marty Makary and Chief Medical Officer Vinay Prasad announced in May that the agency would not approve new COVID booster shots for children and healthy non-elderly adults without clinical trials demonstrating the benefit. On Friday, Prasad told his staff at the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research that a review by career staff traced the deaths of 10 children to the COVID vaccine, announced new changes to vaccine regulation, and asked for “introspection.”
Trump’s memo follows a two-day meeting of vaccine advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in which the committee adopted changes to U.S. policy on Hepatitis B vaccination that bring the country’s policy in alignment with 24 peer nations.
Total vaccines in January 2025 before the change in COVID policy. Credit: ACIP
The meeting included a presentation by FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Director Tracy Beth Høeg showing the discordance between the childhood vaccination schedule in the U.S. and those of other developed nations.
“Why are we so different from other developed nations, and is it ethically and scientifically justified?” Høeg asked. “We owe our children science-based recommendations here in the United States.”
Censorship Industrial Complex
Foreign Leaders Caught Orchestrating Campaign To Censor American Right-Wing Media Companies

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Labour Party files — including internal documents never before released — reveal a coordinated series of maneuvers, strategic deceptions and covert operations that helped deliver U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer to Downing Street, according to the book by investigative journalist Paul Holden. The campaign operated largely behind the scenes that mirrored the same tactics a corporate, pro-Israel faction inside the Labour Party used to crush dissent during Jeremy Corbyn’s rise, a strategy that dismantled the party’s left flank and reshaped British politics.
Holden’s reporting shows that these operatives built an array of anti-disinformation groups that presented themselves as neutral fact-checkers while aggressively targeting conservative outlets for demonetization, deplatforming and reputational damage. Internal documents and interviews indicate these organizations were never independent; they worked in lockstep with senior Labour figures who sought to contain populist movements on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Labour officials celebrated an unexpected election surge in 2017, unaware that a faction inside their own party had been covertly diverting resources to undermine Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. Holden’s investigation reveals that senior Labour bureaucrats secretly operated a parallel campaign from Ergon House, funneling money and support to anti-Corbyn candidates while starving the official operation of crucial funds.
A 2020 leaked internal report (860-page dossier) revealed deep factional divisions inside the Labour Party and showed that senior staff privately opposed Corbyn’s leadership and expressed hope that Labour would underperform in the 2017 election.
The book shows that the misuse of donations was far more extensive than previously known and may have breached election spending laws, especially in constituencies where diverted money was reported incorrectly. The party’s refusal to release campaign materials tied to this funding has intensified criticism of its transparency and raised questions about Starmer’s promise to restore trust in government.
After the 2017 election, strategist Morgan McSweeney began shaping Labour Together into an anti-Corbyn vehicle, using wealthy donors and newly created advocacy groups to amplify allegations that would weaken Corbyn’s support. Holden documents that McSweeney failed to report more than £700,000 (approximately $885,000 to $900,000) in donations despite being legally obligated to disclose them, a violation that later resulted in fines.
BBC News reported in 2022 that Labour Together was fined £14,250 (approximately $18,000) for failing to declare more than £730,000 in donations, confirming that key figures in Starmer’s political orbit had already breached U.K. election transparency laws.
By 2019, McSweeney had aligned himself with Starmer’s leadership ambitions, helping him run as a continuity candidate despite planning a sharp ideological shift once in power. Holden concludes that this project ultimately hollowed out Labour’s credibility, leaving the party mired in collapsing public confidence and confronting mounting questions about the integrity of its top advisers.
(Featured Image Media Credit: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer/picture by Simon Dawson/Flickr)
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