Daily Caller
Energy Sec Slams Biden Admin Climate Obsession, Lays Out Trump Admin’s Pivot In Keynote Houston Speech
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Nick Pope
“The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright sharply criticized the Biden administration’s restrictive energy policies during a keynote speech to energy industry leaders Monday, explaining how the Trump administration’s approach is oriented around unlocking human flourishing.
Wright made the speech to kick off the 2025 CERAWeek conference, one of the premier annual summits for the energy industry. He characterized the Biden administration’s maniacal focus on climate change as counterproductive and impoverishing for ordinary people, pledging to take a radically different approach than his predecessor by unleashing U.S. energy and private sector innovations to make life better and more affordable for Americans, announcing that he is approving a liquefied natural gas (LNG) permit during the speech to prove his point.
“The previous administration’s ‘climate’ policies have been impoverishing to our citizens, economically destructive to our businesses, and politically polarizing. The ‘cure’ was far more destructive than the disease,” Wright said. “There are no winners in that world, except for politicians and rapidly growing interest groups. The only interest group that we are concerned with is the American people. Our focus will be steadfast on the American people and our allies abroad.”
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Wright explained how much of the world’s population lives in poverty in large part because they do not have access to the cheap, efficient energy that powers modern life and its conveniences that only a fraction of humanity enjoys at present. The new energy secretary — who has worked with nuclear, oil, gas, solar and geothermal energy over the course of his private sector career — argued that the U.S. can and should play a leading role in proliferating prosperity with energy instead of regulating the sector too aggressively in the name of climate change.
“Recently I have been called a climate denier or climate skeptic. This is simply wrong. I am a climate realist. I have been studying and writing about climate change for over twenty years. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is: a global physical phenomenon that is a side-effect of building the modern world,” Wright said. “We have indeed raised atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50% in the process of more than doubling human life expectancy, lifting most of the world’s citizens out of grinding poverty, launching modern medicine, telecommunications, planes, trains and automobiles too. Everything in life involves trade offs. Everything.”
“The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens. Running the math on what might have been the benefits from these policies yields perhaps only a few hundredths of a degree reduction in global temperatures in the year 2100,” Wright continued. “The Trump administration intends to be much more scientific and mathematically literate.”
While former President Joe Biden said that climate change poses a threat to humanity that exceeds that presented by nuclear war, Wright’s remarks make clear that the Trump administration will not be treating climate change as an existential threat that takes precedence over other priorities.
The vision Wright laid out in his speech represents a stark departure from the positions of the Biden administration on nearly all fronts, including on the issue of approvals for LNG export projects. The Biden administration unilaterally froze approvals in January 2024, keeping the pause in place for most of the year, in what critics characterized as an election year move to shore up support from the well-funded climate lobby.
To drive home his point that American energy is open for business with the Trump administration leading in Washington, Wright announced that he will be approving a LNG permit extension for the Delfin LNG project, a major development proposed for construction off the Louisiana coast and a victim of the Biden administration’s January 2024 freeze on approvals.
“I am honored to play a role in reversing what I believe has been a very poor direction in energy policy. The previous administration’s energy policy was focused myopically on climate change, with people as simply collateral damage. My predecessor was on this stage one year ago saying that LNG exports would soon be in the rear view mirror. Think about that for a moment,” Wright said during his speech. “Natural gas today supplies 25% of global primary energy and has been the fastest growing source of energy over the last 15 years. Wind and solar, the darlings of the last administration and so much of the world today, supply roughly 3% of global primary energy … Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices on the grid went up and stability of the grid went down.”
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
Billionaire Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, announced Monday that they will give 25 million American children a $250 deposit as an initial boost to President Donald Trump’s new investment program for children.
The Dells’ pledge totals $6.25 billion and will be routed through the Treasury Department. The goal, they say, is to extend access to the federal Invest America program — referred to as “Trump accounts” — established by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by the president in July.
The federal program guarantees a $1,000 federally funded account for every child born from 2025 through 2028, but the Dells’ money will instead cover children 10 years old and younger in ZIP codes where the median household income is under $150,000, according to Bloomberg.
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“What inspired us most was the chance to expand this opportunity to even more children,” the Dells wrote in the press release. “We believe this effort will expand opportunity, strengthen communities, and help more children take ownership of their future.” (RELATED: Trump Media Company To Create Investment Funds With Only ‘America First’ Companies)
Dell, founder and CEO of Dell Technologies with a net worth of about $148 billion, has been one of the most visible corporate leaders championing the Trump accounts. In June, he joined Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and others at a White House roundtable promoting the initiative.
In addition to the new $6.25 billion pledge, Dell Technologies committed to matching the government’s $1,000 contribution for the children of its employees. Other companies, such as Charter Communications, Uber, and Goldman Sachs, have said they are willing to match the government’s contributions when the accounts launch.
“This is not just about what one couple or one foundation or one company can do,” the couple wrote. “It is about what becomes possible when families, employers, philanthropists, and communities all join together to create something transformative.”
Starting July 4, 2026, parents will be able to open one of the accounts and contribute up to $5,000 a year. Employers can put in $2,500 annually without it counting as taxable income.
The money must be invested in low-cost, diversified index funds, and withdrawals are restricted until the child turns 18, when the funds can be used for college, a home down payment, or starting a business. Investment gains inside the account grow tax-free, and taxes are owed only when the money is eventually withdrawn.
The accounts will “afford a generation of children the chance to experience the miracle of compounded growth and set them on a course for prosperity from the very beginning,” according to the Trump administration.
The broader effort was originally spearheaded in 2023 by venture capitalist Brad Gerstner, who launched the nonprofit behind the Invest America concept.
“Starting 2026 & forevermore, every child will directly share in the upside of America! Huge gratitude to Michael & Susan for showing us all what is possible when we come together!” Gerstner wrote on X.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The global war business scored record revenues in 2024 amid multiple protracted proxy conflicts across the world, according to a new industry analysis released on Monday.
The top 100 arms manufacturers in the world raked in $679 billion in revenue in 2024, up 5.9% from the year prior, according to a new Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) study. The figure marks the highest ever revenue for manufacturers recorded by SIPRI as the group credits major conflicts for supplying the large appetite for arms around the world.
“The rise in the total arms revenues of the Top 100 in 2024 was mostly due to overall increases in the arms revenues of companies based in Europe and the United States,” SIPRI said in their report. “There were year-on-year increases in all the geographical areas covered by the ranking apart from Asia and Oceania, which saw a slight decrease, largely as a result of a notable drop in the total arms revenues of Chinese companies.”
Notably, Chinese arms manufacturers saw a large drop in reported revenues, declining 10% from 2023 to 2024, according to SIPRI. Just off China’s shores, Japan’s arms industry saw the largest single year-over-year increase in revenue of all regions measured, jumping 40% from 2023 to 2024.
American companies dominate the top of the list, which measures individual companies’ revenue, with Lockheed Martin taking the top spot with $64,650,000,000 of arms revenue in 2024, according to the report. Raytheon Technologies, Northrop Grumman and BAE Systems follow shortly after in revenue,
The Czechoslovak Group recorded the single largest jump in year-on-year revenue from 2023 to 2024, increasing its haul by 193%, according to SIPRI. The increase is largely driven by their crucial role in supplying arms and ammunition to Ukraine.
The Pentagon contracted one of the group’s subsidiaries in August to build a new ammo plant in the U.S. to replenish artillery shell stockpiles drained by U.S. aid to Ukraine.
“In 2024 the growing demand for military equipment around the world, primarily linked to rising geopolitical tensions, accelerated the increase in total Top 100 arms revenues seen in 2023,” the report reads. “More than three quarters of companies in the Top 100 (77 companies) increased their arms revenues in 2024, with 42 reporting at least double-digit percentage growth.”
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