While America’s distracted by the Steven Colbert Show drama and South Park revenge, Trump’s government just dropped over a billion dollars to build the largest detention center in U.S. history
Welcome to Fort Bliss—A $1.2 Billion Dystopian Human Suffering Factory—Funded By You.
You read that right.
Everything is bigger in Texas. $1.26 billion taxpayers money funneled to private pockets. 5,000 prisoners. No due process. Tent concentration camp in a desert.
America 2025 – Detention Will Make You Free
What’s Being Built—And Why It Should Terrify You
A $1.26 billion federal contract has been awarded to construct a 5,000-bed detention camp at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.
It will be operated under military supervision with private contractors and no guaranteed legal oversight.
This is part of a broader Trump-era policy goal: scaling ICE detention to 100,000 beds nationwide—up from around 40,000.
This facility is slated to fast-track deportations under EO 14159, which targets up to 1 million removals per year.
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Fort Bliss? It’s Another Alligator Auschwitz,
Of Texas Desert Kind
Let’s be clear: this isn’t just a holding site—it’s inhumane state-sanctioned cruelty.
Fort Bliss sits in El Paso’s desert, where summer temps regularly hit 100–110°F. Inside tents, that can spike above 120°F. No air conditioning. No proper plumbing. Just canvas and suffering. And in winter? Temperatures dip below freezing at night, with no insulation to protect detainees.
Just like at Florida’s now-notorious “Alligator Alcatraz,” ambulances driving through the gate will be a daily feature. Already, reports from that prototype camp detail detainees suffering from medical neglect, contaminated food, and makeshift showers rigged with hoses. Some have called it “worse than jail”—and Fort Bliss will be five times bigger.
Here’s what we know—and why it’s enraging—that private contractors stand to profit from building this $1.2 billion tent detention camp at Fort Bliss:
Based in Virginia, without previous large-scale detention experience, mostly focused on smaller administrative and logistics contracts (often under $2 million).
Disaster Management specializes in erecting large-scale temporary housing (often used in refugee projects). It has received over $500 million in federal contracts since 2020.
Its workforce practices have drawn legal and ethical scrutiny: a 2022 Department of Labor review found wage and overtime violations, leading to nearly $16 million in recovered back pay and compliance enforcement.
Amentum(Another Subcontractor)
A large engineering and tech services firm tapped to support unspecified portions of the Fort Bliss project, likely involving logistics, structure builds, and base coordination.
Why This Should Outrage You
It’s Yet Another Trumpian Grift! Public Funds Are Fueling Private Profits Taxpayer money is funding manufacturers of suffering—people with no due process detained in harsh, tented desert conditions. It’s a state funded deliberate cruelty.
The Blueprint of Authoritarianism
Let’s break it down:
Scapegoat a vulnerable group.
Detain them en masse with no trial.
Use military infrastructure and private contractors to bypass accountability.
Build in remote areas—out of sight, out of mind.
Brand it with Orwellian irony.
“Fort Bliss”? That’s not just cruel. It’s fascist stagecraft.
This isn’t about security. It’s about dehumanization at scale, with taxpayer money funding open-air internment that recalls the ugliest chapters of history. Sound familiar?
PolitiSage
The International Criminal Court Must Indict Donald Trump NOW.
Read more
10 days ago · 2292 likes · 111 comments · Morgaan Sinclair, Ph.D.
What You Can Do
Expose it – Share this article. Make people say the name: Fort Bliss Concentration Camp.
Demand Oversight: Call reps. Demand medical transparency, independent inspections, and an immediate halt to construction.
Support Legal Aid: Many detainees will have no lawyer. Contribute to immigrant defense funds now.
Final Thought
Stop saying “it can’t happen here.” It already is.
We’re not just locking people up—we’re engineering human suffering. And we’re doing it with public funds, in military facilities, under desert sun, with names like Alligator Alcatraz, Fort Bliss to mock our conscience.
If we let this slide, history won’t ask if we knew. It will ask why we stayed silent.
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This cartoon was drawn for The Boca Raton Tribune. A group named Save Boca is trying to save the city from overdevelopment…and MAGA “leadership.”
The Boca Raton Tribune is a client of my syndication, and now they want to commission occasional cartoons from me on local issues. They choose the subjects, and I write and draw them. This is our second, with the first being in early July.
The cranes and buildings under construction were the editor’s suggestion. One thing I love about local cartoons is that you can put in local stuff residents will recognize. I do that with a lot of my local cartoons for the FXBG Advance, which is easier for me because I live here. That’s not the case with Boca Rotan, so it’s very helpful when the editor can mention local stuff. (snip)
I do not like to draw obit cartoons. I especially don’t like them featuring the Pearly Gates. I bet when editors receive an obit cartoon from me, they get slightly excited because I don’t normally do these things. And I bet that excitement drops real quick after they read the cartoon, because even when I do an obit cartoon, it’s not like other cartoonists’ obit cartoons. It’s not often I give you a Betty White.
Terry Bollea died today at 71. Bollea was Hulk Hogan. Hogan, like Ozzy, wasn’t someone who had a huge impact on me, like Freddy Mercury, Kurt Cobain, Jeff MacNeely, Prince, David Bowie, John Lennon, George Harrison, or Tom Petty. Notice that they’re mostly musicians. Even at the age of 11, Elvis’ death hit me. But sometimes I will draw an obit cartoon for someone just because of how iconic they were.
Ozzy was iconic. Everyone knew who he was, even if they couldn’t name a song of his. His reality show helped a lot with that. Terry Bollea was iconic, too, in that you don’t have to watch professional wrestling to know who Hulk Hogan is. If there is a Mount Rushmore for wrestlers, many fans would put Hogan in George Washington’s spot.
Hogan made wrestling. When the then-WWF (World Wrestling Federation) went national (wrestling used to be territorial), owner Vince McMahon (who is now in deep trouble for sexual assault) needed a babyface (good guy) hero to be the face of the company. And it worked, Hulkamania ran wild across the nation, as Hulk Hogan defended the World Title year after year against bigger and badder bad guys. One problem was that there weren’t that many bad guys physically larger than Hulk Hogan. There was only one Andre the Giant, and most big guys couldn’t wrestle, even enough to match Hogan’s three-move set. They once hired actor Tommy Lister (Deebo from the Friday movies) to have a feud with Hogan, because Lister was huge and had played the hell (bad guy) in a horrible film with Hogan. I didn’t have to see it to know it was horrible. One problem with hiring an actor to wrestle is that actors are not wrestlers. This makes for bad matches.
At Wrestlemania 2, Hulk faced off against King Kong Bundy, who was paid $50,000 for the match, which was half of what Hogan made for the event. Bundy wasn’t mad. He was happy because wrestlers didn’t usually make those kinds of paydays. Hogan was such a star that wrestlers made more money working with/against him. McMahon would sign new guys, not always by promising them titles (he often lied), but with runs with Hogan. This is an estimation, but a wrestler who usually made $1,000 a week could make $10,000 to $50,000 a week if he was working with Hogan. This information comes from wrestlers, but keep in mind that wrestlers are often liars.
Hogan was the hero. He would make his entrance to the song Real American (it’s catchy and annoying) while waving an American flag. He’d tell the kids to “say your prayers and eat your vitamins.” Hogan, despite never losing and being the champ, was always the underdog. Most of the match consisted of Hogan getting his ass kicked, until he hulked up. The villain’s punches would suddenly become ineffective, Hogan would turn around with an angry expression, take a few more punches, then stand straight up and point his finger at the bad guy, like, “YOU!” Then he’d start punching, whip the bad guy off the rope, perform a bodyslam, whip himself off the ropes, do a legdrop on his opponent, and then it was 1, 2, 3 for the pin, and the fans would go crazy. Find the Hogan/Andre match, and you’ll see. I was shocked to look this up to discover it lasted as long as 12 minutes. I’m trying to remember what they did in that match to make it last so long. It’s very slow. It wasn’t technical wrestling, and Hogan did the same routine for every match, but it was storytelling in the ring. Hulk always won….usually.
Hogan was a real-life cartoon. (snip; yes, there is MORE)
This is entirely about erasing the LGBTQ+ community from society. They teach and preach hate about us then use that acts of violence and vandalism to claim the “public” is against the LGBTQ+ representation. Why we generate such hate for just living our lives openly like they do is beyond my understanding. The people pushing hardest to erase the LGBTQ+ have only misunderstood texts in their holy book written over centuries in different cultures and languages. Yet they read it as if the words they are reading mean the same now or are correctly translated. And still that doesn’t give them the right to remove the LGBTQ+ from the public square and teach hate against us. The reasons given by the transportation secretary are meaningless garbage and complete untrue. Hugs
In a literal erasure of LGBTQ+ identity in South Florida, the city of Boynton Beach has complied with recent orders from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the Trump administration to eliminate a rainbow crosswalk in the beachside city.
Video reveals a road crew painting over the once-colorful intersection at East Ocean Avenue and Southeast First Street on Wednesday morning. It’s now painted black.
Boynton Beach has “removed the inclusionary-painted intersection on the 100 block of East Ocean Avenue to ensure full compliance with state and federal transportation mandates and address safety concerns,” a statement from the city read. “The decision follows recent guidance from the U.S. Transportation Secretary and the Florida Department of Transportation.”
The Pride commemoration was first unveiled in June 2021.
The rainbow intersection has been vandalized before. During Pride month in 2023, surveillance video captured a motorcyclist burning out over the mural, leaving black tread marks across it. He then stopped to record the damage he caused.
The Pride erasure comes just days after a coordinated campaign by the Florida governor and the federal Transportation Department to remove rainbow intersections across the state.
On July 1, former Road Rules reality star and current Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy issued a social media edict to all U.S. governors to remove the crosswalk art.
“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” Duffy declared. “Political banners have no place on public roads. I’m reminding recipients of @USDOT roadway funding that it’s limited to features advancing safety, and nothing else. It’s that simple.”
In the order and subsequent interviews, Duffy implies the Pride crosswalks are causing chaos on the roads and have led to traffic fatalities.
“Far too many Americans die each year to traffic fatalities to take our eye off the ball,” Duffy told the far-right Daily Signal.
“Roads are for safety,” he said somewhat incongruously, “not political messages or artwork.”
Duffy didn’t specify what percentage of the 39,345 traffic deaths in the U.S. in 2024 were caused by rainbow crosswalks.
Other cities in South Florida with rainbow intersections, including Delray Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach, face the same state and federal mandates. It wasn’t immediately clear whether or how they would comply.
Other Pride crosswalks in the state have also been subject to vandalism, some repeatedly.
Florida Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue enthusiastically endorsed the federal mandate the day after it was issued.
“Florida’s proactive efforts to ensure we keep our transportation facilities free & clear of political ideologies were cemented into law by @GovRonDeSantis,” Perdue posted to socials. “Great to now have our federal partners also aligned behind this same common-sense policy.”
Rand Hoch, president of the Palm Beach County Human Rights Council, called the orders “blackmail”.
“This is just another example of the president and the governor blackmailing local governments by telling them they’re going to withhold funding so they can try to publicly erase the LGBTQ+ community,” he told the Sun-Sentinel. “This seems to be a priority of these administrations.”
Despite the public erasure, Hoch, who was present at the 2021 unveiling of the Boynton Beach Pride intersection, said LGBTQ+ people “are not going to disappear.”
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This is a fun half from an Emma Thursday 07-17-2025
This last one is from the Nazi authoritarian cult of tRump maga who I posted a meme of getting fired and asking for money because his boss felt his was not a good fit for the company. FAFO
The Young GOPer Behind “Alligator Alcatraz” Is the Dark Future of MAGA
James Uthmeier is the real brains behind this notorious migrant detention camp in the Everglades. The more barbarities that emerge, the brighter his star will no doubt shine.
The other day, Stephen Miller went on Fox News and offered a plea that got surprisingly little attention given its highly toxic and unnerving implications. Miller urged politicians in GOP-run states to build their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” the state-run immigration detention facility that officials just opened in the Florida Everglades.
“We want every governor of a red state, and if you are watching tonight: pick up the phone, call DHS, work with us to build facilities in your state,” Miller said, in a reference to the Department of Homeland Security. Critically, Miller added, such states could then work with the federal government by supplying much-needed detention beds, helping President Trump “get the illegals out.”
Keep all that in mind as we introduce you to one James Uthmeier.
Uthmeier, the attorney general of Florida and a longtime ally of Governor Ron DeSantis, is widely described in the state as the brains behind “Alligator Alcatraz.” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, sums him up this way: “In Uthmeier, DeSantis found his own Stephen Miller.”
Uthmeier is indeed a homegrown Florida version of Miller: Only 37 years old, he brings great precociousness to the jailing of migrants. Like Miller, he is obscure and little-known relative to the influence he’s amassing. Also like Miller, he is fluent in MAGA’s reliance on the spectacle of inhumanity and barbarism.
“You don’t need to invest that much in the perimeter,” Uthmeier said of “Alligator Alcatraz” in a slick video he recently narrated about the complex, which featured heavy-metal guitar riffs right out of a combat-cosplay video game. “People get out, there’s not much waiting for them other than alligators and pythons. Nowhere to go, nowhere to hide.”
Any migrant who dares escape just might get devoured alive by an animal—one animal eating another. Dehumanization is so thrilling!
The real-world “Alligator Alcatraz” is already gaining notoriety for its very real cruelties. After Democratic lawmakers visited over the weekend, they sharply denounced the scenes they’d witnessed of migrants packed into cages under inhumane conditions. Meanwhile, detainees and family members have sounded alarms about worm-infested food and blistering heat. And the Miami Heraldreports that an unnervingly large percentage of the detainees lack criminal convictions.
But Uthmeier is getting feted on Fox News and other right wing media for this new experiment in spite of such notorieties—or perhaps because of them. There’s good reason to think more red state politicians will seek to create their own versions of “Alligator Alcatraz” or get in on this action in other ways—and that more young Republican politicians will see it as a path to MAGA renown and glory.
For one thing, the money is now there. Buried in the big budget bill that Trump recently signed is a little-noticed provision that immigration advocates increasingly fear could fund more complexes like this one. It makes $3.5 billion available to “eligible states” and their agencies for numerous immigration-related purposes, including the “temporary detention of aliens.”
When Miller told GOP politicians to follow Uthmeier by collaborating with federal officials to develop new versions of “Alligator Alcatraz,” he was probably talking about this slush fund. State officials can try to tap into it for building out such facilities. “For Republican states across the country that want to copy the ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ model, this bill will give them that money,” immigration analyst Austin Kocher tells me.
What’s more, red state politicians are paying attention. Fox News contacted numerous gubernatorial offices to ask if they intend to take up Miller’s invitation. The responses were positive, with many eagerly touting plans for detention complexes. While it’s unclear if these will resemble “Alligator Alcatraz,” the underlying impulse is clear: Many red states want to expand state-run detention efforts. And again: The money is there.
This is a bad development. “Alligator Alcatraz” should not be the model for the future of migrant detention in much of the United States.
Here’s why. The facility is funded and operated by the state of Florida, but the state can use it to detain undocumented people under a federal program that allows ICE to authorize local law enforcement to carry out immigration crackdowns. That puts “Alligator Alcatraz” in a grey area: Local law enforcement agencies are using it to carry out Trump’s immigration detention agenda even as ICE does not run the facility.
Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center, who specializes in criminal justice, points to a toxic combination built into the idea of more versions of this arrangement. ICE detention is subject to federal oversight. But huge influxes of federal money for migrant detention—as in Trump’s new bill—could create new incentives for states to ramp up their own detention efforts. Yet because “Alligator Alcatraz” is a new experiment, she says, it’s unclear what sort of federal oversight future imitation efforts would receive, even if they get some federal money.
“What will access to counsel look like for detainees?” Eisen asks. “What will access to family members look like? It’s difficult to imagine state-run facilities where conditions and due process are prioritized.”
Illustrating the point, when a reporter recently asked ICE for comment on what’s going on inside “Alligator Alcatraz,” ICE said, well, it isn’t their facility. In other words, the federal government is not responsible for what happens inside those walls—even as Miller and Trump call on other states to build more of them.
Which brings us back to Uthmeier and the future of MAGA.
It’s easy to see Uthmeier and his “Alligator Alcatraz” becoming a model for other young Republicans seeking a route into MAGA celebrity. Consider his career trajectory: It’s fairly conventional establishment-Republican stuff. A native of Destin, a small beach city in the deep red Florida panhandle, he earned a law degree from Georgetown and then worked for the Commerce Department in the first Trump administration—and then for the ultra-establishment D.C. law firm Jones Day.
Uthmeier has also made appearances at the conservative Federalist Ssociety, which is as establishment-conservative as it gets. He joined DeSantis’s first administration as a senior legal adviser, and then got appointed as attorney general when the slot was vacated by the appointment of former AG Ashley Moody to now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s Senate seat.
All in all, it’s in some ways a conventional path to GOP success. In fact, Uthmeier actually has a track record of criticizing Trump in the past on things like Covid-19 and abortion. But J.D. Vance survived such heresies, and now, in the party that Trump remade, Uthmeier apparently recognizes that “Alligator Alcatraz” is his big ticket. It’s a reminder that in today’s GOP, the MAGA and older-line Republican establishments are bleeding into one another—and that getting attached to such an idea is a path to national MAGA stardom.
Put another way, in the cut-throat world of the MAGA attention economy, association with things like “Alligator Alcatraz” can carry enormous weight. It’s hard for people who don’t swim in MAGA’s rancid information currents to grasp, but when Trump recently toured the facility with DeSantis, it was a huge MAGA propaganda coup for the Florida governor (yes, he apparently still harbors national ambitions).
Indeed, one person who very much noticed this was apparently Uthmeier himself. According to one Florida operative in touch with Uthmeier’s staff, there’s considerable sensitivity in his inner circle over who is getting credit for “Alligator Alcatraz,” with some worrying that Uthmeier isn’t reaping enough of it.
Uthmeier needn’t worry, however. When Trump toured the facility, he said of Uthmeier: “That guy’s got a future.” In this, the MAGA God King himself gave a big boost to Uthmeier’s 2026 electoral bid to keep his appointed AG role, which will be a platform for even higher ambitions. And if more barbarities emerge from “Alligator Alcatraz,” as they surely will, his MAGA future will only get that much brighter.
One voice was yelling he was a US citizen. The conditions are horrible. They get their drinking water from the toilet. Maxwell Frost is a progressive treasure. Hugs
I see that our recycling center has closed until further notice. International Paper, downsizing, has closed its recycling plant in Wichita, laying off all those employees, I saw on the newscast from the station I linked. Their story links a release from IP about all their closures and their plans for the year. The release is dated Feb. 13, of 2025. There’s another release from the Wichita Business Journal about the Wichita plant, but it says little to nothing. (No link from them; they’re mostly Kansans and Americans For Prosperity, anyway.)
Earlier, I got the idea to search if IP’s downsizing is due to recission of tax cuts and to tariffs. Gemini (who always volunteers though I never ask, preferring to find a link to a known source) says that while it cannot state that those things cause the downsizing in full, it also cannot state that those aren’t in the mix. (Because I do skim Gemini’s stuff.)
So, this hurts a bit: the closing of our recycling facility, as well as the Wichita one. During the first Trump admin, when POTUS began that trade war with China, China reciprocated by, possibly among other things, refusing anymore plastic recycling from the US. Our facility couldn’t find a place that did the recycling; no one else does it. China does it very economically though of course there is the question of what it’s really doing with the plastic, but another story for another time.
Anyway, in those days, I was an active BPW member. One of the things we worked hard on was getting a recycling collection facility here in town. We lobbied hard, both the public and the council, for use of an unused building (the former firehouse,) and possibly the use of a big truck for hauling the recycling collected to the recycler. We asked for no funding, we had willing volunteers; all the civic organizations set up volunteer schedules. We just needed the facility and a way to haul. Before the facility came about, I became a member of the city Planning Commission, so I couldn’t continue in that effort until after it was decided by the council. But, it was a happy circumstance that there was a plan for recycling in the existing Strategic Plan, even then! That’s always a big help, when something’s in the Strat Plan.
So, this was not a thing that came before the Planning Commission. I was not on Zoning Appeals at that time, so I have no idea if they got it, but as it came to reality, that wouldn’t have been necessary. It was decided that that firehouse building would become the collection facility, it would be staffed with volunteers but with a city worker or two there because it’s city property and insurance insists on that, and a city worker would do the hauling. Yay! It was open each Saturday from 9 until noon, and people needed to bring their recycling, preferably sorted, to the facility where volunteers then helped getting things where they went.
Eventually it grew, and there weren’t enough volunteers every Saturday to keep the lines moving reasonably. It went before the council to staff another one or two. There would still be volunteers there to keep things moving without too much staff. (People here in town like nice things, but don’t like paying for them.) The council approved, and the facility also opened on Mondays from 11 AM to 1 PM. That way, downtown business, who go through a lot of corrugated cardboard and bubble wrap, could get theirs done without as many of the public. Also, the staffers could actually get the stuff loaded in time for it to go to the recycler.
I just went there last week to drop recycling. We usually accrue enough corrugated cardboard and chipboard to unload at least once per month. We’ve cut paper back a lot, and again, plastic hasn’t been accepted since Trump p.o.’d China last term, so that’s not so much. Even so, where we usually have a single trash bag to go out for pickup, I think we’re going to have more that now has to go to the landfill.
I may be taking it too seriously, but I feel the way I did when the SCOTUS overturned their own decision in Roe v. Wade. We worked hard for it, we had it, it was good for all, and now it’s gone.
I hope this hasn’t bored anyone very much. It’s more sentimental than I usually am when posting such stuff. Still, our recycling collection facilities closing, or really, any big companies downsizing, is happening everywhere, and is affecting many, many people. I feel for all the Wichita workers who will have no jobs just in time for school shopping. So, I thought I’d post, because we all have to keep our eyes open for this happening around us everywhere. Thanks for your time! 🌞
Far from the front lines of the climate crisis, 100 men and women in air-conditioned offices, 61 of them millionaires, are making decisions that could increase United States carbon dioxide emissions, and the warming of the climate they are driving, for decades to come.
In the latest political wrangle over energy and climate policy, a group of Republican senators over the weekend added provisions to the US federal budget bill that, as currently written, would end clean energy tax credits at the personal level and at utility scale and increase taxes on foreign-made parts for solar power equipment.
Ending federal subsidies for most renewable energy projects, including residential heat pumps, for example, would affect thousands of projects that are already in planning or development and jeopardize future investments in manufacturing renewable energy equipment.
Friday, June 27, hours before the Senate released the latest draft of the reconciliation bill just after midnight, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright claimed on the Department of Energy website that wind and solar are unreliable and that federal subsidies have made energy more expensive, although he did not cite any official reports or peer-reviewed studies to support that claim.
On the Department of Energy website, Wright wrote, “wind and solar brings us the worst of two worlds: less reliable energy delivery and higher electric bills …If sources are truly economically viable, let’s allow them to stand on their own,” he wrote, ignoring that the fossil fuel industry gets annual subsidies of about $20 billion annually, according to estimates by Oil Change International, a nonprofit watchdog group.
But hundreds of studies show that renewable energy is much less expensive and, in a well-planned grid, can make energy supplies more secure.
“The proposed GOP tax on wind and solar is a danger to the United States,” Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford University renewable energy researcher who has authored numerous studies on wind and solar power, wrote via email.
The new tax provisions “lock in death and illness to up to 100,000 Americans every year due to fossil-fuel and bioenergy-fuel air pollution that wind and solar help to eliminate,” he said.
An early evaluation shows the administration’s planned energy policies would result in the drilling of 50,000 new oil wells every year for the next few years, he said, adding that it “ensures the continuation of land devastation… the poisoning of soil and groundwater due to fossil fuels and the continuation of gas blowouts and fires.”
There is nothing beneficial about the tax, he said, “only guaranteed misery.”
An analysis by the Rhodium Group, and energy policy research institute, projected that the Republican regime’s proposed energy policies would result in about 4 billion tons more greenhouse gas emissions than a continuation of current policies—enough to raise the average global temperature by .0072° Fahrenheit.
The overall budget bill was also panned in a June 28 statement by the president of North America’s Building Trades Unions, Sean McGarvey.
McGarvey called it “a massive insult to the working men and women of North America’s Building Trades Unions and all construction workers.”
He said that, as written, the budget “stands to be the biggest job-killing bill in the history of this country,” potentially costing as many jobs as shutting down 1,000 Keystone X pipeline projects, threatening an estimated 1.75 million construction jobs and over 3 billion work hours, which translates to $148 billion in lost annual wages and benefits.
“These are staggering and unfathomable job loss numbers, and the bill throws yet another lifeline and competitive advantage to China in the race for global energy dominance,” he said.
Research in recent years shows how right-wing populist and nationalist ideologies have used anti-renewable energy arguments to win voters, in defiance of environmental logic and scientific fact, in part by using social media to spread misleading and false information about wind, solar and other emissions-free electricity sources.
The same forces now seem to be at work in the US, said Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Bristol who studies how people respond to misinformation and propaganda, and why people reject well-established scientific facts, such as those regarding climate change.
“This is a bonus for fossil fuels at the expense of future generations and the future of the American economy,” he said. “Other countries will continue working towards renewable-energy economies, especially China. That competitive advantage will eventually pay out to the detriment of American businesses. You can’t negotiate with the laws of physics.”
