2. Each of the following moves would consolidate a candidate’s base, except:
A. Expressing agreement with the great replacement theory
B. Expressing solidarity with the Proud Boys and January 6 insurrectionists
C. Expressing enthusiasm, which was a big no-no in 2004 Iowa, apparently
3. Which violation of American values would cause the electorate to doubt the candidate’s fitness for the presidency?
A. Violating the human rights of families by tearing children away from their parents at the border
B. Violating the bodies of twenty-six women
C. Violating the unspoken decibel limit on cheering at an event meant for cheering, which is definitely a good rule that applies equally to everyone
4. If exposed to the public, which revelations would instantly decimate campaign fundraising?
A. The candidate being caught with boxes full of state secrets next to their toilet
B. The candidate being caught sleeping with a porn star just after his wife had a baby
C. The candidate being caught up in a moment, just a fleeting moment, which at the time seemed normal, not the end of everything the candidate had ever worked for since the candidate was twelve
5. Which of the following statements warrants being aired 633 times by national news outlets in a span of four days?
6. Which of the following audio recordings would be so damaging that it becomes a years-long political meme and defines the candidate for the rest of their life?
A. A recording where the candidate extorts Ukraine for election assistance
B. A recording where the candidate brags about grabbing women “by the pussy”
C. A recording where the mics picked up the candidate but not the roar of the crowd, which, if you were there, was really loud and made screaming much more normal in context, actually
7. Which action would cause an immediate, double-digit drop in the polls?
A. Starting a movement to hang the vice president
B. Starting a coup d’etat attempt against the United States of America
C. Starting to say “yee-haw” because it felt so right after rattling off the upcoming state primaries, but then realizing halfway through the first syllable that, dammit Howard, someone from Vermont can’t pull off “yee-haw,” and then panicking and switching to “yeah!” or “yay!” all at once, but it was too late and a lump in your throat made it come out like the death knell of a tortured bobcat
8. True or False: It makes perfect sense that the twenty-five-year abortion record of the presidential candidate who ended Roe v. Wade has less Wikipedia content than the three-second audio record of a candidate who just, you know, was pumped up in the face of a setback in the Iowa caucuses, so pumped that he lost control of his body in a burst of unvarnished optimism:
A. True
B. False
C. There has not been a difference between truth and falsehood, right and wrong, or sanity and insanity since early 2004
9. Which charges would provoke widespread calls to suspend a campaign?
A. Being charged in New York with thirty-four felony counts for covering up sex with a porn star
B. Being charged in Florida with forty felony counts for stealing state secrets and lying to the FBI
C. Being charged in Georgia with ten felony counts for conspiring to steal an election
D. Being charged in DC with four felony counts for trying to stop the electoral vote certification in Congress in order to seize power from the lawful president-elect, Joe Biden, in violation of the US Constitution and the peaceful transfer of power
E. Being charged with all eighty-eight felony counts above, all in a five-month period
F. Being charged with a zeal to oppose the invasion of Iraq and establish universal health care, which looks pretty good these days if you ask some people but was apparently too sincere for the petty, vindictive shitheads who actually vote in this country.
10. Which of the following statements would make voters question a presidential candidate’s mental capacity?
The idea behind these laws seems to be if they can hide that LGBTQ+ people / kids exist they can prevent the acceptance and tolerance of LGBTQ+ kids / people. In the minds of the haters who write these bills hopefully that will force people who are not straight or cis to stay hidden from society. They are desperate to return to the 1950s when LGBTQ+ people had to stay hidden or risk losing everything they had, their job, housing, and friends. They are pathetic in their need for everyone to be the same as they are, feel the same as they do, and to live as they do. Why I did not know or understand. The irrational hate for LGBTQ+ kids is really weird. That they would rather have kids hurt, harmed, assaulted, ostracized, and possibly driven to suicide rather than give them acceptance or simply tolerance. I don’t undestand what their gain is in this? Hugs
The appeals court vacated two separate injunctions against the law, but advocates promise to keep fighting.
John Russell (He/Him)April 7, 2026, 1:00 pm EDT· Updated on April 8, 2026
Shutterstock
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has ruled that Iowa can enforce a 2023 law restricting classroom instruction on LGBTQ+ topics and access to certain books while legal challenges against the law proceed.
On Monday, the three-judge panel overturned injunctions previously issued by lower courts in two separate lawsuits challenging aspects of the Senate File 496, according to the Associated Press and The Des Moines Register.
Passed by the Iowa state legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2023, the law prohibits “any program, curriculum, test, survey, questionnaire, promotion, or instruction relating to gender identity or sexual orientation” in kindergarten through sixth grade. It also bans materials featuring “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act” from school libraries and classrooms — a provision which critics say is intended to ban books featuring LGBTQ+ characters and themes.
The law went into effect on July 1, 2023. The following November, the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal sued the state on behalf of LGBTQ+ advocacy organization Iowa Safe Schools and seven students and their families, challenging SF 496’s classroom instruction ban.
Last May, a federal judge issued a split decision, upholding the law’s ban on discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in K–6 classrooms, but blocking its ban on school “promotions” and “programs” that acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ+ people. U.S. District Judge Stephen Locher also blocked a provision of the law banning schools from providing “accommodation that is intended to affirm the student’s gender identity” without notifying their parents, writing that S.F. 496 was impermissibly vague about what constitutes an “accommodation.”
Writing for the Eighth Circuit on Monday, Judge Ralph Erickson held that the state’s interpretation of the law as requiring school “programs” and “promotions” to only encompass curricular activities does not violate the U.S. Constitution. However, the court did not address whether it is constitutionally permissible for the state to ban specific groups and extracurricular programs, such as Gender & Sexuality Alliance groups, because the Iowa Safe Schools lawsuit did not challenge specific applications of the law, according to the Register.
The court also disagreed with Judge Locher’s ruling that the law’s language around “accommodations” was too vague, restoring S.F. 496’s ban on schools accommodating students’ gender identities without outing them to their parents.
In a separate November 2023 lawsuit, the Iowa State Education Association was joined by publisher Penguin Random House and several prominent authors of banned books in a challenge to S.F. 496’s book-banning provision. Last March, Judge Locher sided with the plaintiffs, issuing a preliminary injunction preventing schools from removing books it considers “obscene” from classrooms and libraries.
Again, writing for the Eighth Circuit in a separate decision Monday, Judge Erickson disagreed w ith Locher’s ruling that school library books are not part a school’s curriculum. Erickson wrote that a school’s library catalogue constitutes government speech and can be restricted by state law, according to the Register.
The decisions on both cases send them back to the district court. But as the Register notes, the Eighth Circuit indicated in both rulings that the plaintiffs could not show a “likelihood of success on the merits” in their challenges to S.F. 496.
At the same time, in a joint press release the ACLU of Iowa and Lambda Legal noted that the rulings narrow “where and how the law may be applied.”
“The prohibition regarding sexual orientation and so-called gender theory applies only to specific, mandatory instruction on these topics during class time. The law, as currently interpreted, does not require schools to prohibit student expression of LGBTQ+ identity nor does it limit the sponsorship or promotion of GSAs,” ACLU of Iowa Senior Staff Attorney Thomas Story said.
“The court’s interpretation of the provision on banning books is that it applies only to those that specifically describe or depict one of those sex acts defined in Iowa’s criminal law. And with the forced outing provision, a report would be made to parents or guardians only if a student specifically requests a school accommodation for the stated purpose of affirming a gender identity different from their registration forms,” Story added.
In a statement responding to the court’s decision, Iowa State Education Association president Joshua Brown told the Register that the case was “about much more than legal technicalities.”
“It is about protecting the freedom of speech and the right to share ideas — values guaranteed by the First Amendment,” Brown said. “Our schools should be safe spaces where students are free to learn, teachers can use their professional expertise without fear, and families can trust that education is based on open inquiry rather than government censorship.”
A spokesperson for Penguin Random House indicated in a statement to the Register that the company intends to keep fighting against S.F. 496. Similarly, Lambda Legal Senior Attorney Nathan Maxwell called the ruling “a setback,” but noted that “it is not the end of this fight.”
“Iowa’s SF 496 is a cruel and unconstitutional law that silences LGBTQ+ children, erases their existence from classrooms, and forces educators to expose vulnerable students to potential harm at home,” Maxwell said in a statement. “We will continue to use every legal tool available to protect these young people. They deserve nothing less.”
Subscribe to the LGBTQ Nation newsletter and be the first to know about the latest headlines shaping LGBTQ+ communities worldwide.
Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On Easter Sunday, God’s chosen in the White House issued a vulgar and unbalanced posting on his “Truth Social” that epitomizes the insanity of his Iran War. Attending to it closely will help us understand how Trump has strengthened the government of the Islamic Republic and put it in control of global energy. Trump fondly imagines that he can dislodge Iran from this new ascendancy, but he is wrong, since it depends on sabotage, a sabotage that cannot be policed.
This is embarrassing, Delete it, President @realDonaldTrump – unless you want everyone to think you’ve lost your marbles.
The foul language and clear mental imbalance visible in this announcement sparked a further round of calls for Trump’s removal under Article 25 of the Constitution, which is nothing more than an internet meme since Trump has surrounded himself on his cabinet with people even more certifiable than he is, and who wouldn’t dare move against him.
Trump, having imbibed whatever substance it is that makes him manic, announced that “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!!”
He is repeating a threat he made previously, to bomb Iran’s civilian electricity-generating plants as well as its civilian bridges.
Iran has 98 major power plants fueled by fossil gas, which generate 85% of the country’s electricity. The largest, the Damavand power plant south of the capital, Tehran, has a generating capacity of over 2.8 gigawatts.
One of Iran’s power plants is nuclear, at Bushehr. If Trump or Israel bombs it, the consequent radiation pollution will deeply harm the Arab Gulf states, not only through airborne particles but also by contaminating sea water, which is drawn on by the region’s desalinization plants. This exposure to radiation would certainly increase cancer risk in the region. There are mountains between Bushehr and the Iranian interior, so the radioactive particles would be blown west toward other countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Striking civilian power plants, and above all nuclear ones, endangers the noncombatant population of children, women and unarmed men and violates International Humanitarian Law.
In fact, the International Criminal Court in the Hague issued “warrants of arrest for two individuals, Mr Sergei Kuzhugetovich Shoigu and Mr Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov, in the context of the situation in Ukraine for alleged international crimes . . .” on June 24, 2024. They were indicted for “for the war crime of directing attacks at civilian objects (article 8(2)(b)(ii) of the Rome Statute) and the war crime of causing excessive incidental harm to civilians or damage to civilian objects (article 8(2)(b)(iv) of the Rome Statute), and the crime against humanity of inhumane acts under article 7(1)(k) of the Rome Statute.”
Among the “civilian objects” that these Russian officials ordered attacked in Ukraine were power plants and structures such as the Kryukovsky Bridge.
So Trump is talking like a war criminal, which tells you why he has placed sanctions on International Criminal Court judges.
Trump already struck the unfinished B1 bridge linking Tehran to Karaj. Since it was not finished, it could not possibly have had a military purpose, contrary to the lies of the lying liars in the Trump administration who gave that as the excuse for hitting it.
Trump continued, “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell– JUST WATCH!
It is not clear how a body of water such as a strait could copulate. However, it can engender revenue, and does so for Iran. A lot of revenue.
Iran has not actually closed the Strait of Hormuz entirely. It is exporting its own petroleum through that narrow aperture, mainly to China. Trump has been forced by the global oil shortage to lift sanctions on the Iranian tankers, and so Iran is also selling again to India. Before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rushed Trump into war on Iran on February 28, Iran was exporting about 1.4 million barrels a day to China. The price of petroleum was about $67 a barrel then, but Iran had to offer a steep discount to offset American sanctions, and so was probably only getting $57 or less a barrel. So Iran was getting something like $29 billion a year for its petroleum from China and a few other customers (90% goes to China).
China is now likely having to pay $110 a barrel for Iranian petroleum.
Iran’s oil income just went up to $55 billion a year if these prices and this volume of trade persists, which is plausible. So the “crazy bastards” in charge of Iran have nearly doubled their income off the Netanyahu-Trump war because of the fertility, under their control, of the “fuckin’ Strait.” The Iranian oil industry is state-owned, so all the money goes to the clerics and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, as well as to the conventional army and the elected institutions, the parliament and president. This extra income helps the government tamp down resistance, strengthening it against civil society. In any case, many Iranians under foreign attack are rallying around the flag. Of course there are also tax losses from the economic disruption of the war, but the vastly increased oil income helps make up for them as far as the government is concerned. If the price of oil goes to $200 a barrel, as it may well, Iran’s government could get $100 billion a year for its petroleum.
Not only that, but Iran has instituted a toll system, wherein countries that have good relations with Iran and pay a fee can transit the Strait without fear of an Iranian drone attack. In contrast, countries that Iran believes contribute to the American war effort against Tehran such as the Emirates and Kuwait, are blockaded by the threat of such strikes. These tolls could be an ongoing and lucrative source of income for the government. Before the war, 138 ships transited the Strait daily. If that traffic resumes but each has to pay Iran a $2 million toll, that would bring in $96 billion a year, i.e. four times what Iran was getting for its petroleum before the war.
So here’s the thing. With the advent of Iran’s Shahed drones, which can be manufactured inexpensively and of which it has tens and thousands, there is no way for anyone, including Trump and the US military, to stop Iran from sabotaging ships that won’t pay the $2 million. At least, I don’t see how it could be done. You’d need tens of thousands of interceptors, and we hardly have any left. Moreover, interceptors cost $1.5 million apiece, so it makes much more sense to allow each ship to pay Iran the $2 million.
Container ship in Strait of Hormuz. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Indra Beaufort).Public Domain. Via Picryl .
Trump has shown Iran how it can go into the protection business in the Gulf for the long term. Nice oil shipping industry you have here, it would be a shame if anything happened to it. And off that, Iran actually increases its GDP substantially.
If Trump takes out Iran’s electricity and bridges, he can interfere with its economy and its society in a big way. But he can’t stop the drones or the protection racket that way. Moreover, Iran has made it clear that its response will be to take out the power plants in the Gulf Arab states as well as in Israel. Since the US and Israel are running low on interceptors, and since even small Shahed drones have great range and can do a lot of damage, Iran’s threat is credible.
If Trump takes out Iran’s petroleum-production capability, Iran will crash oil production in the Gulf, taking 20 million barrels a day off the market for years to come. That would certainly be another Great Depression and likely would spell the end of the oil industry, since everyone in the world would migrate to electric vehicles quickly.
So although Trump meant the phrase ironically and blasphemously, the Iranian authorities may well end up saying “Praise be to Allah” over Trump’s monumental stupidity.
Tomorrow is Ron’s heart catheterization. Today I have reached a breaking point. After I did the things that had to be done this morning I am dissociating. I find my mind simply shutting down. I am losing time not hearing or seeing anything. My mind keeps parking itself in neutral. I have to keep it together one more day. I made Ron his lunch and got him into bed making sure he had his CPAP on. I took out a pork tenderloin for supper, and I will make potatoes and what ever vegitable Ron wants for supper. I am so tired and sore. Hopefully one more day. Hugs
The president of the United States greeted the country with this Truth Social post about his intentions in Iran on Easter Sunday: “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell – JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP
No one seems to have got so far into the post as to notice that he said “Praise be to Allah,” which he would most certainly say was a jest, if asked. But imagine Joe Biden, or worse still, Barack Obama, saying that “in jest” and how Republicans would have responded. Trump is completely off the rails and Republicans are turning a blind eye, pretending it’s not happening.
Earlier this week, Trump’s “spiritual advisor” Paula White-Cain compared him to Jesus. Trump, too, was “betrayed and arrested and falsely accused,” she said. No one in the Republican Party seems to have believed they need to strenuously resist that characterization.
And so, we enter the new week with an unstable president at the helm in wartime. Meanwhile, at home, there are plenty of issues mounting. But Trump seems to have largely gotten away with knocking his connection to Jeffrey Epstein and allegations about his personal conduct off the front burner.
Laura Loomer is influencing policy changes at DOJ
After Trump fired Attorney General Pam Bondi, there appears to be another significant personnel change in the works at DOJ, this one inspired at least in part by Laura Loomer’s dislike of the number three official at DOJ, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward. Trump appears to be on the verge of replacing him with the current Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, who has upended its work and overseen a mass exodus of career personnel.
Woodward was the defense lawyer for one of Trump’s co-defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case, Walt Nauta. His client hung in there with Trump, instead of flipping and offering testimony against him in exchange for a deal. That worked out well for Nauta, but only because Trump won the election. Most lawyers acting in the client’s best interests in that type of situation would have worked toward a plea. Lost in the plot from that case was the conflict of interest Woodward had that could easily have kept him from representing Nauta and might have resulted in another lawyer voluntarily stepping aside. Woodward had previously represented one of the witnesses who decided to cooperate with the prosecution after receiving advice from a lawyer who wasn’t connected to other defendants. Judge Cannon permitted Woodward to represent Nauta despite that conflict, after Nauta waived it. Woodward has also represented White House adviser Peter Navarro, who was prosecuted for obstructing Congress when he ignored a subpoena from the January 6 committee, FBI Director Kash Patel when he testified before a grand jury about Trump’s retention of classified documents, and one of the defendants in the Oath Keepers prosecution.
All that to say, Woodward was a known quantity for Trump when he appointed him. But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to save his job, just over a year into it.
There’s been some suggestion on social media that Laura Loomer is, at least in part, responsible for the change. Loomer is a conservative activist and online influencer who has claimed the ability to impact Trump’s hiring and firing decisions in the past. Last August, Trump was asked about that and said, “She makes recommendations on things and people. And sometimes I listen to those recommendations, like I do with everybody. I listen to everybody. And then I make a decision.” Loomer has never been a fan of Woodward’s.
Her concerns center on Woodward’s wife, apparently, not Woodward. She has had them since before he was confirmed.
Woodward’s wife apparently has the audacity to have her own views on issues, and they are…not racist. Loomer reiterated her take just before Trump made his move at DOJ, also attacking Todd Blanche, the former Trump criminal defense lawyer who is now in charge of the Justice Department in an acting capacity. Blanche and Woodward may have been surprised to learn that, according to Loomer, they’re now Democrats.
That’s a lot of maneuvering, that benefits Dhillon, who has overseen the dismantling of much of the Civil Rights Division’s work, including voter and election protection, and gone on the attack for the administration. That might have made her an attractive candidate for the position to Trump without more. If confirmed by the Senate as “the Associate,” as the number three position at DOJ is called, Dhillon would supervise her old division, Civil Rights, as well as the Civil Division, the Antitrust Division, the Environment and Natural Resources Division, and an administrative division that oversees grant funding. It’s a substantial role and could be a stepping stone to a still higher office.
This is more than a personnel squabble within DOJ and warrants our close attention. Since taking over the Civil Rights Division, Dhillon has made a number of decisions with significant consequences that run contrary to the history of the Division, including:
Setting priorities for the Division that included putting an end to DEI, supporting gun rights, protecting religious liberty by filing lawsuits challenging what DOJ views as anti‑Christian discrimination, and opposing transgender participation in women’s sports.
Pressuring colleges and universities over DEI programs and allegations of antisemitism. In one notable instance, the president of the University of Virginia was forced out for failing to move quickly enough to end DEI.
Ending, as her predecessor Jeff Sessions did, consent decrees with Police Departments. In her case, it was Minneapolis (George Floyd) and Louisville (Breonna Taylor), in cases involving systematic misconduct. She ended investigations in other jurisdictions, changing the environment to one that is far more tolerant of police misconduct.
Abandoning employment discrimination cases, as well as the work of the disability section to protect access, and work combating housing discrimination.
Countermanding early work in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minneapolis to investigate ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fired the shots that killed Renee Good. Much of the career leadership in that office resigned in the wake of that decision.
We don’t yet know who Trump will nominate to be the next Attorney General. Dhillon was confirmed 52-45 for the Civil Rights job, garnering no votes from Democrats but mustering support from every Republican. She’s been effective at pushing her priorities, which are Trump’s priorities, and at pushing career people out the door. A Justice Department under her leadership might make people long for Bondi’s simpering incompetence.
To come full circle, this was Dhillon’s response to Trump’s “Fuckin’ Strait” post this morning:
The Trump Administration appeals Anthropic’s victory.
Thursday morning, the government filed its notice of appeal after Anthropic won a victory against it in the lower court. That means it will try to overturn Judge Lin’s injunction, which prevents Trump/Hegseth’s designation of Anthropic as a supply-chain risk. We’ll likely see an effort to get an order from the Ninth Circuit to set that injunction aside while the litigation is underway this week
The federal civil rights investigation and prosecution we won’t see.
The Buffalo Medical Examiner ruled that the death of a legally blind elderly Burmese refugee dropped off by Border Patrol at a closed shop late at night in winter was a homicide. The facts of the case are terrible. And there’s a federal criminal law designed to address this kind of civil rights violation by federal agents acting “under color of law.”
NBC reported that Nurul Amin Shah Alam died of a burst ulcer caused by severe stress brought on by dehydration and hypothermia, which was brought on by the agents’ abandonment of him. The statute permits prosecution of agents who deprive a person of their rights because they are an alien. If DOJ were operating properly, there would be an open investigation. The potential charge is a serious one, based on the denial of rights, not a homicide. The punishment under the law, “if death results” from agents’ actions, can be life imprisonment or even the death penalty. Any other DOJ would be focused on getting this case and doing justice.
The DHS shutdown is still on.
The House failed to take action to pass the Senate’s bipartisan funding deal to reopen the Department of Homeland Security last week. That means the shutdown will continue at least until Monday, when Congress is back in Session. The Senate compromise withhold money the administration wanted to push Trump’s immigration agenda, but would fund DHS until the end of the fiscal year.
TSA workers in the Portland, Maine, airport cheerfully told me last week that they had received some back pay, but had no assurances of receiving paychecks going forward. Hard-working TSA employees are being forced to bear the brunt of Trump’s inability to run the government. It’s surprising Democrats aren’t driving this message every day. And, with hurricane and fire seasons approaching, FEMA funding is sure to be an issue soon, as well.
And, DOJ still hasn’t released all of the Epstein Files.
I have no intention of forgetting that there is more to that story.
Thank you for being here with me at Civil Discourse. It’s going to take all of us, staying informed and working together, to keep the Republic. If you’ve been enjoying the free posts, upgrading to a paid subscription is a great way to help keep the newsletter coming and to contribute to the time and resources it takes to stay on top of law, politics, and this administration.
I wish! 😄 Leading Kansas writes this time in regard to data centers, and about addressing our local governments in our own behalf.It works the same in every state.
This cartoon was drawn for the Fredericksburg Advance. But don’t yell at them for it; you can yell at me.
If you live in Virginia, you have been bombarded with flyers about the special election on redistricting. And it’s not just flyers but also TV commercials, which are also popping up online. We are getting these things from both sides.
There is a special election in November on a state constitutional amendment that would give Democrats as many as four seats in Congress. The measure would also temporarily bypass the state’s redistricting commission to redraw maps in the middle of the decade.
The state’s Supreme Court approved the measure to be on the ballot less than a week before early voting began. State Republicans repeatedly tried to stop Democrats from moving forward with the referendum. The irony here is that Republicans claim that voting yes will disenfranchise voters, while they literally tried to keep this off the ballot so people couldn’t vote on it.
This is a direct response to Donald Trump and Republicans redistricting mid-decade to give themselves more seats. Donald Trump even said he was entitled to have more congressional seats. This is one reason why we need to No Kings protest. Donald Trump already believes he’s entitled to win elections he’s lost. (snip-MORE, and it’s on point)
Energy company Deep Fission is in the process of building a new and untested type of underground nuclear reactor in Parsons, KS
The Trump administration has reduced regulations to encourage nuclear power production
The reactor will likely power data centers for artificial intelligence
Large data centers consume huge amounts of water and energy and produce different types of pollution, leading to health risks for nearby residents
In November 2025 a two-year-old energy company called Deep Fission broke ground in Parsons, Kansas. They hope this project will enable them to install the second ever energy producing nuclear reactor in the state, after Wolf Creek, potentially with more reactors on the way in the future. If the early “characterization” drilling goes to plan, they claim the reactor could begin pumping electricity into the grid in the near future.
Parsons is a city of 10,000 in southeastern Kansas, near the Oklahoma border. I’ve lived in Kansas for most of my life and I had not heard of Parsons until last week. So, why is Deep Fission in Parsons, Kansas, and why now? Not coincidentally, the Great Plains Industrial Park, also located in Parsons, has lately been advertised as a prime location for new data centers to power the trillion-dollar (yes, trillion with a T) artificial intelligence boom forced upon us by large technology corporations and their venture capitalist backers. Which means the Parsons nuclear reactor project would likely come as a package with one or more new data centers, along with potential economic prosperity and a host of legitimate concerns that community members have already raised.
Part 2: The New Nuclear Power
While the Department of Energy set a goal for the Parsons reactor to go online in July of this year, Deep Fission themselves are aiming to connect to the grid by 2027 or 2028. Two years is still an unusually rapid rollout for a nuclear power plant, which usually takes 6-10 years from groundbreaking to full operation.
Nuclear energy is typically labeled as “clean” energy compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, meaning that it releases fewer pollutants into the air and water than fossil fuel consumption. Still, there are two main concerns. First is the disposal of nuclear waste, which ranges from the lightly contaminated clothing of plant workers to the lethally radioactive spent fuel a plant produces over time. This latter “accounts for just 3% of the total volume of waste, but contains 95% of the total radioactivity.”
A relatively new method in the US and Europe for disposing of our most dangerous nuclear waste is to bury it very deep underground, so that it can be surrounded by solid rock to provide the same level of pressure containment as required at structure at a surface nuclear reactor facility. The father-daughter team that eventually founded Deep Fission originally created Deep Isolation to dispose of nuclear waste. Deep Fission takes their concept a step further by placing the entire reactor, and therefore its most dangerously radioactive elements, into a borehole drilled one mile underground.
The second main concern related to nuclear energy production is, of course, accidents or attacks. It is true that large-scale nuclear accidents are very rare, but when they happen, they become instant, globally recognized disasters whose names we all know: Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima. The effects are so widespread as to be practically impossible to quantify. The reactor explosion and meltdown in Chernobyl, for example, caused several dozen deaths directly related to radiation exposure, but various studies have predicted anywhere from thousands up to a million eventual additional cancer deaths. Not to mention the environmental and economic cost to the entire region around Chernobyl. And radioactive boars still terrorize people and farmland in the region around the Fukushima plant in Japan.
But those issues are known, and regulations have historically attempted to shore up potential dangers posed by new plants. In contrast, nothing like the underground nuclear reactor in Parsons, Kansas has ever been attempted before, and thanks to Executive Order 14301, will not need to go through long established design and testing phases that other types of nuclear reactors have been subject to in the past. John Young, a mining environmental regulatory specialist who lives in Sedgwick County, asks, “Why abandon the current regulatory process for something created out of whole cloth with no public input? And no one can define the current regulatory pathways for Federal and State authorizations.
“What,” Young asks in frustration, “could possibly go wrong?”
Part 3: Data Centers and Artificial Intelligence
So that is a glimpse into the nuclear energy side of things. Next we must address concerns around data centers and artificial intelligence. Data centers come in different sizes, like the smaller center being proposed in Wellington, KS, which would reportedly “use roughly 30% of the city’s electrical capacity while generating an estimated $1.3 million in annual electric utility revenue” while consuming only two gallons of water per day. Larger data centers consume resources less modestly. “Around the country, and the world, there is a land race among the big tech companies for sites for their data centers,” claims a November 2024 investigative report by Rolling Stone. Data centers are much newer than nuclear energy technology, yet the ways in which they harm communities near them have already become apparent.
Water: “Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people,” according to a June 2025 study by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI). And data centers built explicitly to power AI represent the fastest growing portion of the market.
Last year, researchers at the University of California, Riverside calculated that ChatGPT—one of several popular Large Language Models (LLMs) vying for marketplace dominance—answered about 10,000 queries per second. The processing load to do so guzzled about 6,000 liters (or about 1,000 toilet flushes) of fresh water per second, all day, every day. That is only generating written text. AI photos require more water, and still more for AI video. “The extraction process is permanent,” explains the University of Alabama at Birmingham Institute for Human Rights. Water used to cool data centers evaporates as it cools hot components, meaning it can no longer be used by people in the region who need water for drinking, cooking, bathing, laundry, and general survival.
Pollution: Unfortunately, it is not only consumption of water to worry about. The evaporation of water cooling data centers leaves behind higher concentrations of nitrates and other contaminants leaked through agricultural fertilizers and pesticides into local water supplies, drastically increasing incidents of “rare cancers, muscle disorders, and miscarriages” among people who live nearby. Geographically, Parsons, Kansas sits atop the Alluvial and Ozark Aquifers.
Reports of noise pollution have increased near data centers as well. Residents in different Virginia towns experienced disturbing high and low frequency humming in a wide radius around two new data centers.
These same experts predict that the disempowerment will not only come at the individual level, but also at the societal level, as lawmakers turn their attention and favor even more toward tech companies and AI services that increasingly take over tasks that used to be performed by human beings.
The purpose of this article is not to overwhelm with doomsaying or inevitability. If the Deep Fission underground reactor works as advertised, it could genuinely provide cleaner energy than fossil fuel and mitigate some of the effects of climate change. But to get there safely, we need to demand transparency and regulatory protections from political and corporate leaders. If enough of us speak up in place like Parsons, Topeka, Sedgwick County, and every corner of our town, state, country, and world, we embolden those watching, each other, and ourselves to continue building the world we want and deserve.
tRump couldn’thelp himself but he had to attack Obama making claims of how bad Obama’s library is. Then Sam describes tRump’s grift / scam on his library, using tax free dollars to build a hotel that he will make money from. Then Sam talks about the citizenship birthright case. Hugs
Abraham Lincoln’s faith in the Declaration of Independence ultimately influenced Walt Whitman’s harsh but optimistic appraisal of the American experiment.
Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln (Library of Congress)
“The United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of Feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time,” wrote American poet Walt Whitman in his 1871 work, Democratic Vistas. Despite writing in the wake of a brutal civil war and a failing Reconstruction Era, Whitman remained optimistic. “Not the least doubtful am I on any prospects of their material success.”
Known more for his poetry, exemplified by Leaves of Grass (1855), Whitman’s dark 1871 treatise on the nation remains a harsh but ultimately optimistic appraisal of the American experiment. It serves as a useful tool for thinking about the nation’s current state on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Whitman’s revolutionary patriotism had long been part of his worldview. He celebrated the Declaration of Independence and the Revolution in the preface to Leaves of Grass, noting that a poet must “enter the essences of the real things and past and present events,” among them “the haughty defiance of ’76, and the war and peace and formation of the constitution.”
But for all his celebration of the Declaration and the nation’s founding, he did not mince words regarding the nation’s failings. He wrote of a “hollowness” at the center of American life at the time, calling the business classes depraved and the government saturated in corruption. (snip-go see the rest!)
Donald Trump is threatening to bomb Iran back to the Stone Age, which, if he does, would be a war crime.
Trump’s chosen war is with the government of Iran, not the people, yet he continues to threaten to destroy its infrastructure. The more Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth brag about their success in the war, the more it seems that Iran fights back.
Trump tells us that the war is won and that Iran’s ability to wage war is nearly depleted if not already destroyed, yet missiles still rain on Israel and our other allies in the Gulf. And if Iran doesn’t have any weaponry left, then how did they shoot down two American jets? If the war is already won, then why are we still fighting? (snip-click on the title to get the rest!)
Because of Mamdani’s policies being for the people to help the people and his huge popularity is going to affect or should affect how other democrats run their races. The people respond to taxing the wealthy more and using those funds to help the lower incomes. Maybe the young today don’t remember how it was before Reagan slashed the taxes on the wealthy when infrastructure was maintained, services for the public were available, when schools were properly funded and higher education was inexpensive and government offices to serve the public were fully staffed along with so much more. But the more the upper incomes take of the country’s money the less is available for the rest of the people. A large part of the democratic party became addicted to that big money from corporate and wealthy donors so they did not fight for the people as they should have instead helping companies and businesses to make more profit. The people saw the shift by the democrats and stopped supporting them. Mamdani has shown how to get the voters back on the democrats side again. Hugs
Shutterstock
Scottie's Playtime 