“I will put America first. I will keep America safe, and I will work with you to make sure that Israel is with us for thousands of years,” he told an enthusiastic crowd at the Venetian Las Vegas.

Speaking via remote live broadcast from New York amid his election case there, Trump predicted that he will get about half of the Jewish vote in the coming election.

A Sienna College poll of likely voters in New York state from July 28 to Aug. 1 found 50 percent of Jewish voters would support Trump over Harris. Nationally, a survey from the American Jewish Committee before Harris entered the race found 61 percent of Jewish people said they would vote for President Joe Biden over 23 percent for Trump.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Trump received 30 percent of the Jewish vote in 2020 and 24 percent in 2016.

Continuing a theme on the campaign trail, Trump questioned how Jewish voters could support his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

He suggested that if he had been serving a second term these past few years, he would have expanded support for the Abraham Accords.

“Everyone, every country, virtually, would have been signed into the Abraham Accords,” he said.

Trump spoke after Dr. Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, who created the Venetian Las Vegas.

The Adelsons have been major financial supporters of Trump during his presidential candidacies.

Speaking at the event, Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) made his chamber’s candidates and fundraising landscape a theme. He pointed out that the Senate map, which has many more Democrats defending seats than Republicans, is favorable to his party. The Center for Politics at the University of Virginia predicts the GOP will take the Senate.

“We won’t see a map like this for the rest of the decade,” he said, describing Harris as adept at raising money.

The campaign recently announced it would direct $25 million to down-ballot contests.

Other speakers on Thursday morning included Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, talk show host Mark Levin, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and Auburn College men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl, who praised Evangelical Christians for their support of Israel.

Democrat Pledges Support to Trump

One group of speakers on Sept. 5 was made up of Jewish ex-Democrats.

However, Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum said he didn’t quite fit into that category. He told the crowd at the Venetian that he supported the Green New Deal and similar left-wing policy positions along with Rep. Richie Torres (D-N.Y.), a pro-Israel Democrat.

Yet, he said that he could not endorse Harris for president, criticizing the absence of an “ironclad commitment to security to the State of Israel.”

Kestenbaum closed by throwing his support behind Trump.

“The Democratic Party has taken the Jewish vote and Jewish voters for granted for far too long,” he said.

Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy stood beside former Iowa representative Steve King, who was taken down in the GOP primary by Rep. Randy Feenstra (R-Iowa) after a New York Times article alleged Mr. King had defended white nationalism. Both men were holding their hands over their hearts as they listened to the U.S. national anthem.

Last May, Mr. King in comments to The Epoch Times praised Mr. Ramaswamy, saying that he was “blazing a clear and bold trail for conservatism.” At the time, he had not thrown his support behind any candidate.

Now, though, he has endorsed the anti-woke entrepreneur. Mr. Ramaswamy has made a point of standing by him despite criticism from the legacy press.

“The fact that The New York Times says that Steve King said something a few years ago doesn’t make it true. I’ve gotten to know Steve well and trust him far more than the MSM [mainstream media],” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is of Indian descent, wrote on X on Jan. 2.

“I made a pledge to Steve, and I kept it at the fourth Republican presidential debate, talking about this issue,” Mr. Ramaswamy said at the Capitol.

The former congressman was among those who spoke at a Jan. 10 rally at the Capitol against the use of eminent domain for Summit Carbon Solutions’ proposed carbon dioxide pipeline. Legal battles over the approval of its network of carbon capture pipelines are playing out throughout the Midwest, including in North Dakota.

Mr. King, still an influential political figure despite his exile from public office, has been a vocal local critic of the plans.

“It’s all driven by tax dollars and carbon credits,” he told The Epoch Times in May.

At least as early as a June appearance in Sioux City, Iowa, Mr. Ramaswamy was speaking out against the seizure of private farmland through eminent domain for “public use” in the form of a carbon capture pipeline, according to coverage from the Sioux City Journal.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., now an independent candidate, voiced strong opposition to carbon capture pipelines at the Iowa State Fair in August when he was still contending for the Democratic nomination.

Mr. Ramaswamy is reaping political dividends thanks to his strong stance on the issue. Another speaker at the event, state Rep. Steven Holt (R-Denison), announced his endorsement during the anti-pipeline rally. He had, in Mr. Ramaswamy’s delicate phrasing, backed “another candidate” up until that point—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

“[Vivek] was, to my knowledge, the first presidential candidate to focus on this issue,” Mr. Holt told the crowd.

Mr. Holt’s perspective contrasts with the view of North Dakota state Sen. Jeff Magrum (R), one of Summit’s biggest foes in the state legislature.

“He [Mr. Ramaswamy] was desperate for attention. Rather than missing a golden opportunity, he jumped onboard,” Mr. Magrum told The Epoch Times.

Just days ahead of the Jan. 15 caucus, it remains to be seen whether Mr. Ramaswamy’s strong stance on pipelines and relentless touring across the state will translate to real votes of support. RealClearPolitics’ polling average has him below former President Donald Trump, Mr. DeSantis, and his bête noire, former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.

Another contender who has been polling below the top candidates, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, dropped out of the GOP race on Jan. 10.

“Better late than never,” Mr. Ramaswamy told The Epoch Times in response to talk of Mr. Christie’s departure, still unconfirmed at the time he spoke.

He told reporters he was “in this to the very end,” regardless of his performance on Jan. 15.

Founders ‘Rolling Over in Their Graves’: Ramaswamy

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution holds that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

A central concern for pipeline critics is the 2005 Supreme Court decision Kelo v. City of New London. The 5-4 decision—opposed by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, and Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—permitted the government to take private property and give it to private rather than public parties.

The Court found that the City of New London’s seizure of land to sell to private developers qualified as a “public use” since it was part of the city’s plan for economic development.

“George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton and John Jay are rolling over in their graves, and they were when Kelo v. New London was decided,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.

Eminent domain was also at issue when land was taken in Iowa for the Dakota Access Pipeline, which transports crude oil from the Bakken in far western North Dakota to an oil terminal in Illinois. The Iowa Supreme Court in 2019 held that those takings did not violate the U.S. Constitution or Iowa’s constitution.

The businessman was pressed on his view of oil and gas pipelines by anti-oil protesters.

“I don’t think any private company, including an oil company, should be able to use eminent domain,” he said.

‘Next Week It’s Going to Be Windmills’: Iowa Farmer

Allen and Christine Hayek are among the Iowans who stand in opposition to Summit’s vision.

At the rally, Mr. Hayek was wearing a hat emblazoned with the name of his agricultural operation, “Hayek Farms.” The fact that he shares a last name with Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, a legendary defender of private property rights, may just be a happy coincidence.

“Next week, it’s going to be windmills, it’s going to be solar panels … They’re literally going to take over every piece of ground we have,” Mr. Hayek told The Epoch Times.

He thinks the Dakota Access case was a little different.

“Even that [served] a public good,” he said.

“This thing serves no purpose other than to stick it [CO2] in a hole,” he added.

Another high-profile attendee of the Jan. 10 carbon pipeline rally was political activist and journalist Laura Loomer.

She told The Epoch Times that she was “ride or die” for President Trump, saying she couldn’t imagine him being prevented from running.

“The American people are not going to stand by for their elections to be stolen by power-hungry secretaries of state and enemies of our justice system. To remove President Trump from the ballot, it would literally cause a revolution in our country,” she said.

She suggested that Mr. Ramaswamy “would make an exceptional GOP nominee in 2028.”

John Haughey contributed to this report.

It’s hard to predict how Mr. Newsom might pull it off, at least during this cycle—he has remained a steadfast supporter of incumbent President Joe Biden, and as the filing deadlines for multiple Democratic primaries have passed, he hasn’t flinched.

He could be gunning for 2028, two years after state term limits will force him out of the governor’s mansion. Or, if events line up just right, he could make his move sooner.

“I think it’s been pretty obvious that Newsom has been positioning himself for a run in 2028 and to be available in 2024 should Biden’s health or capacities deteriorate to the point that Democrats decide that they need another candidate,” Morris Fiorina, professor of political science and Hoover Institution fellow at Stanford University, told The Epoch Times.

California Assemblyman James Gallagher, who leads the Republicans in that chamber of the California Legislature, also cast doubt on President Biden’s ability to campaign for another term.

“Right now, everybody in public is saying they’re rallying behind Joe Biden, but it’s very clear that he is deteriorating,” Mr. Gallagher told The Epoch Times.

Gloria Romero, a Democrat who was formerly majority leader of the California State Senate, said “the conundrum is the vice president,” and dubbed Mr. Newsom “the replacement candidate.”

2024 as 1968

President Biden’s detractors have sometimes compared him to former President Jimmy Carter, who presided over high inflation and his own hostage crisis. But an even more war-clouded incumbent—Capitol Hill dealmaker President Lyndon B. Johnson—could offer another parallel as the United States steps up support for Israel against Hamas. Like the Vietnam War, the conflict is unpopular with much of the Democrats’ base, in part because of civilian casualties.

Amid protests over Vietnam, the unpopular President Johnson dropped out of the race early in 1968. Months of intraparty division, including the assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, culminated in the chaotic and violent Democratic convention, which was held in August in Chicago.

The party establishment’s favorite, then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey, ultimately carried off the nomination, defeating a fellow Minnesotan, the anti-war Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.), and various others. Mr. Humphrey then fell in the general election to Richard Nixon, the man who was once counted out of national politics after he lost the 1960 presidential race to John F. Kennedy.

There are other striking similarities between 2024 and 1968. The Democratic National Convention will again take place in Chicago. Robert F. Kennedy’s son is in the running, too, albeit as an independent. And President Biden’s new Democratic primary challenger, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.), is, like Mr. Humphrey and Mr. McCarthy, a Minnesotan (though, unlike them, he isn’t running against an unpopular war).

Chuck DeVore, a former California State Assembly member now with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told The Epoch Times that President Johnson’s departure from the field “opened up the delegates that he may have already won at that point to be able to vote as they pleased on the floor of the Democratic convention.”

“Essentially, you end up with this brokered convention. We may end up seeing something very similar in 2024,” he said.

Seeking the Center on Domestic Issues

The 2024 Chicago convention is many months away. For now, an observer can only assess what California’s governor has already done that may boost his presidential profile.

During the last legislative session, some of Mr. Newsom’s vetoes attracted media attention. For instance, he shot down legislation that would have decriminalized possession of psychedelic mushrooms. He also vetoed a bill that would have seen condoms distributed for free in California’s public high schools as well as legislation that would have altered child custody proceedings by making judges favor parents who “affirm” a minor’s transgender identity.

In a CNN opinion piece, liberal commentator Jill Filipovic called some of those vetoes “disappointing,” arguing that the governor is “a man who puts his own political future ahead of the will of the people.”

While some observers may sense a shift to the center, Ms. Romero doesn’t quite see it that way.

“It’s really political calculation,” she said. She lambasted some of the bills emanating from California’s Legislature, calling them “almost Babylon Bee-ish.” They are, in short, hard for the governor to greenlight if he wants to become competitive across a country where California values aren’t always and everywhere welcome.

She speculated that some of the vetoes show the governor trying to regain the trust of nonleftist Democrats like her, many of whom have become disillusioned with Mr. Newsom’s leadership style.

Ms. Romero described California’s leader as a chameleon-like figure who benefits from a relatively sympathetic treatment by the legacy media.

Like Ms. Romero, Mr. Gallagher characterized the vetoes as a political maneuver meant to make the governor seem less left-wing.

“The problem is, he’s still passing pretty radical policy,” Mr. Gallagher said. He cited bills such as Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener’s S.B. 253, which will require large companies to report greenhouse gas emissions.

He said Mr. Newsom’s vetoes may allow him to look tougher on drugs while preserving his environmental agenda—a signature issue for him domestically and during his recent trip to China, where climate policy was a central concern.

Vetoes by the Numbers

Mr. DeVore suggested the vetoes may be less exceptional than they seem.

“Every governor of California, or really any governor across the country, will veto a certain number of bills that they see as just poor bills,” he said.

“I think there is a danger in reading a little too much into that,” he added, noting that the state’s past Democratic governors have also vetoed bills from the Legislature, which has skewed left for many decades.

Indeed, while some media coverage suggests Mr. Newsom’s recent vetoes take him closer to the American center, the big picture is foggier.

Mr. Newsom vetoed 156 bills and signed 890 bills during the latest legislative session. That means he shot down a little less than 15 percent of the legislation that reached him from the state’s Legislature, both chambers of which are controlled by commanding Democratic supermajorities.

That’s in keeping with what he has done before, according to an analysis by the California Senate’s Office of Research.

Mr. Newsom vetoed a little fewer than 14.5 percent of the bills that reached him in 2022. While that marked a big increase over a 7.89 percent veto rate in 2021, it was roughly on par with a 13.08 percent veto rate in 2020—and in 2019, the governor vetoed 16.51 percent of the bills that crossed his desk, a higher rate than in 2023.

Mr. Newsom’s immediate predecessor, fellow Democrat Gov. Jerry Brown, vetoed a similar share of bills during his second stint as governor. The veto percentage under his leadership ranged from a low of 10.71 percent in 2013 to a high of 16.52 percent in 2018.

The last California governor who consistently vetoed a bigger chunk of bills was its last Republican state executive, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The movie star-turned-politician took down more than 22 percent of the bills that passed the Legislature every year he was in office. He wielded his veto pen most frequently in 2008, nixing 35 percent of the legislation that session.

Mr. Fiorina of the Hoover Institution argued that Mr. Newsom’s vetoes are just part of the picture when it comes to his supposed conservative turn.

In September, for example, the governor announced the Board of State and Community Corrections was awarding over $267 million to law enforcement agencies across California.

“He made extra funds available to local authorities for crime fighting,” Mr. Fiorina said.

In addition, the governor has launched the CARE Court program for mental illness treatment, which withstood disability rights activists’ legal challenge in the California Supreme Court. Mental illness is one of the chief contributors to homelessness, a formidable challenge in Mr. Newsom’s state.

“Crime, homelessness, trans issues … it is almost as if his staff is thinking, ‘What attack ads about [California] liberals will the Republicans run in the Midwest battlegrounds? Let’s move now to head them off,” Mr. Fiorina said.

Ms. Romero, the California Democrat, said she expects Mr. Newsom to “dance to the latest tune of the piper, even as silly as they might be, to basically become the new head of the Democratic Party.”

Newsom in China

The same President Nixon who in 1968 defeated Mr. Humphrey went on to visit China while in office. The president, a poker shark during his youth, played his hand boldly but carefully at a time when the Soviet Union and China were fracturing.

The trip, which helped set the stage for the end of the Cold War, was so iconic that it even inspired an opera, John Coolidge Adams’s “Nixon in China.” (“Five-card stud taught me a lot about mankind,” the President Nixon character muses in the third act.)

Mr. Newsom’s Chinese tour hasn’t yet been commemorated in song, at least. But a few photos and videos of his trip, part of foreign travels that also saw him visiting Israel, have circulated widely on social media, sometimes amplified by accounts unfriendly to the governor and his party.

There’s Mr. Newsom, posing in sunglasses on the Great Wall of China. There’s Mr. Newsom, tooling around in a Chinese electric vehicle. There’s Mr. Newsom, barreling into a small Chinese boy on a basketball court. For the media-savvy man at the head of America’s most image-conscious state, the optics may have smarted.

The substance of the governor’s trip has also come under scrutiny.

The Daily Caller News Foundation reported that an affiliate of a Chinese intelligence service took credit for bringing Mr. Newsom to China.

The Epoch Times has reviewed Chinese-language posts from that group, the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, which the State Department in 2020 said was seeking “to directly and malignly influence state and local leaders to promote the PRC’s global agenda.”

In one post, the organization’s president, Yang Wanming, lauded California, saying it was “at the forefront” of U.S. states when it comes to relations between China and America, having what it called “close personnel exchanges.”

Mr. Newsom did not discuss China’s human rights record with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, though a statement from the governor’s office claimed he discussed “a variety of human rights issues including Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan” with other officials.

“It is wrong to visit China and fail to bring up human rights issues. But Newsom went further, defending his failure,” said Anders Corr, a strategic analyst of international affairs, in an email to The Epoch Times.

“The visit raises questions about why an American politician—who doubtless seeks the presidency—would do such damage to his own reputation,” Mr. Corr, who is also a contributor to the publication, added.

Mr. Gallagher pointed out that the governor’s time coincided with a flyover by a Chinese jet of a U.S. bomber. And only days ago, a federal prosecutor alerted the House Judiciary Committee of possible Chinese Communist Party (CCP) interference in the state’s 2024 election.

“While he’s back there, we have continued interference and aggression from China, and Gavin’s just buddying up to them,” he said.

The California State Assembly’s Republican leader questioned the governor’s comments lauding the country’s record on climate and the environment.

“He certainly is coming back really more singing China’s praises rather than standing up to them and the clear abuses that they have on human rights and intellectual property theft,” he said.

The trip garnered plenty of media attention, fueling more speculation about the governor’s possible ambitions for higher office. Yet both Mr. DeVore and Ms. Romero pointed out that such visits to China and other Asian countries aren’t so unusual for California leaders.

“This is not an unusual thing, for a California governor to be on the world stage,” Mr. DeVore said.

“California has a unique relationship with the Pacific Rim, and so it’s not unusual for delegations to go to Asia,” Ms. Romero said.

She was particularly critical of his stumble while playing basketball.

“Politics is a sport. There he is, playing a sport, and he literally trips over and falls,” Ms. Romero said.

Newsom Versus Harris

As he builds toward a possible bid for the White House, Mr. Newsom has to go beyond establishing his credibility on domestic and foreign affairs. He must somehow gingerly skirt around the woman now second in line for the most powerful office on the planet, Vice President Kamala Harris.

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in September, Mr. Newsom said Ms. Harris “is naturally the one lined up” if President Biden does not run.

The two go way back in California, and more specifically in San Francisco politics, having scored early wins in the same city that produced former House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Ms. Harris was San Francisco’s district attorney while Mr. Newsom served as that city’s mayor. In fact, according to local reporting from the time, Mr. Newsom was in the crowd during Ms. Harris’s swearing-in ceremony in 2004, the same day he was sworn in as mayor.

Ms. Romero suggested the Democrats may have to execute a delicate maneuver: “How do we replace her without being accused of being racist, sexist, blah blah blah?”

Mr. Gallagher agreed with Mr. Newsom that the “likely” replacement for President Biden, should he bow out, would be Ms. Harris, who is half Jamaican and half East Indian by origin.

While the daughter of two professors checks the right boxes for intersectional realpolitik, the vice president has been dogged by low likability and high unlikability ratings in many surveys. But slotting in Mr. Newsom could be tricky for multiple reasons.

“You would have to overstep her to get in that place. And if he does, then they’re going to have a problem with black voters, a core part of their voting constituency,” he said.

Indeed, black turnout fell in the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton ran as the Democratic candidate after eight years of President Barack Obama, whose ancestry is half Kenyan and half white American.

But California’s white governor may have played his party’s intersectional (and coalitional) politics adeptly by appointing now-Sen. Laphonza Butler to take over for the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

In addition to being an LGBT black woman, Ms. Butler was a leader in the Service Employers International Union (SEIU), a major force for Democrats during elections. She also led the pro-abortion access group EMILY’s List.

“She brought with her two vital constituencies for the modern Democratic Party,” Mr. DeVore said.

Ms. Butler has also announced she won’t seek reelection. That leaves a lane open for Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), beloved among many Democrats for his role in President Trump’s first impeachment.

Newsom Versus DeSantis (and Trump)

Like Ms. Romero and Mr. Gallagher, Mr. DeVore suggested Mr. Newsom would have a tough time bypassing Ms. Harris even with the presidency on the line.

“How do they finesse being able to minimize the time where Biden is a lame duck [and] somehow figure out how to muscle Kamala Harris aside and have a reset at getting a person in as a standard bearer who has a better shot at winning? This is not an easy thing to do,” he said.

Some of the credibility to pull it off may come from the California governor’s upcoming debate with Mr. DeSantis, another White House hopeful.

Mr. Newsom mocked Mr. DeSantis for accepting his invitation to debate. The two will go at it on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program on Nov. 30.

“The fact that he took the bait in relation to this debate shows that he’s completely unqualified to be president of the United States,” Mr. Newsom said in a September interview coinciding with the second Republican debate in Simi Valley, California.

The governor dominated the Reagan Library’s spin room for portions of that event, helping to define the media’s interpretation of it.

Florida’s governor has seized on Mr. Newsom’s China visit to get in his own digs, comparing Mr. Newsom to Mr. Xi.

“These are two guys who locked down their people, violated their rights … imposed medical authoritarianism, and really hurt their societies—and they both had really the same playbook on COVID-19,” Mr. DeSantis said on Fox & Friends during Mr. Newsom’s trip.

Mr. Gallagher said, “I predict Gavin will get destroyed by DeSantis because Gavin has no record to stand by.”

For some Americans now wondering if Mr. Newsom has what it takes to be president, the matchup could prove educational. If not, it could at least be entertaining. It’s being billed a little like a pro-wrestling showdown.

Other Americans may reserve their judgement until the California governor faces off against the Republican frontrunner, President Trump.

Unlike Mr. Newsom, Mr. DeSantis, or Ms. Harris, President Trump has occupied both the White House and World Wrestling Entertainment’s WrestleMania ring.

Mr. Newsom has never duked it out with WWE promoter Vince McMahon, but he can talk the right kind of trash for modern American politics. In April, he predicted that Mr. DeSantis would “get rolled by Trump.”

Eva Fu contributed to this report.

Many of the greatest among them emanate from a key geopolitical rival, China.

That’s partly because the new technologies frequently use inverters. When solar panels, wind turbines, and battery systems generate or store direct current electricity, inverters turn it into the alternating current electricity that flows through the grid.

Paul N. Stockton, a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, opened what he called a “rabbit hole” in response to a question on inverters during the House Energy & Commerce hearing.

“Do we have a satisfactory supply of inverters for all of the renewable energy that’s being brought into the grid?” Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) asked Mr. Stockton, who also holds positions on subcommittees in the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy.

“Manufacturers in China are important producers of inverters being deployed nationwide, across the United States,” Mr. Stockton responded.

He explained that the country’s reliance on Chinese inverters could jeopardize grid security.

“Sure, we’ve got inverters. Some of them are made in China. Others may be manufactured for final assembly in friendly nations, but they might have components—hardware, software, and firmware—that could provide attack vectors. And the constant updating of firmware from the cloud and by service providers—who’s on top of that for maintaining adequate security? Congressman, that’s an opportunity for progress,” Mr. Stockton said.

Solar Panels With Parts From China

The United States’ use of solar panels with parts from China that are assembled in Southeast Asia has been a source of controversy in this Congress. President Joe Biden vetoed a bill that would have ended his temporary pause on tariffs affecting those panels.

In his written testimony, Mr. Stockton elaborated on the ways inverter-based resources “provide China with new opportunities to disrupt the grid.”

He referred to a 2022 report from the Department of Energy outlining the cybersecurity risks associated with the changes to America’s grid.

“I propose that we prioritize our efforts to prevent Chinese leaders from accomplishing their goals in attacking the grid,” Mr. Stockton wrote.

He noted that inverter-based resources have some advantages, testifying in writing that they “have provided reliable, much-needed power during the 2023 heat domes and other extreme events.”

“Yet, they are also prone to catastrophic failures that can put the grid at risk.”

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) also asked Mr. Stockton about inverter-related vulnerabilities facing the United States.

Mr. Stockton offered a central recommendation to the lawmakers in attendance:

“Above all, ensuring that at the level of the devices, we hold manufacturers’ feet to the fire and ensure the adoption of safe and secure inverters, instead of relying on individual utilities or energy aggregators or other entities within the larger electric system to do their own homework.”

Bruce J. Walker of the Alliance for Critical Infrastructure Security voiced similar concerns about the threat from China, citing the U.S. intelligence community’s 2023 threat assessment.

Yet, he and Mr. Stockton offered contrasting perspectives on the decentralization that could be afforded by the rise of wind and solar.

Mr. Stockton argued in written testimony that decentralization could make the grid “more difficult to disrupt than today’s version, which relies on a small number of critical, high-value assets that adversaries can selectively target.”

Mr. Walker, on the other hand, testified that decentralization “has increased the surface area for cyber penetration.”

Manny Cancel, CEO of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), named China alongside Russia, Iran, and North Korea as foreign adversaries that could threaten the United States’ grid.

“Chinese cyber activities are probably one of the largest and most dynamic cyber threats to critical infrastructure and continue to demonstrate an increasing sophistication, including new and adaptive techniques to gain access to networks and conduct espionage,” he explained in written testimony.

More Threats From China or Russia?

“Are you seeing more threats from China or Russia?” Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-W.Va.) asked Mr. Cancel.

“Probably China right now, but it’s not consistent,” Mr. Cancel replied, adding that Russia is a “very complex adversary.”

The grid experts’ concerns weren’t limited to the threat from China and other rivals on the world stage.

“The accelerating decarbonization and retirement of coal generation is forcing the United States toward an electric generation fleet reliant upon natural gas pipelines, further increasing the electric sector’s cyber and physical attack surface area,” Mr. Walker testified.

One of the most high-profile attacks on America’s energy infrastructure targeted a similar system, the Colonial Pipeline for jet fuel and gasoline.

Rep. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) asked Mr. Walker if he favored more reliance on coal over improvements to pipeline security as a strategy for mitigating such threats.

“I actually advocate for an all-of-the-above approach,” he told the lawmaker.

America’s emerging electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure, including existing and planned charging stations, was another recurring topic.

In his written testimony, Mr. Stockton observed that EVs open up more space for internet-managed “demand-side management”—in other words, policies and technologies designed to influence consumer behavior—”on a massive scale.”

“These same capabilities are opening the door to unprecedented opportunities to manipulate demand for power, and exacerbate rather than remedy grid instabilities,” Mr. Stockton added.

In response to questioning from Mr. Griffith, Sam Chanoski of the Idaho National Laboratory sounded more optimistic about the cybersecurity of EV charging infrastructure, based on testing at his facility and other national laboratories. He told the lawmaker that the results were on par with “any other product.”

“There is not a digital product that is invulnerable,” he said.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

There and elsewhere, the arrest of 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, accused of leaking classified national defense material, claimed the limited attention spans of those in the Journalist-American community.

Trump and the indictment didn’t make the very top of The New York Times’ digital front page. Yet, the title of a subsection about a quarter of the way down, “The Trump Investigations,” offers some clues as to how Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s controversial case may be recast—namely, as one of many legal quagmires through which the ex-commander-in-chief must trudge.

Fox News was accused in March of a soft ban on Trump appearing on its channel, yet hosted on April 12 Trump’s first interview since his indictment, which it featured partway down its digital front page. An article on Bragg also made the cut.

The former president was almost a total non-entity on the digital front page of CNN, famously dismissed by Trump as “Fake News CNN.” It’s part of a noticeable pattern over the past week. Although coverage of Trump has fluctuated, it has generally trended downward. Yet, the legacy media’s “indispensable man” has never fully exited the news cycle.

Weak Case Driving Coverage Downward: News Analyst

Kevin Tober, a news analyst with the conservative Media Research Center, has been monitoring coverage of Trump. His March 28 article, written before Trump’s indictment was released, noted that the four big Sunday news roundtable shows obsessed over that story while ignoring key new stories that could hurt President Joe Biden.

Those revelations included emails from Biden’s vice presidency suggesting that members of the Biden family sought to downplay coverage of Hunter Biden’s Burisma Holdings board membership in 2015, along with subpoenas from the House Oversight Committee that appear to link the Bidens to payouts from a Chinese energy company.

Tober has a theory about why the indictment has faded from view.

“I think the media looked at what’s in the indictment, and they realized there’s nothing there,” he told The Epoch Times in an April 12 interview. “Even they are embarrassed to be hyping this.”

Once the indictment was unsealed, legal experts quickly identified numerous flaws in it. Those issues range from the way it blends state and federal laws to its vagueness concerning Trump’s alleged second crime. Yet, even if the media is quietly backing away from a weak case, its powerful megaphone may have served the intended purpose.

Pro-Trump commentator John Doyle argued in an April 7 video that people who don’t follow the news closely will see the former president more negatively on average because of the indictment.

“They’re just going to remember that, you know, every time they turned on the news in the gym, whatever, it seemed like Trump was wrapped up in some scandal, which will just make them more likely to think, ‘Well, they finally got him,’” Doyle said.

The media, Tober said, is “always quick to report on anti-conservative or anti-Republican stories.”

In his view, one of the media’s biggest tricks is omitting or downplaying inconvenient information, sometimes in response to explicit instructions. He cited CBS News’ ban on the word “transgender” in its coverage of the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, as reported by the New York Post.

‘The Current Thing’

One useful concept for making sense of the news cycle originated over a year ago as a spinoff of the “non-playable character” (NPC) meme—”The Current Thing.”

The Current Thing is often the top story for days, weeks, or even months at a time. And not only are you forced to think about it—you’d better support it or risk paying the social price.

An early example comes from 2012, with the crusade against African warlord Joseph Kony. More recently, The Current Thing has ranged from COVID-19 to the war in Ukraine. For many, The Current Thing is becoming harder and harder to escape with each passing year.

“The Current Thing, at a fundamental level, is a distraction. Any distraction,” said Adam Ellwanger, an English professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, in an April 14 interview with The Epoch Times. “American society is at a very late stage in its degradation.”

Ellwanger wrote about what he sees as the elite-driven nature of The Current Thing for The American Conservative in 2022.

“Current Thingism is about freezing the public gaze on ONE problem, in the hope that they remain oblivious—or indifferent—to the rest, and thus remain ignorant of the bigger picture,” Ellwanger added. “Because the establishment is thoroughly leftist, the issues that become The Current Thing are ones that are conducive to advancing the agenda of the political and cultural left.”

For a few days, Trump’s indictment was The Current Thing. Yet, as Tober noted, the story lost momentum over the following week, though didn’t disappear completely.

The indictment-related stories that did emerge illustrate another powerful weapon in the media’s arsenal—namely, the framing of a specific story and the latest Current Thing.

On April 11, for example, Bragg’s lawsuit against Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) dominated many headlines. Jordan’s original subpoena, the trigger for Bragg’s reaction, hadn’t commanded anything resembling the same amount of attention.

“Framing is very often ideological,” Tober said.

Some argue that The Current Thing is more a product of financial incentives than of political belief. After all, journalists make money from the public’s attention. Why wouldn’t they capitalize on a snowballing story, regardless of ideology?

Despite its legendary self-obsession, the media itself might not give you the best answers.

“The media kind of goes back and forth like a ping-pong ball. They follow whatever the new thing is, the new controversy,” Tober said.

This writer ran a test using the most unscientific method possible: a Twitter poll.

What factor mostly determines "the current thing"? (Please retweet this one.)

— Nathan Worcester (@nnworcester) April 13, 2023

In the eyes of those who answered, ideology edges out money in establishing The Current Thing, leaving chance or other factors in the dust.

In fairness, it’s pretty hard to imagine that our media presents—and polices—the latest big stories without taking politics into consideration.

The current Current Thing, Texieira’s arrest, has been publicized as a national security risk for the United States and a possible justification for expanded government monitoring of social media by the Biden administration.

It comes just weeks after Congress proposed the RESTRICT Act, a putatively anti-TikTok bill that could greatly expand the government’s ability to clamp down on online communications.

The explosive content of the leaks, and what they reveal about the United States’ involvement in Ukraine, has remained a relative afterthought.

Trump vs ‘The Current Thing’

Trump has long had a complicated relationship with the media and its Current Things. Even as he supposedly “craved media approval,” the real estate mogul and reality show star had a knack for disrupting the press’s narratives while leading the country. He also captured clicks and eyeballs for legacy and non-legacy outlets alike.

“They [the media] just can’t get over their obsession with the president,” Tober said.

Even today, he said, “it’s always Trump, Trump, Trump” on the news.

“We always joke, ‘Well, who’s the president right now?’”

Many Current Things in the past few years have been driven wholly or in part by Trump.

Like other Republican leaders before him, he’s provided a focal point for leftist ire. In some ways, the Trump phenomenon—perpetually seen as an emergency, forever dominating the news cycle, and always demanding a politically safe response—was the most durable Current Thing of the past few years.

Yet, in Ellwanger’s view, Trump has offered Americans a path away from The Current Thing.

“He seeks to move the public’s attention away from The Current Thing in order to see the broader degradation,” he said.

“If the public were to get that broader panorama, they would recognize that some radical alternative is needed to the current establishment. Which, of course, would empower Trump. Therefore, he remains Public Enemy #1 according to Current Thingism.”

As of early Friday, Teixeira and the bombshell documents continued to dominate headlines, leaving the man from Mar-a-Lago in the shadows.

It’s hard to believe that will last, particularly given the unprecedented nature of what has happened with Trump.

The Current Thing comes and goes, but Americans’ polarized responses to the indictment of a former president don’t seem likely to vanish without a trace.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

Their party first deployed the term in mid-2022 as part of a midterm strategy that aimed to activate voters outraged about the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, among other issues.

“The terms ‘MAGA Republicans’ and ‘Extreme MAGA Republicans’ were created by the Democrats along with some never Trump Republicans in an attempt to isolate Trump supporters as being outside the mainstream of the American political process,” said Richard Manning, president of the Republican-aligned Americans for Limited Government, in an April 3 email to The Epoch Times.

Others argue that the talk of “MAGA Republicans” is, in actuality, unifying and necessary.

“The term ‘MAGA Republicans’—as used by President [Joe] Biden, Chuck Schumer, and other prominent politicians—does not aim to divide the country as many critics claim,” said David Carlucci, a Democratic strategist, in an April 4 email to The Epoch Times.

“Instead, it is meant to rally all Americans regardless of party affiliation against an ideology that has sought to dismantle our democratic institutions.”

Biden Leads and Some Republicans Follow

Biden helped to normalize, and step up, rhetoric aimed at “MAGA Republicans.”

As early as August 2022, the commander-in-chief took aim at Trump loyalists in the GOP using the memorable “MAGA Republicans” branding.

He didn’t stop there. He claimed that the “philosophy” behind support for former President Donald Trump amounted to a kind of “semi-fascism.”

That language met with plaudits from Never Trumper Bill Kristol. Kristol, an influential early advocate of the Iraq War, is the son of the late “godfather of neoconservatism,” the ex-Marxist Irving Kristol.

“You know what you call a movement that’s semi-OK with violence against its opponents? Semi-fascist,” Kristol wrote on Twitter in late October 2022, just before the midterm election.

In the judgment of one anonymous GOP strategist who spoke with The Epoch Times, that sort of labeling “adds fuel to the fire of partisan divisions in this country.”

Yet Democrats’ relatively strong performance last November may have convinced them the approach worked.

“If you want to see the effectiveness of ‘MAGA Republican’ rhetoric, look no further than the 2022 midterms where several ultra-vocal MAGA Republicans like Kari Lake, Dr. Oz, and Herschel Walker lost their elections,” said Carlucci, the Democratic strategist.

Carlucci cited December 2022 polling from Vanderbilt University showing that only 34 percent of Republicans “say they are ‘more of a supporter of the Make America Great Again, or MAGA, movement’ than they are a ‘supporter of the Republican Party.’”

The anonymous GOP strategist acknowledged that some of that language seeks to link a range of Republicans to “the most unpopular figures on the right.”

Andrew Cuff, communications director at the political agency Knight Takes Rook, thinks Democrats’ “MAGA Republicans” tactic succeeded thanks in part to the leadership of some top Republicans.

“Tiny minorities of establishment Republican leaders approved and encouraged these attacks, lending credence to the notion that feckless Republicans who have given up fighting are more ‘sane’ and ‘civil’ than the ‘extreme’ majority of their party.

“It’s abundantly clear that the GOP establishment prefers the role of controlled opposition under Democrat rule than to be dislodged from power in their own party,” he told The Epoch Times in an April 3 interview.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in February accused “MAGA Republicans” of contributing to a lack of GOP unity—an expression of concern that is difficult to take at face value, but one wholly in keeping with a wedge strategy.

For now, backing for Trump among Republicans seems to be on the rise, if recent polls on the upcoming 2024 contest are to be believed.

The upshot: Biden’s speeches still target “MAGA Republicans.” In one March 15 speech, he opined that “MAGA Republicans” are “different.”

“This is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden added.

MAGA and ‘Extremism’

Talk of MAGA Republicans’ “extremism” has also escalated.

The White House’s March 27 response to Republicans’ recent budget proposal asserts it is the product not merely of “MAGA Republicans” but of “extreme MAGA Congressional Republicans.”

In a March 24 press release, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) referenced “Extreme MAGA Republicans” no fewer than 13 times.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans want to ban books on the Holocaust. Ban books on the Holocaust. Extreme MAGA Republicans want to ban books on Martin Luther King Jr. Extreme MAGA Republicans want to ban books on the LGBTQ journey in the United States of America,” Jeffries said.

“Most folks don’t view all these Republicans as extremist,” the anonymous GOP strategist told The Epoch Times.

“This ideology should not speak for the entire party, but with all the noise caused by figures like Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and of course former President Trump, it is particularly concerning that MAGA extremism will become the overwhelming voice of the Republican Party,” said Democratic strategist Carlucci.

“The use of the word “extreme” continues to serve as an effective slur against Republican candidates,” said Cuff.

“Extremism,” he said, is a “national security trigger word.”

Cuff tied that rhetoric to Biden’s Sept. 1, 2022, “Dark Brandon” speech, which saw him deliver remarks against a blood-red backdrop while flanked by U.S. Marines.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said in his remarks that day.

“He tied it [extremism] with the MAGA label in order to connect it with President Trump and his MAGA movement,” Cuff said.

He noted that it followed the administration’s actions on parent protesters at school boards and an FBI memo targeting “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology.”

“The words are chosen very carefully,” Cuff said.

The neocon ex-Republican Kristol was, if anything, ahead of the curve when it came to alleged “extremism” among his opponents.

“If the term ‘MAGA Republicans’ works, fine. But wouldn’t it be easier just to call them extremists? Why the ‘MAGA’ complication?” he asked in a July 1, 2022 Tweet, responding to a Politico story on Democrats’ use of the “MAGA Republicans” label in their midterm messaging.

MAGA-Baiting Across Ticket

MAGA-baiting has takers at lower echelons of the Democratic Party too.

During her unsuccessful campaign for reelection as Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot accused opponent Paul Vallas of having “MAGA Republican ways.”

Even closer to the ground, members of the Chicago City Council’s Progressive Reform Caucus, which includes numerous open socialists, referred in scathing terms to Vallas’ backing from what they called “MAGA Republicans.”

Legacy media outlets—even those outside the United States—are also echoing the “extreme MAGA Republican” rhetoric that has been issued by leading Democrats.

A March 4 U.S. politics article in the Guardian, a UK paper, claimed that one of Trump’s speeches at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) was aimed at “MAGA Republicans.”

A November 2022 analysis in the Washington Post asked, “Can MAGA Republicans learn to love democracy again?”

In January of this year, Jennifer Rubin—like Kristol, a Bush II-era neoconservatism who distanced herself from the right after Trump’s election—opined in the Washington Post that Republicans have embraced the ways of “extreme MAGA Republicans” in the months since their mediocre midterm performance.

Pushback Begins

House Republicans targeted by the language of “extremism,” “semi-fascism,” and more have pushed back.

“We are addressed as MAGA extremists, extreme MAGA Republicans, and I would like to make just a clarification point—it’s Ultra MAGA. That’s what we prefer,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) said in Congress several weeks ago.

Just days ago, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) accused Biden of having “functionally gaslit” Trump’s indictment by “saying Extreme MAGA Republicans were dangerous.”

“It’s Biden’s government that we are currently investigating for super-charging the notion of domestic violent extremism,” he said in an interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News.

SpaceX founder and Twitter CEO Elon Musk has also questioned Biden’s rhetoric. In a March 27 Tweet, the president attributed opposition to one policy he supports to “extreme MAGA House Republicans.”

“Is it accurate to refer to those making the proposal as ‘extreme MAGA,’” Musk wrote in response.

He tagged the site’s “Community Notes” account, which often corrects and adds context to Twitter posts.

Carlucci thinks the apparent resonance of Democrats’ “extreme MAGA Republicans” rhetoric should serve as a wake-up call for Republicans.

“The midterms tell us that independent voters are fed up with MAGA ideology and that the Republican Party should reclaim its narrative from its extreme side,” said Carlucci.

Cuff believes the language hints at a broader campaign of repression from the Left.

“Ultimately, the goal is to treat the entire Republican base as domestic extremists, extralegally surveil and censor them, and instill the mass fear of arrest and repression [to which many prominent Republicans, including former President Trump, have already been subjected],” Cuff said.

One thing seems clear: extreme rhetoric, including accusations of extremism, triggers a reaction.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

The Feb. 10 letter from the EPA to Norfolk Southern notes “multiple rail cars and tankers were observed derailed, breached, and/or on fire.”

Coverage of the incident has mainly stressed the presence of vinyl chloride, a chemical used to make PVC pipes and other products. The National Cancer Institute notes that vinyl chloride has been linked to cancers of the brain, lungs, blood, lymphatic system, and, in particular, the liver.

Yet, the EPA’s letter mentions other potentially hazardous chemicals in those derailed tankers.

Specifically, it notes the presence of ethylene glycol monobutyl ether, ethylhexyl acrylate, isobutylene, and butyl acrylate.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s online chemical database notes that the chemical solvent ethylene glycol monobutyl ether “can cause serious or permanent injury.”

“Ingestion or skin contact causes headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness,” the website states regarding the chemical, which is found in many household products.

The same chemical database notes that 2-ethylhexyl acrylate, which is used to make paints and plastics for things like contact lenses, “can cause significant irritation” and may be explosive at high temperatures.

It states that isobutylene, a liquified gas used to make aviation fuel, can incapacitate and, in some circumstances, asphyxiate those exposed to it.

Butyl acrylate, meanwhile, is described in that database as potentially a source of serious or permanent injury and a relatively unstable substance. It is used in making things like paints, sealants, and adhesives.

The Epoch Times has asked the EPA for more detail on the potential environmental and human health risks posed by the chemicals involved in the derailment.

Norfolk Southern Responds

“Norfolk Southern received the EPA’s letter and we have confirmed to them that we have and will continue to perform or finance environmental monitoring and remediation. Our hazmat team was in East Palestine within an hour of the incident, and the response continues today in close coordination with the Ohio and U.S. EPA, NTSB [National Transportation and Safety Board], and other federal, state, and local agencies,” a spokesperson for Norfolk Southern told The Epoch Times in a Feb. 13 email.

The spokesperson directed The Epoch Times to the NTSB for any comments on the causes of the crash.

The latest details from that agency came Feb. 6, through an announcement that it had launched an investigation into the derailment.

“Additional information will be issued when available,” the NTSB told The Epoch Times in a Feb. 13 email.

While some online influencers have said Norfolk Southern paid only $25,000 to the town of East Palestine, the company’s spokesperson said that sum was just an initial donation to the Red Cross to establish a shelter at East Palestine High School.

“In total, more than $1 million has been distributed directly to families to cover costs related to the evacuation,” a Feb. 13 press release from the company states.

EPA’s letter describes Norfolk Southern as potentially liable under the federal government’s Superfund law.

It wouldn’t be the first Norfolk Southern derailment site to end up under that regime.

One derailment in Decatur, Alabama, involved the contaminant hydrofluoric acid, a chemical that can be deadly if inhaled in large quantities.

Local Waterways

The EPA’s letter states that “materials related to the incident” were seen flowing into storm drains.

Chemicals released during the event have also been detected in various local waterways, including the Ohio River, according to the letter.

The Ohio River watershed is home to 25 million people and spans parts of 14 states. The river ultimately empties into the Mississippi River.

West Virginia American Water has not detected any changes to water in portions of the Ohio River that it monitors, as reported by WCHS.

Buttigieg Under Fire

The derailment has provoked strong rhetoric from lawmakers, some of whom have blamed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, formerly a McKinsey consultant and mayor of a college town in Indiana.

“This is another transportation failure under Mayor Pete’s leadership. Where is he?” asked Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) in a Feb. 13 post on Twitter.

Buttigeg did not mention the incident while delivering remarks on Feb. 13 while speaking at the National Association of Counties Legislative Conference.

He did, however, mention the threat from “balloons,” drawing laughter from his audience.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the EPA for additional comment.