How Trump’s Energy Team Unplugged America to Save Us from Progress
by Pimm Fox
Imagine, if you will, a group of circus clowns—giddy, grease-painted, and spectacularly illiterate in physics—handed the keys to the national power grid. One’s honking a horn labeled “Drill, Baby, Drill.” Another’s juggling coal chunks like cabaret bonbons. And there, in the center ring, is our orange-maned ringmaster yanking the plug on the country’s electric lifeline like a toddler unplugging the ventilator to charge his iPhone.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: the Trump Administration’s latest feat of bureaucratic Bedlam—killing the $4.9 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, a massive power transmission project that would have, dare I say, electrified the nation’s feeble infrastructure.
Let’s break it down, like a meth-fueled auctioneer with a copy of Popular Mechanics and a grudge against renewable energy: the Grain Belt Express was designed to ferry five gigawatts—that’s five Hoover Dams worth—of clean, Midwestern wind energy from Kansas to Indiana, lighting up urban areas faster than cocaine lights up an ‘80s stockbroker. We are talking about connecting four regional grids. Think of it as a high-voltage Peace Corps for electrons.
But no! The administration’s Energy Department, apparently now run by men who fear toaster ovens, declared that the project’s “conditions were unlikely to be met.” Translation: we had to cancel it because it was going to work too well and make too much sense.
Now, here’s the side-splitting punchline—they canceled the loan the same day they unveiled plans to dominate the global race in Artificial Intelligence. I beg your pardon? They’re launching a moonshot for AI while simultaneously sawing through the power cable that would’ve kept the rocket from sputtering into the side of a hill.
This is like announcing your intention to become the world’s greatest deep-sea diver, then puncturing your oxygen tank because your cousin Earl doesn’t trust “big air.”
AI needs power. Lots of it. Colossal, climate-altering, data-center-melting megawatts of power. By 2030, AI and data centers will consume electricity like frat boys consume Red Bull—recklessly and by the barrel. We’re talking about more than 8% of total U.S. electricity demand just to keep our servers from smoking like a congressional ethics report.
Oh, but that’s not all! EVs? Yeah, they also need electricity. Kind of the whole point, really. They’re not magical unicorns. You don’t whisper “freedom” into the tailpipe and expect them to gallop to Whole Foods. The electric vehicle revolution is coming, and the transmission grid is about as prepared for it as a butter sculpture at a flamethrower convention.
But what does the Trump administration do in the face of rising demand? Do they build? Do they modernize? No, they channel their inner medieval baron, toss the loan in the moat, and declare that wind is witchcraft.
Why? Because Missouri’s junior senator and professional wet towel, Josh Hawley, complained about eminent domain. Oh yes—eminent domain, the same legal tool that brought us railroads, airports, and the blessed Eisenhower interstate system. Josh, a man so backwards he thinks rotary phones were too edgy, called the project a “boondoggle” and begged Trump to kill it. So Trump did. Like a bored toddler smacking a butterfly with a golf club.
And now, dear reader, the pièce de résistance: the administration is spinning this as a win for taxpayer responsibility. I haven’t heard spin like that since Baghdad Bob assured us U.S. troops weren’t in Iraq—as they rolled past behind him. This project was shovel-ready, regulator-approved, and would have paid for itself in grid stability, lower electricity bills, and fewer apocalyptic brownouts. But sure—let’s treat it like a free-range yoga commune and chase it out of town.
Let’s remember, this is the same administration that wants to put a man back on the moon using bungee cords and moonshine. Their idea of a “smart grid” involves stringing Christmas lights between Mar-a-Lago and a tanning bed.
Even the project’s private developer, Invenergy, tried to rebrand it to curry favor with Trumpian fossilheads—floating the idea of adding gas plants and even coal (!) to the mix, as if to say, “Please sir, may we light our future with a matchstick soaked in crude?” No dice. The administration smelled progress and doused it in Freedom™ cologne.
Meanwhile, America’s transmission infrastructure is aging like milk in a sauna. The Department of Energy has warned we need a 60% expansion in interregional transmission by 2035. That’s not a progressive fever dream—that’s math. And ignoring it won’t slow down climate change, it’ll just make your next blackout feel like a spa weekend in Caracas.
But I suppose we should be used to this. Under Trump, governing is done by stunt—by a troupe of vaudevillians who believe that clean energy is a communist plot and that “infrastructure week” is a codeword for campaign rallies with forklift photo ops.
So here we are. A power-hungry nation with AI ambition and a 1950s grid. We could have plugged into the future. But instead, we tripped over our own extension cord and blamed the wind.
And somewhere, deep in a Kansas field, the turbines are still spinning—quiet, patient, and ready.
If only the same could be said for our leaders.
