Washington Journal features retired Major General Stephen Leper debunking military strikes on Caribbean drug boats as illegal, citing over 80 civilian deaths and violations of international law like Admiral Bradley’s "kill everyone" order. He warns of dangerous policy contradictions—Coast Guard seizures, DOJ impunity, and Trump’s pardon of a trafficker—while supporting a bipartisan war powers resolution to curb unilateral actions. Meanwhile, Axios’ Ben Giemann details AI data centers consuming 50+ megawatts each, straining grids and water supplies, despite tech giants’ $390B investments and efficiency claims, revealing energy demand’s unintended environmental toll. Callers critique Trump’s leadership, coal-to-data-center pollution risks, and systemic failures, linking them to broader concerns about corporate control and media censorship. [Automatically generated summary]
Later in the week, members will consider legislation to change the permitting process for energy and infrastructure projects under the Clean Water Act.
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The flag replacement program got started by a good friend of mine, a Navy vet, who saw the flag at the office that needed to be replaced.
He said, Wouldn't this be great if this is going to be something that we did for anyone?
Comcast has always been a community-driven company.
This is one of those great examples of the way we're getting out there.
Comcast supports C-SPAN as a public service, along with these other television providers, giving you a front-row seat to democracy.
Joining us to discuss the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug boats is retired Major General Stephen Leper, who is a former JAG working group member as well as a U.S. Air Force and former Deputy Judge Advocate General.
We were formed in February of this year when Secretary Hegset fired the Judge Advocates General of the Army, Air Force, and Navy.
And we gathered together, we former and retired judge advocates, because we were concerned about both the messaging that was delivered at that time supporting the firing of the TJAGs, as well as the implications of those messages.
The message, of course, was we don't want lawyers to stand as obstacles to what we want to do in military operations.
We think lawyers actually detract from military operations instead of enhancing them.
The larger implications of that message are essentially that we don't think the law or lawyers matter to military operations, and so we're not going to consider the law as we plan and execute future military operations.
That's a dangerous message, and we as former judge advocates united in the common purpose to push back on that message.
Since the beginning of September, the U.S. military has carried out almost two dozen strikes in the Caribbean on boats the Trump administration alleges have been trafficking drugs.
And Defense Secretary Pete Hegset yesterday was defending those strikes on those drug cartel boats during remarks that he made at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
And right now the world is seeing the strength of American resolve in stemming the flow of lethal drugs to our country.
Here again, we've been focused and here we've been clear.
If you're working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you.
Let there be no doubt about it.
President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests.
Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.
Like President Reagan, President Trump knows how to do so in a way that is tied to a clear purpose with a decisive and credible theory of military victory.
Just as the lessons of Vietnam informed Ronald Reagan and his Weinberger doctrine, so too the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan guide President Trump and his secretary today.
Major General Leppard, President Trump has told Congress that the U.S. is in non-international armed conflict with drug cartels and is treating these members as unlawful combatants.
Well, we, my colleagues and I, are looking at this from a legal perspective.
And as law of war experts, we understand that this operation targeting narco-trafficker boats does not qualify under international law as a non-international armed conflict.
In order to have a non-international armed conflict, you need to have the element of armed on both sides.
And in this particular case, we're not talking about an armed enemy.
We're talking about a group of civilians who are trying to introduce drugs into our border.
Now, there's no question that narco-trafficking is evil.
Narco-trafficking is a crime.
And the United States and other countries around the world have traditionally treated it as a crime.
What we've done is we've basically taken that crime and we've put it into a new category that this administration argues is worthy of having lethal military force being applied against it.
So my thoughts about the Secretary's comments are: first of all, this is not a non-international armed conflict.
And secondly, in order by making it such, what we're basically doing is we're saying that we are justified in taking the lives of civilians without due process.
Under the international law, it's called extrajudicial killing.
And under our law, it's called murder.
So what we're essentially being asked to do, our military, is murder civilians who are trying to bring drugs into our country, something that the Coast Guard is still handling as a law enforcement issue.
And our argument is that we should continue treating it as such.
One of the more notable attacks has involved what's being referred to as a double tap, in which an order was given to kill survivors.
Now, this week, Admiral Frank Bradley, who's a special operations commander overseeing the mission, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he issued the command to kill survivors, but that he was complying with Defense Secretary Pete Hegset's verbal command to kill everyone on board, although the Secretary has denied that reporting about issuing a kill everyone order.
What's been your reaction to this debate back and forth and the way that this played out?
Well, again, because this is not a non-international armed conflict, we argue that the laws of war do not apply to this situation.
But let's put that aside.
You know, that's a lot of lawyers talking about a lot of law.
Let's consider for a moment that the laws of war do apply, okay?
The laws of war provide a minimum standard of treatment of persons involved in a conflict, minimum.
And under these circumstances, where you have survivors of a strike on their vessel who are trying to climb back into their vessel, the vessel, of course, being non-navigable, and simply trying to survive and who are dependent upon rescue in order to survive beyond climbing in the boat.
That is the definition under the law of war of shipwreck.
And our obligation, vis-à-vis shipwrecked sailors or shipwrecked personnel, is not to target them, it's to protect them.
So at the moment that we delivered that first strike and converted these individuals from targets to shipwrecked survivors, our obligation with regard to those people also changed, also shifted from one of attacker to one of rescuer.
The fact that we did not uphold that obligation puts us in a position where we had violated international law and the people up and down the chain of command who gave the order and executed the order essentially committed murder.
I want to play you some remarks from Secretary Hegseth earlier this year, addressing generals, where he talks a bit about sort of these rules around engagement.
We unleash overwhelming and punishing violence on the enemy.
We also don't fight with stupid rules of engagement.
We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill the enemies of our country.
No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement.
Just common sense, maximum lethality, and authority for warfighters.
That's all I ever wanted as a platoon leader.
And it's all my E6 squad leaders ever wanted, back to that E6 rule.
We let our leaders fight their formations, and then we have their back.
It's very simple, yet incredibly powerful.
A few months ago, I was at the White House when President Trump announced his Liberation Day for America's trade policy.
It was a landmark day.
Well, today is another Liberation Day.
The liberation of America's warriors in name, in deed, and in authorities.
You kill people and break things for a living.
You are not politically correct and don't necessarily belong always in polite society.
We are not an army of one.
We are a joint force of millions of selfless Americans.
We are warriors.
We are purpose-built, not for fair weather, blue skies, or calm seas.
We were built to load up in the back of helicopters, five tons, or zodiacs, in the dead of night, in fair weather or foul, to go to dangerous places, to find those who would do our nation harm, and deliver justice on behalf of the American people in close and brutal combat, if necessary.
Well, it struck me when I first heard that speech live that what he was describing could easily be applied to murderers and terrorists.
The way that he was describing the use of force and the lethality that he believes that the military should operate with is certainly a description of what the military needs to be capable of doing.
But the only thing that distinguishes us from murderers and terrorists is the idea that we do it consistent with the law.
We are constrained by the law.
And one of the fundamental principles of international law underpinning the laws of armed conflict is the concept of honor.
We are an honorable profession.
I served for 35 years in the Air Force, and my fellow airmen and the soldiers, sailors, and Marines I worked with during that 35 years all joined the military and served in the military because they believed it was an honorable profession, because they wanted to serve their country, because they wanted to defend us against enemies who would do us harm.
We didn't consider ourselves murderers.
We didn't consider ourselves terrorists because we were trained in the laws of war.
The laws of war guided us.
And so what, if you go back to that speech and you do a word search of the transcript and you look for the word honor anywhere in it, you won't find it.
Secretary Hagseth's definition of warrior ethos does not include honor, does not include respect for law.
That's the concern that united the former and retired JAGs in the purpose to push back on these messages.
You mentioned this, but many, several members of Congress in talking about these strikes that have killed more than 80 people so far in the Caribbean, they're worried that some of these might be considered war crimes.
What is the threshold for a war crime?
And if these attacks are found to be unlawful, who ends up being responsible?
Well, again, assuming that the laws of war apply, which we argue they don't because this is an illegal operation from the very start, the laws of war are basically grounded in the Geneva Conventions, especially when it comes to the status of personnel that the military is ordered to fight.
And the Geneva Conventions, in a non-international armed conflict, it would be the common Article III of all four Geneva Conventions, essentially defines people who should be protected.
Now, you know, going into an armed conflict, the proposition that one state is arrayed against another state assumes that it's the military of both states that are fighting.
That's an international armed conflict.
When you engage in a state versus non-state sponsored armed force, that's the definition of non-international armed conflict.
And a war crime under either scenario would be a violation of the laws of war that apply to each of those conflicts.
In this particular case, with regard to these particular boat strikes, the 2nd of September strike in particular, the targeting of survivors of a shipwreck specifically violates Common Article III, which requires us to protect such persons, not continue to target them.
A war crime is both a violation of the laws of war, but then the act itself could also be a violation of domestic U.S. law.
And in this particular case, even if we assume that the administration is correct, and this is a non-international armed conflict, a war crime may have been committed.
At the same time, that act constituted murder under our domestic laws.
So the people responsible for this would be everyone from the person who gave the order all the way down to the person who pulled the trigger.
There's been a lot made over the past couple of weeks about the duty to disobey unlawful orders.
In my view, the order to kill those survivors was an unlawful order.
The person who gave it is responsible.
The person who executed it is responsible.
And everyone along that chain of command who facilitated it could be held criminally responsible as well.
Before we get to callers, Senate Democrats and Senator Rand Paul have filed a war powers resolution to prevent the United States from engaging in military hostilities with Venezuela in particular without direction from Congress, without approval from Congress.
How would that change the dynamic of what's happening if that were to pass?
Well, what that would do is it would impose the requirements of U.S. law on the decision to go to war in the first place.
In this particular case with the boat strikes, the president made a unilateral decision to start targeting boats, and he has not complied with the war power resolution in the sense that he has allowed that operation to extend beyond 60 days without Congress's approval.
If Congress takes the first step and exercises its authority under Article 1 of the Constitution to essentially make war, then what it would be saying is you can't do this unilaterally, Mr. President.
We're telling you what the constraints are on you going forward with respect to this particular operation.
I don't know what was in the mind of the president when he started ordering these boat strikes.
What I will say is that these boat strikes actually provide a lot of conflict for our troops because at the same time we're conducting these boat strikes, killing the people on board, we're also still conducting law enforcement operations.
The Coast Guard is still out there interdicting, seizing drugs and arresting drug runners.
And at the same time, the Department of Justice has said in a memorandum that it issued several months ago that they're not going to prosecute these people who are manning these drug boats.
And then lastly, the president has pardoned a major narco-trafficker.
So when you put all these data points together, the cognitive dissonance that it creates for our military has got to be tremendous.
A military member who's been asked to pull the trigger does so knowing that basically what he or she is doing doesn't matter to the overall effort to prevent drugs from coming to this country.
Let's hear now from Pat in Keyport, New Jersey on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Pat.
unidentified
Hello.
I'd like you to address an issue I read about this week, which is that these drug running boats, once you're in international waters, you're expected to fly the flag of the country that's your jurisdiction.
And the story I've heard is that these are not carrying the flag of any country, and aren't they essentially pirate ships, which the U.S. military has a history of fighting through our existence as a country, and that it doesn't require a declaration of war.
They're violating the rules of international navigation.
Not flying a flag does not make you a target for lethal force.
It could make you a target for boarding by law enforcement authorities from countries surrounding the body of water that they're on, but it certainly does not make that vessel subject to attack.
So, Rodney, if I can pause you for just a moment, I do want to let the Major General respond to your question, but I also want to read a little bit here from a story in USA Today about that terrorist designation that you referenced.
The foreign terrorist organization known as FTO designation declared on November 24th gives more tools to the War Department to give Trump options to deal with cartels.
War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in an interview on November 21st.
Headed by the illegitimate Nicolas Maduro, Cartel de los Solos has corrupted the institutions of government in Venezuela and is responsible for terrorist violence and drug trafficking, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X.
But experts said that the designation is not a military tool and that the organization it is leveled against, Cartel de los Solas, does not exist as an organized drug cartel.
Venezuela barely contributes to the flow of drugs coming into the United States, accounting for just a fraction of the cocaine.
It is not a source of fentanyl, the drug responsible for most overdose deaths, which is primarily produced in Mexico, according to the State Department.
Rodney, given that information, I just want to give you those details if you wanted to finish up your question and then we can let the Major General respond.
unidentified
Well, I mean, I really don't have a question.
My concern is that, you know, our government is trying to protect the continental United States.
And if you can stop any of the drugs coming in through the borders or through international waters, they're saving Americans.
As far as Congress declaring war, I don't foresee that happening.
Congress don't like declaring war on certain things.
And if you listen to them, they all say, oh, well, these are innocent people and they need to be picked up and brought here.
And let's waste the taxpayers' monies and put them through the court system.
And now we're going to turn around and let's jail them.
And we're going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Drugs are a scourge, and we need to do everything we can to prevent drugs from coming into this country, full stop.
But we have been doing that.
We have been treating it as a crime, which is what it is.
And we have been treating the people who are involved in bringing drugs to our shores as criminals, which is what they are.
The International Terrorist Organization designation, as was mentioned, does not give us the ability or right to designate the people who bring drugs to our shores as combatants.
And under international law, we do not have the authority, we do not have the right to use lethal force against them without due process.
And so I understand your concern about wanting to do all we can to prevent drugs from reaching our shores, but killing them indiscriminately and illegally is not the way to do it.
What you described at the top of your comment is the incredible burden that's been placed on our military.
Our military is now operating with several different lines of effort in an overall attempt to stop drugs from coming to our shores.
Their particular line of effort involves dropping bombs or shooting missiles at boats and killing all the occupants.
It's a tremendous burden to place on them, especially when the other lines of effort have been pretty successful in stopping drugs from coming to the United States.
I think I saw a statistic yesterday that said that last year the Coast Guard seized over 500,000 pounds of cocaine headed for the United States.
That's a lot.
And right now, by far, the greater number of drug boats coming to this country are being interdicted by law enforcement.
So my concern for our military is that we are putting them in a very, very difficult position of having to ask themselves the question whether the orders that they are being given are lawful or not.
And whenever you have a situation like that, it just creates a tremendous burden on them.
And it actually has the impact of weakening the military overall.
President Trump has threatened to recall Democratic Senator Mark Kelly, a Democrat of Arizona, to active duty in the military and then have him court-martialed.
This is related to some statements as well, sort of an ad campaign about encouraging members of the military to not follow illegal orders.
Can the president do that, court-martial Senator Kelly, to bring him back into the military for this purpose?
If you're calling this a war crime, what would you call what the Biden administration did in Afghanistan after 13 Americans were killed there by a terrorist attack?
And they blew up a house and killed 10 civilians and seven children.
And all the people that the Obama administration killed withdrawal and attacks, including one American citizen, where was his due process?
And I can't speak to the specific examples that you've given.
All I can say, again, is that the laws of war establish different classes of people who are involved in an armed conflict.
There are combatants who are lawful targets, and there are non-combatants who are not.
And in the class of non-combatants, you have civilians, wounded and sick, and shipwrecked.
And in the case of the boat strike that we've been talking about on September 2nd, that second strike arguably is a war crime because it targeted protected persons under international law, i.e., shipwrecked sailors.
Dan is in Georgetown, Massachusetts, on our line for independence.
Good morning, Dan.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for having me on.
I just want to, you know, that guy, the last caller, brought up some points there about other adventures we've been in.
But I've just got to say, you know, after Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize, the campaign he had of dropping bombs on innocent civilians, hospitals, schools, he blew up a UN hospital, schools in Afghanistan, wedding party, funerals.
Like he was dropping bombs on innocent families in Afghanistan over and over and over again.
So just common sense here, you know, you can take your law crap and I won't tell you where to stuff it.
But common sense says dropping bombs from unmanned drones with pilots from Texas on civilian families in a sovereign country, that's all okay because Obama walked on water.
We all understand that.
But now we have boats coming from.
You know that they know exactly where they came from, what they have in there, right?
We got pictures, we got satellite images.
We're not arbitrarily shooting fishing boats out of the Caribbean Ocean.
So the hypocrisy here is through the roof.
And I'm telling you the frustration of the American people when you have a president who can do no wrong, that's a mass murdering thug, and then you have a president that's trying to do the best he can and get some peace going, and you label him the mass murdering thug.
Well, as to whether or not anyone can be prosecuted for these or any other acts that are considered war crimes or violations of our domestic U.S. law, the answer is yes.
I mean, they can be prosecuted.
The question, as you pointed out, is how and where.
And, you know, under these circumstances, it's not likely that an international tribunal would be convened either as an ad hoc tribunal or even in the tribunals that are standing.
I doubt that a case could be brought or would be brought.
As far as our own domestic law, however, there are consequences to acts like these.
And it really doesn't matter what administration you're talking about.
The rule of law means that justice is ultimately served, that the laws constrain our military operations.
And when the laws are violated, there should be accountability.
And the group of former and retired JAGs that I'm part of has called for accountability when and where necessary.
So we're, you know, we're hopeful that Congress will indeed investigate these accusations, these events, and show the American people not only the video,
but the Office of Legal Counsel memorandum that seeks to justify the boat strikes as legal in the first place, and all of the other things that have transpired and that we've talked about over the last several days with regard to the 2nd of September boat strikes as well as all others.
Yeah, I just want to find out what's the point with blowing these boats out of the water when they can't even reach the United States.
They can't even get here.
So they've got to go somewhere else to offload those, to redistribute them, to come where they're going.
I figured they're going to Europe.
But anyway, if Trump's so wanting to get rid of all these drug boats and hexes, who's not qualified to be where he's at, how come he's pardoning Honduran president who was convicted of smuggling drugs to this country?
Well, as I mentioned, that is a concern I have for the military because the military understands all of this.
And to the extent that they identify hypocrisy within the policies that they're asked to execute, it makes it very, very difficult for them to do that.
Well, first of all, with regard to the first question, we don't know what advice the president's lawyers have given him because the Office of Legal Counsel, at least in this particular case, we don't, because the Office of Legal Counsel opinion that we understand places these boat strikes on firm legal foundations has not been released.
So the first step here needs to be that we all know what the Office of Legal Counsel said before we can draw any conclusions about whether it's a valid interpretation of the law.
As to your second question, every judge advocate serving in the U.S. military has to be licensed by a state in the United States.
In my particular case, I am licensed in North Carolina and Colorado, and I'm an active attorney in both of those jurisdictions.
My colleagues, when they served in military, were required to be active attorneys in their respective states.
Well, I mentioned at the top of the show that my connection with the U.S. military goes back to my mother having been liberated by the U.S. Army in Europe after World War II.
And so, you know, I joined the military.
I went to the Air Force Academy at age 17 because I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps.
My father served as an Air Force NCO for 28 years, and I wanted to follow in his footsteps because I saw the good that the military did around the world.
I grew up all over the world.
My dad dragged my brother and me from assignment to assignment, many of which were overseas.
And I saw as a young child and as a young adult before I went to the academy, the great respect that our military was held up to by the people we met all around the world.
They viewed the military just as I did, as an honorable institution that does good.
And so I joined the military because I wanted to be one of the good guys.
I wanted to defend this country.
I wanted to learn how to do that.
I wanted to be part of a force that could be deadly when necessary, but I also wanted to be part of a force that was honorable at all times.
And so when I think back on World War II and I think about how the U.S. forces comported themselves during that conflict, we were the good guys.
We were the good guys and we need to continue to be the good guys and following the law ensures that.
And so what I would say to my fellow Americans is the law exists for a purpose.
It ensures that the good guys remain the good guys.
And that's what I hope we all want for our military.
Later on our program, we're going to be taking more of your calls in open forum.
But coming up, we'll hear from Axios Energy Reporter Ben Giemann, who's going to discuss with us the growth of data centers and their impact on the economy, the power grid, and electricity costs.
We'll be right back.
unidentified
Tonight on C-SPAN's Q&A, former NASA flight director Eugene Kranz shares stories from his 34-year career, beginning with the Mercury program through the space shuttle era, including his work on landing men on the moon in 1969.
Dale Armstrong then flew the spacecraft searching for a landing point.
And we were counting down seconds of fuel remaining.
Normally we landed with about two minutes of fuel, 120 seconds.
But my controller has now started counting 60 seconds.
And then pretty soon it was 45 seconds.
Then it was 30 seconds.
And about the time that we said 15 seconds, we recognized the crew had just landed.
unidentified
Eugene Kranz with his book Tough and Competent tonight at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
Boston-based writer Doug Most's new book is called Launching Liberty, subtitled To Build the Ships That Took America to War.
Most, who spent 15 years at the Boston Globe, writes, and I quote, in total, American shipyards produced 2,710 Liberty ships in essentially four years, peaking in the spring and summer of 1943, when almost 800 ships were built in seven months.
A lot of the credit is given to Henry Kaiser, who produced half of all Liberty ships, 1,490.
By 1943, average time per ship was down to 42 days, the fastest month recorded.
Author Doug Most is currently working at Boston University.
unidentified
Author Doug Most with his book, Launching Liberty, The Epic Race to Build the Ships That Took America to War.
On this episode of BookNotes Plus with our host, Brian Lamb.
BookNotes Plus is available wherever you get your podcasts and on the C-SPAN Now app.
Yeah, so data centers have been with us for a long time.
They are these processing facilities and data storage facilities.
And while artificial intelligence is ushering in an age of very different data centers, typically what they're used for are things like emails, payment processing, storing photos, your Netflix, all those sorts of things.
And what's really interesting right now is that as these large language models, as AI sort of grows, this new generation of data centers is just quantitatively and qualitatively really different.
And that's really shaking up the electricity situation, right?
Because these newer types of data centers, in order to kind of train these large language models, help them hoover up and understand just utterly massive amounts of information and data.
And then the next part of that is what's known as inference or actually making queries to sort of get answers from these AI models.
That just requires a step change increase in the amount of power that these facilities need.
Right now, those types of kind of gigantic facilities are a pretty small minority of the total data center, of the total amount of data centers out there, but they're the ones that are really growing fast.
I mean, there was a kind of fascinating statistic that I think illustrates this in a recent report that right now, about 10% of current data centers exceed 50 megawatts of energy demand.
Most of the ones in development are well north of 100 megawatts, and you've got some that are what is known as gigawatt scale.
So that's, you know, 1,000 megawatts and over.
And, you know, that's super abstract, I get that.
So to put that in perspective, you know, a gigawatt of electricity, you know, depending on the size of the home, that's going to be powering about, you know, several hundred thousand homes.
So that really gives you a scale of how big these things are, right?
I mean, think of, you know, it's basically for some of these larger facilities, you're sort of putting a town's or even small city's worth of demand into a town, right?
And so that kind of gets to the massive energy needs of these sort of newer types of very powerful chips and processing units.
I want to go to how Amazon Web Services describes a data center, breaking it down as a physical location that stores computing machines and their related hardware equipment.
It contains the computing infrastructure that IT systems require, such as servers, data storage drives, and network equipment.
And it's the physical facility that stores any company's digital data.
And I think that kind of tells us what it physically is, but these are starting to mean something more when it comes to their role in communities.
And that's because right now, you know, you hear the term the hyperscalers a lot.
You know, these are the big tech companies, you know, the Metas, the Googles, the Amazons of the world, and the data center developers that they're working with.
And these are the facilities, these are the companies that are building these data centers that are very different than sort of the existing fleet.
These are the ones that are much larger and require much more energy, require much more cooling.
So they can use up to hundreds of thousands, if perhaps into the, by some projections, into the millions of gallons of water per day.
And so these are the types of facilities that are driving just huge amounts of new investment that's going into, has been somewhat concentrated in Northern Virginia and some other, you know, there's this thing called Data Center Alley, but it's really spreading across the country.
And we're talking really, really big money here.
You know, there's some speculation that perhaps AI is a bubble and that could bear out.
But for the moment, you know, the bank Barclays, their research arm, put out a report just the other day that said that the capital investments of just Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle together are totaling $390 billion this year.
Not all that's for data centers, but a big chunk of it is.
And that number is just slated to grow and grow and grow.
So the amount of the AI boom is just really creating something of a revolution in this industry.
Yeah, I mean certainly you'll have a workforce that's sort of trained in a given industry that might be clustered in a certain area.
But it is going to be changing because the power demands of these sort of newer types of facilities are so large that eventually they're going to have to be sort of more evenly distributed.
And that actually gets something I find really fascinating, which is that everybody knows the number of these things is definitely growing, right?
I mean, that's certainly clear.
But analysts and all sorts of researchers and the industry itself is having a really hard time figuring out exactly how much new data centers will come online and how much energy will be needed.
And that's because there's no sort of like central repository of this information, right?
And for very legitimate reasons, if you're a developer of any types of properties or business facilities or factories, for example, you might be looking around at different locations where you can get the best deal, where the sort of access to roads, workforce facilities, broadband, fiber optics, et cetera, et cetera, is going to be the best.
And so it's very difficult to know how many of these proposals out there are truly different proposals or perhaps is there some double counting going on.
For example, I had interviewed the head of a large utility called Exelon.
This is a little while ago now, but he said that one of the things that they were really needing to do is have a kind of more defined matrix for how they think about, okay, what is a real proposal that's very likely to go forward versus one that's just sort of simply more speculative, if you will.
So right now, data centers are a very small slice of U.S. electricity consumption.
It's not, you know, certainly not nothing.
By most estimates I've seen, it's perhaps on the order of 2, 3, 4%.
That is slated to grow by a huge amount.
There was an energy, just one benchmark, people, a lot of different numbers flying around, but one benchmark is the Energy Department put out an analysis late last year that predicted that by 2028, data centers will be somewhere in the range of around 6.7 to 12.8-ish percent of U.S. electricity demand.
So not only is that gigantic growth, but that uncertainty range is also absolutely huge.
And that's one of the things that's making sort of the energy analysis and planning around this so tricky because, you know, again, we know the numbers up, but how far up and how quickly remains to be seen.
And this gets into why this really is affecting a lot of communities because in communities all over the country, people are seeing their energy prices go up.
And one of the things people are blaming that on is data centers.
I would say that that is certainly real, but it is also just one piece of the story.
I mean, electricity prices certainly are rising.
I was actually looking at some data this morning and the most recent good data available was for September and gosh, let's see.
I think power prices had risen about 34% on average in the U.S. between September of 2020 and September of 2025.
That said, power prices are a very, very regional thing.
And power prices are growing for a whole bunch of different reasons.
One is that our grid is just really old and aged and it needs a lot of upgrades.
And so when power companies need to make upgrades, some of those costs do get passed along to consumers.
One kind of overarching dynamic here that's partially about data centers, but not just about data centers, is that U.S. electricity demand was pretty flat for about 15 or 20 years.
And now it's growing really quickly for, you know, and there's several reasons why.
Data centers is one, electric vehicles, just the sort of broader digitization of the economy, the increasing electrification of buildings.
We've had more and more manufacturing coming online of computer chips and other things.
So this kind of swirl of reasons why U.S. power demand is rising after being kind of flat or close to flat for a long time, that's contributing to the rise in power prices as well.
You know, there is an element of this.
Weather is getting more extreme in certain ways, right?
You know, we have longer and more intense heat waves.
Sometimes we also have these amazing cold snaps, this thing called, you know, the polar vortex that everyone hears about.
And so when those types of events occur, that can all create this kind of much higher peak in the electricity demand that might be sustained for some number of days, and that can sort of help push up prices as well.
But a lot of it's just we need a lot of investment in the grid.
Bloomberg did a news analysis of wholesale electricity prices.
I'm reading here for tens of thousands of locations across the country to look at the effects of the AI boom on the power market.
The locations and prices were tracked and aggregated monthly by grid status and energy data analytics platform.
Bloomberg analyzed this data in relation to data center locations from DC Byte and found that electricity now costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas located near significant data center activity.
There have been several politicians who have actually run on this issue.
How big of a pushback do you think we're going to be continuing to see in communities around the country about this?
I think this is a growing and simmering story, the extent to which we could start to see a backlash.
I mean, already, just in these most recent special elections we had for the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey, this was a big, big deal.
You know, you had the governor-elect of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, saying, look, she was very sort of prominent on the campaign shell saying these data center developers need to, I think the term she used was pay their fair share.
And that's really something we're starting to see a lot.
Yes, this is absolutely going to be, I think, seeping into the politics of the midterms.
Just the other day, I was noticing that the Democrats, the top Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, were sort of trying to probe and ask questions to the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission about this topic.
It's one of these kinds of things where it's a letter, but it's a letter meant for public consumption, kind of a press release.
But I do think that that is something of an indication that if Democrats were to take back the House, this is something that they will be looking into a lot.
I mean, I think Democrats do see something of a vulnerability for President Trump here because, look, U.S. power prices have been rising for years now, but whichever party is in power is going to sort of face some vulnerability, whether it's on the price of eggs, gasoline, electricity in this case.
And so I do think that this will be a thing going into the midterms.
The Trump administration is pretty attuned to this, right?
I mean, you often hear the Energy Secretary Chris Wright saying a couple things.
One is he is very quick to remind everybody that power prices were rising even before the administration took office.
And because the administration is very, very bullish on AI and wanting to support these companies, he's been making an argument, which I think is pretty interesting, which is that in the longer term, and perhaps in the near to midterm as well, that it's something of a myth to think that these data centers will only be pushing up electricity prices because I don't want to put words in his mouth, but there is a sort of case to be made that says, look, you've got these extraordinarily deep-pocketed companies,
these big tech companies with huge balance sheets that are very anxious to get these facilities online and get more power generation online to supply them.
And so as a result, you've got a sort of big, large wallet, if you will, that is ready and willing to pay for some of the grid upgrades that are necessary and some of the new power generation that is necessary.
So I do think it remains to be seen as this industry grows and matures how much of those costs are borne by the companies and how much of those costs are borne by consumers.
Right now, we're seeing some pretty clear evidence that they're being borne by consumers.
Right, we've got some data here from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association that average prices for electricity increased 11% in the first half of 2025, which is one of the largest increases in more than a decade.
But I want to give our audience a chance to chat with you and ask their questions about energy and AI and data centers in particular for Ben Demon of Axios.
We're going to start with Regina in Denham Springs, Louisiana on our line for independence.
Good morning, Regina.
unidentified
Good morning.
Thank you for taking my call.
One of the concerns that a lot of communities are having is the fact that the data centers will be using mass amounts of water, fresh water to be exact.
How is the company that's pushing these data centers going to meet that need and not short the individuals in the community that need the fresh water?
And another one is, I guess another question I have to have to ask is also about what is the purpose of having so many of these centers and we're not using other forms of energy, say like our competitor China is.
So if you could just answer my question regarding the fresh water and how the data centers and Meta and Amazon and the rest of the companies plan on addressing that issue with the fresh water and not putting the responsibility back on the consumer.
Certainly, I think right now that one very kind of hot area politically, but also from a kind of business innovation standpoint is how to make these facilities more efficient.
Now that's more efficient on the energy side, but also on the water usage side.
So I think, you know, there's any number of startup companies out there, as well as the large companies themselves, trying to figure out what are some different ways of cooling these facilities that don't require just pulling so, so much water from local sources and local aquifers, because this does risk putting some real strains on communities, not only from a price perspective, as we've been discussing, but from a sort of natural resource perspective.
I'm glad the caller brought up different sorts of energy sources because that's one of the things that I think is really fascinating to me, which is to what extent is this data center boom going to be helping to kind of shift the U.S. electricity mix?
One example is that a lot of these large tech companies are investing in next generation nuclear reactors.
Or, well, by investing, they at least have agreements that are perhaps more aspirational to sort of help bring some of these smaller nuclear reactors online, this next generation of reactors.
We'll see how many of those come to fruition.
But that's a bit of a longer term thing, right?
I mean, optimistically, you might see some of these things come online late this decade.
I think perhaps early or even mid-2030s is more likely.
You know, another big change that we're seeing is: well, one, this is also certainly increasing demand for natural gas, but it's hard to get new gas online quickly because there's just a big backlog for these big gas turbines.
But that is going to be one of the sources that fuels these data centers.
And then there's any number of other large nuclear plants as well.
One of the really interesting stories was that at Three Mile Island, not the damage reactor, but the other one, that had been turned off.
But Constellation Energy, thanks to a deal with Microsoft, is going to be bringing that undamaged reactor back online.
And so you're seeing all these deals between these large tech companies and different energy companies.
Now, to some extent, you're seeing this idea of kind of these sort of co-located, or you could even say behind-the-meter situations where you've got an energy source that's directly powering a data center or at least providing a large share of its energy to the data center.
But with something like this Constellation deal and some of the others, it's not so much that it's like, you know, feeding directly into the data center.
The energy from that reactor will go into the regional pool.
But Microsoft, by all accounts, is paying, through this power purchase agreement with Constellation, is paying a sort of a large premium for that electricity.
And so I think, you know, one kind of basically what I'm saying is that when you have companies that want power fast and have a lot of money, they're willing to pay for it.
I think it could also be something that perhaps softens a bit of the blow for renewables, right?
I mean, one of the huge energy policy changes we've seen is that the Trump administration is very hostile to wind and to some extent hostile to solar power as well.
And the larger GOP budget law, of course, phases out some of these incentives much more quickly than they otherwise would have occurred.
But we're going to need it all to power these facilities.
So I think while renewables are going to grow more slowly than we once thought because of these policy changes, I think the fact that you've got these large tech companies paying to have sort of some of these renewables projects brought online is something of a not a saving grace but softens the blow.
Yes, Abraham Silverman, a Johns Hopkins University researcher, was quoted in a CNBC article, kind of echoing what the caller was just saying, that data centers aren't always great neighbors.
They tend to be loud, they can be dirty, and there's a number of communities, particularly in places with really high concentrations of data centers, that just don't want more data centers.
And to the caller's other point about water, I did see this report or a story, it's I think a press release from Microsoft back in December of last year that the next generation data centers consume zero water for cooling.
Now this obviously doesn't do anything about the data centers that are there, but it said beginning August 2024, Microsoft launched a new data center design that optimizes AI workloads and consumes zero water for cooling.
By adopting chip-level cooling solutions, we can deliver precise temperature control without water evaporation.
While water is still used for administrative purposes like restrooms and kitchens, this design will avoid the need for more than 125 million liters of water per year per data center.
So there does seem to be some innovation happening there.
Oh, well, I mean, yeah, just to the extent that I think it's a great point that, you know, on some level, necessity is going to have to be kind of the mother of invention here because these companies are so desirous of getting these facilities built.
I think another area, not on the water side, but on the energy side, that I've been learning a lot more about is there's a great interest both among regulators and among parts of the industry in making these data centers into more sort of flexible assets, right?
You know, we've been talking about the fact that they require just gargantuan amounts of energy, which they absolutely do, but there's some thought that there are technologies that can be brought to bear that can sort of help to modulate that in ways that don't kind of sacrifice the performance of these training and using these AI models, but you can do things like have them on a very sort of granular level, kind of ramping down their energy needs in limited circumstances, but also kind of quickly shifting that computing between data centers in different locations.
So, if you've got, say, a big demand peak in one area because it's super hot or super cold, you can move some of that compute to another region.
In fact, one of the things that's really worth watching right now is that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is thinking of doing a rulemaking that says, hey, we're going to assert, we're going to kind of yank control from the state utility commissions, and we're going to be the ones kind of running the show.
I'm oversimplifying it, but we're going to be the ones running the show on giving permission for these data centers to connect to grids.
And they're going to sort of come closer to the front of the line or be able to do this more quickly if they can be flexible in their power needs.
I think that's a really important point that's getting more attention right now, which is that this is something that this is absolutely what would be, you know, what we would see as sort of an environmental justice issue.
It's the fact that sort of large industrial facilities, oftentimes polluting facilities or noisy facilities or both, often do get located historically in communities that are lower income and quite often in communities of color.
And that is something that, in fact, the NAACP has a conference on this very topic coming up in the near future that I'm going to be attending.
In terms of the health impacts that the caller mentions, I mean, one of the sort of ones to look at is that as more electricity generation is needed, what is going to be the sources of that electricity, right?
Is it going to be kind of cleaner sources or is it going to be sort of more emissions and more polluting sources?
And I say polluting in a couple of different contexts.
One is carbon emitting, so that's sort of a global warming question, although that's not a sort of localized thing.
But also, the more that you have power plants that run on fossil fuels either increase output or stay online longer than they perhaps would have, that can have some real pollution impacts as well.
I mean, one thing that we are seeing is, you know, I highly doubt we're going to see many new, or probably any new coal-fired power plants built in the United States.
But as electricity demand rises, for all the reasons we've been talking about, the data centers being one of them, we are seeing a number of coal-fired power plants that had been scheduled to shut down.
Sort of thinking, you know, the utilities are kind of thinking about increasing the lifespans of those facilities.
So that gets precisely to what the caller mentioned, which is the kind of environmental justice impacts of this.
I mean, you've got companies like Amazon and Google.
They are, as we were talking about before, they are reaching these agreements to hopefully start to bring some of these small modular, what are called small modular reactors online in the coming years.
I think it remains to be seen, right?
You know, there have been none of these things built yet in the U.S. There is one, there are being built in other parts of the world.
I think it's going to be a question of how quickly they can get the cost down.
But yes, if I had to predict, I think that the data center boom is giving a kind of shot in the arm to the kind of next generation nuclear facilities in a way that would not have otherwise occurred.
Looking even further out, I was chatting with the head of a data center company called Switch the other day, and his theory is that because these energy needs are so immense, that he thinks that nuclear fusion will come online much more quickly, perhaps by decades at large scale than it otherwise would have without this data center boom.
Now, everybody's been, you know, fusion has always been over the horizon, and it always sort of, you know, but whether that comes to pass, we don't know, but certainly, you know, already we have these hyperscalers, these data, you know, these big tech companies are talking with the fusion startups.
So, you know, again, remains to be seen how much of that comes online, but it is something that's not just a fantasy, I would put it that way.
Chuck is in Syracuse, New York on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Chuck.
unidentified
Perfect timing for this topic.
I know a caller talked about them targeting poor communities, but I'm from Syracuse, which is supposed to get Micron, which is going to guzzle water and electricity to feed an entire city.
And a local entrepreneur here with not the best reputation, I won't mention his name, wants to open up a data center here.
And I saw last week that a data center in eastern Oregon has been linked to rare cancers, muscle conditions, and miscarriages.
And it seems Syracuse is completely run by Democrats and we're number one in child poverty.
So they look for the poorest places that need the job the most and they exploit the heck out of them, kind of like they did in that movie A Civil Action where the factory came into a town that had no jobs and polluted the water and caused all these cancers.
And this type of exploitation is very dangerous.
And be careful, Ben, because the tech oligarchs are going to send their goons out after you.
I think what the caller is discussing, I can't speak to the kind of the cancer questions and some of those localized toxins questions that the caller raised.
But I do think that the last couple of calls have gotten to the fact that this is just rising very quickly on the political radar.
It has been, I don't want to say out of nowhere, but I think it is something that we're going to be hearing a lot about in the midterm election cycle.
It's such a fascinating question because on the one hand, this is one of the important industries of the future.
And the Trump administration, but much of this is bipartisan, want to make sure that the U.S. is poised to capitalize on an industry that is coming down the pike and just growing and growing and growing.
On the other hand, how do you navigate these health impacts, these energy needs questions?
On some level, it's just kind of going to be the story of the day and one of the political stories of the day as well.
But yes, I do think there is certainly a kind of a backlash booming.
And I think you're actually seeing the tech companies being highly aware of this, right?
I mean, I think perhaps some of the callers and viewers have seen this TV ad where Meta sort of talked about the data centers they're putting into facilities that had been seeing job losses and some of the jobs this can bring.
I mean, look, everything is a trade-off, right?
So, you know, are these data centers bringing new jobs to communities?
Sure.
But are they bringing new strains on local resources and perhaps being one of the forces that are driving up people's costs?
The New York Times has a headline for one of their stories, The New Price of Eggs, The Political Shocks of Data Centers and Electric Bills that the Democrats zeroed in on utilities and affordability to win Republican support in upset elections in Georgia and Virginia.
But will the same playbook work in 2026 to what you were saying about the midterms?
Yeah, so this is such an interesting question, in part because energy prices are not just electricity prices.
Of course, there's the cost to fill up your car.
And right now, these things, this is something that I've been writing about for a while, and some others have been writing about as well, which is that gasoline prices have, again, your mileage may vary, but gasoline prices have generally been dropping and they now have slid under $3 per gallon on a nationwide average basis.
They're much cheaper in some places, a heck of a lot more expensive in others, but that's just an average.
But okay, gasoline prices are going down.
Electricity prices are going up.
What is the political fallout of that?
It's really tough to know.
I mean, you know, on an average basis, again, it really depends on the community, but on an average basis, people do spend considerably more on gasoline than they do on electricity.
And, you know, gasoline, I think, is just a much more visible expense for people.
So, you know, you could say, okay, well, if gasoline prices are going down, but power prices are going up, but it's a lesser share of people's bills or household budget, maybe that's beneficial to the party in power.
On the other hand, power prices are going up pretty quickly.
And it's just, you know, one of the reasons I think we're discussing this today is that just this topic is just so important and in the news right now that maybe people are hearing a lot more about those power bills in addition to just noticing them when they get that envelope or when they get that email.
So that's a long-winded way of saying if gasoline prices are falling and electricity prices are rising, what does that mean for any given political race?
I think that's something that I'm going to be watching really carefully.
Bobby is in Warncliffe, West Virginia on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Bobby.
unidentified
Good morning, guys.
Very interesting topic.
We in Mingo County and Logan County, southern part of West Virginia, have been sold out by our county commissions all the way up to our House of Delegates that passed a law back in early 2024, I think it was.
And they have, the state is, we're destined to have two data centers put in right here in Mingo County.
And they're said to be the largest data center in the United States.
unidentified
And this land that they're putting this on is old, abandoned strip land that the coal companies have got.
And we have a population of 400 residents, which is unincorporated.
And a lot of our folks, especially the young people, have to leave the area for jobs.
And this is not going to create many jobs.
But all the people have been calling in there spot on.
We've had approximately eight meetings down here.
We're trying to introduce some legislation to slow this down because of all the pollution aspects, all the lighting, all the noise.
It's going to have approximately 113 generators, massive generators that power these ships that you see on the ocean.
And they're going to have, like, diesel as backup.
And I've got a friend of mine that worked for the gas company corporation over the years, and he says there's just not enough gas left in these communities.
Just because we're almost out of time, Bobby, I want to make sure that Ben Giemann has a chance to respond because these issues that Bobby's raising are the stories that we've started to hear from multiple parts of the country as they have these concerns about data centers coming in.
Yeah, I mean, you know, this is an industry that I think, you know, AI is a topic that we've all been hearing about at sort of a 30,000-foot level.
And I think what all these calls are revealing is that, you know, where the rubber meets the road, there are some real deep concerns about what the impacts of these things are going to be.
I think, you know, it's not something that there's any kind of equation or formula that you could create, but just I do think it's to sort of figure this out, but I do think it's going to be a question of to what extent are these facilities kind of creating new environmental burdens versus helping to ease them, right?
I mean, certainly we've been hearing about the former, and I think those concerns are very real and those effects are very real and legitimate.
You know, I also hear a lot of excitement about some of the environmental upsides of AI, right?
I mean, you know, it's the idea that as these kind of large language models and as these kind of AI models become more sophisticated, are they going to help sort of with the types of research needed to sort of create cleaner forms of energy?
You know, for example, I've heard about some optimism around the idea that they can sort of help to research much more sophisticated battery chemistries.
Now, that can be something that involves both electric vehicles, but also stationary grid batteries, so you can sort of store renewables overnight and so on.
And, you know, so I guess what I'm sort of trying to say is that I think AI is a very sort of, you know, there's sort of two sides of this coin, right?
Certainly we have some real resource constraints and real resource challenges.
On the other hand, as the power grid, just to stick on that for a second, gets more sophisticated and we have more distributed forms of generation, more newer forms of generation, whether it's batteries, the proliferation of renewables, data grids are going to have to get a lot more complicated and they're going to have to be sort of talking, you know, there's going to be a lot more internal communication needed.
And the International Energy Agency did an interesting report about how AI can kind of help the grid of the future sort of function more efficiently.
So I think, you know, the localized impacts are real, as we've been discussing, but the potential upsides are real as well.
And so it's going to be something I'm very fascinated to watch.
Up next, we're going to continue our program with Open Forum.
We're going to have your phone calls and comments.
You're welcome to start dialing in now.
The numbers are on the screen.
It's your chance to weigh in on any political or public policy topics on your mind this morning.
And as we go into break on this Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, we wanted to show you this video from our friends at American History TV.
It's a newsreel report on December 7th, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, including a U.S. Navy film of the aftermath.
unidentified
Here is the motion picture record released by the United States Navy of the havoc wrought by the Japs' sneak sky and sea raid on Pearl Harbor, America's mid-Pacific naval bastion.
On December 7th, 1941, Japan, like its infamous Axis partners, struck first and declared war afterwards.
Costly to our Navy was the loss of war vessels, airplanes, and equipment, but more costly to Japan was the effectiveness of its foul attack in immediately unifying America in its determination to fight and win the war thrust upon it and to win the peace that will follow.
The Japs copied their German masters in striking hard at airfields.
Hickamfield, northwest of Honolulu, and the Ford Island Naval Plane Base were the first objectives of Japan's treachery.
Scores of planes were bruised and battered by the Japs' aerial bombs.
Many of these were demolished beyond repair.
Direct hits were scored on hangars and these were badly shattered.
Equipment and airplane supplies were reduced to smoldering ruins.
Here at the Naval Air Station is grim and positive evidence of Jap treachery.
Here, foul blows were struck while Jap diplomats were talking peace in Washington.
America lost three destroyers.
Here are seen the United States destroyers Downs and Shaw as they rest on the bottom of Pearl Harbor with decks awash after Jap bombers make direct hits on their decks.
First to feel the sting of Japanese steel are the USS Oklahoma and Utah, the latter a 33-year-old target ship.
Accurate hits by the enemy bombers make short work of these two naval bulwarks.
Now with their keels practically out of water, they lie helpless wrecks and a sad reminder of cowardly strategy.
To make possible a surprise attack within Pearl Harbor, the Japs built two-man submarines to enable them to fire sneak blows within waters that are narrow and tortuous.
Several of these surprise weapons were blown from the water by direct hits of our naval gunners.
Others were beached and captured.
While sky and seafire was still raging, salvage crews inspected our naval craft to estimate what may be saved.
Before the din of bursting bombs had been silenced, preparations were underway to salvage these two warships.
At low tide, the huge propeller of the Oklahoma, stilled by the enemy, was high above water.
It is believed that the small two-man Jap submarines carrying dual torpedo tubes were responsible for these two losses to our Pacific fleet.
Here is the actual bombing of the mighty USS Arizona by Jap planes.
These pictures were made by a fearless cameraman who thought nothing of his personal safety to make possible this record for all posterity.
A single lucky hit was responsible for the disaster that befell the Arizona when a Jap bomb falling directly through one of the battleship's funnels exploded in the engine room and set ablaze tons of fuel oil.
Dense black smoke billowed to the sky as the massive control tower began to keel over.
The Arizona's courageous crew stuck to its guns until the very end.
Here was displayed heroism that will live forever in the glorious annals and traditions of the American Navy.
The once mighty Arizona now rests on Pearl Harbor's Muddy Bottom, a pitiful relic of its former self, a grim monument to the treachery of Japan.
The once mighty Dreadnought's armor plate is twisted and torn, but the great battleship's control tower still stands, a defiant beacon that in days to come will cast its shadow upon Nippon's very shores.
At Pearl Harbor, at Hickam Field, in the bomb-pot streets of Honolulu, ever is written history.
History with a tragic, treacherous pen.
History that 130 million Americans will never forget.
And in days to come, the Japs, too, will remember Pearl Harbor.
Here is a tragic, unforgettable page in the annals of America.
Here, the cunning deceit of the Japs will never be forgotten.
Here, they hoped to score a knockout before the war began.
The Arizona's gun crews, battered and broken, fired to the last, their guns pointed skyward, from whence the enemy appeared.
The Jap sneak blow cost hundreds of military and civilian lives.
The treacherous attack cost our Pacific fleet two battleships outright, another capsized, the loss of three destroyers and a mine layer.
Bombs were still bursting and flames still pouring from our shattered naval craft.
A light United States cruiser valiantly moves out to join the fleet and avenge Pearl Harbor.
We're in open forum, ready to hear your comments about public policy news of the day.
Republicans can call in at 202-748-8001, Democrats at 202-748-8000, and Independents at 202-748-8002.
One of the stories that we've been watching this morning and following for the last several days is the continuing fallout to those boat strikes that happen in the Caribbean that the United States engaged in against alleged drug smugglers.
And yesterday, this is a story from CBS, Hegseth won't commit to releasing the video of the second strike on alleged drug boat.
We are reviewing it right now.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Saturday refused to say whether the Pentagon would release video of the early September operation that targeted survivors of a strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the Caribbean.
We're reviewing the process and we'll see, Hegseth said in a Q ⁇ A session after addressing a defense forum hosted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.
Whatever we were to decide to release, we'd have to be very responsible about reviewing that right now.
11 people were killed in the September 2nd missile attack on an alleged drug boat, the first of several such assaults off Latin America's coastal waters.
The Trump administration has faced heavy criticism after the Washington Post reported last week that the second missile was launched on the boat, killing two survivors of the initial strike.
Here are more of those comments from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defending those strikes on the alleged cartel boats during his remarks yesterday at the Ronald Reagan presidential library.
And right now, the world is seeing the strength of American resolve in stemming the flow of lethal drugs to our country.
Here, again, we've been focused, and here we've been clear.
If you're working for a designated terrorist organization and you bring drugs to this country in a boat, we will find you and we will sink you.
Let there be no doubt about it.
President Trump can and will take decisive military action as he sees fit to defend our nation's interests.
Let no country on earth doubt that for a moment.
Like President Reagan, President Trump knows how to do so in a way that is tied to a clear purpose with a decisive and credible theory of military victory.
Just as the lessons of Vietnam informed Ronald Reagan and his Weinberger doctrine, so too the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan guide President Trump and his secretary today.
Once again, we're in open forum, ready for your comments.
We received this comment via text related to our last segment on data centers.
Renee from McDonald, Ohio says, there are talks here in our village of building a data center here.
The location is a steel mill that just closed down.
My question is, how would you compare apples to apples?
The pros and cons of old steel mills versus data centers based on health and safety for workers and the public.
Now, back to your comments in open forum.
Tay is in Katy, Texas on our line for independence.
Good morning, Tay.
unidentified
Yes, good morning.
How are you?
Fine, thanks.
Yes, ma'am.
So the last guest that you had on was talking about a gas price falling.
Yes, the gas price are falling.
But the reason why the gas price was falling is because if you look at the number of repossessions, power repossessions, and if we talk to dealership, the market is down.
There's not too many people driving right now.
The cost of living is so high that people are cutting back on unnecessary driving and things like that.
The same thing happened in COVID.
When COVID, when nobody was driving, the gas price went down.
In 2024, last year, when President Trump ran, he said he was going to bring the price of energy down on day one.
My electric deal has went up by almost 20 to 25 percent.
Between me and my wife, I'm a chemical engineer.
Between me and my wife, we're bringing in $250,000 a year.
And we know we are not, things are not the same.
We are not saving.
So I'm thinking, if we are having this kind of problem, I don't know how people that work in the grocery stores, people that are just minimum wage, are they surviving this?
This economy is completely based on AI.
If you go to the bank, if you say you want to open an AI shop, data shop based on AI, they will give you a loan.
If you want to open a mechanic workshop, you probably wouldn't get a loan today.
And everybody that knows, if you watch, I watch enough of CNBC and Fox Business News to know that the people, if you listen to the people that know, they know that this AI is a bubble.
And if it fails, if this AI fails, if you think 2007 or 2008 was an economy crisis, the economy crisis coming will look like a joke.
So speaking of that era, you mentioned car repossessions, and this is a story from back in November that car repossessions are expected to hit their highest rate since the 2009 recessions.
More Americans are struggling to keep up with their car payments.
Auto loan delinquencies have risen above pre-pandemic levels after hitting record lows during COVID, and more borrowers are now facing defaults and repossessions.
A recent report from the Recovery Network Database, RDN, says more than 2.5 million cars were repossessed in the last year, and this year it's on track to hit 3 million, the most since 2009.
Kel is in Jessup, Georgia, on our line for Republicans.
One of the comments that an individual made pertaining to the Affordable Care Act during the first open forum demanded that there should not be an extension of the Affordable Care Act.
And furthermore, he expressed concerns of a type of racial grudge against ethnic diversity receiving medical care.
I think the plan should be extended.
And secondly, I was looking at the video of Hiroshima.
I don't think that the Japanese attack or the American attack on Japan should continue to be raised as a type of American democracy.
I do understand that there was global tension.
I do understand the hostility has been annulled and circumvented.
However, to keep such a disturbing destruction in place, like historically and on a repetitious tangent, it takes away from the American identity.
Next up is Al in Newcastle, Delaware, on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, Al.
unidentified
Good morning.
Hi, Kimberly.
I'd like to call this morning about the AI, and I appreciate the great information that Ben gave out there.
I live here in Newcastle County, Delaware, and we are faced with a huge 6 million square foot data center coming to the area a few miles away from here, and it's going to use 1.2 gigawatts of electricity.
They haven't figured out the water part of it.
They definitely haven't figured out the electrical supply yet.
There is like just closed lip, no disclosure on anything from Starwood Investments, Starwood Digital Investments.
This project is called Project Washington.
And it's huge.
It's supposed to use more electricity than all the residential units in Delaware totaled.
And right now there's a big fight in Newcastle County Council about it.
We have a couple people who have actually gone down to Loudoun County, Virginia, and spoken to the people down there and have tried to craft ordinances.
Ordinance 25-101 has been getting batted back and forth.
There's a couple other people, in particular, Janet Kilpatrick.
And she's been just a block.
She's taken off all restrictions on the data center.
She's blocked everything.
And another one, Tim Sheldon, he gave a finger to another county Representative during a meeting that just fell apart because it's just crazy.
But there's no information coming from Starwood, and they're starting to put out a lot of Facebook ads and things like that, stressing like 700 jobs.
Their job numbers have grown and growing and growing.
But if you look at even like what you had on the program earlier, aerial photographs of some large data centers.
Look at the parking lot.
There was one pickup truck in the parking lot.
And so that's not 700 jobs like they're promising.
And even if everybody showed up for work, there's only 15 parking spots.
So they knew what to expect there.
And there's not enough capacity here in Delaware.
The grid, we're on the PJM grid.
Pennsylvania is thinking about pulling out.
Delaware only generates about 20% of their own electricity.
And I don't know.
I don't know where it's going to come from.
And if they say, oh, we'll just compete on the market with you guys.
You know, we won't be bidding against you or nothing.
Heck, they won't.
But it's a mess.
So it's county, county meetings are going to keep trying to go back and forth and fight in this fight, but it is a mess.
Dwight is in Uniondale, New York, on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Dwight.
unidentified
Good morning, ma'am.
My question is, there was a gentleman, I don't recall his name, that worked with the Trump administration and now he's in Congress, was talking about a transcript from a phone call.
I would like to know what happened with that and if anything's going on with that.
That's it.
Thank you.
Transfer of a phone call, Dwight?
Yes, ma'am.
It was a phone call between President Trump and the leader of Saudi Arabia concerning Kadoshi, the journalist that was killed.
And he said we should get to the transcript of it, but I haven't heard anything about it since he spoke about it.
I'll have, I see very quickly, the first thing I could find quickly is a story in the New York Times about this, which said that Trump and Prince had a disturbing call after Khashoggi's murder, according to a lawmaker.
Representative Eugene Vinman of Virginia said he reviewed a classified transcript of the 2019 conversation that would shock Americans.
This is a story from November the 21st.
It said at a news conference on Capitol Hill with Mr. Khashoggi's widow, Mr. Vinman said that the transcript, which he reviewed as part of his duties serving on the National Security Council during Mr. Trump's first term, would shock people if they knew what was said.
He said it was one of two disturbing phone call transcripts he had read during his time in the first Trump administration, the other being the 2019 call with Ukraine's president that became the basis of a whistleblower complaint involving his twin brother.
But I haven't seen any updates since that story on November the 21st, Dwight.
unidentified
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
I would like to see more updates on it on what's going on because I believe that's more important than what is going on because that was a U.S. citizen.
Next up is Scott in Los Angeles, California on our line for independence.
Good morning, Scott.
unidentified
Good morning to everybody out there, all my brothers and sisters.
Hope it's going to be a great day for you.
A couple of quick thank yous to C-SPAN for just great programming lately, stuff you won't see anywhere else.
Thank you to the kind lady who answers the phone.
She's just obviously full of kindness.
And you, Kim, are just doing a sensational job, just a great, great job.
The reason I'm calling today is I have a little bit of commentary about Donald Trump and what I hear from him.
I'm watching a cabinet meeting the other day, and let me just quickly say before I forget, you reporters that are in there, please do not relent on asking Epstein questions because his response is always worth the price of admission and the shifting stories and the differing explanations.
Now, the last lady I saw asked this question was met with, he didn't mind the question.
He didn't like the tone.
Now, do you guys have a laugh track at C-SPAN?
Because I've watched this and seen it a few different times now.
There was no tone.
It was a matter-of-fact question, and he loses his mind.
And the reason he does lose his mind is, as we all understand, he's very prevalent in those files, okay?
But again, my main comment is, you know, I wish I could sing, Kim, because I'd bust out a few notes of, who do you, Mr. Big Shot?
Who do you think you are?
I'm watching a cabinet meeting, and he's calling names.
He's calling a lady a piggy.
I don't know who he's talking to, but does he understand that there are people in this world who have had tremendous accidents?
They've had glands damaged.
They may not necessarily be large if they are even large due to eating.
I haven't seen the lady.
I'm willing to bet cash she's bigger than she is.
And then he's got something to say about the idea, Scott.
I'll look into that while we are hearing from some other callers.
Let's hear from Paul in South Carolina on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Paul.
unidentified
Good morning.
I'm Paul Prince.
I was O Re County Councilman for County Council for 30 years, the vice chairman for three different terms.
And I'm a volunteer firefighter first responder for this makes me 61 years, and I'm still very active in doing this.
I'm 82-year-old.
The concern I was thinking a while ago about the boat that got blown up, and there was two trying to be survivors.
It's too late to do anything about them because they're already gone.
But it looks like if they could have took those two people and brought them in, maybe they could have found out where they were carrying this dope that was on the boat.
And maybe they could have got involved in these people that's receiving it here in America.
Another thing is, why couldn't they, in the future, follow a boat if they know it's full of drugs and dope?
And when it comes to shore, capture them and whoever's receiving it here in America so that we can maybe, you know, for somebody to deliver something, there's got to be a receiver and there's profit on both sides.
So maybe capture.
There's a lot of people in America, you know, receiving it and they're distributing it.
So they're guilty of helping to kill our people in America.
So some way they ought to figure out a way to catch them both and maybe that would curtail some of this drugs coming into America.
A previous caller asked about President Trump's diagnosis of chronic venous insufficiency.
This is a story here from PBS News from back in July.
Following recent reports that President Donald Trump's ankles appeared swollen, the White House has confirmed that Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency.
In the President's annual physical exam released in April, Navy Captain Sean Barbarella said that Trump's blood flow to his extremities is unimpaired.
I'm going to scroll down here a little bit.
What is chronic venous insufficiency, which is what the caller asked about.
Chronic venous insufficiency develops when key valves and leg veins are no longer able to help the blood flow back up to the heart.
Blood then collects in the legs and places pressure on the veins, which can lead to an increase in pressure and discomfort if left untreated.
Edward is in Burbank, California on our line for independence.
Yeah, I'd like to say a couple of things on this independent forum.
I'm an independent.
I've never joined either party.
There's an expression that says that history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
Number one, I feel we live in a two-party dictatorship that dominates and controls the electoral process.
I've voted for Republicans in the past.
I voted for Democrats.
I voted for independents, and I've not voted at all.
Another thing, our illustrious, that's facetious, illustrious Secretary of Defense said he didn't like seeing fat people in the Pentagon.
Well, why does he like to see a fat person in the Oval Office?
And number three, I'm surprised historians aren't mentioning this, but Neville Chamberlain in the 30s met with Hitler to appease him so that he could take over the Sustain land, which is the German population within Czechoslovakia, and claiming that that would be peace in our time.
He agreed to that.
Subsequently, Hitler took over all of Czechoslovakia.
And this is Trump's playbook with Putin and Ukraine.
He's one who makes deals to satisfy Putin as Trump the appeaser rather than standing up like Winston Churchill did to Hitler.
So that's my comment on the fat guy in the Oval Office.
William is in Englewood, New Jersey on our line for Democrats.
Good morning, William.
unidentified
Hello, Kim Lee.
I'm going to need some help.
Mike Johnson had introduced, he wanted to introduce legislation so that the Congress couldn't profit or benefit from any of the rules that they made against different corporations, which makes sense in a free market society.
Chip Roy from Texas was the first one to jump on him.
If you could find that while I make my comment to kind of verify what I'm saying, now, here's what I got to say for America.
America, we got to stop this Republican, Democrat, whatever.
It's our fault that we have this problem that we have.
We've let our Congress and Senate and everyone else to be bored.
Now, you think about this.
I don't know what town you live in, but I don't know of a town that couldn't use a couple of million dollars.
And instead, we've put all this money into campaigns.
Some of these jobs don't pay but two or three hundred thousand dollars, yet they spend ten, twenty million dollars.
It's not that they spend it, people give it to them.
We have these tax, the money that we waste on elections where people used to go out and stop, sit, you know, walk on the stoop, go around, you know, trying to convince people.
We don't do that anymore.
We as a group, both Democrat, we're going to Democrat.
No, it's not Democrat or Republican or anybody.
It's all of us.
Just one more thing.
Our Congress is supposed to protect us by making sure we don't have these major mergers so that there's competition.
Competition is what keeps prices down.
But when you let a company buy another company, this is what Congress is supposed to do.
They're supposed to look and say, no, that's not supposed to happen.
I do want to quickly respond to what you were just asking about with Chip Roy and Speaker Mike Johnson.
Here's a story from The Hill.
This is from December the 1st.
Republican dissenters spark discharge petition clash with Johnson.
Speaker Mike Johnson is staring down a potential political firestorm in the coming weeks as a few Republican dissenters aimed to use a rare procedural mechanism to force legislation on a stock trading ban and Russian sanctions onto the House floor.
I'm going to scroll down a bit in this story.
The fight over stock trading has long gripped Capitol Hill with lawmakers repeatedly pushing bans that rarely advance.
But any attempt by Johnson to block a discharge petition on the latest effort could trigger significant backlash.
The bill, introduced by Representatives Chip Roy of Texas and Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island, has 101 co-sponsors as of late November, including 21 Republicans.
Some of the most hardlined conservatives in the House, including Reps Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, have backed it.
Johnson in May expressed support for banning members of Congress from trading individual stocks, noting he doesn't want any impropriety.
However, he added that he has some sympathy for the counterargument members have made that lawmakers' salaries have been frozen since 2009 while inflation has risen.
Now let's go to Ivan in Texas on our line for Republicans.
Good morning, Ivan.
unidentified
Hello.
Yeah, this is Ivan in Dallas, Texas.
May I not tell you about the cartels bringing drugs into this country, poison.
We lost a lot of people in the lower Vietnam, a lot of people, but America has lost a lot of Americans because of the poison they're bringing into this country.
And it's so sad.
So many people, real Americans, have been touched with this poison.
And it's sad.
You know, you're losing somebody in your family.
And I love America.
And we should all stick together and be real Americans because we can help each other.
Because this is the only good country we have.
And children, Mike and thank God we got to tell the stop this.
And I don't feel sorry for the guy that's hanging on the side of the boat because he knew what he was doing.
They care about their lives, but they don't care about our lives in America.
And killing us with their poison.
They know it's poison coming here.
They just like the money.
Well, he's hanging on for his life.
What about the drugs when they hit America?
We let our children and everybody in America be a real American and hang in there.
Yeah, there's not much time, but I think one of the most important articles people can look up is the GLADIO crimes of the U.S. Empire, GLADIO, G-L-A-D-I-O crimes of the U.S. Empire by GlobalResearch.ca.
And it has an incredible number of links to articles by former insiders in the CIA, the Pentagon, Murder and Corporate, essentially, and the right-wing presidencies.
unidentified
And they will never be mentioned on C-SPAN, ABC, networks, or broadcasts.
But you must read Gladio Crimes of the U.S. Empire by GlobalResearch.ca, because, among other things, it documents the extensive history of CIA and Western involvement in global narcotics trafficking, including importation of drugs into the United States and the use of false flag terrorism.
Operation Northwoods was an evil plan by the Pentagon to mass murder Americans and use it as a pretext to frame up Cuba for it and massively invade Cuba.
These sorts of truths have been completely censored by the United States corporate media, the CIA, and the Pentagon that controls it.
And until we begin to realize that both the Democrats and the Republicans are controlled by that same mafia, Democratic-leaning media or Republican-leaning media on foreign policy, they are all committed.
That is all of the time that we have today for Washington Journal.
unidentified
C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington, D.C. and across the country.
Coming up Monday morning, NBC News Senior Congressional Reporter Scott Wong on the week ahead for Congress.
And then SCODIS Blog executive editor Zachary Shemtom previews Monday's Supreme Court case, Trump v. Slaughter, which will examine the legality of President Trump's firing of a Federal Trade Commission member.
Also, Julia Manchester, White House reporter for The Hill, on the week ahead at the White House.
And we'll talk about a new poll that examines Americans' declining attitudes on the value of a four-year college degree and educational alternatives to it with Career Education Colleges and Universities president and CEO Jason Altmeyer.
C-SPAN's Washington Journal.
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