The tripling energy bills in New Jersey could be fatal for Democrats
Republicans in the state have claimed it is tied directly to Democratic Governor Phil Murphy's (pictured) move to shut down the state's nuclear and coal plants in 2017. Murphy touted offshore turbines as the way forward, but none of them have yet to be completed due to issues around costs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, electric bills in the state now rank as the 12th highest in the nation, with prices 15 percent higher than the national average. The outlet also reported the state is becoming increasingly depending on out-of-state generation to meet the electricity demand. One resident who spoke with Fox News told the outlet of their horror and confusion over the price gouging.
One woman said: '$200 more, I know my electrical bill. I was shocked. So to say the least, I'm very disappointed. This is killing us, and every time you turn around it's something more. You only get little pleasures in life that you enjoy, and my air conditioner is one of them.'
Jack Ciattarelli (pictured), a Republican, is running to dispose Murphy in the 2026 gubernatorial election. He has used the high energy costs to blast state Democrats, saying their ambitious ideas have impacted the wallets of state residents. Murphy is term limited from running again, with the Democratic nominee congresswoman Mikie Sherill stepping up.
Sherill has sought to deflect the blame on to the region's grid operating company, arguing that they are 'ripping off' citizens. Due to the soaring prices, the BPU announced that $100 in credits would be handed out to curb the rising costs.
The regulator's three members approved the move that will see monthly electricity bills reduce by $50 in September, and $50 in October. Commissioner Zenon Christodoulou said: 'This should be helpful for people, but in no way solves the problem. I hope this helps some people get over the hump. This is a very difficult time.'
Due to opposition from the Trump administration, plans to build offshore wind farms seem all but dead in the water for the state. In his first day in office Trump paused nearly all offshore projects in New Jersey, after he ordered agencies to stop issuing permits and leases for them.
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New Statesman
25 minutes ago
- New Statesman
What JD Vance was really doing in Britain this week
Photo byJD Vance is the most underestimated man in Washington. Memes of him with a cartoonishly fat face populate the internet. A recent South Park episode had Donald Trump shouting at a tiny Vance 'Will you get out of here?!' and kicking him off screen. The news that he was turned away from The Bull pub in Oxfordshire this week following a staff mutiny was gleefully reported by American media. Democrats sneer that he is nothing more than a drooling dauphin, simpering and slavish. Vance is certainly going along with Trump's conceits in order to inherit the throne. But this narrative misses that JD Vance is already the prince of the Western right. His trip to England was the surest proof yet that Vance's constituency isn't just to be found in Washington or Ohio – but across the influencers and intellectuals of a tightly bound and unusually loyal transnational reactionary movement. This summer Vance held court in an English 18th-century manor, a forward operating base in his campaign to Maga-ify the British right. Part of his itinerary was set up by the slick Cambridge theologian James Orr and the podcasting former chancellor George Osborne. The less well-known Orr used to do Jordan Peterson's scheduling during his tours of British university campuses. Orr also serves as a Vance interpreter, having been quoted in the Times that Vance has a 'special concern' for the UK. Vance's criticism of the British government, particularly over its backsliding on free speech, seems grounded in a paternal feeling for America's errant ward. For these precious weeks Vance has come in-person, here to help guide the country onto stronger ground. The line between what counts as an official trip and a family holiday has blurred under Trump's administration. One of Vance's first 'official' trips was to the Vatican – where Vance, a Catholic convert, met Pope Francis – and to India with his family, the birthplace of his wife's parents. Meanwhile, the president invites world leaders to attend to him at his Scottish golf course. Informality takes precedence over diplomatic protocol. But while Trump invited Keir Starmer and Ursula Von der Leyen to Turnberry, Vance can look to the future. His guestlist showed he is interested in a new generation, one which will be ushered in under his tutelage. On 11 August, Vance hosted a small reception, organised by Osborne. Four Conservative MPs were there, all relatively young, and none the party leader: Robert Jenrick, Laura Trott, Chris Philp and Katie Lam, who recently clocked nearly one million views on X with a video illustrating mass migration with a jar overflowing with beads. Kemi Badenoch and Vance insisted diary clashes explain her absence. Under normal circumstances, you'd think someone who wants to be prime minister would make a trip to see the person most likely to be the next president of the United States. On 13 August, the vice-president instead met the person most likely to be the next prime minister. He hosted Nigel Farage for a one-on-one breakfast which Farage described to the Telegraph as 'two old friends meeting with many, many common interests. After all, I've been the longest public supporter of Maga in Britain.' Despite this 'old' friendship, Farage is not a recipient of the ultimate honour: the only one of these political guests Vance follows on his X account is Robert Jenrick. And Vance's online habits have taken to even more unexpected corners of British internet culture. He also follows Thomas Skinner, the former Apprentice candidate and self-made English influencer known for his catchphrase 'bosh'. Skinner was a guest at the manor for a barbecue on the evening of 10 August, alongside Orr and the Tory MP Danny Kruger. This is unusual. Imagine Dick Cheney eating ribs with David Davis, Ann Widdecombe, Robert Kilroy-Silk, and a young Michael Gove at a rented cottage in Salcombe. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Vance once said that Kruger's 2023 book on Britain, Covenant, has 'lessons for all of us who love the civilization built by our ancestors'. In a fragment, here is Vance's conflicted affection for England. The view that the ancestral home has been wrecked by liberal progressivism and mass immigration is a common thread in Maga. Steve Bannon once remarked to me: 'It's so pathetic, England. God, I love England – it's so fucked up'. In a column for the Wall Street Journal to mark Vance's visit, Orr claimed that the 'historical heuristic for our [Britain's] national unwinding is Beirut 1975'. That's a soft, almost cryptic way of saying that Britain is heading for a civil war fought along ethno-religious lines. This sense that Britain needs radical reform is what explains Vance's guestlist. Jenrick not only shares a physiognomy – a stout moon-shaped face, topped with closely cropped dark hair – with Vance (at least before Jenrick's Ozempic glow-up); both men have moved gradually but decidedly from liberal conservatism to the radical right, fuelled by civilisational angst at the extraordinary number of migrants who have arrived in Europe and America in recent decades. Another term for their beliefs is national conservatism. And it's not just a belief system: 'national conservatism' might be seen as a byword for this network of individuals, one which can unite theological grandees, international statesmen – and ambitious politicians. The same network of ideas and influence will be on display in Washington DC in September when the National Conservative Conference will take place. This is the sixth annual gathering, the brainchild of the American-Israeli political thinker Yoram Hazony. Vance, the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump adviser Stephen Miller have all attended in the past. The conferences are organised by Hazony's Edmund Burke Foundation, who have a UK branch, chaired by none other than Orr. Hazony recently told the New York Times that National Conservatism distinguishes itself in two directions: from the libertarians in the Republican Party to their left and the racist and anti-democratic figures to their right. Farage, who is listed as a conference speaker, has long said something similar about creating a wall between himself and people such as Tommy Robinson. Yet there are other speakers far to the right of most on Vance's guestlist: Jeremy Carl, the man trying to revive white identity politics; Jack Posobiec, a Bannon ally who once called for the overthrow of democracy; Jonathan Keeperman, an influential figure on the online right who runs Passage Press, a publishing company that prints forgotten books by reactionary authors (Ernst Jünger, HP Lovecraft) alongside contemporary writers popular with Maga intellectuals (Curtis Yarvin, Steve Sailer). One forthcoming NatCon panel will discuss how to overturn the Supreme Court ruling which legalised gay marriage in America. Does the British right have anything useful to learn from this crew? Apart from one Farage foray into abortion rights, the social issues that rivet America have little grasp in the UK. And while Skinner might like to tweet occasionally about going to church, the Catholicism of Vance and his political allies is dedicated and doctrinaire. As Ross Douthat, the Catholic New York Times columnist who interviewed Vance at the Vatican in May, told me, 'If you're going to be a Christian in the intelligentsia, it feels like Catholicism or nothing.' A paradox of American secularism is that religion is also a font of political philosophy. That is not the case in Westminster. Kruger's evangelical Christianity is unusual in parliament. But outside the Commons, perhaps the most influential evangelical is Paul Marshall, the owner of the Spectator and co-owner of GB News. Marshall met Vance on 12 August. Yet few in England would cite the Archbishop of Canterbury as a political inspiration. Roger Scruton plays the role of in-house philosopher for British conservatives much more than Pope Benedict XVI. But religiosity is not a precondition for national conservatism. English national conservatism will always be couched in English culture. Progressives' adoption of woke politics, exemplified by the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, was the last significant American political import into Britain. Is Vance leading what could be the next? There is no JD Vance analogue in the country. But this son of Scots-Irish America is assembling the English shards of himself, from the religious intellectual pondering integralism, to the Essex hillbilly with the common touch. National conservatism has the inventory to hand a wily politician both a populist playbook and at the same time an elite intellectual hinterland to serve as a guiding philosophy. One suspects Vance dished out some advice to his guests while in the Cotswolds on how to use this very modern synthesis to fuel Britain with the same forces he and Trump are using to reshape America. [See also: The Cotswolds plot against JD Vance] Related
The Guardian
25 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Love in a cold climate: Putin romances Trump in Alaska with talk of rigged elections and a trip to Moscow
That was the moment he knew it was true love. Donald Trump turned to gaze at Vladimir Putin as the Russian president publicly endorsed his view that, had Trump been president instead of Joe Biden, the war in Ukraine would never have happened. 'Today President Trump was saying that if he was president back then, there would be no war, and I'm quite sure that it would indeed be so,' Putin said. 'I can confirm that.' Vladimir, you complete me, Trump might have replied. To hell with all those Democrats, democrats, wokesters, fake news reporters and factcheckers. Here is a man who speaks my authoritarian alternative facts language. The damned doubters had been worried about Friday's big summit at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a cold war-era airbase under a big sky and picturesque mountains on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. They feared that it might resemble Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Adolf Hitler in Munich 1938, or Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin carving up the world for the great powers at the Yalta Conference in 1945. It was worse than that. Trump, 79, purportedly the most powerful man in the world, literally rolled out the red carpet for a Russian dictator indicted for alleged war crimes over the abduction and transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children. Putin's troops have also been accused of indiscriminate murder, rape and torture on an appalling scale. In more than 100 countries, the 72-year-old would have been arrested the moment he set foot on the tarmac. In America, he was treated to a spontaneous burst of applause from the waiting Trump, who gave him a long, lingering handshake and a ride in 'the Beast', the presidential limousine. Putin could be seen cackling on the back seat, looking like the cat who got the cream. As a former KGB man, did he leave behind a bug or two? Three hours later, the men walked on stage for an anticlimactic 12-minute press conference against a blue backdrop printed with the words 'Pursuing peace'. Putin is reportedly 170cm (5.7ft) tall, while Trump is 190cm (6.3ft), yet the Russian seemed be the dominant figure. Curiously, given that the US was hosting, Putin was allowed to speak first, which gave him the opportunity to frame the narrative. More curiously still, the deferential Trump spoke for less time than his counterpart, though he did slip in a compliment: 'I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin – with Vladimir.' The low-energy Trump declined to take any questions from reporters – a rare thing indeed for the attention monster and wizard of 'the weave' – and shed little light on the prospect of a ceasefire in Ukraine. Perhaps he wanted to give his old pals at Fox News the exclusive. Having snubbed the world's media, Trump promptly sat down and spilled the beans – well, a few of them – to host Sean Hannity, a cheerleader who has even spoken at a Trump rally. The president revealed: 'Vladimir Putin said something – one of the most interesting things. He said: 'Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting … No country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.' 'And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said: 'You won that election by so much and that's how we got here.' He said: 'And if you would have won, we wouldn't have had a war. You'd have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead. And he said: 'You lost it because of mail-in voting. It was a rigged election.'' In other words, the leader of one of the world's oldest democracies was taking advice from a man who won last year's Russian election with more than 87% of the vote and changed the constitution so he can stay in power until 2036. In this warped retelling of history, the insurrectionists of January 6 were actually trying to stop a war. Evidently Putin knows that whispering Trump's favourite lies into his ear is the way to his heart. It worked. The Russian leader, visiting the United States for the first time in a decade, got his wish of being welcomed back on the world stage and made to look the equal of the US president. He could also go home reassured that, despite a recent rough patch, and despite Trump's brief bromance with Elon Musk, he loves you yeah, yeah, yeah. 'Next time in Moscow,' he told Trump in English. 'Oh, that's an interesting one,' the US president responded. 'I'll get a little heat on that one, but I could see it possibly happening.' Trump's humiliation was complete. But all was not lost. At least no one was talking about Jeffrey Epstein or the price of vegetables.
Daily Mail
25 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Bill Maher stuns with savage Hunter Biden barb after Melania Trump threatens $1 billion lawsuit for Epstein remarks
Bill Maher took aim at Hunter Biden after Melania Trump revealed she plans to sue him for defamation after he claimed she was introduced to Donald Trump by Jeffrey Epstein. The first lady revealed Wednesday that she will sue Hunter for $1 billion after he refused to apologize and take down a podcast video where he made the false claim. Maher, one of the few liberals who criticized the coverup of the Hunter Biden laptop story, took his shots at the troubled former First Son on his HBO show. 'Melania says she's gonna sue Hunter Biden,' he said, to immediate chuckles from the audience. 'That's not the joke part! I really like this where she says she's gonna sue him for a billion dollars.' He then explained why the first lady was suing Biden before delivering the punchline. 'If Hunter loses, it's going to be weird for him writing a woman a check because she's not a prostitute,' Maher joked to laughs and applause. Maher famously said in 2022 there was a 'conspiracy to get rid of' ex-President Donald Trump that involved suppressing the New York Post's infamous Hunter Biden laptop story. The controversy began in an interview with the Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan podcast, where Hunter Biden cited a Daily Beast report for his claim about the first lady sourced to author Michael Wolff. The first lady's lawyer Alejandro Brito called Hunter Biden's comments 'false, defamatory, and lewd'. 'Given your vast history of trading on the names of others-including your surname-for your personal benefit, it is obvious that you published these false and defamatory statements about Mrs. Trump to draw attention to yourself,' Brito wrote in a letter, first obtained by Fox News Digital. After Mrs. Trump threatened legal action, Hunter shared his public reaction on Callaghan's show. 'F**k that. That's not going to happen,' Biden replied, after Callaghan showed him a copy of the letter. Hunter defended his comments, citing reporting from Wolff's book, and a 2019 story from the New York Times that reported Epstein was 'claiming to people that he was the one who introduced Mr. Trump to his third wife, Melania Trump'. Other media outlets backed down from the false claim, including the Daily Beast, which retracted the story and apologized. Political operative James Carville also deleted a podcast video where he made the claim and apologized. Hunter defied the lawsuit threat and vowed to take the Trumps to court, even as he estimated the lawsuit would probably cost 'millions' of dollars. 'If they want to go through the process, then they know it's going to cost them an enormous amount of money to do it,' he said. 'We gotta figure out how we're going to pay for it.' The president is championing the decision by his wife to sue Biden for his claim. 'I told her, let's go ahead and do it. I let her use my lawyers,' Trump revealed to Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade in an interview on Thursday. 'She was very upset about it.' Trump repeated that the claim was false and easily disproven. 'Jeffrey Epstein had nothing to do with Melania and introducing,' he said, criticizing Hunter and other media outlets that aired the claim. 'But they do that to demean, they make up stories ... I mean, I can tell you exactly how ... it was another person, actually. I did meet through another person. But it wasn't Jeffrey Epstein.' The president pointed to his success in getting media outlets to back down in response to lawsuits, which prompted his endorsement of the lawsuit. 'I said go forward, you know, I've done pretty well on these lawsuits lately,' Trump said.
