Weekly Roundup

Very Exciting Regional Energy Oversight Board Elections

I spent the better part of a day learning about the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area energy utilities. I don't live in Arizona. Also, RFK Jr is a jagweed, but we knew that.

Endeavorance

21 May 2026 — 9 min read

A Labor Win

A coalition of five worker unions associated with the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) just landed a major victory after a three day strike brought the highest volume commuter rail in the United States to a screeching halt.

The coalition included about half of the workers on the railway, totaling about 3,500 folks. They walked off the job after years of failed negotiations for reasonable compensation and a reversal of policies which would have undermined the total compensation of hundreds of union workers.

According to the New York state comptroller's office, the strike's economic impact was around $60 million a day as it impacted more than a quarter of a million daily riders.

The MTA—New York's transport authority—failed to give workers a raise for years despite the skyrocketing cost of living we've all been dealing with. With the recent concessions won from the union workers, they will now receive a meaningful raise in addition to back pay dating back to mid-2023. Notably, some workers hadn't seen a raise since back in 2022.

This situation didn't come out of nowhere. It's been simmering along in the background for a few years. Several unions had upcoming contract renewals after years of stagnating pay and cost-cutting measures despite an independent board finding that the MTA was operating with a more than $700 million budget surplus in 2025. The total cost of the contracts that the workers sought was less than 20% of that surplus.

As I've been researching this, I can't help but note how many publications are framing this strike as some kind of abuse of power by the workers; an outsized and unacceptable impact on our lives.

This did not need to happen, sure. The MTA could have, at any point, cared enough to prioritize the livelihoods of the people who provide the service. Instead, they stonewalled through multiple independent federal mediation boards and waited until the workers had no choice but to reach for collective action.

The MTA and the NY state government made a lot of noise about how collective action from these workers would put an unfair strain on riders because it would increase their fares. I want to quote the report from the Presidential Emergency Board who was assigned to try and help cut through the negotiations a bit:

Only about 1/3 of the MTA operating budget comes from the farebox. The rest is derived from a complex variety of funding sources, although none from the federal government. [...] As of January 26, 2026, the MTA Finance Committee Performance Report showed a calendar year 2025 operating budget surplus of $765 million. Overall, it appears that the fiscal capacity of the LIRR and of the MTA has increased in recent years and in particular since the PEB 253 Report.

The "PEB 253" report mentioned in the quote is hilariously referring to the previous Presidential Emergency Board assigned to the exact same thing, just a year or so prior. Mind you, that "Presidential" is referring to the POTUS. These were Trump's own people and even they were like, "bro this is wild, just pay them."

So yeah. Collective action works, and it works fast. Three days of train disruption to get thousands of workers paid years worth of what amount to stolen wages. Money that could—and should—help US workers pay for food, housing, and healthcare—instead held back under threat of pitting the public against the workers.

One interesting thing here is that these workers are technically public sector and therefore are legally "unable" to strike per state law, but the federal Railway Labor Act exempts these specific workers from that rule.

Trump's New Bank Account

Three decades ago in 2019, a Booz Allen Hamilton government contractor whose last name is "Littlejohn" leaked some of Donald Trump's tax returns to news organizations. I guess after finally being content with his galvanized steel frames, Littlejohn wanted to do something big. In 2020, the New York Times published the leaked documents, upsetting the man who my lawyers inform me I must refer to as "The Big Dawg."

I have fired my lawyers.

In retaliation, Donald Trump—while president of the United States—sued the United States government for $10 Billion in damages. Before a judge could make a determination on the case, Trump dismissed the case and instead took a settlement from the DOJ who announced what amounts to a nearly $1.8 Billion slush fund to give payouts to people who the Trump administration has deemed were victims of "weaponization" of the justice department under the Biden administration.

Oh also: "Acting Attorney General" Todd Blanche signed an addendum the day after the settlement which bans the US government from further investigating Trump, his immediate relations, or businesses based on prior findings and existing audits.

It is indeed as absurd as it sounds. Here are the specifics.

First up, this is making the rounds in a lot of social media as a "January 6th slush fund" to pay out a bunch of money to January 6th rioters who were pardoned by Trump. That is possible—as in, those people can apply for payment and may receive some. But this didn't spiral out of January 6. It came from Trump trying to sue the US government for billions of dollars.

So what is it actually? It's a pool of cash totaling $1.776 Billion (1776, because of course they did that) from which people can apply for a payout overseen by a small group of direct Trump appointees decide who gets what money:

The Fund will consist of five members appointed by the Attorney General. One Member will be chosen in consultation with congressional leadership. The President can remove any member, but a replacement must be chosen the same way as the replaced member was selected.

Practically speaking, it is indeed a slush fund for Trump allies to pillage taxpayer dollars while the MAGA base gets some red meat in the form of the news talking about Trump giving money to the January 6ers. Pretty big win for the White House all around, honestly.

While you may be wondering if this is legal, I would respond with my own question of, "was there ever a reality where that would have stopped them?" Criticism is pouring in over this from all angles, even from Republican leaders. Though, for them, it's more of a "well, I dunno about that one," than a, "hey maybe we shouldn't let the president pillage tax dollars without congressional approval since congress controls the purse."

The White House asserts that they're allowed to do this because it's coming from the Treasury Judgment Fund which is used to pay settlements. They also claim there is precedent in the form of an Obama-era program of a similar shape. What the DOJ omits from their precedence claim is that the Obama program spun out of years of court cases and had strict public reporting and oversight requirements.

By contrast, the oversight requirements for this fund are a quarterly memo sent to the Attorney General with a list of who got what money. Otherwise, they say the fund, "must take steps to protect private information and avoid fraud" and will stop taking claims at the end of Trump's term.

Anyway, when they're out of the White House, we should just take up their approach of ignoring every complaint they have about literally everything and instead just do whatever while also putting every single member of this fuck-ass administration in jail. Or something.

Phoenix Energy

The Phoenix rises to provide renewable energy. Hopefully.

The Salt River Project is one of the largest public power utilities in the United States, delivering that good good zap juice to more than two million customers in the Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan area. Instead of the state regulator overseeing an energy corporation, it has an elected board.

Said board just had an election, and now a bunch of raging, lunatic leftists are going to turn our electricity trans. Wait, one sec, something got messed up in my research document. Uh...

Oh, nevermind; what I meant to say was a bunch of clean energy aligned candidates won over a slate of candidates literally backed by Turning Point USA. The board is now 8 clean energy advocates against 6 largely conservative members, marking the first time in the history of the energy provider that a majority of its board is open to green energy initiatives.

In fucking ARIZONA. WHERE THE SUN LIVES.

Now you might be wondering: what in the Kentucky Fried Fuck is Turning Point USA doing funding candidates for the board of an energy utility in the Phoenix metro area? Good question. Idfk. The COO of Turning Point Action (a branch of the org) is quoted in saying that they wanted to turn out the vote in a tough "pretty blue" area as a layup for midterms in November, but despite millions of dollars and on-the-ground door knocking campaigns, TPUSA's chosen candidates lost. Since then, there's been some real criticism of TPUSA from Republican organizers hopeful for it to carry some kind of water come November.

Unfortunately, the President and Vice President of the board are both the Turning Point candidates. The reason why is mind boggling: those seats votes are weighted by the number of acres owned by the landowner who is voting. If you aren't a landowner, you don't get a vote. If you are a landowner with thousands of acres, you get significantly more votes. That said, the President position only breaks ties, so a majority coalition on the board is still significant.

Those Measles Tho

Right after the apocalypse came the year 2000: a timeless era whose history is dotted with the likes of... some stuff that is reminiscent of the early 2000's. I dunno. Those thin wrap-around sunglasses? Maybe?

Anyway, another thing that happened in 2000 is that we eliminated Measles in the US. Well done, us.

Except now RFK Jr is the Secretary of Health in this presumed nation and 2026 has us on track to see the largest spike in Measles cases since the early 90s, outpacing last year and threatening to change the status of Measles from "eliminated" to "as present and destructive as RFK Jr."

The CDC's Measles outbreak dashboard has us at 1,893 confirmed cases so far this year. That is an undercount, as the data is only being reported by 40 states (well, 39 and DC).

While there are outbreaks and the trend is absolutely bad, I want to be clear that this isn't me saying that Measles are about to take us all out tomorrow. The absolute numbers are still fairly low. The trend is the problem. And the States aren't alone. Canada has already lost their "elimination" status, as has most of the Americas at large.

RFK Jr is a dangerous grifter who has spent his time and influence on this planet trying to convince people that life-saving medical research is somehow actually dangerous. We now have more children than we've had in a generation getting infected with a disease we once considered eliminated.

To this day, I will never understand how anyone bought the notion that RFK Jr was somehow not anti-vaxx.

Thankfully, he's a dumbass who is wrong. Unfortunately, his wrong (and dumb) ass are in a position of power, while I—and the scientists who actually do the work of keeping us all alive—only really have the option of screaming into the void. So, given that, allow me to scream this into the void:

To date, in 2026, of the 1893 confirmed Measles cases, 92% were unvaccinated or unknown while 8% were vaccinated.

Now: an RFK-grade dumbass would look at that and immediately make claims about how the 8% that were vaccinated are proof that it doesn't work. Thankfully, the CDC has a helpful chart that shows measles cases over time to illustrate what reaching herd immunity status (95% vaccination rate) does. Around 2020 is when the rate of vaccination for kindergarteners first dropped below that 95%. 2025 is when Trump took office.

War Motions

I want to check in on this real quick and just say that it's still... kinda... just going on. The main thing I'm looking at right now is that the Trump admin has been continuing their trend of growing ever louder about the idea of "doing something" with Cuba. Hell, while I was writing this, I had to go back and add this sentence to say that the US announced a criminal indictment of former Cuban President Raul Castro.

The indictment is for Cuba's downing of two US-civilian-operated aircraft who entered Cuban airspace in 1996 as a part of an ongoing Cuban-exile-funded campaign to drop propaganda pamphlets urging for Cuban citizens to rise up against their government.

Cuba has maintained that any incursion on their territory will be met with "impregnable" resistance.

But honestly, one of the biggest reasons I think the current admin is hesitant to launch an operation in Cuba is because it would create even more Cuban refugees who would flood into Florida: a major center for MAGA supporters who specifically voted for the guy who ran on a platform of "no new wars" as well as "deport all the brown people." (There's some really interesting analysis of all of that in this discussion)