Tag: corporations

Chevron Lands 20-Year Deal To Power Microsoft’s AI Expansion

Microsoft has signed a 20-year agreement with Chevron to power a massive new AI-focused data center campus in West Texas, underscoring the growing race among tech companies to secure reliable energy supplies, according to Bloomberg.

The project, known as Project Kilby, is expected to begin generating power in 2028 and eventually reach 2.67 gigawatts—enough electricity for more than 530,000 Texas homes.

Chevron is developing the project with Engine No. 1 and expects to make a final investment decision later this year. Despite the enormity of the deal and the inroads into powering AI directly, Chevron stock was little changed after the cash open.

Bloomberg writes that the site near Pecos, Texas, will use natural gas from the Permian Basin to fuel GE Vernova turbines and generate electricity directly for Microsoft’s planned data center campus. Because the facility will produce its own power, it will not draw from the grid.

“Consumers are concerned about and are already feeling the effect of power-demand growth,” said Jeff Gustavson, Chevron’s president of New Energies. “We specifically designed this, in this part of the country, to avoid any of that.”

The agreement comes as Microsoft accelerates its AI infrastructure buildout to compete with Alphabet and Amazon. The company has said it plans to double its data center footprint over the next two years, driving demand for large-scale, dependable power sources.

Chevron argues the project also creates a productive use for abundant Permian natural gas that is often wasted because pipeline capacity is limited. “This is the most abundant gas basin in the country, maybe the world,” Gustavson said.

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No New Laws Required… Private Biometrics Are Building The Digital ID Prison

That “black pill moment” is arriving faster than many realize. Not primarily through sweeping new government mandates, but through private companies quietly normalizing biometric data collection under the banners of “security,” “fraud prevention,” and “child protection.” They are erecting the infrastructure for a world where you cannot easily participate in daily life, commerce, or even basic online access without surrendering your face, your license scan, or other biometrics. Once the systems exist and the data flows, laws can simply ratify what private actors have already made routine.

In a recent commentary “Digital ID Black Pill Moment”, I highlighted a sobering reality: 186 out of 198 countries already have digital ID systems in place. Only a shrinking handful of nations lack foundational national digital IDs. As I wrote, “the global push for digital IDs is far advanced, likely past the point of no return, aligning with the UN’s 2030 goal of universal legal identity and enabling a globalist digital currency system that could control access to everything.”

Facebook/Meta: Selfie or Stay Locked Out

Government mandates are not required to finish building the digital surveillance prison. Citizens are willingly submitting their biometrics to access social media sites. For example, I am no longer on Facebook. They banned me during the Covid era after I began sharing information about the true contents of the shots and alternative treatments. A friend just sent me a Facebook post and I could not view it without taking a selfie and sending it to FB. No way was I going to comply.

Try viewing certain Facebook posts or recovering a flagged account, and you may hit this wall. Users are increasingly prompted to submit a video selfie turning their head in different directions so the system can map facial geometry to “prove you’re a real person” or restore access. The company states it uses this to combat scams and compromised accounts, and claims the video is deleted after verification.

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Apple’s New Subdomain Kills “Hide My Email” Cover

Apple is about to label every anonymous email address its paying customers generate, creating a new obstacle for privacy-conscious users.

Hide My Email, the iCloud+ feature that creates an alias “@icloud.com” address to shield your real inbox from apps and websites, has always worked because of one specific design choice.

The generated addresses were indistinguishable from any other iCloud account. An app receiving “randomword_terms_42@icloud.com” had no way to tell whether it belonged to someone generating anonymous aliases or to someone’s grandmother.

That forced services to treat all iCloud addresses equally because filtering out the anonymous ones meant filtering out millions of regular Apple customers too.

Starting later this summer, new Hide My Email addresses will use “@private.icloud.com” instead of plain “@icloud.com,” according to a developer notice the company posted Monday.

The “private” subdomain announces to any app or email provider on the receiving end that the person signing up doesn’t want to be identified and hands them a one-line domain filter to block those sign-ups entirely.

Apple presented the move as a domain unification, consolidating Sign in with Apple addresses (previously on “@privaterelay.appleid.com”) under the same new subdomain. The company told developers that existing addresses on legacy domains will keep forwarding mail and that app and email providers should update their filtering to accommodate the change.

The gap between “@icloud.com” and “@private.icloud.com” looks cosmetic but functions as a kill switch. Services can now ban all anonymous aliases without touching regular iCloud mailboxes, the same way they already block disposable email providers like Guerrilla Mail or Mailinator.

The plausible deniability that made Hide My Email useful, the inability for a service to prove an address was anonymous, disappears the moment Apple stamps it with a subdomain that says so.

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Another day, another illegal billion-dollar bribe to raise your electricity prices

The Interior Department has made another illegal agreement with a gas company to drop development of cheap and clean offshore wind and instead focus on dirty, expensive gas, giving that company the better part of a billion dollars worth of taxpayer money while starving Americans of much-needed electricity.

Wind is one of the cheaper forms of energy we have available to us, and also has the benefit of not causing pollution. Pollution from fossil fuels harms human health, causing millions of deaths and childhood asthma cases and costing trillions of dollars per year globally.

It’s also an important resource at a time when American electricity demand is increasing, leading to higher energy bills as the proliferation of data centers squeezes energy availability.

However, the Department of the Interior, the government agency responsible for usage of public lands including oceans, is currently occupied by Doug Burgum, a fossil fuel advocate who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from the fossil fuel industry.

As such, Burgum has done all he can to stop cheap and clean energy projects and to try to benefit dirty and expensive fossil fuels, to the detriment of Americans’ lungs and electricity bills.

Interior has cut off 400k homes worth of power just before Christmas, tried to pause new power generation projects and halt existing constructions, and tried to make permitting harder (while fast-tracking expensive, dirty projects with “concierge” service). His party suggested drastic new fees on wind farms, far in excess of the inspection fees on dirty oil projects.

But many of those efforts have been swiftly reversed by courts due to their illegality.

This hasn’t stopped Burgum from coming up with other illegal ideas to starve Americans of the energy they need.

The latest trend has involved a pattern of bribes given to oil companies from public coffers to convince them to stop development of offshore wind and instead refocus on gas projects.

It started with a nearly-$1B bribe from taxpayer coffers to French oil giant TotalEnergies in March, basically buying out its offshore wind lease in exchange for a commitment to put that money into fossil fuel projects.

Interior made up a fake national security reason for this agreement, even though it is clear that domestic sources of power are far more secure than the kind that start intractable global conflicts. Courts have previously ruled that there are no national security concerns around wind power and Dept. of Defense had signed off on these projects.

But it didn’t stop there. Interior has continued with similar near-billion-dollar bribes, with an $885 million deal in April, and another near-billion-dollar deal today.

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Paraquat poison: The toxic herbicide still killing Americans while EPA looks the other way

In this quiet southeast corner of the state, home to roughly 20,000 people surrounded by forest and farmland, a deadly secret hangs in the air. The Sipcam Agro plant here processes the toxic herbicide paraquat, making it the largest single emitter of the chemical in the entire United States. And the residents are paying the price with their lives.

Wayne County’s Parkinson’s disease death rate ranks in the top 7% of all U.S. counties reporting such deaths between 2018 and 2024. This is no coincidence. The evidence linking paraquat to Parkinson’s — the world’s fastest-growing incurable neurodegenerative disease — has accumulated for decades, yet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency continues to allow this poison on American soil.

A history of corporate deception

The story of paraquat reads like a criminal conspiracy. Syngenta and its corporate predecessors knew about the dangers as early as the 1950s, when Imperial Chemical Industries researchers found that paraquat caused central nervous system damage in lab animals. Internal documents now emerging in court show company executives worried about long-term liability as early as the 1980s.

Chevron, which once partnered with Syngenta to sell paraquat, left the business in 1986. While the company claims market forces drove this decision, internal memos reveal top executives were terrified of the legal consequences. Canadian researchers had already found an “extraordinarily high correlation” between Parkinson’s disease and paraquat use.

The EPA’s capture by industry

The EPA’s track record with toxic chemicals speaks for itself. After previously seeking public comment on banning paraquat in 2019 and recommending restrictions on aerial applications, the agency reversed course in 2021, re-registering the poison for 15 more years. The decision was based largely on evidence provided by the Agricultural Handler Exposure Task Force — an industry advocacy group founded by none other than Syngenta.

This is the same pattern we’ve seen with glyphosate, PFAS and countless other hazardous chemicals. The revolving door between industry and regulatory agencies ensures that profits come before public health. Kelsey Barnes, now a senior adviser to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins, was previously a manager of federal government relations for Syngenta.

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OUTRAGE! HelloFresh Goes Full Pride Month Cringe With Crude ‘BOTTOMSUP’ Discount Code—Grindr Jumps Into Comments

Another major brand has decided customers no longer deserve normal marketing.

HelloFresh, the meal-kit company that built its name delivering dinner boxes to American families, posted a bizarre Pride Month “official statement” on Instagram. The graphic began like a normal woke corporate Pride post, but quickly turned into adult innuendo. 

The company wrote that “eating isn’t always a top priority” during Pride Month, then promoted “high-fiber recipes” for those who are “prepping.”

The joke was not subtle. It was a sexualized Pride Month joke wrapped in the language of a meal-kit advertisement.

Then it got worse.

One user asked HelloFresh for a Pride Month discount code called “BOTTOMSUP.” HelloFresh responded by telling the user to “Use code BOTTOMSUP” for a Pride Month discount, adding, “you ask we deliver. Literally.”

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Massachusetts Sues UnitedHealthcare Over Alleged $100 Million Fraud

Massachusetts sued UnitedHealthcare on May 29, alleging the company defrauded the state’s Medicaid program by making seniors appear sicker than they were to secure higher payments.

The company contracted with MassHealth to provide a Senior Care Options—which combines Medicare and Medicaid benefits into one plan—for seniors aged 65 and older.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly received more than $100 million in fraudulent payments from MassHealth between 2015 and 2025, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell stated in the complaint.

UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, said the complaint is “meritless and doesn’t accurately describe our Senior Care Options program” in ‌a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

The legal complaint alleged UnitedHealthcare inflated payment rates in three ways.

Upcoding

Massachusetts paid UnitedHealthcare a per-member, per-month rate for each senior enrolled in the plan based on UnitedHealthcare’s assessments of the member’s health conditions.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly labeled members as having behavioral health disorders such as depression or anxiety, or substance use disorders to gain higher reimbursement rates, according to the complaint, when the members had no diagnosis or treatment on record for such conditions.

An analysis by the attorney general’s office revealed that nearly 30 percent of UnitedHealthcare’s 2014 through 2024 behavioral health assessments lacked any matching medical claims to support the mental health diagnoses reported to the state.

Keeping Overpayments

The insurer’s internal reviews identified that many members were incorrectly placed in the highest and most expensive level of care despite not qualifying for it, according to the lawsuit.

While the company eventually downgraded these members to lower-paying levels, it allegedly failed to inform the state of the prior errors or return the extra money it had already collected.

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Electric Vehicles Lead Major Car Maker to Report First Loss in Decades

Honda Motors reported its first annual loss in nearly 70 years, which came as a result of an emphasis on electric cars.

The Japan-based car company has been listed on the stock market since 1957, but the combination of electric vehicle bets and Trump trade policies led to its first-ever year in the red.

“EV demand has declined considerably, due to the rollback of environmental regulations in the U.S. and other factors,” Honda said in a statement, per a report from Fox Business.

The company faces $9 billion in restructuring costs because of the lackluster electric vehicle demand.

It suffered a $2.7 billion loss in the past fiscal year, according to a report from the Associated Press.

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DOT Subpoenas New York After Deadly Virginia Bus Crash — State Accused of Stonewalling Federal Investigation Into Chinese-Born CDL Holder

The Biden-era policies that opened the floodgates to lax oversight and questionable licensing practices are once again under scrutiny after the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a subpoena to the State of New York over its refusal to cooperate with a federal investigation into a deadly bus crash that killed five people in Virginia.

According to a report from Fox News, the DOT confirmed it has formally subpoenaed New York officials after the state allegedly failed to provide records related to Jing Shen Dong, the bus driver accused of causing the horrific crash in Stafford County, Virginia, on Friday morning.

The crash left five people dead and multiple others injured, raising serious questions about how Dong obtained and maintained his commercial driver’s license (CDL).

“The Acura caught fire, police said. Four of the five people killed were in the Acura: a 45-year-old man, a 44-year-old woman, a 13-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy, all from Greenfield, Massachusetts, police said,” ABC News reported.

“The fifth victim killed, a 25-year-old woman, was in the Suburban, police said,” the outlet reported.

“Forty-four people were taken to hospitals, including three with critical injuries, police said,” ABC reported.

Federal officials say Dong is a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in China, does not speak English, and received his CDL through the State of New York in 2024.

Now, transportation officials want answers.

According to DOT, investigators attempted to obtain critical documents through normal channels but were repeatedly met with resistance from New York authorities.

“The subpoena is a result of not being able to obtain the requested documents through other reasonable means,” a DOT spokesperson told Fox News.

The federal agency is demanding that New York turn over all records related to Dong’s CDL, his entry-level driver training, and the driving school he attended.

Those records must be produced by Wednesday at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.

Failure to comply could result in penalties and additional legal consequences.

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Corporations Can Vote in Some Delaware Elections, Judge Says

Corporations, partnerships, trusts, limited liability companies, and other “artificial entities” have the right to vote in Delaware elections under some circumstances, a judge said in a novel ruling Tuesday.

Judge Craig A. Karsnitz rejected an ACLU challenge to a charter permitting voting in local elections by the entities that own most of the property in the Town of Fenwick Island, one of several municipalities in the state with similar provisions. Karsnitz dismissed the lawsuit from Delaware’s Superior Court, citing “the principle of one person/entity/one vote.”

“Visions of faceless large corporations or even HAL controlling a small town are frightening and the stuff of science fiction,” but “trusts, partnerships, limited liability companies, and corporations are expressly recognized as ‘persons’ in the Delaware Code,” the judge said.

The dispute over municipal voting in a tiny coastal community represents an unusual flashpoint in the decades-long fight over the free speech rights of corporations and the dark money flooding the American electoral system. The US Supreme Court held in 2010’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission that political spending counts as constitutionally protected speech.

Ever since that ruling effectively ended corporate campaign finance regulation, the prospect of outright voting by business entities has served as fodder for both critics and comedians.

Delaware, home to more corporations than people, is a fitting place for reality to outpace satire. The state constitutional provisions expressly enshrining corporate personhood reflect Delaware’s budgetary reliance on the billions in fees it raises annually from the more than 2 million business entities chartered there.

Karsnitz, writing in a 19-page opinion Tuesday, rejected an array of constitutional arguments advanced by the ACLU, including the claim that entity voting dilutes the political power of living people.

The lawsuit “does not allege discrimination based on race or political partisanship,” show “that entity property owners vote sufficiently as a bloc to usually defeat the preferred candidates of natural persons,” or assert “that Fenwick’s charter distinguishes between natural persons and entity property owners with the discriminatory intent to fence out natural persons,” the judge said.

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