TLP Weekend Edition (June 14-15, 2025)

What we're reading and checking out.

The College World Series kicks off this weekend in Omaha, Nebraska. Arizona, Arkansas, Coastal Carolina, Murray State, Louisiana State, Louisville, Oregon State, and UCLA will compete for college baseball glory. (Getty Images)

⚡️ “After the Green Vortex: Why Energy Policy Bipartisanship Could Be Closer Than We Think,” by Ted Nordhaus. If you read just one article on the future of energy policy, let it be this one from The Breakthrough Institute’s Substack. Absolutely lucid and entirely correct.

The wild swings of energy policies from Democratic to Republican administrations beg the question of whether the United States is capable of sustaining any coherent energy policy, whether in service of climate mitigation or energy dominance. And yet, despite all of that political and policy volatility, the US over recent decades has both managed to sustain a significant and consistent rate of decarbonization while establishing its energy economy as the envy of much of the world. America is a global fossil energy superpower. Despite decades of stagnation, it still operates the largest nuclear fleet in the world. It has ample, developed hydroelectric resources. It trails only China in installed wind and solar capacity and generation and is at the forefront of geothermal energy technology….

[T]he partisan rollback of the IRA is likely to be no more consequential in terms of short term emissions and energy prices than was its partisan passage. By contrast, the energy policies that account for America’s long term decarbonization—the build out of substantial nuclear and hydroelectric generation capacity in the post-war era, the development of shale gas and the coal to gas transition, and most recently the scale up of wind and solar—were largely done on a bipartisan basis in service of a variety of economic, environmental, and geopolitical concerns.

Yet, despite accounting for the lion’s share of energy system decarbonization over the last 60 years, federal policies promoting hydro, nuclear, and natural gas were all consistently opposed by the environmental community. Indeed, federal energy policy partisanship over the last generation has almost entirely been due to the capture of the Democratic Party, and particularly Democratic energy policy, by the environmental movement, which led Democrats to embrace the so-called soft energy path—the notion that the United States could meet its energy needs entirely with variable renewable energy, energy efficiency, and energy storage. This led Democrats to turn first against nuclear energy and then against natural gas while single mindedly elevating climate change and implausible emissions targets as the central objective of Democratic energy policy.

That posture began to shift over the course of the Biden administration. The administration and Democratic Congress largely reversed the party’s long standing skepticism about nuclear energy, recognizing its environmental benefits and reliability. In the face of inflation and rising energy prices, many Democrats learned to love oil and gas production. And as the effort to scale wind and solar increasingly ran up against environmental regulatory obstacles, many Democrats began to dabble in permitting reform.

In the wake of the election, all of those trends have accelerated. A civil war within the party, between Abundance and progressive environmental factions is well underway, driven in significant part by major differences over the party’s posture towards nuclear, natural gas, and permitting reform. Many elected Democrats, meanwhile, have figured out that the party won’t make much progress with working class voters until it is perceived to be for Big Ass Truck[s] and against internal combustion vehicle bans.

So a return to bipartisan energy policy along these lines might not be as far off as it seems. Whether done under the banner of Secret Congress, Quiet Climate Policy, or something else, a Democratic Party that was pro-nuclear and pro-natural gas, that got serious about removing the regulatory obstacles to meeting growing energy demand and building infrastructure, and that abandoned the pursuit of arbitrary and unscientific temperature and emissions targets in favor of achieving climate co-benefits through sustained investment in energy innovation and infrastructure is one that could once again do business with Republicans on a lot of energy policy.

📰 "All of L.A. is not a ‘war zone.’ We separate facts from spin and disinformation amid immigration raids," by the Los Angeles Times. Following last weekend’s anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles, a bevy of reporters at the L.A. Times put together a nice rundown of what has (and hasn't) happened, separating fact from fiction. This included refuting a widely circulated video claiming that ICE raided an elementary school graduation and a viral X post claiming police cars had been set on fire during the latest demonstrations. When such emotionally fraught and polarizing events happen—often producing high stakes—it's important that all Americans operate on a shared set of facts. The Times' coverage is a good start at setting the record straight.

💵 “What To Do Now: How Philanthropy Can Help Win the Fight for America’s Future,” by David Callahan. On his site Inside Philanthropy, Callahan lays out a cogent case for how progressive funders ignored reality in American politics and how they might get things back on track to help create a sane and politically effective movement dedicated to economic security and freedom for all people. TLP readers will be familiar with much of his analysis of what went wrong:

Very few leaders feel confident about a set of funding priorities that can decisively change what’s possible in the U.S. over the next decade. “There is no grand plan. There is no map,” a top grantmaker told me.

This sense of uncertainty is not surprising. The strategies that liberal philanthropy has been pursuing to achieve transformative change in America—which have heavily centered identity and rights—have hit a dead end. The left-of-center coalition is shrinking as more working-class Americans of all races exit its ranks or choose never to enter them. This trend is monumentally important. Eligible voters without a college degree constitute a strong majority of the electorate—a share that is even larger in some battleground states.

The left-of-center coalition has lost working-class support as the perception has grown that Democrats and progressive groups aren’t interested in the economic concerns that preoccupy most Americans. Instead, they are seen as overly focused on cultural issues that are less important to most people and downright unpopular in some cases. At a core level, many working-class Americans don’t think Democrats and the left share their values or understand their needs. A Democratic Party dominated by college-educated voters is also seen as defending failing institutions at a moment when Americans are hungry for dramatic change and feel that their voices don’t matter.

Philanthropy shares some of the blame for these deep weaknesses, as I argued in an article earlier this year exploring how we got here. For years, funders underinvested in work to address people’s material struggles at the root level and amplified voices who were well to the left of even the constituencies those voices purported to represent. The need to change course right now, with a keen, pragmatic eye on electoral realities, comes down to the same underlying political bottom line: Almost nothing that philanthropy hopes to achieve will be possible if the MAGA right is able to consolidate recent gains. And much of what it has previously achieved will be at risk.

To turn things around, funders dedicated to social change must dial in on the public’s deep sense that America’s economy isn’t working and move this problem to the top of their agenda. The quest to create shared prosperity has historically been the strongest cornerstone of a majoritarian politics. Greater economic opportunity is also key to expanding social rights and strengthening democracy—a pattern that played out throughout the latter half of the 20th century, both in the U.S. and in other nations that prospered after World War II. Rising living standards tend to bring out the best in people, morally. Scarcity, as we’re now increasingly seeing, brings out the worst.

Even if you don’t share Callahan’s politics, his article offers a solid argument for a new theory of power from the broader progressive movement that is worth considering.

🇮🇱 Valley of Tears, on Max. As another conflict takes off in the Middle East, this Israeli show about the Yom Kippur War in 1973, produced and released before the attacks on October 7, 2023, is a highly engaging and heartfelt examination of the traumas and fleeting victories of war. The story is told through the perspectives of soldiers from different social classes and backgrounds in Israel, and is psychologically gripping and tense from the get go—as the actual Syrian attack and Israeli counterattack must have been to those involved. The cinematography and acting are superb, and you’ll fly through the episodes in no time.

🎸 Ripped and Torn, by Lifeguard. These young lads from Chicago are bursting with interesting songs and unique guitar rock, full of angular riffs and off-kilter beats that mix indie rock, punk, and experimental sounds. TLP will be at the Lifeguard show at the Songbyrd in D.C. next month, and will be spinning this new vinyl in the meantime. Check out a live version of some old and new tunes below for a taste.

Happy Father’s Day and have a nice weekend!