Several independent U.S. oil producers are expected to sign production contracts with Venezuela’s state-run oil company in the coming days, according to three industry representatives familiar with the plans — a step forward for the Trump administration’s efforts to boost production in the beleaguered South American nation.

A signing ceremony involving several smaller U.S. producers and the Petróleos de Venezuela had been set for Tuesday evening in Houston, according to the people, who were granted anonymity because details of the event have not been made public. Venezuela’s oil minister is scheduled to attend, as is the head of exploration for PDVSA, one of the people said. The ceremony could be pushed back until Wednesday morning, another of the people added.

The White House, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is not expected to be formally involved with Tuesday’s ceremony, but it comes after top administration officials traveled to Caracas in late April to secure memorandums of understanding that laid the groundwork for formal production deals in the country that holds some of the world’s largest oil reserves.

It marks a sign of progress after the Trump administration’s effort to push new oil development in Venezuela, which began after the U.S. raid that captured former leader Nicolás Maduro in January, had slowed in recent months. Despite a boost from higher crude prices, negotiations have bogged down around key details like dispute resolution, while authorities in Caracas dealt with a devastating pair of June earthquakes that killed thousands.

Venezuela’s interim president Delcy Rodríguez last month unveiled new regulations offering more favorable fiscal terms to international oil companies.

The signings come after the Trump administration renewed pressure on Rodríguez to have PDVSA sign contracts with American companies, an industry source familiar with the negotiations. Those efforts included outreach from Secretary of State Marco Rubio to discuss how increased oil revenue could help the country after a devastating earthquake earlier this summer, this person said.

“There’s a renewed acknowledgement from Delcy that increased oil production is the pathway to rebuilding after the earthquakes and accomplishing what her government wants to do for the people who are suffering because of the earthquakes,” this person said.

David Goldwyn, head of the international energy consulting firm Goldwyn Global Strategies, said investment from independent oil producers and expanded production from existing fields are likely to be Venezuela’s “primary source of new oil growth for the next couple of years.”

“While the supermajors bide their time until they see how the politics sort out, and whether they can cherry pick the best assets, independents can derisk their projects in a short period of time,” Goldwyn said.

But those investments are only likely to add up to 300,000 barrels a day to the country’s oil production over the next year, far from the increase of millions of barrels the authorities in Caracas and Washington would like to see, Goldwyn said.

“Incremental production is all we will see until the framework improves, electricity is restored, and the political picture becomes clearer,” he said.

Der Raketenterror gegen Kiew und andere Teile der Ukraine bringt Wladimir Putin militärisch keine Geländegewinne, zielt aber auf die Zermürbung der Zivilbevölkerung. Rixa Fürsen bespricht mit dem Sicherheits- und Verteidigungsexperten Nico Lange die Lage nach der russischen Frühjahrsoffensive 2026.

Lange kritisiert die zögerliche europäische Militärhilfe und das Fehlen strategischer Luftverteidigung scharf. Um Angriffe nachhaltig zu stoppen, müsse die Ukraine russische Rüstungsfabriken und Lieferketten mit Waffen wie dem Taurus gezielt ausschalten können.

Auch bei Rufen nach Diplomatie warnt er vor Naivität: Erfolgreiche Verhandlungen seien nur durch harten wirtschaftlichen und militärischen Druck möglich. Wirksame Hebel wären etwa ein umfassender Stopp für Schengen-Visa für Russen oder das konsequente Blockieren der Schattenflotte.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

Mehr von Rixa Fürsen gibt es auch hier:
Instagram: @rixafu | X: @rixa_fursen.

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Chinas Exporte treffen die deutsche Kernindustrie in nie da gewesener Härte und Geschwindigkeit. Weil massiv Arbeitsplätze wackeln, sucht Europa händeringend nach einer politischen Notbremse. Rixa Fürsen spricht mit Janka Oertel über die existenzielle Bedrohung für den Autobau und Maschinenbau. Oertel ist Politikwissenschaftlerin und China-Expertin, bei der Denkfabrik „European Council on Foreign Relations“ ist sie Direktorin des Asienprogramms und Senior Policy Fellow.

Wie hart Peking inzwischen zurückschlägt, zeigt die Reaktion auf jüngste EU-Sanktionen. Binnen 24 Stunden konterte China mit Exportrestriktionen gegen Rüstungskonzerne wie Rheinmetall. Trotzdem wächst in Europa der Widerstand, sodass beim EU-Rat im Oktober scharfe Handelsschutzmaßnahmen folgen könnten.

Während wir noch über E-Autos diskutieren, plant China längst die nächste industrielle Revolution. Im Bereich der sogenannten Biomanufaktur will Peking eine globale Dominanz aufbauen, um unabhängiger von fossilen Rohstoffen zu werden. Oertel warnt davor, dass Europa auch bei dieser Zukunftstechnologie seine aktuelle Führungsrolle verspielen könnte.

Das Berlin Playbook als Podcast gibt es jeden Morgen ab 5 Uhr. Gordon Repinski und das POLITICO-Team liefern Politik zum Hören – kompakt, international, hintergründig.

Für alle Hauptstadt-Profis: Der Berlin Playbook-Newsletter bietet jeden Morgen die wichtigsten Themen und Einordnungen. Jetzt kostenlos abonnieren.

Mehr von Rixa Fürsen gibt es auch hier:
Instagram: @rixafu | X: @rixa_fursen.

POLITICO Deutschland – ein Angebot der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH
Axel-Springer-Straße 65, 10888 Berlin
Tel: +49 (30) 2591 0
information@axelspringer.de
Sitz: Amtsgericht Berlin-Charlottenburg, HRB 196159 B
USt-IdNr: DE 214 852 390
Geschäftsführer: Carolin Hulshoff Pol, Mathias Sanchez Luna

Ukraine called on the European Union to sanction the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom on Monday, hours after a POLITICO investigation revealed allegations of safety and engineering failures at one of the company’s flagship projects.

“Rosatom is not just another energy company — it is the instrument of Russia’s ambition to secure a global monopoly in nuclear energy,” Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha wrote on X.

He said the findings were further evidence that Rosatom was “not a reliable partner” and urged capitals to restart talks on EU sanctions. “No state should be doing nuclear business with a company complicit in war crimes,” he added, sharing a link to POLITICO’s article.

POLITICO’s investigation revealed warnings from Egyptian authorities and internal assessments by Rosatom regarding the construction of the El Dabaa nuclear plant. The documents obtained by POLITICO raised concerns ranging from the quality of concrete work to delays and management problems, while an Egyptian agency alleged “deliberate negligence” and violations of “nuclear safety culture.” Nuclear material has yet to be introduced at the site.

Rosatom previously defended its safety record at El Dabaa and pointed to regular scrutiny of the project by Egyptian, Russian and International Atomic Energy Agency officials. None of the allegations contained presented to Rosatom by POLITICO, have been “confirmed within the contractual, technical and oversight procedures envisaged by the project,” the company said in a statement.

It did not respond to a request for comment on Sybiha’s remarks on Monday.

Sybiha’s call puts renewed pressure on EU governments that continue to cooperate with Rosatom despite Russia’s war in Ukraine. In Hungary, the company is building two new reactors at the Paks II nuclear plant using the same VVER-1200 technology planned for El Dabaa.

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar last week challenged Rosatom’s claim that construction for the reactors remained on schedule, saying his government was carrying out a full review of the project.

ROME — In the barns where the milk for Italy’s most famous cheese is produced, the fans have barely stopped whirring for two months. As temperatures across northern Italy push close to 40 degrees Celsius, cows stand almost motionless, tongues lolling, while automated sprinklers soak their backs.

Italy is now enduring its fourth major heat wave of an exceptionally brutal summer. The prolonged heat is piling costs on the €4 billion industry behind Parmigiano Reggiano, forcing farmers to spend heavily on cooling their animals while drought and dwindling water supplies make it harder and more expensive to grow the forage needed to feed them.

Farmers have received support from regional authorities, the EU and a producers’ consortium to help them adapt to the heat, but they say the funding falls short of the investment increasingly required.

For producers of the protected cheese, there is no possibility of escaping somewhere cooler. Under the strict rules governing Parmigiano Reggiano’s EU Protected Designation of Origin — that secures its added value on the market — the cows, their milk and the cheese must remain tied to a defined area of northern Italy. At least 75 percent of their forage must also be grown locally.

Dairy cows can begin suffering from heat stress at around 25C, depending on humidity, according to Giovanni Buonaiuto, a vet with the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium, which defends producers’ interests. Their digestive system generates considerable heat as they break down food, while cows have relatively few sweat glands with which to disperse it. “It’s as if the cow has a radiator inside her,” Buonaiuto told POLITICO.

As temperatures rise, cows eat less and stand for longer to expose themselves to moving air. They rest and ruminate less, milk production falls and prolonged heat can also affect fertility.

Buonaiuto said milk production has fallen by about 10 percent on average during the summer, although the impact varies sharply between farms depending on their cooling systems.

Overheating herds

Federica Dall’Aglio, who raises 400 cattle on the plains near the city of Parma, said each cow was producing five to six kilograms less milk a day, a fall of roughly 20 percent, despite fans and water sprays installed to protect her herd.

The cows now spend much of their time beneath the fans and water sprays, she added, as they’re reluctant to move away from the cooling systems.

Outside the barns, farmers are reorganizing their working days around the heat too. Some now cut and collect hay at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m., Buonaiuto said, before the morning heat causes the hay to crumble. By 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., it can already be too hot.

Keeping the cows cool comes at a high cost.

Luca Cotti, a sixth-generation dairy farmer and president of farmers’ association Coldiretti in the northern Emilia-Romagna region, said electricity consumption in barns can double or even triple during extreme heat as cooling systems run almost continuously.

He recalled worrying about winter 20 years ago, with the weather freezing drinking water and other systems in the barn. Now investment is directed toward surviving summer.

The new normal

Extreme summer heat was once exceptional and might last a week before temperatures eased, Cotti said. Now, he said, “it’s normal.” This year, “since June, it has never let up.”

For some smaller producers with older facilities, the question is whether the investment is still worthwhile.

Dall’Aglio’s family has been investing in cooling systems for around 15 years, recently adding solar panels to help offset their growing electricity needs.

Across the Parmigiano Reggiano supply chain, such technology is becoming commonplace. Around half of its dairy farms, responsible for 70 percent of its milk, have invested in advanced cooling systems, including fans, motion-sensitive water sprays and automated temperature monitoring, according to the consortium president, Nicola Bertinelli.

The remaining 30 percent of milk comes largely from farms in the cooler hills and mountains, he said.

With persistently high temperatures, insufficient rainfall and water levels in major Alpine lakes approaching historic lows, authorities in the Po River basin, which supports agriculture across northern Italy through a network of tributaries and canals, have declared a high level of drought severity.

Alfalfa, an important source of forage for the cows, is relatively resistant to drought because of its deep roots. But Dall’Aglio said her family had already been irrigating heavily to ensure a good hay crop this year.

When rivers run too low for irrigation, some farmers have to pump groundwater instead, which can make irrigation around five times more expensive because of the energy required to extract it, according to Lorenzo Catellani of farmers’ association CIA Agricoltori Emilia-Romagna.

Coldiretti is calling on politicians to treat water storage as infrastructure rather than emergency relief.

Cotti said regional and national authorities need to invest in reservoirs and other water-storage infrastructure, arguing that individual farms cannot solve the growing problem of water scarcity alone.

Paradoxically, Parmesan producers normally worry about producing too much, not too little — and had sought to curb output this year. “We always have the brake on,” Cotti said, adding that high prices mean farmers have little difficulty increasing production when needed.

Despite the strain, producers insist there is no danger of Italy running short of Parmesan.

The cheese’s strong global market gives farmers greater scope to invest than producers in more fragile agricultural sectors.

For now, those investments are keeping Parmigiano production stable, although smaller farmers with aging barns may eventually choose to close rather than spend the money needed to adapt. For now, there is little to do but wait for the temperatures to fall. “We keep going like this,” Cotti said. “We hope it ends as soon as possible.”

Hungary is sinking two barges to ensure a key nuclear power plant stays online, Prime Minister Péter Magyar said Saturday.

Europe’s summer of extreme heat has caused the Danube’s water level to hit record lows, affecting power production at the Paks nuclear plant. Nuclear power stations are typically built by rivers and along coastlines so they can use water to cool down reactors.

Hungarian authorities are sinking the two barges to raise water levels so Paks, which provides the country with more than a third of its electricity, can continue to operate normally. The sinking began Saturday morning and Hungarian media are quoting the prime minister saying the water level at the plant has risen by 1 centimeter.

Magyar said on X that the current water level near Hungary’s only nuclear energy facility is 122 cm lower than normal and it is projected to drop below 132 cm on Monday, which would force one of the plant’s two turbines to shut down.

On Wednesday, Magyar announced that they would be building a riverbed sill with 150,000 cubic meters of stone and was considering sinking the two 80-meter barges. A sill is an underwater dam meant to slow down the current and raise water levels. Hungary’s Defense Ministry has assigned 100 troops to work around the clock on the project, the prime minister said on X.

Nuclear energy facilities across Europe have been affected by this summer’s droughts and soaring temperatures. Romania shut down a nuclear power plant earlier this week due to the Danube’s water levels.

France — one of Europe’s biggest producers of nuclear power — has seen its fleet of nuclear power plants affected throughout the summer. Le Monde reported authorities had to shut down six of the country’s 57 nuclear reactors as yet another heat wave broiled much of the country. Earlier in the week, a climate change-fueled jellyfish invasion forced workers to bring parts of a different plant offline.

Magyar has also cast doubt on completing an expansion of the Paks plant by a Russian state-owned firm in a deal signed by Magyar’s predecessor, the Kremlin-friendly Viktor Orbàn, citing the water issue.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has a problem: Nobody wants the hardest job in Washington.

The Ukrainian president is struggling to find someone of sufficient influence to represent Kyiv to the Trump administration, with prospective candidates proving reluctant to take on the grueling assignment at a critical moment in the war, according to two former senior Ukrainian officials and four lawmakers.

The need to replace the previous envoy, Olga Stefanishyna, helped trigger Zelenskyy’s still-incomplete government reshuffle. Stefanishyna was formally dismissed on Aug. 3 over impending embezzlement charges. 

Zelenskyy moved his reshuffle plans forward so he could offer the ambassadorship to Yulia Svyrydenko, the outgoing prime minister, according to a former senior Ukrainian official and a Republican foreign expert familiar with the background to the shake-up. But she declined, disrupting his plans. 

“It is no secret that I counted on and offered Yulia Svyrydenko the post of ambassador to the United States,” Zelenskyy said at a press conference in late July. He added that he was looking for a candidate with the highest possible qualifications: “a person at the level of a deputy prime minister, minister, or prime minister.”

Since then, however, other prospective candidates have proved equally reluctant, spurning what would in any case be the difficult job of handling Donald Trump’s unpredictable White House.

Ukrainians with sufficient heft and skill for the ambassadorship are looking at it askance, “worrying that they would not enjoy the conditions they would need to do the job properly,” said Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, a prominent Ukrainian opposition lawmaker and former deputy prime minister who is a regular critic of Zelenskyy.

“Certainly that would be the case without having the ear of the president or his trust,” she added. That narrows Zelenskyy’s options sharply. The person would likely have to come from his tight inner circle of trusted aides, Klympush-Tsintsadze said, but there is no one there who seriously fits the bill. 

“Framing it as if nobody wants the job would be a kind of oversimplification,” said a former Ukrainian diplomat who was granted anonymity in order to speak freely. “Of course, there are people who want the job, but there’s no one who really measures up to it. Zelenskyy is having a hard time filling the position.”

Wrong direction

The trouble filling the Washington post is part of a broader problem for Zelenskyy, whose office did not respond to a request for comment. The president’s approval ratings have deteriorated since he embarked a month ago on a government shake-up that remains incomplete and has proved turbulent. According to a Socis Center for Social Research survey, more than 55 percent of Ukrainians believe their nation is moving in the wrong direction.

Zelenskyy’s dismissal in July of popular defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov sparked street protests and a political backlash, while several key posts remain unresolved. The reshuffle has also raised questions about how Zelenskyy chooses his senior team — and how far beyond his tight circle of trusted aides he is prepared to look. 

“No one has explained to Ukrainians why exactly the government had to be changed,” Mykola Knyazhitskiy, an opposition lawmaker from Lviv and founder of Ukraine’s Espreso TV channel, said.

“There had been no clearly articulated public complaints about Svyrydenko. In her farewell address to parliament, Svyrydenko received applause. MPs gave her a standing ovation. So why was she dismissed if her performance was considered so successful and was so highly regarded?” 

Difficult timing

The ambassadorial vacancy comes at an especially fraught moment for Kyiv. Washington remains central to Ukraine’s ability to sustain the war, and whoever takes the job will have to navigate a Trump administration that has repeatedly shifted course on military support and on how — and when — the war should end.

In an interview with POLITICO’s Dasha Burns earlier this year, Stefanishyna acknowledged she had experienced “diplomatic whiplash” in the role. 

Kyiv is trying to persuade Trump to give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems, something he promised in June, only to reverse himself in July. The issue is becoming more urgent as Ukraine heads toward another winter of Russian attacks on its energy and civilian infrastructure and is already struggling to intercept intensified ballistic missile strikes. Zelenskyy has said this year’s deliveries of air defense missiles from Ukraine’s allies have fallen by two-thirds compared with 2025.

At the same time, there are signs the White House may soon seek to revive stalled peace negotiations. That would put a premium on having an ambassador in Washington with the political weight to get through the door, the authority to speak for Zelenskyy and the skill to navigate an administration where policy can change quickly. And also to lobby Congress. 

Leaving the post vacant, therefore, carries risks well beyond diplomatic protocol. Ukraine could find itself without a heavyweight operator in Washington just as decisions are being made over weapons, air defense, logistics and intelligence sharing, as well as the terms of any renewed peace push.

“It is quite likely that Zelenskyy won’t appoint anyone this side of the midterm elections in the United States,” said Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, an opposition lawmaker. “It will be hard to judge who would fit the political landscape best until those elections have been held.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar on Thursday cast doubt on a deal struck by his predecessor that would see Russia’s state nuclear company Rosatom expand Hungary’s nuclear power capacity.

Weeks of extreme heat and drought have pushed the Danube River to record lows, slashing output at Hungary’s Paks nuclear plant — which normally supplies around a third of the country’s electricity — to little more than 10 percent.

“These plans were accepted despite the fact that nuclear power plants that do not operate with a closed-circuit cooling system and are so exposed to the environment are no longer being built in the world,” said Magyar, per local media.

Rosatom CEO Alexei Likhachev wrote that the Russian state nuclear company was still on schedule with two new reactors at Paks despite Hungary’s change of government in April, which saw Magyar oust Russia-friendly incumbent Viktor Orbán.

Concrete preparation for Unit 5 is more than 80 percent complete, he said, while work on Unit 6 is advancing and reactor components are already being manufactured.

“We are ready for dialogue,” Likhachev said, adding that Rosatom had received no questions from Hungary’s new government.

Magyar challenged that account hours later. Under the original contract, Paks II should have been operating by 2024, he told reporters in a press conference Thursday. Instead, Hungary has spent roughly 1,000 billion forints (€2.8 billion) on a site he described as little more than depots and “two large concrete pits.”

“I don’t really see that they have adhered to the contract,” Magyar said. His government is now carrying out a full review of the project, including its financing and cooling arrangements.

The review cuts at one of Orbán’s signature deals with Russia. Orbán struck the Paks II agreement in Moscow in 2014, handing Rosatom the two-reactor expansion backed by up to €10 billion in Russian state financing. Two years later, he called it the “deal of the century.”

Those ties survived Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. As recently as March this year, Orbán’s foreign minister Péter Szijjártó admitted to discussing EU sanctions with senior Russian officials after leaked calls showed him boasting that a bank linked to Paks had been kept off a sanctions list.

Downstream, Romania shut the second and last operating reactor at Cernavodă on Thursday after the Danube fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

Romania took Cernavodă’s second and last operating nuclear reactor offline on Thursday after the drought-hit Danube River fell too low to supply its cooling pumps.

“At 10:53 a.m., Unit 2 of Cernavodă NPP was shut down in a controlled manner,” Romania’s Energy Ministry said in a press release.

The government insisted the national grid remained stable and said it would bridge the shortfall with imports, hydropower, wind, coal and reserve generation. Romania had already notified the European Commission of an electricity crisis after the shutdown of Unit 1 on July 28, with Unit 2 accounting for roughly another 700 megawatts — about 10 percent of national production.

Cernavodă could stay offline for a while. “The forecast for the next 10 days shows a continuous decrease in the flow and level of the Danube,” plant director Romeo Urjan told Romanian news outlet Digi24 on Tuesday evening, saying officials did not expect to restart Unit 2 during that period.

Emergency dredging, rock blasting and sunk barges had bought the reactor roughly another week of operation.

The shutdown is the latest fallout from a drought emptying Europe’s rivers. Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite images released last week showed the Danube shrinking dramatically compared with last summer, exposing sandbanks and parched countryside north of Budapest in Hungary.

The river has hit a record low in Hungary, while record-low levels have also been reported in Romania, disrupting shipping and straining energy and water supplies.

Hungary is scrambling to keep its Paks nuclear plant operating. With output down to little more than 10 percent, Prime Minister Péter Magyar ordered the construction of a riverbed barrier Wednesday and put two barges on standby to be sunk if the Danube falls further.

Cernavodă’s two reactors normally supply around a fifth of Romania’s electricity. Before this summer, drought last forced a reactor there offline in 2003.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her role at the end of August, President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

The president, in a post on Truth Social, said Leavitt is departing to spend more time with her family, but will remain one of his “top outside advisors” and an “influential voice within the Republican Party.”

“Karoline has been one of the best White House Press Secretaries in the History of the Office,” Trump wrote.

Leavitt’s departure comes on the heels of a leave of absence this summer after the May birth of her second child, Viviana. She returned to the White House last month.

Leavitt gave birth to her first child, Niko, during the 2024 presidential campaign, returning to work quickly when the president was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Leavitt, in a post on X, described the job as “the honor and adventure of a lifetime,” but said she had decided to step away to devote her time to being a mom.

“The truth is since returning to the White House after the birth of my daughter, I have felt in my heart that I cannot be the best mom my two young children deserve while devoting the constant time, energy, and attention required of the White House Press Secretary,” she said, “and that is why I have ultimately made the bittersweet decision to depart the White House and embark on a new chapter in my life.”

Trump, in his post, called it “a decision I totally understand and respect!”

Leavitt has served as White House press secretary since the start of the second Trump administration. During Trump’s first term, she interned in the White House Office of Presidential Correspondence while in college before becoming associate director, eventually joining the White House press team as assistant press secretary under then-press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

As press secretary, she has been widely praised on both the left and the right for being an effective communicator for the president in the White House briefing room. She earned a reputation for her tough but friendly banter with the press in that format.

The White House did not immediately answer questions about who will succeed Leavitt as press secretary and the timeline for replacing her.

Trump had four press secretaries during his first term: Sean Spicer, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Stephanie Grisham and McEnany.

Form Energy has landed Google and Crusoe as customers. Now, it has raised $750 million to expand manufacturing to deliver its massive, 100-hour batteries.

LONDON — Prime Minister Andy Burnham will lead a meeting of the government’s emergency committee Wednesday afternoon in response to ongoing heatwaves, droughts and wildfires across the U.K.

COBR (Cabinet Office Briefing Room) meetings are convened during a crisis or emergency — and come as the record-breaking conditions take a severe toll on U.K. infrastructure.

The crisis is an early test for Burnham, who came to office just last month.

A Downing Street spokesperson said: “We know how challenging this summer is proving, particularly for firefighters tackling wildfires, farmers working in drought conditions, and NHS staff in busy A&E units.

“We will continue to take the action needed to keep communities safe, protect water supplies, support farming communities and safeguard the environment.”

Britons are this week bracing for their fifth heatwave of 2026, with some temperatures forecast to exceed 36C. The Met Office, Britain’s national weather service, has warned that this summer is set to be the U.K.’s hottest since records began.

More than two-thirds of England is now in drought after the driest July since records began in 1836. The whole of Wales is also in drought, and more than 27 million people across the U.K. are facing water restrictions including hosepipe bans.

The U.K. is grappling with wildfires including at the New Forest national park in south England. The National Fire Chiefs Council responded to 458 wildfires last month, its busiest month on record.

‘Snail’s pace’

The rival Green Party first demanded a COBR meeting weeks ago after a wildfire engulfed parts of Suffolk in eastern England. Green Leader Zack Polanski said Wednesday’s meeting is “only a first step. This is a climate emergency which is leading to hundreds of deaths and stretching our firefighters, health staff and farmers to the limit. What we urgently need is concrete action.”

Liberal Democrat Energy Spokesperson Pippa Heylings warned a COBR meeting alone “will not put out fires or protect our communities,” and said government is “moving at a snail’s pace.”

Prior to today’s COBR, the U.K.’s National Drought Group and Severe Weather Resilience Network have held regular meetings, and the government has also vowed to work with water companies to build nine new reservoirs for the U.K. — which built its last reservoir back in 1992.

U.K. climate advisers have meanwhile spent much of the summer urging the country to up its game when it comes to adaptation for a warming world.

The Committee on Climate Change, a government advisory body, said in May that cooling to protect from heat, “increased flood preparedness, and improved water management are the highest priorities.”

“Deploying these adaptations at scale will help avoid loss of life – particularly amongst those most vulnerable to climate impacts – and unnecessary damage and disruption to people and to the economy,” it said.

The U.K. has been “built to a climate that no longer exists,” Swenja Surminski, a member of the Climate Change Committee Adaptation Committee, told MPs in June.

Additional reporting by Charlie Cooper.

California is launching a probe into the Trump administration’s most recent move to scuttle the state’s nascent offshore wind industry.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration on Tuesday released an investigative subpoena against German energy company RWE, according to David Hochschild, chair of the California Energy Commission.

“These are unlawful actions … they’re using funds that are not dedicated to those purposes, and we’re going to vigorously contest those,” Hochschild said of the Trump administration’s settlement agreements to kill offshore wind projects. “We’re going to court.”

He made the announcement on stage during POLITICO’s The California Agenda: Sacramento Summit.

Hochschild’s statements show that California, facing a relentless assault on its offshore wind ambitions, is turning to the courts as its primary venue for fighting back.

RWE announced a $1.2 billion agreement on Thursday to surrender its offshore wind leases off the coasts of New York, California and Louisiana. That signaled the continued success of a recent Trump administration strategy to kill wind projects it opposes: offer the developers funds to instead invest in fossil fuel facilities. That tactic has so far ended three of the five planned wind projects off the California coast.

In May, California issued a similar investigative subpoena to Golden State Wind after it cut a Trump administration deal to cancel an offshore wind project. The state later said it intended to sue over that deal. California followed that same playbook with Invenergy’s offshore wind cancellation. It has not filed any lawsuits in response to the deals to date.

Aug. 11 is quickly becoming jellyfish invasion day at the Gravelines nuclear power plant in northern France.

Despite spending hundreds of thousands of euros to protect the plant from a jellyfish swarm like the one that saw reactors shuttered on Aug. 11, 2025, French utility provider EDF on Tuesday was again forced to bring the parts of the facility offline due to the presence of “several dozen tons” of jellyfish blocking pumping systems.

“On-site teams are fully mobilized to ensure the safety of the facilities and to reconnect the reactors to the national power grid,” EDF said in a statement.

Three fishing vessels are now “constantly patrolling off the coast of the plant” to conduct “preventive fishing operations […] 24/7,” the company added.

Tuesday’s jellyfish invasion comes a the latest in a series of climate change-driven incidents that have affected French nuclear energy during a particularly infernal summer.

Nuclear power plants are typically built by rivers or on coastlines so they can use nearby water sources to cool their reactors. But a record number in France this summer have been forced to temporarily shut down due to heatwaves and droughts affecting their water supply.

Rising sea temperatures have made jellyfish swarms more common along the French coast in recent years, and those swarms can affect a plant’s ability to bring in seawater — which is what happened at Gravelines. Following last year’s incident at the plant along the North Sea, EDF installed cameras and deployed fishing boats to monitor the situation.

While the vessels “prevented a massive influx of jellyfish” on Saturday and Sunday, they were eventually overwhelmed as the swarm grew from “about 100 kilograms” to “several dozen tons,” the French state-owned utility giant said.

Opponents of nuclear energy were quick to jump on the incident.

“This only highlights that nuclear power plants are ill-equipped to deal with the consequences of climate change,” the French branch of Greenpeace said in statement.

Fusion power startups are turning to Kyoto Fusioneering to supply components for future power plants. The Japan-based startup just received a grant to build a part of the fuel system.

Solar energy, at any time of day or night - that's the dream of space mirror projects. Futurists have been imagining satellite mirrors that could reflect the sun's light onto the Earth's surface for over a century. Russian scientists experimented with the concept in the '90s with the Znamya project. The idea is to put a large mirror in orbit and angle it such that sunlight can be reflected onto a specific geographical area for illumination or the generation of solar power.

Now, the California-based company Reflect Orbital wants to try this idea again, launching a test satellite named Eärendil-1 as a precursor to a fleet of up to 50,000 spa …

Read the full story at The Verge.

MIRROR, ALBERTA — Nestled within a sleepy community campground and roadside cafe, hundreds of Canadians are gathered to imagine a new country of their own.

It’s July 1, and they’re hosting a family-friendly event that looks like a typical Canada Day celebration. Live music, a farmers’ market, hamburgers on the grill. Except there isn’t a Maple Leaf in sight.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

Instead, people have wrapped themselves in Alberta’s flag, wave “we’re done” banners and wear “Trump 2024” and MAGA — Make Alberta Great Again — ball caps. This is an “Albertans’ Day” gathering at the Whistle Stop Cafe, which gained notoriety for bucking pandemic-era rules and which former Alberta premier Jason Kenney calls “ground zero” for the province’s fast-growing separatist movement.

And until Alberta separates, Moore places her faith not in Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney — whom she views as part of a Davos “cabal” — but in U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I kept thinking this: Trump is the only one that can save us.”

Moore’s affinity for conspiracy theories is shared by many, though certainly not all, of the separatists. Resentment toward the federal government in Ottawa is longstanding in Alberta. But a surprising new ingredient has turbocharged the separatist push: Trump and the increasingly toxic U.S.-Canada relationship. The separatists are furious about Carney’s friction with Trump and the fraying ties to their southern neighbor. Some even hope the Trump administration might help their cause.

Many separatists believe Trump’s presidency makes Alberta’s independence possible, with the United States a ready customer for its oil and gas should they split from Canada. One group, the Alberta Prosperity Project, is trying to seek a C$500-billion U.S. government loan to fund the province’s “seamless departure” from Canada.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s independence movement,” says Jeffrey Rath, a co-founder of the Alberta Prosperity Project and a longtime separatist activist who has sought to court the Trump administration.

Many separatists see a cultural kinship with the United States. They proudly share fake newspaper clippings that highlight the province’s history of early American settlers allegedly helping to shape a self-reliant, frontier culture that remains in Alberta today. They argue the Eastern provinces are more associated with European traditions than American ones.

While some object to Trump’s idea of making Canada the 51st American state, others embrace the idea.

“I like freedom and less taxes,” says Casey Phillips from Edmonton, Alberta.

Carney and his government are now working hard to convince skeptical Albertans their best prospects lie with a united Canada. He and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, who called the Oct. 19 vote, are touting a new pipeline agreement to send western oil abroad. The effort may work with some swing voters, but the hard-core separatists aren’t likely to buy it.

“It will never happen because Canada’s a communist country and there will be 24 years of paperwork,” Phillips says of the pipeline project. “It’s all lies.”

The separatists have good reason to think the Trump administration could be an ally. In January, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Alberta a “natural partner for the U.S.” while referencing the province’s “great resources.”

“People are talking,” Bessent told conservative podcaster Jack Posobiec, nodding to the separatist movement. “People want sovereignty. They want what the U.S. has got.”

Rath says he has requested introductions to the U.S. Treasury Department and major financial institutions like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to build a day one feasibility plan for Albertan independence, though it’s unclear if he has had any such conversations.

The Alberta Prosperity Project, however, has taken three trips to Washington, D.C., and Rath insists the group has met with “very senior level” officials, who he says have taken their information directly to the White House.

A State Department spokesperson said the department “regularly meets with a wide range of representatives. We do not anticipate any future meetings, and all department engagements are at our sole discretion.”

“As Ambassador to Canada Pete Hoekstra has said, the vote is a decision for the people of Alberta,” the spokesperson added.

Bessent made his comments amid heightened U.S.-Canada tensions; days earlier Carney had argued at Davos that middle powers needed to form new coalitions after the Trump-fueled “rupture” in the global order.

That episode inflamed the pro-America separatists, as did Carney’s subsequent use of the phrase “new world order” during a January trip to China to sign new energy and trade agreements. That phrase is catnip to those who fear the creation of a global government, and more conspiracy theories quickly seeped into Alberta’s separatist movement through Facebook groups and YouTube videos claiming Carney is steering the country toward communism and against the U.S.

But it’s also true that Alberta’s grievances with Ottawa began long before Carney jostled with Trump. They have been passed down for generations, rooted in a belief that the federal government has ignored, exploited or misunderstood the province since its founding.

Today, that resentment has become deeply personal. Separatists point to what they see as federal overreach and clean energy policies that have made life more expensive and undermined their economy.

Federalists, meanwhile, are alarmed that neighbors, friends, family, and sometimes even spouses, are “willing to betray their country,” in Kenney’s words.

Former Conservative MP Damien Kurek cautions against dismissing separatists as traitors. Instead, he argues, politicians should ask why so many Albertans feel abandoned by the federation.

For Kurek, one of the defining moments of Albertan anger came in 2021, when U.S. President Joe Biden cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline on his first day in office by revoking its cross-border permit.

The ripple effects spread throughout Kurek’s riding. He says mechanics had fewer oilfield trucks to repair and restaurants served fewer meals, while roadside motels sat empty and young families put off buying homes.

But what many Albertans remember most isn’t Biden’s decision. It’s the belief that Ottawa, under then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, failed to fight it.

“I was very frustrated with the Liberals, including many Liberals that told me that I just needed to accept it, that are still on the Liberal Cabinet benches today,” says Kurek, whose riding included Hardisty, Canada’s largest oil pipeline hub.

That moment reinforced a deeper belief among many of his constituents, he says: If our national leader won’t stand up for us when we need him most, the very “promise of Canada” was in question.

Many in rural Alberta feel like their communities live or die by decisions made thousands of miles away in Ottawa. But this was just another chapter in a much longer story.

Kenney, the former Alberta premier, traces Western alienation back to the province’s creation in 1905. He says Ottawa initially treated Alberta more like a colony than an equal partner, including delaying provincial control over its natural resources.

The modern separatist movement then took shape in the 1980s after former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau introduced the National Energy Program, which raised taxes on oil companies and oil exports and shifted more of the industry’s profits from Alberta to Ottawa. The unpopular program was dismantled five years later, but Albertans didn’t forget.

When Trudeau’s son, Justin, became prime minister in 2015, his government introduced environmental policies that Alberta’s oil industry argued made it more difficult and expensive to build pipelines, expand production and attract investment.

Albertans’ sense of alienation also extends beyond energy policy. Many feel their votes carry less weight than those cast in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec, since that’s where federal elections are often decided. After repeatedly electing Conservative MPs only to see Liberal governments take power in Ottawa, some have concluded federal elections have little effect on Alberta’s fortunes.

That frustration is compounded by Canada’s equalization program, enshrined in the Constitution, which redistributes federal tax revenue to help less wealthy provinces fund public services. Because Alberta’s oil-rich economy is one of the country’s wealthiest, it has never qualified for those payments. At the same time, Ottawa collects more in federal taxes from Albertans than it spends in the province, which reinforces a decades-old belief that Alberta bankrolls the rest of the country while getting too little in return.

“It’s very scary to see what they’re trying to take from us, what they’re trying to control,” says Trina, a Red Deer resident who volunteers with a separatist group and who did not give her last name. “It leaves us with a lot of uncertainty. Nothing feels secure.”

Carney is aware of the challenge ahead. Even as he has warned Alberta against stumbling into its own Brexit disaster, he has sought to address the province’s most tangible concerns.

Last November, Carney signed an agreement with Alberta to work toward a new oil pipeline and soon after, delivered a sobering wake-up call to his Liberal caucus behind closed doors.

To the surprise of MPs in the room, Carney opened his remarks by addressing the specter of Alberta separatism, framing the pipeline deal not just as an economic win, but as a strategic necessity to keep the country together.

“He was emotional,” a Liberal MP, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal party matters, told POLITICO at the time. “You could hear a pin drop.”

It was a clear sign from the prime minister that the separatist movement was shaping his thinking — and federal policy.

“This was a no-BS kind of thing,” the Liberal lawmaker said. “This was coming from someone who grew up in that province, who understands that province, and who was very worried about the feelings of alienation.”

The speech also marked Carney’s first step in persuading Liberal supporters — many of whom had embraced Justin Trudeau’s aggressive climate agenda — that pipelines, increased oil production and energy exports were essential to Canada’s economic and geopolitical future.

Carney has made a similar pitch to the broader public.

“In Canada, we are strongest when we are united — when we look out for each other and ensure that no child, no family, no one is left behind,” Carney said in a speech to Canadians and his Cabinet in January. “This spirit of solidarity and generosity helps define us as a nation.”

Nine months later, Carney has backed up that message with action. Since taking office, he has rolled back several Trudeau-era environmental policies despite pushback from some Liberal MPs, including former environment minister Steven Guilbeault, who is leaving politics after accusing his party of “backsliding” on climate action. Last month, the West Coast oil pipeline got closer to fruition, after Carney’s government announced its partnership with Alberta would amount to a C$35 billion project in a bid to boost the province’s energy sector.

The policy shift is part of Ottawa’s effort to encourage federalists to send a strong message on Oct. 19, that they want to remain in Canada. In July, Carney made three trips to Alberta, two of which included photo-ops with Smith, Alberta’s premier. Both have been framing their pipeline pact as proof that Canada still works, for all its people, even as many separatists argue it comes a decade too late.

Federalists say the biggest risk in the vote isn’t necessarily that Alberta endorses moving toward separation; polls show about 30 percent of Albertans want independence. It’s that federalists don’t show up to vote since they assume victory. If turnout is low, a highly motivated separatist base could post an unexpectedly strong result, giving the movement new legitimacy and driving away private investment in the province.

“We can all think that the worst isn’t going to happen. We could put signs on our lawn and write poetry about Canadian unity. But honestly, unless people show up at the polls on Oct. 19, we could lose this referendum question,” says Eleanor Olszewski, a federal Liberal cabinet minister from Alberta.

Back outside the Whistle Stop Cafe, the conversations at Albertans’ Day drift from claims Carney wasn’t democratically elected, to beliefs the pandemic was orchestrated by global elites, to how a federal ban on assault-style firearms is meant to stop Canadians from rising up against the federal government.

One vendor sells knives, stun batons, tactical shovels, night-vision glasses and body shields, encouraging Albertans to protect themselves. Pickup trucks and SUVs are modified to look like sheriff’s vehicles with “Republic of Alberta” decals. Some separatists show off homemade T-shirts that read “skid mark Carney” or “pure-blood warriors” showcasing a white baby in the paws of a lion.

The antipathy toward Carney and enthusiasm for Trump even has some separatists ready to defend Trump’s wave of tariffs against Canadian goods.

Keith Walker, who is from a small farming community in southern Alberta, believes the only thing preventing Canada from becoming a communist country under Carney is Trump’s trade war.

Canada, in his view, is part of a group of governments that Trump is trying to dismantle alongside Venezuela, Cuba and Iran. “That’s why that’s happening,” Walker says of Trump’s tariffs; he and a friend are both wearing Trump 2024 hats.

The separatists’ longstanding grievances with Ottawa aren’t occurring in a vacuum. Populist forces have reshaped the globe over the last decade, amid Brexit and Trump and the pandemic, and they are now converging in Alberta.

Separatism has become a right-wing uni-cause.

“It is a perfect umbrella,” Kenney says, “for every obsession, paranoia and anxiety on the right.”

There's two things you should know about me, your intrepid reviewer: I hate the feature creep associated with modern power banks, and I love shaving grams off the gear I carry when backpacking, bikepacking, and trail running. So imagine my delight when Nitecore released a new generation of its ultralight NB10000 battery. After a few weeks with it I can confidently say: Haribo be damned!

The $83.95 NB10000 Gen 4 weighs just 146 grams, according to my scale, and measures 1.45 x 11.6 x 4.68cm (0.57 x 4.57 x 1.84 inches), according to Nitecore's spec sheet. That makes it the lightest and most compact 10,000mAh power bank I can find. Even when …

Read the full story at The Verge.

BERLIN — Europe’s reserves of natural gas are running dangerously low, risking fresh energy woes if the Iran war rages on and cold spells drive up heating demand over winter.

But the continent’s top energy user doesn’t seem too bothered.

Germany is the EU’s biggest vulnerability because its sheer size means gas shortfalls there could be felt in neighboring countries, driving up prices across the bloc if it fails to restore its reserves.

That’s prompted growing calls for Berlin to do the unthinkable: intervene outright to direct its state-controlled energy giants to buy gas at any price, abandoning years of free-market doctrine on energy policy.

So far, the government has refused to budge, even as it falls short of EU targets and faces the risk of physical supply shortages as early as November. It’s a gamble that the markets will figure everything out, even as war and hot weather distort traditional incentives and upend global supply chains.

“Storage levels are not only exceptionally low for this time of year, but historically low,” said Sebastian Heinermann, the managing director of Germany’s top gas storage association, INES.

But Germany, he warned, is still relying on an outdated, market-oriented approach to refill its reserves, even when there are “hardly any market-economic incentives left.”

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, EU countries have been required to hit gas storage targets of 90 percent of national capacity by winter to prevent serious supply shortfalls. The EU lowered that target to 80 percent following the outbreak of the Iran war to prevent panic buying.

Typically, refilling is the responsibility of traders and utilities, which buy gas cheap in the summer to store and then sell in the winter for a profit. But buyers say higher summer prices as a result of the Iran war and climate change have upended that dynamic, leaving gas reserves across the bloc at around 58 percent of national capacity, 16 percentage points below the five-year historical average and the lowest level since 2011. 

The low reserves have already added to the increased pressure on gas prices linked to renewed tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, with the European natural gas benchmark now consistently higher than it was for the first four months of the Iran war.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has said the bloc faces no winter supply risks. But a report by energy analytics firm Rapidan projects that reserves will rise to only 65 percent of total storage capacity by November, arguing that hitting the EU’s target by winter won’t be possible without “materially higher prices.” 

That risk has been exacerbated, analysts say, by the bloc’s move in recent years to replace its long-term supply deals with Russia with short-term purchases of globally traded liquefied natural gas. These seaborne cargoes are highly mobile and go to the highest bidder — leaving buyers more exposed to volatility on international markets, especially in the wake of the loss of key supplies from Qatar and rising demand in Asia.

Germany, the bloc’s largest gas consumer, has seen its reserves fill up even more slowly than others, in part thanks to its more hands-off, market-led approach to restocking than many of its neighbors. As a result, reserves stood at only 47 percent of national capacity in August, according to the latest data — the lowest fill level since records began. That’s especially worrying as the country’s reserves are important for the bloc as a whole, representing over 20 percent of the EU’s storage capacity. 

Nevertheless, Berlin is staying the course. While its energy ministry has acknowledged the country’s historically low reserves, it has refused to intervene to direct its main state-controlled gas buyers, SEFE and Uniper, to buy gas at current prices to ensure its targets are met, instead of waiting for market conditions to improve.

“It is the responsibility of companies and traders to fill the storage facilities for the winter,” a spokesperson for the German energy ministry told POLITICO. “Government-led filling of the storage facilities would further constrain the gas market and drive prices even higher. The supply situation over the coming months would actually deteriorate.”

Whether this is the right approach will become clearer by winter, said Laurent Ruseckas, a senior gas analyst at S&P Global. If temperatures are unseasonably low, traders may be forced to buy additional supplies at late notice, driving up prices, especially if the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. On the other hand, intervening could raise prices prematurely if winter turns out to be mild.

“If you start buying now to get storage to some politically predetermined level you’re making prices higher now to get insurance that you won’t get higher prices in the winter when it’s cold,” said Ruseckas.

Germany’s reluctance to move quickly also highlights the difficulty the EU’s fragmented energy sector has in competing with more centralized Asian economies that have acted more quickly to secure supplies, consistently outbidding European countries even as their reserves run low.

Others warn that physical supply strains are also possible. Heinermann, of INES, warned that even filling the country’s reserves to 76 percent of capacity — which SEFE says is achievable — would not necessarily meet its supply needs if winter is “exceptionally cold.” That could ripple out to neighboring countries to which Germany is treaty-bound to provide emergency gas assistance, including Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Denmark.

Heinermann called on the German government to encourage faster restocking by lowering network charges at storage facilities or abolishing the conversion levy, fees imposed for the conversion of gas on national grids. Berlin has already unveiled plans for a new emergency gas stockpile, but that will only cover 10 percent of the country’s gas capacity and kick off officially next summer.

It’s no surprise that other major gas consumers have already waded into the private sector. The Netherlands, another free-market champion suffering from low gas reserves, earlier this summer allocated €1.2 billion for its state energy company, EBN, to more swiftly top up its reserves. 

But Berlin’s energy giants are sticking to their guns — for now.

A spokesperson for SEFE told POLITICO that even though “international conflicts” could weigh on European storage levels, the 70 percent target “remains achievable” without intervention. He pointed out that 78 percent of German storage capacity has already been booked, though acknowledged that doesn’t necessarily translate to actual volumes of gas stored. 

Regulatory measures could be useful if “necessary” but could distort markets and increase costs, he added, without specifying what.

A Uniper spokesperson was less confident, warning it would be “increasingly challenging to reach the target storage levels before the winter season starts” at the current rate of filling. But she too stopped short of calling for intervention, arguing instead for better incentives for refilling — mirroring growing calls from gas lobbyists in Brussels to scrap the rules outright.

President Donald Trump on Thursday announced tariffs on polysilicon and its related products, in his administration’s latest attempt to eliminate China’s choke points in the global supply chain for solar panels and semiconductors.

But Trump’s directive won’t take effect until Dec. 4 — well after November’s midterm elections and a planned September summit between Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping — as the administration grapples with voters complaining of high prices and fragile trade negotiations with China.

“This will bring the supply chain here,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said of the order on Thursday alongside Trump at the White House. “We’ve got the industry here, it’s too small, and it’s going to explode.”

Because polysilicon is used in semiconductors and solar panels, it’s essential for military hardware and everyday electronics like cell phones and laptops, in addition to the world’s fastest-growing energy source.

The order imposes a 15 percent tariff on imported polysilicon and its derivatives, as well as minimum prices for imports of polysilicon, polysilicon ingots and wafers, solar cells and solar modules.

It also includes a clause intended to prevent companies from stockpiling those materials between now and December, authorizing Customs and Border Protection to restrict imports if it suspects an importer is attempting to dodge the higher duties.

Trump’s order is the result of a Commerce Department investigation launched last July into national security risks in the polysilicon supply chain, as part of a broader effort to shift supply chains away from China for multiple industries including wind turbines and robotics.

China has a near-monopoly on the production of polysilicon, according to S&P Global. But recent U.S. efforts to limit key areas of trade with China have already drawn a backlash from Beijing, which earlier this week implemented new controls on drone exports to the U.S.

The White House emphasized the order’s impact on domestic semiconductor production, a key focus as the U.S. looks to build out infrastructure related to artificial intelligence. Trump said the U.S. will “have a big percentage of the chip business by the time I leave office.”

But Thursday’s order may have a big impact on the solar industry, according to Jon Toomey, president of the pro-tariff Coalition for a Prosperous America organization.

“This proclamation delivers the most significant global trade protection action for the American polysilicon and solar industry in the modern era,” Toomey said in a statement. “For the first time, the United States is protecting the entire solar supply chain with a single action — and rewarding the manufacturers that build here — while taking a significant step to bolster the domestic semiconductor supply chain.”