It's been a while since I've done a non-political nerd thread. And I wish I could do them more often! So let's do a palette cleanse to talk about this article from WaPo that is technically true, but deeply misinformative about US electric markets. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro… 1. Read the whole article, but the big problem is this paragraph. It's true that electricity isn't like other markets, but not because it has high fixed costs. It's because it is a regulated market that isn't subject to those forces you learn in Economics 101.

Mike Johnson refuses to open the House. Refuses to do oversight. Refuses to defend the Constitutional rights that only protect so long as they are enforced. Refuses to stand up to child predators. So we organized our own hearing in Chicago yesterday. And if you’re objecting to this on the grounds that I accused Trump of being a child predator… well, you can choose to follow Mike Johnsons example and protect child predators too. Or you could insist on the release of the Epstein files that might clear his name.

If you care about the rule of law, you should furious that Rep. McIver is forced to defend herself against trumped-up, bogus charges today while so many legitimate criminals are being ignored or pardoned by Trump & his cronies. thehill.com/regulation/cou… First, it is INSANE that Mike Johnson accused McIver of "inappropriate behavior" and sits silently in the face of this. abcnews.go.com/Politics/girlf…

This is disgusting. And I can GUARANTEE you that lots of dumps are going to come out about lots of Republican electeds who are way too close to the people in these texts. politico.com/news/2025/10/1… This is a good crowdsourcing project. Suggest you look through for names in your state, see who you can connect them to. For example, there’s this guy.

Stephen Miller is trying to provoke people into responding to the government's unlawful use of force because he wants his own Reichstag Fire. This is an old, and very dangerous playbook. Take video. Resist peacefully. But don't give these fascists what they want. Abraham Lincoln famously said that "in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail. Against it, nothing can succeed." The crimes they are committing are horrific but keep that public sentiment in mind: neither their agenda nor their M.O. is popular.

If you were under the impression that Trump & Witkoff’s abuse of presidential power with CZ Zhao was the only situation where the Trump family was violating the Constitution’s emoluments clause with a crypto criminal, we need to now move onto Justin Sun. Buckle up:

https://twitter.com/seancasten/status/1968104652878299508

1. Sun created the Tron blockchain which, according to some estimates has housed the majority of the illicit (read: money laundering) crypto activity. trmlabs.com/resources/blog…

Just updated my regular look at what power sources are driving the US electric sector on a % basis. Nice cause for optimism. Renewables still growing. Coal use slightly increasing recently but all at the expense of natural gas - which is just economic switching. e.g, markets are still preferentially deploying and dispatching in least cost order. (In non econ speak: people prefer cheap energy). The push to export LNG has predictably pushed up domestic gas costs giving coal a slight preference on the margin but renewables still win.

Here’s a brief story, with receipts about Trump administration corruption and crypto industry collusion that WILL be investigated once the majority of the House is filled with people who take ethics and the Constitution seriously: 1. First, in November 2023, Binance (a large crypto exchange) pled guilty to money laundering and agreed to pay a $4 BILLION fine. Also, their founder CZ Zhao was sentenced to 4 months in prison. justice.gov/archives/opa/p…

Lisa Cook is ALLEGED to have committed crimes by a man who was CONVICTED of 34 felonies. Due process matters. A country based on the rule of law that attracts foreign capital because of that promise should be steadfast in opposition to her termination. When I said yesterday that this was only about racism it kicked up a nest of trolls. But the second part is the one that hurts us all - white, black, racist and tolerant alike. We will all be poorer if the world loses faith in the US economy.

https://x.com/SeanCasten/status/1960135861892464645

Van Drew is of course full of shit. He's a disposable sycophant who gets some TV time prior to his disposal. But just to humor him, let's pretend for a moment that you are Dr. Evil and are setting out to tamper with our democracy. How would you do it? (thread)

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1957917888842449209

1. It's worth going through this exercise because if you want to catch a criminal, you have to think like a criminal. So assume you have nefarious intent but want to minimize your chances of getting caught and spend the fewest possible resources to flip the most possible votes.

Scott Bessent is a smart guy. But he only got the job as Treasury Secretary because Trump knows how to identify people who will roll over for him. Which is to say, he knows better. So let’s fact check his oped in today’s WaPo, shall we? washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/… 1. First, if you want to understand what the crypto legislation that passed the House will actually do to financial markets, here are the facts.

https://twitter.com/repcasten/status/1945522762384032092

Just learned that Mike Johnson, before coming to Congress claimed to be the Dean of a law school named after a pedophile. Which may explain a few things. Notably…
… he then voted to table a resolution I introduced to compel the release of the Matt Gaetz ethics report, which also included significant allegations of underage sexual abuse. clerk.house.gov/Votes/2024490

This is anti-scientific, immoral and economically irresponsible. I say this without hyperbole - when the history of this era is written, Donald Trump will have been responsible for more deaths than Stalin, Mao and Hitler combined. nytimes.com/2025/07/22/cli… Millions, if not billions will die if we don't address climate change; some will survive but if rivers keep moving, coasts keep eroding, fires keep burning we will be forced to become migratory. That is a choice.

I’m not wild about the cynicism here, partly because it blames all of Congress for things the Republican majority is jamming through, but more because it assumes that our founders actually created a Representative democracy. Some morning musings: washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/… 1. To the first point, there are a host of issues that are squarely in the Democratic platform that regularly pass the House when Dems are in power but are blocked by Rs. Women’s rights, sensible gun control, campaign finance reform. All are supported by strong majorities.

If you've tuned into CSPAN anytime in the last 2 hours and found yourself slapping the side of the TV, wondering why the screen isn't changing, here's what's happening... 1. Lots of us including yours truly got in really late last night to vote on a bill that would slash taxes for billionaires, kick 17 million people off their health insurance, force lots of kids, seniors and veterans to go hungry AND is really unpopular. It's an easy "no" vote.

Because a number of folks keep asking, let’s talk about why the Democrats overwhelmingly voted to table Al Green’s motion to impeach Donald Trump. TL;DR: if you want Trump to be out of office ASAP, this was the right call, right now. Read on for the explanation… 1. Shortly after my wife and I got engaged we took a vacation to Wyoming. In the course of a horseback trip, our guide, upon learning of our upcoming nuptials, prior to offering me some advice said “I’ve been married 5 times, so I think I know a little something about women”.

This is not about the merits of Iran’s nuclear program. No president has the authority to bomb another country that does not pose an imminent threat to the US without the approval of Congress. This is an unambiguous impeachable offense. I’m not saying we have the votes to impeach. I’m saying that you DO NOT do this without Congressional approval and if Johnson doesn’t grow a spine and learn to be a real boy tomorrow we have a BFing problem that puts our very Republic at risk.

This is the reason why our Constitution has an emoluments clause. And every day that the House GOP refuses to do any oversight of the Trump family's grift is another day that our Republic gets a little more fragile. Thread: ft.com/content/13a6ce… 1. I've been raising a stink about Sun and Trump ever since he fronted $30M to World Liberty Financial, Trump's shady AF defi platform. thedefiant.io/news/tokens/ju…

Liz Truss lasted 49 days as Prime Minister. For context, that's less than 20% of the time that Kevin McCarthy lasted as speaker. And yet she - like him - thinks she has some wisdom to offer from that experience. (TL;DR: she's learned nothing.) washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/… As I said on the floor earlier this week, mediocre businesses hate competition for the same reason mediocre politicians hate DEI. Because they can't win in a meritocracy. But economic growth depends on competition - in labor and energy markets.

Watching the Senate cloture vote on the (highly misnamed) Genius Act and keep thinking back to a conversation I had with a Senior official in the Biden WH 4 years ago. I asked him what he thought about crypto and he said “how do you define money?” Thread: 1. It was a very Socratic process, but goes to the heart of the rot in the crypto space. The whole thesis is that it’s currency. But it isn’t, and never will be, for the same reason that gold, fine art and pork bellies aren’t money.

This is scary and highlights something that's painfully obvious in DC: smart people either don't want to work in this administration or are being turned away. But effective government - esp when crisis strikes - depends on having smart people around. washingtonpost.com/business/2025/… And that's huge own-goal. There is a deep pool of talent in DC that wants to work in the WH. Not the electeds (no disrespect intended) but the people they hire. Because while winning an election depends on a whole host of factors, hiring staff is an embarrassment of riches.