Show that a stupid shit would build a stupid pile of shit..........

I rode Elon Musk's Vegas Loop, the worst transit system on Earth

Column: SFGATE managing editor Katie Dowd takes a trip on the least efficient form of transit on the Vegas Strip

By Katie Dowd

In 1863, the world’s first underground railway opened in London. On its first day, nearly 40,000 thrilled Brits made the short, speedy journey between Paddington and Farringdon. The future of transportation had arrived.

One hundred and sixty-three years later, I was at my desk in San Francisco, clicking around the Vegas Loop map, trying to figure out where the world’s dumbest form of transportation could take me. 

In 2016, billionaire Elon Musk decided he was sick of traffic. Because Musk believes every thought he’s ever had is the first of its kind, he decided to revolutionize transportation. His mission was to build underground highways, creating a tunnel system below surface streets that would zip people around in a way that congested, outdated freeways could not. Las Vegas, which has never seen a gimmick it didn’t love, signed on to become the first American city with a Loop. 

The scale is ambitious to the point of stupidity. Once its 104 stations and 68 miles of tunnels are complete, the Vegas Loop site says it “will serve up to 90,000 passengers per hour.” About 642,000 people live in Las Vegas, plus an additional 110,000 tourists on any given day. That means every single resident and tourist need to ride the Loop multiple times per day to average 90,000 passengers an hour. For reference, the Tokyo Metro moves 6.5 million people a day around an area with 33 million residents. You do the math. 

So far, the Vegas Loop has opened just nine stations, five of which connect the Las Vegas Convention Center. From a sixth station, Encore, travelers can go only to the convention center. Three more stations serve Westgate, Resorts World and Fontainebleau. As it turns out, the ground below cities is not a vast, empty space. It’s already full of infrastructure like sewer systems, electrical lines, gas pipelines, flood-control tunnels — there’s a reason you call 811 before you start digging around in your yard. Musk, who’s no fan of regulation, holds the stance that it’s better to pay for penalties than follow the rules. As a result, the Loop has been plagued by issues, including allegations of worker injuries, chemical burns and “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels.  

To supplement this sad little system, the Loop added $12.50 rides to the airport. But because there’s no tunnel there yet, it’s just a regular route on regular surface streets. Oh sorry, were you imagining a train? Autonomous cars? Nope. The Loop is operated by human drivers in Teslas. Elon Musk is creating a race of mole people driving endless circles below Las Vegas. 

I was in Vegas the last week of May, so I figured I’d give the Loop a try. On its site, you can prebook tickets; despite the fact Tesla has an app, the Loop does not. When I clicked on “ride the Loop,” I was informed that six of the stations were closed because there was nothing going on at the convention center that day. Westgate, Resorts World and Fontainebleau, however, were open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., a completely reasonable schedule given most Vegas tourists are tucked back in their beds by 8:30 p.m. 

A quick glance at the map showed that there are no loops. There are lines that largely do not connect with one another. Unless you book an airport ride, the farthest south you can go is the Encore, which, if you know anything about the geography of the Strip, is not far. The only logical way to test the system was by booking a $4.50 one-way ticket from Resorts World — misspelled Resort World on the Loop map — to Westgate, a trip of about a mile. Adding insult to injury, I was warned that my “ride may be shared.” After paying with a credit card, I was texted a QR code with no further information on how to hail a car. “Enjoy the ride on the Vegas Loop!” the text said. But … how?

Because almost no lines, let alone loops, of the system exist yet, my Loop adventure began with a Lyft from my hotel on the south end of the Strip. After being dropped off at Resorts World, I followed signs pointing to VEGAS LOOP.  An elevator took me down to Basement Level 2, and I found myself in the service sector of a parking garage. Delivery trucks rumbled by while I looked for a place to scan my QR code. Instead, I found a sign with a station map. At the bottom of the sign was the text “Press button to request a ride” with an arrow pointing down. There was a silver button. Surely it wasn’t this stupid, I thought. But with no other option, I pressed it. Luckily, I looked up quickly enough to notice the bottom of the screen now said my ride would be arriving at approximately 9:59 a.m. I was, once again, given no additional information.

I took a seat on a bench, stunned. What happened when a car drove up? How would I know if it was mine? What if a dozen other people showed up and pressed the button a dozen more times? Would we all behave honorably and take our rides in the order we pressed the button? There were four small benches and one button. Ninety thousand people AN HOUR were going to do this? While waiting, I thought about how people complain that billionaires are wasting money trying to go to space. I disagree. Put them all in a rocket and send them to Mars. 

At 9:59, a white Tesla Model Y pulled up. “Um, hi,” I said, awkwardly showing my phone to the driver. “Is this QR code OK?”

He said it was, and I hopped in. I went to show him my phone again, and he took it out of my hand without asking permission. As he lifted it to a scanner on his console, he turned on the camera and snapped a photo of the floor. Both of us now flustered, I had to pull up the code a second time, praying that none of the friends I’d texted about my day so far responded: “loop looks stupid lol.” 

Code scanned, we took off. And then stopped. The thing about the 12-foot-wide tunnels is that they can’t accommodate two lanes of traffic. So we paused for over a minute, waiting for the car coming in the opposite direction to clear the tunnel. The driver, who was, to be fair, absolutely lovely, cheerfully explained to me that the tunnels are wider than they appear. This did the opposite of reassure me. I’ve seen the claustrophobic videos of Teslas lined up in the tunnel during busy conventions. “Wider than they appear” seemed extremely relative. 

Finally given the all-clear, we took off into the void. As we went through a rainbow light-up tube, all I could think about was a crash. If the Tesla clipped the wall, if a battery caught fire, I was toast. A crash would block the entire tunnel. God forbid there were any other cars behind us; they’d have to back out to avoid it. After a minute or so, we reached a junction where several tunnels branched off in different directions. It looked exactly like the sewer system in “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” And based on the appearance of a “mystery green pond” at one of the dig sites, it’s possible they really are growing a new Donatello down there.

Although the lights made it seem like we were speeding, a quick look at the dashboard revealed we hovered around 35 mph — a far cry from Musk’s initial concept of a pneumatic tube system where humans would be flung 700 mph through the tubes. A quick check of Google Maps showed the route we were taking, on city streets, took 6 minutes. As we emerged into the sunshine at Westgate, I checked my timer. Six minutes. I’d saved zero minutes. 

I bid farewell to my friendly driver — there’s no tip system on the Loop, so that does save a few dollars — and stepped out of the car. I was once again astonished to see what the Loop considers a “station.” At Westgate, there were no benches and no shade. Waiting for a ride in the heat of summer would be torture, and considering it was just a stretch of sidewalk near the Westgate hotel porte-cochere, the prospect of hundreds of Loop riders an hour getting into and out of cars in an organized fashion was unimaginable. 

Ready to be done with this insultingly stupid system, I walked over to the nearby Westgate monorail station. I purchased a ticket at a kiosk, headed up to the platform and waited a few minutes for the next train. The area was covered and cool, with clearly marked doors. When the train arrived, dozens of us loaded into it in seconds. 

As we glided over the sad Loop station, I could see new tunnels being built. One will someday connect to Harry Reid International Airport, which, at least, is a place people want to go. The train continued, stopping at various convenient points along the Strip. My train was driverless. It was filled with people. 

As I looked out onto the Spring Mountains, ancient and magnificent, I thought about how true wisdom is knowing when innovation is unnecessary. Some things, like subways, are fundamental for a reason. We figured them out in 1863, and there’s simply no reason to start from scratch. But I suppose there are two types of people in this world: those who gaze at the mountains and see their beauty, and the ones who think, “I could drill a hole through that.”

Vela Supernova Remnant

The explosion is over, but the consequences continue. About twelve thousand years ago, a relatively normal star in the constellation Vela suddenly exploded, creating a strange point of light briefly visible to humans living near the beginning of recorded history. The outer layers of the star crashed into the interstellar medium, driving a shock wave that is still visible today. The featured image, taken piecemeal over 60 hours from the Khomas Region of Namibia, captures some of that filamentary and gigantic shock in visible light, with details highlighted by hydrogen (red) and oxygen (blue) emissions. As gas flies away from the detonated star, it decays and reacts with the interstellar medium, producing light in many different colors and energy bands. Remaining at the center of the Vela Supernova Remnant is a pulsar, a star as dense as nuclear matter that spins around more than ten times in a single second.

Yes! Stop fucking up!

‘Why are we talking about this?’: Democrats are furious that the Bidens won’t go away

Jill Biden’s new memoir is the latest of many pain points for Democrats who want to move on from 2024.

By Lisa Kashinsky, Dasha Burns and Andrew Howard

Democrats want to move on from 2024. The Bidens won’t let them.

Former first lady Jill Biden put a glaring spotlight back on the debate that ended her husband’s political career while promoting her new memoir. Former President Joe Biden is drawing attention again to his audio interviews with Special Counsel Robert Hur as he sues the Justice Department to prevent their release. And his scandal-ridden son Hunter Biden, whose past Republicans repeatedly weaponized on the campaign trail, is making headlines again — this time for appearing on a podcast with flame-throwing conspiracy theorist Candace Owens.

Jill Biden’s stunning admission this week that she thought her embattled husband was having a stroke on the debate stage in June 2024 stood in stark contrast to her positive spin and staunch defense in the moment. And it ripped open barely healed wounds from Democrats’ disastrous effort to hold the White House, setting off a fresh round of backward-looking fingerpointing less than a week after the party’s botched autopsy of the 2024 presidential election.

Leading Democrats say it’s an unnecessary distraction as they push to keep their party focused on a critical midterm — and what voters truly care about.

“We don’t need to be distracted by what the DNC says about the autopsy. I don’t need to be distracted about anyone’s book,” New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, told reporters on the sidelines of a Democratic National Committee meeting in Washington on Thursday. “What I need to do is to focus on making a difference in the lives of people. And that’s what I think they’re getting really frustrated about, is all this nonsense. I don’t think the average Democratic voter, honestly, particularly in New Mexico, gives a damn about that book or the debate anymore.”

Lujan Grisham, who sat on the national advisory board for the 2024 Biden-Harris campaign, stressed that she didn’t mean “any disrespect” to Jill Biden and later said she is a “big Joe Biden fan.”

Still, Jill Biden’s confession that she was “frightened” by her husband’s debate performance landed with a thud among former Biden White House and campaign staffers who were told in the moment to treat the then-president’s halting and haphazard debate performance as little more than a blip.

Meghan Hays, a former special assistant to Joe Biden in the White House who left before the 2024 reelection bid, cautioned that the timing and context of the former first lady’s memoir risks dealing Democrats a setback at a time when they’re on an electoral hot streak.

“I think that they need to sell books, and I think that Dr. Biden wants her story out there,” she said on C-SPAN’s “Ceasefire,” hosted by POLITICO’s Dasha Burns.

“It is not welcome from Democrats,” Hays said. “We have a lot of momentum in our favor … and when we get pulled back into conversations about age and the election in ‘24, it’s never gonna be a good place for Democrats. I think it’s a tough place to be.”

Hays wasn’t the only former Biden official who expressed frustration.

“My reaction was basically: ‘Welcome to the club.’ Every person across America and in your administration wondered the same thing, and instead of acknowledging that, we were told for days to ignore it — that it was just a bad night, just an anomaly,” said another former Biden White House staffer, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Still, several prominent Democratic strategists, former party leaders and past Biden-Harris officials downplayed the significance of this latest bout of 2024 relitigating, dismissing it as little more than white noise that wouldn’t have much effect on the party’s prospects in 2026 or 2028.

“Let everyone finish venting about ‘24 now and get it out of their systems,” former Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who narrowly lost her reelection that year as Trump carried her state, said in a text message to POLITICO, adding that “voters won’t remember any of this in 2028.”

But, she added, “I am a bit unhappy about the DNC’s delayed release of the autopsy of 2024. We don’t need those reminders in writing and we certainly don’t need to give the Republicans any more oppo to remind voters of everything we did wrong in 2024.”

A spokesperson for the Bidens declined to comment. A former Biden White House and campaign staffer, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said in a text message that the party writ large has moved on.

“While it feels painful and traumatic for those who had to deal with this at the time, the public is focused on the current president and related concerns: high gas prices, immigration concerns, [Jeffrey] Epstein,” the person said.

The renewed firestorm around the two-year-old debate comes as other moves by the Biden clan force Democrats to again confront his decline in real time.

Joe Biden is suing the Trump administration in an effort to block the release of recorded interviews with a ghostwriter that were obtained by the Justice Department during a now-shuttered probe of whether he had mishandled classified information. But his effort to stop the tapes and transcripts from going public is dredging up another painful encounter that derailed his second term hopes.

Hur chose not to charge the president in that investigation because he believed jurors would likely see Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory,” a moment that set off a political firestorm. The audio of Hur’s interviews with Biden, released last year, backed that up.

As Biden tries to keep those tapes under wraps, his son made recent moves to draw more attention to himself and his family.

Hunter Biden has triggered a raft of headlines in recent days after he taped a podcast with Owens, the conspiratorial conservative influencer who has repeatedly attacked the Biden family and the former president’s mental capacity. In the interview, Owens promised not to disparage Joe Biden and even commended Hunter Biden for defending his father. But the widespread media coverage still generated backlash within the party.

Some Democrats are simply ready to sweep the Bidens into the dustbin of history so their party can move forward.

“Nobody wants to relitigate the worst debate performance since the Greek Republic. Why are we talking about this? Why are we talking about Hunter Biden? Why is Hunter Biden talking about Hunter Biden?” said Pete Giangreco, a longtime Democratic strategist who worked on Barack Obama’s campaigns but was not involved in Joe Biden’s or Kamala Harris’ bids.

“Your time has passed, move on. … The Republicans and all their super PACs are going to outspend us three-to-one, four-to-one — that’s what we need to be focused on,” he added.

But the Bidens — and Harris — show no signs of slinking back into the shadows. Harris, who released a book last year criticizing the president with whom she served, has signaled she could mount a third presidential bid in 2028. Joe Biden, for his part, has begun endorsing his former administration officials who are running in midterm contests; one of his picks, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, won her gubernatorial primary last week in the key swing state of Georgia. Jill Biden is embarking on a book tour to promote her work.

And other Democrats say they’re less frustrated at the Biden family itself than they are with their party’s most vocal factions, which descend into a circular firing squad with each drip of new information about 2024.

“I would rather not have to talk about it. But they both have the right to do what they’re doing,” Maria Cardona, a prominent Democratic strategist who backed Biden’s reelection bid, told POLITICO on the sidelines of the DNC meeting. “But we also are in control with how we react to it. So let them do their thing. They are no longer in control of the party. We don’t have to rehash every single word that comes out of it.”

Turned on Cornyn

The Texas GOP finally turned on Cornyn

The senator was a towering figure in Texas and national politics. His loss signals the end of an era for the Republican establishment.

By Liz Crampton

The storied career of Sen. John Cornyn came to a swift and decisive end at the hands of the GOP voters who once propelled him to power.

The senator was a towering figure in both national and Texas politics, known for his sober temperament, ability to cut deals and role in shaping the Senate GOP conference during the last four presidencies. Then, just about an hour after polls closed Tuesday, Cornyn lost his primary to Ken Paxton, a scandal-plagued MAGA darling who was boosted by President Donald Trump’s last-minute endorsement.

Cornyn’s defeat is rattling the establishment wing of the GOP, who viewed the brutal primary as a battle for the soul of the party. His supporters mourn his approaching absence in the Senate as another example of an institutionalist who fell victim to the rise of the populist right, what they see as the end of an era of compassionate conservatism.

“It just blows my mind that anybody could look at John Cornyn and somehow call him a secret liberal RINO,” said Josh Schroeder, mayor of Georgetown, Texas, and a Cornyn supporter. “If that guy can’t pass a conservative litmus test, who can?”

Cornyn’s loss stands to further deplete the corps of senators willing to work across the aisle on thorny policy issues, from immigration reform to gun safety — potentially contributing further to increasing polarization on Capitol Hill.

While Cornyn was not a frequent bipartisan operator in the mold of former Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) or Rob Portman (R-Ohio), he occasionally dug in to try and find compromise. His loss comes just ten days after fellow Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) lost his own primary to a Trump-backed challenger. Before that, it had been 14 years since the last elected senator lost a primary.

“He’s always been about delivering results for Texas rather than chasing headlines,” said Brian Walsh, Cornyn’s former communications director. “He respects the Senate as his institution and believes deeply in doing the work the right way, even when it’s difficult, or I would say politically inconvenient.”

His participation was often crucial as a member of the GOP leadership team and a key Republican fundraiser who operated with the tacit approval of Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who served as GOP leader for nearly all of Cornyn’s tenure.

Even though his supporters were long skeptical of his odds in the primary, Cornyn chose to go down swinging. He continued to run negative ads against Paxton throughout Texas until the last minute, harping on Paxton’s indiscretions. And he warned during an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday that the attorney general would be an “albatross” on the rest of the Republican ticket “likely to have a negative drag on the down ballot races in Texas, judges, local officials, House of Representatives, you name it.”

But those moral arguments did not sway a majority of primary voters — or Trump, who chose to endorse the attorney general and cited Cornyn’s decision to wait to endorse his third presidential run as proof he was insufficiently loyal.

Paxton’s supporters have long shrugged off his long trail of criminal and ethics investigations, impeachment by the state legislature and ongoing divorce, complete with accusations of infidelity, believing that his commitment to carrying the MAGA torch was more important than corruption allegations or a messy personal life. Paxton, for his part, has tried to focus the campaign on his qualifications for the Senate — and allegiance to Trump.

Paxton also benefitted from a strong anti-incumbency sentiment rippling throughout Texas. The GOP base was ripe for his argument that Cornyn was too enmeshed in the D.C. swamp to justify sending back to Washington even as those attacks bewildered Cornyn’s supporters, who pointed to his long record of voting for Trump’s agenda.

As majority whip during Trump’s first term, Cornyn helped shepherd the president’s signature tax bill across the finish line. In 2024, he fell just a few votes short of becoming majority leader against Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). And few Republicans have demonstrated fundraising prowess like Cornyn, the former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who has brought in more than $400 million throughout the course of his political career.

“Senate Republicans were very eager to see their friend and colleague continue, and Cornyn is one of those guys that would’ve raised money for his fellow incumbents. That’s unlikely to continue,” said a GOP Senate strategist, granted anonymity to speak candidly.

Trump, after weeks of standing on the sidelines, swooped in at the start of early voting to back Paxton, a reward for the attorney general supporting his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Cornyn, on the other hand, voted to certify the results.

Throughout the bitter campaign, Cornyn shifted to the right on some issues, adopting the fiery language of the MAGA base, which was seen as an effort to endear himself to Trump in a bid for his endorsement. Most prominently, he ran an ad declaring that “radical Islam is a bloodthirsty ideology.”

When Paxton cleverly declared that he would drop out of the primary if the Senate GOP killed the filibuster to pass the SAVE America Act, Trump’s priority election bill, that staved off the president’s planned endorsement of Cornyn. The Texas senator belatedly announced a reversal of his longheld support of the filibuster. And Cornyn introduced a bill two weeks ago to rename a major U.S. highway Interstate 47 to honor Trump. But it came far too late to save him.

But in a hyper-partisan environment, Cornyn’s decisions to occasionally work with Democrats doomed his standing among the rabidly conservative base in Texas.

Cornyn kept to the outskirts of high-stakes bipartisan immigration talks, such as the “Gang of Eight” that sought a comprehensive overhaul in 2013. But he later partnered with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona in exploring a narrower, border-security-focused bill.

He also found success reaching across the aisle in 2022 on gun safety legislation in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was modest relative to Democratic demands for stricter gun control. But it was still the most significant federal gun legislation in a generation — and it provoked intense backlash among hard-right voters in Texas.

“We both know that when we’re doing what’s right, it doesn’t matter what other people think,” Cornyn texted Sinema at the time.

Four years later, Paxton made the legislation a centerpiece of his campaign, accusing Cornyn of shepherding “the worst gun control bill in decades.”

Texas will now be swept up in an expensive and competitive Senate race, with Democrats amped to compete against Paxton, who they view as more vulnerable than Cornyn in a midterm environment favorable to their party. Many believe Democratic nominee and state Rep. James Talarico is their best shot in a generation at flipping a statewide seat.

Schroeder, who represents a small town in Talarico’s former district, said the Democrat is capable of pulling off a strong campaign: “He appears to be campaigning from the high road while the Democratic party is just slicing Paxton to shreds because they got a whole lot of ammunition.”

In the aftermath of the brutal primary, some Republicans fear that the state of the GOP is dire – and potentially unable to unify ahead of November with the possibility that some Cornyn supporters will sit out the race entirely or vote for Talarico. After the race was quickly called on Tuesday, Talarico posted on X: “To Senator Cornyn’s supporters: you have a place in our campaign.”

In his concession speech, Cornyn said he will support the GOP ticket: “I’ve fought the good fight, I’ve finished the race, and I’ve kept the faith.”

“I’ll have more to say later.”

86-47 flag

Anti-Trump group can keep flying ‘86-47’ flag near National Mall, judge rules

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss says the banner can’t plausibly be read to threaten violence against President Donald Trump.

By Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney

A federal judge has ordered the National Park Service not to interfere with a liberal organization’s display of an “86-47” flag at its ongoing demonstration near the National Mall, rejecting the contention that the phrase was meant as a coded call for violence against President Donald Trump.

U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss issued a two-week restraining order Monday at the request of Accountability Now USA, which has been protesting Trump for months at a site in front of the federal courthouse on Constitution Avenue.

Moss concluded that the group intended to advocate for Trump’s removal from office via impeachment, and that “86” is not an unambiguous call to political violence — and certainly not the kind of “imminent” violence that would be necessary to justify restrictions on speech.

“The Court does not doubt that political violence is on the rise and that it poses a grave threat not just to the targets of the threats but to the country as a whole. But the enormity of that problem does not change the meaning of Plaintiff’s speech, which by any reasonable measure merely advocated for the President’s impeachment and removal from office — that is, ‘to throw [him] out,’” Moss wrote.

The Obama-appointed judge appended a Merriam-Webster definition of the term “eighty-six,” which defines it as a 1930s soda-counter slang meaning “to throw out “ or ”to get rid of.”

The ruling doesn’t mention the recent criminal case brought against former FBI director James Comey, accusing him of threatening Trump’s life last year with an Instagram post of a seashell arrangement on a North Carolina beach that depicted the “8647” phrase. But Moss’ determination underscores questions about the genesis of the charges against Comey, who took down the post and apologized and has repeatedly denied that the expression was meant to provoke violence against Trump.

An attorney for Comey, Patrick Fitzgerald, declined to comment on the decision.

Moss’ ruling doesn’t rule out the possibility that use of “86-47” could be viewed as a threat in some context, and he notes that Merriam-Webster’s discussion of “eighty-six” does mention it is sometimes used to refer to killing someone, although the editors declined to adopt that meaning “due to its relative recency and sparseness of use.”

According to court filings, Secret Service agents visited the protest on May 12 and briefly spoke with some people who were participating, who said they wanted Trump out of office but wished him no physical harm.

Justice Department attorneys said the flag became more ominous in the wake of the May 24 incident near the White House, where an armed man was shot dead by law enforcement.

Accountability Now USA first ran into trouble with the Park Service in April over signs critical of Trump’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, including one sign that said, “Trump raped little girls.”

Trump has acknowledged that he knew Epstein but has said he broke off ties with him before he came under scrutiny by law enforcement. The federal government’s files on Epstein contain a smattering of allegations against Trump, but authorities have said they were deemed not credible. Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to Epstein’s crimes.

A Park Service official emailed the protest group in April, alleging that its signs contained “obscenity” not protected by the First Amendment and that the organization could face “further steps” if the signs were not removed.

The group took the signs down temporarily before suing, Moss said. His opinion issued Monday does not analyze whether the signs meet the legal definition of obscenity.

Western drought

Trump taps Democrats’ climate money for Western drought

As Colorado River water levels reach disastrous lows, the administration looks to draw cash from the 2022 climate law it sought to neuter.

By Annie Snider

As the drought-stricken Colorado River faces record-low flows that could set off a sprawling water and power crisis across the West, the Trump administration is opening the federal cash spigot.

In recent weeks the Interior Department has contacted farm districts, cities, tribes and other water users in Arizona, California and Nevada looking to extend Biden administration contracts that paid out nearly $1.4 billion from Democrats’ signature climate law to entities that agreed to fallow fields, tighten conservation measures or otherwise forgo water deliveries.

At the same time, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered up a list of projects from the region’s seven governors to address the river’s long-term problems, for which the federal government could be a “potential cost-share partner.” The menu of proposals they delivered a week ago includes 85 projects totaling more than $50 billion — a price tag that far exceeds what Interior currently has in its coffers.

The sudden willingness to open the federal wallet marks a sharp U-turn for the Trump administration, which froze funding for some of the same efforts last year and has overall sought to claw back billions of dollars of spending from Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.

That Interior is now quietly tapping those funds underscores the dire crisis facing the Colorado River, which serves 40 million people, a blossoming tech sector and 5.5 million acres of irrigated farmland from Wyoming to Mexico.

But the one thing that could actually solve the waterway’s fundamental problem is missing from the conversation, former officials and water experts say: permanently reducing the amount of water that farmers and ranchers draw from a river that has been dramatically shriveled over the past quarter-century due to climate change.

“We’ve got to move away from remaining quiet and saying the politicians can just continually ask for billions of dollars in federal money to keep from making any difficult decisions,” said Bruce Babbitt, who served as Interior secretary under President Bill Clinton after spending nearly nine years as governor of Arizona.

“These proposals are all nice proposals, but they don’t even come close to addressing the bigger problem,” he said. “I would call it avoidance money.”

A spokesperson for the Trump administration’s top Western water official, Interior Assistant Secretary Andrea Travnicek, declined an interview request and did not respond to questions for this story.

Some money is already flowing without fanfare by Interior. The department last month released more than $120 million in Inflation Reduction Act spending in Colorado and Utah for environmental projects tied to the river that were approved in the waning days of the Biden administration.

‘The political death penalty’

Roughly three-quarters of the Colorado River’s flows are used by farmers and ranchers who hold powerful legal rights under the century-old system that governs Western water. That means that during times of shortage, cities and suburbs typically see their supplies cut first while farmers and ranchers can continue their full draws from the waterway.

It will be impossible to fix the imbalance between supply and demand on the drought-shriveled river without taking some of those irrigated acres completely out of production, said Kathryn Sorensen, director of research at Arizona State University’s Kyl Center for Water Policy.

“There’s no way to solve the math problem without taking on agriculture,” she said. “You can’t fix this by focusing on the conservation efforts of the cities. It’s just not enough water.”

Sorensen, who previously headed Phoenix’s water department, co-authored a recent paper arguing that policymakers need to start talking about the difficult farmland realities. It was a gentle attempt to jump-start the conversation that no one wants to have — least of all elected officials who are highly tuned to the political perils of crossing rural farmers.

“It’s toxic,” she acknowledged. “It is the political death penalty for elected officials.”

Even some of the staunchest farming proponents acknowledge that it may make sense for some land to come out of production.

“I can’t say absolutely no fallowing,” said Samantha Barncastle, executive director of the Family Farm Alliance, an advocacy group for irrigated agriculture. “As a farmer’s wife, as an irrigation district attorney, as the leader of the Family Farm Alliance, it pains me to say that you should take out a farm under any scenario, but I know that the reality is that sometimes that is going to be necessary.”

Still, the river supplies some of the country’s best farmland, producing not just alfalfa, but also vegetables, citrus, lettuce and other crops. Barncastle noted that as more land comes out of production, “it won’t take long for that affordability crisis to hit home for average Americans.”

The key, she argued, is that any decisions about fallowing or buy-outs must be entirely voluntary for the farmers and must be done in a strategic way to minimize impacts on other farmers, the environment and consumers.

JB Hamby, California’s lead Colorado River negotiator and a board member of the river’s largest agricultural farm district, the Imperial Irrigation District, agreed that retirement is a conversation worth having about low-yield farmland. But he noted much of California’s land is productive.

“This is an important part of our domestic food security needs, as we were really awakened to during Covid,” Hamby said.

Experts say farmland is going to be dried up one way or another, since cities and suburbs can afford to pay far more for water than farmers that are tied to international commodity prices.

Cities across the seven states that rely on the Colorado River have already undertaken major work to reduce their water use by requiring the removal of lawns, mandating efficient equipment in buildings and policing water use. Las Vegas — the city of excess — has taken perhaps the most aggressive approach, reducing the metro region’s water use by 40 percent since 2002 at the same time that its population has doubled.

While there’s more work to be done to tighten efficiency, most of the options that cities have left to keep the taps running are expensive infrastructure projects that would take decades to bring online, such as desalination plants and facilities to turn sewage water into potable supplies.

Economically, it would make far more sense for municipal water agencies to buy farmland and take it out of production or cut long-term deals with farmers to pay them to fallow during times of drought, said Jim Lochhead, former CEO of Denver Water.

“It’s going to happen one way or the other if hydrology continues to go the way it’s going,” Lochhead said. “It could either happen with a softer landing helped by federal funding or it could happen just by virtue of the market causing land to be dried up and local communities suffering the consequences.”

Crowley County, Colorado, offers a cautionary tale of what can happen when large amounts of farmland are taken out of production without a plan in place. Farmers in the southeast corner of the state began selling their water rights off to Front Range cities more than a half-century ago. As more and more land went out of production, farm supply stores, railway infrastructure, restaurants and grocery stores closed, too, devastating the region’s tax base. Today, the county seat is little more than a ghost town.

A ripe moment

Lochhead said some quiet discussion about addressing agricultural water use has begun as part of a push for $2 billion in federal funding being mounted by irrigation districts, cities, environmentalists and tribes.

The moment could be ripe. Farms are facing intense economic headwinds heading into the summer growing season, with the U.S.-Iran war driving up the cost of diesel, fertilizer and other crop inputs. Fears are high that this summer could be ruinous across the West, with a super El Niño forming in the Pacific, threatening to raise temperatures, while dry forests and soils are poised to turbocharge the wildfire season.

More farmers have applied for the few existing short-term fallowing programs in the region than there is funding to support. That includes a summer program at California’s Imperial Irrigation District, said Tina Shields, the district’s water manager.

A larger-scale effort to cut agricultural water use over the long-term could take a number of different forms, experts said.

One option would be to model a program on the Agriculture Department’s existing Conservation Reserve Program. That voluntary program is focused on water quality, paying farmers rent when they sign long-term contracts to convert environmentally sensitive acreage to native grasses, trees or cover crops.

A similar program focused on water quantity could instead pay farmers to enroll marginal land using a disproportionately high amount of water for low-crop output, Sorensen argued in her paper.

Another approach would be to leverage the handful of existing programs like the one at Imperial, in which farmers conserve water to transfer to cities. Those programs help shore up cities’ supplies but don’t actually reduce river use.

Babbitt argued they could, though, if policymakers required cities to give up a portion of that conserved water and instead leave it in the river’s reservoirs to bolster the system as a whole.

But all of the options run head-long into politics. That’s because, under Western water law, any river supplies suddenly freed up by taking one parcel of agricultural land out of production become available to the next user in line, unless state, local and federal rules are changed.

“We’ve got 1840s water law, 1900s infrastructure and 21st-century agriculture, and they don’t fit well together,” said John Entsminger, Nevada’s lead Colorado River negotiator. “The simplicity of, ‘Just buy up 10,000 acres of alfalfa production and leave that water in Lake Mead’ — it’s not that simple.”

The current agricultural water transfer programs have been hard-wrought and politically consequential.

Imperial’s came about a quarter-century ago, when President George W. Bush’s administration strong-armed California into reducing its Colorado River water use. The urban water purveyor for Southern California, which otherwise would have had to bear those cuts, instead cut a series of deals with Imperial and other agricultural districts in the state to pay farmers to fallow some portion of their land or adopt water conservation measures.

Under intense political pressure, the Imperial Irrigation District’s board of directors narrowly approved the deal. The three board members who voted for it were the target of intense political opposition and two of them were unseated in the next election.

Paying farmers not to farm

Rather than undertake a politically treacherous program to permanently reduce agriculture’s Colorado River water use, the Biden administration, and now the Trump administration, opted to pay farmers not to farm, year after year.

Partly that’s been driven by crisis. In 2022, water levels at one of the river’s biggest reservoirs, Lake Powell, were plunging fast toward the point at which hydropower production would cut off.

That’s when Democrats approved a $4 billion pot of drought funds in their Inflation Reduction Act that the Biden administration used to pay farmers, cities and tribes to forgo supplies for up to three years.

Nearly $1.4 billion was spent on such contracts — half of which went to Imperial, which got paid nearly double what other entities received — despite urban water managers’ concerns that the influx of federal dollars could drive up the price that farmers would demand for water conservation.

Biden administration officials said at the time that they planned to reserve the majority of the $4 billion for projects that would make permanent reductions.

Some projects, like a water reuse plant in Tucson and a lawn removal program in Southern California, did get funded. But others under consideration were halted when the Trump administration took office, first as part of an across-the-board freeze on any Biden-era spending. Trump administration officials later sought to use federal money as leverage to prod the seven states that share the river into cutting a water-sharing deal.

But the states remain deadlocked, and the Colorado River is now facing record-low flows after a warm, dry winter.

With the IRA dollars set to expire at the end of September, the administration appears to be preparing to spend the nearly $1 billion in remaining drought funds on another round of contracts paying cities and farmers to relinquish supplies for a year or two.

Bill Hasencamp, the Colorado River resources manager for the water purveyor that supplies Los Angeles, San Diego and other Southern California communities, said it’s reasonable to cut another round of short-term deals now, given the looming disaster at the river’s reservoirs.

“The situation on the river right now is so dire,” he said. “One more year could be really bad. Now it makes a lot more sense to focus on short-term.”

But, he said, the Trump administration is looking to pay less for those short-term contracts than the Biden administration did three years ago.

Shields with the Imperial Irrigation District said she has agreed to accept half of the amount paid by the Biden administration for extra conservation this year. But, she said, that only worked because the higher price they got from the remaining contract was covering the district’s overhead costs for running the program.

“We were doing it already for what was already contracted,” she said. “That’s the reason we could agree to the cost share this time.”

But even just re-upping the Biden contracts stands to be a heavy lift for Trump’s Interior Department, especially after sharp staffing cuts and a reorganization that hit Interior’s division of water grant experts particularly hard.

Hasencamp said there’s been no formal bid process and many regional water officials haven’t heard back from Interior after getting a round of emails several weeks ago asking if they’d be interested in doing another round of conservation.

OpenAI's biggest problem

Florida is now OpenAI's biggest problem in red America

Top Florida pols are making AI regulation a key issue, pushing legislation, lawsuits and campaign messages.

By Andrew Atterbury and Kimberly Leonard

Florida Republicans, led by Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Attorney General James Uthmeier, are applying more pressure than any other red state to regulate artificial intelligence — turning Florida into the biggest threat against AI in conservative America.

Beyond Florida state lawmakers earlier this year mounting two DeSantis-backed attempts to pass AI regulations, Uthmeier this week launched a lawsuit to strongarm OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman into creating safeguards for its ChatGPT bot, a legal maneuver that could inspire other states to act.

“We’re going to make them pay for hurting our kids,” Uthmeier said Monday.

And Rep. Byron Donalds, Trump’s pick to succeed DeSantis as governor of the state they all call home, said Monday that he disagreed with the president on regulating AI. The GOP front-runner said that while Trump has called for a national framework, he wants states to regulate the technology given that Congress failed to quickly address numerous popular issues.

Donalds made the comments despite AI cash pouring into his campaign coffers, with the pro-AI political action committee Leading the Future planning to spend at least $5 million to boost his candidacy.

His comments, as well as others from GOP gubernatorial candidates former state House Speaker Paul Renner, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and investor James Fishback pledging to hold a hard line on AI, all but ensure Florida will continue trying to govern the technology at the state level beyond the end of DeSantis’ administration.

The moves also signal that Florida Republicans are willing to buck Trump — and tech money flowing into their campaigns — to take a stand against AI, which is seen as an existential threat among voters who fear technology will make their jobs obsolete, data centers will be housed in their communities and cyberattacks and sophisticated scams could drain their bank accounts.

“We are at this turning point where concerns about safety and security are much more palpable to elected officials,” said Brendan Steinhauser, a Texas-based consultant and president at the Alliance for Secure AI, which is pushing for regulations. “I have had a number of meetings with candidates and consultants … and they are all seeing this stuff in the polling.”

Steinhauser, who worked on Sen. John Cornyn’s 2014 campaign, said voters are expressing concerns about how their jobs might be rendered obsolete because of automation and the rise of advanced robotics and “superintelligence,” among other things, and are finding it all “very unsettling.”

“People are seeing that and the politicians reflect public opinion,” he said.

The president, by contrast, recently postponed signing an executive order that would create increased federal oversight of AI and has said he’s worried about the U.S. being outpaced by China when it comes to technological developments. In the West Wing, various factions are trying to get on the same page about regulations, with some concerned they could become too onerous and others worried about the technology’s potential threats to national security.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment.

Even though Florida’s attempts to pass AI-related legislation stalled, Uthmeier’s lawsuit seeks to hold OpenAI accountable in a way that parallels the stalled legislation by forcing the company to obtain parental consent for data collection from some of its youngest users.

Uthmeier alleged in the filing that OpenAI is committing unfair business practices for “failing to warn of ChatGPT’s dangers” and “designing, offering, and maintaining a dangerous product that provides content unsuitable for children without requiring adequate age verification.” As such, the attorney general is asking a judge to change how OpenAI operates, from barring certain behaviors to demanding damages on behalf of Floridians.

OpenAI did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment on the lawsuit.

Florida’s civil complaint, which is in addition to an ongoing criminal investigation, is galvanized by allegations that two Florida students used ChatGPT to commit gruesome crimes.

For one, a suspected gunman behind the 2025 shooting at Florida State University allegedly communicated frequently with a ChatGPT bot about a campus attack, asking for detailed information about operating guns and ammo, how the country might react and where he could find the most students. The 20-year old student, Phoenix Ikner, is accused of killing two people at FSU and wounding six others and awaits trial on multiple charges of murder and attempted murder. OpenAI officials maintain “ChatGPT is not responsible for this terrible crime.”

Meanwhile, University of South Florida student Hisham Abugharbieh is accused of using ChatGPT to plot how to dispose of a body in the leadup to the disappearances of two of his classmates. He was later charged with killing them.

Separately, the comprehensive AI legislation proposed by DeSantis earlier this year would have required chatbot platforms to share information with parents, including all interactions their children have with AI. Under this so-called “bill of rights,” parents would have been able to limit the amount of time their children use chatbots and get notifications if children share any thoughts about harming themselves or others.

Although this measure passed the state Senate twice with bipartisan support, the GOP-led House never considered it in a committee hearing, let alone on the floor.

But even with near-unanimous support among Republican state senators, one argued the proposed bill of rights was actually too weak on protecting children.

State Sen. Erin Grall (R-Vero Beach), the lone Republican who voted against the legislation in the Senate, claimed the policies appeared meaningful but would do a “terrible job” regulating technology.

“We have lulled parents into believing that we are actually protecting when we are not,” Grall said during the special session, which ended May 1.

In standing between Florida and AI regulations, Republican House Speaker Daniel Perez during the special session said he spoke with “many” members who disagreed with the bill of rights policy, cementing his decision to skirt the legislation again after already avoiding it once.

At the time, House leaders opted to defer acting on AI so the “federal government can take the lead and get something passed,” as the incoming House speaker, state Rep. Sam Garrison (R-Fleming Island), told reporters. But even reluctant House Republicans left the door open to potential state regulations if Congress fails to act.

“If that doesn’t happen,” Garrison said during the special session, “well then, ultimately, the state’s gotta do what we have to do.”

Another dumbfuck..........

Trump names Bill Pulte acting director of national intelligence

Pulte — who leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency — will take over for Tulsi Gabbard.

By Gregory Svirnovskiy and John Sakellariadis

President Donald Trump named Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence on Tuesday, a surprise move that would elevate a political ally with no known background in intelligence to a key national spy post.

Pulte will take over for Tulsi Gabbard, who announced plans to leave the DNI post at the end of this month. Pulte has used his perch at the housing finance regulator to push for investigations into Trump’s perceived political enemies.

“William has deep experience managing the most sensitive matters in America, the safety and soundness of the Markets, and over 10 Trillion Dollars at Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, a substantial increase from where it was just 12 months ago,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Pulte made headlines last year for recommending the Department of Justice investigate Democratic lawmakers, Federal Reserve board member Lisa Cook and New York Attorney General Letitia James over unproven allegations of mortgage fraud. None of the allegations have led to a conviction.

But it’s helped him earn a powerful ally in the president.

“KEEP MOVING FORWARD, WILLIAM, DON’T LET THE RADICAL LEFT WEAKLINGS STOP YOU!” Trump wrote on Truth Social in July 2025.

Pulte also advocated for Congress to investigate then-Fed Chair Jerome Powell over the renovation of the central bank’s headquarters and promoted a widely panned 50-year mortgage idea championed by Trump.

Trump’s announcement made no mention of nominating Pulte for the permanent DNI job, but if he did, confirmation would be a tall order. Democrats are deeply suspicious of Pulte given his central role in Trump’s campaign to dominate the Federal Reserve, as are many Republicans.

Pulte’s nod is the latest challenge for Senate Republicans, and it comes as the administration looks to smooth things over with lawmakers still smarting over its “Anti-Weaponization Fund.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune alluded to the controversy surrounding Pulte in his initial reaction Tuesday and said he was unsure he would ever be nominated for the permanent post.

“I’ll try and get more information about the current state of their thinking about that position,” he said. “If he’s somebody they want in that position permanently, he’s got, as you all know, a lengthy road ahead of him.”

Any nomination would have to move through the closely divided Senate Intelligence Committee, where opposition from any one Republican could sink a nominee’s chances amid solid Democratic opposition.

Panel member Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) recently lost his Senate primary after Trump endorsed a scandal-ridden competitor who was seen as more loyal to the president, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Todd Young of Indiana have also broken with Trump at times on foreign policy and other matters.

The White House and Office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment on when Pulte would take over and if Gabbard was stepping aside.

Pulte will remain at the helm of the federal housing agency — and stay on as chair of government-controlled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — as he takes on the new post, Trump wrote on Tuesday.

The director of national intelligence is responsible for overseeing the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, as well as the delivery of a daily compendium of pressing spy material to the president.

Because the DNI has no authority to conduct foreign spy operations, the officeholder’s influence depends on their relationship with the president — something Gabbard struggled with throughout her tenure.

Democrats were quick to pan the appointment.

“This appointment speaks volumes about what this president expects from the nation’s top intelligence official,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Rather than selecting a respected national security professional capable of delivering independent judgments, the president has chosen an official who has demonstrated not just willingness but eagerness to use the authorities of government to pursue political retribution.”

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Pulte’s target at the Federal Housing Finance Agency, wrote on X that Pulte “politicized and weaponized the housing agencies and will do the same in the intelligence community.”

During a tumultuous year-and-a-half-long stint running the country’s intelligence apparatus, Gabbard saw her influence wane and was sidelined as the president pursued aggressive foreign interventions in Iran and Venezuela.

More than once, the president reportedly mused about firing her. Her onetime chief-of-staff, former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent, left the job in March over his opposition to the war in Iran.

In the end, Gabbard resigned to care for her husband, who is fighting bone cancer.

But Gabbard, too, played into Trump’s thirst for political vengeance. She revoked the security clearances of former intelligence officials from prior administrations and has helped supervise the Trump administration’s investigation into the 2020 election, which Trump still falsely maintains he won.

Admits political risk

Trump ally admits political risk of Iran war at campaign event

The comments, obtained by POLITICO, are a stark acknowledgement from Republican Rep. Ashley Hinson.

By Erin Doherty

Rep. Ashley Hinson, the likely GOP nominee in Iowa’s critical Senate race, said last week that the Iran war will become a “political liability” if it extends much longer, according to audio obtained by POLITICO.

Asked in a one-on-one exchange about a timeline for the war, Hinson said, “I’m deferring to the president on the negotiations because he has the team doing it.”

However, she added: “I do hope we can get this done by the next couple of weeks. If it drags on beyond that, it’s a political liability for us too, because we’ve lost Iowa soldiers. I’ve been to four funerals since December, it’s awful.”

It’s a stark acknowledgement for a representative who has positioned herself as a loyal ally of President Donald Trump on Capitol Hill, including on the ongoing war, and repeatedly voted against limiting the president’s military powers.

The candid remarks came during a private conversation during a public meet-and-greet with voters in Webster County last Thursday.

Hinson didn’t go so far last Thursday as to condemn the Iran war, reiterating that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon” and that the families of the fallen Iowa soldiers “all said that we need to finish the job.” But her remarks offer a glimpse into Republicans’ growing concerns that a prolonged conflict, especially with the resulting rise in gas prices and risk of increased American casualties, could become a vulnerability in battleground contests.

“Of course endless wars are unpopular — no one wants them and thankfully President Trump is doing everything he can to prevent one while keeping Americans safe,” a Hinson spokesperson said in a statement. “Ashley fully supports his mission to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands.”

While some anti-interventionist Republicans have openly criticized the conflict, such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), few Trump-endorsed candidates running in competitive races have publicly acknowledged the political complications of being at war.

Hinson is widely expected to win Tuesday’s GOP primary for Iowa’s open Senate seat and take on the Democratic nominee, either state Sen. Zach Wahls or state Rep. Josh Turek, in November — what will be one of the nation’s most closely watched races as both parties battle to take control of the upper chamber.

Trump endorsed Hinson’s Senate bid last year and reinforced his support for her in a Truth Social post on Monday night.

Early polling of hypothetical head-to-head matchups between Hinson and Wahls or Hinson and Turek show a tight general election, although the race could widen between now and November.

The White House has offered conflicting timelines for when the Iran war may end, frustrating some Republicans strategists and officials. Polling shows that voters are souring on both the president and the war as the weeks go by, especially as cost of living concerns remain a top issue ahead of the midterms.

A May POLITICO Poll found that a majority of Americans — including many Trump voters — said the war has made things more expensive for them and Trump is not doing enough to protect them from high costs.

“The sooner the war winds down … the better off [Trump] is, at least for the midterms,” said one Florida-based Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the midterm landscape.

But the president has continued to insist that deterring Iran from developing a nuclear weapon is a top priority. “I don’t care about the midterms,” he said last week during a Cabinet meeting when discussing why he hasn’t moved faster to end the conflict.

The war in Iran has become a particular concern for Iowans as prices for fertilizer and diesel fuel — both essential for food production — have soared amid the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That, combined with Trump’s trade policies from earlier this year, has sent the state’s agriculture sector spiraling. Iowa has also experienced personal toll from the conflict when six Army Reserve soldiers with the 103rd Sustainment Command based in Des Moines, Iowa, were killed on March 1 in an Iranian strike on a Kuwait facility.

“Ashley has stood side-by-side with grieving Iowa families whose loved ones paid the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country,” the Hinson spokesperson said. “She will always honor their service and stand with our men and women in uniform carrying out this critical mission.”

Massive Russian air attack

Massive Russian air attack on Ukraine kills at least 12 people

Moscow launched 650 drones and 73 cruise missiles in a fresh nighttime offensive that caused significant damage in Kyiv.

By Jonas Loesel

Kyiv was targeted in a large-scale Russian strike Tuesday, just over a week after another big attack on Ukraine’s capital.

The missile and drone barrage killed at least 12 people, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on X. The authorities reported an additional 58 people had been injured.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the attack damaged or destroyed dozens of residential buildings, including four medical centers.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had warned Friday that fresh Russian air attacks were imminent — a warning he reiterated Monday night. According to the Ukrainian Air Force, Moscow launched 650 drones and 73 cruise missiles in the nighttime offensive.

“Russia once again demonstrates that its goal is to terrorize the civilian population,” Ukraine’s Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko said. “These are deliberate strikes on residential areas, hospitals, schools, and critical and civilian infrastructure.”

Russia’s Foreign Ministry urged foreign diplomats to evacuate Ukraine’s capital last week, warning the country would soon begin “consistent and systemic strikes”.

Despite the carnage, Sybiha said the attack showed that “Moscow is losing on the battlefield. No number of missiles can change this.”

Ukrainian air defenses shot down the overwhelming majority of Russian drones, but only around half the missiles launched by the Kremlin. Zelenskyy sent a letter to U.S. President Donald Trump last week, warning that the country was running low on American ballistic missile interceptors.