New England Governors: Stop Chasing a Nuclear Fantasy

By Rob Okun Are all six New England governors out of their minds? It’s 2026, renewable energy is surging globally, nuclear power plants remain as dangerous as ever, and they want to build new nukes? On September 30, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey will host her regional counterparts at a “pro-nuclear summit” at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, for the public to supposedly learn about the so-called safety and benefits of “advanced” nuclear energy. Protesters will be there in droves, led in part by the Clamshell Alliance, which began exposing the perils of atomic energy half a century ago. The dangers nukes pose haven’t changed; 21st century marketing has. At a time when the governors—and other leaders—should be the strongest voices promoting renewable energy, many instead either enacted legislation, or offered incentives, or adjusted regulatory frameworks to support nuclear development. We’re in the midst of a catastrophic climate emergency that demands we accelerate clean energy, not gamble our future on repackaged nukes. Here’s a question: How likely would any state be taking another bite of the nuclear apple if the Trump administration hadn’t cut nearly $8 billion in Biden-era renewables funding last year? There’s a story CNN, MS NOW, and Politico would be well advised to pursue. New nuclear plants take 10 to 15 years to come online. Small modular reactors—the industry’s latest attempt to rebrand its radioactive product—still exist only on paper. Solar, wind, storage, and efficiency can be permitted and built now, at a fraction of the cost. Every dollar, every year spent chasing nuclear is a dollar and a year not spent on the energy sources that can actually reduce emissions safely. In 1977, I was one of 1,414 people arrested for protesting construction of a nuclear plant in Seabrook, New Hampshire, along once-pristine salt marshes inland from the state’s coastline. Part of the Clamshell Alliance, one of the first groups in the country organizing to halt nuclear construction, we didn’t need a degree in atomic energy to understand that nukes were hazardous, absurdly expensive, and a technology the government routinely lied about. The industry once claimed electricity from atomic reactors would be “too cheap to meter.” Not long after Seabrook, I joined the staff of New Roots, editing a magazine chronicling the alternative energy movement, then still in its infancy. We’ve come a long way since then. It’s been half a century since the antinuclear movement began waking the country up to atomic energy’s dangers—before Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986), and Fukushima (2011), and the many near-misses since. Longtime nuclear critic and Clamshell veteran Harvey Wasserman has compared the cost of the new reactors to renewables, noting that even pronuclear proponents concede they merely hope small modular reactors will cost “only” about three times as much as proven solar power, and four times or more the cost of offshore wind. Nuclear can’t compete with renewables on safety, construction time, climate impact, overall cost, or creating jobs. Nuclear power is essentially uninsurable; it took an act of Congress limiting the liabilities of the nuclear power industry in the event of an accident—only then, back in 1954, did commercial utilities agree to build nuclear power plants and that law is now extended—solely for the benefit of commercial utilities—until 2065. No such exemptions are necessary or even contemplated for safe solar and wind power generation. Indeed, the waste is studiously ignored by pro-nuclear advocates; no one wants to discuss out loud: every reactor over the past eight decades has produced radioactive material that will stay lethal for thousands of years, with no permanent storage solution anywhere. Nuclear infrastructure, from uranium mines to waste dumps, has a long documented history of landing hardest on poor, Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color, whose land and treaty rights get steamrolled in the process. There are zero radioactive byproducts from solar, wind, and low-head hydro. Add nuclear plants sitting in active war zones in Ukraine and Iran, and the inconvenient truth that “civilian” nuclear programs are the on-ramp to developing weapons capability, and the case for caution isn’t nostalgia—it’s realism. Governors: please do your homework to learn why the second Seabrook reactor was never built. When the twin-reactor project was proposed in 1972, it was projected to cost under $1 billion. By 1984, the price had ballooned past $10 billion. The utility abandoned the second reactor, and the primary builder filed for bankruptcy. When you gather for your summit, governors, please don’t ignore the sea of protesters outside. Better yet: open a window, open the doors, and open your eyes. The energy future you’re looking for won’t be found inside your conference room. It’s been outside it for 50 years, literally beaming at us every day. Rob Okun (robokun50@gmail.com), syndicated by PeaceVoice, is editor emeritus of Voice Male, which has long chronicled the profeminist men’s movement. The post New England Governors: Stop Chasing a Nuclear Fantasy appeared first on The Westside Gazette.

Andrew Garfield Says He ‘Froze’ Playing Basketball With Woody Harrelson

Andrew Garfield finally got the basketball game he had wanted for years, only to discover that playing opposite Woody Harrelson was considerably more intimidating than imagining it. During a September 29 appearance on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast, Garfield recalled joining Harrelson and friends for a game. Garfield had a particular reason to be excited. He said he had been a fan of Harrelson for years and considers the 1992 basketball comedy White Men Can’t Jump one of his all-time favorite movies, with Harrelson giving one of his favorite performances. The admiration became a problem once the game actually started. “I fully froze and folded,” Garfield said, admitting that he played “really badly” and felt like a 7-year-old at a party who suddenly wanted to go home. Entertainment Weekly reported that Garfield was still jokingly apologizing to everyone who had been on the court with him. Harrelson apparently gave him little opportunity to settle down. Garfield said the 65-year-old actor still plays well and remains “fiercely competitive,” a quality he said he loved even though his own nerves prevented him from showing what he thought he could do. Garfield Had Just Called Basketball One of His Strengths Garfield’s performance was especially painful to him because basketball came up as he and Poehler were discussing things he believed he was good at. Garfield said he loves basketball and thought he was a pretty capable player before the Harrelson game gave him reason to reconsider that assessment. He told Poehler that he grew up in a competitive household and genuinely loves games, adding that he can sometimes become too invested because he believes players should actually try to win. By the end of the story, Garfield had turned the disappointing performance into a joke at his own expense. Basketball had entered the conversation as something he thought might qualify as a hidden talent, after describing what happened with Harrelson, he concluded that the talent might be gone or perhaps was “never” there in the first place. ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ Made Harrelson a Different Kind of Opponent Garfield’s nerves also carried decades of movie fandom onto the court. In Ron Shelton’s White Men Can’t Jump, Harrelson played Billy Hoyle opposite Wesley Snipes’ Sidney Deane, two basketball hustlers working the courts of Los Angeles. Disney+ lists the original film as a 1992 sports comedy starring Harrelson and Snipes. Garfield told Poehler that he had wanted to play with Harrelson for a long time because of that performance. Instead of relaxing once the opportunity finally arrived, he said the reality of sharing a court with somebody he had watched and admired for years sent him straight into a freeze response. Garfield was complimentary about Harrelson’s current ability, saying he “still plays great” and takes good care of himself. He also joked that Harrelson should protect his knees, before immediately acknowledging that the older actor clearly remains capable of keeping up on the court. He called him “fiercely competitive” and said he genuinely loved that trait.

‘They treated me like a corporate spy’: Employee says he was terminated minutes after giving two-week notice, sparks debate on company loyalty

An anonymous employee has described an abrupt end to their four-year stint at a company after submitting a two-week resignation notice and allegedly being terminated within minutes. The worker said they had prepared a detailed handover after securing a new job. Their account prompted others to share experiences and differing views on loyalty, job security and workplace exits.

Jennifer Lawrence Joins Zach Cregger’s Secretive Sci-Fi Thriller ‘The Flood’

Jennifer Lawrence is heading into science fiction for Zach Cregger’s next original movie. The Oscar winner will lead The Flood, a new thriller from the filmmaker behind Barbarian, Weapons and this year’s Resident Evil. Cregger wrote the screenplay from his own original idea and will direct and produce the film for New Line Cinema. Amblin Entertainment is producing alongside Roy Lee and Miri Yoon of Vertigo Entertainment, and Warner Bros. has scheduled a theatrical release for August 11, 2028. The studio has not released a synopsis or identified Lawrence’s character. Cregger has previously described The Flood as science fiction rather than a conventional horror movie, saying it has disturbing material and horror scenes but is ultimately more cerebral and structurally ambitious than a straightforward scare vehicle. “Jennifer is one of a kind, and I’m beyond excited to see her in this role,” Cregger said in the casting announcement, according to TheWrap. Lawrence Is the First Star Announced for Cregger’s New Film Lawrence is the first major cast member publicly attached to The Flood, putting her at the center of a project that Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy described as Cregger’s “bold and wholly original vision.” The executives said they were eager to work with Cregger, Vertigo and Amblin again following their experience on Weapons. Entertainment Weekly independently confirmed Lawrence’s casting and the August 2028 release date. The outlet also reported that Steven Spielberg’s Amblin is producing with Lee and Yoon, while Amblin’s official site lists The Flood among its feature projects. Cregger Came Up With the Idea While Trying to Work With Spielberg Cregger has revealed more about how The Flood came together than about what actually happens in it. He told Deadline that the concept emerged during a brief window in which he was eager to create something he could make with Spielberg and gave himself roughly five days to find the right idea. According to Entertainment Weekly’s account of that interview, inspiration arrived while Cregger was watching another science-fiction movie with his wife and began thinking about what could make an abandoned-spacecraft scenario stranger and more frightening. He said the full movie suddenly seemed to appear in his mind, giving him the idea he had been searching for. Cregger has since described the finished concept in broader creative terms rather than revealing its mechanics. In interviews surrounding Resident Evil, he called The Flood “very cerebral” and “more sophisticated,” while telling TheWrap that it has his most bizarre narrative structure yet and is “a bit more of an adult movie” despite containing horror sequences. ‘The Flood’ Left Netflix After a Fight Over a Theatrical Release The film’s path to New Line began before Lawrence joined the cast. TheWrap reported in November 2025 that Cregger had written the project through Amblin’s relationship with Netflix but that development stalled because he wanted a firm theatrical commitment that the streamer had not provided. The project subsequently went into turnaround, and New Line picked it up earlier this year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. By April, Warner Bros. had already placed The Flood on its theatrical calendar for August 2028, and the current casting report says principal photography is due to begin in Europe during the opening months of 2027. That move also reunites Cregger with the studio behind Weapons. Lawrence Already Has Two Other Major Movies on Her Schedule View this post on Instagram A post shared by Leonardo DiCaprio (@leonardodicaprio) The Flood joins a busy stretch for Lawrence after Die My Love. She is also starring opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s What Happens at Night, which began production in the Czech Republic earlier this year with Apple Original Films. TheWrap reported that Lawrence and DiCaprio play a married American couple traveling to a snowy European town to adopt a baby. She is also returning as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, which opens November 20, 2026.

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· Sep 28, 2026

24 things to do in Virginia Beach this October

How Trump Has Lowered the Wages of American Workers

By Lawrence S. Wittner On June 6, 2025, Donald Trump’s White House staff issued an upbeat statement proclaiming that what it called the “Trump Effect” was creating “higher pay for American workers.” The reality, though, is that Trump, during his second term in office, has deliberately reduced the wages of millions of workers and, despite substantial inflation, frozen the wages of millions more. In March 2025, kicking off his assault on workers’ wages, Trump rescinded a Biden administration executive order that had increased the minimum wage that federal contractors must pay their workers who are employed in government services. These 400,000 workers included janitors in federal buildings, food service workers, cashiers in gift shops and national parks, and security guards. Thanks to Trump’s action, the minimum wage for these workers fell from $17.75 to $13.30 an hour, a 25 percent pay cut. Workers directly employed by the federal government received particularly harsh treatment. Shortly after taking office, the Trump administration, through a combination of firings, bad-mouthing, and pressures toward early retirement, inspired a mass exodus of over 300,000 federal workers from their jobs and incomes. Furthermore, Trump deprived more than a million federal workers (a large majority of union-represented federal employees) of their right to collective bargaining, which, among other things, severely limited their ability to secure higher wages. In this context, Trump froze the wages of most federal employees for two years in a row. Raising their pay, he said, would be “irresponsible.” During 2026, the Trump administration took additional action to lower the wages of American workers. It adopted policies that deprive workers of wage, salary, and overtime protections by facilitating their misclassification as independent contractors rather than as employees. The administration also rescinded another Biden-era regulation that made overtime pay available to increased numbers of salaried workers. Consequently, 4.3 million salaried employees no longer qualify for the time-and-a-half pay for overtime work, a policy established by the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. If the Trump administration were at all interested in securing “higher pay for American workers,” it would certainly do something about the disgracefully low federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Stuck at that level since 2009, the minimum wage has lost much of its value thanks to inflation. By 2025, a full-time employee at the minimum wage level earned only $15,080 for a year’s work, placing the employee below the U.S. government’s official poverty line. Had the minimum wage been indexed to inflation in the late 1960s, it would be over $12.50 per hour today. But Trump has never sought to raise the federal minimum wage, and at times has even suggested eliminating it. Certainly, he and his party have been the major obstacles to repeated Democratic attempts to raise it substantially since 2009. Another indication of Trump’s disdain for the federal minimum wage is his administration’s effort to exclude millions of American workers from even this pathetic $7.25 per hour guarantee. In 2025, the administration proposed removing more than three million home care workers for the elderly from federal minimum wage (as well as overtime pay) protection. It also widened the opportunity for corporations to pay disabled workers less than the minimum wage. Thanks to such exemptions, disabled workers in some states earn only about $4 an hour. Although Trump enjoyed considerable success in using the federal government to implement a wage reduction policy, he was occasionally defeated. For example, in 2025, Trump’s Labor Department slashed the wage level for farm workers admitted to the United States under the H2-A agricultural guest worker program. By establishing a cheap foreign labor pool, this action adversely affected American farm workers’ wages, which declined by up to $7 an hour, resulting in a $2.46 billion annual transfer of income from workers to employers. In August 2026, however, in response to a major lawsuit brought by the United Farm Workers and other pro-worker organizations and individuals, a U.S. district court ruled that the Trump administration policy was illegal. In addition, the consequences of maintaining the federal minimum wage at its ridiculously low level were offset to some degree by many states and localities, largely governed by Democrats, which instituted―or already had in place―higher minimum wage rates of their own. Thus, although 20 states, mostly governed by Republicans, stuck with the federal rate of $7.25 per hour, workers in much of the country benefitted from higher minimum wage rates. Furthermore, many U.S. workers secured pay raises through union contracts or union campaigns or because employers were anxious to maintain workforces adequate to meet their own needs. Overall, however, the combination of the Trump administration’s reductions and wage freezes, in the context of substantial inflation brought on by Trump’s tariffs and wars, have led to a decline in the “real wages”―wages adjusted for the cost of living―of American workers. As the New York Times reported in mid-August 2026, during July consumer prices outpaced workers’ earnings, which meant that “for the fourth month in a row, Americans’ real wages―how many sandwiches, haircuts, and gallons of gas they can buy with an hour’s pay―actually fell.” The University of Michigan’s measure of consumer sentiment for August 2026 found that only eight percent of people surveyed expected their income growth to exceed inflation over the next year. Although that’s an inconvenient fact for Republicans in the run-up to the forthcoming midterm elections, when “affordability” has become a key issue, it’s a logical result of the Trump administration’s policies. Even as Donald Trump has used his control of the federal government to make himself and his family richer, he has employed it to make American workers poorer. Dr. Lawrence Wittner, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author of Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press The post How Trump Has Lowered the Wages of American Workers appeared first on The Westside Gazette.

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