News Vérité

“Go West, Young Man” was a rallying cry by newspaper editor Horace Greeley for America to achieve its manifest destiny and build farms and communities in the nation’s then-vast unoccupied areas. Now, many of the farms spawned by that rallying cry are being gobbled up by developers of data centers. Data centers also require lots of electricity and water, so remaining farmlands can run dry and out of wattage. The American Farm Bureau Federation is sounding the alarm that this trend is not only threatening the livelihood of farms, but also of the very supply of agricultural products upon which the nation depends/According to its website: “Farmland is the foundation of agricultural production and a generational asset for farm families. Once converted to industrial use, it is rarely returned to production. In regions experiencing rapid development, the cumulative loss of prime farmland is a growing concern.” Modern agriculture heavily relies on the digital economy—using precision ag, GPS, and cloud-based data to optimize crop yields. However, farmers are increasingly asking if the digital infrastructure meant to optimize their future is actively swallowing up the land and water needed to sustain it. The data center threat is moving some areas to enact

Former No. 1 Son Hunter Biden is walking away with a $1.7 million victory in a defamation lawsuit over a Trump ally who claimed Hunter was involved in a bribery scheme on behalf of Iran. Former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne was on the losing end. Byrne had claimed that Hunter had accepted an $800M Iranian bribe to get his father, then-President Joe Biden, to unfreeze $8 billion in frozen Islamic Republic assets. Byrne claimed an Iranian official had informed him of the scheme, but he was unable to present any evidence in court to prove his allegation. Byrne was involved in attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election on Trump’s behalf. When he levied his bribery allegation against Hunter, No. 1 Son sued for defamation. Byrne failed to show up for the first trial in October, but this time got his clock legally cleaned. Presiding U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of California wrote in his judgment yesterday that “the evidence is clear and convincing that defendant has engaged in intentional misrepresentation with conscious disregard towards plaintiff’s rights.” He awarded Hunter $1 in nominal damages along with $1.7M in punitive damages.

The Trump administration has issued subpoenas to four reporters for the New York Times who wrote a piece questioning safety features on the Qatari-gifted new Air Force One. Reporters Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager, and Eric Schmitt were served subpoenas, in some cases by federal agents at their homes on Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal. The article was spurred by President Trump’s switching to the old Air Force One — pre-Qatari — on returning from the NATO summit in Turkey, then switching back to the new one in Great Britain. The switcheroo came after Israel warned of new Iranian threats on Trump’s life. Widespread reporting on the plane switch, in print and on TV and not just by the NYT, questioned whether the refurbished new Boeing was up to snuff on all the necessary security features found on the older version. The New York Times called the subpoenaing  a “brazen act.”  The National Press Club issued a statement, saying: “The National Press Club calls on the Justice Department to immediately withdraw these subpoenas and reaffirm a principle that has long distinguished the United States: a free and independent press serves the people, not the government.” The Justice Department responded by saying the