By Kennedy Maize
A DOGE desperado has dug in at DOE. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has replaced his original chief of staff, Alex Fitzsimmons, with a veteran of Elon Musk’s extra-legal Department of Energy Efficiency and former software entrepreneur Carl Coe. According to a DOE news release, Fitzsimmons will take over as head of the agency’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response.
As Musk’s DOE overseer, according to the agency, Coe “worked closely with Secretary Wright and 40 key offices in DOE focused on process improvement and cost savings.” Among other software engineering jobs Coe held most recently was owner of time and billing software company Mango Practice Management, aimed at accountants and lawyers.
According to DOE, Coe spent 17 years at computer-aided design software company PTC. The DOE news release said, “While at PTC, he worked extensively with the Department of Energy and the National Labs focused on product development and lifecycle management.”
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the Trump administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2026 budget, released Friday (May 2), featuring $163 billion in domestic agency cuts and major increases for the Defense Department and Department of Homeland Security, DOE gets off largely unscathed. According to the Washington Post, DOE would see a 9% cut compared to FY 2025. Only the Justice Department would get a lower percentage cut, 8%. In contrast, the State Department budget would be slashed by 84% (mostly through the elimination of the Agency for International Development).
White House annual budget proposals are aspirational, sometimes and to some people inspirational. They are not factual. Congress allocates agency funds, not the executive branch, which spends the dollars the solons provide.
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The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board will hold a May 15 online meeting on challenges to Holtec International’s request for four licensing amendments at the closed Palisades nuclear power plant in Michigan. The license changes would keep the plant restart effort on the company’s schedule for October.
The April 15 Federal Register notice of the planned meeting says the proposed license changes would allow Holtec to use “Framatome Alloy 690 sleeves to repair the defective steam generator tubes as an alternative to removing the tubes from service by plugging.”
The notice adds, “The NRC has made a proposed determination that the license amendment request involves no significant hazards consideration.” Sleeving versus repair has been a long-running among Holtec, local restart opponents of the 805-MW Combustion Engineering pressurized water reactor, and some skeptics on the NRC staff. The NRC staff’s environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act found that sleeving presents no significant environmental impact.
Three judges on the ASLB staff will hear the oral arguments from Holtec, the challengers to the staff finding, and the agency staff. The meeting begins at 10 am Eastern Time, The public can tune into the audio by phone, by dialing 301-576-2978 and entering passcode 161 010 605#.
The meeting will occur not long after Holtec received its third disbursement of DOE’s $1.52 billion restart loan for Palisades. The agency April 22 released $46,709,358 to Holtec. Palisades got its second loan disbursement from DOE’s Loan Programs Office in March. The loan was originally approved by the Biden administration last September.
Despite the recommendation in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which has guided much of the Trump administration, and political huffing and puffing from Trump’s minions, DOE’s loan office appears to be safe from extinction.
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Speaking of factual, what planet does Donald Trump live on? In bragging about the chaotic and sketchy accomplishments of his second first 100 days in office, the president posted on his social media platform Truth Social (which some refer to as “Trump Pravda”), “Gasoline just broke $1.98 a Gallon, lowest in years, groceries (and eggs!) down, energy down, mortgage rates down, employment strong, and much more good news, as Billions of Dollars pour in from Tariffs.”
The Hill reported that Trump told a Michigan rally, “Gasoline was almost $4 not so long ago. And now … we just hit $1.98 in a lot of states. Think of it.” Days later at a University of Alabama graduation ceremony speech, he said, “Gasoline prices just hit $1.88 cents a gallon in three states. Can you believe it?” 
No, you can’t. According to his Department of Energy, as of April 28 the average price of gasoline across the country was $3.133/gallon, down 52 cents from a year prior. The lowest average of the 10 regions the Energy Information Agency tracks was $2.686/gallon in the Gulf (of Mexico, that is) Coast, near major refineries. The highest price was $4.192 on the West Coast. Take out California and the West Coast price was $3.757/gallon. On a weekly basis, U.S. gasoline prices were down less than a penny. Also, weekly gasoline prices were down in five of the 10 regions, and up in 5.
These are not just Trump’s usual lies. Lying is his lingua franca. If his lips move, he’s lying. These are hallucinatory. It’s also clear that Trump has seen neither a gas station nor a grocery store in decades.
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