(The Center Square) – Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine touted the United States’ early success against Iranian nuclear sites in a news conference.

“President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history, and it was a resounding success, resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12-day war,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth and Caine celebrated the strikes, but referred assessments of the damage to Iran’s nuclear site to the intelligence community, including the CIA. 

“What the United States military did was historic,” Hegseth said.

Caine said the strike against Iran with 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs included 15 years of intelligence assessments on Fordow, Iran’s nuclear site, and many tests of the bomb. He said the United States developed the bombs with Iran’s nuclear facilities in mind.

“Operation Midnight Hammer was the culmination of those 15 years of incredible work, the air crews, the tanker crews, the weapons crews that built the weapons, the load crews that loaded it,” Caine said.

Caine said the military targeted two ventilation shafts in Iran’s Fordow nuclear site. He said Iranians tried to cover the ventilation shafts with concrete caps.

“The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon, and the main shaft was uncovered,” Caine said.

Caine said the next five bombs were meant to go through the opened shaft and explode the main complex at 1,000 feet per second. Another six hit the other shaft.

“The weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded,” Caine said.

B-2 bombers dropped 12 “bunker buster” at Iran’s nuclear site. The bombs weigh as much as a semi-truck and can penetrate up to 200 feet underground.

The U.S. military spent about $400 million to design and produce 20 such bombs for the U.S. Air Force. The 30,000-pound bomb is called GBU-57, or Massive Ordnance Penetrator, or for short, simply MOP. MOP was designed to “attack hard and deeply-buried facilities.”

All 12 MOPs hit their targets, Caine said. 

“Unlike a normal surface bomb, you won’t see an impact crater because they’re designed to deeply bury and then function,” he said. “All six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go.”

Caine warned adversary nations that the United States is working on the same kinds of operations against targets in other countries.

“Our adversaries around the world should know that there are other [Defense Threat Reduction Agency members] out there studying targets for the same amount of time, and will continue to do so,” Caine said.

While Caine and Hegseth lauded the operation, they declined to offer specifics on the damage assessment, referring it to CIA reports.

“The Joint Force does not do [Battle Damage Assessments],” Caine said. “By design, we don’t grade our own homework, the intelligence community does.”

Hegseth and Caine declined to comment on reports that uranium was moved from Iran’s nuclear site before the United States attacked.

“There’s nothing that I’ve seen that suggests we didn’t hit exactly what we wanted to hit in those locations,” Hegseth said.

He said leaked intelligence that the operation only set Iran’s nuclear program back by two months was motivated by “political purposes.”

“Someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this strike wasn’t successful,” Hegseth said. 

Reporters asked about satellite imagery showing trucks moving material, possible enriched uranium out of Fordow before the attacks. Hegseth said he had no credible information to support that assessment. 

President Donald Trump said the imagery showed work related to the recently constructed concrete caps Iranians put over the ventilation shafts.

“The cars and small trucks at the site were those of concrete workers trying to cover up the top of the shafts,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “Nothing was taken out of facility. Would take too long, too dangerous, and very heavy and hard to move!”

(The Center Square) – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a pair of bills on Wednesday designed to bring reforms to the state’s behavioral health apparatus and assist with the mentally ill in the criminal justice system.

The second-term GOP governor signed Senate Bills 1620 and 168 in a ceremony in Tampa. 

SB1620 implements some of the key recommendations by the Florida Commission on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder. The measure will standardize clinical mental health assessments used by providers and school mental health programs; improves discharge planning from treatment facilities; requires plans to address access to long-lasting injectable medications for the mentally ill; mandates biennial reviews of telehealth availability with a focus on rural; and underserved areas and supports new training programs and stipends for behavioral health workers. 

SB1620 was sponsored by Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, who was honored by the governor on his legislative work on substance abuse and mental health by having the University of South Florida’s behavioral health services research institute named in his honor. 

“I’ll never forget 27 years, three months ago when I woke up in the Hanley-Hazelden treatment facility and the day I asked for help,” said Rouson, a recovering addict. “The hopelessness, the loneliness, the anger, the fear, the rage, the bottom became my gift of desperation. I became desperate to change and whether I believed I could or whether I couldn’t, I knew I was right. I’m very honored to be here today.”

Rouson also said that he told then-Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, who appointed him to lead the Florida Commission on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder in 2021, that he didn’t want to help author a report that would gather dust on a shelf, but do something that would lead to real, lasting change.

He also said SB1620 turns thoughtful recommendations by the commission into real policy and would help keep Florida a leader at treating people with mental illness and addiction. 

SB168, sponsored by Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, is known as the Tristan Murphy Act. It was named after Murphy, a victim of suicide in 2021 at a state correctional facility work program during a mental health episode. 

“We talk about a lot of issues in Tallahassee, but mental health is a messy issue. It’s a difficult issue,” Bradley said. “It’s an issue that is hard to move the ball meaningfully because it takes a lot of resources, it involves the criminal justice system and our sheriffs on the ground. It involves our providers.”

The bill requires the state Department of Corrections to provide physical and mental screenings for inmates eligible for work assignments and allows screening within 24 hours for people detained by law enforcement for a crime. This can allow them to be diverted to a mental health facility instead. 

“And I think if you talk to a lot of people in law enforcement, and obviously you have a lot of really dangerous criminals, they just need to be kept off the street,” DeSantis said. “But a lot of people that interact with the justice system, the root cause is not that they’re bad people trying to harm others, it’s that they’ve got a lot of mental health problems that are leading to behavior that is antisocial, and so to the extent that we can do that and identify that and potentially provide solutions for that, that’s going to ultimately be better for taxpayers, it’ll be better for the entire justice system, and it’ll be better for the safety of our community.”

(The Center Square) − According to the latest data from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, there are currently 100 gigawatts of electricity generation awaiting connection approval across its footprint — including 36 gigawatts in the South region alone, which includes Louisiana.

Of the 36 GW sitting in MISO’s queue for their South region, 20 GW is is generated from solar.

The grid operator’s latest resource adequacy report warns that at least 3.1 gigawatts of new capacity will be needed beyond what’s already committed to meet reliability targets in the next several years. Without it, the risks of outages during extreme weather or peak demand events will grow.

“MISO’s projected capacity shortfall is meaningful, but there are a ton of tools to fix the problem,” said Casey Baker, a senior program manager at GridLab. “For context, 3.1 gigawatts is only about 2–3% of MISO’s total peak load. It’s significant in the energy world, but not unprecedented.”

Baker pointed out that other grid operators face even steeper challenges.

“ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), for example, is forecasting a 75% increase in peak load by 2035 — that’s an increase of roughly 65 gigawatts. MISO is in good shape.”

MISO is facing mounting pressure to expand its electricity capacity as demand surges across its 15-state footprint, including Louisiana.

Rapid growth in energy-intensive industries, data centers, and electric vehicle adoption has accelerated the need for new power resources, with MISO warning that “immediate action” is needed to avoid future capacity shortfalls.

A key driver of this surge is Louisiana’s booming industrial sector. Entergy Louisiana alone has submitted more than $3 billion in grid upgrades to accommodate new facilities, including Meta’s $800 million data center in Richland Parish and Hyundai’s massive new steel plant in Ascension Parish.

In Louisiana, the demand spike could translate into higher costs without sufficient grid upgrades. Entergy Louisiana has forecast several potential rate hikes tied to various projects including the Hyundai facility.

To help manage the load, Entergy has proposed several new transmission lines and substations, as well as a series of demand-response programs aimed at reducing strain during peak hours.

These include smart thermostat incentives, EV charging programs, and large-scale commercial demand response agreements. Entergy estimates these programs could cut demand by 95 megawatts within two years, and up to 155 megawatts in five years.

“While a 100 MW solar plant does not provide 100 MW of resource adequacy benefit, there is a lot of opportunity for MISO utilities to rapidly expand their generation portfolios and meet this growing need,” GridLab’s Casey Baker told The Center Square.

And the pace of connecting new generation remains a hurdle.

While gas generation is one potential solution, supply chain constraints mean that few gas projects in MISO’s queue are likely to come online before 2030. Of the 18 gigawatts of gas submitted in the latest queue window, none have even begun the required grid impact studies.

Meanwhile, energy storage presents one of the most promising short-term solutions. Another 3 gigawatts of energy storage sits in MISO’s Surplus Interconnection Queue, a separate fast-track process that allows projects to connect within 12 to 18 months — far quicker than the typical multi-year process for new generation.

Energy storage refers to technologies—most commonly large-scale batteries—that can store electricity when supply is high and release it when demand is high or when other power sources aren’t available.

To visualize the space needed for batteries, Baker mentions a Florida project that fits 400 megawatts of storage on 40 acres. Expanding that to 4 gigawatts for MISO would need about 800 acres total — spread across the entire region.

Alternatively, a single high-voltage transmission project, such as the proposed Grain Belt Express, could deliver 5 gigawatts of power from other regions — enough to address the projected shortfall outright. However, MISO currently lacks a formal process to accredit transmission lines as a capacity resource, though that is under development, according to Baker.