Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to be acquired by Paramount Skydance in a $110 billion deal, ending a bidding war after Netflix withdrew its offer. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026 pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
The IBEW called for transparency and regulatory scrutiny following a second round of CBS News layoffs and plans to shut down CBS News Radio, warning that a proposed merger of CBS News with CNN raises serious questions about the future of union broadcasting jobs.
Per a new EIA report, wind and utility scale solar generated a record 17 percent of US electricity in 2025, up from less than 1 percent in 2005. Utility scale solar rose 34 percent year over year, while combined wind and solar reach 19 percent when residential installations are included.
A UPenn Kleinman Center policy blog identifies five key risk categories reshaping the US grid: locational congestion, temporal price uncertainty, volume variability from renewables, extreme weather tail risk, and flawed regulatory design, as demand from AI data centers and electrification accelerates.
EEI and IBEW presented Senators Susan Collins and Jack Reed with the John D. Dingell Award for their sustained bipartisan support of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, with Collins securing a $20 million funding increase to bring total LIHEAP funding to $4 billion in FY2026.
IBEW Local 430 has filed plans to build an 11,500 square foot union hall in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin to replace its current facility in Racine, serving approximately 150 members as both a business office and meeting hall.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a formal partnership with North America Building Trades Unions at a BlackRock infrastructure summit, committing $1.5 million over five years to support NABTU training and recruitment as the company projects it will need 20 percent more skilled tradespeople than currently exist to hit its 10 gigawatt compute target by 2030.
IBEW Local 271 Business Manager Jeimeson Saudino pushed back against claims circulating at a packed Sedgwick County town hall, saying modern data centers use closed loop cooling systems rather than millions of gallons of water daily and pointing to projects in Oklahoma and Kansas where data center development reduced local property taxes.
Lowell City Council voted 10 to 0 for a one-year data center moratorium after IBEW members and neighbors clashed over a Markley expansion, illustrating the broader political squeeze facing Gov. Healey as consumer anger over high energy costs collides with her AI driven economic agenda and a stalled data center tax exemption that remains unfinalized 16 months after she signed it into law.
Virginia lawmakers are divided over whether to eliminate a data center sales tax exemption that cost the state an estimated $1.9 billion last fiscal year, with teachers and fiscal advocates calling for repeal while IBEW Local 26 and other trades unions rallied to preserve the incentive they say drives well paying union construction jobs in the Commonwealth.