Authored by Lance Christensen via The Epoch Times,
In July, as America turned 250, a reactor the size of a minivan went critical in the red-rock desert of Emery County, Utah.
The company that built it, Valar Atomics, isn’t a Utah company at all. It’s based in El Segundo, California, in the shadow of the aerospace giants that once made Southern California the undisputed capital of American engineering.
But when President Donald Trump challenged American industry to bring a new nuclear reactor to life by Independence Day, Valar didn’t build its test site in California. It built it in Utah. That single fact says more about where these two states are headed than any think tank report could.
I have deep roots in my birthplace of Utah and a considered love for California, the state I have chosen to call home.
So, without picking a winner, we need to ask which state will actually do the work of building the next 50 years of American abundance, and why one of them keeps getting in its own way.
The Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence with the vision of building something more expansive than the servitude they endured for hundreds of years.
“Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” doesn’t happen by accident but can be possible only when a people reject the “multitude of New Offices, and … swarms of Officers [that] harrass [sic] our people, and eat out their substance.”
The men and women of the 18th-century revolution were dedicated to turning scarcity into abundance through sheer, sustained will and effort that would make its way westward in the mid-19th century without anyone’s permission.
As destinations for those migrations, Utah and California would asymmetrically benefit from these ambitious renegades over the years as they tamed the hostile landscapes of sagebrush, salt flats, and mountains.
My fourth-great-grandfather, Alexander Beckstead, was among the first to dig irrigation canals in Utah and construct blacksmith shops in the barren Great Salt Lake Valley. My wife’s family left Prussia to settle the Central Valley south of Sacramento as the unpredictable inland sea wreaked havoc on farms and cities.
Sam Brannan, the man who sailed from New York into sleepy Yerba Buena with 200 other Mormon ocean pioneers and announced the gold discovery on the streets of San Francisco, refused to make the trek eastward to the Great Salt Lake. He believed California’s beauty, resources, and location made it the better place to build, and he created town sites across the state and amassed a fortune that made him California’s first millionaire before dying in poverty.
Yet Brigham Young rejected the allure of California and, looking over the Wasatch Front, proclaimed, “This is the right place,” trusting that the desert would eventually “blossom as the rose.” And it has, with affluence oozing out of every corner of the state.
Although Utah’s population is a smaller portion of California’s post-World War II boom, it is currently blowing California’s deserts in Los Angeles, San Diego, and the Central Valley out of the water and doing so despite Brannan’s failed hustle a century and a half ago.
Young’s executive successor, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, has spent this anniversary year arguing that the Founders’ “pursuit of happiness” was never about comfort. It was about character, self-mastery, purpose, and the discipline to build something larger than oneself. It is a high standard the state keeps reaching for.
In California, by contrast, it appears that the spirit of Eureka is lost, and there is less interest in the unglamorous work of actually building success.
That gap is largely political, not geological, resulting in a broken permitting and licensing structure. California’s sun, wind, water, energy, brainpower, and burgeoning artificial intelligence industry are no longer capable of producing some of the biggest innovations in the world as industries are drawn to other places with better regulatory environments.
My colleague Ed Ring has spent years documenting how California’s energy rules were designed for an era of managed scarcity, not abundance.
Ho Nieh, the current chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, likes to say the country needs more power plants, not more PowerPoints. Utah took that injunction seriously and got a working reactor in less than a year.
California, home to the very engineers who designed it, seems unconcerned that Utah is eating our lunch while allowing the decline of its aging nuclear infrastructure.
California does not need to imitate Utah, but she needs to return to the instincts that once defined this state as the destination for every adventurer. The legislature needs to pass predictable, consistent regulation instead of duct-taping rules that shift to the whims of progressive activists every legislative session.
We need public officials to plan for both baseload power and the demand spikes an AI-driven economy will throw at the grid. We need a culture that rewards the people willing to meet our mountains instead of celebrating those who are content to rope them off. We need to refuse the doom-laced climate rhetoric that treats every power plant as an enemy rather than a tool.
Two deserts, two centuries, two paths. Only one of these states is currently spawning nuclear reactors. The other one is still capable of it, if we can find the political will to pursue an abundance agenda with the seriousness and discipline required to build and sustain it.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 14:05"Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough went absolutely nuclear on elected Democrats Monday morning for refusing to denounce the party's rising far-left wing. He specifically cited far-left types such as Hasan Piker, a self-described Marxist who is the unofficial spokesman for the Democratic Socialists of America. Some DSA leaders have said in their own words that the goal is "to destroy America from within."
Piker's toxic rhetoric has included attacks on America, calls to "kill capitalists," and inflammatory remarks promoting hatred and violence.
Hasan Piker calls on his followers to kill capitalists:
“Yeah kill them! KiII those motherfuckers and murder those motherfuckers in the streets. Let the streets soak in their fucking red capitalist blood, dude.”
Democrats are campaigning with him. pic.twitter.com/YiZxGgRkgc
In one clip, Piker said: "We want more immigrants to come into your countries, and then they're gonna f**k your sisters and then your daughters. We're here to destroy the White Race, bitch."
Hasan Piker says he wants to FLOOD illegals into the United States so they can "f*ck your sisters and daughters" to "destroy the white race"
I am demanding the Democratic Party voice PUBLICLY that they denounce Hasan Piker's comments.
If they don't, let this post be proof…
Piker has a long history of hatred and violent rhetoric, but this is nothing new for the DSA, which is systematically pushing revolutionary Marxism to collapse the nation from within. So, this toxic rhetoric should make sense.
"The most important thing we can do is take that (American) empire down from within"
DSA members make it clear what their goal is: destroying America. pic.twitter.com/Txy5Na21UG
Meanwhile, the DSA has devolved into a "red-green alliance" of Islamists and communists....
And the latest comments from Piker to surface include:
Unofficial Democract spokesman Hasan Piker says he loves the goal of impoverishing the White middle class
This is who Abdul El-Sayed and Francesca Hong are campaigning with pic.twitter.com/t9zEsYgHE1
Here's Scarborough from yesterday:
But please, I don't need people telling me, oh, you have to just turn a blind eye to people saying that women getting raped on October 7th didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. Americans aren't going to support that!
This is not about me. This is about the Democrats once again fumbling the football on the two-yard line when they have a chance to make great gains, but being so woke—I don't know if you want to call it woke one, woke two, or woke three—but being too woke to call out the obvious! I swear to God, it's really crazy that we're even having this conversation.
If somebody says a woman being raped doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, it's okay to call that person out and demand that candidates distance themselves from those people if you want to rule over a party and win elections.
If somebody says going to a rally the day after Hamas slaughters more Jews than any time since the Holocaust, it's okay for Chuck Schumer, it's okay for Hakeem Jeffries to call that despicable and demand that people distance themselves from that. That's okay!
So why are we bringing this up now? We're bringing this up now because it seems an awful lot like what was happening in 2024 when Democrats couldn't get out of their own way to win an election they should have won."
Scarborough: Democrats must condemn Hasan Piker and distance themselves from his extremist rhetoric.
Retweet and follow if you agree! pic.twitter.com/LlHg6tdp1U
Left-wing Senator Chuck Schumer had his chance to denounce the Democratic Socialists but instead recently said, "Being a big-tent party is a strength, not a weakness."
Senator Chuck Schumer thinks Democrat Socialists — who want to oust him as Leader — make the Democrat party stronger.
REPORTER: “Is the rise of the DSA good for your party?"
SCHUMER: “Being a big tent party is a strength not a weakness.” pic.twitter.com/17hSbCbtMx
Scarborough is not the only voice in the Democratic Party denouncing the DSA.
Last Friday, Hillary Clinton warned about the unhinged socialist, saying on a podcast that Republicans are deploying what she called a "very effective" anti-communist attack against the Democratic Party's rising class of far-left candidates.
💥NEW: Hillary Clinton: "It's not just about Michigan — but the Republican messaging is: 'communist, socialist.' It's gonna be a VERY effective attack." pic.twitter.com/PS6ObKoZli
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) August 7, 2026Let's not forget:
DSA is far-left; let's not forget that.
The rise of socialist and Marxist factions within the Democratic Party carries an obvious political risk ahead of midterms: years of radioactive sound bites have created an opposition-research gold mine and what could become a major "gift to Republicans" in the midterms.
The deeper concern is radicalization pipelines that aren't just colleges and funded by billionaire foundations via nonprofits but also influence linked to the communist regimes in Cuba and China, alongside an increasingly visible alliance between far-left activists and Islamist movements. Eyes on Middle East Children's Alliance (MECA) and China Marxist billionaire Neville Roy Singham.
Tyler Durden Tue, 08/11/2026 - 13:45