NOW IN OUR 14TH YEAR ON KPFT!

Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig, now in its 14^th year on KPFT from Houston 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, Livingston/Goodrich 89.9-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. KPFT is Houston’s Community radio.

KPFT is a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, so all contributions for Thinkwing Radio to KPFT are tax deductible. In return for your gifts, you may choose from a number of KPFT “Thank You Gifts”, which you can see and choose from here.

In the show script published here, I include the links used to fact-check myself. 

AUDIO: 

Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio) is now on Sundays at 1PM and re-runs Wednesday at 11AM (CT) on KPFT 90.1 FM-HD2, Houston’s Community Media. You can also hear the show:

1. Live online at KPFT.org (from anywhere in the world!)
   
   

   Please take a moment to choose THINKWING RADIO from the drop-down list when you donate.

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Except for timely election info, the extensive list of voting resources will now be at the end.

“There’s a reason why you separate military and police. One fights the enemy of the State. The other serves and protects the People. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the State tend to become the People.” ~ Commander Adama, “Battlestar Galactica” (“WATER”, Season 1 episode 2, at the 28 minute mark.)

This is Lesley Stahl asking Trump in an interview why he keeps attacking the press and claiming that they’re reporting fake news: “At one point he [Trump] started to attack the press and I said, ‘You know, that is getting tired. Why are you doing this? You’re doing it over and over and it’s boring and it’s – it’s time to end that. You know, you’ve won the nomination and, uh, why do you keep hammering at this? And he [Trump] said, ‘You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you.’ He said that. So, put that in your head for a minute.” ~ Lesley Stahl (“Deadline Club”, May 21, 2018). Excerpt from “Kasie DC”, May 27, 2018 (VIDEO)

 Welcome to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig, now in its 14^th year on KPFT from Houston 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, Livingston/Goodrich 89.9-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. KPFT is Houston’s Community radio.

And welcome to our international listeners from China, Singapore, Hong Kong, Germany, Belgium, United Kingdom, and elsewhere.

On this show, we discuss local, state, national, and international stories that may have slipped under your radar. At my website, THINKWINGRADIO-dot-COM, I link to all the articles I read and cite, as well as other relevant sources. Articles and commentaries often include lots of internet links for those of you who want to dig deeper. I do try to fact-check myself and include the links I use to do so.

It’s now the 54th week of Trump’s military occupation of Washington DC; and 43 weeks since those states’ governors deployed National Guard troops to Memphis, Tennessee and New Orleans, Louisiana, at Trump’s request, where they remain for now.  

The next gubernatorial election in Tennessee is in just over 2 months, and I can’t wait to see how that turns out.

LAWFARE has a chart of where US troops are currently stationed around the US. The link is in this show post at ThinkwingRadio[.]com.

Due to time constraints, some stories may be longer in this show post than in the broadcast show itself.

1. Don’t be alarmed, because sample ballots are not yet available, but …
   1. Fair warning, our next election day is November 3.
   2. Early Voting will run from OCT 19 – 30, 2026
   3. So early voting is just about 8 weeks away. Get yourself mentally prepared.
2. The following story is from Thursday the 18^th. If you may qualify for this refund settlement, you MUST apply by Tuesday, August 25^th. If you’re listening to this show on Sunday the 23^rd or a repeat of this show on Monday the 24^th, you only have a day or two to apply. So listen carefully and don’t dawdle. From KHOU[.]COM — Homebuyers: You may be entitled to settlement cash. Here’s the deadline; Author: KHOU 11 Staff | KHOU.COM | Published: 5:59 PM CDT August 19, 2026/Updated: 5:37 PM CDT August 20, 2026. TAGS: Homebuyers Settlement, Keller Williams, RE/MAX, Real Estate, Realtor Commissions,
   1. If you bought a home in the U.S. in recent years, you might have money coming your way. Keller Williams and RE/MAX have agreed to a $28.5 million settlement over allegations that real estate companies worked together to keep agent commissions artificially high, and Texas homebuyers who purchased property during a specific window could be eligible to file a claim.
   2. The lawsuit centers on real estate commissions, the fees paid to agents when a home is bought or sold. Homebuyers alleged that major real estate companies coordinated to keep those commissions higher than they should have been, which could have meant buyers paid more for their homes. Keller Williams and RE/MAX deny any wrongdoing but agreed to settle the case rather than continue fighting it in court.
   3. [MIKE: There’s a link embedded in the story at ThinkwingRadio[.]com so you can] FIND OUT IF YOU’RE ELIGIBLE
   4. For Texas residents, the settlement generally covers eligible residential purchases made between January 25, 2019, and April 14, 2026, as long as the property was listed on an MLS, or multiple listing service.
   5. There is no word yet on how much money each claimant could receive. That amount will depend on how many people file claims, how much a claimant paid for their home and how much they paid out in commission.
   6. Anyone who purchased more than one home during the eligible time period needs to file a separate claim for each property.
   7. The deadline to file is fast approaching. Claimants have until [Tuesday] August 25 to submit their paperwork.
   8. MIKE: It’s possible that some eligible parties have already been notified, but if you haven’t received a notification and believe that you may possibly be eligible to participate in this settlement, it’s urgent that you apply right way!
   9. MIKE: This story has the internet links you’ll need for further information and to apply. You can find it near the top of today’s show post at ThinkwingRadio[.]com.
3. Next, in Texas Republican Islamophobic Christian Nationalist news, from ABC13[.]COM — Greg Abbott threatens Dallas [and] Houston airports’ grant funds over Islamic washing facilities; By Ayden Runnels, The Texas Tribune | ABC13.COM | Tuesday, August 18, 2026 12:54PM. TAGS: Politics, Houston, Dallas, Texas Politics, Religion & Spirituality, Texas News, Bush Intercontinental Airport, Texas Politics,
   1. Dallas Fort Worth International Airport canceled plans to install a facility commonly used for Islamic prayer after Gov. Greg Abbotton Friday threatened to withdraw state and federal funding, as Houston’s mayor defended George Bush Intercontinental Airport’s amenity.
   2. Abbott sent a letterto the North Texas airport’s CEO Christopher McLaughlin, as well as the mayors of Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth, stating his office was in the process of reviewing all grant funds over facilities in their cities’ airports. He also sent a letter to U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy to refer the airports for federal investigations.
   3. [Abbott said in a news release announcing the grant reviews,] “These ablution facilities appear designed to single out one subset of the population for special treatment based on religion. That is illegal. … Both airports are government-owned facilities. The federal and state constitutions prohibit government from facilitating this sort of discrimination. Just as the government cannot favor the secular over the sacred, it also cannot favor one religious view over all others.”
   4. At the center of the investigation and grant reviews are ablution facilities, used by Muslim people for wudu, in which hands and feet are rinsed prior to prayer. Abbott said funding would be revoked if their use continued.
   5. Houston’s airport has had an ablution room since 2024, described as for use by people of all faiths. DFW told KERAthat it has had a station since 2019.
   6. In a statement on Monday, Houston Mayor John Whitmire did not specify how the city or airport would respond to Abbott’s letter, but defended the ablution facility in the airport as available to all. He also clarified that the facility was paid for through fees on international airlines, rather than taxes or grant funds of any kind.
   7. [Whitmire said,] “IAH is a global gateway, as it connects Houston to five continents via more than 200 nonstop routes. … The ablution room was created in response to passenger requests and serves a practical need.”
   8. Shortly after Abbott’s public announcement about the grant reviews on Friday, a DFW airport spokesperson said in a statement that plans for the facility had been canceled after deciding it “would not deliver the originally anticipated operational benefits.”
   9. [The statement read,] “Like all proposed projects, the airport ultimately considers the operational benefits, customer service impacts, operational risks and costs before approving them.”
   10. Anti-Islamicrhetoric has been at the forefront of Texas Republican messaging through the year, as GOP leaders have railed for months about the urgency of ending the so-called “Islamification” of Texas.
   11. Abbott has repeatedly usedthreats of withdrawing funding as a means of exerting control over Texas cities to press issues important to the GOP base in the state. Most recently, Abbott threatened $530,000 in grants for Grand Prairie unless the city canceled an event at a water park initially advertised as a “Muslims only” gathering. He also threatened funding for transportation last year unless cities removed rainbow crosswalksintended to show support for LGBTQ+ communities.
   12. Abbott’s letters about the ablution facilities follow another letter sent Thursday by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, to DFW airport officials. Parker, who chairs the state Senate’s transportation committee, sent a list of questionsto administrators asking how the private donation for the facility was accepted and who it came from.
   13. In a statement Saturday morning, a spokesperson for the airport said the design firm filling out the permit form for the facility made an “administrative error” and accidentally listed it as privately funded. The project was intended to be paid for by airport funds made through parking and concessions before it was canceled.
   14. MIKE: This is a state government attempt at petty ethnic religious discommodation. It’s another example of the hateful, discriminatory, Christian nationalist, Islamophobic agenda that Gov. Abbott and Texas Republicans seem to promote.
   15. MIKE: It’s possible that the plans for the DFW ablution facility may have been technically “mis-described”, and perhaps relabeling the application will help, but I think we know what the source of the governor’s objections really are.
   16. MIKE: Once again, Republicans show us that local control is great until they have the levers of real power. Then they oppress local government that they disagree with. They’re just closet tyrants.
   17. MIKE: Modern Republicans do not equal freedom. Remember that on this rapidly arriving election day.
4. As of Saturday, August 22^nd, this next story on media concentration news from HOUSTONCHRONICLE[.]COM is still current — How a $6.2 billion merger could remake Houston’s television news landscape; By Nathaniel Rosenberg, Staff Writer | HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM | Aug 15, 2026. TAGS: Houston Media Market, Texas Media, Nexstar, Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Tegna, Media Consolidation,
   1. Come September, when viewers of CW39 flip to the channel for the 9 p.m. news, they’ll be greeted with the unfamiliar faces of Len Cannon and Mia Gradney, the evening broadcasters on KHOU, Houston’s CBS
   2. The seemingly minor programming switch — CW39 currently leases its nightly broadcast from ABC13 — is among the first shifts in the Houston media market following the proposed merger of broadcasting giantsNexstar and Tegna, which would create one of the largest local television companies in U.S. history.
   3. In April, the Federal Communications Commission approved the $6.2 billion merger of the rival television conglomerates, paving the way for Nexstar to own 256 stations across 80% of the country’s media markets, including 42 stations in Texas, covering approximately 98.1% of the state’s population.
   4. In Houston [3], Dallas-Fort Worth [3], Austin [4] and 11 other markets, Nexstar is poised to control at least two stations.
   5. Nexstar is poised to dominate local Texas TV
   6. The company will own 42 Texas stations, covering 98% of the population, if its pending merger with Tegna is approved.
   7. President Donald Trump has trumpeted the deal, saying it “will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition.” But the merger is currently held up in federal court, after a bipartisan coalition of 13 states sued to block the union on antitrust grounds. Texas did not join the suit, and the [Texas] Attorney General’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
   8. Tegna didn’t respond to requests for comment. Nexstar, which is headquartered in Irving [TX], declined to comment on specifics of the merger, citing the ongoing litigation. Its executives have argued that the merger is essential for the survival of local television journalism, which they say is increasingly eclipsed by YouTube, streaming, and other social media platforms.
   9. Andy Alford, Nexstar’s president of broadcasting, described the programming shift at CW39, which it has owned since 2019, as an “arm’s-length relationship between two distinct organizations.” Tegna owns KHOU.
   10. At the same time, he heralded the pending merger as an opportunity to produce better journalism in Houston by combining the “talent, resources and capabilities” of KHOU and CW39.
   11. [Alford said in a statement,] “We continue to believe that a future integration of our newsrooms is a better outcome that will create even greater opportunities to serve our community while strengthening and preserving local journalism.”
   12. But media observers and antitrust scholars warned that in the long run, the merger and other moves by the FCC to lift limits on industry consolidation would likely lead to layoffs of newsroom staff and a decline in both the amount and diversity of local news coverage across Houston, its suburbs and other major Texas media markets.
   13. [Nikolas Guggenberger, an antitrust and media law professor at the University of Houston, said,] “It’s unhealthy if one company dominates local broadcasting. … On the labor side, I think it also has the potential to have devastating consequences.”
   14. [This could be] An ‘inflection point’ for the TV news industry.
   15. Both Nexstar and critics of its merger with Tegna agree that the television news business has suffered over the last 20 years. Viewership has steadily declined, with eyeballs increasingly drawn to streaming services and social media, resulting in fewer advertising dollars and decreased revenue in local TV.  
   16. Zachary Metzger, the director of the State of Local News Project at Northwestern University, likened the current television landscape to the state of newspapers in 2005: on the verge of a dramatic reduction in staffing and ownership consolidation, due to steadily declining earnings.
   17. Mike McGuff, a local media blogger and former CW39 reporter, said the industry-wide decline was a major factor in the carousel of hires and departures at Houston-area stations over the past few years.
   18. [McGuff said,] “Houston is probably more stable than a smaller market, but still it’s not as stable as it used to be. … (Employees) are moving around a lot more, and looking to get out as the stability goes away.”
   19. Last Thursday, in a move celebrated by Nexstar, the FCC eliminated a cap that prevented companies from reaching more than 39% of television viewers nationwide. The commission’s chair, Brendan Carr, presented the change as an opportunity to level the playing field between television and tech conglomerates, which don’t face similar restrictions.
   20. But the lone Democrat on the FCC blasted the move as illegal, and many critics argued that it swept aside a rule meant to safeguard a healthy diversity of perspectives in local news.
   21. [Guggenberger, the media law professor, said,] “It’s unhealthy if one company dominates local broadcasting; it’s a ‘media pluralism’ concern.”
   22. [Experts say that] TV layoffs loom in Houston [and] statewide.
   23. The potential impact of the pending merger is still unclear.
   24. Nexstar hasn’t announced any internal changes, including potential staff cuts or plans to physically combine the KHOU and CW39 newsrooms.
   25. But cost cuts are likely, said media professors and experts. Industry consolidation, Guggenberger notes, tends to reduce both wages and overall employment, as workers have less leverage to negotiate higher salaries.
   26. [Metzger, the media researcher, said,] “I think we will be seeing a dramatic shrinking of these newsrooms. … That trend is only going to accelerate under massive chain ownership.”
   27. Metzger said his research shows that media mergers typically lead to a more impoverished reporting landscape. There’s often less education coverage, less local business news, and suburbs are neglected in favor of crime stories and a focus on bigger cities.
   28. If there’s a saving grace for Houston, McGuff argues, it’s that the local television market is both large and less ripe for consolidation than in other major Texas cities. Metzger also thinks it remains a “pretty vibrant news city.” 
   29. Most of the prominent stations are already owned by large national media brands (including Nexstar, Disney, Fox and Univision) who are not currently looking to sell, according to McGuff.
   30. But the impacts of the Nexstar merger and FCC changes are more likely to be felt in regions like Austin, Lubbock, or the Rio Grande Valley, where Nexstar is set to own both top stations, rather than the comparatively smaller CW39 and the larger KHOU.
   31. [Metzger said,] “When these newsrooms shrink down… there no longer is that feeling of ‘these are people who I can I trust, who are telling stories about me and are invested in telling stories about my community'”. … People don’t see enough stories about themselves.”
   32. MIKE: There’s a graphic in the story that shows how this merger will affect various media markets around Texas. Fortunately, there’s a spreadsheet that can be downloaded that shows how many stations in each market are going to be affected if this merger goes through:
   33. 4 each in Austin, Waco-Temple-Bryan, & Tyler-Longview (including Lufkin & Nacogdoches) TX
   34. 3 each in Abilene-Sweetwater, Amarillo, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Houston, Odessa-Midland, San Angelo, & Wichita Falls TX
   35. 3 each in also Lawton, OK and Shreveport, LA
   36. 2 each in Beaumont-Port Arthur, and Harlingen-Weslaco-Brownsville-McAllen, & Lubbock TX
   37. 1 each in Corpus Christi, San Antonio, and El Paso, TX (which includes Las Cruces, NM),
   38. NO NET CHANGE IN: Laredo and Victoria TX, and the Sherman, TX market which includes Ada, OK
   39. ​MIKE: Comments in the story about the allegedly positive impact that these mergers might have on the quality of local news, and the community relationships that local news develops, are all important points, but I think that it’s a specious argument that consolidation of truly local newsrooms will improve local news quality.
   40. MIKE: If media mergers and consolidation like this must happen, I have a different idea.
   41. MIKE: Organizations like the Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters, France24, BBC, etc. are news pools that cover national and international stories around the globe. They offer subscription services at a price to news organizations and media that otherwise would not have the resources to cover the news in that sort of breadth and depth.
   42. MIKE: Perhaps, rather than leave local news solely to local stations and letting it wither on the vine, we need this sort of organization to organize a national pool for local news.
   43. MIKE: If part of the rationale for these massive media mergers is, allegedly, to provide greater financial resources for local news, then media consolidation doesn’t have to be the only answer.
   44. MIKE: Depending on how our elections go between now and 2028, the US and FCC could someday return to much smaller ownership caps, and perhaps one or more national news organization could be built that would source high quality local news to local media for a subscription price.
   45. MIKE: To some extent, this is already the case. Many media outlets are already offering local news stories sourced from other local media outlets and affiliates, or from organizations like USA Today.
   46. MIKE: I firmly believe that with public will and government incentives (though perhaps not this government), we can strengthen local news reporting rather than seeing it die a slow megalopolistic death.
   47. MIKE: Whether this is accomplished by an idea like mine, or some other means, such as incentivizing non-profit news organizations, we must rescue local news while simultaneously ending media megalopolies.
5. I suspect that the availability of water for drinking and farming is going to be a continuing theme for the rest of 2026. From WIRED].]COM — Puerto Rico Is Rationing Water. It Could’ve Avoided It by Harvesting Rainwater; By Yessenia Funes | WIRED.COM | Aug 15, 2026 5:30 AM. TAGS: Science, Puerto Rico, Water, Drought, Extreme Weather, Environment,
   1. [A ready-made solution to Puerto Rico’s current water shortage is] barely being tapped: the normally copious rainfall.
   2. Anywhere from 30 to 169 inches of precipitation falls on the territory annually but, [unlike some other island states,] the government doesn’t require US citizens in Puerto Rico to install catchment systems to take advantage of [this] free resource …. As climate change increases the odds of more intense droughts on the island, that type of decentralized infrastructure may be just what Puerto Ricans need in an emergency.
   3. Bottom of Form
   4. [MIKE: I will note bluntly, though the story does not, that everyone born in Puerto Rico or any US state is a full US citizen. Native-born Puerto Ricans can even vote in US elections if they move to and reside in any US state. Continuing …]
   5. [Says Fernando Abruña, a partner at local firm Abruña & Musgrave Architects,] “One of the best unused reservoirs of water in Puerto Rico are the roofs of the houses.”
   6. The drought has exacerbated a water crisis that was already in motion due to ruptured water pipes and other decrepit infrastructure.
   7. For the past week, Puerto Rico governor Jenniffer González has ordered municipal governments to shut off water two days at a time for people in the northeast [in order] to conserve local supplies, leaving 180,000 households with limited [water] access. The problems began well before that, though: Many families have been without consistent water for more than 100 days.
   8. While the drought is a factor, the biggest issue isn’t a lack of water, says environmental lawyer Ruth Santiago, but rather the government’s mismanagement of it.
   9. [Says Santiago, who works with the local group Comité Diálogo Ambiental (the Environmental Dialogue Committee),] “Even with the climate crisis and these droughts, we still have abundant water. … We could be harvesting rainwater right now,” [she says as a storm erupts mid-conversation]
   10. The most resilient harvesting systems rely on gravity, using gutters to divert rainwater from a roof to a canister that connects to indoor pipes like a faucet or showerhead. Bigger systems can help collect water to cool power plants and other industrial uses.
   11. Abruña, who is also a fellow with the American Institute of Architects, estimates the island could gather 30 billion gallons of water a year if just 1 million households used rainwater collection technology. The average resident uses 62 gallons a day, amounting to just over 72 billion gallons of residential water use a year.
   12. The Puerto Rico Aqueduct and Sewer Authority loses about 60 percent of the island’s drinking water before any arrives at customers’ homes due to leaking pipes and failing infrastructure.
   13. [MIKE: I hate percentages that give no context. According to my further research, that 60% number equals maybe 267 million to 333 million gallons of treated water lost every single day. I’ll get back to this number in my comments. Continuing …]
   14. The ongoing emergency was caused, in part, by a series of ruptures in the 72-inch Superaqueduct water pipe, a main artery that services major cities on the northern coast. Repairing and updating the island’s aging water distribution system is most urgent, Santiago says, but rainwater harvesting is a cost-effective solution that can be quickly implemented.
   15. The practice is not widespread in Puerto Rico, where the government has prioritized centralized grids fed by freshwater, but these systems are popular in other island communities. Roughly 90 percent of homes in the US Virgin Islands have a cistern to collect rainwater, and the territory has building codes that require many new developments to include this infrastructure. (Barbados has similar codes.) In Hawaii, Honolulu County even offers a limited number of free rain barrel installations to residents.
   16. [Says Farah Nibbs, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland Baltimore County’s Department of Emergency and Disaster Health Systems,] “There is nothing that can help the Caribbean region as quickly and as reliably as rainwater harvesting,” … noting [that] governments should treat it “as part of the national water supply.”
   17. She also says governments should help cover the costs to avoid putting onerous “economic and financial burdens on households.” Yet in Puerto Rico, the government offers no incentives or financial assistance. That’s left small organizations attempting to meet demand.
   18. Since 2010, local environmental nonprofit Plenitud Puerto Rico has donated and installed 73 rainwater harvesting systems for neighbors in Las Marías, a mountainous municipality on the western side of Puerto Rico. Executive codirector Owen Ingley estimates that the technology costs the group $500 to $2,000 for small, simple units and up to $5,000 for larger, more advanced ones with electric pumps. There are also additional costs to maintain the system, especially if a bad storm damages it, and to monitor water quality.
   19. The team recently installed a unit for a man in his eighties who lives alone and regularly experiences disruptions to his water supply. The system doesn’t provide drinking water, but it helps him meet other household needs such as flushing the toilet or filling his dog’s water bowl. …
   20. José Pérez Cordero, an at-large legislator in the Puerto Rico House of Representatives, introduced a resolution in June that would order the Puerto Rican Natural Resources Committee to conduct a feasibility study on rainwater harvesting. That would include looking at how other Caribbean islands have made it work and adopting similar models for Puerto Rico. The proposal has gone nowhere, even as water insecurity mounts.
   21. [Pérez Cordero says,] “We are, right now, in the perfect moment to do it, because we are in the middle of a crisis. … Sadly, we always wait for the reaction.”
   22. He points to a 2024 law that mandated all public agencies to implement rainwater collection systems on government buildings. That, too, has gone nowhere: Agencies aren’t following the law, nor is it being enforced.
   23. Pérez Cordero’s New Progressive Party is in power, but he says his peers have often lacked the political will to be proactive and prioritize the environment.
   24. Rainwater harvesting won’t solve all of Puerto Rico’s water problems, particularly in urban locations where it’s hard to install them in large apartment complexes. They also aren’t sustainable if the wet season isn’t rainy enough — a prospect that’s likely to increase as burning fossil fuels heats up the planet. But that doesn’t mean they can’t play a role in shoring up a dysfunctional system.
   25. [Pérez Cordero says,] “Facing climate change, every year is going to be harder. … Every year, the dry season is going to be longer. Every year, the rainy season is going to be harder too.”
   26. MIKE: Before we get too high and mighty about how much water Puerto Rico loses to decrepit infrastructure, let’s do a local comparison for context.
   27. MIKE: Houston loses approximately 32 billion gallons of treated drinking water annually to leaks and aging infrastructure, which is greater than the total yearly water consumption of the entire city of Fort Worth.
   28. MIKE: Houston’s lost water equals about 87.6 million gallons every single day. Puerto Rico is losing about 267 million to 333 million gallons of treated water per day. For my calculations, let’s round that to about 300 million gallons per day.
   29. MIKE: The population of Puerto Rico is approximately 3.2 million, according to recent S. Census Bureau estimates. That’s about a third more people than the city-limits population of Houston which has approximately 2.4 million people.
   30. MIKE: So for comparative purposes, I think we should be comparing per capita loss of water to faulty infrastructure.
   31. MIKE: According to my calculations, it might be fair to say that Puerto Rico is losing about 93.75 gallons of potable water per person per day to faulty infrastructure.
   32. MIKE: Houston is losing about 36.5 gallons of potable water per person per day to faulty infrastructure.
   33. MIKE: That means that Puerto Rico — a mountainous island — is losing about 2.5 times more water to faulty infrastructure than Houston, which lies in a basically flat flood plain.
   34. MIKE: Puerto Rico is a relatively poor US territory, with an island poverty rate at about 40%, more or less. Houston’s poverty rate is about 21%, which is the highest among America’s most populous cities.
   35. MIKE: Now we have something to discuss.
   36. MIKE: Mismanagement is probably a significant part of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure problems, but those problems also have important geographical roots, so its solutions will likely not much resemble the solutions most cities or states might use on the US mainland.
   37. MIKE: It’s true that many Caribbean islands use catchment systems — a process called “Rainwater harvesting” — to supplement their water supplies, but those islands are mostly flat rather than mountainous, creating a different kind of watershed.
   38. MIKE: Even the article I found that discusses how most Caribbean islands use captured rainwater to varying degrees, including full household use, makes the point that, “water quality may be affected by atmospheric pollutants and material deposited on the catchment surface.”
   39. MIKE: Puerto Rico lies in the storm-prone northeastern Caribbean. On its own, it lacks the financial resources to significantly upgrade its water and — while we’re discussing it — electrical infrastructure, especially in the face of its particular location in the sea.
   40. MIKE: Due to Puerto Rico’s geography, the “catchment systems” discussed in this story may represent a partial solution, but it’s important to note that according to a recent article from Culligan, water from catchment systems is not necessarily safe to drink without adequate filtration and treatment.
   41. MIKE: The article summarizes itself this way: “Rainwater is not considered safe to drink for most households because it can collect bacteria, parasites, chemicals and pollutants from the air, roofs, gutters and storage tanks. [R]ainwater harvesting works well for non-drinking uses like irrigation…”
   42. MIKE: Further, “Collected rainwater is not recommended for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, rinsing food, or making ice. … Most homeowners use rainwater for tasks where drinking water quality is not required, such as garden and lawn irrigation, car washing, rinsing tools or outdoor equipment, [and] toilet flushing where permitted by local code.”
   43. MIKE: The Culligan article addresses the question of whether captured rainwater can be made potable — in other words, safe for drinking, cooking, washing, and bathing.
   44. MIKE: It says, “Disinfection is often discussed for potable setups because microbes are a major concern. Methods for disinfecting rainwater often include chemical disinfectants or UV disinfection units in permanent systems. Even with filtration and disinfection, rainwater is not a suitable drinking water source for most households because there is no routine regulatory testing available, and home setups do not typically cover the full range of possible contaminants and changing conditions.”
   45. MIKE: In other words, contrary to how the WIRED story makes it sound, adding a catchment system to a home or business in Puerto Rico is not as simple as collecting rainwater from your roof into barrels and then pumping it into a home’s “indoor pipes like a faucet or showerhead.”
   46. MIKE: It’s entirely likely that new homes or homes that are being rebuilt following a storm can be fitted or retrofitted in ways that are somewhat cost-effective because the plumbing can be properly segregated for appropriate uses of captured rainwater.
   47. MIKE: But no matter how you slice it, while rainwater catchment systems may be a partial answer to Puerto Rico’s water problems, it’s not a simple matter of adding barrels. It would likely cost thousands of dollars to properly equip a home with a system that might provide safe potable water, and the owners/operators of that system would have to be trained in how to maintain it so that the water continues to be reasonably
   48. MIKE: Puerto Rico has to build infrastructure solutions — both centralized and decentralized — that suit its unique geographical needs.
   49. MIKE: In my opinion, Puerto Rico, as a commonwealth territory of the United States, needs federal help to properly provide adequate infrastructure for its people. It’s possible that Puerto Rican statehood is an ultimate answer.
   50. MIKE: With full voting rights for the population, and voting representation in Congress, Puerto Rico could negotiate for inclusion of earmarks in financial bills that could help the island.
6. I ran across an interesting story about Japan’s energy picture at AUTONOCION[.]COM — Japan switched one reactor back on at the biggest nuclear station ever built after fourteen years dark, and three weeks later the utility that owns it started switching off solar farms for the first time, up to 3,290 megawatts on a single afternoon; By: Luis Reyes | AUTONOCION.COM | Published: Aug 15, 2026 @ 5:00pm ET. TAGS: Energy, Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s Unit 6, Japan, Nuclear Energy, Solar Energy, Energy Storage,
   1. Within three weeks of Kashiwazaki-Kariwa’s Unit 6 putting electrons on the wire, the same utility that owns it started curtailing solar farms — up to 3,290 megawatts cut in a single afternoon — a thing that had never happened in that service area before.
   2. One [restarted reactor] displaced the equivalent of 1.3 million tons of [Liquified Natural Gas (LNG)] annually, and that math is about to rewrite how Japan thinks about the energy mix it spent a decade, and a fortune, building.
   3. With 14 years of rust, three failed restart attempts, and a grid now visibly oversupplied on sunny days, the full story of what this moment means for nuclear, solar, and the countries watching Japan’s every move, is not what the headlines told you.
   4. The Fukushima meltdowns get remembered as something that happened to one plant. What they actually did was switch off an entire country. All 54 of Japan’s reactors went dark, and a nation that had been pulling roughly 30 percent of its electricity out of fission went shopping for gas from anyone with a cargo to sell.
   5. [MIKE: I’ll note here as an aside that I checked on how that’s going by asking Google AI, “Fukushima remediation progress”? and “Fukushima cleanup timeline”. I infer from various articles that full remediation of the reactor, contaminated soil, and other debris (of which there is close around 1000 tons) is expected to be completed by somewhere between 2051 and 2076, which is a pretty broad timeline. I expect that timeline to slip based on unresolved questions about what technology to use for various aspects of the cleanup and unresolved questions about how to safely isolate the reactor itself. Serious nuclear accidents are not like cleaning up oil spills which, by the way, humans are still not very good at. Continuing …]
   6. Fifteen of [the 54 previously closed] reactors are running again. The most recent one back [online] is the one worth paying attention to, and not for the reason the headlines gave.
   7. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa sits on the Sea of Japan coast about 135 miles northwest of Tokyo, and it is the largest nuclear power station ever built. Seven reactors, 8,212 megawatts of installed capacity between them, every one of them idle since 2012. On April 16, exactly one re-entered commercial operation.
   8. It took three attempts and about 50 extra days to get there. And within three weeks of that reactor putting power on the wire, the utility that owns it began switching off solar farms in its own service area for the first time.
   9. … Tokyo Electric Power Company, better known as TEPCO, planned to restart Unit 6 on January 20. It postponed [that] by a day because an alarm designed to warn operators about control rod withdrawal failed to sound during a test of that alarm.
   10. The second attempt went further. Workers began pulling neutron-absorbing control rods on the evening of January 21, and shortly after midnight another alarm tripped in the control rod monitoring system, this time on a single rod. [The Plant general manager] told reporters he had decided to shut the reactor down, with 52 of the 205 control rods already out of the core.
   11. TEPCO replaced parts and restarted on February 9, with criticality confirmed at 3:20pm local time. Generation and transmission resumed on February 16, [but] the unit came offline again from February 20 to 24 for inspections, and commercial operation was set for March 18.
   12. That date slipped too. In mid-March an alarm indicated a small electricity leak at a generator, and [TEPCO’s president] told reporters he could not say when commercial operation would begin. It finally happened at 4:00pm on April 16, per World Nuclear News.
   13. Fourteen years is a long time to leave a machine sitting. TEPCO plans to run it for one year before the next scheduled inspection in April 2027.
   14. … Unit 6 is a 1,356-megawatt Advanced Boiling Water Reactor [ABWR[ that first entered service in 1996. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was the first plant anywhere to use the ABWR design.
   15. The S. Energy Information Administration estimates the unit will generate about 9,500 gigawatt-hours a year at full output, displacing roughly 1.3 million tons of liquefied natural gas [LNG] … . Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry puts the effect on the Tokyo area at about 2 percent of electricity supply.
   16. Those are not small numbers for a country that imports every molecule of gas it burns. Gas covered 33 percent of Japanese electricity generation in 2024. Nuclear covered 9 percent.
   17. Here is the timing detail most coverage skipped. Unit 6 was generating on February 16. The Strait of Hormuz closed on February 28.
   18. Nobody at TEPCO restarted a reactor because of the Middle East. [Niigata’s Governor] had consented back in November 2025 and the prefectural assembly backed him in December. The Middle East showed up twelve days after the power did.
   19. The closure took more than 10 billion cubic feet per day of LNG off the water. [That’s] about 20 percent of global trade, most of it Qatari volume. Kpler tracked no laden LNG vessel crossing the strait between March 1 and April 24.
   20. Asian buyers went to the spot market. The Japan-Korea Marker, Asia’s benchmark LNG price, rose 51 percent to $16.02 per million British thermal units by late April, while Henry Hub in the United States fell 9 percent over the same stretch, according to EIA figures drawn from Bloomberg data. American terminals were already running at 94 percent of authorized capacity, so there was not much slack left to send.
   21. Tokyo started curtailing solar three weeks later.
   22. A nuclear plant is baseload. It runs flat out or it does not run, and it cannot be throttled down on an afternoon to chase demand. Coal and gas plants have minimum output floors too, generally 30 to 50 percent of capacity. That leaves one thing in the stack that can be dialed back quickly, and it is the solar.
   23. On March 1, TEPCO curtailed renewable output in its service area for the first time, cutting up to 1,810 megawatts during midday hours. On March 29, with demand about 3,500 megawatts lower than it had been on March 21 and Unit 6 contributing 1,319 megawatts of inflexible supply, curtailment peaked at 3,290 megawatts. …
   24. Across March 28 and 29 together, curtailed [solar] energy came to 16.2 gigawatt-hours; [that’s] against 9.2 GWh across March 1, 8 and 21 combined.
   25. Those figures come from an April briefing note by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis [IEEFA], built on TEPCO’s own published dispatch data. IEEFA argues for renewables and reads the numbers accordingly, so treat the framing as advocacy. The underlying data is the utility’s.
   26. What makes it sting for Japanese households is that curtailed output earns nothing. Japan does not compensate generators for power the grid refuses to take, and consumers still pay a renewable surcharge of 4.18 yen [or about US 2.5¢] per kilowatt-hour this fiscal year, roughly 20,000 yen annually for a household using 400 kWh a month.
   27. [MIKE: I’ll note by comparison that the average US household uses an average of 800-900 kWh per month. Your usage may vary. Continuing …]
   28. None of that is an argument against the reactor. It is an argument about a grid short on storage and interregional transmission. On the March days when Tokyo was throwing away its own solar, it was simultaneously importing power from the Tohoku region up north.
   29. … The obvious follow-up is [what will happen] when the rest of the [reactor complex] wakes up? The honest answer is that most of it may not.
   30. Unit 7 is the same 1,356-megawatt [kind of reactor], and cleared regulatory screening alongside Unit 6 in December 2017. TEPCO has pushed its restart to 2029 or 2030, and in September 2025 said it would remove fuel from the unit because required post-Fukushima safety construction would not be finished in time. Running both would add an estimated 100 billion yen, around $633 million, to TEPCO’s annual earnings.
   31. [TEPCO”s president] told the Niigata assembly in October 2025 that the company was considering decommissioning Units 1 and 2. Units 3, 4 and 5 have no announced timetable.
   32. Unit 6 has a clock on it as well. TEPCO has until September 2029 to complete the anti-terrorism safety facility required at the unit, and it can run until then. Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority revised those requirements in early April to keep some operating reactors from having to shut down over the deadline.
   33. The national target is nuclear at around 20 percent of generation by fiscal 2040, which needs up to 30 reactors. Fifteen are running. Three more have initial approval, six are under review, and eight of the operable fleet have not filed to restart at all.
   34. The industrial base is not the problem. Japan still does much of the world’s heavy nuclear forging at a single press in Hokkaido, which we covered in June, and it builds inspection robots that take a radiation dose no human should. The reactors are the slow part.
   35. … During a media tour on May 1, reporters could see the spent fuel cooling pool at Unit 6 from a top-floor observation area. It is 88 percent full.
   36. Kashiwazaki-Kariwa is one of three Japanese plants whose cooling pools will be full inside five years, according to the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan. [The plant general manager] put it plainly to the Associated Press: without solid fuel management plans, “our power generation will stall sooner or later.”
   37. Across 17 Japanese plants, cooling pools held more than 17,000 tons of spent fuel as of December 2025, close to 80 percent of national storage capacity, per METI figures. TEPCO is shuffling fuel from Unit 6 into pools at other reactors on the same site.
   38. For permanent disposal, the government has approached Ogasawara village about a feasibility study on … a government-owned island roughly 1,240 miles south of Tokyo with no permanent residents and an army missile range under construction. It is the fourth site to reach a feasibility study since the early 2000s, and the review process takes about two decades.
   39. … Japan got the biggest nuclear station on the planet producing power again after fourteen years, which is a real engineering result and a real political one. One reactor of seven; about 2 percent of the Tokyo area’s electricity; and 1.3 million tons of LNG a year the country no longer has to bid for against Europe.
   40. It also showed that dropping 1,356 megawatts of inflexible baseload into a grid that cannot store or move surplus means something else gets switched off, and that something is the cheapest generation on the system. Germany answered the same 2011 accident by shutting everything down, and one of its unused reactors now houses an amusement park. Neither country has a permanent home for the waste.
   41. The next hard date is April 2027, when Unit 6 comes down for inspection. What TEPCO does with that pool between now and then will say more than the restart did.
   42. MIKE: I’m still very wary of nuclear power because of all the downsides that current reactors have based on conventional nuclear technology and its modern variations.
   43. MIKE: Let me start by suggesting that between Fukushima and Chernobyl, we’re averaging 1-2 major catastrophic accidents about every 50 years. Guessing two per century may be conservative. These accidents take almost half a century to mitigate and remediate — badly. And that doesn’t include the various serious nuclear accidents over the last 75 years — of which there have been about a dozen or so — that didn’t rank up there with the BIG 2.
   44. MIKE: In my opinion, with the possible exception of generating little or no CO2 after construction is completed (because making and curing concrete generates plenty), there are really no upsides to the nuclear reactors we’ve built, now that renewables are in the picture.
   45. MIKE: Reactor plants take too long to build, and commonly take much longer than originally projected. They’re too expensive and, again, typically end up much more expensive than planned.
   46. MIKE: After over 70 years of processing, using, and removing nuclear reactor fuel, we still have no solid idea of what to do with the atomic waste. Note that I did not use the phrase “how to dispose of used nuclear fuel” because mostly, we still don’t actually dispose of it. We store it in places.
   47. MIKE: Current nuclear waste is dangerously radioactive for about 100 thousand years. That’s close to half as long as our species has been on this planet, and about 20 times longer than recorded human history. How are we supposed to make any disposal sites safe for a hundred thousand years when we can’t even preserve records for more than 5000?
   48. MIKE: And what about nuclear reactors that now exist in war zones? The world is perpetually holding its breath hoping that one side or the other won’t cause a reactor breach, accidentally or on purpose.
   49. MIKE: Over the years, I’ve talked a lot about energy and energy grids. There are lots of possible solutions out there that can be effective, depending on specific circumstances.
   50. MIKE: The ultimate answer, in my opinion, is expanding renewable energy resources, and renovating, updating, and interlinking current energy grids so that we can transport and share power more widely as needed. (ERCOT take note.)
   51. MIKE: Energy grids around the world need to add much more energy storage capacity than they have now as buffers, so that building out wind, solar, and geothermal doesn’t mean lots of wasted energy on good days and energy shortages on bad days.
   52. MIKE: Storage doesn’t automatically mean lithium-ion batteries. There are lots of energy storage solutions, both extant and under development, that can serve utility-sized enterprise projects. They even have a name: BESS (for “battery energy storage systems”). They’re even being built in various locations around the greater Houston metropolitan area.
   53. MIKE: I discussed a local BESS in League city as Topic 11 of my January 25, 2025 show. It included a link to various kinds of energy storage technology options, which I’m also including in today’s show post at ThinkWingRadio[.]com. That’s where I believe the future lies. Not so much in nuclear reactors, and certainly not in restarting the old ones we have.
   54. MIKE: None of that will happen fast, but I bet it can happen faster than you can build a nuclear reactor.
   55. MIKE: On nuclear power, I will say this. There are nuclear technologies being worked on that promise cheaper nuclear power, using fuels that are potentially safer and less radioactive, generate less waste, and can even reprocess and use much of the nuclear waste we’re storing.
   56. MIKE: In my opinion, if early 20^th century autos were the equivalent of renewable energy, then building more nuclear plants is like competing with cars by breeding better horses.
   57. MIKE: I think it’s ultimately a losing proposition.
7. Next, a disturbing story from NPR[.]ORG on August 19— Israel strikes an air base in Syria to prevent Turkish troops from deploying; By The Associated Press | NPR.ORG | August 19, 2026@3:51 AM ET. TAGS: Middle East, Syria, Israel, Turkey, Türkiye, Abu al-Duhur Base,
   1. Israel struck an air base in northwest Syria early Tuesday, saying it aimed to prevent Turkish troops from deploying there.
   2. Turkey, which has close ties with the Syrian government and has been providing assistance to Syria’s military, has tense relations with Israel. The rival countries have sought to curb each other’s influence in neighboring Syria.
   3. Eight strikes hit the runway of the Abu Duhur air base in the northwestern province of Idlib, causing damage but no casualties, state TV said.
   4. Syria’s Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shibani told reporters in Damascus that Syria condemns the “Israeli aggression,” adding that the strikes were “an unjustified provocation, a violation of Syria’s sovereignty, and a direct threat to regional and global stability.”
   5. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement that Israel had attacked the base because Syria had been “on the verge of breaching” an agreed-upon “status quo in security matters” by allowing Turkish troops to deploy there.
   6. [The statement said,] “Israel repeatedly warned Syria that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel’s security. Syria chose to ignore these warnings.”
   7. The Foreign Ministry of Turkey condemned the attack in a statement and called for “the international community to take a more decisive stance to end Israel’s escalating aggression against Syria and to ensure accountability for these actions that disregard international law.”
   8. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said foreign fighters used to stay at the base before they were recently asked to leave. The Observatory added that Turkey, which is a main backer of Syria’s government, has been rehabilitating the air base that had been out of service for years during Syria’s conflict that left nearly half a million people dead.
   9. Tom Barrack, the U.S. ambassador to Turkey and special envoy to Syria, posted on X that Washington is “deeply concerned that the confirmed Israeli airstrikes” on the Abu Duhur air base constitute “an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability.”
   10. The government of Syria’s Interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa has neither “adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces,” but has repeatedly indicated a preference for de-escalation with Israel, Barrack said.
   11. The United States has in the past hosted, and will continue in the future to host, discussions to encourage diplomacy, Barrack added.
   12. Regional countries including Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia also issued statements condemning the strikes.
   13. Since the fall of Bashar Assad’s government in December 2024 when insurgents marched into his seat of power in Damascus, tensions between Israel and Turkey over Syria have been on the rise.
   14. Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes around Syria after Assad’s fall, mainly destroying assets of the Syrian army to keep them out of the hands of his successors. The Israeli military also seized control of a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in southern Syria, which it continues to occupy.
   15. Israeli drone strikes on a southern suburb of Damascus last year killed eight soldiers and wounded others.
   16. The new authorities in Damascus have said they do not want a conflict with Israel, but Israel has remained suspicious of the government led by former Islamist insurgents.
   17. S.-mediated talks between Israel and Syria aimed at reaching a security agreement have been ongoing for more than a year but have so far failed to produce a deal.
   18. MIKE: MIKE: The area often described as the Levant — which includes Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Syria, as well as Cyprus and part of Turkey — is a rough neighborhood, and every country there is entitled to its own national defense infrastructure.
   19. MIKE: Israel has a history of mutual hostility and military actions with Syria that go back over 75 years, and old habits are hard to break. They have a right to worry.
   20. MIKE: From Israel’s perspective, the new Syrian government’s plans for military reconstruction and its future geopolitical posture are suspect. Certainly, the Syrian governing party’s early militant Islamist origins are a cause for their concern.
   21. MIKE: On the other hand, Syria has a right to their ideas of national security. Israel is not their only neighbor, and other actors can threaten them.
   22. MIKE: Turkey under Erdoğan is flexing and extending its geopolitical muscle, frazzling the nerves of more than just Israel in the region.
   23. MIKE: Israel has been experiencing the equivalent of a 16-year Trumpian government. It’s an ideologically extremist Rightwing Likud administration that governs only with a coalition of smaller parties that are even more extreme than Likud.
   24. MIKE: Much like Trump’s MAGAn America, only about 35-40% of Israelis support the Netanyahu government, which just goes to show that even a parliamentary political system won’t automatically reflect the will of the majority.
   25. MIKE: I have an old school friend who has lived in Israel for decades, and she and her family are bitterly opposed to Netanyahu. Like a majority of Americans, she feels that her government has long failed to represent her.
   26. MIKE: I also recently met a woman who lives in the US but still has friends and family in Syria with whom she is in frequent contact.
   27. MIKE: I was able to question her briefly, and what she’s hearing is that there’s much more freedom of speech in Syria than was ever the case under the Assads. She seems to have a lot of hope for Syria’s future under Presidency Ahmed al-Sharaa’s Syrian transitional government.
   28. MIKE: That’s what I know from two people. It’s hardly a representative statistical sample, but it is a sample.
   29. MIKE: I hope that there is some diplomatic contact and constructive dialog going on between Israel and Syria that might lead to something like a peace treaty, because I think there’s a potentially historic window here for eventual peaceful resolutions of the outstanding issues between Israel and Syria, but I don’t have any illusions how hard and complicated that would be.
   30. MIKE: Any real progress in peace talks will probably have to wait for a centrist, post-Netanyahu, post-Likud government in Israel.
   31. MIKE: The next Israeli national election is on Tuesday, October 27. That’s only about 9 weeks from now.
   32. MIKE: Keep your etsbaot (אצבעות) crossed.

There’s always more to discuss, but that’s all we have time for today. You’ve been listening to Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig from KPFT Houston 90.1-HD2, Galveston 89.5-HD2, Livingston/Goodrich 89.9-HD2, and Huntsville 91.9-HD2. We are Houston’s Community radio. I hope you’ve enjoyed the show and found it interesting, and I look forward to sharing this time with you again next week. Y’all take care!

MIKE: Comments in the story about the allegedly positive impact that these mergers might have on the quality of local news, and the community relationships that local news develops, are all important points, but I think that it’s a specious argument that consolidation of truly local newsrooms will improve local news quality.

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