The outlook for U.S. rare earth materials production got brighter on two fronts yesterday, if market moves are any indication.

Why it matters: China currently dominates production and processing of rare earths used in defense systems, wind turbines, EVs, electronics and more.

Catch up quick: The Defense Department is making billions of dollars worth of investments and business commitments to MP Materials, which operates California's Mountain Pass mine.

• It's buying $400 million worth of preferred stock for a 15% stake, making it the firm's largest shareholder.
• It's also helping finance new mineral separation capabilities and supporting a new magnet factory in Texas.
• The deal includes 10-year offtake agreements and price floors.

Driving the news: Meanwhile, Ramaco Resources' share price surged 31% yesterday after a Fluor study showed the technical viability and attractive economics of extracting rare earths from Brook Mine, a coal site in Wyoming.

• Energy Secretary Chris Wright is scheduled to attend a ribbon-cutting at the project today.

Behind the scenes: Ramaco Resources CEO Randall Atkins hinted at work with the Pentagon in an interview with Bloomberg yesterday.

• "We have not entered into direct talks with the Defense Department, but we certainly have had indirect outreaches in both directions," he said.

The big picture: The MP deal signals a Trump 2.0 appetite for aggressively using industrial policy to bolster rare earth access — even as trade talks with China include loosing its export restrictions.

• Still, MP Materials is casting it as a public-private partnership, with CEO James Litinsky telling CNBC that "this is not a nationalization ... we still control our company."
• MP Materials' stock soared 51% yesterday on news of the deal and is up 176% on the year.

What we're watching: How much new commercial development actually flows from all this.

• Arnab Datta, an industrial policy analyst who has written on ways to counter China's dominance, gave the MP deal a mixed review in a lengthy X thread.
• He praised it for "expanding the toolkit" through equity, lending, price floors and more, and the "enduring" 10-year commitment.
• But he also laid out risks and concerns, like future Defense Department appropriations if complications emerge with the project.

😬 A new analysis concludes there's "upward bias" in estimates of data centers' future electricity demand — and that it could cost ratepayers.

• The big picture: The London Economics International LLC study explores factors like developers duplicating requests in multiple regions, constraints on chip availability, transmission bottlenecks and much more.
• State of play: It was prepared for the Southern Environmental Law Center, which said it's worried about overbuilding of fossil fuel infrastructure and crowding out clean energy.
• The bottom line: "This bias may prove costly to existing customers, especially in regions where vertically integrated utilities own generation and pass costs to customers under cost-of-service regulation and the incremental cost of investment far exceeds the average embedded cost."

🌡️ Rising temperatures pose an "increasing risk to the resilience" of many of the world's biggest data center hubs, per a new study from the risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft.

• Why it matters: The risk is multifaceted, ranging from pressure on water resources needed for cooling data centers — many are already in "water stressed" regions — to power outages and well beyond.
• Threat level: Right now 56% of the world's top 100 data center hubs "score as 'high' or 'very high' risk for cooling degree days," and this rises to 68% by 2040 and keeps going up.
• Yes, but: These findings assume major growth in future emissions, akin to the RCP 8.5 scenario that's looking increasingly unlikely. The firm calls this part of resiliency planning. "It follows the 'plan for the worst, hope for the best' school of thought," Olivia Dobson, director of resilience, tells me in a statement.
• The bottom line: Companies should start planning for this now as demand for AI, data storage and cloud computing rises, the report finds.

📉 Global oil demand growth this year will be the slowest since 2009 outside of the 2020 COVID crisis, with "emerging market consumption particularly lacklustre," the International Energy Agency said this morning.

• Why it matters: Its latest monthly outlook paints a picture of supply growth that will substantially outstrip demand increases through 2026.
• Yes, but: The imbalance isn't obvious in the physical market, IEA notes, partly for seasonal demand reasons. "Price indicators also point to a tighter physical oil market than suggested by the hefty surplus in our balances," it said.
• The intrigue: IEA's report riffs on whether the effect of trade battles is already starting to show up in demand data in the U.S., China, Japan, Korea and Mexico.
• The bottom line: "Although it may be premature to attribute this slower growth to the detrimental impact of tariffs manifesting themselves in the real economy, the largest quarterly contractions occurred in countries that found themselves in the crosshairs of the tariff turmoil," IEA said.

⚔️ President Trump told NBC News that he expects Senate passage of bipartisan legislation to impose major new oil sanctions on Russia — but with a catch.

• State of play: "They're going to pass a very major and very biting sanctions bill, but it's up to the president as to whether or not he wants to exercise it," Trump said.
• Friction point: Politico reports that "desire to have unchecked authority over the next wave of Russia sanctions could throw a wrench in the Senate's hopes of passing a bipartisan sanctions bill before August recess."
• Catch up quick: The bipartisan bill, sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R) and Richard Blumenthal (D), includes massive tariffs on countries that buy Russian energy.

The Trump administration is working carefully to stamp out conspiracy theories about "weather modification," wading into a viral, recurring debate that reignited in the wake of Texas' deadly flooding.

Why it matters: Some Trump allies have amplified baseless claims that cloud-seeding or geoengineering caused the disaster, complicating the government's efforts to reassert scientific facts without alienating the MAGA base.

The intrigue: EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin released a set of online resources yesterday that claim to cover "everything the agency knows about the latest science, research and other information regarding contrails and geoengineering."

• The materials directly debunk common myths, including the idea that aircraft contrails are secretly dispersing chemicals ("chemtrails") and that the government is manipulating weather events.
• But they do so in a way that echoes the language of skeptics — emphasizing transparency and public concern, rather than outright dismissal.

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That's research firm Wood Mackenzie's downwardly revised estimate of fully electric vehicles' share of U.S. sales in 2030.

Why it matters: It's a steep drop from their prior projection of 23%, reflecting the loss of incentives in the new budget law.