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The IV
The antidote to negative content
April 20, 2026
Need a dose of hope? We hear ya.
It must be 4/20, because psychedelic therapy was just fast-tracked by the White House. Live music fans got a big win because Live Nation sucks, and now everybody knows it—taylor swift ticket refunds, anyone? Maryland says NO to an ICE facility, and more…
1. After 16 years and billions in hidden fees, a jury just told Ticketmaster: it wasn’t your imagination.
A federal jury in Manhattan found that Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary operated as an illegal monopoly, harming consumers, artists, and venues. A second trial will now determine remedies — which could include forcing Live Nation to sell concert venues or break up the company entirely.
2. 29 people have died in ICE custody this year. On Wednesday, a federal court said: not in this warehouse.
The US District Court in Maryland halted ICE’s plan to convert an 825,000-square-foot warehouse near Hagerstown into a 1,500-bed detention facility. ICE had purchased the property for $102 million and awarded a $113 million retrofit contract — while bypassing required environmental reviews and while Washington County’s sewage system was already near capacity. Construction is now paused indefinitely. The system of checks doing what it was built to do.
3. The federal government just invested $50 million in psychedelic mental health research — and it has bipartisan backing.
For the roughly 30% of people with depression or PTSD whose symptoms don’t respond to standard medications, a new federal research pathway just opened. An executive order commits $50 million through ARPA-H to match state investments in psychedelic therapy research. The order also directs the FDA to issue National Priority Vouchers for three breakthrough-designation psychedelics, cutting review timelines from months to weeks. No psychedelic has been approved yet. But the science is now federally funded and fast-tracked.
4. The US DOJ is suing states that pass AI laws. States are passing them anyway.
Governors in Oregon, Idaho, Nebraska, Tennessee, and Maine signed AI safety legislation into law — including chatbot disclosure requirements, protections for minors from AI manipulation, and prohibitions on AI impersonating mental health professionals. This comes despite a White House executive order directing the DOJ to challenge “onerous” state AI laws and threatening to condition federal infrastructure funding on compliance. More than 35 states have active AI legislation in 2026. When the federal government stepped back, the states stepped in.
Transparency Coalition | Troutman Privacy + AI
5. AI data centers need baseload clean power. This 1.7-gigawatt geothermal deal just locked it in.
Fervo Energy and Turboden — a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries company — signed a three-year framework to supply turbines for up to 35 of Fervo’s 50 MW “GeoBlock” power plants, totaling 1,750 MW of 24/7 carbon-free power. The companies are currently in the advanced commissioning stage of Phase I at Cape Station in Beaver County, Utah, with startup expected later this year. Once online, it will be the first commercial-scale enhanced geothermal project in the world.
Turboden / Fervo press release
6. Africa just built more solar in three months than it did in all of last year.
Africa commissioned roughly 970 MW of utility-scale solar in Q1 2026 — the highest quarterly addition ever recorded, and more capacity than the entire continent installed in all of 2025. Total installed utility-scale capacity across Africa now stands at 26.15 GW, led by South Africa and Egypt, with strong momentum building in Morocco, Nigeria, Zambia, and Namibia. Africa currently has 133 GW of utility-scale solar in active development. What was promise a decade ago is now delivery at speed.
7. Renters can’t put panels on their roofs. So Americans built a 10-gigawatt workaround.
US community solar — shared solar projects that let renters, apartment dwellers, and households with shaded roofs buy into off-site solar — crossed 10 gigawatts of installed capacity in April 2026. Community solar has made clean energy accessible to households that couldn’t otherwise participate in the transition. At current growth rates, the sector is on track to reach 30 GW nationwide by 2030.
Wood Mackenzie / ACP via Tesevo
8. Pennsylvania’s shale gas wells might be about to produce clean power instead.
The US Department of Energy announced a $14 million project to convert a horizontal shale gas well in Pennsylvania’s Appalachian Utica Shale into an enhanced geothermal system — the first EGS demonstration east of the Mississippi. The project will test whether the same drilling technology that extracted gas from the ground can now tap the earth’s heat to make 24/7 carbon-free electricity. If it works, it offers a replicable template for hundreds of similar wells across Appalachia.
That’s your dose of hope. Forward it to someone who needs it.
Warmly,
HD