Last year’s election split Taiwan’s government with President Lai Ching-te of the effectively pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party leading the executive branch and the pro-China Kuomintang party controlling the legislature. KMT lawmakers repeatedly blocked Lai’s agenda on issues such as defense and energy. Earlier this year, civil society groups accusing the KMT of undermining Taiwanese democracy triggered recall elections against two dozen legislators in a bid to give the DPP a chance at a governing majority.

On Saturday, voters rejected the effort. All 24 recall elections failed to win over the 25% of the district’s voters required to oust the incumbent KMT legislators from power.

The result could deepen Taiwan’s political divides. But it may signal hope for reviving nuclear energy on the island.

In May, the DPP fulfilled its decades-old pledge to end atomic power generation on Taiwan, rendering the country dependent almost entirely on imported fossil fuels for its electricity. That same month, the KMT won enough support to set a date for a referendum on whether to restore operations at the last Taiwanese nuclear plant to shut down, the Maanshan station located near the island’s southern tip.

Despite the government’s opposition, a majority of Taiwanese adults support nuclear power, according to polling from the consultancy Radiant Energy Group. Yet sources in Taiwan whom I have spoken to over the past few months have repeatedly warned me that the partisan divide in Taiwan would cripple the effort, since DPP voters would be primed from the July recall election to either cast ballots against a KMT referendum or decline to vote at all. Unless at least 50% of qualified voters turn out, a plebiscite is automatically invalidated under Taiwan’s referendum law.

When I texted Angelica Oung, a Taiwanese pro-nuclear advocate who opposed the recalls, this morning to ask whether she Saturday’s outcome left her optimistic about the upcoming nuclear vote, she responded: “Yes… cautiously.”

“The problem is even if the referendum passes the DPP can find procedural reasons to drag their feet,” she told me.

The referendum, after all, is nonbinding. “But,” she added, “the political pressure will mount!”

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PROGRAMMING NOTES: I have much to share since my last update on my work outside of this newsletter.

On Monday, I started a new gig: I’m now the chief writer of Heatmap’s weekday morning newsletter. You can find the latest edition here and find the previous days’ issues on my author’s page here.

This morning, I made my debut in New York Focus, the finest local publication covering the Empire State, with a story looking ahead at the state’s plan to build the first new nuclear plant in my lifetime.

Last week, I went back on the Singapore broadcaster CNA’s climate podcast with my friends Jack Board and Liling Tan to talk about the effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill.

I also had a scoop in the MIT Technology Review on California’s grid operator becoming the first in the nation to deploy AI in its outage management system.

In The Atlantic, I had another scoop on President Donald Trump’s threat to fire the remaining members of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s board of directors as part of what my sources fear is the first step toward privatizing the federally-owned utility.

Over at Latitude Media, meanwhile, I wrote about Google’s deals for deploy CO2 batteries and save old hydropower plants, why the answer to a more reliable grid is better planning, green steel startup Boston Metal’s latest funding round, and the dubious methodology behind the Trump administration’s grid reliability report.

On Thursday, I made my usual scheduled appearance on the BBC World Service’s “Business Matters” to talk about the Fed’s independence, why I think people should be more upset at CBS for what happened with “60 Minutes” than Stephen Colbert, and why I think Comic Con is a quasi-religious event.

I also went back on CNN last week to talk about the recent flash flooding in New York, Texas and beyond.

The soundtrack to this edition is “Nightwalk,” the 1967 masterpiece by Nuyorican jazz king Joe Torres, a track that can ease the soul on a hot summer Saturday.

Signing off from a bright and humid Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where invasive spotted lanternfly nymphs have made a comeback, pulling amateur exterminators into an erratic dance as they swiftly hop away from incoming shoe heels. Unfortunately for them, I can report that the insects don’t seem to have adapted to dodging baby stroller wheels just yet.

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