The EV election?

You can lead an electorate to the electronic vehicle charging station, but you can’t make them plug in.  

That’s the lesson President Biden is learning as American consumers reject the “green” future the administration has been trying to mandate through the EPA’s proposed emissions standards and billions in EV subsidies and tax credits.  

The American people, however, just aren’t buying the climate change is “even more frightening than a nuclear war” line Biden is selling.

“This week,” reports the Daily Mail, “Ford said it would lay off about 700 workers at the Detroit plant that manufactures its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck, and GM pushed back production of the Chevrolet Silverado EV, citing slowing demand.” 

In a feature piece I wrote about EVs earlier this year, expert sources I interviewed attested to the myriad of logistical difficulties involved in the administration’s all-electric timeline, including the fact that charging stations are few are far between, and transformers in neighborhoods don’t have the capacity to charge all the EVs Americans are told they must own.  

The National Automobile Dealers Association calls the EPA rules “too far, too fast,” noting: 

In May, the EPA proposed a rule for model years 2027-2032 light and medium duty vehicles that essentially calls for 60 percent of new vehicles sold in 2030 and 67.5 percent of new vehicles sold in 2032 be EVs. This proposal exceeds the Biden Administration’s 2021 executive order which called for 50 percent EV sales by 2030. Last year, EV sales were 5.8 percent of new light duty sales.  

The Mail posits that Biden’s support for EVs could “tank his reelection,” quoting a Ford executive who labeled electronic vehicles “political football” and pointing out that “Trump vows to back gasoline engines.”

Biden’s diehard EV allegiance is characteristic of how the administration has operated all along: insisting on elitest, out-of-touch policies (EVs are notoriously expensive) while ignoring clear and present dangers, such as an out-of-control border, inflation and soaring crime.    

When it comes to how EV mania will affect Biden’s reelection campaign, I cede the floor to one Elon Musk, who said this week regarding Tesla’s Cybertruck, “We dug our own grave…” 

-Teresa Mull

On our radar

NYT ADMITS ERROR The New York Times published a lengthy editor’s note Monday acknowledging it “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas” regarding a hospital explosion in Gaza. The NYT initially blamed Israel for bombing the hospital, a claim since rejected by US intelligence.  

MENENDEZ GATE New Jersey senator Robert Menendez returned to court to enter an expected not guilty plea to the conspiracy charges accusing him of aiding Egypt’s government while chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

OCTOBER 7 FOOTAGE REVIEWED The Israeli Defense Forces shared forty-three minutes of unedited footage from Hamas’s attacks on innocent civilians with reporters. Melissa Weiss of Jewish Insider said the brutal images of murder “were punctuated by gasps and sobs from grown adults.”

GOP speaker troubles 

Forget the next Republican presidential debate in Miami; the real intra-GOP debate is one you can’t watch, and it’s happening right now.

As the GOP tries to figure out its “speaker math,” nine Republicans are going to vie for support at a forum run by the conference’s chair, Representative Elise Stefanik. The last time the House GOP considered having a candidate forum, it was going to be moderated by Fox News’s Bret Baier and televised publicly. That was canceled, and no TV cameras will be allowed this time.

Tonight’s forum came together quickly; candidates had until noon yesterday to announce bids. Now, Republicans get to pick between a pair of former NRCC chairs like Tom Emmer and Pete Sessions, current and former Republican Study Committee chairs like Kevin Hern and Mike Johnson, and a Freedom Caucus member like Byron Donalds.

Can any get the votes they need to herd the cats in the House GOP? That’s a problem for tomorrow!

-Matthew Foldi

Latin America goes libertarian

When most were asleep, two inflation-ridden Latin American countries, Venezuela and Argentina, counted votes. This morning, we got the results.

In the country of Leo Messi and Pope Francis, pro-Bitcoin anarcho-capitalist Javier Milei cemented his position as Argentina’s opposition leader, beating center-right Patricia Bullrich, who was backed by former president Mauricio Macri. Now, he is set to face-off for a second round with socialist minister of economics Sergio Massa, who received 7 percent more votes than Milei. Throughout the day, Milei and his allies denounced that votes for the libertarian were being targeted by fraudsters, and a preliminary investigation into the allegations has already commenced. 

In Venezuela, Maria Corina Machado and her “classical liberal” party broke the presidential primaries. At 26 percent of the total ballots counted, the National Committee of Primaries indicated that the candidate won the election with 93 percent of votes. The other twelve candidates were left with decimals to share. Machado is theoretically set to challenge Nicolás Maduro next, but whether that’s actually happening is another story.

Both of these elections display the tremendous success of the libertarian movement in Latin America, which although labeled populist by some in the US media, sounds more Ron Paul than Pat Buchanan. Milei has obliterated a Central Bank piñata on national TV while Machado has called for the privatization of the country’s oil and gas industry. The two are as Milton Friedman-loving as it gets, and their success may be good for the US, though, they each face socialist behemoths that won’t give up easily.

–Juan P. Villasmil

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