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  • Inside Congress’ scramble to build an AI agenda

    Inside Congress’ scramble to build an AI agenda

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    Last Wednesday, Lieu, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and a couple of other members introduced a bill to prevent a Terminator-style robot takeover of nuclear weapons — the same day that Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Mark Warner (D-Va.) sent a barrage of tough letters to cutting-edge AI firms. Leaders on the House Energy and Commerce Committee — egged on by the software lobby — are debating whether they should tuck new AI rules into their sprawling data privacy proposal.

    And in mid-April, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer dramatically entered the fray with a proposal to “get ahead of” AI — before virtually anyone else in Congress was aware of his plan, including key committee leaders or members of the Senate AI Caucus.

    The legislative chaos threatens to leave Washington at sea as generative AI explodes onto the scene — potentially one of the most disruptive technologies to hit the workplace and society in generations.

    “AI is one of those things that kind of moved along at ten miles an hour, and suddenly now is 100, going on 500 miles an hour,” House Science Committee Chair Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) told POLITICO.

    Driving the congressional scramble is ChatGPT, the uncannily human chatbot released by OpenAI last fall that quickly shifted the public understanding of AI from a nerdy novelty to a much more immediate opportunity — and risk.

    “It’s got everybody’s attention, and we’re all trying to focus,” said Lucas.

    But focus is a scarce commodity on Capitol Hill. And in the case of AI, longtime congressional inattention is compounded by a massive knowledge gap.

    “There is a mad rush amongst many members to try to get educated as quickly as possible,” said Warner. The senator noted that Washington is already playing catch-up with global competitors. As the European Union moves forward with its own rules, both Warner and the tech lobby are worried that Congress will repeat its multi-year failure to pass a data privacy law, effectively putting Brussels in the driver’s seat on AI.

    “If we’re not careful, we could end up ceding American policy leadership to the EU again,” Warner said. “So it is a race.”

    The White House, Schumer and… everyone else

    To judge by the grab bag of rules and laws now under discussion, it’s a race in which Washington is undeniably lagging.

    Many of the world’s leading AI companies are based in the U.S., including OpenAI, Google, Midjourney and Microsoft. But at the moment, virtually no well-formed proposals exist to govern this new landscape.

    On Wednesday, Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan pledged to help rein in AI — but without more authority from Congress, any new FTC rules would almost certainly face a legal challenge from the tech lobby. The White House came out last year with a “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights,” but the provisions are purely voluntary. The closest thing to an AI law recently was a single section in last cycle’s American Data Privacy and Protection Act, a bipartisan bill that gained traction last year but which has yet to be reintroduced this Congress.

    This year, the highest-profile proposal so far has come from Schumer, whose term as majority leader has already been punctuated by the passage of one massive tech bill, last year’s CHIPS and Science Act. His mid-April announcement laid out four broad AI “guardrails” that would theoretically underpin a future bill — informing users, providing government with more data, reducing AI’s potential harm and aligning automated tools with “American values.”

    It’s an ambiguous plan, at best. And the AI policy community has so far been underwhelmed by Schumer’s lack of detail.

    “It’s incredibly vague right now,” said Divyansh Kaushik, associate director for emerging tech and national security at the Federation of American Scientists who holds a PhD on AI systems from Carnegie Mellon University.

    A Schumer spokesperson, when asked for more details about the majority leader’s proposal, told POLITICO that the “original release . . . has most of what we are putting out at the moment so we will let that speak for itself.”

    Beneath the legislative uncertainty is a substantive split among lawmakers who have been thinking closely about AI regulation. Some members, wary of upsetting innovation through heavy-handed rules, are pushing bills that would first mandate further study of the government’s role.

    “I still think that there’s a lot we don’t know about AI,” said Lieu, whose incoming bill would set up a “blue-ribbon commission” to determine how — or even if — Congress should regulate the technology.

    But others, including Senate AI Caucus Chair Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), say the technology is moving too fast to let Congress move at its typical glacial pace. They cite the rising risk of dangerous “edge cases” (Heinrich worries about an AI that could “potentially tell somebody how to build a bioweapon”) to argue that the time for talk is over. Sooner or later, a clash between these two congressional camps seems inevitable.

    “We have two choices here,” Heinrich told POLITICO. “We can either be proactive and get ahead of this now — and I think we have enough information to do that in a thoughtful way — or we can wait until one of these edge cases really bites us in the ass, and then act.”

    A grab bag of ideas

    While they’re mostly still simmering under the surface, a bevy of AI efforts are now underway on Capitol Hill.

    Some have their roots as far back as early 2021, when the National AI Initiative Act first tasked federal agencies with digging into the tough policy questions posed by the technology. That law birthed several initiatives that could ultimately guide Congress — including the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework, an imminent report from the White House’s National AI Advisory Committee and recommendations released in January by the National AI Research Resource Task Force.

    Many of those recommendations are focused on how to rein in the government’s own use of AI, including in defense. It’s an area where Washington is more likely to move quickly, since the government can regulate itself far faster than it can the tech industry.

    The Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Cybersecurity is gearing up to do just that. In late April, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) and Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) gave the RAND Corporation think tank and defense contractors Palantir and Shift5 two months to come up with recommendations for legislation related to the Pentagon’s use of AI.

    Capitol Hill is also looking beyond the Pentagon. Last week, a spokesperson for Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), head of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, IT and Government Innovation, told POLITICO she’s working on a bill that would force federal agencies to be transparent about their use of AI. And Bennet’s new bill would direct a wide range of federal players — including the heads of NIST and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy — to lead a “top-to-bottom review of existing AI policies across the federal government.”

    The two AI pushes to watch

    The tech lobby, of course, is focused much more on what Washington could do to its bottom line. And it’s closely tracking two legislative pushes in the 118th Congress — the potential for new AI rules in a re-emergent House privacy bill, and Schumer’s nebulous plan-for-a-plan.

    While it’s somewhat unusual for the tech industry to want new regulations, the software lobby is eager to see Congress pass rules for AI. That desire stems in part from a need to convince clients that the tools are safe — Chandler Morse, vice president for corporate affairs at software giant Workday, called “reasonable safeguards” on AI “a way to build trust.” But it’s also driven by fear that inaction in Washington would let less-friendly regulators set the global tone.

    “You have China moving forward with a national strategy, you have the EU moving forward with an EU-bloc strategy, you have states moving forward,” said Craig Albright, vice president for U.S. government relations at BSA | The Software Alliance. “And the U.S. federal government is conspicuously absent.”

    Support from powerful industry players for new rules makes it tougher to understand why Congress is stuck on AI. Some of that could be explained by splits among the broader lobbying community — Jordan Crenshaw, head of the Chamber of Commerce’s Technology Engagement Center, said Congress should “do an inventory” to identify potential regulatory gaps, but should for now avoid proscriptive rules on the technology.

    But the inertia could also be due to the lack of an effective legislative vehicle.

    So far, Albright and other software lobbyists see the American Data Privacy and Protection Act as the best bet for new AI rules. The sprawling privacy bill passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee last summer with overwhelming bipartisan support. And while it wasn’t explicitly framed as an AI bill, one of its provisions mandated the evaluation of any private-sector AI tool used to make a “consequential decision.”

    But that bill hasn’t even been reintroduced this Congress — though committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and other key lawmakers are adamant that a reintroduction is coming. And Albright said the new bill would still need to define what constitutes a “consequential” AI decision.

    “It really is just a phrase in there currently,” said Albright. He suggested that AI systems used in housing, hiring, banking, healthcare and insurance decisions could all qualify as “consequential.”

    Sean Kelly, a McMorris Rodgers spokesperson, said a data privacy law would be “the most important thing we can do to begin providing certainty and safety to the development of AI.” But he declined to comment directly on the software lobby’s push for AI rules in a reborn privacy bill, or whether AI provisions are likely to make it into this cycle’s version.

    Schumer’s new AI proposal has also caught the software industry’s attention, not least because of his success shepherding the sprawling CHIPS and Science Act to President Joe Biden’s desk last summer.

    “I think we’d like to know more about what he would like to do,” said Albright. “Like, we do see the kind of four bullet points that he’s included in what he’s been able to put out. But we want to work more closely and try to get a feel for more specifics about what he has in mind.”

    But if and when he comes up with more details, Schumer will still need to convince key lawmakers that his new AI rules are worth supporting. The same is true of anything McMorris Rodgers and her House committee include in a potential privacy bill. In both cases, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the powerful chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, could stand in the way.

    By refusing to take up the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, Cantwell almost single-handedly blocked the bill following its overwhelming passage out of House E&C last summer. There’s little to indicate that she’s since changed her views on the legislation.

    Cantwell is also keeping her powder dry when it comes to Schumer’s proposal. When asked last week about the majority leader’s announcement, the Senate Commerce chair said there are “lots of things that people just want to clarify.” Cantwell added that “there’ll be lots of different proposals by members, and we’ll take a look at all of them.”

    Cantwell’s committee is often the final word on tech-related legislation. But given the technology’s vast potential impact, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) — who also sits on Senate Commerce — suggested AI bills might have more wiggle room.

    “I think we need to be willing to cross the normal committee jurisdictions, because AI is about to affect everybody,” Schatz told POLITICO.

    How hard will Congress push?

    The vacuum caused by a lack of clear congressional leadership on AI has largely obscured any ideological divides over how to tackle the surging tech. But those fights are almost certainly coming — and so far, they don’t seem to cut across the typical partisan lines.

    Last year, Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) joined Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) on the Algorithmic Accountability Act, a bill that would have empowered the FTC to require companies to conduct evaluations of their AI systems on a wide range of factors, including bias and effectiveness. It’s similar to the AI assessment regime now being discussed as part of a reintroduced House privacy bill — and it represents a more muscular set of rules than many in Congress are now comfortable with, including some Democrats.

    “I think it’s better that we get as much information and as many recommendations as we can before we write something into law,” said Lieu. “Because if you make a mistake, you’re going to need another act of Congress to correct it.”

    Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the ranking member on House Science, is similarly worried about moving too quickly. But she’s still open to the prospect of hard rules on AI.

    “We’ve got to address the matter carefully,” Lofgren told POLITICO. “We don’t want to squash the innovation. But here we have an opportunity to prevent the kind of problems that developed in social media platforms at the beginning — rather than scrambling to catch up later.”

    The broader tech lobby appears similarly torn. Lofgren, whose district encompasses a large part of Silicon Valley, said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has indicated that he believes there should be mandatory rules on the technology. “[But] when you ask Sam, ‘What regulations do you suggest,’ he doesn’t say,” Lofgren said.

    Spokespeople for OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment.

    One thing that’s likely not on the table — a temporary ban on the training of AI systems. In late March a group of tech luminaries, including Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, published a letter that called on Washington to impose a six-month moratorium on AI development. But while several lawmakers said that letter caused them to sit up and pay attention, there’s so far little interest in such a dramatic step on Capitol Hill.

    “A six-month timeout doesn’t really do anything,” said Warner. “This race is already engaged.”

    A possible roadmap: The CHIPS and Science Act

    The dizzying, half-formed swirl of AI proposals might not inspire much confidence in Capitol Hill’s ability to unite on legislation. But recent history has shown that big-ticket tech bills can emerge from just such a swirl — and can sometimes even become law.

    The massive microchip and science agency overhaul known as the CHIPS and Science Act offers a potential roadmap. Although that bill was little more than an amorphous blob when Schumer first floated it in 2019, a (very different) version was ultimately signed into law last summer.

    “That also started off with a very broad, big announcement from Sen. Schumer that proved to be the North Star of where we were going,” said Kaushik. And Schumer staffers are already making comparisons between the early days of CHIPS and Science and the majority leader’s new push on AI.

    If Congress can find consensus on major AI rules, Kaushik believes Schumer’s vague proposal could eventually serve a similar purpose to CHIPS and Science — a kind of Christmas tree on which lawmakers of all stripes can hang various AI initiatives.

    But hanging those ornaments will take time. It’ll also require a sturdy set of branches. And until Schumer, House E&C or other key players unveil a firm legislative framework, lawmakers are unlikely to pass a meaningful package of AI rules.

    “I would not hold my hopes high for this Congress,” Kaushik said.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Nukes, Ukraine and semiconductors top Biden-Yoon agenda

    Nukes, Ukraine and semiconductors top Biden-Yoon agenda

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    The U.S., meanwhile, has some big asks for the government in Seoul as it works to cement South Korea as a regional cornerstone in its effort to rally democracies against China, Russia and other autocratic countries.

    A Nuclear Pact

    The U.S. and South Korea announced a new agreement on Wednesday that reinforces the U.S. commitment to defend Seoul in the event of an attack by Pyongyang, just ahead of Biden and Yoon’s meeting at the White House.

    In the agreement, called the Washington Declaration, the U.S. commits to taking steps to strengthen its military support for South Korea, while Seoul publicly disavows any intention to develop nuclear weapons, said senior administration officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

    One commitment the U.S. has made is to regularly dispatch “U.S. strategic assets” into South Korean waters, including an upcoming port visit by a U.S. nuclear ballistic submarine, the first such deployment since the 1980s, one of the officials said. The countries have also agreed to create a joint U.S.-South Korean Nuclear Consultative Group designed to provide transparency to Seoul on U.S. military planning.

    South Korea has been looking for such assurances amid Pyongyang’s nuclear saber rattling. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un threatened an “exponential” increase in nuclear weapons targeting Seoul in January, and urged the mass-production of short-range missiles that could menace the south. South Korea lost its decades-long positioning of U.S. nuclear weapons on the peninsula in 1991 when President George H.W. Bush ordered their removal in a failed effort to encourage North Korea to abandon its own then-nascent nuclear weapons program.

    The new declaration outlines “a series of steps that are designed to strengthen U.S. extended deterrence commitments and strengthen the clarity by which they’re seen by the Korean public as well as by neighbors in the face of advancing [North Korean] nuclear missile capabilities,” the official said.

    The Biden administration’s requirement that Seoul renounce the development of nuclear weapons reflects nervousness that South Korea is considering doing just that.

    In January, Yoon floated the possibility of South Korea developing its own nuclear weapons capability as a deterrent to Pyongyang’s threats. He walked back that idea a week later, but South Korean concerns about the country’s vulnerability to North Korean attack persist. Those concerns are partly due to “a lack of confidence in the U.S as a committed ally,“ said former ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris.

    Public polling last year found that more than 70 percent of South Koreans wanted a nuclear weapons capacity to counter North Korea’s.

    Former national security adviser John Bolton on Tuesday urged the Biden administration to reposition tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea as a deterrence message to North Korea. The Biden administration says that’s not going to happen. “There is no vision of returning U.S. tactical or any other kind of nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula as there was in the Cold War,” a second senior administration official told reporters at the briefing.

    The Biden administration faults Beijing for not using its diplomatic and economic leverage to curb North Korea’s threats to South Korea. “We have been disappointed that China has been unprepared to use its influence and good offices to weigh in clearly with North Korea about its many provocations,” the first senior administration official said. To mitigate any potential misunderstandings the Chinese might have about the expanded U.S. military presence, the administration is briefing Beijing on its details “and laying out very clearly our rationale for why we are taking these steps,” said the official.

    Arming Ukraine

    But Yoon can also expect pressure from Biden to supply munitions to Ukraine. South Korea provided Ukraine $100 million last year and responded to Biden’s call for more such assistance with a $130 million pledge last month to support Kiev’s energy infrastructure and humanitarian needs.

    But Ukraine’s depleted ammunition stocks have prompted both NATO Secretary-General Jen Stoltenberg and the Biden administration to push Seoul to provide Kyiv munitions. Seoul says its Foreign Trade Act bars selling weapons to countries at war or for re-export to third countries.

    “President Biden will hope to have a conversation with President Yoon about what it means for all like-minded allies who continue to support Ukraine through a difficult few months and will want to know what Seoul is thinking about what the future of their support might look like,” said the second senior administration official.

    Biden may make Yoon’s agreement to override that restriction “part of the price of admission,” to his White House meeting, said David Rank, former Charges d’Affaires at the U.S. embassy in Beijing and veteran Korea desk official at the State Department.

    Seoul “has been historically good at helping out quietly when the U.S. asks it to,” Rank said.

    Tackling Tech and China

    The two sides will also have to navigate some thorny economic issues spawned by recent Biden administration legislation. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 included a provision that reserved a tax credit for electric vehicles to domestically produced cars, locking out EV imports from South Korean automakers including KIA and Hyundai.

    The Biden administration also wants Yoon to block South Korean semiconductor manufacturers from filling any shortfall in chips created by Beijing’s possible ban on sales by the U.S. company Micron, the Financial Times reported on Sunday.

    Yoon is looking for reassurance that “Biden’s economic agenda is not a protectionist one and we’re going to work together on issues like export controls and friend-shoring,” said Kathleen Stephens, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea.

    Those issues are on the Biden-Yoon agenda, but there is no hint of any breakthroughs. “The leaders will be discussing semiconductors and mutual [economic] approaches tomorrow,” the first senior administration official said, declining to provide more details.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • House GOP debt limit plan would block Biden’s student loan agenda, prohibit future relief

    House GOP debt limit plan would block Biden’s student loan agenda, prohibit future relief

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    The legislation would also bar the Biden administration from moving forward with a new income-driven repayment plan that cuts monthly payments for most borrowers and shortens the timeline to loan forgiveness for some borrowers.

    In addition, the GOP plan would permanently prohibit the Education Department from issuing any significant regulation or executive action that would increase the long-term cost to the government of operating the federal student loan programs.

    Such a sweeping prohibition would imperil efforts by the administration to provide additional relief or benefits to student loan borrowers. That would include any backup option for canceling large amounts of student debt if the Supreme Court rejects Biden’s student debt relief plan in the coming months.

    Key context: The provisions are among dozens of policy changes and spending caps that House Republicans included in their 320-page legislation to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March of next year, whichever comes first.

    Republicans have argued that they want concessions from the administration that lower the federal deficit and reduce spending in exchange for their votes to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

    McCarthy said he hopes to pass it in the House next week. But the proposal stands no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate.

    Biden swiftly dismissed McCarthy’s proposal as a nonstarter. “That’s the MAGA economic agenda: spending cuts for working and middle class folks,” Biden said of the plan on Wednesday. “It’s not about fiscal discipline, it’s about cutting benefits for folks that they don’t seem to care much about.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Who’s thrilled by electric cars? The trend that could help or hurt Biden’s climate agenda.

    Who’s thrilled by electric cars? The trend that could help or hurt Biden’s climate agenda.

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    Republican lawmakers are predicting a consumer backlash to the latest mandate from Washington. But industry analysts say car buyers are showing a growing appetite for vehicles that can be refueled with an electric cord rather than a gas pump.

    “Honestly, the vehicles being delivered by automakers are a lot better — people are willing to sit on waiting lists for two or three years,” said Chris Harto, senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports. “There’s a huge amount of pent-up demand for EVs right now, and automakers aren’t delivering.”

    Just two years ago, Biden said he wanted electric vehicles to make up half of new car and truck sales by the end of the decade. The EPA proposal could push electric vehicles even further.

    Electric vehicles made up about 5.6 percent of cars and trucks sold in 2022 — not nearly enough to achieve the large emissions reductions that scientists say are needed to avoid debilitating impacts of climate change. That was up from 1.8 percent in 2020 and 3.1 percent in 2021, according to data from S&P Global Mobility.

    The EPA rules will only reinforce automakers’ move toward electric vehicles, said Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst at the consultancy Gartner. “These rules would really just take away any sort of safety net or ability to turn back,” he said, adding that automakers will likely also press EPA for loopholes “to give wriggle room to the market.”

    The upcoming regulations come as the federal government is pouring billions of dollars into the construction of charging stations along highways and incentives for people who buy EVs. But they also come as the Biden administration is potentially raising the cost of electric cars by requiring manufacturers to make the vehicles in the U.S., while using battery minerals from the United States or its closest trading partners — not China.

    So far, the popularity of EVs is on the rise, and that could increase if the EPA rules lead to more models, some advocates said.

    “Every single state in the union continued to see steady growth in electric vehicle sales in the last decade,” said Lisa Frank, who heads the Washington, D.C., legislative office at Environment America.

    On the other hand, it’s unknown if automakers will be able to produce EVs for the mass market while also overcoming the tremendous expense of bringing a new kind of vehicle to scale. For that reason, today’s EVs carry a higher price tag than traditional models. (Prices for the cheapest model from Tesla, the nation’s top electric carmaker, start at just under $42,000.)

    “The challenge is that as of now, the vehicles aren’t affordable enough that there’ll be a big enough buying base for them to be bought in these numbers,” said John Gartner, who leads EV and charging infrastructure research at the Center for Sustainable Energy, a California nonprofit.

    When contacted by POLITICO’s E&E News, no automakers wanted to comment on the forthcoming rule. Some pointed to a statement put out last week by an industry lobbying group, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation.

    “The question isn’t whether it can be done, it’s how fast it can be done,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said of the transition to electric vehicles, adding that it “will depend almost exclusively on having the right policies and market conditions.”

    The rules come as state officials, and Congress, race ahead with their own efforts to transition away from gasoline-powered transportation.

    California approved a rule that would require all new vehicles sold in the state to be emissions-free by 2035, including plug-in hybrids.

    Congress included billions of dollars to build public EV charging stations in the 2021 infrastructure law. Last year’s Inflation Reduction Act dedicated billions more to tax credits and other incentives for people who buy the cars and a broad array of carmakers and parts suppliers.

    The rules have been shaped in part by EPA tests of cars and components at the agency’s lab in Ann Arbor, Mich., and also by technical research and input from carmakers.

    “As they consider all of those things, they think, what is the maximum they can push the industry?” said Dave Cooke, senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

    The proposed rule will cover greenhouse gas emissions for cars built in 2027 and future model years. Current EPA regulations, which cover cars built through 2026, are expected to push EV adoption to 17 percent of new car sales by the time they expire.

    Bloomberg first reported that the rules could exceed Biden’s goal of making half of all new cars carbon-free by 2030. The New York Times reported separately that EPA’s tailpipe rule could push EVs to as much as 67 percent of new cars sales.

    Separately, EPA is also planning to roll out greenhouse gas limits on heavy-duty trucks starting in model year 2027, following up on its rules that were finalized last year to limit soot and smog-forming pollution like nitrogen oxides from the trucking industry.

    Historically, EPA hasn’t told carmakers what kinds of vehicles to produce when it sets greenhouse gas standards. Instead, it has set a limit — a certain number of grams of carbon dioxide per mile driven — that each company has to meet over the entire fleet of vehicles it sells each year.

    Companies that exceed the goal can build up credits to use in future years and can trade credits among themselves.

    Major carmakers including General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Corp. have already set their own goals to produce more electric vehicles. The EPA proposal “is kind of saying, ‘All right, put your money where your mouth is,’” said Simon Mui, director of clean vehicles and fuels at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    The rules are already attracting scrutiny. Environmental advocacy and consumer groups have argued that EPA should push for even more emissions reductions, particularly given the demand for electric cars and trucks.

    Lawmakers are also beginning to push back by criticizing the regulations as a threat to blue-collar Americans.

    “The EPA needs to explain to the constituents in my district that they should be driving some puny electric car instead of their pickup trucks,” Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) said Monday on Twitter, linking to a photo of an electric-powered Smart car from Europe.

    Beyond the rhetoric, conservatives in Congress may have a chance to block the latest emissions rules. Republicans in the Senate and House, for instance, have introduced a proposal under the Congressional Review Act to roll back the EPA rules on soot and smog from heavy-duty trucks.

    Timothy Cama contributed to this report.

    A version of this report first ran in E&E News’ Climatewire. Get access to more comprehensive and in-depth reporting on the energy transition, natural resources, climate change and more in E&E News.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • NCERT’s decision to make ‘changes’ driven by divisive and partisan agenda: Historians

    NCERT’s decision to make ‘changes’ driven by divisive and partisan agenda: Historians

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    New Delhi: Around 250 educationists and historians criticised the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) over its decision to revise textbooks. They said that removing the chapters was driven by a divisive and partisan agenda.

    The historians demanded NCERT withdraw the decision. Significantly, some sections related to Mughals were removed from the Class 12th History textbooks, and paragraphs that contained information about the ban briefly imposed on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) by the then government after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi were omitted.

    Romila Thapar, Jayati Ghosh, Mridula Mukherjee, Apoorvanand, Irfan Habib and Upinder Singh, among others, have started a signature campaign to protest against the decision and for its withdrawal.

    MS Education Academy

    On the other hand, the Democratic Teachers Front, an organisation of university-level teachers, said that if ‘WhatsApp University’ is given a free hand to devour Indian schools, colleges and universities, then Indian democracy will be seriously affected.

    NCERT said that the change made in school books has not been done with the aim of making anyone happy or angry.

    NCERT Chief Dinesh Prasad Saklani told IANS that the changes have been made purely on the basis of expert advice. He said that new books for all classes on the basis of the National Education Policy (NEP) will also be introduced and its work has been completed at the foundation level.

    Saklani said that changes were not only made in History books but also in books of other subjects to reduce the burden faced by students. He stated that the changes are not based on any particular person, event, period or institution.

    Saklani added that this is not a big change and all of them were made last year, keeping the Covid-19 pandemic in view and the academic loss faced by students worldwide, at all levels.

    In such a situation, NCERT decided to revise the course on the basis of experts’ opinions to reduce the burden on students who would return to school after a long time, Saklani concluded.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • NCERT’s revision of textbooks part of ‘saffronisation’ agenda: Kerala CM

    NCERT’s revision of textbooks part of ‘saffronisation’ agenda: Kerala CM

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    Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday strongly condemned the dropping of certain chapters and portions from NCERT class 12 textbooks and alleged that “complete saffronisation” of academic books was the objective behind the move.

    Historical facts cannot be denied by just cutting out portions that are inconvenient (to some one) from textbooks, he said in a Facebook post.

    Excluding certain portions and chapters from the textbooks with a political motive was not only a negation of history but also a condemnable move. It is evident that the objective behind such actions is the “complete saffronisation of textbooks”, the CM added.

    MS Education Academy

    In the hard-hitting post, Vijayan said it was clear whose interest was being served by the omission of portions about the assassination of the ‘Father of the Nation’ Mahatma Gandhi and the subsequent banning of the RSS, from the political science textbook of class 12.

    Portions about the Mughal Empire were also cut down from the history textbook of the same class, he pointed out.

    “The medieval history of India, excluding the Mughal Empire, is incomplete,” he said, alleging that medieval Indian history had always been an area that the Sangh Parivar had twisted and distorted.

    The Kerala CM accused the NCERT of “whitewashing the fake history” created by the Sangh Parivar by excluding these portions.

    The Sangh Parivar, through the textbooks, was trying to inculcate the politics of hatred and division into the minds of children, the Marxist veteran further charged.

    Accusing the NCERT of supporting the distorted methodology of the RSS in writing history, Vijayan said strong protest needs to be registered against such moves which would otherwise undermine the secular education envisaged by the Constitution.

    The NCERT recently dropped from its class 12 history textbook certain portions on Mahatma Gandhi and how his pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity “provoked Hindu extremists”. It also left out the portion where the government had placed a ban on the RSS after Gandhi’s assassination. The revision of textbooks by obfuscating facts has triggered a row.

    “Gandhiji’s death had a magical effect on communal situation in the country”, “Gandhi’s pursuit of Hindu-Muslim unity provoked Hindu extremists” and “Organisations like RSS were banned for some time” are among the portions deleted from the textbook.

    Portions referring to the Gujarat riots have also been dropped from the class 11 sociology textbook, months after NCERT removed the reference to the 2002 communal violence in two class 12 textbooks.

    The Congress has accused the Centre of “whitewashing” and “distorting” history.

    NCERT Chief Dinesh Saklani said the syllabus was “rationalised” in June last year itself, and there has been no trimming of the curriculum this year.

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • U.S., EU lawmakers feel cut out of Biden’s electric vehicle trade agenda

    U.S., EU lawmakers feel cut out of Biden’s electric vehicle trade agenda

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    151104 trade shipping japan gty 1160

    “I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again so there is no confusion: Congress will not, under any circumstance, forfeit our constitutionally mandated oversight responsibility of all trade matters,” Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), chair of the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee, said in a statement Friday. “This is unacceptable and unconstitutional, and I intend to use every tool at my disposal to stop this blatant executive overreach.”

    According to a proposed rule the U.S. Treasury Department released Friday, the term “free trade agreement” as it applies to the Inflation Reduction Act includes deals in which the U.S. and other countries reduce, eliminate or refrain from imposing tariffs and export restrictions, and aim to raise standards in areas such as labor rights and environmental protection. That’s a broader definition than has traditionally been used.

    Under those criteria, a critical minerals agreement the Biden administration signed with Japan this week, as well as the one the U.S. and EU soon hope to sign, will qualify as “free trade agreements,” even though they have not received congressional approval. That would clear the way for electric vehicles made with minerals from Japanese and European companies to receive additional U.S. tax breaks.

    Members of Congress are likely to protest that interpretation in their comments to Treasury, and some have hinted they may take legal action or attempt to pass new legislation in response.

    In the U.S., the negative reaction wasn’t limited to one side of the aisle. Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the administration has an obligation to obtain congressional consent on any critical minerals agreements.

    Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Ways and Means trade subcommittee, said the proposed rule “contradicts congressional intent and adds to a troubling pattern of this Administration disregarding Congress’ constitutional role on international trade.” He added that he hopes the administration would “reconsider their course.”

    “The Administration is proposing more than guidance around a clean vehicle tax credit, it is redefining a Free Trade Agreement,” Blumenauer said.

    The tug of war between the White House and Congress over trade policy is not new, but it has become more acute under the Biden administration, said Kathleen Claussen, a Georgetown University law professor who specializes in international economic law. She anticipates the administration’s definition of “free trade agreement” could wind up in court.

    “At stake is the sort of future of how we think about what a trade agreement is,” said Claussen, a former associate general counsel at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. “It’s important for Congress to decide sooner rather than later where it is going to draw the line.”

    The Inflation Reduction Act — a crucial element of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda — provides a tax credit worth up to $7,500 for consumers who purchase electric vehicles produced in North America, which members of Congress who voted for the law say is critical to spurring the domestic clean tech manufacturing sector.

    “We intentionally structured tax credits to not just decarbonize the U.S. economy, but to erase the lead that China and other countries have in manufacturing green infrastructure,” Democratic Sens. Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Sherrod Brown of Ohio wrote in a letter to the Treasury Department sent Thursday.

    To qualify for the full IRA tax credit, the vehicle must include a battery made with critical minerals from the U.S. or a “free trade agreement” partner.

    That creates a semantic imperative for the U.S. and EU to call any minerals deal a “free trade agreement,” even though such pacts would traditionally require the approval of Congress and, in the European Union, its member countries as well as the European Parliament.

    “This is procedurally just very, very complicated,” said one EU diplomat, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations. “We want to call it a non-binding instrument, but we have to think about the American domestic context as well. So, it’s better to call it an FTA-light.”

    The view from Washington

    American presidents have long negotiated “free trade agreements,” but the term is not technically defined in U.S. law. It is commonly understood to be a pact designed to lower tariffs and open foreign markets after winning the approval of Congress, a concept that has been forged through decades of practical experience.

    The Biden administration appears to be breaking from that tradition. While the Trump administration did not seek congressional approval for trade deals it brokered with China and Japan, stoking the ire of lawmakers, it did not attempt to define those pacts as equivalent to comprehensive free trade agreements.

    USTR has inked sector-specific agreements in the past without seeking the approval of Congress. And the Treasury Department asserts it has the authority to designate a “free trade agreement” in the context of the Inflation Reduction Act because Congress did not define the term when it wrote the text. The definition Treasury released Friday is slated to take effect April 18.

    But this week, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office updated its online roster of U.S. free trade agreements to include a new category of deals. There are the “comprehensive free trade agreements” that already exist with 20 other countries, and then there is the new “agreement focusing on free trade in critical minerals” with Japan, which USTR signed earlier this week. Both are designated as “free trade agreements.”

    U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle flatly condemned the pact with Japan, not only for the terms of the deal but for how the administration went about negotiating it.

    Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Ways and Means ranking member Richard Neal (D-Mass.), who also happens to have been U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s former boss when she was a congressional staffer, declared the agreement “unacceptable” in a joint statement.

    “It’s clear this agreement is one of convenience,” the two senior Democrats said. And they warned that Tai had exceeded the power given to her by Congress. “The administration does not have the authority to unilaterally enter into free trade agreements.”

    Wyden and Neal’s Republican counterparts, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) and Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), were also quick to skewer the deal. Smith offered perhaps the most colorful language, saying the administration is “distorting the plain text of U.S. law to write as many green corporate welfare checks as possible.”

    Meanwhile, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), one of the key negotiators on the IRA, threatened legal action over the Treasury Department’s interpretation of the electric vehicle tax credit on Wednesday. But he also suggested partners like Japan and the EU should qualify for the perks. His office declined to clarify his position.

    In response to lawmaker criticism over the process for finalizing a similar critical minerals deal with Japan, a USTR spokesperson pointed to Tai’s recent congressional testimony in which she said “further enhancements” would make it easier for congressional staff to review negotiating text, make text summaries available to the public and hold more meetings with the public.

    The view from Brussels

    In Brussels, four EU diplomats, who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak freely, told POLITICO they are increasingly nervous about the critical minerals negotiations because the legal format of the final deal remains unclear.

    The EU’s trade chief Valdis Dombrovskis said at an event earlier this week that “we are currently discussing with the U.S. the exact content and the potential legal procedures.”

    Two EU officials, who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to discuss the unfinished deal, insist the European Commission needs to secure a mandate from member countries for any free trade agreement, even if it’s limited in scope. What’s more, such deals typically require the approval of the European Parliament and EU countries, a process that usually takes several months.

    Miriam García Ferrer, a spokesperson for the European Commission, declined to say whether the deal requires a mandate from EU countries. “This will be a specific and targeted arrangement to ensure that EU companies are treated the same way as the U.S. companies under the IRA,” García Ferrer said.

    Not all EU members share the same concerns about a mandate. Some EU countries in Brussels are keen to move quickly and avoid distractions that tend to arise in trade negotiations, saying it’s best to keep the end goal in sight of getting concessions from Washington on the Inflation Reduction Act.

    Three of the EU diplomats said it would make more sense to wait until the end of the negotiations to determine the legal process on the EU side. “It’s too soon to discuss this,” one diplomat said. “Let’s wait and see what the Commission actually comes up with.”

    Another diplomat added that “form should follow substance” and that most EU countries just want the European Commission to come up with a good result.

    Moens reported from Brussels. Jakob Hanke Vela and Sarah Anne Aarup also contributed reporting from Brussels.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Sex ed, birth control, Medicaid: Republicans’ ‘new pro-life agenda’

    Sex ed, birth control, Medicaid: Republicans’ ‘new pro-life agenda’

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    In Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds is pushing legislation to allow pharmacists to dispense hormonal contraceptives without a prescription. Indiana and Oklahoma are advancing similar GOP-sponsored bills.

    In Indiana and South Carolina, Republican lawmakers proposed lawmakers proposed bills that would require comprehensive, medically accurate sex ed to be taught in the states’ schools starting in grade 5 or 6 — instead of their current abstinence-based approach.

    And in Wyoming and Mississippi — two of the 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid — Republican Govs. Mark Gordon and Tate Reeves recently signed 12-month extensions of Medicaid postpartum benefits into law, in what Reeves referred to as a “philosophically uncomfortable” move that overcame fierce conservative opposition to boosting government welfare.

    “What I can tell you is that the governor was more vocal in his support for [postpartum extension] and was much more outwardly supportive of this idea in the wake of the Dobbs decision,” said Gordon spokesperson Michael Pearlman. “He is a pro-life governor and supports life, but Governor Gordon wanted to emphasize that being pro-life, to him, goes beyond simply being pro-birth.”

    Some GOP-controlled states embraced these policies before the fall of Roe v. Wade last summer, and Republicans argue there isn’t anything inherently liberal about them.

    “The most important thing for people to realize is we need to be pro-life and not just pro-birth. That means investing in our families. That means taking a more meaningful approach to policy and forget about the politics. Let that go out the window and let’s actually do things that help people have successful families,” said Oklahoma state Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican who sponsored two birth control bills this year that passed the state Senate last week. “If we’re going to say we can’t have abortion for women in Oklahoma, what are we going to do to help support these women that can’t have an abortion?”

    Some Democrats chafe at Republicans for taking credit for proposals they have long supported, particularly those aimed at underserved communities.

    “This has been a long time effort specifically led by Black women in the legislature,” said Florida Democratic Rep. Anna Eskamani. “Republicans are trying to give off the impression that they’re championing issues for women and families while they strip away our bodily autonomy and rights.”

    And while some maternal health advocates welcome the growing number of conservatives backing these policies, they also argue that these broader maternal and reproductive health policies can’t undo the harm being caused by the lack of abortion access in these states.

    “In my career — I’m in my mid-40s — I can probably count on one hand Republicans that have been out in front on access to contraception,” said Jamila Taylor, president and CEO of the National WIC Association and a longtime women’s health advocate. “So yes, we are pleased with some of the progress that we’re seeing even in red states, but that’s never going to replace the need or, quite frankly, our fight to ensure abortion rights in this country.”

    ‘A good thing’

    Anti-abortion groups said they are happy to see lawmakers introduce legislation focused on helping families and have endorsed some of these policies, such as postpartum Medicaid extension, alongside the usual types of bills that accompany abortion bans, such as funding for crisis pregnancy centers.

    “This kind of legislation that protects pregnant women and new moms, this is one of our key focuses of 2023, and it’s been awesome to see momentum in a lot of pro-life states this year,” said Kelsey Pritchard, director of state public affairs for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. “We’ve been really happy to see states step up the plate and say, ‘Yeah, we need to do more to help pregnant women and to help our new moms in the state.’”

    Several female Republican lawmakers told POLITICO that while they’ve long understood the need to increase access to contraception, Roe’s fall provided an opening for them to talk with their male colleagues about the importance of such policies.

    “It’s not necessarily that they’ve been against it. They didn’t know they needed to be for it because they didn’t know it was a problem,” said Garvin, the Republican state senator from Oklahoma.

    Garvin’s two birth control bills — one that allows pharmacists to dispense hormonal contraceptives without a prescription and another that makes clear the state’s abortion law does not restrict access to contraceptive drugs — cleared the GOP-supermajority state Senate with significant support.

    “I think the overturn of Roe v. Wade has forced the issue to become more of a dinner table conversation, and people are more open about sex and family planning, and I think those are becoming more of conversation pieces within families, and it’s a good thing,” Garvin said.

    In Iowa, lawmakers are taking another shot at expanding access to birth control, something the governor has wanted to do since 2019. While Reynolds’ bill to allow pharmacists to prescribe hormonal contraception cleared the Senate that year, it did not receive a vote in the House that year.

    “There’s some very, very far right conservatives that just really didn’t believe in birth control, period,” said Iowa state Sen. Chris Cournoyer, a Republican. Since then, “we’ve had more conversations about why it’s important and why it factors in not just for maternal health but also for women’s health in general. I mean, there’s a lot of non-contraceptive reasons why you would get on birth control.”

    A similar bill in Indiana also received enthusiastic support when it passed the House in late February.

    “Allowing pharmacists to prescribe hormonal contraceptives is a simple, yet critical step to providing care to more Hoosier women, especially those who don’t have a primary care doctor, or can’t afford transportation to a different city or county,” said Indiana Republican state Rep. Elizabeth Rowray.

    In two conservative states that have not passed Medicaid expansion, abortion helped Republicans who remain highly skeptical of anything that even vaguely resembles such a policy to pass legislation this year extending postpartum benefits from 60 days to a year after birth.

    In Mississippi, Reeves, who is up for reelection this year, announced his support for the policy in February after months of opposition, calling it a part of the “new pro-life agenda” and saying that Republicans may have to do things that make them “philosophically uncomfortable” in the post-Roe era.

    In Wyoming, legislation extending postpartum benefits passed by slim margins in the House and Senate — and legislative leaders in both houses attempted to kill the bill at multiple points during the session. Both GOP lawmakers supportive of the bill and the governor’s office pitched the proposal during hearings and debate on the bill as “pro-life.”

    Exceptions to the rule

    Not all of these proposals have reached a critical mass of Republican support. The two comprehensive sex ed bills introduced this year in Indiana and South Carolina — two states that have an abstinence-focused sex ed curriculum — have not received hearings.

    But South Carolina Republican state Sen. Tom Davis said he is not giving up. He plans to bring his sex ed legislation forward as an amendment to another education-related bill.

    “If we want to reduce unwanted pregnancies and, by that, reduce the number of abortions, we need to do a better job of providing factually correct scientific information that’s age appropriate,” he said.

    And some Republicans are trying to separate maternal health from abortion. In Florida, for instance, the Department of Health requested more than $12.6 million in its budget this year for the Closing the Gap program, which became the centerpiece of a plan to expand telehealth postpartum services to people of color. The proposal received unanimous support from state lawmakers in 2021, and the department is now asking for a boost to its current $5.4 million budget to expand the pilot program.

    But Joseph Ladapo, who oversees the state Department of Health, has emphasized that the increased postpartum funding predates the efforts pushed by Florida Republicans to tighten abortion controls. State lawmakers approved a ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy last year, and they are now poised to pass a six-week ban by the end of this year’s legislative session in May.

    “For the last two decades, they’ve been taking it more seriously and the Department of Health has been involved in that area for years,” Ladapo said.

    Maternal health advocates said they struggle with the fact that these advances come hand-in-hand with anti-abortion laws, which they believe threaten to worsen existing maternal health disparities.

    “We’re glad that more states are starting to pay attention, but in light of the maternal health crisis, the point really is that Rome is burning, and states are not centering the full range of reproductive health needs,” said Ben Anderson, director of maternal and child health initiatives at Families USA, a consumer advocacy group.

    But advocates also welcome the growing bipartisanship on these issues.

    “What I do see as a pattern is reasonable conversations about some of these safety-net programs that should have long been part of the overarching public health dossier of programs, Medicaid expansion being one of them,” said Terrance Moore, CEO of the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs. “I don’t want to go on a limb and say folks are all going in the right direction, but there’s been real education, deep education.”

    Arek Sarkissian contributed to this report.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Pak faces ‘uphill task’ to try & get Kashmir into ‘centre’ of UN’s agenda: FM Zardari

    Pak faces ‘uphill task’ to try & get Kashmir into ‘centre’ of UN’s agenda: FM Zardari

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    United Nations: Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari has admitted that Islamabad faces an “uphill task” to get the Kashmir issue into the “centre” of the agenda of the United Nations.

    Zardari also fumbled as he went on to refer to India, describing it first as “our friend” before using the term “neighbouring” country.

    “You’re also right to note that we face a particularly uphill task to try and get Kashmir into the centre of the agenda at the United Nations,” Zardari said at a press conference here on Friday, responding to a question that drew parallels between the situation in Palestine with Kashmir.

    Pakistan rakes up the issue of Jammu and Kashmir at every UN forum and platform, irrespective of the topic or agenda being discussed.

    However, it fails to get any traction or support for its agenda from the wider UN membership that considers Kashmir to be a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

    “And whenever the issue of Kashmir is brought up, our friends within, with.. our friend our.. our neighbouring countries, strongly object, vociferously object and they perpetuate a post-fact narrative where they try to claim that this is not a dispute for the United Nations, that this is not a disputed territory recognised for the international community,” the 34-year-old Pakistani foreign minister said.

    Tensions between India and Pakistan spiked after New Delhi abrogated Article 370 of the Constitution to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019.

    India has categorically told the international community that the scrapping of Article 370 was an internal matter. It also advised Pakistan to accept the reality and stop all anti-India propaganda.

    India has told Pakistan that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Islamabad in an environment free of terror, hostility and violence.

    Zardari said “while we do find it difficult to get the truth across, we are persistent in our efforts” and added that at every opportunity, whether it is in the UN Security Council or other events, he makes the effort to mention both the plight of the people of Palestine and of Kashmir.

    “I think your parallel is very justified. There are many similarities between the plight of the people of Kashmir and the plight of the people of Palestine. I think it’s fair to say that both issues remain unaddressed by the United Nations and we’d like to see an extra focus not only on Palestine but also on Kashmir,” he added.

    Zardari was addressing the media here on the outcome of the Women in Islam Conference and Commemoration of the First Islamophobia Day, on the sidelines of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).

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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • House GOP readies its first big agenda push: A massive energy bill

    House GOP readies its first big agenda push: A massive energy bill

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    “Everybody will have a little different perspective. But when you want to attack inflation in this country, it starts with an all-of-the-above energy policy, and I think that will be the more unifying thing,” said House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.).

    While each of the 20 or so bills getting united for the House package has broad support in committee, senior Republicans are still deciding how exactly to maneuver on the floor. While conservatives have demanded a kind of “open season” for amendments, GOP leaders sense that could be a risky strategy for such a high-stakes bill — one that’s likely to be a key plank in their 2024 platform. They’re still undecided on whether to allow a so-called “open rule,” according to multiple lawmakers and aides.

    “That’s the five-vote majority problem,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.), noting that the GOP has already seen energy issues like offshore drilling pit cause intra-party tension on the floor — most recently pitting drill-skeptical Florida Republicans against their colleagues. “If you have a delegation that has a problem, you have a bill problem.”

    The big energy package has long been atop the GOP’s agenda, not all of which has gone smoothly after a dragged-out speaker’s race and slow start to legislating. While House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) had pledged to bring up bills on the southern border, criminal justice and abortion insurance restrictions within the first two weeks of the new majority, those bills have all stalled amid resistance within the conference.

    And there’s another big reason House Republicans are relishing the chance to bring this to the floor. It’s considered their opening bid on the wonky yet critical issue of energy permitting — a rare policy area that both parties believe could lead to a bipartisan deal that President Joe Biden’s willing to sign.

    They know that their package’s pro-fossil-fuel proposals and its targeting of Biden’s progressive climate policies are unlikely to garner bipartisan support, but GOP lawmakers hope the permitting plank in particular represents an aggressive starting point for negotiations with Senate Democrats. Perhaps their most politically vulnerable centrist, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), watched his permitting reform plan fall short last year even as his party controlled both the House and Senate.

    “The dynamics of the last Congress, with Manchin leading it, weren’t really conducive to getting something done. And this approach of doing something that originates in the House is a better start,” said Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), a McCarthy ally and party leader on energy issues.

    Graves crafted the main permitting measure in the House GOP package, which would overhaul rules for reviews conducted under the National Environmental Policy Act — a bedrock environmental law adopted in 1970 — for energy infrastructure, be it pipelines or wind turbines.

    Manchin had demanded his party attempt to pass a similar effort but failed thanks in part to Republicans who were peeved by his support for Democrats’ party-line tax, health care and climate bill.

    From his perch atop the Energy Committee, Manchin is still joining with the White House to press for a congressional permitting modernization that would, they say, help companies take full advantage of the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies that the party-line deal devoted to expanding clean energy.

    “I wouldn’t expect their [Republicans’] first bill to be something the Democrats could support,” said Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.), a centrist who is talking to House Republicans about permitting. “It is true we have an interest, as climate action advocates, to move things along in a way I am not sure the current law accommodates.”

    Most of the rest of Republicans’ legislative package, though, is dead on arrival in the Senate. Instead, it serves mostly political purposes for a GOP that hammered the issue for months during the midterm campaign.

    The effort follows components of a broader energy strategy that McCarthy released last summer, calling for measures to stimulate oil and gas production, ease permitting regulations and reduce reliance on China for critical materials used in green energy technologies.

    McCarthy’s strategy stemmed from an “energy, climate, and conservation task force” he created ahead of the midterms, chaired by Graves, that incorporated legislative ideas from across the conference. That work drew support from leaders of key committees, including Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) of Energy & Commerce, Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) of Natural Resources, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) of Science, and Sam Graves (R-Mo.) of Transportation and Infrastructure.

    “It’s energy security, it’s domestic production, and it’s inflation,” Westerman said. “It’s all of the above energy.”

    The GOP effort, notably, started off at least partly with climate change in mind, as McCarthy recognized the political liability that his party faces on an issue which animates young voters on both sides of the aisle.

    But in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which spiked oil and natural gas prices, most Republicans are downplaying elements of their forthcoming package that could potentially boost clean energy and help address climate change. Instead, Republicans are arguing that Democratic climate policies have stoked inflation by slowing oil and gas production — even though output of both has climbed under Biden.

    “Their agenda is just all in for the polluters and Big Oil,” said Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who led the Select Climate Crisis Committee last Congress alongside Graves (Republicans have since disbanded it). “There is such dissonance there. It’s confusing, to say the least.”

    Republicans counter that their agenda — promoting production and export of all forms of energy, including renewables and other carbon-free sources — makes more sense since Russia’s continental aggression underscored the importance of maintaining ample supplies of oil and gas even as the world transitions off fossil fuels.

    “It’s a really good time to merge energy and climate policy with rational approaches to being cleaner,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who chairs the nearly 80-member Conservative Climate Caucus. “Before, maybe the whole conversation was on being clean. Now, it’s about being affordable, reliable, safe, and clean. That’s a good nexus for a lot of us.”



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )