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“As this Court is well aware, the justice system’s reaction to January 6 bears the weighty responsibility of impacting whether January 6 becomes an outlier or a watershed moment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler wrote in the 183-page sentencing memo. “Left unchecked, this impulse threatens our democracy.”
Prosecutors cited polling from earlier this year showing that one in five Americans believe political violence is sometimes justified and that one in 10 “believes it would be justified if it meant the return of President Trump.”
Rhodes was charged with seditious conspiracy last year alongside nearly a dozen Oath Keepers for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors alleged that Rhodes embraced Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and used it to mobilize Oath Keepers across the country to resist the results of the election.
“These defendants were prepared to fight. Not for their country, but against it,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo. “In their own words, they were ‘willing to die’ in a ‘guerilla war’ to achieve their goal of halting the transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential Election. … These defendants played a central and damning role in opposing by force the government of the United States, breaking the solemn oath many of them swore as members of the United States Armed Forces.”
In an eight-week trial last year, prosecutors presented evidence that the group planned to descend on Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 in response to Trump’s call about two weeks earlier for supporters to “be there, will be wild.” They stockpiled weapons, which prosecutors contend were meant to be available if the mob’s clash with police turned even more violent than it did, at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va.
Rhodes, an Army veteran, Yale Law School graduate and disbarred attorney, was one of a pair of Oath Keepers convicted by a jury last November on rare seditious conspiracy charges for planning an assault on the Capitol as Congress was tallying the electoral votes as part of the process transitioning power from Trump to President Joe Biden.
The other person convicted on the marquee charge was Kelly Meggs, a leader of the Florida Oath Keepers. Three Oath Keepers members tried with Rhodes and Meggs were acquitted of seditious conspiracy, but convicted on other felony charges.
Four other Oath Keepers were convicted of seditious conspiracy at a second trial in January. And three more pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy over the past year.
In addition to the nine Oath Keepers who have been convicted of seditious conspiracy, five members of the far-right Proud Boys have also been convicted of or pleaded guilty to the charge. Four of them, including the group’s national leader Enrique Tarrio, were found guilty by a jury on Thursday. The sentencing recommendation for Rhodes is a window into the likely sentence that prosecutors will seek for Tarrio and his allies.
The recommendation for the stiff prison term for Rhodes was sent Friday night to U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta, who has presided over three jury trials for Oath Keepers members. A fourth is slated to take place later this year.
Mehta, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, has scheduled sentencing for Rhodes, Meggs and several other convicted Oath Keepers over a series of dates in late May and early June.
Prosecutors also announced in their Friday night submission that they are seeking similarly lengthy sentences for others convicted in the Oath Keepers trials to date, including: 21 years for Meggs, 18 years for Jessica Watkins, 17 years for Roberto Minuta, 17 years for Ed Vallejo, 15 years for Kenneth Harrelson and 14 years for Thomas Caldwell. Each of them would equal or exceed the lengthiest sentences given to Jan. 6 defendants so far.
Prosecutors arrived at those steep sentencing recommendations in part by labeling the actions of Rhodes and his co-conspirators “terrorism,” defined in the criminal code as “acts that were intended to influence the government through intimidation or coercion.” The Justice Department has sought this enhancement in relatively few Jan. 6 cases and with limited success.
Judges declined to adopt it in several cases against high-profile Jan. 6 defendants — but none had been convicted of seditious conspiracy and none were alleged to have played as large a role in the Jan. 6 attack as Rhodes and his allies.
Prosecutors also dinged Rhodes and several allies for participating in post-trial interviews in which they defended their actions on Jan. 6. Rhodes, in particular, they said “continues to invoke the words and deeds of the Founding Fathers in not-so-veiled calls for violent opposition to the government.”
About 1,000 people have been charged criminally in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, but prosecutors said Rhodes and other members of the fiercely anti-government Oath Keepers deserve lengthy prison sentences because they were instigators of the unrest and violence that broke out that day.
While the vast majority of those charged entered the Capitol building, Rhodes and Tarrio were convicted on the serious seditious conspiracy charge despite never setting foot in the building that day. Rhodes was in Washington and marched with Oath Keepers members, but remained in a parking lot as rioters entered the building and clashed with police. Tarrio had been arrested by police a couple of days before and was in Baltimore when the violence unfolded on Jan. 6 after being ordered to leave Washington.
While the 25-year recommendation for Rhodes is the lengthiest yet in Jan. 6 cases, it is only slightly longer than the 24-year, six-month sentence prosecutors sought for a man sentenced Friday for repeatedly assaulting police officers during the riot.
A jury convicted Peter Schwartz, 49, last December on assault and civil disorder charges for throwing a chair at police and spraying them with pepper spray, all while armed with a wooden tire knocker. According to prosecutors, unlike many Jan. 6 defendants, Schwartz had “a substantial violent criminal history.”
Mehta, the same judge handling the Oath Keeper’s cases, sentenced Schwartz to 14 years in prison. While that was more than a decade short of what prosecutors asked for, it was the longest sentence yet for a Jan. 6 offender. The next longest was also handed out by Mehta: 10 years for Thomas Webster, a retired New York City police officer who assaulted a D.C. cop on the front lines of the Capitol riot. Prosecutors had sought a 17-and-a-half year term in that case.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“One very famous football club said to me two or three days ago: ‘Whenever we have a problem we say ‘What would the Everton board do, because they always get it right?’” Bill Kenwright, 2021.
Anyone of sound mind would do the exact opposite of what Everton’s delusional chairman and abject board have overseen during the seven years of Farhad Moshiri’s near-ruinous ownership.
Those appointed to run Newcastle’s football operation, for example. Newcastle again showed the wisdom of their £255m investment in new talent since the Saudi takeover in October 2021, along with the astute management of Eddie Howe, as they edged closer to Champions League qualification and pushed Everton towards the Championship with a second emphatic Premier League victory in five days.
Unlike the swift destruction of Tottenham at St James’ Park, Newcastle had to bide their time before delivering another incisive exhibition at Goodison Park. A seventh win in eight outings could have equalled Sunday’s scoreline but for the interventions of Jordan Pickford and VAR. Everton’s strong start was a distant memory by the time Callum Wilson, Joelinton and Alexander Isak were swatting aside the home defence with ease and exposing the chasm in quality between the respective forward lines.
Wilson struck twice, Joelinton once and Jacob Murphy was also on the scoresheet following a mesmerising run from fellow substitute Isak that took him beyond four blue shirts.
Howe shuffled his pack from Sunday but Newcastle’s penetration and winning mentally remained unchanged, victory taking them eight points clear of fifth-placed Spurs with a game in hand.
“We handled the occasion really well,” the Newcastle manager said. “It was a hostile environment and the first goal was always going to be crucial. Our confidence was evident in the second half. Maybe the edge of the game had gone but we had to earn the right to get to that point.”
Three of Newcastle’s goals came down Everton’s right flank where Ben Godfrey had a torrid night. The defender’s inclusion over Nathan Patterson at full back, where he also toiled in the damaging home defeat by Fulham, was a mystifying choice by Sean Dyche, who may have improved Everton’s aggression and physicality but not their prospects of avoiding a first relegation since 1951.
Everton collapsed following Newcastle’s second goal, just as they did against Fulham in the previous home game. With five games remaining to save the club’s top flight status, the first away at Leicester on Monday, the character on display is as alarming as the league table for Evertonians.
Alexander Isak leaves Everton players in his wake during a mesmerising dribble that set up the fourth goal for Jacob Murphy. Photograph: Alex Livesey/Getty Images
Dyche said: “In the first half we did everything I wanted them to do against a team that is flying, apart from conceding, but as soon as the second goal goes in the game gets away from us too quickly. The same thing happened against Fulham. We have to correct that very quickly.”
Goodison Road was filled with noise and blue smoke before kick off as thousands of Evertonians waited to greet the team coach. There was even a sustained fireworks display from behind the Gwladys Street and Bullens Road stands when the teams emerged.
It was some reception from a fanbase being put through the wringer once again and Dyche’s team initially responded, controlling proceedings up until the point Joelinton broke away to create Newcastle’s opener.
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The visitors switched play through Matt Targett, who released the Brazilian down the left with a fine first touch. Joelinton gathered speed as he approached the area and cut back inside Godfrey before unleashing a venomous shot. Pickford parried well but the ball struck James Tarkowski and dropped perfectly for Wilson. The striker, one of three changes from the Spurs’ rout, made no mistake.
Everton fans are fearing the worst after a drubbing by Newcastle. Photograph: Carl Recine/Reuters
Dominic Calvert-Lewin had what would have been an exquisite equaliser disallowed for offside in first half stoppage time. He also forced Nick Pope to save early in the second half following good work from Alex Iwobi.
Pickford produced a magnificent save to deny the increasingly prominent Joe Willock when, unmarked on the corner of the area at a Newcastle corner, he curled a volley towards the far corner. The Everton keeper’s finger-tipped intervention was in vain. Seconds later Bruno Guimarães found Willock, who beat Godfrey to the byline too easily and chipped a perfect cross into the six-yard box where Joelinton scored with a textbook header.
It was soon three when Guimarães found Wilson lurking on the edge of the area. The striker was given time and space to pick his spot and chose the top left hand corner of Pickford’s goal. Dwight McNeil reduced the arrears when scoring directly from a corner but only for a matter of seconds. Isak weaved his way through anaemic challenges from Godfrey, Michael Keane and Idrissa Gueye before shooting across goal. Murphy tapped in at the back post.
There was still time for Howe to rub salt into Everton wounds by introducing Anthony Gordon to predictable boos against his boyhood club. Fabian Schär seemed to have applied more when scoring from distance but his fine effort was disallowed for offside by VAR. The two clubs are heading in very different directions.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Young doctors just out of medical school working as resident physicians, fellows and interns at major US hospitals are organizing unions at an increasing rate, citing long-running problems highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic and a need to rethink the struggles young doctors face in the profession.
The Committee of Interns and Residents, an affiliate of SEIU, added five unionized sites in 2022 compared with about one a year before the pandemic and the surge has continued in 2023 with multiple union election filings. It currently represents over 25,000 residents, fellows and interns across the US, comprising about 15% of all resident and fellow physicians.
Over 2,500 residents and fellows at Mass General Brigham in Boston are currently waiting to have a union election date set after filing this year.
As with other industries facing a renewed interest in unionization from their staff, the US’s rich and powerful hospitals have responded with well-funded anti-union campaigns and tactics to delay union elections and contract negotiations.
Hospital management has opposed the unionization effort, declining to voluntarily recognize the union, encouraging residents not to sign union authorization cards ahead of the election filing and writing local op-eds in opposition to unionization.
Since going public with their union plans, staff have been sent emails and been invited to meetings to try to dissuade residents from unionizing, “often counting on myths around what unionizing would mean”, said Dr Sascha Murillo, a third-year internal medicine resident at Massachusetts general hospital.
“They tried to dangle some carrots with the salary increases and benefit changes that we’re going to see next year, but the only way we’re going to quantify that for the long term is by having a union and an actual contract,” said Murillo.
The unionizing campaign took off after vulnerabilities in the healthcare system were exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, she said, with residents working on the frontlines and bearing the brunt of staffing shortages, an influx of Covid-19 patients, and patients who deferred medical care.
Mass General Brigham offices in Somerville, Massachusetts. Photograph: Boston Globe/Getty Images
Residents often work 80 hours or more a week while being paid barely enough to cover rent in expensive cities like Boston. They often cannot leave or change jobs before they complete the three-year residency program.
“We’re the ones who are often the first faces that patients see. We’re privy to the issues our patients face and want to be able to advocate for our patients,” added Murillo. “These hospital systems are incredibly powerful. We’re seeing a trend across healthcare of these huge mergers and consolidation of power and it’s even more important for all workers in the healthcare system to be able to have a seat at the table to really ensure that those at the top understand what we face day to day in delivering patient care and that we’re able to check that power.”
About 1,400 residents at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia filed for a union election being held in the beginning of May 2023. Penn Medicine has hired law firm Cozen O’Connor, which specializes in union avoidance, in response to the union organizing effort and has encouraged residents to be wary of the union’s promises.
“It still feels like we aren’t being heard. It feels like the institution is still sending a message that they know what’s best for us, that they want to stay in a position of power,” said Dr Chantal Tapé, a third-year resident in family medicine.
Tapé said there was also a need to change the perception of residency programs as an inherently exploitative stage that residents just need to struggle through.
“Our big push is to have a union so that we have a seat at the table, so that there’s a system for accountability where resident voices are heard and hopefully persists across the years so that the issues that are most important to a resident at Penn 10 years from now have the same sort of venue for being heard as the issues that we’re experiencing right now,” she added.
Over 450 residents, interns and fellows at George Washington University are voting in a union election on 25 and 26 April.
“There’s been a large uproar of residents unionizing because residents and fellows across the nation have felt exploited in their jobs, undervalued, underappreciated, overworked in really unsustainable working conditions,” said Dr Marysa Miller, a first-year internal medicine resident at George Washington. “My starting salary was right around $64,000, which when you divide that out into 80-hour work weeks, I make about $15 an hour, far below the living standard in the city, so more than half of my paycheck goes to rent.”
Ahead of their union election, the Dean of the GW School of Medicine, Dr Barbara Bass wrote an email to all residents where she argued in favor of a direct relationship, referring to the union as a third party and citing concerns about the impacts a union could have on professional and mentoring relationships between faculty and residents.
“I think that was really just a tactic to try to scare people. And it’s really just not true, and not something that any unionized campaign amongst residents and fellows has seen across the country,” added Miller. “We are really the ones that are on the frontlines,” said Miller. “But ironically, we’re the voice that’s not listened to and I think that’s kind of what’s been seen throughout all of these union campaigns that are popping up through America.”
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Some 1,200 residents and fellows at Montefiore hospital in New York City won their union election in February 2023, with 82% voting in favor of the union. Residents at Sutter Health California Pacific medical center and Lifelong Medical Care in California also won union elections in 2023.
Ahead of the union vote in New York City, an anti-union video claimed “a vote for this union is a vote against us, your educational leaders”. The video presentation included slides with a misspelled “no ragrets” neck tattoo to warn about the “permanent decision” of unionizing, followed by a slide of a brain where a doctor encourages residents to use the right part of their brain in deciding on their vote.
Residents at the University of Vermont medical center, USC Keck and Greater Lawrence family health center in Massachusetts won union elections in 2022, and 1,500 residents at the University of Washington joined the CIR-SEIU.
At Stanford Health Care in California 1,478 residents and fellows won their union election in May 2022.
Stanford criticized unions ahead of the vote, claiming they prefer a direct relationship with individual residents. The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled against Stanford for refusing to furnish information before bargaining with the union.
Dr Philip Sossenheimer, an internal medicine resident at Stanford, explained the union drive was driven by issues residents experienced during the pandemic and doctors wanting to use unionization as a vehicle to address ongoing issues throughout the healthcare system and how those impact residents and patients.
“Our generation collectively is starting to realize the sort of losses that have come from degradation of labor strength in this country and declining rate of union membership, and I think broadly, as a society, we’re starting to reflect on what that power imbalance means for the average citizen, particularly since as people in this country, we spend a substantial amount of our time at work.”
The Penn Medicine hospital on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Photograph: Charles Mostoller/Reuters
At Children’s national hospital in Washington DC, residents organized a demonstration across the street from the hospital during lunch breaks to demand better pay, improved staffing, and other demands central to the union in new contract negotiations. Though a contract was settled in December 2022, the hospital is currently taking legal action against the union over the demonstration, claiming the union violated a “no strike” clause. The hospital has not commented on the action due to the pending litigation.
“It feels like such a retaliation,” said Dr Lydia Lissanu, a first-year resident at Children’s national hospital. “At the very least if it feels like they want to intimidate us even if it doesn’t work, they want us to know they’re very upset with us.”
Lissanu added that residents have been increasingly organizing unions because of how they were the ones forced to pick up the slack for vulnerabilities exposed in the healthcare system during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re being asked to pick up the slack essentially from all of the other shortages in the hospital, all of the things that have happened in Covid, all of the pediatric respiratory viruses surging all at once. A lot was expected of us, a lot of slack that we had to pick up with very little recognition, very little reward. We’re asking to be treated fairly and be paid for our labor, we no longer feel that we should be grateful for having this job, they should be grateful for us and what we bring to the table.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
Menendez’s position gives the White House some flexibility as it aims to fill the slot vacated by Lael Brainard, now President Joe Biden’s top economic policy adviser. But the New Jerseyan also said tapping a Hispanic person for another top vacant position, such as the Treasury Department’s chief economist or the open seat on Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, wouldn’t be enough.
An administration official said the White House has floated those options to Menendez.
“Look, I’m not going to work against my own efforts,” Menendez said. “They have raised that there may be other positions as well, and if it’s as well, that’s great. But I don’t want to hear that it’s in place of.”
The vice chair search process is in a holding pattern while the White House figures out how to satisfy the senator, who has gotten support for his push from fellow members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, as well as other lawmakers, such as Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.).
Northwestern University professor Janice Eberly, a former Treasury official under President Barack Obama, has been seen as a frontrunner for the vice chair job.
A Latino person has never had a vote on interest rate policy at the Fed, something that has rankled Menendez for years. He voted against Powell’s confirmation to a second term to protest that multiple regional Fed president jobs have been filled in recent years, and none of them have gone to Hispanic candidates.
The administration official said one option could be to elevate Philip Jefferson, appointed to the Fed last year by Biden, to vice chair and pick a Latino nominee for the open board seat. (This option was previously reported by the Wall Street Journal.)
The vice chair position usually goes to a Ph.D. economist with an extensive background in monetary policy, a relatively limited group of people, whereas the pool of candidates for other board seats has traditionally been much bigger.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said it was important to fill the No. 2 spot soon.
“We need a person who has a demonstrated record for holding banks accountable, and someone who will push back against Chair Powell, reminding him that the Fed does not have one job: inflation,” she told reporters Wednesday. “It has two jobs: inflation and jobs.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
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“There is no Black woman in the Senate, so that commitment was heard across the nation,” said Assemblymember Lori Wilson, chair of the California Legislative Black Caucus. “There are Black women in Texas, in Georgia, who are holding onto: If there’s a vacancy, we’re going to get a Black woman, because Governor Newsom said so.”
A Senate vacancy in California would create outsize implications for the 2024 Senate race and a series of fraught political choices for Newsom. The governor would face enormous pressure to move quickly on his decision, given Democrats’ razor-thin margin in the Senate. He’d also have to decide whether to appoint a caretaker or wade into the contest by naming a contender like Lee.
Feinstein, who plans to retire after next year, said Wednesday she will return to the Senate as soon as her medical team allows — though she didn’t specify a date. In the meantime, she called for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to pick a Democrat to replace her on the important Judiciary Committee.
Newsom has made no public statements on the politically thorny issue in recent days, as some lawmakers openly called for Feinstein’s resignation. When asked if he intends to honor his promise, a spokesperson for his office directed POLITICO to his previous comments.
The governor in 2021 said he had “multiple names” in mind for Feinstein’s replacement, though didn’t specify any. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, Secretary of State Shirley Weber, Los Angeles County Supervisor Holly Mitchell and San Francisco Mayor London Breed have all been floated as potential contenders — though representatives for at least two said they would not accept the nomination.
But Lee, one of the most prominent Black women in California politics, seems to be garnering the most support for the appointment. She is running against fellow congressmembers and formidable fundraisers Katie Porter and Adam Schiff in the fierce competition to replace Feinstein in 2024 — a race that is already creating tension within the California Democratic establishment.
In 2020, San Francisco-based She The People helped organize a pressure campaign to fill Harris’ seat with a Black woman. Last time around, the goal was to uplift both Lee in Northern California and then-Congresswoman Bass in Southern California.
But with Bass now installed as Los Angeles mayor, Lee is the most senior among the contenders to replace Feinstein, said the group’s founder, Aimee Allison. It’s widely expected that the statewide political establishment “will break in favor of Barbara Lee,” she said.
Wilson noted that the California Legislative Black Caucus has already endorsed Lee’s bid for Senate, and said she would like to see the congresswoman appointed in the event Feinstein stepped down.
A representative for Lee’s campaign declined to comment on the prospect of a direct appointment. “The congresswoman’s primary concern is for Sen. Feinstein’s health,” said Lee campaign spokesperson Katie Merrill in a statement. “She is wishing the Senator a full and speedy recovery.”
Appointing someone outside the 2024 Senate contest, such as Weber, could give Newsom an out — allowing him to avoid any show of favoritism between Lee, Porter and Schiff. But there’s no guarantee that such an appointee wouldn’t change their mind and run in 2024.
And it might not be Newsom’s preference, anyway.
“Appointing a caretaker may be the way out of a difficult political situation,” said Rose Kapolczynski, a longtime Democratic consultant known for running former Sen. Barbara Boxer’s campaigns. “But [Newsom’s] history shows that he’s happy to take a risk and appoint someone who’s going to serve and run.”
Adding to the pressure is the fact that Newsom did not not endorse Bass for mayor last year even as nearly every high-powered Democrat, including President Joe Biden, rallied behind her — a political decision that earned him some harsh criticism. In a letter sent ahead of the November election, a coalition of Black women’s groups accused the governor of turning his back on them.
“He selectively supports Black women candidates even when they have overwhelming support from the party leaders and our community,” the letter read.
Newsom has so far not moved off his position to appoint a Black woman to the Senate should it become a possibility.
When asked if Weber would consider the job, Matt Herdman, a spokesperson for her campaign, said, “no comment.”
Bass’ spokesperson Zach Seidl, when asked the same question, responded, “absolutely not.”
Lenée Richards, a spokesperson for Mitchell, said “she would not accept an appointment to the Senate.”
Breed’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Roger Salazar, a veteran California Democratic consultant who has advised statewide and national campaigns, said Newsom could certainly risk alienating Schiff and Porter supporters if he appointed Lee to a vacancy.
But regardless of who he has in mind, Newsom would be expected to make a decision quickly — if it came to that. After Harris vacated her seat, it took Newsom several months to name a successor. Now, given the tight margin for Democrats in the Senate and the ongoing debates around gun control, abortion and the economy, he would not have the same luxury of time.
“There’s no question that there’s going to be an urgency because of the national situation,” Salazar said.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
If Wednesday’s proposals work out the way Biden’s regulators envision, two out of every three new cars and light trucks sold in the U.S. in 2032 will be electric — more than 10 times the current national sales rate.
That figure includes a projection that 78 percent of sedans, 68 percent of pickups and 62 percent of crossovers and SUVs could be battery-powered just nine years from now.
Electric vehicle sales are rising already, of course. Some automakers, such as Ford and General Motors, have announced plans to stop making gasoline-powered cars entirely by 2035.
But without stricter regulations, the EPA says, electric vehicles would make up only 39 percent of new sales in 2032.
The agency also projects that half of new “vocational” vehicles — such as garbage trucks and school buses — will be electric that year under its proposals, as well as 25 percent of long-haul freight tractor trailers.
Aren’t electric vehicles more expensive than gasoline-powered ones?
Yes. And EPA estimated that its proposal would add an incremental cost of $844 for cars and $1,385 for trucks in 2032.
But it also contends that those upfront costs will be more than offset by consumers’ savings on fuel and maintenance (electric cars don’t need oil changes, for example), as well as purchasing incentives. The agency says the average buyer of a car or light-duty truck will save $12,000 over the vehicle’s lifetime.
That’s on top of the rule’s projected benefits in reduced oil imports, reductions in diseases related to air pollution and a lessening of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
How would the EPA’s rule work?
The first and most sweeping rule, Reg. 2060-AV49, covers light-duty cars and trucks as well as medium-duty vehicles, a class that includes larger SUVs and passenger vans.
It seeks to prod automakers to produce more electric vehicles by slashing the amount of greenhouse gases allowed to come out of tailpipes.
For light-duty vehicles, the new target would be an average of 82 grams of carbon dioxide per mile traveled in 2032. That’s down roughly half from the administration’s existing target for 2026.
The target is a “fleet average” that the EPA calculates for each auto manufacturer. That means that an automaker’s sales of zero-carbon electric vehicles can offset the pollution from its fossil-fuel cars and trucks, though automakers may pursue more efficiencies in gasoline-powered models as well.
The final real-world figures can also vary depending on how automakers choose to comply with the rule.
The rule also strengthens limits on vehicles’ conventional air pollutants — a step that would also increase the incentives for carmakers to go electric.
For acid-rain-causing nitrogen oxides and other organic gases, the standard would be reduced to 12 milligrams per mile in 2032, down 60 percent from an Obama-era requirement. EPA also proposed a standard for “particulate matter” (i.e., soot) that’s down as much as 92 percent from current standards.
In addition to the primary proposal, Alejandra Nunez, EPA’s deputy assistant administrator for mobile sources, said the agency is soliciting comments on several alternative regulatory options of varying stringency for light-duty vehicles. The least stringent would achieve 64 percent electric vehicle penetration in 2032, Nunez said, while the most would reach 69 percent.
Is that all?
No! The proposal also includes several tweaks to a compliance program that EPA has been using to help automakers meet its requirements.
The agency is maintaining a system in which companies that produce less-polluting vehicles can earn “credits” that they can then sell to their more-polluting rivals. (These credits have been a revenue source for companies like Toyota and Tesla.)
On the other hand, EPA wants to phase out a bonus credits program that rewarded companies for adopting technologies such as solar roof panels and high-efficiency headlights.
EPA also wants to stop giving credits to electric vehicle manufacturers for using more efficient air conditioning.
EPA’s second proposed rule, Reg. 2060-AV50, would cover heavy-duty vehicles such as tractor-trailers and vocational vehicles — the source of a quarter of the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions. The rule follows two prior rounds of greenhouse gas regulations for heavy-duty trucks that manufacturers largely accepted.
That proposal also creates warranty requirements for batteries on zero-emissions trucks and would require automakers to install “state of health” battery monitors accessible to customers.
The light-duty proposal will be open for 60 days of public comment and the heavy-duty proposal for 50 days of comment once published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks.
But wait — didn’t Biden just make it harder to get tax breaks for electric vehicles?
Yes, less than two weeks ago: Under a Treasury Department proposal announced March 31, fewer of the electric cars and trucks now on the market will qualify for the $7,500-per-vehicle tax breaks intended to make EVs more affordable for consumers.
The aim, as mandated by Congress, is to ensure that vehicles receiving the credits are made in the U.S., and that their critical parts and minerals come from either the United States or its closest trading partners. Even tighter restrictions from Treasury — aimed at boxing out countries like China — are due later this year.
So which vehicles will qualify for the tax credits?
Stay tuned: By Tuesday, automakers are supposed to confirm which of their models meet the new Treasury requirements. (They’ll have to swear this under penalty of perjury.)
But when POLITICO questioned the car companies last week, they said just five of the 91 electric car models now sold in the U.S. clearly qualified for the full tax break. Those all came from American automakers, with General Motors, Ford and Tesla leading the pack.
What other obstacles could complicate Biden’s goals?
The U.S. still doesn’t have nearly enough chargers for all the electric vehicles that the EPA wants to see on the highways. And many of the chargers that exist suffer from malfunctions, slow charging and other woes, as David Ferris recently documented for POLITICO’s E&E News.
Questions linger about whether the U.S. electric grid can stand up to the load of charging so many vehicles, and whether domestic manufacturing and mining can ramp up fast enough to make sure EVs are produced domestically.
The administration’s hope is that the prodding from the EPA, the availability of tax breaks and other incentives for technologies such as charging stations will speed up a transformation to electric vehicles that market forces are already pushing to bring about. That’s a work in progress, of course.
What do people say about the rule?
Many environmental groups welcomed Wednesday’s news. Dan Lashof, U.S. director for the World Resources Institute, said in a statement that EPA’s proposals will “speed the United States’ auto industry toward an all-electric future faster than any regulation has before.”
But Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign, argued that the proposal isn’t stringent enough. He called on the EPA to write a regulation that achieves 67 percent electric vehicle sales in 2030 — two years earlier than the agency’s timeline.
“Biden shouldn’t let automakers’ can’t-do attitude sabotage his best shot at cutting carbon emissions,” Becker said in a statement.
Republicans were, notably, less thrilled. Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) accused Biden of trying “to ban the cars we drive,” a common refrain from GOP critics of the new rule.
“The ‘electrification of everything’ is not a solution,” Barrasso said Wednesday. “It’s a road to higher prices and fewer choices.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
This is, as President Joe Biden said in a different context, a big f–ing deal. His administration wants to change the way Americans have traveled the roads for more than a century. But by pushing the industry to make the transition faster, Biden could risk a backlash from unwilling consumers, complicate questions about China’s dominance of electric vehicle supplies, and escalate his administration’s legal fight with the oil industry and GOP governors who oppose his efforts to phase out internal combustion engines.
On the plus side for Biden, though, electric vehicle sales are already rising. And carmakers, who are investing big money in going electric, have defended the EPA’s previous pollution rules in federal court.
“Whether you measure today’s announcement by the dollars saved or the gallons reduced or the pollution that will no longer be pumped into the air, this is a win for the American people,” White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi told reporters on Tuesday.
Still, even some supporters of the president’s climate policies say they worry about a host of complications, including consumers’ ability to afford the $50,000-and-up price of many electric vehicles now on the market. Biden’s signature climate law offers $7,500 tax breaks to lessen the sticker shock, but the Treasury Department announced rules just two weeks ago that will make those credits more difficult to get.
Under the EPA proposal unveiled Wednesday, carbon dioxide emissions for new cars and light trucks would need to fall by 49 percent on average from 2027 to 2032. The agency is also proposing tightened standards for medium- and heavy-duty vehicles, with the latter including dump trucks, school buses and tractor-trailers.
“Everybody cares about global warming,” said Rep. Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from the auto industry’s home base of Michigan. But she added, “I’m hearing from too many people in this country — I mean, strong Democrats — that they can’t afford an electric vehicle.”
Other obstacles to getting more motorists to go electric include the patchy availability of charging stations and questions about whether the new breed of cars and trucks will be made in the U.S., with American-sourced parts and minerals, or would further dependence on China.
Some Republicans were caustic, including Florida Rep. Kat Cammack, who called the proposal “another clueless harebrained plan that actually has no basis in reality.”
“That seems to be the joke of the Biden administration — one of many, in fact — where they say, ‘Oh, you are concerned about rising gas prices, oh, you peasant, go out and buy an electric vehicle that costs $80,000,’” Cammack told Fox Business on Monday. “It’s absolutely absurd how out of touch this administration truly is.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told POLITICO in a statement that the administration’s proposed rule “made clear it wants to decide for Americans what kinds of cars and trucks we are allowed to buy, lease, and drive.”
“These misguided emissions standards were made without considering the supply chain challenges American automakers are still facing, the lack of sufficiently operational electric vehicle charging infrastructure, or the fact that it takes nearly a decade to permit a mine to extract the minerals needed to make electric vehicles, forcing businesses to look to China for these raw materials,” Capito said.
Environmental groups and automakers that specialize in electric vehicles, such as Tesla and Rivian, have urged the administration to go big, saying Biden should seize the opportunity to lessen the country’s largest source of greenhouse gases — the transportation sector.
“These regulations will reflect, in my view, the single most important regulatory initiative by the Biden administration to combat climate change,” said Margo Oge, a former head of EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, at a briefing Tuesday organized by the Environmental Defense Fund. “The administration is going to make history if indeed, at the end of the day, they finalize these ambitious standards.”
Matthew Davis, senior director of government relations with the League of Conservation Voters, said the administration should use the EPA rule to “drive innovation” — building on the electric vehicle incentives in Biden’s infrastructure and climate laws, which have already inspired investments in manufacturing and charging projects.
“If these rules aren’t strong enough, they won’t send a strong additional message to the federal investments message that already has been sent,” Davis said. And that could frustrate the Biden administration’s hopes of having electric vehicles account for half of all new car and truck sales by 2030.
Electric vehicles made up about 5.6 percent of cars and trucks sold in 2022, up from 1.8 percent just two years earlier — but still not nearly enough to achieve the large emissions reductions that scientists say are needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, according to data from S&P Global Mobility cited by POLITICO’s E&E News.
A majority of Americans are at least open to buying an electric vehicle, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Twelve percent of respondents said they are “seriously considering” buying an electric vehicle and another 43 percent said they might consider it in the future, versus 41 percent who “unequivocally say they would not.” Four percent of respondents already owned one.
Yet the interest is highly partisan: 76 percent of Democrats were either seriously or somewhat considering purchasing an electric vehicle, while 71 percent of Republicans said they would not buy one, the polling firm found.
EPA’s new rules will push automakers toward electric vehicles regardless, said Mike Ramsey, an automotive analyst at the consulting firm Gartner. “These rules would really just take away any sort of safety net or ability to turn back,” he told E&E News.
Already the auto industry, which has eagerly welcomed a variety of tax credits for manufacturing and selling electric vehicles, is deflecting blame in case it can’t meet the standards.
In a memo issued last week, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation — the trade group representing nearly the entire U.S. auto industry — cautioned that carmakers’ success in meeting strong new standards for lowering pollution will depend on matters outside their control: The proliferation of chargers, the health of the supply chain, the availability of critical minerals, the capacity of the electrical grid and more.
The move toward electric vehicles “requires a massive, 100-year change to the U.S. industrial base and the way Americans drive,” the auto industry group wrote. “A clear-eyed assessment of market readiness is required. The answer on rule feasibility is: It depends.”
“It’s a difficult dance,” said Stephanie Brinley, an automotive analyst for the auto intelligence service at S&P Global Mobility. “In order to have a more fuel efficient vehicle, it will be more expensive. It will be more expensive to produce; it will be more expensive to buy. It just goes with the territory. And that’s at the core of the conundrum.”
Still, she said, Europe and China have long had stricter regulations than the United States, so manufacturers already have some practice conforming to higher fuel economy standards.
The Republican attack line has already become clear, with some accusing the Biden administration of attempts to social-engineer people out of their pickup trucks and into “some puny electric car,” as Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.) tweeted on Monday.
Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) called the EPA proposal “yet another draconian rule from the Biden” administration and invoked this year’s partisan dust-up about gas stoves, which one federal regulator had suggested banning. (Biden has opposed a stove ban.)
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) last month chastised the EPA for its efforts to boost electric vehicles, arguing that they strain the grid and are impractical for people like his wife, who he said drives 5,000 miles per month taking their children to school from rural areas.
“I don’t want ‘California’ rules,” Mullin said, referring to that state’s electric vehicle mandates. “I don’t want them to play a role in Oklahoma. I want affordable and reliable energy.”
The gas stoves scuffle could seem tame compared with an all-out feud over what’s in tens of millions of Americans’ driveways. The Obama administration took a GOP strafing over policies aimed at getting people out of their cars in favor of bikes, walking and transit — outrage that kept the conservative blogosphere buzzing for months. (Writing for Newsweek at the time, George Will dubbed then-Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood the “Secretary of Behavior Modification.”)
In contrast, Biden has proclaimed himself a “car guy.” And his administration and its allies are pitching the new EPA pollution standards as an economic opportunity for the U.S. to dominate the transportation technology of the future.
A recent report from the Environmental Defense Fund and the engineering and design firm WSP USA found that automakers had announced $120 billion in electric vehicle investments since 2015, with the bulk of that money coming since the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act last year.
Much of that spending, and the jobs that come with it, is happening in red or purple states. Georgia leads the pack on announced new EV jobs, followed by Tennessee, Michigan, Nevada and South Carolina.
The administration said the new standards would save the economy $850 billion to $1.6 trillion between 2027 and 2055, avoid about 20 billion barrels in oil imports, and save the average buyer of a car or light-duty truck $12,000 over the vehicle’s lifetime.
Josh Siegel, Zack Colman, Mike Lee and David Ferris contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SRINAGAR: The budget 2023-24 will give a major infrastructural push to four core areas of health, drinking water, power and road connectivity aimed at providing succour to the common people and improving developmental parameters of UT at the national level, government said in a statement.
The budget has earmarked funds for providing Functional Household Tap Connections to all 18.36 lakh households of Jammu and Kashmir by 2023- 24 with a minimum of 55 litres per capita per day (LPCD) drinking water supply of prescribed quality (confirming to BIS 10500) on a regular, longterm and sustainable basis.
About sixty water supply schemes are likely to be completed during 2023-24. To bring efficiency in planning and revenue collection, the government will introduce digitalization of consumer records and implementation of an online billing systems in entire Jammu and Kashmir.
The construction of prestigious Tawi Barrage, an artificial lake project which will boost tourism of Jammu city, will be completed during 2023-24.
According to the budget document, 6000 Kilometer of blacktopping of roads is expected to be achieved during 2023-24 under all schemes. Besides, 353 new projects worth Rs 1292 crore have been prioritized to be sanctioned under Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF)-XXVIII with NABARD funding.
In last year’s budget, safety audit of bridges having completed 20 years was completed and now in this budget Safety audit for the bridges having completed 10 years has to be conducted during 2023-24.
JK government is also putting efforts on maintenance of road/bridge assets and also for road safety measures.
The year 2023-24 will see further Improvement in daily hours of power supply with Urban- 24 hours and Rural 22 hours besides a reduction in transformer damage rate, a drop in Transmission and Distribution/ Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses.
Under Budget 2023-24, there will be an additional length of LT/HT network (1324.073 km) besides renovation and modernization works would be undertaken at existing 220/132 KV Grid Sub Stations apart from protection/ replacement works at critical towers and insertion of new towers.
To improve power connectivity in remote areas that receive heavy snowfall, Sonamarg will be provided 24×7 power supply during winters with underground cabling through Z-Morh Tunnel besides underground cabling would be done at Nunwan for reliable power supply to holy cave of Shri Amar Nath Ji.
