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Former Fox News editor to testify before Jan. 6 panel

A former top editor at Fox News said on Friday that he has been called to testify next week before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

Chris Stirewalt, who was ousted from the network following the 2020 presidential election and is now a political editor at NewsNation, said the committee had requested his testimony during its next hearing on Monday. 

“I’m not in a position to tell you now what my testimony will be about, I just want to make sure that folks know that I am so that I’m not playing any hidden ball tricks,” Stirewalt said during Friday’s edition of NewsNation’s “Morning in America.” 

Stirewalt was part of the decision desk team at Fox News that made the decision to call Arizona for Joe Biden on election night 2020, a move that infuriated former President Trump and his top aides, some of whom reportedly complained directly to Fox leadership about the relatively early race call.

Stirewalt left Fox News shortly thereafter. 

Since his departure from Fox, Stirewalt has publicly criticized media outlets for their coverage of Trump and his unsubstantiated claims of widespread voter fraud.

“What tugs at my mind after seeing a mob of enthusiastic ignoramuses sack the Capitol, though, is whether that sophistication will come quickly enough when outlets have the means to cater to every unhealthy craving of their consumers,” Stirewalt wrote in an Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times shortly after leaving Fox. 

The panel’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), offered during the committee’s first hearing Thursday a road map for Monday’s hearing, saying it would focus on how Trump and those in his orbit knew there was no validity to his voter fraud claims.

“In our second hearing, you will see that Donald Trump and his advisers knew that he had, in fact, lost the election,” she said.  

“But, despite this, President Trump engaged in a massive effort to spread false and fraudulent information – to convince huge portions of the U.S. population that fraud had stolen the election from him. This was not true.”

The committee has already aired various clips to demonstrate that point, relying twice on Thursday on testimony from former Attorney General Bill Barr.

In one clip Barr says there was ”absolutely zero basis for the allegations” and that Trump’s claims were “complete nonsense.”

“I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that  and that it was doing great, great disservice to the country,” Barr said.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump’s face briefly flashed on screen as she was heard saying she knew her father had lost the election.

“I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying,” she said of Barr’s assertion there was no widespread election fraud.

The committee also played a clip from senior Trump Campaign spokesman Jason Miller recounting how Trump had been told by his data team “in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose.” 

Stirewalt was hired by NewsNation, which is owned by The Hill’s parent company, Nexstar Media Group, last month. 

Source: TEST FEED1

George Conway on possible Jan. 6 committee criminal referrals: 'This case could be tried, we could do this'

Conservative political activist George Conway on Friday said that members of the Department of Justice should be confident that they can set up criminal cases resulting from evidence shared Thursday by the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“This case could be tried, we could do that,” Conway said in an appearance on CNN, emulating what he thought DOJ officials’ responses should be to the committee’s evidence.

He elaborated: “In fact, I think it’s going to be hard for them not to do it after seeing all this evidence.”

The Jan. 6 committee launched its case against former President Trump over prime-time television Thursday, aimed at sharing evidence with the public.

Trump’s belligerent claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him due to voter fraud led directly to the violence of Jan. 6, according to the committee’s testimony.

Thursday’s opening public case included witness statements from a Capitol Police officer who was concussed during the attack, along with footage of violence on Jan. 6 and comments shared by the committee’s vice chair Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney.

“All Americans should keep this fact in mind: On the morning of Jan. 6, President Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” said Cheney.

She added, speaking directly to her fellow lawmakers: “Tonight, I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Conway emphasized his view that the evidence presented by the Jan. 6 committee significantly outweighed any presented by Trump and his allies.

“It’s not much to respond to other than Donald Trump’s self-serving statements that, ‘Oh it was fake news,’” he said.

Conway claimed: “There’s a reason why Donald Trump has always avoided being cross examined under oath as much as possible, why he didn’t do it in the Mueller investigation: he’s got nothing to say, and if he ever tried to testify in his own defense at a trial, he’d get creamed.”

The Jan. 6 televised hearings will continue over the course of this month, each intended to present more evidence against Trump in the battle to prove he was at the helm of irresponsible and illegal action in early 2021.

Source: TEST FEED1

Five takeaways on the Jan. 6 panel’s public case against Trump

The Jan. 6 committee’s prime-time hearing was its opening arguments in making its public case that former President Trump was at the center of a plot to remain in power.

The two-hour hearing offered a mix of visceral video showing the attack on the Capitol paired with footage from some of those closest to Trump outlining their pushback to multiple efforts aimed at keeping him in office.

“All Americans should keep this fact in mind: On the morning of Jan. 6, President Trump’s intention was to remain President of the United States despite the lawful outcome of the 2020 election and in violation of his Constitutional obligation to relinquish power,” Rep. Liz Cheney R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the select committee, said in a lengthy opening statement that outlined the bulk of the evidence the panel has gathered against Trump.

Here are five takeaways.

The committee is Trump’s own team to counter him

Even with Cheney’s strong words against the former president, the panel largely used the words of those close to Trump to back up its assertion that he was at the center of a “coordinated, multistep effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.”

The panel had promised to showcase videotaped testimony from former aides, but its short clips served as video citations as Cheney offered a rapid-fire overview of evidence it otherwise plans to lay out over hours-long daytime hearings.

Former Attorney General Bill Barr – one of the more recent witnesses to sit with the panel’s investigators – made two appearances, saying on tape that there was ”absolutely zero basis for the allegations” and that Trump’s claims were “complete nonsense.”

“I told him that it was crazy stuff and they were wasting their time on that  and that it was doing great, great disservice to the country,” Barr said.

Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump’s face briefly flashed on screen as she was heard saying she knew her father had lost the election.

“I respect Attorney General Barr so I accepted what he was saying,” she said of Barr’s assertion there was no widespread election fraud.

The committee played a recording of acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue recounting how he pleaded with Trump to stop his pressure campaign at the Department of Justice.

“What you are proposing is nothing less than the United States Justice Department meddling in the outcome of a Presidential Election.”

The narrative will focus on Trump vs Pence

Though he will not appear before the committee, the string of references to former Vice President Mike Pence show he will be a focus of the panel as it aims to sidestep the appearance of partisanship in their case against Trump.

Cheney relayed the testimony of White House staffers who alerted the former president that rioters were chanting “hang Mike Pence.”

“The President responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea,’” Cheney recounted. “‘Mike Pence ‘deserves’ it.’”

Her role in walking through the evidence shows the panel is eager to use the Wyoming lawmaker, one of the panel’s two Republican members, to add bipartisan legitimacy to the investigation and appeal to independents and even those in the GOP following the hearings.

In another revealing anecdote, Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told investigators that he spoke with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 6. Meadows, Milley said, had urged him “to kill the narrative that the vice president is making all the decisions” because Trump went silent for much of the day.  

“We need to establish the narrative, you know, that the President is still in charge,” Meadows said, according to Milley. 

Expected in the coming weeks is testimony from Pence’s legal advisors, one of whom emailed a Trump campaign attorney during the riot.

“And thanks to your bullshit, we are under siege,” Greg Jacob wrote as the attack was underway.

An emotional review of a day many watched unfold

The committee played graphic footage of the assault on the Capitol, much of it never-before-seen footage taken by documentarian Nick Quested, a filmmaker who was following the Proud Boys that day.

But to grab the attention of viewers on a topic where scenes of rioters violently rushing into the Capitol has become the norm, the committee sought to make it personal.

Also on the witness stand Thursday was U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards, one of the first officers injured in the attack who returned to the scene once she regained consciousness.

The panel played a clip showing the moment Edwards suffered a concussion, pushed back by rioters, including members of the Proud Boys, until she fell backwards, clipping her head on stairs during her fall.

When she returned to the Capitol, she described a “war zone.”

“It was something like I’d seen out of the movies. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were officers on the ground. They were bleeding. They were throwing up. They had, I mean, I saw friends with blood all over their faces. I was slipping in people’s blood. I was catching people as they fell. It was carnage. It was chaos. I can’t, I can’t even describe what I saw. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that as a police officer, as a law enforcement officer, I would find myself in the middle of a battle,” Edwards told lawmakers.

“It was just hours of hand-to-hand combat.”

The structure of the hearing is a review of ‘a sophisticated seven-part plan’

The seven subsequent hearings planned by the committee are each dedicated to what Cheney described as “a sophisticated seven-part plan” to remain in power.

Its second hearing, slated for this coming Monday, will delve into how Trump knew his claims of widespread election fraud were baseless. The committee showed Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller that Trump had been told even before the election “in pretty blunt terms that he was going to lose.”

The next hearing on Wednesday will focus on Trump’s efforts to get the Justice Department to kick off investigations into his baseless allegations of voter fraud as a way to stall certification of the vote.

The fourth hearing on Thursday will focus squarely on Trump’s efforts to pressure Pence. 

“As you will hear, President Trump engaged in a relentless effort to pressure Pence both in private and in public. You will see the evidence of that pressure from multiple witnesses live and on recorded video,” Cheney said.

The fifth hearing is dedicated to the effort to convince state legislators and election officials to find “alternate electors” that would falsely certify that Trump won key states that he actually lost.

Its sixth and seventh hearing will focus both on how Trump encouraged the march to the certification that was underway, and then “failed to take immediate action to stop the violence and instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol.”

A tease of what’s to come on GOP lawmakers

Cheney also revealed Thursday that the number of GOP lawmakers who sought pardons from Trump was larger than previously known.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) was one of “multiple” GOP lawmakers who asked President Trump for pardons given their roles in seeking to unwind the 2020 election results, she said. 

Perry’s office forcefully denied the allegation.

“Laughable, ludicrous, and a thoroughly soulless lie,” his spokesman Jay Ostrich told The Hill. 

Perry, who helped introduce former President Trump to a mid-level Justice Department attorney willing to forward his election fraud claims, was among several seeking pardons due to their roles.

“As you will see, Representative Perry contacted the White House in the weeks after January 6th to seek a presidential pardon. Multiple other Republican congressmen also sought presidential pardons for their roles in attempting to overturn the 2020 election,” Cheney said.

It was previously reported that “several” GOP lawmakers who were involved with the rally where Trump spoke before the Capitol riot had sought pardons from him. GOP lawmakers who spoke at the rally include Arizona GOP Reps. Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, as well as Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.).

And according to an October 2021 Rolling Stone report, Gosar floated the idea of “blanket pardons” for some of those organizing the Ellipse rally of Jan. 6. 

But lawmakers on the panel who spoke to The Hill after the hearing were mum on who else sought pardons from Trump.

Source: TEST FEED1

DOJ’s politicized double-standard for prosecuting protesters

The Biden Justice Department has charged Ryan Kelley, a serious Republican candidate for governor of Michigan, with four misdemeanor charges arising from his alleged presence at the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Here is the sworn FBI complaint describing the probable cause for Kelley’s arrest, filed in Washington, D.C., federal court.

I carry no brief for Kelley. If the complaint’s allegations are true, he may have joined a crowd of people in “assaulting and pushing past law enforcement officers.” We have to say “may have” because the complaint hedges on this point, observing that an ambiguous image “likely” shows Kelley joining people in these activities. But assuming he engaged in that kind of conduct, then he would not be a peaceful protester — although, having been a federal prosecutor for two decades, I would note that if the Justice Department had strong evidence that Kelley used force against police, prosecutors would have charged him with serious felonies, not mere misdemeanors.

My point here goes to the Justice Department’s dereliction in refusing to prosecute left-wing, pro-abortion activists (i.e., the Democrats’ political allies) for protesting at the homes of Supreme Court justices, notwithstanding that federal criminal law (Sections 1503 and 1507) prohibits it.

The misdemeanor charges lodged against Kelley are pled under Section 1752, which makes it a crime to enter or remain in “any restricted building or grounds” unless one has been given lawful authority to do so.

The Biden Justice Department rationalizes that because the Supreme Court protesters haven’t engaged in violence, they shouldn’t be prosecuted. But the Department of Justice has charged Kelley even though violence is not a necessary component of the crime.

Kelley is being prosecuted for such activities as entering and remaining on the Capitol grounds. It makes no difference whether one uses force while doing so. Federal law makes the Capitol grounds a restricted area. It was in particular restricted on Jan. 6 because then-Vice President Mike Pence was present there. As the statute elaborates, if the president, vice president or “other person protected by the Secret Service” is present, even just temporarily, in a restricted area, it is a crime for someone to come on the grounds without legal authorization.

Again, it doesn’t matter whether a defendant never assaults, intimidates or just approaches the protected government official. The Justice Department’s position, supported by the statute, is that merely being present under those circumstances carries too much of a potential threat to safety and too much risk that government operations will be impeded.

Therefore, people who have engaged in the conduct in which Kelley allegedly engaged are being charged — not just a few of them but hundreds of them.

Look at what the Justice Department and the FBI did here. In connection with Jan. 6, federal investigators have spent 18 months poring over tens of thousands of video images, tips from known and anonymous sources, and cell-site data subpoenaed from telecoms (which, by monitoring where a cell phone was carried, can prove that a person was in a location, such as the Capitol grounds, on a particular day).

Hundreds of those who have been identified as present on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 did not engage in violence. No one alleges that they were anything other than peaceful protesters. (I am not talking here about the many others, out of the more than 800 defendants charged, who assaulted police or took other violent action.) Yet, the Biden Justice Department does not say, “If they didn’t commit acts of violence, leave them alone.” Instead, the Justice Department has labored mightily to identify every person who could be identified and dragged many of them from their homes around the country — such as in Michigan, Kelley’s home — all the way to Washington, to face misdemeanor trials.

Because there is so much serious crime in America, the Justice Department ordinarily does not bother with misdemeanors. But it has decided it must make an example of pro-Trump demonstrators, regardless of whether they used force.

Well, what about the protesters at the homes of Supreme Court justices? Scads of relevant video images are available. It would be easy to identify those who were illegally present. Why does a justice, such as Brett Kavanaugh, have to be the target of an attempted murder in the middle of the night at his home, where he lives with his wife and two young children, before Attorney General Merrick Garland will deign to enforce the law?

Unlike Congress, whose proceedings were obstructed on Jan. 6, the Supreme Court is a non-political branch of government. Section 1507 makes it a crime to protest at the homes of not only judges but also jurors and witnesses in federal cases. That’s because our constitutional system insulates judicial proceedings from politics. There is no free-expression right to influence court cases. Violence is not our “red line” when it comes to the judiciary.

To put it another way, it is a crime to be present in a restricted area where a Supreme Court justice resides for even more obvious reasons than it is a crime to be present in a restricted area where Congress meets, and where officials protected by the Secret Service occasionally visit. Illegal presence near justices’ homes not only creates a patent threat to the safety of the justices and their families; it creates a severe risk that court cases will be decided based on fear and intimidation, rather than the rule of law.

The Biden Justice Department is aggressively prosecuting the people who were unlawfully present at the Capitol but won’t touch the people unlawfully present at the justices’ residences. This has nothing to do with violence. The only distinction is that those unlawfully present at the Capitol on Jan. 6 are the Democrats’ political enemies, while those unlawfully present at the homes of the justices are the Democrats’ political allies. 

As to the latter, Biden administration officials, like their fellow Democrats and progressives, evidently are fine with intimidating the justices if that’s what it takes to prevail in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion case.

Former federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at National Review Institute, a contributing editor at National Review, a Fox News contributor and the author of several books, including “Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad.” Follow him on Twitter @AndrewCMcCarthy.

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If union EV incentives reemerge, opponents are ready for the fight

Incentives for electric vehicle (EV) manufacturers using unionized labor died in December along with President Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better bill. 

As Democrats now look to take a second attempt at passing a sweeping social spending and climate package, critics are ready to pounce on the union incentives if the proposal comes back to life. 

“In essence, it says that having more electric vehicles on the road is secondary to promoting unionization,” Toyota said of the incentives in a statement to The Hill recently.

“Nissan has more than 14,000 manufacturing employees in Tennessee and Mississippi and we cannot support a proposal to provide additional credit to be given to vehicles that are made in unionized plants,” the manufacturer said in its own statement.

Among the many proposals in the Democrats’ roughly $2 trillion spending package, the union subsidy would have provided $4,500 toward purchases of electric vehicles assembled at facilities that employ workers operating under a union. That was on top of a $7,500 tax rebate for EV purchases, meaning consumers could have received $12,500 in total incentives under the reconciliation bill. 

Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) spearheaded the legislation, which Biden endorsed in October.

The CEOs of 12 international automakers that do not have unionized workforces in the U.S. wrote to Senate leaders late last year to argue the incentives “would severely limit consumer choice and adaptability.”

Should the incentives resurface, those automakers will likely find an ally in moderate Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who objected to a number of provisions in the package, including the union perks. 

The West Virginia Democrat told Automotive News in November that the union-related subsidy was “wrong” and “not American.”

“When I heard about this, what they were putting in the bill, I went right to the sponsor and I said, ‘This is wrong. This can’t happen. It’s not who we are as a country. It’s not how we built this country, and the product should speak for itself,” Manchin said. “We shouldn’t use everyone’s tax dollars to pick winners and losers.”

Asked if Manchin’s stance on the issue has changed, the senator’s spokesperson told The Hill recently that she did not have an updated position.

It’s unclear whether the union incentives will have a place in a scaled-down version of the Democrats’ marquee bill, as negotiations have thus far remained behind closed doors, to the extent they are happening at all. 

The Hill reached out to Kildee and Stabenow, as well as the White House, about whether they will again push for the provision. 

Jennifer Safavian, president and CEO of Autos Drive America, which represents international automakers operating in the U.S., told The Hill in an interview that the incentive “discriminates against American workers who have chosen not to unionize.”

Asked why the employees do not unionize, which could make the companies eligible for the incentive, Safavian said “it’s the workers’ choice whether or not they want to unionize, and their workers have chosen not to unionize.”

She recommended asking each individual company why their personnel chose not to unionize but added that it is her understanding that employees “just don’t feel like they need, you know, a third party to speak on their behalf.”

There is, however, support for the incentive both in Washington — from lawmakers and Biden — and within the auto industry.

A spokesperson for General Motors did not respond directly to whether it supported the union incentives but told The Hill the company “is supportive of policies that accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles and establish the U.S. as a global leader in electrification today and into the future.”

Matthew Davis, legislative director at the League of Conservation Voters, told The Hill in an interview that the U.S. auto industry is at a turning point as manufacturers invest big in retooling their facilities and forging new supply chain partnerships.  

“And so this is all absolutely essential to get those incentives on the books, make sure we have good, family sustaining jobs here, safe jobs, making the cars of the future that everyone is going to be wanting to drive,” he said.

Davis noted “it is not unusual for the government to put certain bounds or restrictions or requirements” on funding it provides for projects, adding that “union shops are more likely to be safer, they’re more likely to deliver higher quality and higher throughput.”

But he is not exactly confident about the incentives’ prospects. Asked about the subsidy being included in the revived Build Back Better bill or standalone legislation, Davis said that while his group supports both tracks, he does not think the proposal is likely to get Republican support, meaning reconciliation may be the only realistic route. 

“I don’t think that there would be 10 Republicans who would support it in the Senate,” he said, going on to emphasize, “it’s still, I think, important policy, and we certainly are gonna be continuing to push for that.”

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Where did the monkeypox virus get its name?

(NEXSTAR) – Monkeypox may be the newest global outbreak concern, but the virus itself is nothing new. It was first discovered over 50 years ago in a group of captive primates – hence the name “monkeypox.”

The virus has some more scientific name designations; it Orthopoxvirus genus in the family Poxviridae, according to the World Health Organization.

In 1958 there were two outbreaks of the virus in monkey colonies that were being researched, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It wasn’t until 1970 that the first human case of monkeypox was discovered in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, writes the CDC.

Even though the virus has been around a long time, it has not been eradicated. Because animals continue to harbor the virus, it is endemic in several parts of Africa.

Since the 1970s most human cases have been in central and west Africa and outbreaks have been relatively limited. The WHO estimates there are thousands of monkeypox infections in about a dozen African countries every year. Most are in Congo, which reports about 6,000 cases annually, and Nigeria, with about 3,000 cases a year.

Then, in 2022, the virus started to spread in Europe and now in the United States. Forty cases have been confirmed in 14 states and Washington, D.C., according to CDC data on Thursday.

Another cluster of U.S. cases happened back in 2003, when 47 people in six states had confirmed or probable cases. They caught the virus from pet prairie dogs that been housed near imported small mammals from Ghana.

Most monkeypox patients experience only fever, body aches, chills and fatigue. People with more serious illness may develop a rash and lesions on the face and hands that can spread to other parts of the body.

Most people recover within about two to four weeks without needing to be hospitalized, monkeypox can be fatal for up to 6% of cases and is thought to be more severe in children.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Hurdles remain as Biden’s EV push comes to life

President Biden’s push for more electric vehicles (EVs) on the road and more charging stations around the U.S. is gaining fresh traction while Americans continue to face historically high gas prices at the pump.

The president has been focused on an ambitious climate agenda, which has largely stalled in the Senate, but federal funding for electric vehicle infrastructure manufacturing was passed in the bipartisan infrastructure law, which the president signed in November.

The law included $7.5 billion for electric vehicle chargers and since then, the Biden administration has allocated funding to kick-start programs with the goal of making electric vehicles more prevalent on American roads by the end of the decade.

“I think the amount of money makes me optimistic. Of course, most of it is being distributed to the states, and the states are going to have to use that infrastructure money strategically. And that I believe is going to mean a heavy emphasis on making charging access available to apartment dwellers,” said Jenny Carter, assistant professor at the Vermont Law School Institute for Energy and the Environment.

Biden’s targeted goal of 50 percent EV sale shares in the U.S. by 2030 also includes manufacturing a network of 500,000 chargers that will help make EVs accessible to all Americans for both local and long-distance drives.

The White House has stressed its focus on equity in its push to get more EVs on the road, while electric cars are largely still considered an item for the wealthy or solely for people who can afford and have the space for chargers at their homes.

“The challenge with electric vehicle charging, if you look at how people currently charge who own EVs, it’s all at home. People who own EVs tend to be higher income and have a garage or driveway,” said Tim Johnson, chair of the Master of Environmental Management Energy and Environment Program at Duke University.

“Building our public charging network is critical really for half the U.S. households. What the administration is doing, yes, I think from the charger standpoint and the money going in, it’s critical. It compliments what the manufacturers are doing,” he added.

Carter agreed that most people will want to charge at home, but the millions of Americans who live in apartment buildings also need to be taken into consideration, pointing to an increase in charging stations on streets and in parking lots. 

“Nobody’s going to want to have to drag a charging cable from their house, from their apartment, 200 feet down the road to plug into their car. We’re going to have to make charging accessible to people,” she said.

But experts are optimistic by the amount of money and focus from the administration on the issue.

“I’m really optimistic that we can overcome some of these obstacles. With gas at $5 a gallon, there’s a huge incentive for people to want to move to electric vehicles,” she said.

The Department of Energy in early May announced a $3.16 billion grant program, funded through the bipartisan infrastructure law, to aid domestic manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries.

Recent research from the Federal Consortium for Advanced Batteries projected an increased demand for electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries, indicating the lithium battery market will grow by a factor of five to 10 within the next 10 years.

Johnson said that building up EVs and charging networks is a “chicken and egg issue,” because domestic manufacturing and supply chain issues need to be sorted out to make more in the U.S. He said that to make more vehicles, the cost of batteries and the constraints of minerals has to come down.

In April, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to step up mining of rare earth metals used in the production of batteries.

But, once these electric cars are more common on the roads, the demand will increase.

“The more people who see them, know people who drive them and are happy with them, more people will become comfortable with them,” Johnson said. “But you need all three pieces: the charging network, the cost to go down and for electric vehicles of all types to seem normal.”

With high gas prices top of mind for Americans, Biden has put the blame on Russian President Vladimir Putin with the messaging out of the White House centering on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as the cause of the high prices at the pump seen at home.

Also since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the administration has framed its domestic moves on renewable energy as a way to create jobs and reduce Putin’s leverage over international energy supplies.

In February, Tritium, an Australian company, announced it is building a U.S. electric vehicle chargers manufacturing plant that will begin production in the fall.

Biden, at the time, said the creation of a facility to build chargers for electric vehicles in Tennessee is part of a comeback for American manufacturing and a sign of the post-pandemic jobs resurgence. The plant will have room to expand to building 30,000 units per year and plans to employ more than 500 people over the next five years.

But, in order for the U.S. to reach its EV goals, experts say that provisions in Biden’s Build Back Better agenda, which ultimately died in the Senate late last year when it didn’t garner enough votes to pass, needs to be resurrected.

Build Back Better included enhanced EV tax incentives of up to $12,500 per vehicle, which aimed to lower the cost of buying an electric car and in turn, increase consumer demand.

The administration has made broad commitments to climate change, including cutting carbon emissions in half by 2023. But much of its climate agenda had been tailored in Build Back Better, which the administration is now trying to advance in smaller pieces.

“We need at least parts of Build Back Better to kind of reach the vision of this transformation to electric vehicles. It really can’t happen with making electric vehicles affordable for everyone. There’s a lot of promise in this,” Carter said. 

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To escape China's supply chain, embrace a diverse clean energy portfolio

COVID-19 and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine have demonstrated the fragility of global supply chains. While America’s industrial base has shown strong resilience, a more enduring threat to our clean energy supply chains continues to grow: dependence on materials and manufacturing controlled by the Chinese government. 

On June 6, the Biden administration invoked the Defense Production Act to accelerate the domestic manufacturing of solar panels and other technologies for which America is import-reliant. This builds on the administration’s goal, announced last year, for solar to supply 40 percent of U.S. electricity by 2035, up from 4 percent today. 

While solar power certainly has a role to play, the U.S. should avoid overreliance on any one form of energy and instead embrace a diverse portfolio of affordable, reliable and clean energy technologies.

Conservative policymakers are advancing a comprehensive strategy to support a broad range of domestic energy sources. Last week, U.S. House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), House Select Committee on Climate GOP leader Garret Graves (R-La.), and others from their Energy, Climate and Conservation (ECC) Task Force rolled out part one of a six-part plan to tackle the ongoing energy crisis and the global climate challenge.

The GOP task force pillars include policies to unlock America’s abundant energy resources, promote technological innovation and empower American entrepreneurs to build with a modernized permitting process — all of which are necessary to defeat China and Russia and restore U.S. energy dominance. 

As the task force recognizes, America’s overreliance on supply chains controlled by foreign adversaries threatens our energy security. For example, the Chinese government controls key parts of the solar supply chain, from polysilicon production to wafer manufacturing to module assembly — the crucial steps for manufacturing solar panels. 

Two-thirds of the world’s polysilicon production capacity is owned by Chinese firms, more than 90 percent of global wafer manufacturing capacity is located in China, and Chinese companies control 72 percent of global module manufacturing capacity, according to a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 

It wasn’t always this way. In years past, the U.S. boasted considerable solar manufacturing capacity and global supply chains were more secure. In 1995, the U.S. owned more than 40 percent of global solar module manufacturing capacity, while China had essentially none. In the ensuing years, America’s market share steadily eroded, with China’s module capacity surpassing America’s around 2005. The gap has grown relentlessly ever since.  

The era of solar expansion has coincided with China’s rising manufacturing dominance. China’s human rights record makes matters even worse. Half of the world’s polysilicon comes from Xinjiang, a region of China that has been linked to forced labor and genocide against 1 million Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group. In response, the White House in June issued a ban on polysilicon imports from Xinjiang. 

Even with measures to limit Xinjiang polysilicon, China still controls the upstream solar supply chain. Moreover, the Chinese regime is adept at shifting production to other countries, which hampers traceability.

Instead of setting goals that increase reliance on Chinese supply chains, the long-term solution is to diversify America’s supply chains. As the GOP task force explains, supply chain resilience involves unleashing all of America’s abundant energy resources — including a broader range of renewables, such as hydropower and geothermal, as well as other clean energy technologies, such as nuclear, natural gas and carbon capture. 

We must also fix America’s broken federal permitting process, which makes it more difficult to build clean energy faster — and more likely that new technologies will be manufactured overseas by foreign adversaries who don’t uphold our environmental standards, which will result in higher emissions than if the same manufacturing occurred in the U.S. 

Congress and the Biden administration should embrace all forms of energy that can contribute to a resilient, secure and clean energy system. With smart solutions focused on building and exporting a diverse suite of technologies, the next decade of clean energy expansion can be America’s to seize.

Alex Fitzsimmons is a senior program director at ClearPath, non-profit working to accelerate conservative solutions to climate change. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the U.S. Department of Energy during the Trump administration.

Source: TEST FEED1

Proud Boys leaders say DOJ mixed 'politics and criminal justice' with sedition indictment

Attorneys for the Proud Boys members charged with seditious conspiracy this week on Thursday accused the Department of Justice of “mixing politics and criminal justice.”

“Mixing politics and criminal justice is dangerous, and we have to run from it like fire,” said attorney David Smith, representing Proud Boys members Ethan Nordean, according to The Washington Post.

The leader of the far-right group, Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, echoed the attorney in accusing the DOJ of making political calculations in indicting the Proud Boys defendants just as the public hearings by the House Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol began.

Tarrio’s attorney Nayib Hassan wrote on Wednesday that the indictment “suspiciously seems orchestrated at the highest levels of government” to occur just as Jan. 6 hearings began to be televised.

“But when you look at the timing of the government’s indictment,” added Smith in court. “When the charges could have been brought, and what is coming from the Capitol this week, there is no doubt what is happening, and it’s un-American, Judge.”

Proud Boys defense attorneys called on U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly to accelerate the trial currently scheduled for Aug. 8 to allow them to speak out against perceived unfair publicity.

Kelly, who was appointed by former President Trump in 2017, rejected claims made by the attorneys that the 10-count indictment was politically motivated.

“To make the sweeping conclusion that there is no other explanation for the timing of this is unwarranted,” said Kelly according to the Post, commenting that prosecutors had said in March that they could bring charges by late May.

“The government strenuously objects to the premise there is any coordination going on between this office and the select committee in the timing of charges or the decision to bring the superseding indictment in this case, full stop,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason B.A. McCullough.

Ten prominent Proud Boys members are accused of attempting to use violence to obstruct the government, in the second historically rare charge of seditious conspiracy brought in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Despite Proud Boy leader Tarrio’s physical absence from the riots on Jan. 6, prosecutors argue that he was instrumental in preparing the group to obstruct Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s victory over Trump.

“Tarrio nonetheless continued to direct and encourage the Proud Boys prior to and during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, and … he claimed credit for what had happened on social media and in an encrypted chat room during and after the attack,” wrote the DOJ in March.

Source: TEST FEED1