Any time someone points out gas was more expensive when Biden was president, you immediately know they’re a troll. We all know Putin invading Ukraine was what made gas expensive in 2022 while Trump’s inflated gas prices are entirely self-inflicted, but arguing with trolls is a waste of time. Lately, they’ve added another stock line that actually sounds a little more plausible. Allegedly, Republicans don’t hate EVs. They just stopped favoring EVs and leveled the playing field to let the American consumer choose what they want to drive. That sounds reasonable enough, right? Wrong.
First of all, Republicans didn’t get rid of any sort of EV mandate because the Biden administration never created an EV mandate in the first place. Read the EPA’s final rule on Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles for yourself. It’s long and boring, but you won’t find anything in there that outlaws gas-powered cars or says you have to buy an EV at some point. So why do so many people continue to insist Trump eliminated a Biden’s EV mandate that didn’t exist? Because they’re arguing in bad faith.
The reality is, burning gasoline to make our cars go dumps a bunch of pollution into the air, and humans breathe that air to live. Even if you hate hunting and fishing and would be perfectly happy to never enjoy a hike again, we know the pollution that cars produce when they burn gas causes all sorts of cardiovascular and respiratory problems. That isn’t some alternative political opinion. That’s just science. Pretending those problems aren’t real sure is some “alternative science,” though.
As our country has grown, more people has meant more cars on our roads, and if we don’t want to see more heart attacks, lung conditions, or kids developing asthma and heart problems, we have to cut down on the all that pollution. Which is what Biden’s EPA did. It laid out a timeline for increasing emissions standards on new cars sold in the U.S. To hit those lower pollution targets, automakers would have probably had to offer more hybrids and EVs, but the final rule was written in a way that more or less allowed car companies to clean up their overall emissions in whatever way they chose.
Subsidies are bad, huh?
How many people spreading the myth that Republicans eliminated Biden’s EV mandate are lying and how many just don’t know what they’re talking about, no one can say. We can, however, say pretty definitively that Republicans didn’t “level the playing field” because they hate subsidies and don’t think it’s fair to give EVs an advantage. Because the modern Republican party loves subsidies. It just doesn’t want to see new technology threaten one of its favorite sectors to subsidize — the oil and gas industry.
Any criticism the “we just want things to be fair” crowd has of the Biden administration investing in new technology like America did back in the days of the original space race also applies to the oil and gas industry. They just don’t like talking about that part because it undermines their argument and makes them look like the bad-faith actors they are. Does the Trump administration giving the oil and gas industry $40 billion in new subsidies sound like the actions of a party that hates subsidies? Especially since that $40 billion was a new addition to the $30.8 billion the oil and gas industry was already getting?
The truth is, the modern Republican party is the party of oil and gas. The oil and gas industry owns the Republican party. Nothing the second Trump administration has done with its energy and transportation policies has been about making things fair, encouraging competition, or giving consumers more choice because there’s simply no evidence to support that claim other than the word of some randos on the internet. Nor does the available evidence support the claim that the Republican party as an institution supports any alternatives to fossil fuels.
Republicans are anything but neutral
When Republicans won the 2024 election, the party didn’t stop at killing the federal EV tax credit. Republicans also did their best to eliminate any program that encouraged people to buy EVs, decided getting electricity from the sun basically for free was bad, and they paid a company $1 billion to stop an offshore wind farm that it had already started building. Does that sound like a political party that’s neutral on where energy comes from but cares about fiscal responsibility? Republicans literally paid a company building a wind farm a billion dollars to stop doing that.
Maybe you’ve heard wind farms are loud and bad. Our friend Alec at Technology Connections recently investigated that myth, and turns out, that’s made up, too. You know what isn’t made up? The Republican party’s obsession with putting data centers in communities that hate them because they really are loud and bad for everyone who lives nearby. Why would Republicans go to war against wind farms and all-in on data centers if they actually believe what they say they believe about wind farms? Could it be because they like AI companies and don’t like energy that doesn’t come from oil or gas?
If you still want to argue that getting essentially free energy forever from the sun and the wind is bad, I probably can’t change your mind there. I can remind you that humans invented this neat thing called a battery that allows us to store excess energy and use it later, but I probably won’t change your mind. Still, you can’t look at the evidence in front of you and seriously conclude that Republicans are simply calling balls and strikes here. They clearly love the oil and gas industry, and they hate any new technology that threatens its dominance in the U.S. and around the world.
