Republicans make Biden's EV push an election-year issue as Democrats take a more nuanced approach

News

Republicans make Biden's EV push an election-year issue as Democrats take a more nuanced approach

2024-06-02 22:30 Last Updated At：22:40

TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Donald Trump says the Biden administration's policy to promote electric vehicles is a “radical plan” that would kill the economy in automaking states. Republican allies in the petroleum industry have spent millions on ads that say President Joe Biden's tax credit for EV buyers will cost Americans their freedom.

For voters this election year like Jim Cagle, a retired Jeep assembly-line worker from Toledo, Ohio, the concerns about all-electric vehicles are more practical, such as how he would charge it. Cagle parks his car on the street because he does not have a garage.

“Can you imagine having a cord running out to the street?” Cagle said as he cleaned his minivan at a car wash near a General Motors transmission plant that later this year is set to begin building electric drive units.

Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, and others say Biden's push for EVs is unfair for consumers and amounts to government overreach, and ultimately will be a liability for Democrats. Trump even squeezed in an attack at the top of his remarks Friday after his criminal conviction in New York.

Democrats have been less vocal and more nuanced, advocating Biden's climate reduction goals while promoting homegrown technology over competition from China.

But interviews with about 20 voters in the pivotal industrial heartlands of Ohio and Michigan reveal a more complicated dynamic among people who may decide the winner of November’s presidential and Senate elections.

The Toledo area is itself a crossroads for the issue. It's an automotive city making the shift from the internal combustion engine to electric power, like neighboring Michigan, a presidential swing state that is synonymous with the auto industry.

Toledo has not only produced Jeeps since World War II, but it is also home to oil refineries that supply gasoline across the Midwest and to parts manufacturers for gas and diesel vehicles.

It's here where people like Cagle say issues such as the cost of gas and groceries will be more important than EVs when they vote. But during the interviews with people across the political spectrum, many were skeptical of the vehicles and critical of the Democratic president's tax credits.

“You cannot be shoving EVs down our throat," said Joe Dempsey of Oregon, Ohio, who drives a Toyota gas-electric hybrid that does not require charging. “Let the American people decide if it’s going to happen.”

The issue has put some Democrats in a tricky spot — perhaps none more so than Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, one of the Republicans’ top targets as the GOP looks to win Senate control.

He is having to navigate a changing auto industry and his support for the president’s environmental goals in a state that Trump carried twice by 8 percentage points.

A petroleum manufacturing industry group has spent about $16 million on advertising criticizing Biden's policy to promote EVs, and that total includes about $1.5 million in Ohio criticizing Brown for his support, according to AdImpact and the group’s reporting. In addition to Ohio, the ads are airing in six other swing states and Montana, a GOP-leaning state where Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is seeking reelection.

Republicans, long unable to crack Brown's blue-collar backing, see linking him to Biden's sweeping 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which created tax credits for EV buyers, as one way to do it in an election year.

Brown voted for the act, aimed at fighting climate change in part by providing a $7,500 tax credit for new EV sales to spur steps toward the president's goal of making EVs 50 percent of all new vehicle sales by 2030. Republicans and their allies routinely refer to the policy incorrectly as a government mandate.

But Brown has pledged to oppose a rule change this summer proposed by Biden to allow EVs that are built in the United States but include Chinese-made components to qualify for the credit.

“This will allow China to infiltrate the American auto supply chain, at American taxpayers’ expense," Brown said in a statement in May. “American tax dollars should support American manufacturing and American workers — not enrich Chinese companies.”

Brown, a progressive with a pro-worker mantra, has little to worry about in maintaining his party’s base. But he appears to be aware of the risks of being seen as allying too strongly with Biden, who is unpopular in Ohio, said former Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, a fellow Democrat.

“Sherrod doesn’t have to worry about Democrats. They love him,” Ryan said. “The question is, can he make up the middle? I think he can. And if he is seen as disagreeing with the left, it’s only good for him."

Biden has visited EV plants and grinned as he test drove the new electric Cadillac at the Detroit Auto Show. His chief surrogate in Michigan, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, has advocated for Biden's policy, but with an eye on protecting the industry vital to her state.

“We’ve got to incentivize innovation. There’s no question," Whitmer said in an interview before Trump visited the state in May, where he railed against EVs. “We cannot let Chinese companies be the only ones innovating around electric vehicles because then they will eat our lunch.”

Biden's campaign notes that the president's policies are aimed at moving EV jobs, many of which were left in China during the Trump administration, into the United States.

“Donald Trump would rather lie about President Biden’s policies than face his own betrayals to the middle class,” Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa said in a statement. “President Biden wants the future of auto manufacturing built in America, not China.”

According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted in April, relatively small shares of Americans — around 3 in 10 or less — see a benefit from electric vehicles for themselves personally, the economy or the U.S. auto industry.

John Hiskey, a Vietnam veteran from Toledo, said he thinks EVs are a great idea and he doubts the industry would be this far along without a push from the government. But he has no interest in getting one until he can visit his grandkids without making multiple stops and taking time to charge the vehicle.

“I don’t want to wait a half-hour unless they start putting them in bars," said Hiskey, adding that his vote will not be influenced by which party or politician backs EVs.

Others said the vehicles are cost-prohibitive, even with the tax credit.

“How can they afford electric vehicles when it’s hard to afford living?” said Dru Wilson, 21, who attends college outside Toledo.

Although the petroleum manufacturers represent a fraction of what the two major parties' political action committees are spending in battleground states, it dwarfs the counterprogramming on the part of pro-EV and environmental groups.

Environmental Defense Action Fund and a related group have spent a little more than $772,000 on ads, according to AdImpact, and little of it is targeted in key presidential or Senate states.

Climate Power, a strategic communication group promoting Biden’s climate reduction goals, has committed to spending $80 million on promoting the administration’s measures, including on advertising in battleground states. The group declined to specify how much it expects to spend on advertising and noted that its efforts will also include voter outreach on an array of Biden measures, including promoting EVs.

Missing is one unifying call for Americans to embrace the technology, akin to President John F. Kennedy's 1961 moon landing goal within the decade, said veteran Democratic strategist Joel Benenson, who was a pollster and senior adviser to Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns.

“No one’s telling an inspiring story for EVs. So, how do you develop that story and what it’s going to mean for America going forward?" Benenson said. “That could be a powerful narrative.”

Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux contributed from Washington.

Pope in Belgium promises to help abuse victims after hearing of their trauma and needs

2024-09-28 21:28 Last Updated At：21:42

BRUSSELS (AP) — Pope Francis promised Saturday to “offer all the help we can” to aid clergy sexual abuse victims, after a group of Belgian survivors told him first-hand of the trauma that had shattered their lives and left many in poverty and mental misery.

Francis’ visit to Belgium has been dominated by the abuse scandal, with King Philippe and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo both blasting the Catholic Church’s dreadful legacy of priests raping and molesting children and its decades-long cover-up of the crimes.

Francis met for more than two hours late Friday with 17 survivors who are seeking reparations from the church for the trauma they suffered and to pay for the therapy many need. They said they gave Francis a month to consider their requests, which the Vatican said Francis was studying.

“There are so many victims. There are also so many victims who are still completely broke,” survivor Koen Van Sumere told The Associated Press. “I have also been lucky enough to get a diploma and build a life for myself. But there are so many people who are completely broke and who need help and who cannot afford it and who really need urgent help now.”

Van Sumere said he was encouraged by the “positive” meeting with the pope, but was waiting to see what comes of it. The meeting itself was intense, victims said, “It was at certain moments very emotional and at certain moments it was very rough. When the pope was told things he did not agree with, he also let it be known so there was real interaction," Van Sumere said.

He said he hoped as a first step that the pope would receive the victims at the Vatican in the spring during Holy Week. “And then we can not only celebrate the resurrection of Christ but perhaps also the resurrection of all victims in Belgium,” he said.

On Saturday, during a meeting with Belgian clergy and nuns at the Koekelberg Basilica, Francis acknowledged that the abuse scandal had created “atrocious suffering and wounds,” and undermined the faith.

“There is a need for a great deal of mercy to keep us from hardening our hearts before the suffering of victims so that we can help them feel our closeness and offer all the help we can,” he said.

He said the Belgian church must learn from victims and serve them. “Indeed, one of the roots of violence stems from the abuse of power when we use the positions we have to crush or manipulate others,” he said.

Francis has met with victims in the United States, Ireland and Canada, as well as in multiple occasions at the Vatican. He has cracked down on some bishops who failed to protect their flocks by passing new church rules on investigations and punishments. But the scandal has continued to fester, and Francis' record is uneven, with several high-profile cases still pending or seemingly ignored.

Most galling to Belgians was that it took the Vatican 14 years to laicize Bruges Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, who admitted in 2010 to having abused his nephew for 13 years. Francis defrocked him in March in a move widely seen as attempting to remove a problem before his visit.

After the encounter, Francis went to the royal crypt in the Church of Our Lady to pray at the tomb of King Baudouin, best known for having refused to give a parliament-approved bill legalizing abortion his royal assent, one of his constitutional duties.

Baudouin stepped down for one day in 1990 to allow the government to pass the law, which he was required to sign, before he was reinstated as king.

Francis praised Baudouin's courage when he decided to “leave his position as king to not sign a homicidal law,” according to the Vatican summary of the private encounter, which was attended by Baudouin's nephew, King Philippe, and Queen Mathilde.

The pope then referred to a new legislative proposal to extend the legal limit for an abortion in Belgium, from 12 weeks to 18 weeks after conception. The bill failed at the last minute because parties in government negotiations considered the timing inopportune.

Francis urged Belgians to look to Baudouin’s example in preventing such a law, and added that he hoped Baudouin’s beatification cause would move ahead, the Vatican said.

With the visit, Francis waded straight into Belgian politics and dragged the royal family along with him.

The royals are bound by strict neutrality and the palace immediately issued a statement distancing itself from the visit. The statement said the “spontaneous visit, on the pope’s request, was not part of the official program” and added the king and queen were there only “out of hospitality toward the pope."

Francis started the day by having breakfast — coffee and croissants — with a group of 10 homeless people and migrants who are looked after by the St. Gilles parish of Brussels.

They sat around a table at the entrance of the parish church and told him their stories, and gave him bottles of beer that the parish makes, “La Biche de Saint-Gilles.” The proceeds of the beer sales help fund the parish’s charity works.

Francis thanked them for the beer and breakfast and told them that the church’s true wealth was in caring for the weakest.

“If we want to truly know and show the church’s beauty, we should give to one another like this, in our smallness, in our poverty, without pretexts and with much love.”

The breakfast encounter was presided over by Marie-Françoise Boveroulle, an adjunct episcopal vicar for the diocese. The position is usually filled by a priest, but Boveroulle’s appointment has been highlighted as evidence of the roles that women can and should play in the church.

—

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.