WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is shelling out billions of dollars for clean energy and approving major offshore wind projects as officials race to secure major climate initiatives before President Joe Biden's term comes to an end.
Biden wants to establish a legacy for climate action that includes locking in a trajectory for reducing the nation's planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions. Former President Donald Trump has pledged to rescind unspent funds in Biden's landmark climate and health care bill and stop offshore wind development if he returns to the White House in January.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told The Associated Press on Friday it would be “political malpractice” to undo clean energy incentives that are benefiting all pockets of America, with most of the investments going to counties with below-average weekly wages and college graduation rates.
“A lot of it is going to parts of America who have felt left behind. And this is giving them opportunity,” she said. “Why would we take that away? And why would we prevent counties and cities and people and families from having future-facing jobs in industries like clean energy, which young people are very excited about being a part of?”
Still, Granholm said, she's racing to commit funding and get contracts signed.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the Democratic nominee after Biden dropped from the race this summer, has said she will pursue a climate agenda similar to Biden’s, focused on reducing emissions, deploying renewables and creating clean energy jobs.
Announcements of major environmental grants and project approvals have speeded up in recent months as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said Biden is “sprinting to the finish” and delivering on promises to promote clean energy and slow climate change:
The Environmental Protection Agency made $20 billion from a federal “green bank” available this summer for clean energy projects such as residential heat pumps, electric vehicle charging stations and community cooling centers.
The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management approved the nation’s 10th large offshore wind farm, the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, in September, reaching the halfway mark for Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030. On Oct. 1, the agency gave a key approval to an offshore wind farm project in New Jersey.
In the past month alone, the Energy Department has made six announcements of a billion dollars or more, including more than $3 billion for battery manufacturing projects and a $1.5 billion loan to restart a nuclear plant in Michigan. And just last week, Biden set a 10-year deadline for cities to replace their lead pipes, with $2.6 billion available from the EPA to help communities comply.
Besides the climate law, formally known as the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden is seeking to spend billions in projects approved under the bipartisan infrastructure law in 2021 and the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act. The $1 trillion infrastructure law includes cash for roads, bridges, ports and more, while the CHIPS law aims to reinvigorate the computer chip sector in the United States through tens of billions of dollars in government support.
Energy experts say the rush of announcements is not surprising.
"I’m sure the prospect of a change in the White House, and a change in agency leadership, is creating an increased sense of urgency to get those programs stood up and implemented,'' said Trevor Houser, a partner at the Rhodium Group research firm.
There's an undeniable pressure to lock in as many energy transition benefits as possible before the end of the year, said Matt Lockwood, vice president of strategic market areas and accounts at DNV, which advises companies on energy issues. It's been two years since the climate legislation passed, so federal agencies are starting to churn through these transactions at a faster pace, he said.
The climate legislation put the country on a path to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to try to meet targets in the Paris climate accord. The investments are expected to reduce U.S. emissions by about 40% by 2030.
A new analysis by global consultant Baringa found that Trump would stall the transition from fossil fuels, though by how much would depend on whether the House or Senate is controlled by Democrats who could temper climate rollbacks. Trump, if unrestrained, could permanently alter the trajectory of the energy transition by repealing the climate legislation, substantially slowing renewable rollout and leaving the U.S. wedded to coal and gas for far longer, said Caspian Conran, an economist at Baringa who co-authored the analysis published Wednesday.
As vice president, Harris cast the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which was approved with only Democratic support. As a senator from California, she was an early sponsor of the Green New Deal, sweeping proposals meant to swiftly move the United States fully to green energy.
At a presidential debate last month, however, Harris boasted that the administration has overseen “the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over-rely on foreign oil."
Trump's policies, meanwhile, could raise emissions by about 12% by 2030 compared to those favored by Harris or Biden, Baringa's report said, equivalent to roughly 660 million tons of carbon dioxide.
“This is a race against time to certain extent,” Conran said in an interview. “So even if you’re saying we’re delaying the transition (to clean energy) by five years, maybe that doesn’t seem like a lot. But actually that’s quite profound.”
The U.S. is the world’s second-largest emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide. Baringa says Trump's first-term policies caused emissions to rise 9%, while Biden's policies lowered emissions by 11%.
Companies have announced about 340 major clean energy projects across the country in the past two years, according to E2, a nonpartisan environmental research group. Sixty percent of those, representing 82% of the investments and 69% of the jobs, are in Republican congressional districts despite unanimous GOP opposition to the law, E2 said.
Eighteen House Republicans, including several in close races for reelection, told the House speaker in August they want to protect energy tax credits in Biden's climate legislation that are creating jobs. “Energy tax credits have spurred innovation, incentivized investment and created good jobs in many parts of the country – including many districts represented by members of our conference,” the lawmakers wrote.
To get the clean energy transition right, the U.S. needs to commit to it across election cycles, from one administration to the next, and through sessions of Congress, said Conrad Schneider, senior director at the Clean Air Task Force, an advocacy group.
“We’re trying to publicize the fact that (clean energy) is really beneficial for communities all over the country, whatever political geography,'' he said. “And so we hope that will mean these programs can be sustained through any combination of electoral outcomes.”
McDermott reported from Providence, R.I.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
FILE - A driver waits in their car while charging their electric vehicles at an Electrify America station, Oct. 9, 2024, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson, File)
FILE - Turbines operate at the Block Island Wind Farm, Dec. 7, 2023, off the coast of Block Island, R.I. (AP Photo/Julia Nikhinson, File)
With the Nov. 5 election fast approaching, Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump are setting their sights on the key battleground state of Michigan on Friday.
The vice president is beginning her day in Grand Rapids before holding events in Lansing and Oakland County, northwest of Detroit.
The former president has his own event in Oakland County in the afternoon before an evening rally in Detroit.
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Here’s the latest:
Vice President Kamala Harris walked across a rail trail bridge to enter the outdoor stage at Riverside Park in Grand Rapids. She was introduced by a union carpenter.
Her stage front was decorated with seasonal potted chrysanthemums and pumpkins.
The gathered crowd started to sing “Happy Birthday” to Harris, who will turn 60 over the weekend on Oct. 20.
Trump said that he’s a fan of cows, but primarily as a critique of Democrats’ green energy proposals.
During a Friday morning interview on “Fox & Friends,” the GOP nominee said “I love cows” in response to a child’s video message asking him to name his favorite farm animal.
Trump then reiterated his previous arguments that Democrats’ green energy plans would restrict beef production due to how much methane cows produce.
“But if we go with Kamala, you won’t have any cows anymore because you’re not allowed,” Trump said. “I don’t want to ruin this kid’s day, but I love cows. I think they’re so cute and beautiful.”
Trump and other Republicans have been highly critical of the Green New Deal, a climate proposal put forth by liberal Democrats in 2019 that set ambitious targets to eliminate most greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global warming by 2030.
During her 2020 presidential campaign, Harris said in a CNN climate town hall that she supported changing dietary guidelines to support a reduction in red meat consumption, adding, “I love cheeseburgers from time to time.”
Michigan’s Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer stumped for Harris in Grand Rapids, appearing with Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro. The three have been campaigning for Harris and Walz on a “Blue Wall bus tour.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore also joined Whitmer on stage.
“We need strong, stable partners in the White House who have our backs,” Whitmer said.
Trump has courted auto manufacturing workers in Michigan, a key voting bloc, especially in the Detroit area. Whitmer attacked the Trump administration's record on the industry as “broken promises.”
The crowd interrupted during Whitmer’s speech to chant “Big Gretch,” Whitmer’s state nickname.
On Thursday, a protester confronted Vice President Kamala Harris during a closed-door meeting with students at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, based on a video posted by a pro-Palestinian student group on social media.
Harris did not allow reporters into her meeting on the Milwaukee campus.
According to the video, as Harris was telling students she was invested in them a protester interrupted her saying, “And in genocide, right? Billions of dollars in genocide?”
Harris told the protester that she wanted a cease-fire. She then said that while she respected the protester’s right to speak she was speaking.
University police escorted the person from the room as he continued recording.
The Harris motorcade drove past pro-Palestinian protesters on campus before the meeting in a university building.
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris says Republican Donald Trump is unfit for office.
“He is unstable, and frankly, is a danger to our democracy as has been described by his former chief of staff, secretaries of defense, national security adviser and former vice president,” she told reporters before a rally in Michigan.
When asked about a Politico report that said Trump had declined some interviews in part because he was “exhausted” from campaigning, Harris said, “Being president of the United States is probably one of the hardest jobs in the world and we really do need to ask: If he’s exhausted on the campaign trail, is he fit to do the job?”
Harris and her campaign have increasingly cast her rival as “increasingly unstable” in recent public appearances.
Trump next week is set to visit Asheville, the mountainous North Carolina town where many still lack electricity and running water in the wake of Hurricane Helene.
Trump’s campaign said Friday that the GOP nominee would give remarks to the press in Asheville on Monday, along with several other events planned in North Carolina.
Concerns have abounded about how voting would work this year in the southern battleground state as residents from the mountainous western portion of the state continued to recover from the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene. But on Friday, the State Board of Elections said that more North Carolina residents had turned out to cast ballots a day earlier, on the first day of early voting this year, than in 2020.
Trump has campaigned steadily in eastern North Carolina in recent weeks but hasn’t yet visited areas ravaged by Helene, although he did meet with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp to gauge storm response in that state. Earlier this month, with many of the area’s roads inaccessible, Biden surveyed the storm’s aftermath in the Asheville area by helicopter.
A top campaign official for Kamala Harris said the Democratic presidential nominee is focused on seven swing states and “we are going to fight for every vote.”
In an interview with CNN’s Inside Politics Friday, David Plouffe said they believe the November election will come down to small margins in Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina and “Kamala Harris has a pathway” to win in each.
Plouffe said the campaign is treating every different voting bloc “like they’re a swing voter.”
He said he believes voters don’t want four more years of Donald Trump.
Music star Usher will join Kamala Harris at a rally in Atlanta on Saturday, her campaign announced on Friday.
He will speak at the event — no word if he’ll perform any of his hit songs like “DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love” or “Love In This Club.”
Harris is heading to Georgia for part of the weekend as early voting begins in the battleground state.
Perhaps in a move to instill joy back into her message again, Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to speak outside a “fall fest” in Grand Rapids, Michigan, hosted by the campaign. Thousands waited in long security lines to get into the rally at a park by the Grand River with food trucks, free donuts and pumpkins to decorate.
Mary Muller, 70, and Kathi Padula, 77, said the high stakes of the election motivated them to attend the first political rally of their lives. The two Grand Rapids residents volunteer with the Democratic party in Kent County, a major target within Michigan for Harris and Trump.
“I think Kamala Harris embodies everything that I’m looking for as far as having the experience, the wisdom, the dignity, the caring,” Muller said. “I love the fact that she seems to be a very joyful, caring person yet she’s very smart.”
Marnie Becker-Baratta, 32, attended the rally with the youngest two of her four children. While speaking at a pumpkin decorating table, she said she wanted her kids to see “history happen,” with Harris, who would be the first woman to hold the office of president of the United States if elected.
Becker-Baratta’s kids motivate her to vote and be politically active.
“I don’t want to see their rights taken away,” she said. “My oldest daughter identifies as trans.”
Former President Donald Trump said on Friday that rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, are being treated like Japanese Americans who were incarcerated on U.S. soil during World War II.
“Why are they still being held? Nobody’s ever been treated like this,” he said in an interview with conservative commentator Dan Bongino. “Maybe the Japanese during Second World War, frankly. They were held, too.”
Trump made the comments after claiming the defendants “won in the Supreme Court.” His reference concerns a ruling from this past June that limited a federal obstruction law that had been used to charge hundreds of Capitol riot defendants as well as the former president himself.
The justices, in a 6-3 opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, held that the charge of obstructing an official proceeding must include proof that defendants tried to tamper with or destroy documents.
The overwhelming majority of the approximately 1,000 people who have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to Capitol riot-related federal crimes were not charged with obstruction and will not be affected by the outcome.
Martin Luther King III, the son of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., said on Friday said: “We must never forget our vote is our voice” while endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the nation's top executive.
Martin Luther King III, his wife Arndrea Waters King and other community leaders are working to rally Black voters ahead of the 2024 election, warning about civil rights should Trump win.
King said Republican Donald Trump is who he has “always been — a man willing to hurt others for his own profit and notoriety.”
Donald Trump is expected to visit a new campaign office in one of the nation’s only Muslim-majority cities.
That’s according to a person familiar with Trump’s schedule who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the event hasn’t been publicly announced.
The visit to Hamtramck, located in metro Detroit, comes after the city’s mayor endorsed him last month.
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has tried to cut into Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris’ support with Arab Americans in Michigan. Many Muslim and Arab voters are frustrated with Harris over the U.S. backing of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its invasion of Lebanon, both following Hamas’ attack on Israel last October.
Trump’s allies have held meetings for months with community leaders in Michigan, which is a critical swing state in the November election and has a sizable population of Arab Americans particularly in and around Detroit.
—From Joey Cappelletti in Lansing, Michigan
Former President Donald Trump says he wasn’t a fan of many of the jokes he told at last night’s Al Smith charity dinner.
“For the most part, I didn’t like any of them,” he said in a live appearance on “Fox & Friends” Friday morning.
Trump said a number of people had helped him with material, including some from Fox — though he didn’t say whom.
Trump made a similar aside midspeech after a particularly pointed joke targeting Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris.
He seemed to acknowledge he’d gone too far, calling the joke “nasty” and saying he’d told the “idiots” who’d written it that it was “too tough.”
He also said during the speech that he’d gone “overboard” in his 2016 appearance at the event when he laced into his then-rival Hillary Clinton.
Trump says he’ll “do what I have to do” to drum up support from one of his former GOP primary rivals, Nikki Haley.
Trump gave that response Friday during a live appearance on “Fox & Friends” when asked if he would seek the former South Carolina governor’s support on the campaigning trail in the election’s closing days.
Trump said Haley “is helping us already” and “is out campaigning” but questioned why political watchers seemed so concerned that she and not other former rivals, like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, stump for him.
Harris has been courting some of Haley’s former supporters in the closing days of the general election campaign.
Haley, who also served as Trump’s United Nations ambassador, was the last foe remaining against Trump in the Republican primary earlier this year, shuttering her campaign after the former president’s romp through the Super Tuesday contests. She didn’t immediately endorse him in the race but said in May she’d vote for him, leaving it up to the former president to work toward winning over support from her backers.
Haley called for GOP unity around Trump in a speech at this summer’s Republican National Convention.
Grammy Award winning singer Marc Anthony in a new TV ad for Harris is lambasting Trump for blocking disaster relief for Puerto Rico after a 2017 hurricane devastated the U.S. territory.
The ad released Friday and aimed at Latino voters includes footage of the ravaged island following Hurricane Maria and Trump tossing rolls of paper towels into a crowd during a visit to an island church following a hurricane, behavior from the then-president that was derided by some as disrespectful.
“Even though some have forgotten, I remember what it was like when Trump was president,” said Anthony, who is of Puerto Rican descent. “I remember what he did and he said about Puerto Rico, our people.”
Trump publicly feuded with the mayor of San Juan over her criticism of his administration’s response to the storm that killed 3,000 and withheld billions in congressionally approved aid to Puerto Rico. He eventually relented and announced less than 50 days before his losing 2020 reelection bid that he was releasing $13 billion in aid. At the time, he declared himself the “best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico.”
The Harris campaign said that the ad will air on the popular Spanish-language Telemundo and WAPA America TV, during this Sunday’s coverage of the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards and in Pennsylvania on Telemundo and Univision.
Latino voters have historically favored Democrats, but Republicans have made inroads with the group in recent years.
Residents of Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory of more than 3 million people, cannot vote in the general election. But there are more people of Puerto Rican descent on the mainland than on the island, and they could play a key role in the Nov. 5 vote.
Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign rally at the Resch Expo in Green Bay, Wis., Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of N.Y., listens at the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump gestures as he departs the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner, Thursday, Oct. 17, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
