Daily Caller
Biden’s Signature Climate ‘Boondoggle’ Might Be On Chopping Block After Trump Win
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
In the wake of the election of President Donald Trump to serve a second term in office, along with presumptive Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, many are now asking about what the future will hold for the oddly named Inflation Reduction Act.
Trump made it repeatedly clear on the campaign trail that he is not a fan of that law, which was passed on straight party-line votes in both houses of Congress, or of the hundreds of billions of dollars in green energy subsidies contained in it.
In a statement sent out in a post-election memo, Sierra Club President Ben Jealous took on a pessimistic tone, saying: “Donald Trump was a disaster for climate progress during his first term, and everything he’s said and done since suggests he’s eager to do even more damage this time.” Given the major role played by the Sierra Club and other climate-alarm groups in writing the IRA, that is exactly the kind of comments we might expect.
But a full repeal of the IRA seems unlikely to succeed, even with GOP control of the House and Senate. Republican majorities will be slim and the GOP has never shown an ability to hold all its members together when voting on controversial issues. Thus, a more scalpel-like approach seems more likely to succeed.
I asked Karr Ingham, a respected petroleum economist who serves as the president of the Texas Alliance of Energy Producers, if he thinks Trump and his administration would seek to repeal the Inflation Reduction act in full. Ingham said: “I certainly hope so.” Specifically, Ingham pointed to a need to repeal “the methane tax [waste emissions charge] in the IRA, and frankly, much of the spending boondoggle that is the IRA should simply be eliminated.”
Tom Pyle, president of D.C.-based think tank the Institute for Energy Research, said he believes President Trump “absolutely should” pursue a full repeal of that law. “The vast array of subsidies embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is already destabilizing our electricity grid, while the spending further fuels inflation and contributes to soaring government deficits.”
Pyle further notes that Trump has promised an array of tax cuts for working Americans and families and will need to find budget offsets for those. Pyle believes the IRA offers such an opportunity. “Getting rid of subsidies for big corporations in exchange for tax relief on working families is both good policy and good politics,” he adds.
But American Petroleum Institute President Mike Sommers said his group favors retaining at least some major pieces of the IRA, specifically pointing to subsidies for carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen development. “We’ll advocate for provisions that we support, and we’ll seek repeal of provisions that we think don’t line up with continued production in the states of oil and gas,” Sommers told Politico. This is no surprise given that some of API’s biggest members have already made big bets on both CCS and hydrogen projects.
It is also important to remember that, since the IRA was signed into law in September 2022, renewable energy companies have invested hundreds of billions of dollars into wind, solar and electric vehicles projects, and a big portion of those investments are happening in key Republican states and counties.
Jason Grumet, CEO at the American Clean Power Association, said in a statement that, “Private sector clean energy investment is bringing jobs and economic opportunity to small towns and rural communities across the nation, while hundreds of new factories have come online in states that have seen far too many good jobs move overseas.” Grumet also pointed to the fact that quite a lot of investment into both wind and solar took place during Trump’s first term in office even without the added incentives from the IRA subsidy and tax incentive regimes, adding that ACPA and its members are “committed to working with the Trump-Vance administration and the new Congress to continue this great American success story.”
There is little question the Trump administration will take a hard look at many of the IRA provisions, but political realities combined with the billions already invested based on the continuation of these programs makes a full repeal seem highly unlikely.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Daily Caller
‘Coming Down Like A Missile’: Former FAA Safety Rep Says Plane in Philadelphia Crash Appeared ‘100% Out of Control’
Kyle Bailey on “Hannity” discussing Philly plane crash [Screenshot/Fox News/”Hannity”]
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Hailey Gomez
Former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Safety Team representative Kyle Bailey said Friday evening on Fox News that the jet caught on camera crashing in northeastern Philadelphia appeared “100% out of control.”
Around 6:30 p.m. local time, videos surfaced showing a small jet crashing into a neighborhood in northeastern Philadelphia, with images and footage depicting the plane erupting into a fireball. The FAA confirmed the crash in a statement, identifying the aircraft as a Learjet 55 that had been departing from northeastern Philadelphia Airport en route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri.
On “Hannity,” Fox’s Sean Hannity began discussing the Learjet 55, adding that his pilot friends had described the aircraft as “a sports car in the air.” He then asked Bailey if this type of jet is different from the “average commuter jet.”
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“That’s exactly right, Sean. You have to be ahead of that airplane at all times, or it will get control of you. That plane was doing in excess of 10,000 feet per minute rate of descent, and it didn’t even make it to 2,000 feet after takeoff,” Bailey said. “Right after takeoff, the controller was asking, calling for the airplane to respond. There was no response by the flight crew. There was no communication.”
“The controller was a little bit stumped in trying to make contact with the airplane, and that tells me that the pilot completely was consumed with whatever was going on, and from that rate of descent and from that airplane coming down like a missile, it looked like it could have potentially been at full power,” Bailey added. “It was just coming down there at a rate that really was unbelievable.”
WATCH:
Bailey went on to say that the explosion was likely massive due to the “large quantity of jet fuel,” adding that he believed there was probably nothing the pilot “could have done” to prevent the incident.
“So from taking off for a flight of the duration of where it was going, that probably was very closely, fully loaded with fuel. So that huge fireball that we saw is the result of a large quantity of jet fuel, and that big, almost like — for lack of a better term — like a nuclear-like explosion is probably the jet fuel reflecting off that cloud base,” Bailey said.
“That’s why it looks a little bit strange, but there is no doubt that the plane was 100% out of control, and there was probably nothing that pilot could have done,” Bailey added. “Not even a 10-second mayday came out of that radio back to the control tower.”
The plane was reportedly on a medical assignment with four crew members and two passengers aboard, according to 6ABC. During a press conference around 8:30 p.m., Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker could not provide a fatality count. She instead asked residents “for prayers.”
The crash comes just days after a commercial plane collided with a military helicopter near Washington Reagan National Airport on Wednesday evening, killing all involved.
The incident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA.
Censorship Industrial Complex
‘Don’t Write About The Laptop’: Two Reporters Allege Outlets Killed Stories About Bidens
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Harold Hutchison
“I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop.
Two former reporters with Politico accused the outlet of suppressing negative stories about former President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential election in a video clip posted to YouTube Thursday.
Dozens of former intelligence officials signed an October 2020 letter published by Politico that claimed a bombshell New York Post report about emails from a laptop supposedly abandoned by Hunter Biden “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Puck News reporter Tara Palmeri and Axios reporter Marc Caputo discussed the Politico newsroom’s alleged approach to unflattering reports about the Bidens on Palmeri’s podcast, “Somebody’s Gotta Win,” though the outlet has denied their allegations.
“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation. Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true,” Caputo told Palmeri, who responded. “But then Facebook also pulled all stories down about the Hunter Biden laptop, and I think Twitter did at the same time, too.”
WATCH:
Twitter locked multiple accounts, including the New York Post’s and the personal account of then-White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany for sharing the Oct, 14, 2020 report, citing a “hacked materials” policy. Documents released to journalist Michael Shellenberger by Elon Musk show that the FBI contacted Twitter about the potential for leaks involving Hunter Biden prior to the New York Post’s report.
“Correct, they punished The New York Post, that didn’t help. I mean, Politico, my former employer and I knew at the time, didn’t do itself any favors,” said Caputo. “I was covering Biden at the time, and I remember coming to my editor and saying, ‘Hey, we need to write about the Hunter Biden laptop.’ And I was told this came from on high at Politico: Don’t write about the laptop, don’t talk about the laptop, don’t tweet about the laptop. And the only thing Politico wound up writing was that piece that called it disinformation, which charitably could be called misinformation, at the least.”
Palmeri claimed to have experienced difficulty getting a story regarding Hunter Biden’s purchase of a .38-caliber revolver in 2018 published. Hunter Biden was convicted on three felony counts related to buying the gun in June 2024, but received a pardon from his father on Dec. 1.
Biden pardoned five other family members shortly before his term ended.
“Yeah, I mean, I had a hard time — you know I wrote some pretty serious reporting on Hunter Biden, which actually ended up getting him prosecuted — the story on the gun,” Palmeri said, with Caputo responding, “Yeah! And I remember you consulted with me cause you had, you did the original report on the gun and you came to me like, ‘How do I write about this?’ I’m like, ‘Honestly, I don’t know.’”
“Cause it was hard to get it done. I spent three months on it, I went to the laptop shop, and I did all of the reporting in Delaware, and I did all of that. But yeah it had, it had to be like much, it had to be 100% nailed down. I had everything, you know, the police reports, every, like, you know, I’m a solid reporter. But I do wonder if it could have, if it would have been published a little quicker if it was a different type of story,” Palmeri said. “It was the beginning of his administration, it was a honeymoon period — you know what I mean?”
Caputo recounted that Hunter Biden’s laptop was not the only story regarding the Bidens that was allegedly killed by Politico’s editors.
“Since we’re spilling tea about our former employer, I still have a copy of the story on my external hard drive. In 2019, a rival presidential Democratic campaign of Joe Biden’s gave to me the tax lien — the oppo research — the tax lien on Hunter Biden for the period of time that he worked at Burisma,” Caputo said. “And I wrote what would have been a classic story saying, you know, ‘The former vice president’s son was slapped with a big tax lien for the period of time that he worked for this controversial Ukrainian oil concern, or natural gas concern, which is haunting his father on the campaign trail.’ That story was killed by the editors, and they gave no explanation for that either.”
“We just get called, like, ‘the terrible mainstream media.’ It’s like you don’t understand the process there,” Palmeri said, with Caputo responding, “Well, you also don’t understand the dumb decisions of cowardly editors that are made above us.”
Politico disputed Caputo’s recollections in response to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation and sent a list of references to their past reporting on the Biden family.
“It’s bullshit. During the years referenced, POLITICO journalists lead the way on wide-ranging reporting on the business dealings of Joe Biden’s closest relatives. Ben Schreckinger was probably the top reporter in the country reporting on these matters—he literally wrote the book on it,” a Politico spokesperson told the DCNF. “Through deeply reported coverage—both pre- and post-election—POLITICO provided readers with a nuanced understanding of the dealings of James Biden, Hunter Biden, and other relatives of the president, along with the ethical questions they raised. Notably, POLITICO was the first to confirm that Hunter Biden’s laptop contained genuine material and to report on the gun incident that led to his conviction.”
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