MTG Doubles Down on Unhinged Electric Vehicle Stance

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene still doesn’t seem to understand how electric vehicles work.

The Georgia Republican introduced a confusing amendment to the 2025 defense budget Wednesday, withholding funding from the electric car industry. But Greene couldn’t seem to specify why that was important.

“My amendment would basically say that no funds should be authorized to or to be appropriated in this act or otherwise made available for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2025, may be used for electric vehicles or electric vehicle charging infrastructure,” Greene said. “My amendment would ensure that no funds are authorized in this year’s NDAA on electric vehicles or electric vehicle charging infrastructure.”

The word salad follows a similar electric vehicle–related gaffe that Greene made during Donald Trump’s Las Vegas rally on Sunday, when she tried—but failed—to make electric cars sound like a problem that’s hurting people’s wallets.

“If you think gas prices are high now, just wait until you’re forced to drive an electric vehicle,” she shouted.

That quip defied explanation, especially considering that not only are gas prices actually down this month, but by design, electric vehicles don’t actually rely on fossil fuels to run and therefore cost less to juice up.

Donald Trump wants to bring Bitcoin mining back to the U.S.—but it’s not entirely clear that he knows what cryptocurrency even is, or how massively its production strains a country’s infrastructure.

“VOTE FOR TRUMP! Bitcoin mining may be our last line of defense against a CBDC,” the presidential candidate wrote Wednesday on Truth Social, referring to a “central bank digital currency,” or a digital version of the American dollar.

“Biden’s hatred of Bitcoin only helps China, Russia, and the Radical Communist Left,” Trump continued. “We want all the remaining Bitcoin to be MADE IN THE USA!!! It will help us be ENERGY DOMINANT!!!”

But promising to make Bitcoin mining exclusively American wouldn’t exactly be a good thing for the nation, and the very premise of the proposal calls into question whether Trump actually understands what he’s talking about. Mining Bitcoin involves using a decentralized global system of computers to process a blockchain—a long sequence of ones and zeros that effectively translates into a digital public ledger to verify the authenticity of a sale.

Once a Bitcoin is bought and sold, a new line of information is added to the blockchain. Mining Bitcoin requires a computer to solve extremely complex mathematical problems in order to process that chain. In exchange, the miner receives a predetermined amount of the digital currency as payment.

Around the world, Bitcoin miners use approximately 348 terawatt hours of energy (the prefix “tera-” meaning trillions) per year. That means that crypto mining alone consumes more energy annually than most countries in the world use for all residential and commercial activity, including the United Kingdom, Italy, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Australia, according to data aggregated by Visual Capitalist.

As it stands, the majority of Bitcoin mining already takes place in the U.S., accounting for 37.8 percent share of the entire network by hashrate (a computational measure of a cryptocurrency’s blockchain). That’s been the case since the summer of 2021, when China—which previously represented 75 percent of the hashrate—initiated a crackdown on the digital asset, fearing that the highly volatile currency could undermine their nation’s monetary system.

Ultimately, Trump’s promise that more crypto mining would make the country “energy dominant” simply doesn’t make sense. Mining Bitcoin doesn’t produce energy, as Trump’s call for “energy dominance” would imply. Instead, it requires a massive but incredibly unpredictable amount of energy to produce.

It’s unclear just how much energy crypto mining consumes, as the cryptocurrency lobby has actually fought hard to keep the industry’s energy expenditures under wraps. In March, the Department of Energy settled a lawsuit brought by Riot Platforms, halting an “emergency survey” that sought to quantify the amount of energy used by crypto miners while agreeing to erase all energy consumption data that had been collected up until that point.

But the infrastructure strain can be pictured in other ways: In August, taxpayers in Texas paid Riot $31 million not to mine in an effort to stave off rolling blackouts and spare the state’s electric grid.

Trump’s promise may, however, benefit a different sector entirely: the fossil fuel industry, which currently accounts for most of the energy creation in the U.S. and, as a by-product, fuels the majority of mining data centers. Approximately 96 percent of Riot’s energy was supplied by fossil fuels, despite the miner’s claims that it supports the use of renewable energy, according to an analysis by WattTime, a nonprofit tech company.

So his new stance on Bitcoin might make sense after all, given how much of an effort Trump has made recently to cozy up to oil and gas executives.

Jared Kushner’s Saudi Arabia–funded investment firm is finally being seriously examined. Senate Democrats have launched an investigation into Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, seeking information about the company’s investments—after it received $2 billion of its $2.5 billion in investments from Saudi Arabia.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden is leading the investigation, noting the peculiarities of nepobaby Kushner’s involvement in business dealings he has next to no experience doing. In a letter Wednesday asking Kushner’s firm to respond to queries about its investors, Wyden wrote:

Mr. Kushner’s limited track record as an investor, including his nonexistent experience in private equity or hedge funds, raise questions regarding the investment strategy behind the seeding investments and lucrative compensation that Affinity received from the Saudi PIF and other sovereign wealth funds.

Virginia Canter, former Treasury Department chief ethics counsel, told Salon that Kushner’s shady business dealings with Saudi Arabia, so soon after he and his father-in-law left the White House, raise serious national security concerns. “It’s one of the most egregious situations I’ve ever seen in decades of working in the federal government as an ethics official,” she said. “It appears to be a payoff as much as a potential investment.”

Kushner’s firm launched in 2021 and immediately received a majority of its funds from Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, with a whopping 99 percent coming from foreign sources. Kushner defended the flood of cash by pointing out that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s fund also invests in Nintendo, Uber, and Microsoft—which is more of an insult to those companies than it is a vouch for Kushner.

“The Saudi PIF’s decision to invest $2 billion in Affinity so soon after Kushner’s departure from the Trump White House raises concerns that the investment was a reward for official actions Kushner took to benefit the Saudi government, including preventing accountability for the Saudi government ordering the brutal murder of journalist and American citizen Jamal Khashoggi,” Wyden wrote.

In 2018, MBS oversaw the brutal assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Trump’s White House paid no mind to the murder, instead releasing a shocking statement expressing support for Saudi Arabia and sowing doubt that MBS ordered Khashoggi’s murder, despite a CIA analysis finding that was certainly the case. Trump himself has curious ties to MBS, which during his presidency raised concerns of foreign influence.

This isn’t the first time Congress has sought answers about Kushner’s firm. In 2023, the stench of corruption was so putrid, Congress subpoenaed the company over its ties to Saudi Arabia, with even Republican James Comer saying Kushner’s Saudi blood money “crossed the line of ethics.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson has a tendency to think that when things go bad for his party, it’s the product of gross legislative mismanagement, judicial weaponization, and a vast executive conspiracy. But when his party wants to do something, it’s because justice is swift and everything is proceeding according to plan. House Republicans’ efforts to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt are no exception to this trend.

The GOP quest to hold Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to respond to a subpoena was not dampened by any sense of irony, even though the Judiciary Committee is chaired by Representative Jim Jordan. Jordan famously refused to comply with requests from the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection, alongside Representatives Scott Perry, Kevin McCarthy, Andy Biggs, and Mo Brooks.

During a press conference Wednesday, a reporter asked Johnson if he was concerned the run of rogue Republicans would undermine his argument for holding Garland in contempt. Apparently, he doesn’t think the two cases are alike at all.

“Oh, I’m so glad you brought up the January 6 committee. We’ll be talking a lot more about that in the coming weeks. There’s been a lot of investigation about that committee, I don’t think it was properly constituted, I don’t think it was properly administered, and now we know that apparently, some of the evidence was hidden, and some maybe even destroyed,” he said.

“You talk about apples to oranges, there couldn’t be a more clear contrast between that and what we’re talking about here,” Johnson continued. “This is the Judiciary Committee. This is the weaponization committee.” He went on to laud Jordan’s leadership and “extraordinary” work.

With this statement, Johnson makes it clear there are different rules for Republicans in Congress, special exceptions that prevent them from facing the consequences of their actions. Those who break the rules to defend Donald Trump are doing so bravely, while those who break the rules to defend Joe Biden are subject to the most serious condemnation.

Johnson did not elaborate on how he could so casually call the GOP-led committee the “weaponization” committee, a conspiracy theory buzzword Republicans have adopted to discredit the federal government.

Johnson’s logic, or lack thereof, mirrors his untethered reframing of the guilty verdicts of Trump and Hunter Biden. One is evidence of a “two-tiered” justice system; the other, which would disprove it, is a “separate instance” not worthy of consideration in Johnson’s ongoing weaponization case study.

The House Judiciary and Oversight and Accountability Committees had demanded the audio from Biden’s interview with special counsel Robert Hur, who described the president as a “well meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” be turned over by the end of April. Their attempt to obtain the audio was blocked by the White House, which invoked executive privilege. The move summoned the ire of House Republicans, who became set on holding Garland in contempt.

Senator J.D. Vance doesn’t like diversity, equity, and inclusion principles, and he’s sponsoring a bill to ban them from all federal offices and contracting.

On Wednesday, Vance and Representative Michael Cloud introduced the Dismantle DEI Act, which bans all DEI positions in the government and also bans diversity initiatives from receiving federal grant money. The bill would bar school accreditation agencies from requiring DEI in schools, and stop financial agencies like Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange from implementing diversity requirements for corporate boards.

“It has no place in our federal government or anywhere else in our society,” Vance said. “I’m proud to introduce this legislation, which would root out DEI from our federal bureaucracy by eliminating such programs and stripping funding for DEI policies anywhere it exists. Americans’ tax dollars should not be co-opted to spread this radical and divisive ideology—this bill would ensure they are not.”

The bill takes aim at an executive order President Biden issued in 2021 promoting DEI in the federal workforce, and would drastically cut funding to several government agencies, including NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and even the military.

The bill is not likely to gain traction beyond the Republican-controlled House, if it can even get past the narrow GOP majority. Attacking DEI is like catnip for the right wing, and conservative media has been fanning the flames on the supposedly “woke” principles, even going so far as to blame natural disasters on DEI.

The bill is unlikely to pass the Senate, and instead it appears more likely that it’s all for show, possibly to help Vance move up on Donald Trump’s short list to be his running mate. Vance continuously professes his loyalty to the convicted felon and Republican presidential nominee, even saying that if he was in Mike Pence’s place as vice president in 2021, he would have subverted the 2020 election results to help Trump be reelected. This bill is also a disturbing preview of what Republicans plan to do if Trump wins in November, as the former president has already promised to take on what conservatives think is the “real” prejudice in America: anti-white racism.