NC congressional delegation should support state's electric vehicle industry
An EVgo fast charging station charges a vehicle. (Photo: Loren Elliott for CalMatters)
North Carolina's economy has undergone many important transitions over the last several decades. But in recent years there's been no more promising arrival on the scene than the electric vehicle industry.
As experts at the national Electrification Coalition pointed out last week, federal EV tax credits have helped spur the creation of more than sixteen thousand jobs and over twenty billion dollars in investments in the state in recent years. And, of course, these are jobs and investments that are not only good for the state's economy, but for the world as it struggles to end its heroin-like addiction to fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, the massive budget and tax bill approved by the U.S. House last week places all of this in jeopardy by eliminating several tax credits supporting the industry.
The bottom line: Our nation currently spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year subsidizing the fossil fuel industry. The least North Carolina's congressional delegation can do is help to retain some modest subsidies for an industry of the future that helps our people and our planet.
For NC Newsline, I'm Rob Schofield.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
8 hours ago
- Washington Post
Students applying for financial aid will face stricter ID verification
The Education Department on Friday announced new measures to verify the identities of people applying for financial aid — a move it says is needed because of rising fraud but is being met with mixed reactions from the higher education community. The department said that this summer, colleges and universities must ensure that people who are applying for aid for the first time are who they claim to be, which will require students to submit more documentation. Applicants must present — either in person or on a live video call — a valid, government-issued photo identification to the school. The department expects about 125,000 students to be affected by the new requirement. The changes will be in place until the department's Federal Student Aid office finalizes a permanent screening process in the fall for anyone applying for federal loans and grants through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. The department said it is stepping up identity verification amid an increase in scammers accessing millions of dollars in federal aid. California's community colleges have reported being inundated with scammers posing as students and enrolling to steal aid, and lawmakers in the state are calling on the Education and Justice departments to investigate. An investigation by CalMatters found fraudsters are using artificial intelligence to pose as students and have stolen more than $10 million in federal financial aid over 12 months. For its part, the Education Department said last month that it uncovered more than $30 million in aid being disbursed to thousands of deceased people in the past three years. A separate review in February found that nearly $40 million in loan payments and $6 million in grant awards were sent to ineligible people, according to the department. 'When rampant fraud is taking aid away from eligible students, disrupting the operations of colleges, and ripping off taxpayers, we have a responsibility to act,' Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement Friday. The Trump administration is partly blaming the increase in financial aid fraud on the Biden administration, which it claims removed verification safeguards and diverted resources from fraud prevention toward student loan forgiveness. The Education Department said it restarted a fraud modeling system that was deprioritized under President Joe Biden and found 150,000 accounts believed to be fraudulent in the initial run. Biden administration officials relaxed some verification requirements during the coronavirus pandemic, requiring fewer college students from low-income households to provide additional proof that the information on their financial-aid applications was accurate. At the time, the department said it would focus on ferreting out identity theft and fraud. The decision was praised by financial aid and student advocacy groups, which said too many vulnerable students were caught up in the standard verification process, which yielded little evidence of fraud. They argued that focusing on identity theft, which requires a different form of verification, made more sense. Students can face three types of verification, based on suspected errors or fraud: a standard one that requires the submission of income and tax documents, a custom one that requires identity documentation, or an aggregate one that requires everything. In its latest report, from November, the department's office of inspector general said the agency had taken steps to address identity verification risks but could benefit from additional actions after investigators determined that roughly $27 million in federal student aid had gone to accounts suspected to be fraudulent. Advocacy groups say they want the department to root out fraud but caution against a return to the invasive, time-consuming audits of the past that routinely delayed students' financial aid. 'Protecting against fraud and abuse is important, but must be balanced against access,' said Elizabeth Morgan, chief external relations officer for the nonprofit National College Attainment Network. 'Barriers that delay students' ability to receive aid could harm their ability to attain a postsecondary degree.' The department said it does not expect any changes to the number of financial aid applicants selected for the standard verification while the number of applicants flagged for identity verification goes up. Financial aid groups are cautiously optimistic. Karen McCarthy, vice president of public policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said some colleges have hoped that the department would take a stronger role in fraud prevention because they are ill-equipped to handle it on their own. But she worries that there are few details about the agency's long-term plans and that, while the department finalizes requirements, more work could fall on financial aid officers, especially at under-resourced schools. 'The lack of clarity and specific timing about Ed's plan is concerning,' McCarthy said. 'Recent history has shown that they make promises of delivery of things that will help institutions, and then there is lag, and institutions are kind of stuck doing that additional work for quite some time.' In her statement Friday, McMahon said the department is working to 'reduce the administrative burden on institutions.'
18 hours ago
Federal vs. state power at issue in a hearing over Trump's election overhaul executive order
BOSTON -- Democratic state attorneys general on Friday will seek to block President Donald Trump's proposal for a sweeping overhaul of U.S. elections in a case that tests a constitutional bedrock — the separation of powers. The top law enforcement officials from 19 states filed a federal lawsuit after the Republican president signed the executive order in March, arguing that its provisions would step on states' power to set their own election rules and that the executive branch had no such authority. In a filing supporting that argument, a bipartisan group of former secretaries of state said Trump's directive would upend the system established by the Constitution's Elections Clause, which gives states and Congress control over how elections are run. They said the order seeks to 'unilaterally coronate the President as the country's chief election policymaker and administrator.' If the court does not halt the order, they argued, 'the snowball of executive overreach will grow swiftly and exponentially." Trump's election directive was part of a flurry of executive orders he has issued in the opening months of his second term, many of which have drawn swift legal challenges. It follows years of him falsely claiming that his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election was due to widespread fraud and an election year in which he and other Republicans promoted the notion that large numbers of noncitizens threatened the integrity of U.S. elections. In fact, voting by noncitizens is rare and, when caught, can lead to felony charges and deportation. Trump's executive order would require voters to show proof of U.S. citizenship when registering to vote in federal elections, prohibit mail or absentee ballots from being counted if they are received after Election Day, set new rules for voting equipment and prohibit non-U.S. citizens from being able to donate in certain elections. It also would condition federal election grant funding on states adhering to the strict ballot deadline. The hearing Friday in U.S. District Court in Boston comes in one of three lawsuits filed against the executive order. One is from Oregon and Washington, where elections are conducted almost entirely by mail and ballots received after Election Day are counted as long as they are postmarked by then. The provision that would create a proof-of-citizenship requirement for federal elections already has been halted in a lawsuit filed by voting and civil rights groups and national Democratic organizations. In that case, filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, the judge said the president's attempt to use a federal agency to enact a proof-of-citizenship requirement for voting usurped the power of states and Congress, which at the time was considering legislation that would do just that. That bill, called the SAVE Act, passed the U.S. House but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. Trump's executive order said its intent was to ensure 'free, fair and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion.' The Justice Department, in arguing against the motion by the attorneys general for a preliminary injunction, said the president is within his rights to direct agencies to carry out federal voting laws. The order tasks the U.S. Election Assistance Commission with updating the federal voter registration form to require people to submit documentation proving they are U.S. citizens. Similar provisions enacted previously in a handful of states have raised concerns about disenfranchising otherwise eligible voters who can't readily access those documents. That includes married women, who would need both a birth certificate and a marriage license if they had changed their last name. A state proof-of-citizenship law enacted in Kansas more than a decade ago blocked the registrations of 31,000 people later found to be eligible to vote. The two sides will argue over whether the president has the authority to direct the election commission, which was created by Congress as an independent agency after the Florida ballot debacle during the 2000 presidential election. In its filing, the Justice Department said Trump's executive order falls within his authority to direct officials 'to carry out their statutory duties,' adding that 'the only potential voters it disenfranchises are noncitizens who are ineligible to vote anyway.'
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- Yahoo
Get ready for hunger to skyrocket in North Carolina
At a farm market in St. Petersburg, Florida, SNAP recipients were able to use their Electronic Benefits Transfer cards for food. (Photo by Lance Cheung/USDA). It's hard to fathom in a proposal that includes billions upon billions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, but one of the most significant changes included in the massive budget bill approved by the U.S. House late last month was this: big cuts to the nation's main anti-hunger program. Under the legislation, millions of people would lose SNAP food assistance benefits. Meanwhile, states would be saddled with 14 billion dollars in new costs. And the impacts will be felt in the stomachs of families across the nation. As Raleigh-area Congresswoman Deborah Ross explained last week, in her district – one of the state's more affluent ones – 20,000 of her adult constituents will lose all of their SNAP benefits. Statewide, a total of almost half a million people will lose benefits and the cuts will ripple through grocery stores and the economy as a whole. The bottom line: Rep. Ross is right. The Republican budget will cause irreparable harm to the people of our state. All caring and thinking North Carolinians should support her effort to push back. For NC Newsline, I'm Rob Schofield.
