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New York Times
18-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Man Behind the Republican Case for Clean Energy
Yesterday I published an article about the growing group of Republicans and business leaders who are rallying to support the clean energy tax credits that President Biden signed into law in 2022 as part of the Inflation Reduction Act. At the center of that push is Andrew Garbarino, a House Republican from New York. He finds himself in the awkward position of fighting to protect a program that President Trump and others in Congress have vowed to eliminate in their efforts to roll back climate regulations and cut government spending. Garbarino and 20 other Republican representatives last week sent a letter defending the tax credits to Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. I had spoken with Garbarino for the story and wanted to share more of our conversation, including why he believes the tax credits won't get fully repealed. He and other Republicans are trying to fend off factions from their own party, including the House Freedom Caucus, while trying to reframe the credits as pro-Trump policy. Garbarino starts his pitch to fellow conservatives by trying to separate the tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act, which was deeply unpopular with Republicans. 'I voted against the I.R.A., and there were policies in there that I didn't agree with, just like every other Republican,' he said. Then there's a history lesson for his fellow Republicans. Garbarino points out that several parts of the Biden-era clean energy tax credits existed before the former president signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. (The Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit for electricity generated by certain forms of renewable energy dates back to 1992.) 'People don't realize these things were not created in the I.R.A.,' he said. 'They were just expanded and lengthened under the I.R.A., and a lot of them were in bipartisan bills.' Garbarino said he had organized the letter from last week after Smith, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, told clean energy companies that he was hearing from members of the Freedom Caucus who want to repeal the tax credits immediately, but not from many Republicans in Congress who supported the tax credits. Garbarino had organized a similar letter signed by 18 representatives in August. The most recent letter was signed by 21 members, including seven who did not sign the previous letter and stalwart conservatives like Representative Buddy Carter from Georgia. 'This is a line in the sand to counter what the Freedom Caucus guys have been saying, which is full repeal,' he said. Garbarino said that more members wanted to sign the letter, including some on the Ways and Means Committee, but that they refrained from adding their signatures for strategic reasons. He fell into the role as Congressional Republicans' leading defender of the tax credits. Garbarino is co-chair of the Climate Solutions Caucus and has gotten to know many clean energy companies through his post. When it became clear that a package of incentives that were benefiting their industry was in jeopardy, Garbarino agreed to stick his neck out. 'Nobody else was doing it so I said, 'I'll do it. I'll lead the letter,'' he said. The president has called wind farms, one of the fastest growing sources of energy in the country, 'garbage,' and has vowed to halt the construction of new ones. He has also made disparaging remarks about solar power. But Garbarino said these technologies are essential to fulfill Trump's campaign promises to boost domestic manufacturing and help power artificial intelligence. The clean energy industry is also rallying to protect the tax credits, as Brad Plumer reported yesterday. 'The president wants us to be an energy dominant country, and solar and wind has to be part of that discussion,' he said. 'It takes 10 years to build a natural gas plant. We don't have the technology right now for nuclear or geothermal to work on a large scale. We need energy now, and solar and wind are the quickest things to get online.' Will Garbarino's persuasion campaign work? He thinks so, at least in part. 'I don't think we're going to end up seeing a full repeal,' he said. 'Could there be changes? Absolutely. That's up for I think this letter shows that there is enough support that full repeal would be too painful.' Trump administration aims to eliminate E.P.A.'s scientific research arm The Environmental Protection Agency plans to eliminate its scientific research arm, firing as many as 1,155 chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. The strategy is part of large-scale layoffs, known as a 'reduction in force,' being planned by the Trump administration. Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency's budget. That would be a drastic reduction — one that experts said could hamper clean water and wastewater improvements, air quality monitoring, the cleanup of toxic industrial sites and other parts of the agency's mission. — Lisa Friedman Read the full article. Want cheap power, fast? Solar and wind firms have a suggestion. As President Trump works to blunt the growth of wind and solar power and expand fossil fuel production in the United States, the renewable energy industry is making a new pitch: You need us. Wind and solar developers are increasingly pointing out that America's demand for electricity is soaring, and it's proving difficult to build enough new gas plants to supply all the extra power that the nation needs. Wind, solar and battery storage are relatively quick and cheap to construct. That could help avert energy shortages and keep prices low, an argument that renewable energy firms are making to policymakers. — Brad Plumer Read the full article. Correction: The Climate Fix column in the Friday newsletter stated incorrectly the status of plans in Canada for underground disposal of spent nuclear fuel. A disposal site has been selected in Canada; the project there is no longer in the proposal phase. Thanks for being a subscriber. Read past editions of the newsletter here. If you're enjoying what you're reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here. And follow The New York Times on Instagram, Threads, Facebook and TikTok at @nytimes. Reach us at climateforward@ We read every message, and reply to many!
New York Times
11-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
The Americans Who Ran Guns for the I.R.A.
When it comes to understanding the Irish, it helps to take the long view. The Ulster Plantation of 1609, intended to replace native Catholic Irish residents with Protestant settlers from Scotland and England, initiated a conflict that has never quite ended. And in 1690, the British won a decisive victory over Irish Catholics that Ulster's unionists still celebrate annually as if they've just won the World Cup. More recent divisions in Northern Ireland date to the 1921 treaty that ended the Irish war of independence and granted Ireland status as a 'free state,' rather than a republic — allowing Britain to retain six of Ulster's nine counties. In 'The Next One Is for You,' an informative and well-researched account of the Troubles — the lenient name attached to a bitter internecine struggle — and their reverberations in America, the New York Times reporter Ali Watkins describes the treaty as a 'devil's bargain.' Whether it was demonic or all that was possible at the time, the treaty triggered a brief, brutal civil war that scared Ireland for generations and sent many of the defeated Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.) fighters to the United States. One-party rule by Ulster unionists, Watkins writes, left Catholics with 'few jobs, poor housing and threadbare resources.' In 1968, inspired in part by the American civil rights movement, Catholics initiated nonviolent protests to end discrimination and to put a stop to disenfranchising gerrymandering. The reaction was swift. The local police force stood by while protesters were assaulted and beaten by unionist mobs, who carried out violent attacks against Belfast's Catholic neighborhoods. A radical faction of the I.R.A. known as the Provos dedicated themselves to expelling the British through armed struggle. These events stirred a segment of Irish Americans to take more than a sentimental interest in post-treaty Ireland. The feeling was especially strong in working-class neighborhoods in New York and Philadelphia. In the United States at large, Watkins writes, 'the steady flight of I.R.A. veterans to America had effectively created a shadowy, satellite brigade of Irish Republicans within the country's sprawling Irish diaspora.' Watkins does a thorough job of pulling back the curtain on the principals behind a pro-I.R.A. group called the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NORAID), figures like Daniel Duffy, a mechanic, and Hughie Breen, a Philadelphia bar owner. Ostensibly intended to raise money to support families in the North, NORAID instead largely spent the funds arming the I.R.A. Sympathetic longshoremen and customs officials saw to it that NORAID was able to smuggle semiautomatics into Ulster. The guns triggered a 'ballistic escalation' so potent that the Armalite became the Provos' symbol. Instead of peacekeeping, the British Army devoted itself to crushing the I.R.A. On Jan. 30, 1972, British paratroopers in Derry killed 14 unarmed Catholic protesters, intensifying the conflict exponentially. For the I.R.A., this 'Bloody Sunday' rallied support. 'The surge of interest that followed,' Watkins posits, 'would pay dividends to NORAID for years to come.' In a meeting with President Richard Nixon in 1971, the British prime minister Edward Heath raised the issue of American support for the I.R.A. NORAID could no longer be ignored, and the U.S. Department of Justice pursued a full-scale investigation. Watkins follows in great detail the cat-and-mouse game that ensued between the feds and NORAID. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the F.B.I. were 'stacked with Irish American agents,' but it did the conspirators little good. A sting by an undercover agent was a severe blow. Faced with the 1976 conviction of its operatives in federal court, NORAID faded into the background, 'an obsolete ghost.' At times, in her thorough account of the grass-roots support for the I.R.A., Watkins strays into the weeds. She also offers a separate narrative of women volunteers in the organization, a change in focus only sometimes consequential to the fate of NORAID — and, at other times, a jarring diversion. Watkins credits NORAID as a 'cultural center for huge swaths of Irish America.' In New York and Philadelphia, 'it became a ubiquitous part of daily life' and 'a household name at most Irish American dinner tables.' This inflation of NORAID's prominence is misleading. Support for NORAID from the 30 million Americans claiming Irish ancestry was puny. Watkins argues that 'while they may have been proportionally modest, NORAID members made up for it in enthusiasm.' But in fact NORAID was never a household word. And if 'huge swaths' had actually contributed, NORAID could have raised the I.R.A. from a small guerrilla force to a military powerhouse. When peace came, it wasn't at the barrel of a gun. The main architect was John Hume, a schoolteacher from Derry and founder of the Social Democratic and Labour Party whose commitment to nonviolence was unwavering over decades. Undeterred by threats from extremists, Hume pursued American involvement in reaching a peaceful solution. From the late 1970s, he cultivated a close relationship with Irish America's quartet of political heavyweights, the 'Four Horsemen': New York Gov. Hugh Carey, Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Ted Kennedy, and Speaker Tip O'Neill. Eventually, President Bill Clinton broke with the State Department's traditional loyalty to the British and appointed a special envoy, who in 1998 brokered the Good Friday agreement that ended the fighting. By the time the Troubles ended, more than 3,500 people had been killed — a significant portion of them innocent civilians. Thousands more were physically or psychologically wounded. 'The long war had taken its toll,' Watkins observes in her well-told account, and the effects were suffered 'by ordinary people.' For now, peace holds in Northern Ireland. Britain's decision to leave the E.U. added an unexpected complication, but the empire's sway over Ireland is a thing of the past. In some quarters, there is gathering momentum for reunification. To quote Seamus Heaney, it seems possible that this time 'hope and history rhyme.'
New York Times
31-01-2025
- Business
- New York Times
The Retirement Maneuver More People Should Be Making
It's hard to hand over a big portion of your retirement savings when you're old or getting there. Every fiber in your being shrieks 'mistake.' And sometimes it is a mistake, as it was for Bob and Sandy Curtis, who forked out $840,000 in entrance fees for a continuing care retirement community that subsequently filed for bankruptcy. Other times, though, writing a very big check is exactly the right thing to do for your long-term financial health. I'm referring to 'Rothification,' a maneuver that costs a lot in taxes up front but raises your potential living standard in the long run. I wrote about it last year. Rothification is the conversion of an ordinary individual retirement account or 401(k) into a Roth I.R.A. For simplicity I'll stick with the case of converting an ordinary I.R.A. to a Roth I.R.A. from here on. In an ordinary I.R.A., you put in money that hasn't been taxed yet. (You can also put in money that has been taxed, but I'm going to ignore that complication.) Money in the I.R.A. grows tax-deferred. Later, when you withdraw money from the I.R.A. to cover retirement expenses, you pay taxes on the withdrawals as ordinary income. An ordinary I.R.A. can be a good deal if you expect to be in a lower tax bracket in retirement than during your working years — say, because you won't have a lot of retirement savings to draw upon. A Roth I.R.A., the mirror image, is stuffed with money that's already been taxed. The money grows tax-free, and when you withdraw from it, you don't have to pay any taxes on either the original contribution or any subsequent gains. It's a great deal if your tax bracket in retirement is as high or higher than it was during your working years, as happens more often than many people expect. It can sometimes be a good bet even if you're in a lower tax bracket in retirement: Because the withdrawals don't count toward your taxable income, they help you avoid many years of income-related taxes on Social Security, lower your Medicare premiums and limit required minimum distributions from your ordinary 401(k) or I.R.A., which are taxed. Now, back to writing that big check. The pain of a Roth conversion comes when the government demands its cut up front. The money you take out of an ordinary I.R.A. to fund the Roth I.R.A. looks like regular income to the Internal Revenue Service and is taxed as such. The maneuver may push you into a higher tax bracket — say from 22 percent to 24 percent, 32 percent, or even 35 percent. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
