
‘Major blow' for clean energy: Project cancellations snowball
Clean energy business group E2 reported Wednesday that the scrapped investments — the second-highest monthly amount since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — affected electric vehicle, offshore wind and battery projects. The nixed projects included a Stellantis $3.3 billion battery plant in Illinois and RWE's halting of offshore wind development in the United States.
'What the House delivered the other day was worse than anyone expected, so I think you are going to continue to see cancellations,' said Bob Keefe, E2 executive director.
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The group found that since January, approximately $14 billion in announced clean energy investments have been canceled or delayed, affecting 10,000 jobs.

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New York Post
15 minutes ago
- New York Post
Trump demurs on pardoning disgraced former Rep. George Santos: ‘He lied like hell'
President Trump demurred on whether he'll pardon disgraced former Long Island Rep. George Santos, who kicked off a seven-year prison sentence for fraud last week. Despite Santos' claims he had been privately lobbying for a pardon, Trump indicated the push to give the fabulist some sort of clemency was news to him. 'He lied like hell, I have to tell you. And I didn't know him, but he was 100% for Trump. I might have met him, maybe, maybe not, I don't know,' Trump told Newsmax host Rob Finnerty on Friday. 'Nobody has talked to me about it,' Trump said of a Santos pardon, before taking note of the former Congressman's prison sentence. 'It's a long time.' Advertisement Santos, 37, pleaded guilty in August 2024 to aggravated identity theft charges and wire fraud for swindling donors to bankroll his campaign for Congress. 3 George Santos is serving out a seven-year sentence for wire fraud and identity theft. Bloomberg via Getty Images 3 President Trump was amused by George Santos' lies but didn't rule out a pardon. Advertisement Prosecutors accused Santos of falsely claiming he had $250,000 in donations to qualify for the National Republican Congressional Committee's 'Young Guns' program. Santos also preyed upon elderly donors and charged credit cards without authorization for frivolous expenses, authorities said. Some of the charges billed to donors include Botox treatments, OnlyFans purchases, jaunts to Atlantic City casinos, French fashion attire, and more, prosecutors said. Santos denied some of the accusations made by prosecutors and blamed others on his former treasurer Nancy Marks, who cooperated with authorities. 'But he was a congressman and his vote was solid; it sounds like a lot. You know, you could blame the other side for not checking him out,' Trump added. Advertisement 'You could say the media misses. Everybody missed it. They found out about it after the election was won.' Trump was referencing the series of scandals against Santos after he was caught lying about vast swaths of his personal backstory, including falsely claiming he was a star volleyball player at New York University even though he never attended the school; that he worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs and that his Jewish grandparents fled prosecution in Europe. In reality, his grandparents were born in Brazil, and he has since described himself as 'Jew-ish.' Santos, who was ousted in a late 2023 bipartisan vote, was the sixth House lawmaker to be expelled from the lower chamber. Advertisement 3 George Santos had to report to prison after turning 37. Dennis A. Clark Since then, he's launched a podcast, titled 'Pants on Fire,' and revealed he had been pressing behind the scenes for some form of clemency from Trump, though in May, Santos said he dropped that pursuit. 'Even though I initially considered the prospect of petitioning the president with a pardon application I have seized that approach as I will not spend the last 61 days I have of life scrambling on how to get past a bunch of guard dogs,' he said. In his remaining weeks before reporting to prison, Santos made several media appearances including on the 'Tucker Carlson Show,' in which he admitted to being terrified of winding up behind bars. 'I'm not suicidal. I'm not depressed. I have no intentions of harming myself, and I will not willingly engage in any sexual activity while I'm in there,' Santos wrote on X earlier this month. Trump also acknowledged that Sean 'Diddy' Combs' allies have pushed for a pardon, but was noncommittal about pardoning him or Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell.


Politico
2 hours ago
- Politico
On the Senate's ‘Kumbaya' committee, John Kennedy is suddenly singing off-key
'We're just going to do what we can to get the appropriations process moving again, and that's something we haven't had here in quite a while,' Thune said. 'So there's a lot of muscle memory we're trying to engage.'' The Senate is 'trying to find a sweet spot,' Thune added. Kennedy ultimately reached a deal with leadership this week to get a separate vote on funding for Congress. He said he wanted to be able to vote against the Legislative Branch bill without having to oppose a two-bill package focused on the departments of Veterans Affairs and Agriculture. He's angling to make a similar protest vote against the bill funding the Department of Interior and environmental projects, which would complicate Thune putting it in a second spending package that he wants to bring to the floor next month. But Kennedy's position frustrated colleagues who say he didn't articulate any policy concern with the congressional funding bill beyond believing it spent too much money. And his willingness to take a verbal sledgehammer to the Senate's talks is grating on some fellow Republicans who are straining to keep them on track. 'What we're seeing is different, and I don't know why,' Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said about recent tactics from Kennedy and other senators. 'When I came on the Appropriations Committee, it was kind of like an unspoken rule, if you will — that we would be there to not only support the Republican bills, but as appropriators, we kind of held together … and we made the process work.' 'We don't have that right now, which is unfortunate,' she added. Besides publicly badmouthing the bipartisan process, Kennedy made other moves to rankle his Appropriations colleagues — starting with his vocal support for Trump's pursuit of 'rescissions.' Those spending clawbacks essentially serve to undo the spending panel's work. Not only did Kennedy vote for a first $9 billion package last month, he has also been backchanneling with White House budget director Russ Vought about additional requests. Democrats, and some Republicans, are warning that would blow up the appropriations process, but Kennedy called it 'naive' to think if the White House held off that Democrats would want to 'share a cup of hot cocoa and a hug with us.' Meanwhile, his frequent claim that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is responsible for breaking the government funding process has particularly rankled Democrats. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is on the Appropriations Committee and likely to be Schumer's next No. 2, said the idea that 'you're going to blame the Democratic leader, and you control both chambers and the presidency, is plainly goofy.' 'If he wants to vote no on his own bill, I suppose he's entitled to do that. It's a little weird, but he's entitled to do it,' Schatz said. 'But there's no reason he should block the Senate from considering the legislation that he's presumably helped to craft.'


Fox News
2 hours ago
- Fox News
DAVID MARCUS: Fetterman calls fellow Democrats ‘just gross' for shunning Israel
There is a growing notion that support for Israel is becoming a divisive issue on the American right, owing mostly to a handful of influencers who nobody who isn't terminally online has ever heard of, but in fact, it's Democrats who are divided in very plain sight. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., an emerging leader in the caucus, on Friday took to X to say that "Recognizing a Palestinian State is an idea whose time has come," which mirrors plans by France, the UK, and Canada, to do just that. I pointed out to the congressman that by "handing out prizes for massacring teenagers at music festivals, Hamas will learn this lesson well and execute it in blood," which was to say, if they are rewarded, they will do it again. Here it gets interesting. As Khana points out, his proposal "explicitly calls for a democratic Palestine where Hamas is not in power and has disarmed." This led me press the congressman on whether this recognition would take place before or after Hamas actually left power. "I am for recognizing a Palestinian state (non Hamas representative) and then working with the 22 Arab countries to work on a democratic Palestine," he replied. So, in effect, the answer was that, yes, as a result of the barbarism of Oct. 7, 2023 and its aftermath, Khanna wants to reward the terrorists with the achievement of their secondary goal, a Palestinian state. Their primary goal, of course, is the destruction of Israel. I decided to see how a pro-Israel Democrat voice on Capitol Hill would react to Khanna's proposal, so I asked Sen. John Fetterman, D-Penn., to weigh in. Boy did he. "Witnessing many in the media and in my party turning Israel into a pariah state is just gross," the maverick lawmaker told me. Fetterman makes a key point here: The sudden calls for a Palestinian state are clearly not just a rebuke of Israel, but a threat to it. The Jewish state is being told to end its war, even with Hamas in power, or else. The good news here is that Rep. Khanna and his anti-Israel allies have no more power to recognize a Palestinian state than you or I have to recognize a sovereign Quebec or Alberta. The bad news is that it may be Khanna, not Fetterman who represents the zeitgeist of the Democrat party on the Israel issue. On Friday, it was Sen. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who "reaped the whirlwind," as he once put it, as protesters, including a New York City council member, descended on his office in Gotham to hoot, holler, and get arrested while voicing their opposition to Israel. It could not have happened to a more deserving member of Democrat leadership. These protesters are the wages of Schumer's fecklessness in the face of not just of anti-Israel sentiment in his party, but often, straight-up antisemitism. It was, after all, Schumer and his ilk who sat by quietly as Jewish students were harassed and chased down by pro-terrorist mobs on college campuses in recent years, a despicable situation that President Donald Trump has cracked down on. This week, 27 Senate Democrats voted to cut some military aid to Israel. No Republicans did, but that also leaves 20 Democrats who didn't. It was a pretty close margin among Democrats, even if the anti-Israel crowd is much, much louder. Ultimately, if the Khanna wing of the Democrat Party has its way, Israel will be weakened, Hamas will be strengthened, and the deadly counterbalance of the past 75 years will be reinstated. The Fetterman wing, albeit quietly aside from the Keystone state's hoodie-rocking senior senator, on the other hand, stands with Trump and almost all of the GOP in the firm belief that a return to the pre-war status quo that leaves Israel open to further attack is not acceptable. Last year, in Israel, I had the chance to speak with officials, including some in the war cabinet, and they stressed one principle over and over: Neither Hamas, nor the Palestinian cause in general, can be allowed to grow stronger than it was on October 6, 2023. It is a mystery as to why so many Democrats cannot understand that rewarding bad behavior begets more bad behavior, but whether this refusal stems from political necessity, or just hapless progressive naivete, it's dangerous. For now, it certainly seems that the virulent anti-Israel wave in the Democrat Party is washing over Fetterman and the few brave others standing for the Jewish state, like Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y. If there are others ready to stand up, now is the time.