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Here are a few of the things the Republican Party is prepared to do to protect children.

The Republican Party in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma and Kentucky is prepared to ban or strictly limit the public performance of drag and other gender-nonconforming behavior.

This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance, Jack Johnson, the Senate majority leader in Tennessee and one of the sponsors of the states ban, wrote on Twitter.

I cant think of anything good that can come from taking children and putting them in front of a bunch of grown men who are dressed like women, said Gary Stubblefield, an Arkansas state senator who wants to enact a similar ban there.

The Republican Party is prepared to ban or strictly limit discussion of L.G.B.T.Q. people and identities in public schools, as well as transgender health care for minors, to protect them from what they say is manipulation and abuse.

We dont want parents to be abusing their children, said Shay Shelnutt, an Alabama state senator whose bill to restrict teaching and ban care was signed into law last year. We dont want to make that an option, because thats what it is; its child abuse. This is just to protect children.

The Republican Party is prepared to extend this circle of protection to discussions of race and American history in public schools so-called critical race theory to protect students from guilt, shame, discomfort and any other negative emotion. Critical race theory is a divisive ideology that threatens to poison the American psyche, Dan Bishop, a state representative in North Carolina, said when he introduced the Stop CRT Act in 2021. For the sake of our childrens future, we must stop this effort to cancel the truth of our founding and our country.

And the Republican Party is prepared to strictly limit or even ban social media, over concern that platforms like TikTok and Instagram may harm the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents. We protect our children from drinking, from smoking, from driving, said Representative Chris Stewart of Utah, who has introduced a bill that would make social media companies legally liable if they fail to keep kids under 16 off their websites and applications. They cant drive when theyre 12. We should protect them from the impacts of social media.

There is a lot, in other words, that the Republican Party is prepared to do to protect children from the world at large. But there are limits. There are lines the Republican Party wont cross.

The Republican Party will not, for example, support universal school lunch to protect children from hunger. When Minnesota Democrats pushed the measure in the most recent session of the states Legislature, for example, one of their Republican colleagues strenuously objected. I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they dont have access to enough food to eat, Steve Drazkowski, a state senator, said. He, like most Republicans in the Legislature, voted against the bill.

In the United States Congress, most Republicans will not support a child allowance to keep children, and their families, out of poverty. On the question of health care, there are 10 states Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming where Republicans have refused the Medicaid expansion passed under the Affordable Care Act, depriving millions of Americans, including many children, of access to regular medical care.

And in the wake of yet another school massacre in Nashville, where a shooter killed three adults and three children at a private Christian school Republicans refuse to do anything that might reduce the odds of another shooting or make it less likely that a child dies of gun violence.

There isnt anybody here that, if they could find the right approach, wouldnt try to do something because they feel that pain, said Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota in an interview with CNNs Kaitlan Collins on Wednesday. And yet when we start talking about bans or challenging on the Second Amendment, I think the things that have already been done have gone about as far as were going to with gun control.

Its a horrible, horrible situation, said Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee, who represents the district in question. And were not gonna fix it. Criminals are gonna be criminals.

In 2021, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, firearms were the leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the United States.

When you put all of this together, the picture is clear. The Republican Party will use the law and the state to shield as many children as possible from the knowledge, cultural influences and technologies deemed divisive or controversial or subversive by the voters, activists and apparatchiks that shape and guide its priorities. When Tucker Carlson, Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty say jump, their only question is: How high?

But when it comes to actual threats to the lives of American children from poverty, from hunger, from sickness and from guns then, well, the Republican Party wants us to slow down and consider the costs and consequences and even possible futility of taking any action to help.

On Tuesday, I wrote about the fundamental deception behind the slogan parents rights. What sounds like due consideration for parents as the most important adults in the lives of most children is in fact a rallying cry for a subset of the most conservative and reactionary parents, who want a state-sanctioned hecklers veto over the education of all the children in the community. It is a Trojan horse for the slow destruction of public schools.

Something similar is true of the constant calls to protect children. The way they talk about them, these children are not real, living, vulnerable kids. They are a symbol, and the calls to protect them are an excuse, a pretext for wielding the state against the perceived cultural enemies of the American right. These champions of children arent all that interested in young people as citizens with rights and entitlements of their own.

The dark irony in all this is that as the Republican Party turns the idea of the children against gay people as well as trans and other gender-nonconforming Americans, it becomes more likely that actual kids will try to harm themselves, out of fear or despair or a sense of isolation or all of the above.

Not all children, it seems, are worthy of protection.

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Opinion | The Republican Party Says It Wants to Protect Children ... - The New York Times

Congressional Republicans took aim Wednesday at the District of Columbia City Council, the citys public schools, its surging crime and alleged mismanagement in City Hall as they advanced a resolution seeking to overturn a council vote for the second time in a month.

In a quarrelsome House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing titled Overdue Oversight of the Capital City: Part 1, Republicans such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene described Washington as an urban hellscape where criminals run rampant and schools do more to produce criminals than to teach math or reading.

Youve got some crappy schools, Rep. Gary Palmer, R-Ala., told the panels witnesses, who included D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson, Councilmember Charles Allen, Washington Chief Financial Officer Glen Lee and D.C. Police Union Chairman Greggory Pemberton. Your schools are not only dropout factories, theyre inmate factories.

An increase in some violent and property crime has put the district under a microscope.

Rep. Angie Craig, D-Minn., was assaulted in the elevator of her H Street apartment building in February before fighting off her assailant. Last week, a staffer for Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was stabbed in the head on H Street by a man who was released from prison the day before. That staffer, Phillip Todd, is in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery, but the attack was evidence to Republicans of deteriorating conditions in the nations capital.

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House Republicans paint DC as hellish in move to strike another city ... - Roll Call

WASHINGTON Two and a half years after the Department of Veterans Affairs began testing a new computer system at Spokanes VA hospital, virtually no one in Congress is satisfied with the outcome, but Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate committees responsible for the effort have different ideas about how to fix it.

On Wednesday, Democratic and Republican senators announced separate bills aimed at improving the electronic health record system, for which the VA is paying $10 billion to Oracle after the tech giant acquired Cerner, the company behind the software. The legislation was unveiled two weeks after VA officials told senators problems with the system had contributed to six cases of catastrophic harm, including the deaths of four veterans.

Republicans on the House VA Committee released legislation in January that would freeze or cancel the systems rollout and Democrats on the panel followed March 22 with two bills intended to improve the management and oversight of VA projects.

The flurry of legislation comes at a turning point for the beleaguered effort to replace the VAs existing computer system with Oracle Cerners, which began in 2017 when then-President Donald Trump promised the deal brokered by his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, would give veterans faster, better and far better quality care.

Since the system was launched at Spokanes Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center and its affiliated clinics across the Inland Northwest in October 2020, it has had the opposite effect, according to a Spokesman-Review investigation.

Top VA officials in charge of the program have left the department in the wake of revelations that a problem with the system led to roughly 150 cases of harm to veterans. An internal VA report shared with Congress in March identified several other problems.

Deputy Secretary Donald Remy officially stepped down Saturday, after he told lawmakers in November 2021 that the system worked and the department had properly positioned it for success despite having been informed of the incidents of harm. Terry Adirim, the executive in charge of the systems rollout, resigned in February. Months after Remy shared information about the patient harm with her, according to the VA Office of Inspector General, Adirim told lawmakers last April she didnt believe there was any evidence the Oracle Cerner system had harmed any patients or that it will.

After multiple delays prompted by the problems that have emerged from VA facilities using the system in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, Montana and Ohio, VA officials have said they plan to launch it in June at a hospital in Saginaw, Michigan. As that date approaches and the system continues to affect veterans where it is already in use, heres a look at the legislative proposals to fix it.

The bill unveiled Wednesday by Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Patty Murray of Washington and Sherrod Brown of Ohio would mandate that the VA set clear criteria that must be met before the system is launched at additional sites something VA leaders have said they are already working on and require the department and Oracle Cerner to fix the systems problems that were identified in a recent VA report.

This legislation will put into law the kind of aggressive oversight necessary to fix the current system thats my first priority, Murray said in a statement.

The Senate Democrats bill also would require the VA to appoint an official to negotiate a more favorable contract with Oracle Cerner and to develop a plan B for a new electronic health record system in case the company doesnt agree to the new contract. Other provisions in the legislation aim to reform the VAs acquisition process to avoid similar contracting blunders in the future.

Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, the top Republican on the Senate VA Committee, introduced his bill along with several other GOP senators, including Mike Crapo and Jim Risch of Idaho. Their legislation, which is relatively narrow, would require the VA secretary to certify in writing to the panel that the system has met minimum standards for stability, safety and usability that would be defined by senior VA leaders.

Our nations veterans have gone through too much to see delays in services due to technology errors, Risch said in a statement. The VA in Spokane, which serves North Idaho veterans, has experienced significant slowdowns. While the VA appropriately postponed the deployment of the Oracle Cerner system to other facilities, Congress must intervene to protect the health care needs of our veterans.

In a statement, Crapo said it would be irresponsible to continue the systems rollout before all concerns have been properly and adequately addressed.

The language in the Senate Republicans bill is similar to language included by Murray, Tester and others in the government funding bill Congress passed in December. But it would go a step further by blocking the systems launch rather than simply withholding funds.

It marks something of a change in tone from Moran, who represents many employees of Kansas City-based Cerner and has been quieter about the systems flaws than Democrats on the Senate panel and his GOP counterparts in the House.

On March 22, Reps. Mark Takano of California and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida the top Democrats on the House VA Committee and a subcommittee charged with oversight of the Oracle Cerner project, respectively announced two separate bills that take a broader view of the VAs challenges.

The House Democrats first piece of legislation would create a new position at the VA, under secretary for management, to consolidate and standardize business functions across the department. Their second bill would require the VA to commission independent assessments of four major modernization programs, including the effort to replace the departments current electronic health record system.

While I am encouraged by President Bidens and Secretary McDonoughs efforts to make investments in our veterans a top priority in recent years, it is time we also invest in making sure that veterans and taxpayers are getting what they pay for a modernized and efficiently managed VA, Takano said in a statement.

Republicans on the House VA Committee including Chairman Mike Bost of Ohio and Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana, who chairs a key subcommittee have so far taken the most hard-edged approach to the Oracle Cerner systems problems. In January, they joined fellow GOP Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Spokane, Dan Newhouse of Sunnyside and several others to introduce a bill that would halt the systems rollout until the local and regional leaders of each VA medical center approve its launch.

Separately, Rosendale introduced a bill which only Bost has co-sponsored so far that would cancel the project altogether. While the bill backed by McMorris Rodgers and others appears to be a more moderate option, Oracle executive Ken Glueck told The Spokesman-Review in February it would be an even worse outcome for his company, because it would kill the project slowly.

In contrast to House Democrats and senators from both parties, the House Republicans have expressed openness to reverting to the VAs existing electronic health record system, known as VistA, which is still used at all but five of the departments 171 medical centers. Even if the Oracle Cerner system is eventually implemented across the VA health care system, the department will likely rely on VistA for at least several more years.

Despite their differences, the bills introduced by Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate have significant areas of overlap that could form the basis of bipartisan, bicameral legislation. But even if that happens, it isnt likely to pass Congress and be signed into law by the president before the Oracle Cerner system is scheduled to launch in Michigan this summer.

The VA has shown more caution in recent months about continuing the systems rollout. Meanwhile, Oracle executives have pledged to pour resources into improving the systems flaws since the company acquired Cerner in a deal worth more than $28 billion last June. While lawmakers weigh the pros and cons of putting more taxpayer money into the project, the system continues to impact veterans and VA employees in the Inland Northwest, southern Oregon and central Ohio.

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Democrats, Republicans offer competing bills to fix VA computer ... - The Spokesman Review

Fights over increasing the nations borrowing authority have been contentious in Congress, yet follow a familiar pattern: Time and again, lawmakers found a way to step back from the brink before markets began to panic and the nation risked a dangerous default on its debt.

But this years fight has a different feel, some lawmakers say.

A new Republican majority in the House is itching for a spending showdown, and determined not to yield. They blame what they view as excessive federal spending for higher food and gasoline prices and the growing national debt. Led by Speaker Kevin McCarthy, they have ruled out passing a clean debt ceiling increase even as the White House insists such legislation be passed without conditions. Its an impasse that shows no signs of easing ahead of this summers deadline for action.

Very worried. Very worried, was how Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., a close McCarthy ally, described his outlook. And frankly, I dont see how we get there at this point. Theres no process set up, theres no dialogue, theres no discussion.

The political conditions are comparable to 2011, when a new Republican majority swept into power after a resounding election win and was determined to confront a Democratic White House and extract major spending cuts in return for a debt limit increase.

To resolve that stalemate, Congress passed and President Barack Obama signed the Budget Control Act. The bill temporarily allowed borrowing to resume, set new spending limits and created a bipartisan supercommittee to recommend at least $1.2 trillion more in deficit reduction over 10 years. Republicans and Democrats on the panel failed to compromise, however, triggering automatic reductions in spending.

But some damage was done. Standard & Poors Ratings Services downgraded U.S. debt for the first time that year because it lacked confidence political leaders would make the choices needed to avert a long-term fiscal crisis.

In 2013, Obama took a different tack. He made clear early on there would be no negotiations on must-pass legislation to prevent a U.S. default, and he never wavered.

A partial government shutdown, which began Oct. 1, swiftly coincided with the prospects of a default. On Oct. 16, Congress passed legislation to end the twin threats and GOP lawmakers who demanded to roll back Obamas signature health care law got nothing for their efforts. We fought the good fight. We just didnt win, conceded then-House Speaker John Boehner.

Republicans say they are determined that Biden, who was Obamas vice president during both of those debt ceiling battles, will have to follow the path set in 2011 not the one set in 2013.

President Biden is not President Obama, right? said Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., the leader of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. His poll numbers are in the tank and theyre going to keep going down.

The result, Perry said, is that Biden doesnt have the political standing to ignore House Republicans.

Look, theres gonna be shrapnel all around, right. Right? Perry said. Everybody might take some wounds from it, but hes not walking out of this thing unscathed.

After a tumultuous start to the new Congress in which Republicans struggled to elect a speaker, they are taking great pains to show unity. Moderates and conservatives in the House are adamant: Biden must engage.

Any damage in Treasury markets and the bond market, to the economy, will fall at the feet of the president of the United States because hes the one that started this entire saga saying he wanted no negotiations, said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.

Hes got to meet us partway, added Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb.

Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia said what concerns him most is that some Republicans believe the damage from a federal default is manageable, rather than to be avoided at all costs.

Some of these people are substituting belief for empirical evidence and dont accept the warnings of economists, Wall Street, Janet Yellen, Connolly said.

Breaching the debt ceiling is different than a federal government shutdown. The government can continue to operate once the Treasury has exhausted its cash-on-hand. But outgoing payments would be limited to incoming revenue. Not all payments could be made on time and in full. Many fear such an event would shake the foundations of the global financial system.

Some lawmakers dont believe the consequences would be that devastating. Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., said breaching the debt limit without an agreement to increase it would force prioritization of our spending.

Im not afraid of that, quite frankly, Good said.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the government may be unable to pay all its bills as soon as June. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys Analytics, told a House panel this week the so-called X Day is likely to occur in mid-August. He said market pressures will likely build after Congress returns from its July 4th recess.

As we can see from recent events given the banking crisis, the system is very fragile at this point in time, Zandi said. Adding the debt limit as an issue for investors would be particularly inopportune.

He said there would be immediate and long-term consequences from a default.

I think under any scenario, we would go into recession, it would be severe, financial markets would be upended, Zandi said.

In the Senate, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is encouraging negotiations. I think Kevin McCarthy has been most reasonable, he said.

GOP leadership in the Senate has also voiced support for McCarthys efforts. But some Senate Republicans say spending fights should be relegated to the annual spending bills that Congress passes to fund government agencies. An increase in the debt limit doesnt authorize new federal spending it only allows borrowing to pay for what Congress has already approved.

Look, if we have disagreements on spending, and if we have to close government to resolve things, so be it, but threatening a collapse of the U.S. and world economy without raising the debt ceiling is, in my opinion, a weapon that is too severe, said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah.

There have been roughly 80 deals to raise or suspend the borrowing cap since the 1960s. Romney noted that the debt ceiling was extended, with the help of Democrats, multiple times during Donald Trumps presidency.

Of course, last time you had President Trump as the individual pushing to raise the debt ceiling, but somehow when we have a Democratic president, we find religion, Romney said.

The focus on the debt limit, now at about $31.4 trillion, intensified this week with McCarthy sending a letter to Biden warning that his position of not negotiating could prevent America from meeting its obligations and hold dire ramifications for the entire nation.

In a formal response, Biden signaled that he would not be willing to meet directly with the speaker until House Republicans released their own budget plan, which he asked McCarthy to do before lawmakers left Washington on Thursday for the Easter recess.

As I have repeatedly said, that conversation must be separate from prompt action on the Congress basic obligation to pay the Nations bills and avoid economic catastrophe, Biden wrote.

The letters did not appear to generate any progress or good will. Republicans left town without proposing a budget. And McCarthy accused Biden on Thursday of making the decision to put the economy in jeopardy, while seemingly making a crack about the presidents age.

I dont know what more I can do and how easy. I would bring the lunch to the White House. I would make it soft food if thats what he wants, McCarthy said, prompting laughter from other Republicans in the room.

____

Associated Press staff writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

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Republicans largely shrug off warnings on debt ceiling as they smell blood, saying Bidens poll numbers are in the tank and theyre going to keep going...

In the weeks before their massive energy package reached the House floor, some Republicans were aghast about marine mammal deaths and blamed the burgeoning offshore wind industry.

They said the rush to build out offshore wind in the Atlantic has been killing whales at a rapid clip and they tried to use the legislation to address their concerns.

Like the canary in the coal mine, the recent spate of tragic whale deaths shed new light and increased scrutiny to the fast-tracking of thousands of wind turbines off our coast, Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) declared at a packed field hearing in New Jersey earlier this month.

The concern among Republicans was great enough that it cast some doubt on whether the energy package, H.R. 1, the Lower Energy Costs Act, would have enough votes to pass. In the end, concerned lawmakers got whale- and wind-focused provisions added.

Despite that resolution, the issue shows no sign of dying down. Former President Donald Trump famously railed against wind turbines. And conservative media and commentators like Fox News Tucker Carlson, who has been running a series titled The Biden Whale Extinction, have continued elevating the issue on the right.

Since December, 30 whales have been found dead along the Atlantic coast, many of them in New Jersey. Eight dolphins were found dead in New Jersey this week.

Though NOAA Fisheries says there is no evidence that preparations to build offshore wind facilities were the cause of the deaths, and blamed many deaths on vessel strikes, that hasnt stopped Republicans from beating the drum on the issue.

Democrats are dismissing the outrage as a blatant attempt to give fossil fuel interests an advantage. They say the sudden concern amounts to misinformation backed by oil money and the Koch network.

Given their political track record on not supporting a lot of conservation bills, the argument does ring hollow, said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), ranking member of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.

Renewable energy proponents acknowledge that all human activity in the ocean poses impacts whether from oil and gas or wind energy.

The fates of all sectors are intertwined, said Alex Herrgott, a former Trump administration official and president of the Permitting Institute, a nonprofit with offshore wind and oil and gas members. You cant single out one for attack without creating a new hurdle for the sector you were trying to help.

Ultimately, he said, whales dont care what the drilling, surveys and vessel traffic is for.

At one point this week, the uproar over wind energy seemed big enough to threaten the Lower Energy Costs Act. Ultimately, it passed the House on Thursday mostly along party lines.

Multiple amendments requiring the federal government to study a range of potential offshore wind turbine impacts eased concerns among Republicans and got Democratic buy-in.

One, from Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), would require the Government Accountability Office to study the impact on, among other things, military readiness (E&E Daily, March 30).

Another, from Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), would require the GAO to publish a report on all potential adverse effects of wind in the North Atlantic Planning Area. Those include maritime safety, the economy, the environment and endangered species.

People are really concerned, and theyre not all Republicans; theyre independents, middle-of-the-roaders, Van Drew, who helped lead the field hearing, told E&E News. People love whales and dolphins, and this gets them going.

Democrats, meanwhile, tried to offer an amendment in favor of wind, but it failed. Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) scoffed at the Republican-led amendments, saying they gave hot air to the fictions about offshore wind.

He pointed to information from NOAA stating there is no specific links between recent large whale mortalities and currently ongoing surveys.

The clean energy lobby argued that federal agencies have been studying an increase in whale deaths since 2016 well before any offshore wind construction began.

Disinformation shouldnt dictate policy, American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet said.

One of the key witnesses from the March New Jersey field hearing, David Stevenson, has been a consistent opponent of offshore wind projects (E&E Daily, March 17). The organization he works for, the Caesar Rodney Institute, has received funding from American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers. CRI is also connected to the State Policy Network, which receives money from Koch network foundations.

House Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), one of the chief drivers of H.R. 1, laughed off the idea that dark money groups were potentially driving the anti-offshore wind push.

I find that amazing, he said during an interview at the Republican retreat in Orlando, Fla., earlier this month. It doesnt change the fact that there are dead whales washing up on the shore. You would think the environmental groups would be raising the red flag. But they are turning a blind eye.

Westerman and several other Republicans interviewed for this story called Democrats guilty of double standards.

Had that happened in the Gulf of Mexico, everybody would be blaming the oil industry, he said.

The only thing that is changing on the East Coast is the wind industry. I dont know if thats affecting the whales or not, but we should probably do some kind of a study to find out what is causing those whale deaths.

Westermans remarks were before the energy bill hit the House floor. But by Wednesday, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) was willing to point the finger at the energy transition.

The Green New Deal is on the backs of marine life, he said. Its something that, in this rush to renewables, Democrats frankly ignore.

The whale issue could put Democrats in a difficult spot.

At a recent hearing, Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.) pressed an oil executive whether he cared about whale deaths specifically blaming seismic surveys.

It did not take long for offshore wind proponents to take note and worry that those arguments could come back to bite Democrats, especially since wind energy requires seafloor-penetrating surveying and pile driving during construction activities.

When asked about the whale-and-wind issue, other climate-minded Democrats downplayed concerns.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said theres no evidence of wind activities affecting whales.

I think this is another evidence-free effort to try to interfere with [energy] competition for their fossil fuel overlords, he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), a senior member on the House Natural Resources Committee, argued that for the last decade Democrats have authored bills to protect marine mammals, particularly the right whale with little Republican support.

But this interest in whales just suddenly springs up when offshore wind is starting to take off and threaten fossil fuels, he said.

Just this week, the White House put out a fact sheet detailing its advances on offshore wind. President Joe Biden has set a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind electricity by 2030.

Still, Democrats are beginning to press the administration on the whale deaths. In a letter this week to NOAA, five senators raised concerns on the matter, though they did not mention the offshore wind industry.

Republicans were more inclined to support offshore wind when it was still a futuristic energy source, said Dave Anderson of the Clean Energy Policy Institute, which advocates for renewables. Now that it stands to seriously compete with oil and gas, he argued, they oppose it.

Its easy to say nice things about renewables when they are not actually happening, he said.

In 2019, when the Trump administration delayed the Vineyard Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts and ordered more environmental reviews, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined Northeast Democrats to urge the administration to move ahead.

We believe it is possible for multiple industries to coexist in mixed use regions offshore, the bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote in their letter.

But this week, the now-House majority leader was singing a different tune: I mean, there are whales that are showing up dead on the beach, he told reporters.

Industry sources do acknowledge they have a public relations problem.

We can complain all we want that its not us, but theres a huge constituency out there, both on the left and the right, that believes that sound kills whales in the oceans, said one industry lobbyist, granted anonymity to speak candidly. And we have not spent nearly enough to fight that dynamic.

Reporters Timothy Cama and Heather Richards contributed.

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Why Republicans suddenly hate offshore wind - E&E News