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2026-01-14 06:26:48

A Republican-appointed majority of Supreme Court justices appeared ready to uphold two state laws that ban transgender women and girls from participating on girls and women’s school sports teams. Though the scope of the rulings and how sweeping its implications will be both remain unclear, oral arguments on Tuesday showed there are likely at least five votes for upholding transgender sports bans in Idaho and West Virginia.

The justices heard two cases on Tuesday, one brought by a college student in Idaho and one brought by a now-high school student in West Virginia. Going into oral arguments, there were fears that the justices—who have amassed a recent track record of ruling against the rights of trans people—might use the occasion to broadly undermine transgender rights, and not just in school sports. And in both cases, a majority of the court’s right wing appeared ready to rule in favor of the laws and against exceptions for either plaintiff. But whether or not the rulings would have further impact remained unclear. A decision in the cases is likely to come at the end of the term in June.

One key vote appears to be Chief Justice John Roberts, who six years ago joined the landmark Bostock decision finding that discrimination against gay and transgender people in employment contexts is illegal sex discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Bostock was a 6-3 decision authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, and joined by Roberts as well as four Democratic appointees. There are now just three Democratic appointees, lowering the current Bostock majority down to five. But on Tuesday, when it comes to whether to allow banning trans students from sports, Roberts’ comments indicated that he was switching teams.

“In terms of Bostock, I understand that to say that discrimination on the basis of transgender status is discrimination on the basis of sex,” Roberts said Tuesday. “But the question here is whether or not a sex-based classification is necessarily a transgender classification.”

The idea put forth by Roberts here is that while transgender discrimination is part of the sex discrimination Venn diagram, rules limiting team membership to a single-sex do not necessarily target transgender people. This may be technically true, but it’s too cute in this context. It allows Roberts to ignore the obvious, purposeful effect of discriminating against trans people by using terms like biological sex rather than the term transgender. There is a long history of discriminating against classes of people without specifically naming the target—literacy tests and grandfather clauses come to mind.

Roberts’ comments are unsurprising. He made essentially the same argument last year in authoring the Skrmetti decision, in which the court allowed states to ban gender affirming medical care for transgender minors on the grounds that the prohibitions were based on age and on medical use—even though it was clear that the laws were targeted at transgender kids. In this way, Roberts’ logic provides a door to more anti-trans discrimination under the guise of legitimate purposes.

Gorsuch, who authored Bostock, was harder to pin down during oral argument, but he too indicated that he sees school sports as different from Bostock‘s workplace context. Even if Gorsuch were to surprise courtwatchers and side with the plaintiffs, it appeared unlikely that there is a fifth vote to either strike down the laws or, as the three Democratic appointees were pushing for, allow exceptions for transgender athletes who prove they do not have a biological advantage over their cisgender teammates. 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh raised the possibility using the case to ban trans students’ participation in sports in states where they are currently allowed to join girls and women’s teams, and even repeatedly asked whether allowing transgender women and girls to play alongside cis women and girls actually violated the rights of those cis teammates under Title IX, which requires equal opportunities in education. He called sports a “zero-sum game” in which a trans player inevitably costs a cis player a spot on the team, or the podium, or a college recruitment offer. The ACLU’s Joshua Block, arguing for transgender teen Becky Pepper-Jackson of West Virginia, responded that girls lose these opportunities to other girls all the time. If they lose them to a trans girl whose medical transition has erased any biological advantage, then there’s no real difference. 

As Block points out, the question of whether trans athletes have an advantage animates the arguments on both sides. The science is unclear. The plaintiffs argue that if they can show there is no unfair advantage, then they should be allowed to play. The states, as well as the Trump administration, argue there should not be exceptions. 

The question of whether the biological sex requirement should be waived for trans athletes who can demonstrate no advantage was a long and technical part of oral argument, but it also was particularly revealing. One side says if there’s no advantage, let them play. The other side still says no.

2026-01-14 03:30:15

With the death toll reportedly surging in the thousands as Iran continues to brutally suppress the nationwide demonstrations over the country’s economic collapse, President Donald Trump on Tuesday urged Iranians to keep protesting the regime.

“Iranian Patriots, KEEP PROTESTING,” he posted on social media. “TAKE OVER YOUR INSTITUTIONS!!! Save the names of the killers and abusers. They will pay a big price.”

In perhaps the strongest signal yet that the US could be planning to intervene, Trump added, “HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!”

The president’s message came as the number of dead is estimated to be as many as 2,000 to 3,000. According to a report by the Associated Press, Iranian state TV first recognized the devastating death toll on Tuesday. Reports from inside the brutal crackdown have been limited after Iran shut down internet service last Thursday and blocked calls from outside the country.

The unrest, which started in December after the country’s currency collapsed, has prompted the Trump administration to threaten military strikes against Iran if it continues to kill protesters. “Diplomacy is always the first option for the president,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday. “However, with that said, the president has shown he is not afraid to use military options if he deems it necessary.” On Monday, Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on any country that does business with Iran, potentially leading to further economic turmoil for Iran.

Iran’s head of the country’s Supreme National Security Council also shot back at Trump’s message on Tuesday with the following:

Trump’s encouraging words for protesters in Iran come as his administration cracks down on protesters at home after the killing of Renée Good, the 37-year-old woman who was shot multiple times and killed by an ICE officer in Minneapolis last week. The glaring dissonance has been especially evident in the administration’s accusation that Good was guilty of “domestic terrorism,” as well as its apparent approval of federal agents continuing to brutalize, and sometimes shoot, at protesters. 

As my colleague Jeremy Schulman wrote on Sunday, Trump’s second-term crackdown on dissent started with pro-Palestinian activists, and never stopped.

Early last year, ICE began arresting and attempting to deport people with legal immigration status—such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk—who had engaged in pro-Palestinian activism or expressed pro-Palestinian views. The administration was explicit about the new policy. Troy Edgar, Trump’s deputy secretary of Homeland Security, made clear that the government was seeking to remove Khalil in large part because he’d chosen to “protest” against Israel.

2026-01-14 00:02:28

In much of the world, Grok and its parent company both appear to be in serious trouble. After Grok, X’s AI chatbot, has been used to generate sexualized and violent images of women and children, the social media company has faced a wave of backlash and censure, with new nationwide bans on accessing Grok in place and other consequences on the way. On Monday, the EU threatened to fine X under its broad Digital Services Act if it didn’t act “quickly” to fix Grok, in the words of one regulator.

But within the secure confines of Elon Musk’s own mind, Grok is not only wildly successful, but “solid as a rock,” as he tweeted on Monday, with the goal of pursuing “the deeper truth and appreciation of beauty.”

The outrage over Grok’s lack of guardrails has been raging for weeks, after X delivered an update on Christmas Eve which allowed users to edit images and videos on the app. That included other people’s images and videos, and the tool was inevitably and quickly used for violently sexualized campaigns against the platform’s female users. Images of women in street clothes were undressed and images of women in hijabs and other religious modesty garments had them removed, as users generated images of women and girls bloodied and bruised. X eventually limited the tool to paid subscribers, which seems to mean that you can still make nonconsensual images if you pay for the privilege. 

The Internet Watch Foundation, a UK non-profit, says it has uncovered “criminal imagery” of minor children generated by the tool. The UK’s Office of Communications, or Ofcom, the country’s regulatory body for communications services, says it has opened a formal investigation into X over the generation of nonconsensual images. In a statement reprinted by the Guardian and other outlets, Ofcom said it found reports “of Grok being used to create and share illegal nonconsensual intimate images and child sexual abuse material… deeply concerning,” adding that platforms “must protect people in the UK from content that’s illegal in the UK.” Citing the “risk of harm to children,” Ofcom pledged an investigation “as a matter of the highest priority.” Other countries have already acted: over the weekend, the governments of Malaysia and Indonesia both suspended access to Grok because of the generation of nonconsensual sexual images. 

As he has in the past, Musk has largely stayed out of the discussion involving Grok, his most hideous and beloved child. But he has occasionally mounted public defenses of the AI platform; on January 3, he told a user, “Anyone using Grok to make illegal content will suffer the same consequences as if they upload illegal content.”

Overall, Musk has suggested that criticism of Grok is from people who “just want to suppress free speech,” and his broader strategy seems to be trying to focus on what he seems to see as the tool’s artistic value. Since the newest version of the tool was made available, Musk has shared several images and videos made by Grok that he considers to be beautiful or impressive, providing an interesting window into his definitions of those terms. They include a heavily made-up woman singing for four seconds, modelesque women dancing in dresses made of flowers, and a near-mute combination of those two things. He also reshared faked videos of a dragon swimming and a guy doing parkour on top of a tall building. Most recently, he reposted a Grok video of a busty, armor-clad vaguely Grecian-looking figure striding through stone ruins, declaring it to be “beautiful.” 

Musk has also imputed sentience and motivations to Grok, taking on a loopy, quasi-religious tone when he discusses the tool. “Compared to other AIs, Grok is solid as a rock,” he declared in a tweet on Monday. “And it will get much better. Eternally curious to know the deeper truth and appreciation of beauty are its goals.” He’s previously said that Grok is “on the side of the angels.” As part of his continued and oft-stated ambitions to have X be the one, global company that everyone uses for everything, he’s also claimed that Grok and Optimus, the “humanoid robot” Tesla has claimed it is developing, could take the place of “government healthcare,” as Musk tweeted on Christmas. “Government healthcare is like having the DMV as your doctor,” he wrote. “Grok and Optimus will provide incredible healthcare for all.” 

Meanwhile, in the more earthbound realities in which the rest of us live, one of the harshest critics of Grok to emerge on X is the mother of Elon Musk’s 13th known child, conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, who has tweeted that she’s had “countless” explicit images made of her by the tool’s users. Her account’s blue verification checkmark was removed when she complained, she has claimed, and she says she was then banned from subscribing to Twitter Premium, the service that allows accounts to be monetized and subscribers access to what the company calls “increased usage limits” on Grok. (In a separate but related bit of messiness, Musk claimed he would file for sole custody of the pair’s son, accusing St. Clair of “planning to transition” the child after St. Clair apologized for past insensitive and inflammatory statements she’s made about transgender people.)   

“I’ve had women send me the most horrid images Grok has produced of them,” St. Clair tweeted on January 6. “And the emails from the platform saying there was no violation of ToS [terms of service]. These women are distraught + at a complete loss for what to do.” 

2026-01-13 23:56:37

On Sunday night, news broke that the Justice Department has commenced a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, an unprecedented move that marked an aggressive escalation of Donald Trump’s ongoing effort to seize more control of the historically independent Fed, which sets monetary policy for the US economy.

For months, Trump has expressed frustration with Powell because the Fed has refused to decidedly lower interest rates. The administration claims that this investigation is not retaliation for the president’s dissatisfaction with the Fed, but rather about lies Powell allegedly has told about the $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s office building in Washington, DC. In a rare public statement on Sunday night, the usually reserved Powell called out this framing: “The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the President,” he said.

The investigation has raised concerns among economists and the business world about the potential impact to the US economy if a first-in-history DOJ prosecution against the Fed chair is allowed to move forward—and how it might compare to cases of political intimidation or prosecution of central bankers in other countries, from Turkey to Argentina.

I spoke to Jason Furman about these questions. A Harvard economist, Furman previously served as President Barack Obama’s chief economist, leading his Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) during Obama’s second term. On Monday, Furman signed on to a statement decrying the Powell investigation that is cosigned by every living former Fed chair, as well as former Treasury secretaries and CEA chairs who’ve served both Democratic and Republican presidents.

Our conversation below, edited for length and clarity, explores the importance of central bank independence to strong economies, and the grave consequences that have arisen around the globe when that independence has been compromised.

Let’s back up for a second: Why is central bank independence important?

If you don’t have an independent central bank, you’re investing enormous power in a president who can abuse it and follow their whims.

There are also two broader arguments: Number one is that we have fiat money, which means you can print as much as you want, whenever you want. That is a wonderful, amazing thing to help respond to recessions and prevent depressions, but it also can be really abused and cause a lot of inflation. So, we need some way to make sure that it’s limited. An independent central bank is the way to have your cake and eat it too—a fiat currency that you can use aggressively to respond to recessions, without a huge amount of inflation.

Finally, there’s been an awful lot of economics research for several decades now which has documented that the more independent your central bank, the lower your inflation, the lower your interest rates, at no cost at all, in terms of recessions or higher unemployment and the like. So, it really does empirically seem to be a free lunch.

The statement you signed on Monday, along with other economists who’ve served at the highest levels of government, is short—just four sentences. One of them says that this attack on Powell is akin to what happens in nations that have far less developed economies than America’s—what you call “emerging markets with weak institutions.” What are some of them?

There are examples in other places, though many of them get complicated. In Zimbabwe, they prosecuted the central banker. The central banker probably had messed up pretty badly the way they handled monetary policy, but they also messed it up badly because they listened to the government. So they listened to the government, caused a lot of inflation, and then got prosecuted for it. Indonesia had a case like this, though it’s possible that the central bank actually was somewhat corrupt and had misused money.

So when you start looking at cases in emerging markets with weaker institutions, you know, there’s a certain amount of messiness and complexity that differs from the unfortunately simple, clear-cut thing happening the United States right now: Jay Powell is not corrupt. The people prosecuting him are.

What happened in these other markets once central bank independence was compromised?

In Argentina, they ended up with so much inflation they stopped publishing the data. They had a massive default, a very, very deep recession, and ended up with the largest bailout program in the history of the International Monetary Fund. The poverty rate went up. The unemployment rate went up. This was in 2015, but in 2001, Argentina had a similar recession, and dozens of people were killed in demonstrations related to it. Zimbabwe ended up with inflation in the trillions of percent—just absolutely mind-boggling—and almost complete economic collapse.

So these, to me, are very, very extreme warnings for the United States. Of course, I don’t think the United States is going to be like Zimbabwe anytime soon, but the reason it’s not going to be is precisely if we know about those examples, talk about them, and make sure that they don’t happen here.

You also mentioned these countries in a post on Bluesky, where you listed governments that have either prosecuted or threatened to prosecute central bankers as political intimidation or punishment for monetary policy. It’s a long list! Is there one country that is a particularly relevant example for what seems to be starting here?

The closest analogy to what President Trump is trying to do is what President Recep Erdogan did in Turkey.

So Turkey had a relatively high inflation rate. It was in the low double digits, and President Erdogan thought that the way to reduce inflation was to cut interest rates. When his central banker refused, the person was fired. In another case, a central banker was threatened with criminal prosecution and investigated for officially unrelated things—but it was obviously about the choice of monetary policy. That central banker was forced out in the face of this investigation.

Then Erdogan got someone along the lines of what he wanted: They cut interest rates dramatically. Inflation took off and rose to 85 percent. There has been a lot of suffering in Turkey in the years since, and a lot of political discontent. The systems that are meant to protect central banks from being overly politicized failed in Turkey, and the result was a very serious crisis for people there.

So Erdogan prosecuted central bankers for something unrelated—but it was clearly a punishment for monetary policy the leader didn’t like. That rings true with what is now happening with Powell, where the investigation is ostensibly into his statements about the renovation of the Fed’s DC headquarters.  But how far does that analogy extend? How likely is it that the chain of events turns out like they did in Turkey?

I do think the United States is very different from Turkey, and so Trump is much less likely to succeed. There are a few protections here. One is that monetary policy is made by the votes of 12 people on a committee (the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s primary policymaking body), and the chair of that committee is just one of the 12. I think that those 12 people historically often did what the chair told them to do. But they are getting increasingly independent. And if they thought it was Donald Trump trying to tell them what to do, they would get more independent.

The second protection is the Senate, which has had way too little backbone over the last year, but when it comes to things that might mess with financial markets and the stock market, you’re seeing a little bit of backbone: Two senators have already come out strongly critical of this, talking about concrete actions they’re going to take to not confirm anyone else to the Fed as long as this [Powell investigation] is going on.

And then finally, it’s just hard for me to imagine that US courts would follow through. With [the Justice Department prosecutions of] James Comey and Leticia James, the courts threw those cases out. And if there was a really, truly spurious case here—and this looks like a really, truly spurious case—I have enough faith in the legal system, which has placed some constraints on Trump in general and looks like it’s going to place more constraints when business and the economy are at stake.

This is the latest and most dramatic turn in a list of actions the administration has taken to assert more control over the Fed—like Trump’s ongoing court battle to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook. Why do you think the Trump administration is doing this?

I think Trump has a deep-seated conviction from decades in the real estate industry that low interest rates let you do more. My guess is the low interest rates help him personally. But I actually don’t think that’s the essential motive here. I think he is capable of all sorts of personal corruption, but in this case, it’s much more a mindset of: You think it’s good for you, you think it’s good for the world, and you think it’s good for a lot of the people around you.

So what Donald Trump would love is to be able to change the independence of the Central Bank tomorrow. To do that, he would need to be able to fire people or intimidate them into leaving with criminal prosecution. My guess is the courts will stop that from happening. So then, the threat here is not a sort of instant decapitation—it is a longer-term, patient effort.

Even if the courts stop a prosecution from happening, Trump does get one appointment to a vacancy, both Fed governor and chair slot this year. He gets another appointment two years from now. Maybe someone else leaves early, and he gets another appointment. Over six years President Trump and his successor could appoint multiple people and basically use that to take over.

If that longer-term takeover happens, how much closer do you think monetary policy gets to some of these extreme emerging market situations that you’ve talked about?

I don’t think it’s something that would happen super-fast, but it could last a long time: You know, Argentina was a great economy, and now it’s very different than the United States. And central bank independence really is one of those few items you’d have on the list as to why those two countries are so different.

So I don’t know how much closer it gets. It depends on just how rigid the people appointed are. And just how much they’re willing to ignore warning signs in markets—and their own appearance with the public that they would be failing.

2026-01-13 20:30:00

The right likes to pretend that President Donald Trump is antiwar. This has always been more useful delusion than fact, but there was once a half-truth buried in there. During a 2015 Republican primary debate, Trump broke with GOP orthodoxy by calling the second Iraq War a “big, fat mistake.” At rallies, he promised to stop “using our military to create democracies in countries with no democratic history.”

For the right-wing intellectuals who take cues from isolationist Pat Buchanan, this rupture was an opportunity. These men had long recommended that the United States stop trying to export democracy and import immigrants. Trump gave them a vessel; they gave him substance.

In his 2016 essay “The Flight 93 Election,” writer and future White House national security strategist ­Michael Anton made the most famous argument for Trump as antiwar. Norms did not matter, Anton wrote. The West was dying. Trump was an anti-globalism antidote to decline. Under him, the US would no longer wage “endless, pointless, winless” wars, Anton pseudonymously promised. He would focus on America first.

However suspect the logic of an antiwar Trump, it has persisted for more than a decade. When then-Sen. JD Vance pledged his support for the president, after once wondering whether he was the next Hitler, he said it was because Trump had “started no wars.”

But casting Trump as “Donald the Dove” was always ridiculous. In 2016, Trump’s opposition to the Iraq invasion was simply that we’d lost a war. He supported invasion in the early 2000s and, to this day, is mainly upset we didn’t take the oil on the way out. Trump’s barbs at his 2016 opponent made clear the actual problem he saw. The issue with US foreign policy was not war, but, as Trump groused, that “Hillary Clinton favors what has been called ‘military adventurism.’”

“Adventurism” has become the buzzword that MAGA wields to contrast themselves with previous regimes, even as they fight the same conflicts and forge new ones. The US lost when it ­invaded countries like Vietnam and Iraq because those campaigns were based on flimsy pretexts with abstract, unattainable goals and sold to the public as virtuous missions. In December, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained the Trump administration strategy to Fox News as “not isolationism,” but also “not adventurism,” which he defined as when “there’s a problem in the world and the only solution to it is for the United States to send military assets to go solve it.” If only the US waged leaner and meaner wars, without sentimental moralizing, it would win. This is why Trump, who claims he’s stopped at least eight wars, is now overseeing what he and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth insist on calling the Department of War.

The idea, outlined in a National Security Strategy (NSS) memo released in December, is that America should win the fights we choose, and should choose those fights based solely on our “core national interests.” The document defines these “interests” so broadly—“freedom of navigation,” preventing an “adversarial power from dominating the Middle East,” ensuring the power of US quantum computing—that one struggles to imagine a reason that would not qualify. But this haziness has not stopped right-wing proclamations of a new age of restraint. “No more undefined missions. No more open-ended conflicts,” now–Vice President Vance told Navy cadets last May. “We ought to be cautious in deciding to throw a punch, but when we throw a punch, we throw a punch hard, and we do it decisively.”

Despite such talk, Trump has acted less like a shrewd realist and more like a bully. Immediately after retaking office, he threatened to take back the Panama Canal and annex Canada and Greenland. Last June, American B-2 bomber planes struck Iran. He’s ratcheted up drone strikes in Somalia. And on Christmas Day, he ordered airstrikes on Nigeria.

Then, the big one: Early this year—after military buildup in the Caribbean and more than 100 deaths from boat strikes—the US made good on threats to go after Nicolás Maduro, attacking Venezuela and capturing the president. The reasoning wasn’t human rights, or even specious claims that Venezuela was flooding the US with drugs. Trump was explicit: It was to get oil.

There were no more bromides about democracy. Instead, it was “peace through strength” with “kinetic” strikes. “In rejecting ‘adventurism,’ the Trump administration is saying mainly that it wants to avoid protracted wars,” explained Stephen Wertheim, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a historian of US foreign policy, told me. But this approach, he said, “leaves in place enormous scope for military activities below that threshold” that “may end up entangling” the US all the same. Without a wholesale reckoning with American attempts at global primacy, US foreign policy will be in permanent crisis, Wertheim said.

The NSS, which Anton reportedly authored, makes plain the contradictions in MAGA’s critique of adventurism. The document says the rest of the world should be our concern only if a nation “directly threaten[s] our interests.” But if our national “interests” are defined as being “the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country,” protected by “the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military,” who shouldn’t expect a fight?

Trump suggests the way to square this circle is to shrink the map. The NSS describes a restoration of “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere,” or what Trump calls the “Donroe Doctrine.” But Venezuela made clear what that means. We ousted Maduro over erroneous claims about national security, and to seize oil. Suddenly, the new GOP’s anti­war foreign policy sounds a lot like old GOP pro-war foreign policy—except in Latin America, not the Middle East. When FBI Director Kash Patel declares we must treat narcotraffickers like “the al-Qaedas of the world,” that is not a critique of adventurism. It is adventurism coming home.

In 2025, federal agents in military gear dropped from a helicopter to raid an apartment building in ­Chicago. Days later, Hegseth was asked, half-jokingly, by Fox News whether a young soldier is more likely to deploy to the Middle East or the Midwest. “Well, I’ll tell you this,” Hegseth ­answered. “The era of reckless adventurism around the globe is over.”

Under Trump, the wars will continue—from Chicago to Caracas. It’s not a reckless adventure; it’s all part of the plan. Until Trump says it isn’t.

2026-01-13 20:30:00

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On Friday morning, the US House of Representatives approved a bill that would get the Department of Energy (DOE) out of the business of energy standards for mobile homes, also known as manufactured homes, and could set the efficiency requirements back decades. 

Advocates say the changes will streamline the regulatory process and keep the upfront costs of manufactured homes down. Critics argue that less efficient homes will cost people more money overall and mostly benefit builders.  

“This is not about poor people. This is not about working people,” said Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who grew up in a manufactured home, on the House floor before the vote. “This is about doing the bidding of corporations.”

The average income of a manufactured home resident is around $40,000, and they “already face disproportionately high energy costs and energy use,” said Johanna Neumann, senior director of the Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy at Environment America. That, she said, is why more stringent energy codes are so important. But the Energy Department, which oversees national energy policy and production, didn’t always have a say over these standards. 

Starting in 1974, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, became tasked with setting building codes for manufactured homes. But HUD last updated the relevant energy-efficiency standards in 1994, and they have long lagged behind modern insulation and weatherization practices. So in 2007, Congress assigned that task to the DOE. It still took 15 years and a lawsuit before President Joe Biden’s administration finalized new rules in 2022 that were projected to reduce utility bills in double-wide manufactured homes by an average of $475 a year. Even with higher upfront costs taken into account, the government predicted around $5 billion in avoided energy bills over 30-years.

At the time, the manufactured housing industry argued that DOE’s calculations were wrong and that the upfront cost of the home should be the primary metric of affordability. Both the Biden and now Trump administrations have delayed implementation of the rule and compliance deadlines, which still aren’t in effect. 

This House legislation would eliminate the DOE rule and return sole regulatory authority to HUD. Lesli Gooch, CEO of the Manufactured Housing Institute, a trade organization, describes it as essentially a process bill aimed at removing bureaucracy that has stood in the way of action. “The paralysis is because you have two different agencies that have been tasked with creating energy standards,” Gooch said. “You can’t build a house to two different sets of blueprints.”

Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.), agreed and called the move “commonsense regulatory reform” in a letter urging his colleagues to support the bill. Ultimately, 57 Democrats joined 206 Republicans in voting for the bill, and it now moves to the Senate, where its prospects are uncertain. 

If the bill becomes law, however, the only operative benchmark would be HUD’s 1994 code and it could take years to make a new one. While more than half of the roughly 100,000 homes sold in the US each year already meet or exceed the DOE’s 2022 efficiency rules, the nonprofit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy estimates that tens of thousands are still built to just the outdated standard. “Families are struggling,” said Mark Kresowik, senior policy director at the council, and he does not expect HUD under Trump to move particularly quickly on a fix. “I have not seen this administration lowering energy bills.”

For now, though, it’s the Senate’s turn to weigh in.