Rahm Emanuel—previously Obama White House Chief of Staff, a congressman, Mayor of Chicago, and Biden Ambassador to Japan, and currently a presidential aspirant—published a piece in the Wall Street Journal pushing a narrative that is fast becoming political dogma. It goes like this: a bill which passed in mid-2025 to, beginning in 2027, phase out many ‘clean energy’ subsidies (i.e., “Inflation Reduction Act” green boondoggles) is responsible for your electricity bill having continued its upward trajectory begun with passage of the 2022 IRA “climate law.”
Admittedly, Emanuel’s framing titled “Rising Electricity Price? Thank Trump: Bigger bills are a direct result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut green-energy subsidies,” is rather less detailed and more straight-line: the bill to trim subsidies passed, your bills are (still) going up…coincidence? I think not.
This passes for insightful policy advocacy among even the most-credentialed of our credentialed class. One need merely avoid including all of that bothersome context and detail that might undercut the narrative.
The oped does nod early on to the fact that “Electricity prices have leapt by 10% since January [2025].” They were leaping before that; rates have steadily increased as a result of the Obama-Biden “green energy” agenda (if much more earnestly after Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” passed). For these purposes, however, apparently that’s just factual clutter: the new administration was inaugurated in late January, so January 1 is your baseline. And Bob’s your Uncle.
In political-land, it matters not. The word went forth.
Again, the July 2025 repeal of IRA subsidies begins in 2027. Causing price increases before that. As Mackinac Center’s Jason Hayes notes:
All well and good to the thoughtful reader. But Mr. Emanuel plays even more fast and loose. He cites to one source for his argument against “eliminating various Biden-era subsidies” for “investment in electricity and clean-fuel production,” that being “the Princeton University-led Repeat Project.”
As that group’s website states up front, it is “[l]ed by Princeton University Prof. Jesse D. Jenkins,” who the same newspaper’s readers may recall as the architect of those same subsidies profiled as “The Professor Helping Guide Billions in Climate Spending.” (Politics, July 8, 2023).
Imagine Mr. Emanuel’s surprise when he finds out!
We kid. Emanuel notes, “Americans aren’t stupid.” Neither is he. The sin of omission is a tell: that this is a racket and a wealth-transfer (as well as ideological) industry is understood.
What with billions at stake (likely an understatement), you should not be surprised that things are even worse. As one party, Power the Future, has already noted in an amicus brief filed in the federal securities case brought by numerous states, Texas et al. v. BlackRock, et al., it appears that a senior officer for a certain notorious Wall Street actor was behind this subsidy scheme, launched in 2018 (when inflation was at 2.4%). PTF makes a convincing case that BlackRock’s chief sustainable investment official, former Obama and Biden White House aide Brian Deese—working through intermediaries including principally a non-profit seemingly created for the purpose and nominally run by the Arabella/New Venture Fund network—in fact steered the effort to subsidize “green” energy produced by his clients and political allies – after first activating the Princeton expert cited to obliquely by Mr. Emanuel to craft the plan.
For those hoping for a more honest debate on the green agenda, we are afraid you will have to keep waiting.