By The Washington Times (Politics) | Created at 2026-08-10 17:31:04 | Updated at 2026-08-10 19:41:04
3 hours ago
Americans for Tax Reform calculated that the Agricultural Act provision allowing for year-round high-ethanol gasoline would increase fuel costs for Americans.
It would also increase the ethanol industry’s dependency on government, said the low-tax conservatives led by Grover Norquist.
The bill would make the Renewable Fuel Standard permanent and authorize year-round E15, the gasoline blend with up to 15% ethanol.
The last farm bill, the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, expired more than seven years ago.
Americans for Tax Reform has been calling on Congress to fully repeal the Renewable Fuel Standard since 2013, calling it a “wasteful climate initiative and a massive subsidy for biofuel producers, notably ethanol from corn.”
If Congress wants to allow the year-round purchase of E15 fuel, the group said, lawmakers should first repeal the mandate altogether and enable E15 to compete in a free market without federal requirements and taxpayer subsidies.
What’s more, the Congressional Budget Office said in May that “because ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline, higher ethanol blending would reduce fuel economy and increase gasoline consumption, thus increasing revenues from the federal excise tax on gasoline.”
The tax hawks said Congress should not be “in the business of subsidizing a worse fuel economy for drivers in an attempt to trick consumers with fake savings at the pump.”
House and Senate Republicans have two competing farm bills making their way through Congress. The House bill was reported out of committee in March. The Senate bill by Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, Arkansas Republican, is stalled in committee.
AG Blanche prodded to review legal opinion on mail-order abortion pills
Over 30 pro-life organizations called on newly confirmed Attorney General Todd Blanche to reevaluate the Office of Legal Counsel’s opinion in favor of mail-order abortion pills.
The pro-life advocates said the interpretation of the Comstock Act “reflects the actual statutory text that Congress enacted.”
The Comstock Act bars the mailing of any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.”
In a letter to Mr. Blanche, the organizations said they want the review soon and “are confident you will conclude that the Comstock Act the OLC opinion describes is not the one Congress enacted.”
“As you know, interpreting an act of Congress requires ‘adhering to Congress’s intended meaning.’ To that end, courts start with the text, ‘giving the words used their ordinary meaning.’ Absent any ‘qualification, [courts] presume the operative language means what it appears to mean.’
“And ‘where … the words of the statute are unambiguous,’ the ‘judicial inquiry is complete’ and a court ‘may not resort to extrinsic evidence to interpret them,’” the letter said.
The pro-life groups said that this well-established approach compels the conclusion that Congress meant what it enacted in the Comstock Act, that no person may knowingly use the mail to send, and the U.S. Postal Service may not deliver anything “intended for producing abortion.”
Pro-life groups have long called on the Trump administration to rescind this statute.
Louisiana sued the Food and Drug Administration in October in an effort to rescind the 2023 statute that allows abortion drugs, such as mifepristone, to be distributed without a visit to a healthcare provider. The FDA has said it is conducting a safety review of mifepristone that will not be available until at least December.
FAIR crafts new work permit rules for migrants
The Federation for American Immigration Reform offered up several recommendations to limit work authorization for immigrant parolees, deferred action recipients and migrants awaiting deportation on orders of supervision.
The recommendations follow the Department of Homeland Security’s recently proposed rule that would mandate that the specified classes of migrants establish both economic necessity and discretionary merit, which replaces the policy of automatically issuing work permits.
The new rule would also restrict work authorization for aliens with a criminal history, mandate biometrics with applications, and condition renewals on employment with an E-Verify-participating employer.
FAIR’s comment proposed several additional changes.
“Notably, DHS should end the practice of granting work permits to aliens eligible for parole and provide for existing permits to expire immediately upon an alien receiving a final order of removal,” the organization said. “To assess how work authorization for aliens impacts U.S. workers, DHS should coordinate with DOL’s Office of Immigration Policy (OIP) to carry out sectoral labor market analyses.”
FAIR also urged Congress to pass permanent statutory changes, namely the Permanent Trump Secure Border Act or H.R. 9773, which would restrict the DHS secretary from granting parole. FAIR said it would also overhaul asylum rules and close loopholes that “the Biden administration exploited to facilitate illegal immigration.”
Parole enables DHS to temporarily allow otherwise inadmissible aliens into the U.S. for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit, such as critical medical care or for their testimony in court. However, the Biden administration often abused this legal power to allow entry of more than 2 million unvetted illegal aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Afghanistan, said FAIR.
At the same time, FAIR said, the Biden administration protected illegal aliens already in the U.S. from deportation through what became known as “parole-in-place” and granted them work authorization.
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