sh.itjust.works

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday that the Republican legislation speeding through the U.S. House of Representatives would cut household resources for the bottom 10% of Americans while delivering gains to the wealthiest in the form of tax breaks.

The CBO also said Tuesday that the Republican reconciliation package, which Trump has championed, would trigger automatic cuts to Medicare spending—reductions that the nonpartisan body did not factor into its distributional analysis.

The CBO's analysis also did not include the impact of a tentative deal to boost the cap on state and local tax deductions (SALT), a change that would primarily benefit wealthy households.

In March, Oyer was asked to make a recommendation to Attorney General Pam Bondi to reinstate actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, which were rescinded after a domestic violence conviction in 2011. Oyer reviewed the case and refused. Within hours, she says she was terminated.

Last month, Oyer testified about her firing in front of Congress. She not only accused the Department of Justice of “ongoing corruption” and abuses of power, but she also said the administration tried to send armed US marshals to her home carrying a letter warning her against testifying. Oyer says it felt like “an attempt to display the power of the Department of Justice” and “make me afraid of telling the truth about the circumstances leading up to my termination.”

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/39086280

My first months on Lemmy were spent on Lemmy.world, which was the biggest instance at the time. I had no experience with Hexbear because .world had defederated that instance. I sometimes saw it being described as a "tankie" instance, but it was nothing specific.

After I moved to .zip, I came across [email protected], which seemed to be free from anything overtly political and reminded me of r/Gamingcirclejerk, so I subscribed to it and occasionally made comments related to gaming.

Today I made multiple comments to a post about an article on the STALKER game developers having removed the Soviet symbols and the Russian audio in the remastered edition of the game. I would argue that in the thread, there were no comments from me that could be construed by a reasonable person as defensive of Nazism, fascism, or even hinting at it. For example, in one of the comments, I linked a Ukrainian law that prohibits the use of Nazi symbols, though I highly advise looking through all my ten comments as to avoid any misunderstanding or false impressions.

Conversely, one comment posted by another user dismissed Holodomor as Nazi propaganda, which I reported, but a moderator of that community just ended up calling me out for that and taking no action, followed by them banning me.

The thread containing all of my untouched posts is still available via lemmy.zip. My comments are also available for viewing via my user page. They are not available on hexbear due to the ban.

No one has ever LinkedIn this hard.

I am CRINE.

In his seemingly endless quest to not finish The Winds of Winter, Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin has a new project on the table: He’s producing a magical-realist reimagining of the story of Hercules, animated by Blue Spirit, the Emmy-winning studio behind the bloody Netflix revenge series Blue Eye Samurai. The film is based on the novella A Dozen Tough Jobs from Howard Waldrop, a Nebula Award winner and Martin’s lifelong friend.

A Dozen Tough Jobs sets the Greek myth in 1920s Mississippi, making Zeus’ son Hercules a former sharecropper descended from slaves. After being released from prison for a heinous crime, he lands in the custody of the wicked Boss Eustice, and has to earn his freedom through spins on the classical 12 labors of Hercules. That story feels like a good fit for Blue Spirit, which combined Japanese history and the blood-soaked trappings of Quentin Tarantino movies in Blue Eye Samurai.

Joe R. Lansdale (Bubba Ho-Tep, Hap & Leonard) is writing the script for Lion Forge Entertainment, the studio behind the Oscar-winning short Hair Love. No timeline for the release has been announced.

“If anyone understands the power of epic stories and expansive franchises, it’s George R.R. Martin,” Lion Forge founder David Steward II said in a news release. “With A Dozen Tough Jobs, we’re reimagining a timeless legend through fresh, culturally rich lenses. This isn’t just a retelling — it’s a groundbreaking take unlike anything audiences have seen before, grounded in history but pushing myth into uncharted territory.”Martin previously produced the 2022 short film adaptation of Waldrop’s short story Night of the Cooters, starring Vincent D’Onofrio. Beyond Game of Thrones, he is producing several other projects in various stages of development, including adaptations of Nnedi Okarofor’s Who Fears Death, Roger Zelazny’s Roadmarks, and his own Wild Cards shared-world anthology series.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

During the course of developing Mario Kart World, the team making it were confronted with an important, potentially existential question: Does Mario, in fact, eat mushrooms? Meaning, do Super Mushrooms in the Mario universe need to be eaten, or simply touched to imbue Mario (and Luigi) with super powers?

The answer to that question may seem obvious to you, but even 20-year Nintendo veteran Shintaro Jikumaru wondered if he really understood the delivery mechanism of a Mushroom Kingdom mushroom. Jikumaru and Mario Kart World producer Kosuke Yabuki did their due diligence on the matter, turning to Nintendo executive Takashi Tezuka for the answer. Tezuka served as assistant director on the original Super Mario Bros., and has produced or supervised dozens of Mario games since, so if anyone would know, it’s him.

The Mario Kart World devs raised the question in the first place because Jikumaru was inspired to add food — hamburgers, specifically — to the new open-world Mario Kart. That required game designers to implement food-eating animations.

“We thought, why don’t we have a drive-thru system where characters eat while driving, and eating makes them change outfits or transform into a different character?” Yabuki explained. “Though, it’s utterly ridiculous.”

The addition of hamburgers (and other regional foods that cause wardrobe changes) to Mario Kart World forced Yabuki and Jikumaru to face a fact about the rules of the Super Mario universe. In a new Ask the Developer interview at Nintendo, they explain:

Yabuki: Then, the question came up: “Does Mario, in fact, eat mushrooms?” (Laughs)

Jikumaru: So in the midst of development, we went up to Tezuka-san and asked him to confirm, “Is Mario actually eating those mushrooms?”

Yabuki: That’s right. And Tezuka-san answers, “Yeah, he is.”

Longtime Mario fans will probably point to games like the Mario & Luigi series, where the brothers are clearly shown throwing edible power-ups into their mouths, or The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which makes it obvious that Mario eats mushrooms to unlock their effects, but touches items like Fire Flowers and Super Stars to gain their powers. Still, you can appreciate that Mario Kart World’s creators desire to be thorough, and that there’s some amount of inconsistency in the dozens of power-ups in Mario games. In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, for example, when Mario uses a Super Mushroom in a race, he is not shown eating it; instead, it is implied the mushroom is given to the kart itself, like some sort of NOS injection.

But questions about which Super Mario power-ups Mario eats versus what he merely touches may be up for debate. And there are plenty of other unknowns. Consider:

How does Mario consume a Mega Mushroom, which is many times his size?Are Golden Mushrooms and Drill Mushrooms actually made of metal?Does that mean Mario can digest metal? We know he can become metal.Does Mario eat the acorns that transform him into Flying Squirrel Mario?Are the royal crown and propeller hat on a Golden Dash Mushroom and a Propeller Mushroom, respectively, edible?Does a Boo Mushroom just look like a Boo? Or is it a Boo?If it’s a ghost, does Mario have a bunch of dead souls in his digestive system?What other power-ups are eaten, beyond mushrooms and fruits?What happens if Mario just, like, licked a P-Block a little bit?How upsetting is it to eat a fuzzy Bee Mushroom?

You can probably tell that if I ever get an interview with Takashi Tezuka (highly unlikely after this story) I will have dozens of questions for him that he will get increasingly annoyed by.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

A federal suit filed in Illinois in November by five Minto Money borrowers contends that McGraw has provided “tens of millions of dollars” in capital for the loans. CreditServe provides the infrastructure to market, underwrite and collect on them while “the Tribe is merely a front” and shares in only a small percentage of the revenue, according to the suit.

It called McGraw the “enterprise’s principal beneficiary,” asserting that he and CreditServe’s CEO, Eric Welch, have collected “hundreds of millions of dollars of payments made by consumers.”

The suit alleged that McGraw and the other defendants, including Minto Money, violated state usury laws and federal prohibitions against collecting unlawful debt. A confidential settlement resolved the lawsuit in early May but left open the possibility that other Minto Money customers could file similar suits in the future.

“This loan is outrageous with interest over 700%!” one person complained to the Better Business Bureau about having paid $4,167 on a $1,200 loan from Minto Money. “I am one step away from filing from bankruptcy.”

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt celebrated ten years of monster slaying on May 19, and publisher CD Projekt honored the milestone with an anniversary stream starring Geralt voice actor Doug Cockle, a stunning new trailer, and The Witcher 3 price drops across platforms for those who aren’t one of the 50 million who’ve already purchased it. Yet, while you may want to celebrate by booting up The Witcher 3 for one more hunt, consider instead diving into the books that provided the foundation for CD Projekt Red to build the games upon.

I bought The Witcher 3 five years ago, but to avoid another Game of Thrones situation (where silly me watched the show before reading the books), I committed to reading the entire book series before installing the game. And I’m so glad I did! Andrzej Sapkowski’s two short story collections and six novels all tell an amazing story, as well as provide so much context and depth for the events of The Witcher 3.

If you start The Witcher 3 without the knowledge of the books, you’ll be unknowingly hindering the emotional impact of so many characters and quests in The Witcher 3. Take Geralt and Yen, for example. Their fates are literally tied together due to the events of the short story “The Last Wish,” and Geralt’s wish ensures they never stray from the other’s orbit for long. Yet The Witcher 3’s quest of the same name explores the wish’s impact from Yen’s point of view; it’s left her with an uneasy feeling regarding what the two truly mean to one another, leading to one of the best quests in the entire game — one that I don’t think can emotionally resonate with the same impact if you hadn’t read about these two from their from first meeting onward. They’ve both loved and hurt each other over the years, but are meant to be together, djinn or no djinn.

Reading the short story collections and novels will also introduce you to some of the best supporting characters found in Witcher canon. The later books mostly concern Geralt’s pursuit of a missing and fleeing Ciri, and along the way he’s joined by his Hansa, a Fellowship of The Ring-like group of excellent supporting characters. While you certainly know Dandelion from the games, the Hansa also includes the heroic Nilfgaardian soldier Cahir and my personal favorite Milva, human ally to the majority-elven guerilla fighters Scoia’tael. Each member of Geralt’s Hansa has a captivating arc, and the books are perhaps worth reading for them alone.

With The Witcher 4 too many years away, now is the perfect time to dive into Sapkowski’s eight-book series (with a ninth on the way!). Not only will the books enrich your experience playing The Witcher 3, but they’ll also provide context on why this saga was Ciri’s story all along. Yes, the books are told mostly from Geralt’s perspective and you embody him in the games, but his role in the novels is in part to advance Ciri’s plot, to save her from falling in the machinations of evil men like Emhyr and Vilgefortz who want to use her and her Elder Blood gene to advance their own schemes.

Having Ciri star as a Witcher in CDPR’s next game and follow in her father figure’s footsteps is a natural continuation of her story. Yes, this may essentially canonize one of the multiple endings of The Witcher 3, but the other two — her dying, or her becoming empress of Nilfgaard — either cut her journey short or don’t quite fit the character.

There’s a vocal minority on the internet that tends to cry out when *gasp* a woman stars as the playable character in a game, and that group has let their thoughts be known about Ciri. To them, I say listen to Geralt himself (well, his voice actor) and “read the damn books” — anyone who does will soon realize this saga has always been about Ciri.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

The hearing took place as the deported men sat on a plane in South Sudan. The judge on Tuesday ordered that they not be discharged from U.S. custody without his permission.

Murphy said he would consider whether the administration’s conduct was “criminally contemptuous” but would save that determination for another day.

“By restricting vaccine access to caregivers who don’t meet age or high-risk criteria,” said Jason Resendez, CEO of the National Alliance for Caregiving, “the FDA creates a dangerous public health gap, as unvaccinated caregivers face increased risk of contracting and transmitting Covid-19 to the older adults and seriously ill individuals who depend on their care.”

Pokémon Go players can buy a “Fuzzy Fighter” paid Special Research ticket for $8 as part of the “Final Strike: Go Battle Week” event. The ticket was only originally available for purchase from March 5-10, but it’s available again until May 27, making many wonder: Is this “Fuzzy Fighter” Special Research worth buying?

You can get one Kubfu for free from the “Might and Mastery” research, though if you want a second one, you’ll need to buy this research.

Below, we explain our thoughts behind the value of the “Fuzzy Fighter” Special Research and list out all the steps for the research.

Update (May 21): We’ve confirmed more information about Dynamax Kubfu and have updated this guide to reflect that.

Is the ‘Fuzzy Fighter’ Special Research ticket worth it?

The short answer is: If you really want a second Kubfu, then yes, but note that the Kubfu you get is only Dynamax and it will be powercrept eventually by Gigtanamax Urshifu.

Let’s break it down, using prices from the Pokémon Go webstore (as usual) to be as thrifty as possible.

The pass costs $8 and there’s no $8 coin bundle. Math-ing it out, $8 is roughly 1,100 coins, based on the $10 coin bundle. This pass gives the following rewards:

10 Pinap Berries4 Golden Razz Berries4 Silver Pinap Berries20 Poké Balls20 Great Balls20 Ultra Balls1 Incense1 Star Piece5 Hyper Potions5 Revives2 Premium Battle Passes5 Rare Candies

Buying the pass from the webstore also gives you an additional three Rare Candies and three Max Revives. You can only buy a few things from the above list from the in-game shop, and those items total up to 440 PokéCoins. That said, of course, you can’t buy things like Ultra Balls, Rare Candy, and the special berries, so while they don’t have an exact PokéCoin value, so you’ll need to use your own discretion to value those items based on your own needs.

As part of the pass, you’ll also get encounters with Stufful, Teddiursa, Tyrogue, Cubchoo, Pancham, and of course, a second Dynamax Kubfu.

If you just want a second Kubfu for your collection, that’s a good enough reason to grab this pass. However, if you’re big into Max Battles, then it’s a little more complicated than that — and in fact might not be worth it after all.

When this research was first available in March, we didn’t know if the “Might and Mastery” research would follow the path that Kubfu does in the mainline Pokémon games. The Isle of Armor DLC for Pokémon Sword and Shield revolves its story around Kubfu. You get one, you train it into an Urshifu — and then you give it a special soup that allows it to Gigantamax. However, now that the research can be fully completed, we know that your Dynamax Kubfu is going to stay Dynamax. No soup for him!

If you like Max Battles a lot, you will prefer a Gigantamax Urshifu, not one that Dynamaxes. Dynamax Urshifu will very likely be heavily outclassed in stats by Gigantamax Machamp and you may not want to sink all that hard-to-get candy and Stardust into a critter that will be outclassed by another version of itself down the line. As of writing this, Dynamax Urshifu has its uses (depending on which form you pick), but any hardcore Max Battler will likely have the Pokémon that outclass it (Gengar and Inteleon) already.

Gigantamax Urshifu will be worth investing into, whenever it does appear, but for now that second Dynamax Kubfu doesn’t have too much use.

‘Fuzzy Fighter’ Special Research steps and rewards

Below, we list the full steps and rewards for the “Fuzzy Fighter” Special Research.

‘Fuzzy Fighter’ step 1 of 5

Catch 30 Pokémon (2 Golden Razz Berries)Collect 500 Max Particles (Stufful encounter)Spin 10 PokéStops or gyms (20 Poké Balls)

Rewards: 1 Incense, 10 Pinap Berries, 1,000 Stardust

‘Fuzzy Fighter’ step 2 of 5

Explore 5 km (20 Great Balls)Spin 20 PokéStops or gyms (Teddiursa encounter)Power up fighting-type Pokémon 10 times (2 Silver Pinap Berries)

Rewards: 1 Premium Battle Pass, 5 Revives, 1,000 XP

‘Fuzzy Fighter’ step 3 of 5

Use 10 berries to help catch Pokémon (20 Ultra Balls)Win 3 raids (Tyrogue encounter)Power up water-type Pokémon 10 times (10 Kubfu Candy)

Rewards: 1 Star Piece, 5 Hyper Potions, 1,000 Stardust

‘Fuzzy Fighter’ step 4 of 5

Catch 15 different species of Pokémon (2 Golden Razz Berries)Defeat 5 Team Go Rocket members (Cubchoo encounter)Power up dark-type Pokémon 10 times (10 Kubfu Candy)

Rewards: 1 Premium Battle Pass, 5 Rare Candies, 1,000 XP

‘Fuzzy Fighter’ step 5 of 5

Earn 5 candies exploring with your buddy (2 Silver Pinap Berries)Make 2 excellent throws (Pancham encounter)Level up a Max Move (10 Kubfu Candy)

Rewards: Dynamax Kubfu encounter, 3 Kubfu Candy XL, 1,000 Stardust

From Polygon via this RSS feed

UnitedHealth Group, the nation’s largest healthcare conglomerate, has secretly paid nursing homes thousands in bonuses to help slash hospital transfers for ailing residents – part of a series of cost-cutting tactics that has saved the company millions, but at times risked residents’ health, a Guardian investigation has found.

Those secret bonuses have been paid out as part of a UnitedHealth program that stations the company’s own medical teams in nursing homes and pushes them to cut care expenses for residents covered by the insurance giant.

In several cases identified by the Guardian, nursing home residents who needed immediate hospital care under the program failed to receive it, after interventions from UnitedHealth staffers. At least one lived with permanent brain damage following his delayed transfer, according to a confidential nursing home incident log, recordings and photo evidence.

Tenka is a friend of mine, he used to speedrun The 7th Guest lol

He's got tons of Mortal Kombat speedruns, some Diablo, and a lot of other games

https://www.speedrun.com/users/Tenka

They included measures like enhanced training, accountability, and improved data collection of police activity.

Around 70% of the department's lawyers have quit, according to current and former officials who spoke to NPR, over concerns of its changing priorities under the new Trump administration.

Edit: NPR had a more thorough list:

The Justice Department said it would also close investigations of police in six other jurisdictions:

• Phoenix, Arizona

• Trenton, New Jersey

• Memphis, Tennessee

• Mount Vernon, New York

• Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

• Louisiana State Police

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/21/nx-s1-5406262/trump-administration-dismisses-police-investigations-minneapolis-george-floyd

A friend shared this with me and I thought some of you would enjoy it.

Has anybody heard if the upcoming 47-day maximum on TLS cert lifetime will apply to Enterprise wifi auth using private PKI (especally on IOS and Android)?

We have a campus CA that signs the TLS cert used by RADIUS when students connect to wifi using personal devices. Freshman need to accept the cert once (hopefully after checking the fingerprint), then usually one more time before graduation. Every 47 days would be difficult.

In Quentin Tarantino’s 2003 movie Kill Bill: Volume 1, vengeful assassin The Bride (Uma Thurman) seeks a sword from the legendary swordsmith Hattori Hanzō (Sonny Chiba). “I need Japanese steel,” she says. “I have vermin to kill.” Hanzō has sworn off making instruments of death, but when he learns the vermin is his former student Bill (David Carradine), he consents to forge her a new sword. It is his finest work. The Bride accepts the beautiful weapon in a solemn ceremony, and she’s off on her murderous way. It’s one of the coolest scenes in a cool movie.

Twenty years later, another female assassin got her own version of a Japanese swordcrafting story, in Amber Noizumi and Michael Green’s Netflix animated series Blue Eye Samurai. Mizu (Maya Erskine) is a half-white, half-Japanese warrior in the Edo period, filled with bitterness at her rejection by Japanese society, posing as a man, and seeking vengeance against four devilish white men, any of whom might be her father. In flashback, we learn how she was taken in as a child by the blind swordsmith Eiji (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), whom she calls Swordfather. She learned smithing from him, and swordfighting from his customers. She forges a sword using metal from a meteorite, and sets off on her murderous quest.

[Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Blue Eye Samurai.]

In its very first episode, Blue Eye Samurai pays a bold, direct tribute to Kill Bill. A Mizu training montage is soundtracked by Tomoyasu Hotei’s “Battle Without Honor or Humanity,” the guitar instrumental that was an iconic needle drop in Tarantino’s film, and went on to become a ubiquitous, almost clichéd shorthand for determined preparation and ice-cool swagger. Quoting it in such a similar story seems both obvious and risky. What if Blue Eye Samurai doesn’t measure up?

But perhaps this is both sincere homage and gentle misdirection on Noizumi and Green’s part. Because Blue Eye Samurai’s swordcrafting arc goes an awful lot deeper than Kill Bill’s version, and the creators have much more on their minds.

A swordcrafting story beat has obvious, mythic appeal. It’s a rest stop on the hero’s journey that allows them to reflect and gather strength; the preparation of the weapon mirrors the hero’s preparation to use it — they’re both being “tempered” and “sharpened.” It’s also an origin story for the weapon that imbues both it and the hero’s quest with resonance. (In the case of Kill Bill, The Bride’s sword is imbued with Hattori Hanzō’s regret at the countless lives his swords have taken, and with the righteousness of The Bride’s quest to kill the deadly Bill.) Above all, it emphasizes what makes the weapon special — and by extension, what makes its bearer significant. It’s a power fantasy. As Hattori Hanzō tells The Bride: “If on your journey you should encounter God, God will be cut.” Cool.

At first, it seems as though Blue Eye Samurai is heading in the same direction as Kill Bill, especially considering the mythic dimension of the meteorite sword. But Noizumi and Green deepen and complicate the swordmaster-and-student dynamic, weaving in the show’s themes of identity and trauma. Master Eiji teaches Mizu how to beat the impurity out of the metal — but tells her not to push too far. “An impurity in the right place is a quality,” he tells the girl, whose racial identity and gender are both considered impurities in this era and country — flaws the blind swordsmith can’t see, or chooses to ignore.

But the meteorite metal defeats him. “No man can tame this cursed metal,” Eiji says. But Mizu does. At the end of the first episode, as she leaves her Swordfather to go on her quest for revenge, she raps her new sword on the floor, and its unmistakable ringing sound tells Eiji she has succeeded where he failed. Oddly, though, we don’t see her forge her mythic weapon — at least, not the first time. Although Blue Eye Samurai is a revenge narrative, and it’s plenty bloody, Noizumi and Green are aiming for something other than the violent catharsis Tarantino is so drawn to.

Mizu’s sword serves her well on her adventures, and the two of them leave a trail of lopped-off limbs and heads behind them. But in a climactic confrontation in episode 6, the villainous Abijah Fowler (Kenneth Branagh) fires his flintlock at Mizu, and the shot shatters the sword’s blade. In episode 7, a similarly shattered Mizu returns to Master Eiji to reforge her weapon. “Your sword broke because the blend was wrong,” he says. “It was too pure. The metal wants to be blended with new steel.” But, disappointed in the heedlessness of Mizu’s thirst for blood, he refuses to reforge it: “The fire in you rages beyond control. I have no steel for you.” In other words, he’s effectively saying, “Your sword is broken because you are.”

Mizu resolves to smelt her sword down herself in a kiln of her own making, but fails at first. She falls back on the reflexive self-hatred of anyone who’s suffered a lifetime of discrimination: “Perhaps a demon cannot make steel,” she says. Master Eiji encourages her to try again, and it’s only when she smelts the metal as her true self — naked, breasts unbound, skin inscribed with the Heart Sutra (a key Buddhist text) — that she succeeds.

“A sword from this steel could kill a god,” Master Eiji says, in another nod to Kill Bill. But crucially, Mizu declines to use it to forge a new blade. “You were right, I don’t deserve a sword, not yet,” she says, vowing to continue her quest without it. “You can determine if I am worthy of a sword of this metal made by your hand.”

This level of self-knowledge and self-denial does not fit into the usual templates for a revenge story, or a swordcrafting arc. With a gentleness and nuance quite foreign to the heroic dimensions of these stories, Blue Eye Samurai folds Mizu’s complex, human relationships with both Master Eiji and herself into what’s usually a far simpler preparing-for-battle sequence.

Mizu’s original meteorite sword was not revered for its perfection, but flawed by it. It was a pure tool of killing, made in hatred and self-rejection, and at the moment of truth, it broke. Paradoxically, Mizu earns the right to reforge it by understanding that she is not yet ready to. Instead, she asks her Swordfather to one day make it for her, because a sword accepted as a gift of love from one father would be more beautiful and honest than a sword forged in hate to kill another.

It’s bold to tell a swordcrafting story in which the sword doesn’t actually get made. Perhaps we’ll get to see it in the show’s second season. But Blue Eye Samurai has already shown that it isn’t just a typical power fantasy or revenge story, and the sword at its center has an unusual depth of symbolism. In season 1 of the show, Mizu takes the first step toward becoming the person the sword deserves. There’s still a long road ahead for both of them.

From Polygon via this RSS feed

Chris Wright, US Secretary of Energy, during a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies hearing in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, May 7, 2025. | Photo: Getty Images

The Trump administration’s attempts to gut 12 energy efficiency standards could cost Americans billions of dollars in higher electricity bills.

The Department of Energy (DOE) recently announced that it plans to rollback dozens of policies in what it called its “largest deregulatory effort in history.” While the DOE claims that getting rid of “burdensome and costly” rules would save $11 billion, that doesn’t take into account the costs Americans would bear if they have to use more energy-hungry appliances.

Adding up those costs, the deregulation spree would ultimately lead to about $43 billion in higher electricity bills for households and businesses, according to an analysis by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project (ASAP) that was first shared with The Verge.

“The department is looking at the savings these rollbacks would provide while completely ignoring the costs.”

“The department is looking at the savings these rollbacks would provide while completely ignoring the costs. It turns out that the costs would be nearly five times greater than the savings,” says Joanna Mauer, deputy director of ASAP.

ASAP compiled data on 12 of the efficiency standards DOE targeted, for which the department had previously published its own estimates for costs and savings it expected the rules to generate for consumers.

A common criticism of energy efficient appliances is that they often cost more to purchase than a less efficient alternative. Upon finalizing the efficiency standard for portable air conditioners in 2020, for example, the DOE expected the cost of buying more efficient technologies to add up to $1 billion for consumers who purchase those products during the 30 years following the rule going into effect. Taking those costs into account adds up to the roughly $11 billion in savings the DOE says it’s achieving by getting rid of those 12 standards.

But that’s an incomplete picture, ASAP argues. When the DOE finalizes a standard, it typically also calculates the cumulative savings consumers would benefit from with a more efficient appliance. Those savings primarily come from lower energy bills (although the metric also considers other potential costs like repairs). The portable air conditioner standard, for instance, was expected to save consumers $4.1 billion over the lifetime of products purchased during the same 30 year time period.

That leads to a net savings of $3.1 billion for consumers as a result of the efficiency standard for portable air conditioners. The net savings the DOE has previously estimated for the 12 rules on the chopping block now add up to $43.2 billion — which is what ASAP says is the more important number to consider. Those standards apply to an array of common products including microwave ovens, conventional cooking tops and ovens, air purifiers, dehumidifiers, external power supplies, battery chargers for phones and other devices, and more.

The DOE didn’t immediately respond to The Verge’s press inquiry. “We are bringing back common sense — slashing regulations meant to appease Green New Deal fantasies, restrict consumer choice and increase costs for the American people,” Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in the agency’s announcement last week.

Its proposals are likely to face legal challenges because energy efficiency standards are subject to an anti-backsliding provision within the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA). Earlier this month, President Donald Trump signed a presidential memorandum directing the Secretary of Energy to stop enforcing a slate of efficiency rules the administration plans to rescind or revise. News also broke this month that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to shutter the Energy Star program that can save a typical household $450 a year on energy bills.

From The Verge via this RSS feed