But the locals of Middletown, Ohio, are jubilant.

A hulking steel plant in Middletown, Ohio, is the city’s economic heartbeat as well as a keystone origin story of JD Vance, the hometown senator now running to be Donald Trump’s vice-president.

Its future, however, may hinge upon $500 million in funding from landmark climate legislation that Vance has called a “scam” and is a Trump target for demolition.

In March, Joe Biden’s administration announced the US’s largest ever grant to produce greener steel, enabling the Cleveland-Cliffs facility in Middletown to build one of the largest hydrogen fuel furnaces in the world, cutting emissions by a million tons a year by ditching the coal that accelerates the climate crisis and befouls the air for nearby locals.

…

When campaigning for the Senate in 2022, Vance said Biden’s sweeping climate bill is “dumb, does nothing for the environment and will make us all poorer,” and more recently as vice-presidential candidate called the IRA a “green energy scam that’s actually shipped a lot more manufacturing jobs to China.”

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  • @Atom
    33•2 months ago

    Additional statistics about the IRA, which Trump and Vance have vowed to defund, from E2 two years into the IRA:

    Nearly 60 percent of the announced projects representing 85 percent of the investments and 68 percent of the jobs - are in Republican congressional districts. This despite the fact that no Republican voted for the legislation.

    https://e2.org/reports/clean-economy-works-two-year-review-2024/

    • @AngryCommieKender
      16•2 months ago

      They needed to pick a different abbreviation. I was really curious as to why The US was funding the Irish Republican Army.

      • @[email protected]
        2•2 months ago

        That’s how it works though unfortunately, a disproportionate amount of government money comes from majority democrat cities/states, and is spent in majority republican states