He called you crazy. Then he cut the mileage rule.
Look at the oil policy. Then decide who it is for.
Fuel-economy rules cut. The fine for missing them set to zero. Public land put back on the lease calendar. Wind and solar slowed. Climate called a hoax. Electric-vehicle drivers called crazy. The people running the relevant departments come out of the oil and gas business. This is the record. Read it before you pick a side. Understand the implications before you attack the writer of this article.
I am not asking you to join a party. I am asking you to look at a set of decisions, made in the open, that point in one direction: more oil and gas, for longer, with fewer rules in the way.
You can like the president. You can dislike electric cars. You can think a new truck should cost less at the dealer. None of that changes the paperwork. The paperwork is the policy. Here is what it says.
The mileage rule was cut, and then the fine was erased
On September 30, 2026, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published the final Corporate Average Fuel Economy rule for model years 2022 through 2031. The agency calls it the Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule III. It takes effect November 30. Corporate Average Fuel Economy is the fleet-average miles-per-gallon standard automakers have lived under since the 1970s oil shocks. It is an NHTSA rule, inside the Department of Transportation. It is not an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule. Those are separate, and both were cut.
The rule NHTSA just replaced aimed at about 50.4 miles per gallon by model year 2031. The agency later re-estimated that path at about 49.3. The new rule aims at 34.9. Inside that average, passenger cars are set at about 40.2 miles per gallon and light trucks at about 26.4. That 34.9 figure is roughly where the fleet already was in 2024. The annual increases written into the rule are small: about 0.9 percent a year for cars and about 0.5 percent a year for trucks through 2029. NHTSA says the targets can be met with ordinary gasoline engines, without electric vehicles and without buying credits from someone who builds them.
The administration’s case is the sticker price. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy called it common sense. The department estimates about $1,300 off the price of a new vehicle, and about $138 billion in savings over five years. President Trump said on Truth Social that he had approved new standards that “terminate” what he called an “EV mandate,” and that the old rules forced people into cars they never wanted.
Here is the part that does not make the press release. Congress had already set the civil penalty for missing a Corporate Average Fuel Economy target at zero, in the tax-and-spending law signed on July 4, 2025. NHTSA wrote that zero into the rule and said it had no choice. A standard with no fine is a suggestion. Credit trading between automakers is also being shut down, which removes the remaining reason for a gasoline-truck maker to pay an electric-vehicle maker for compliance.
The EPA action is separate, and larger. On February 12, 2026, Administrator Lee Zeldin, standing with the president, repealed the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases from vehicles endanger public health and welfare, and eliminated the federal greenhouse-gas standards that rested on it. The agency called it the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history and said it would save more than $2,400 per vehicle. Lawsuits are already in court.
A cheaper truck that burns more fuel is not cheaper. It is a loan. The oil industry collects it at the pump, mile after mile, for the life of the vehicle.
Public land was put back on the lease calendar
The same 2025 law ordered the Bureau of Land Management to hold at least four oil and gas lease sales a year in eligible states, restored noncompetitive leasing for parcels that draw no bid, and put royalty rates back at 12.5 percent.
In Alaska, the current plan opens about 18.6 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska. A March 2026 sale offered more than a million acres in the western Arctic. This fall the Interior Department proposed rules, requested by the Alaska oil and gas industry, to speed permits in that region, including areas long treated as special. Separately, the Bureau of Land Management has looked at expanded leasing under part of Utah’s Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, by directional drilling from outside the boundary.
In June 2026 the department also moved to unwind Biden-era bonding and leasing rules: the $500,000 statewide bond back toward the old $25,000 figure, and public-comment windows cut from 90 days to 10.
This land is not a company asset. It is held by the federal government for the public. Opening it is a choice. Speeding the comment period is a choice. Lowering the bond a company posts against cleanup is a choice. If a well is orphaned, the cleanup cost does not vanish. It moves.
The people writing the rules come out of the industry the rules favor
Policy this consistent is not an accident of staffing.
Chris Wright is Secretary of Energy, confirmed by the Senate on February 3, 2025, by 59 to 38. Before that he was chief executive of Liberty Energy, one of the largest hydraulic-fracturing companies in North America. He founded it in 2011. In 1992 he founded Pinnacle Technologies, a company built to map and model shale-gas fracking. At confirmation he held about 2.6 million shares of Liberty, worth roughly $47 million, and told the Senate he would step down and divest within 90 days. In 2019 he drank fracking fluid on camera to argue it was safe. He has been a public critic of climate policy and of the push toward wind and solar. He now runs the department that approves liquefied-natural-gas export terminals and sets the federal research agenda on energy.
Doug Burgum is Secretary of the Interior, confirmed at the end of January 2025. He was governor of North Dakota, an oil state, for two terms. The Associated Press reported that while he was governor he leased family land to oil companies, including Continental Resources, the firm run by Harold Hamm, a major donor and ally. He co-hosted a North Dakota Petroleum Council banquet for fracking executives at the governor’s mansion. His assignment from the president is to make it easier to produce oil and gas on the public land his department controls. He also chairs the National Energy Dominance Council.
They are the two names at the top. They are not the whole list. An October 2025 analysis by Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, reported by The Guardian, found more than 40 Trump administration picks who had worked directly for oil, gas, or coal companies — 43 people with direct employment ties to the fossil-fuel industry — placed in the agencies that write energy and environmental rules. The same reporting put fossil-fuel donations to the 2024 campaign and its committees at about $96 million, plus $11.8 million toward the second inauguration.
Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, does not come out of an oil company. He sits on that same energy-dominance council, and in June 2025 he toured Alaska’s North Slope with Burgum and Wright to promote drilling. The pattern is the council, not one résumé.
A former fracking chief executive runs the Energy Department. A former oil-state governor who leased family land to an oil company runs the public lands. Dozens of former industry employees sit in the agencies underneath them. Then read the mileage rule, the lease calendar, and the methane proposal again. The paperwork and the payroll point the same way.
Wind and solar were slowed on purpose
Oil leasing was sped up. Wind and solar were not.
In January 2025 the administration froze wind-energy authorizations. A federal court vacated that blanket pause in December 2025. The Justice Department later dropped its appeal. Stop-work orders hit five offshore projects already under construction: Empire Wind, Revolution Wind, Vineyard Wind, Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind, and Sunrise Wind. Courts struck all five down. The Interior Department also routed renewable permits through senior political review. A June 2026 Wood Mackenzie report put more than $121 billion and about 92 gigawatts of early-stage wind, solar, and storage at heightened risk from the added scrutiny. About 7 gigawatts on federal land was cancelled or stalled in 2025.
Congress did its part. The July 2025 law pulled forward the end of the main federal tax credits for new wind and solar. Projects generally had to start construction by July 4, 2026, or be online before 2028, to qualify.
Clean power is still being built. It is being built into a headwind that oil and gas permitting does not face. Courts have blocked several of the starkest moves. The direction of the policy has not changed.
The words match the paperwork
On September 23, 2025, at the United Nations General Assembly, the president called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He said the predictions were made by “stupid people,” called the carbon footprint a hoax “made up by people with evil intentions,” and told countries to get away from what he called the green-energy scam. The United States has again left the Paris Agreement.
On August 5, 2026, at a rally in Las Vegas, he turned from policy to the people who drive the cars. Electric-vehicle drivers, he said, “have a disease.” Range anxiety, in his telling. Then: “These people are crazy.”
You can disagree with a subsidy. Calling the driver crazy is not an argument about subsidies. It is a tell. The same term, the administration ended the $7,500 clean-vehicle credit, the California clean-car waiver, and pieces of the federal charging-program funding that were supposed to make long trips ordinary.
The list is longer than the headlines
A few more entries, all from this term:
September 14, 2026: the EPA rescinded the carbon standards for power plants and proposed a rule to block future administrations from setting new ones, on the claim that U.S. power-plant emissions have no material effect on the climate.
October 7, 2026: the EPA said it would propose scrapping the Biden-era “super emitter” program, which requires oil and gas operators to investigate large methane leaks reported by outside sensors. The agency’s figure is $45 billion a year in savings for producers. Methane is the second-largest driver of warming, and a large share of it comes from oil and gas systems.
The same administration has pressed the European Union to repeal, or delay until 2035, its methane rules on imported gas. Those rules would have required U.S. exporters to document leaks.
Add it up. Weaker mileage rules. No fine for missing them. No greenhouse-gas standards for new vehicles. Lease sales on a statutory schedule. Lower bonds. Shorter comments. Methane checks proposed for the shredder. Power-plant carbon rules gone. Tax credits for wind and solar shortened. Permits for those projects slow-walked until courts intervened. The climate record called a con. The electric-vehicle driver called diseased. The departments run by people who made their names in oil and gas.
What the other side says, and what it does not answer
The case for all of this is simple, and parts of it are real. New vehicles are expensive. Some buyers do not want an electric car. American oil and gas production is large, and exports bring money home. A rule that raises the price of a truck and assumes a charging network that is still thin will lose at the kitchen table.
None of that answers the question these policies refuse to sit with. Burning the fuel has a cost that does not show up on the window sticker. It shows up in the fuel budget, in the air, in the cleanup bond that was lowered, in the public acre that was leased, and in a climate record that does not care what a rally calls it.
About 7 or 8 percent of new U.S. vehicle sales are electric. The president cites that number as proof the transition failed. It is also proof that the remaining 92 percent still run on oil, and that every mile per gallon given back is a barrel someone will sell.
The ask
Do not take this from me. Read the September 30 fuel-economy rule. Read the February 12 endangerment repeal. Read the lease schedule in the 2025 law. Read the UN transcript from September 23, 2025, and the Las Vegas remarks from August 5, 2026. Then look at who is sitting in the chairs at Energy and Interior.
Then ask a plain question. If these policies work exactly as written, who sells more product in 2035?
If the answer is the oil industry, you are not looking at an accident. You are looking at the point.
And for the record, I am registered neither as a Republican or Democrat. I am registered in Florida as “No Party Affiliation” because I am a patriot FIRST and above everything else in the political spectrum. If it bothers you that I do not jump on board your political ship, then I suggest it should be you who examines your positions.
I can assure you, as a scientist and a meteorologist, I have forgotten more about the atmosphere and climate than the current President of the United States will ever know. So let me ask a simple question…where does he get off calling me “stupid?” This is why I write the articles…because those we elect, including the POTUS, have forgotten who they work for and that their positions are not positions of “leadership,” but are actually “citizen servants!”
My voice will not be quieted.
References
ABC News, “Trump administration rolls back fuel economy standards for automakers,” September 28, 2026. Fleet target cut from 50.4 mpg to 34.9 mpg by 2031; administration savings claims of $1,300 per vehicle and $138 billion. https://abcnews.com/Business/trump-administration-rolls-back-fuel-economy-standards-automakers/story?id=136818690
Politico, “Trump slashes Biden-era fuel economy standards for cars,” September 26, 2026. Truth Social language on the “EV mandate”; about 34.5 mpg in the proposal, later finalized at 34.9. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/26/trump-vehicle-standards-ev-01067597
NPR, “The Trump administration weakens fuel efficiency standards for new cars,” September 28, 2026. https://www.npr.org/2026/09/28/nx-s1-5918509/car-fuel-efficiency-cafe-standards-rollback
Sidley Environmental, Health, and Safety Brief, “Department of Transportation Finalizes Rollback of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards,” October 1, 2026. Final rule September 28; 34.9 mpg by model year 2031; June 2025 interpretive rule on electric vehicles in the CAFE calculation. https://environmentalhealthsafetybrief.sidley.com/2026/10/01/department-of-transportation-finalizes-rollback-of-corporate-average-fuel-economy-cafe-standards-for-passenger-cars-and-light-trucks/
Van Ness Feldman, “A New Road Ahead: NHTSA Eases Fuel Economy Standards,” September 30, 2026. Federal Register publication of SAFE Vehicles Rule III; 40.2 mpg cars, 26.4 mpg light trucks, 34.9 mpg fleet in model year 2031, against about 49.3 mpg under the prior standards; civil penalty already $0 under the 2025 law. https://www.vnf.com/getpdf.aspx?show=8956
GoodCarBadCar, “NHTSA Final CAFE Rule Sets a 34.9 MPG Fleet Target for 2031,” October 4, 2026. Public Law 119-21 set the civil penalty at $0 from model year 2022; credit trading curtailed. https://www.goodcarbadcar.net/nhtsa-cafe-2031-34-9-mpg-credit-trading-three-row-trucks/
EPA news release, “President Trump and Administrator Zeldin Deliver Single Largest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History,” February 12, 2026. Repeal of the 2009 endangerment finding and vehicle greenhouse-gas standards; agency savings claim of more than $2,400 per vehicle. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/president-trump-and-administrator-zeldin-deliver-single-largest-deregulatory-action-us
Reuters, “Trump revokes basis of US climate regulation, ends vehicle emission standards,” February 12, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/trump-administration-set-revoke-basis-us-climate-regulation-2026-02-12/
Bureau of Land Management, “Impacts of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 to the Oil and Natural Gas Leasing Program,” Instruction Memorandum 2026-018, May 2026. Four lease sales a year, noncompetitive leasing restored, royalty rate 12.5 percent. https://www.blm.gov/policy/im-2026-018
Bureau of Land Management, “Interior Advances Revisions to Oil and Gas Leasing and Waste Prevention Rules,” June 21, 2026. Bonding and shorter public-comment windows. https://www.blm.gov/press-release/interior-advances-revisions-oil-and-gas-leasing-and-waste-prevention-rules
Courthouse News Service, “Trump administration defends oil and gas lease sales on pristine Alaska land,” October 5, 2026. About 18.6 million acres open in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska; lease sale mandated by the 2025 law. https://www.courthousenews.com/trump-administration-defends-oil-and-gas-lease-sales-on-pristine-alaska-land
Earthjustice, “Trump Administration Proposes Regulations to Rubber Stamp Drilling in Alaska’s Western Arctic,” September 4, 2026. Industry-requested permitting rule; March 2026 lease sale of more than a million acres. https://earthjustice.org/press/2026/trump-administration-proposes-regulations-to-rubber-stamp-drilling-in-alaskas-western-arctic
Moab Times-Independent, “Trump officials eye expanded oil, gas leasing beneath a Utah wildlife refuge,” October 7, 2026. Ouray National Wildlife Refuge proposal. https://www.moabtimes.com/articles/trump-officials-eye-expanded-oil-gas-leasing-beneath-a-utah-wildlife-refuge/
The New York Times, “Chris Wright Is Confirmed as Secretary of Energy,” February 3, 2025. Liberty Energy chief executive; about 2.6 million shares, roughly $47 million; divestiture pledge. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/climate/chris-wright-energy-secretary.html
Wikipedia, “Chris Wright,” accessed October 2026. Pinnacle Technologies, Liberty Energy, Senate vote 59–38, 2019 fracking-fluid demonstration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Wright
Associated Press, “Big Oil wants a lot from Trump. It has an ally in Doug Burgum,” January 30, 2025. Family land leased to oil companies, including Continental Resources; petroleum-council banquet at the governor’s mansion. https://apnews.com/article/trump-oil-gas-industry-burgum-interior-ally-3ebe90d0207c99866365d72e74eda371
Associated Press, “Senate confirms Doug Burgum as interior secretary,” January 30, 2025. https://apnews.com/article/burgum-trump-interior-secretary-energy-a123dea9f2a1f03a1ed95f316593740d
The Guardian, “More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal,” October 8, 2025. Public Citizen and Revolving Door Project count of 43 direct industry employees; about $96 million in fossil-fuel campaign donations and $11.8 million for the inauguration. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/08/trump-administration-fossil-fuels-climate
EPA news release, “EPA Administrator Zeldin, Interior Secretary Burgum, Energy Secretary Wright Travel to North Slope Alaska,” June 4, 2025. https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-administrator-zeldin-interior-secretary-burgum-energy-secretary-wright-travel
Reuters, “Stalled US permits threaten $121 billion in wind and solar investment,” June 29, 2026. Wood Mackenzie: $121 billion and about 92 gigawatts at risk; about 7 gigawatts on federal land cancelled or stalled in 2025. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/stalled-us-permits-threaten-121-bln-wind-solar-investment-report-2026-06-29/
Axios, “Renewables boom faces a Trump-era cliff,” September 30, 2026. Tax-credit deadline and agency restrictions. https://www.axios.com/2026/09/30/renewables-boom-trump-cliff
Environmental Defense Fund, “Courts Strike Down All Five Stop-Work Orders for Offshore Wind Projects,” February 2, 2026, updated coverage into October 2026. Empire, Revolution, Vineyard, Coastal Virginia, Sunrise. https://www.edf.org/media/courts-strike-down-all-five-stop-work-orders-offshore-wind-projects
Reuters, “Trump tells UN that climate change is ‘greatest con job’ globally,” September 23, 2025. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/trump-tells-un-that-climate-change-is-con-job-2025-09-23/
Axios, “Trump calls climate change ‘greatest con job’ in United Nations speech,” September 23, 2025. Carbon-footprint remark. https://www.axios.com/2025/09/23/trump-united-nations-climate-change-scam
Electrek, “Trump claims electric car drivers have a ‘disease,’” August 5, 2026. Las Vegas remarks. https://electrek.co/2026/08/05/trump-mocks-evs-mandate-claim-las-vegas-rally/
AutoGuide, “Trump Calls EV Drivers ‘Crazy,’ Says They Have a ‘Disease,’” August 7, 2026. https://www.autoguide.com/auto/category/electric-cars/trump-calls-ev-drivers-crazy-says-they-have-a-disease-44636236
Politico, “EPA scraps climate curbs for U.S. power generation,” September 14, 2026. https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/14/epa-power-plant-climate-rules-01069146
Reuters, “US will rescind policy targeting oil and gas industry methane leaks,” October 7, 2026. Super-emitter program; agency figure of $45 billion a year. https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/epa-says-will-soon-act-rescind-biden-policy-targeting-methane-leaks-2026-10-07/
Gas Outlook, “U.S. dials up pressure on EU Methane Regulation,” October 8, 2026. U.S. request for repeal or delay to 2035. https://gasoutlook.com/analysis/u-s-dials-up-pressure-on-eu-methane-regulation/
