News
Washington DC
: A key part of President Joe Biden’s climate agenda – a $150bn programme to replace the nation’s coal- and gas-fired power plants with wind, solar and nuclear energy – looked set to be dropped this week after Joe Manchin (pictured), a Democratic senator from the coal-rich state of West Virginia, refused to support it, says Coral Davenport in The New York Times. The programme would have rewarded utilities for switching from fossil fuels to renewables and penalised those not doing so. Instead, the White House was left trying to cobble together other policies that would cut emissions. A plan to offer free tuition at community colleges looked likely to be scrapped too, with the overall cost of the social-policy and climate legislation to be cut from $3.5trn to $2trn, says The Wall Street Journal. Meanwhile, the party is racing to pass a separate $1trn infrastructure bill. With
