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Sparks

Biden Raved About EVs to the Special Counsel: ‘Damn, They’re Quick’

He then made an unspecified “car sound.”

President Biden.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It is the great Faustian bargain of the American presidency: To lead the world’s most powerful nation, you have to give up driving forever.

For some leaders, this sacrifice can be excruciating. Given the opportunity to climb behind the wheel of a Mack truck in 2017, then-President Trump honked the horn, mimed driving, and was reported generally looking like “he wanted to steal it.” Later, in 2020, during a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the president gazed longingly at some “nice trucks” nearby and wondered aloud, “You think I could hop into one of them and drive it away? I’d love to do it. Just drive the hell outta here.”

This destiny has been especially cruel for car guy and speed junkie Joe Biden — so much so, in fact, that during his interview last fall with Robert Hur, the special counsel investigating allegations that Biden mishandled classified documents, the president complained about only being allowed to drive his beloved Corvette up and down his driveway.

According to Biden, there is at least one silver lining that comes with the highest office in the land: “Probably one of the best parts to being vice president and president, I get to drive all these, you know, electric vehicles,” the president raved to his interviewers. “I have. Damn, they’re quick.”

The transcript goes on:

President Biden: You know, think about this. You had one of those big 4x4s, the — I think it’s a Ford Bronco, whatever it is. Zero to 60 in 4.6.

Robert Hur: Yes.

Marc Krickbaum, deputy special counsel: Instant torque.

Hur: That’s fast.

Biden: Yeah. By the way, you know how it works?

(laughter)

Biden: It’s really cool.

Hur: Sir, I’d love — I would love, love to hear more about this, but I do have a few more questions to get through.

Biden: You can take 30 seconds, but you put your foot on the brake, you hit, you hit a button that’s in the — and it says “launch.”

(laughter)

Biden: You step your foot on the accelerator all the way down —

Hur: Woah.

Biden: — until it gets to about 6, 7 grand. Then all of a sudden, it will say “launch.” All you do is take your foot off the brake. (makes car sound) 

[Interview transcript]

In this limited context, at least, Hur’s later questioning of the president’s mental acuity seems a little unfair. Tell me you wouldn’t make excited car noises if you had the chance to experience instant torque, especially if you’d hung up your own car keys over a decade before.

It almost — almost — makes getting elected worth it.

Blue

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Sparks

After Trump Phone Call, DOE Cancels $5 Billion for Grain Belt Express

The Department of Energy announced Wednesday that it was scrapping the loan guarantee.

A cut wire.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Department of Energy canceled a nearly $5 billion loan guarantee for the Grain Belt Express, a transmission project intended to connect wind power in Kansas with demand in Illinois that would eventually stretch all the way to Indiana.

“After a thorough review of the project’s financials, DOE found that the conditions necessary to issue the guarantee are unlikely to be met and it is not critical for the federal government to have a role in supporting this project. To ensure more responsible stewardship of taxpayer resources, DOE has terminated its conditional commitment,” the Department of Energy said in a statement Wednesday.

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Meta’s Major AI Energy Buildout

CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the company’s expanding ambitions in a Threads post on Monday.

Electrical outlets and a computer chip
Justin Renteria/Getty Images

Meta is going big to power its ever-expanding artificial intelligence ambitions. It’s not just spending hundreds of millions of dollars luring engineers and executives from other top AI labs (including reportedly hundreds of millions of dollars for one engineer alone), but also investing hundreds of billions of dollars for data centers at the multi-gigawatt scale.

“Meta is on track to be the first lab to bring a 1GW+ supercluster online,” Meta founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote on the company’s Threads platform Monday, confirming a recent report by the semiconductor and artificial intelligence research service Semianalysis.

That first gigawatt-level project, Semianalysis wrote, will be a data center in New Albany, Ohio, called Prometheus, due to be online in 2026, Ashley Settle, a Meta spokesperson, confirmed to me. Ohio — and New Albany specifically — is the home of several large data center projects, including an existing Meta facility.

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Trump Says He’s Going to Slap a Huge Tariff on Copper

“I believe the tariff on copper — we’re going to make it 50%.”

Donald Trump.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

President Trump announced Tuesday during a cabinet meeting that he plans to impose a hefty tax on U.S. copper imports.

“I believe the tariff on copper — we’re going to make it 50%,” he told reporters.

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Green