Dave Cooke

189. The Breezy Inequity of Trump v. Orr The Supreme Court's latest grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration illustrates in technicolor the direct (and ugly) consequences of the two different ways it keeps messing up "equity."

"Beyond being the 24th consecutive grant of emergency relief to the Trump administration, the cryptic ruling in Orr is a reminder of just how bankrupt the Court’s proffered justifications are in these cases—both legally and in other ways, too."

Me on today's ugly #SCOTUS ruling in Trump v. Orr:

I guess what I'm getting at is that the Lightning being flat is neither a surprise nor really off pace, so the issue raised is not new. My point was regarding the environment for this non-announcement.

US EV sales are up 9% YTD in total. Most of Ford's EV drop is in the Transit -- its non-commercial offerings are up 11% YTD.

Looking at YTD because September pulled forward sales makes it even weirder timing:

Lightning: 24,577 (2025 J-O) v. 24,670 (2024 J-O)
Mach-e: 44,868 (2025 J-O) v. 38,939 (2024 J-O)

It's a small share of the F-150 uptake, but that was always likely. At 1/3 the hybrid uptake that has to be ~planned.

Freedom to Move We need a transportation system that centers the communities it’s meant to serve.

We must demand more. Here's a start at what that looks like: www.ucs.org/resources/fr...

A bar chart showing the inputs and outputs for the $2.2 trillion in 2021 transportation sector spending in the United States. Where's the money coming from? $1.655 trillion from private vehicle ownership. $304 billion from commercial trucking. $206 billion in general public funding. $10 billion from transit users. Where's the money going? $442 billion to the oil industry. $1.075 trillion to the automotive industry. $182 billion to other businesses. $118 billion to general government funding and services. $275 billion to spending on roads. $82 billion to spending on transit.

With affordability and the rising costs of living such a huge issue, the next surface transportation bill should be designed to HALT the wealth transfer from the American public to the #oil and #automotive industries, not accelerate it.

The User-Pay Myth: We ALL Pay for Our Roads, Not Just Drivers It’s time we think harder about what it is we're paying for, for whom and why, and how we pay for it.

The biggest contributor to highway costs aren't just drivers -- it's all of us via sales, property, and income taxes. So if the public is paying for this crap, maybe we should get something better from our transportation officials than just "one more lane oughta do it"? blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/t...

The Truth Is Out There: The Cost of Roads Is Bankrupting the Highway Trust Fund, Not Electric Vehicles The continued build out of the freeway system creates an ever-increasing cost spiral for infrastructure built.

Taxing #EVs isn't going to fix the problem, but they're an easy scapegoat. The problem is the US doesn't want to pay for the true cost of our broken car-centric transportation system. Highway construction costs are out of control: we can't keep running on this treadmill. blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/t...

Trucks Cause the Lion’s Share of Road Damage—and Their Industry Wants You to Keep Paying for It There is no reason for US taxpayers to foot the bill for a trillion-dollar per year industry.

Apparently Sam Graves (House T&I) wants to put in place some new fees to "fix" the Highway Trust Fund. If you're gonna do that, maybe start with the folks responsible for breaking all that infrastructure in the first place? blog.ucs.org/dave-cooke/t...

Trucks Cause the Lion’s Share of Road Damage—and Their Industry Wants You to Keep Paying for It There is no reason for US taxpayers to foot the bill for a trillion-dollar per year industry.

The trucking industry keeps our economy moving—but that doesn’t give it a free pass for its negative impacts. From pollution in frontline communities to heat-trapping emissions and damaged roads and bridges, this fossil-fueled sector must pay its fair share.

How collaboration with China can revitalize US automotive innovation Strategic collaboration, not protectionist barriers, should be pursued

🚗⚡ New in @science.org: My piece on why the U.S. needs to rethink its approach to China's electric vehicle industry (and what's at stake if it doesn’t).

The competitive gap is bigger than you think. Thread 🧵

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Plug-in hybrids pollute almost as much as petrol cars – EU data Even in electric mode, PHEVs still burn fuel and emit 68g of CO2/km, on average. Their hidden fuel consumption costs the average PHEV driver €500 extra a…

Like, sure PHEVs add another close to 10% of the market capable of a way-too-small share of electricity usage (www.transportenvironment.org/articles/plu...), but the bulk of the market still exclusively uses gas/diesel.

Hybrids are also fossil-fuel only.

"Because of other countries testing programs" President Trump ordered the Pentagon "to start testing our Nuclear Weapons on an equal basis". Normally, testing nuclear weapons refers to explosive testing of a nuclear weapon, something the US has not done at full scale since 1992.

A House of Dynamite Gets It Right—But Here’s the Full Picture The Pentagon is wrong to attack the movie for being inaccurate. We cannot rely on missile defense systems to protect us from nuclear destruction.

My @ucs.org colleague Dr. Laura Grego explains why the Pentagon's _claim_ that a A House of Dynamite is wrong about the effectiveness the anti-missile system that supposedly defends the US against long-range nuclear attack is a load of hooey. The system, as the movie says, is a coin-flip at best.

"It's okay for us to tell our customers to kill themselves" may be a novel defense strategy, but it certainly isn't a thorny legal question.

Lee Zeldin's legal authority to 'make the U.S. the AI capitol of the world': none.

Lee Zeldin's commitment to his actual legal authority and responsibility to protect human health and the environment: also none.

Here's how D.C. solved the billion-dollar budget problem Congress created District leaders used creative accounting to spend hundreds of millions in revenue, despite federal lawmakers holding up the money.

I've heard so many people ask over the last few months: Whatever happened to that $1.1 billion Congress wouldn't let DC spend this spring?

Many assume that money is still sitting around somewhere, but it's not! DC actually spent pretty much all of it. I found out how:
wamu.org/story/25/10/...

You Can Have Money Or Sympathy, But Not Both | Defector Nick Saban, ex-Alabama coach but still somehow patron saint of college football, had some things to say during yesterday’s edition of College GameDay about the “ugliness” faced by his former coaching…

More than ever before, people like Franklin and Saban are insisting that the expectations being put on coaches at powerhouse schools are too high, and that no mere mortal with an $85 million contract can be expected to deliver all the time. defector.com/you-can-have...

It's from the Manhattan Institute, so it's not like they're seeking accuracy in anything they publish.

A photo of Bernie on stage at no kings in dc, taken from behind. Large crowds!

Colette with indivisible founders Leah and Ezra.

BIG DAY in Washington, DC for #NoKingsDay

It’s a privilege to be in coalition with @indivisible.org and standing up for science and democracy together!

@standupforscience.bsky.social
#StandUpForScience

Let’s see your signs!

I accidentally stumbled into a deaf trivia event at a local brewery I dropped into for a beer, and it was definitely interesting. There was all of the animated raucous energy but none of it audible.

Show impact of research investment better, says ex-NSF director Sethuraman Panchanathan says research funder and scientists must improve ‘storytelling’ as agency faces $5 billion cuts

I agree that scientists (and academics generally) need to be able to tell better stories about why their work matters, but doing so is 1) often not given credit internally, and 2) a different set of skills in many cases. Telling stories about why knowledge matters is a specialized field in itself.

Cars have so destroyed people's brains that some people explicitly choose not to use blinkers because signaling advances notice that there is space (e.g. to merge) and thus other drivers see that as a signal to take back that space and prevent another car taking it.

That’s not how science works dip shit.

Just openly cheering the destruction of any representation of gay people in public space. They think their power is totally unrestricted, and the entire country will support them rolling back society to the 1950s, or maybe the 1850s

This is the kind of shit that loses people's faith in government. We lack true representation as it is -- the least the DC Council can be is transparent in acting upon what little authority they do have.

Opinion Guest Essay That Hegseth Speech Was Actually Pretty Good Oct. 7, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET

The biggest dumbass you've ever met in your life:

Also, respect for it being KIA's entry into the #EV game. That's a serious legacy it's leaving behind -- incredible how far they've come in a decade.