The New York Times splashed a four-column headline across its front page — "Americans Staggering as Their Power Bills Skyrocket" — and trained its cameras on suffering Oklahomans, all to let Democrats off the hook for the very affordability crisis their green mandates created.
Here is the stake: working families in blue states already pay double what red-state residents pay for electricity, and the climate policies responsible for that gap are the same policies Democrats want to expand nationwide. The Times isn't covering that story — it's rewriting it so Republicans own the blame.
HotAir laid out the numbers the Times chose to bury. Federal Energy Information Administration data show the six states with the highest electricity prices are California plus five Northeastern states that joined the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cap-and-trade scheme designed to intentionally drive up consumer power costs. The twelve states with the lowest prices are all solidly Republican, save purple Nevada. Prices per kilowatt-hour in climate-obsessed California and the Northeast run double and more the prices in many Republican-run states. Higher taxes, heavier regulation, and so-called "climate" policies drive the gap.
So how does the Times frame the crisis? By spotlighting Oklahoma — a Republican-run state with relatively low electricity prices — and blaming a "record-hot summer" for an "affordability crisis." A large photo of two Oklahomans sleeping in their living room to save on electricity accompanies the piece. The message to voters: don't look at the blue-state price tags, look at this red-state family.
The timing is not accidental. With the election days away, cost of living is the issue that could sink Democrats in swing districts. The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that in Pennsylvania's 1st Congressional District — one of the swingiest in the state — more than a quarter of voters call the economy the most important issue, and Trump is deeply underwater on cost-of-living approval at 68 percent disapproval. Democrat Bob Harvie now leads Republican Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick 48-46 in a race that could decide House control. The Inquirer frames Fitzpatrick's vulnerability as a drag from Trump. What neither paper mentions is the regulatory drag from green mandates that Democrats champion and working people finance every month.
Follow the money: RGGI member states don't just accidentally have high prices — the initiative is structured to raise them. Cap-and-trade auctions generate revenue for state coffers while ratepayers absorb the costs. Renewable portfolio mandates force utilities to buy pricier generation and pass it along. The Times wants voters to forget who designed this system and who profits from it.
The question left open is whether voters will buy the rebrand — or whether their own utility bills will tell them what the paper of record won't.
