Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) condemned the Biden administration for implementing energy efficiency standards for mobile homes in a rule that will increase costs for low-income households.

Officials from the Energy Department adopted a new final rule last year that requires single-section and multi-section mobile homes to meet new climate-dependent energy conservation measures. The new standards are estimated to raise the cost of large mobile homes between $4,100 and $4,500, marking a significant increase from the $81,400 average costs for newly manufactured mobile homes, according to data from the Census Bureau.

Scott, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, wrote in a letter to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm that the new policy will continue to “raise costs for families” seeking affordable homeownership opportunities in a constrained housing market. He added that the standards are “overly broad, unduly burdensome, and undermine commonsense efforts to increase supply and assist families looking for affordable housing opportunities” even as they ask consumers to “bear the costs imposed by climate alarmists.”

Energy Department officials have meanwhile asserted that the final rule will save mobile home residents over time as they pay less for power. The standards call for more stringent duct and air sealing, insulation, and hot water system specifications.

“Manufactured housing is truly one of the best opportunities for helping families realize the dream of homeownership, accounting for roughly six percent of housing stock and being the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the country,” Scott continued. “I ask that you immediately delay implementation of this rule to provide hard-working families relief from this costly and misguided regulation.”

The Biden administration, which has established a “whole-of-government effort” to reduce carbon emissions and incentivize green energy production, drafted a number of similar regulations over the past two years. Officials have introduced new emissions rules for household appliances such as gas stoves; Granholm nevertheless admitted that she personally owns one of the popular appliances.

Controversy over the potential regulations on gas stoves emerged earlier this year when Consumer Product Safety Commission Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. said in an interview that the products constitute a “hidden hazard” and declared that “any option is on the table” for a nationwide prohibition. Consumer Product Safety Commission Chairman Alex Hoehn-Saric later posted a statement asserting that neither he nor the agency planned to outlaw gas stoves.

The new standards for mobile homes come after residential real estate prices increased substantially in the years following the lockdown-induced recession, which caused supply chain bottlenecks and labor shortages that increased the cost of properties. Home sale prices increased from $322,600 in the second quarter of 2020 to $467,700 in the fourth quarter of 2022, according to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Elevated mortgage rates induced by actions from the Federal Reserve to combat inflation, on the other hand, recently caused the first year-over-year decline in median home prices in more than a decade even as properties become less affordable. Apartment rental markets are meanwhile seeing decreases in typical unit sizes, indicating pressure from the cost constraints and a reversal from the desire for larger properties that corresponded with lockdowns as households spent more time in their homes and breadwinners relied more on remote work.

Daily Wire host Matt Walsh lambasted the partnership between Bud Light and transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, contending that boycotting the brand will not be difficult, but noting that radical gender theory requires universal and constant affirmation in order to survive.

Mulvaney, a man who identifies as a girl, has acquired millions of followers on TikTok over the past several months amid his purported gender transition. Bud Light, owned by Anheuser-Busch, recently announced a partnership with the influencer and featured Mulvaney on a commemorative beer can to “authentically connect” with the brand’s audience.

Walsh responded to the deal by noting that Mulvaney has been rewarded for a supposedly marginalized identity with a “long list of corporate sponsorships,” which has also included makeup brand Ulta Beauty and fashion house Kate Spade.

“This is how persecuted these people are: all a man needs to do is announce he’s a woman and he will be immediately showered with more endorsement deals than an NFL quarterback gets,” Walsh commented. “In fact, one of the only quarterbacks who rivals Mulvaney’s sponsorship tally is Colin Kaepernick, and he’s not even a quarterback.”

Walsh noted, on the other hand, that avoiding Bud Light would not entail much sacrifice. “Their beer tastes like rainwater siphoned out of a tin bucket that’s been sitting in your backyard for three weeks,” he continued. “Bud Light tastes very much like malaria and rust. It also tastes like nothing at the same time.”

Bud Light and the other companies which have associated with Mulvaney have received widespread criticism from their core demographics in recent months, especially those which serve women. Walsh noted that the deal between Bud Light and Mulvaney does not make “good business sense,” but observed that offering a “sign of allegiance to the trans agenda” was the true purpose of the arrangement.

“The way to signal this allegiance,” he added, “is to constantly make trans people visible, even if they’re already as visible as any minuscule minority can possibly be or has ever been in history.”

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Major corporations, government agencies, and other institutions indeed rushed to offer their support last week for “Transgender Day of Visibility.” Senior officials in the Biden administration welcomed a number of “transgender kids and their parents” on Friday to discuss efforts in some states to ban so-called sex change surgeries for minors. President Joe Biden himself previously generated backlash last year for hosting a discussion with Mulvaney in the White House.

Walsh noted that transgenderism is an inherently “progressive” movement, which progresses like “bone cancer eating away at its host until there’s nothing left to consume,” and added that the ideology requires constant validation because its core assumptions are “constantly on the verge of collapse” due to their evident contradictions with reality.

“It’s perched precariously on this edge, and it must be aggressively propped up all the time, every second of the day,” Walsh remarked. “The trans person individually barely believes the claims he makes about himself and his own identity. His self-perception is this superficial, ephemeral thing. It’s a lie that he whispers constantly to himself, and he shouts it at the world and demands that it be shouted back to him. No other group needs this kind of support because no other group is in a constant state of trying to convince itself that it exists.”