The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration announced today that it is gutting fuel-economy standards for cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks, an inconceivable decision given the purpose of the federal fuel economy program – to reduce gasoline consumption – and the skyrocketing prices at the pump Americans are already struggling to pay.

The final rule weakens existing Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, lowering the expected fleetwide average to just 34.9 miles per gallon by 2031 – below what automakers on average have already achieved. In its proposal, NHTSA predicted that its changes would force the average driver to pay $1,400 more in fuel costs over the lifetime of their vehicle.

The following is a comment from Atid Kimelman, an attorney at NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council):

“With Americans struggling to afford gasoline that is more than $4 a gallon, the Trump administration is going to force them to pay more at the pump. Oil companies will get a windfall from gutting the fuel economy standards, but the rest of us are going to be handing over more of our hard-earned paychecks to fill up the tank.

“This is a harsh blow to American families struggling to afford rising energy costs. It will raise drivers’ costs while also worsening air pollution across the country following a scorching summer marred by devastating storms and wildfires.

“Congress established fuel economy standards five decades ago after Middle East unrest led to a spike in oil prices. But with the war with Iran driving up oil prices, the Trump administration is doing all it can to keep us dependent on gas guzzlers. In fact, most automakers would not need to make any fuel-economy improvements over the next five years to meet these new standards.

“This rollback is not only bad policy; it also violates the law. Stay tuned.”

Background

Over the past five decades, fuel economy standards have been one of the most significant actions the United States has taken to reduce its reliance on oil and save drivers money at the pump. A bipartisan Congress first established CAFE standards in 1975 in the wake of the OPEC Oil Embargo a few years earlier. As a result of federal clean car and fuel economy standards, vehicles in the United States today use less gas and create less pollution than they used to. Since enacted, fuel economy improvements have saved more than two trillion gallons of gasoline, enough to run every car and light truck in the U.S. for more than 15 years. They have also saved drivers a combined $5 trillion in fuel costs and avoided 14 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions, a Princeton University study concluded.

NHTSA’s 2024 fuel economy standards were forecast to raise the average vehicle’s fuel efficiency to 50.4 miles per gallon, saving Americans $23 billion in fuel costs. Those standards are being repealed in this action by the Trump administration today, and a new average goal of just 34.9 miles-per-gallon set.

Instead of following its statutory mandate to set vehicle fuel-economy standards at “maximum feasible levels” to reduce fuel consumption, with these new standards NHTSA set goals below what vehicle fleets on the road today already achieve.

Earlier today, the federal government under President Donald Trump finalized a rollback of fuel economy standards for passenger cars and trucks. By doing so, the administration effectively eliminated the nation’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards, which have improved vehicle efficiency and saved families about $321 billion at the gas pump since the modern CAFE program was implemented in 2010.

Below is a statement by Dr. Dave Cooke, senior vehicles analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientist’s (UCS) Clean Transportation Program.

“The federal government’s decision to gut fuel economy standards is a handout to automakers and oil companies that will strap American consumers already struggling with an affordability crisis. According to UCS analysis, CAFE standards have saved consumers over $32 billion since the Iran War began and sent gas prices skyrocketing. Weakening these standards means drivers will spend more on fuel while having fewer options to choose efficient vehicles.

“The administration claims this rollback will save consumers money, but even the government’s own analysis shows the opposite: consumers will spend more over the lifetime of their vehicles. Any small reduction in upfront vehicle costs will be outweighed by higher fuel expenses.

“This rollback doesn't just stall progress—it moves the nation backward. For example, the administration’s 2031 standards are weaker than what the new vehicle fleet had already achieved in 2024. This industry giveaway is a raw deal for drivers, who deserve vehicles that cost less to operate and give them more choices—not a policy that forces them to spend more at the pump.”

President Trump’s Department of Transportation today finalized a rule gutting Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards, which conserve billions of gallons of gas and save consumers billions at the pump.

Trump’s action is illegal because the law requires that the fuel economy standards be set at the “maximum feasible” level. The final rule ignores the feasibility of clean technology and the millions of fuel-efficient cars already on the road.

“Trump is tanking sensible mileage standards at the worst possible time for consumers, who’re getting hit with sky-high prices at the pump,” said Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Safe Climate Transport Campaign. “Consumers will pay the price for these reckless rollbacks while Trump’s Big Oil and Big Auto buddies reap the short-term profits. This move spells short- and long-term disaster for people’s health, the planet, and even U.S. automakers who’ll sit on the sidelines while clean cars advance around the world. This standard was the biggest single step any nation has taken to save gas, money at the pump, and auto pollution.”

The fuel economy rule would have saved 64 billion gallons of gas. Even before the current rise in gas prices, it was set to deliver $35 billion in savings to consumers over the lifetimes of the vehicles covered. To do this, it would have required automakers to add gas-saving technology so new cars averaged 50.4 miles per gallon by model year 2031. The Trump rule will result in cars averaging a mere 34.9 mpg in 2031.

The standards also would have slashed pollution that harms Americans’ health and worsens the climate crisis. Transportation makes up the biggest share of climate-heating pollution from the United States, the world’s second biggest carbon polluter.

Gutting the fuel economy standards will allow automakers to make vehicles that guzzle more gas and pollute more, costing consumers at the pump and at the doctor’s office.

“Trump’s creating a perfect storm to crush competitiveness of domestic car companies, drive up consumer costs and kill the climate,” said Becker. “There’s nothing Trump won’t sacrifice on the altar of fealty to Big Oil and auto polluters, whether it’s our health or our wallets. Trump’s rollbacks are speeding us toward a sicker, poorer America. Major carmakers asked Trump to give them this Trojan SUV that could spell their doom since they won’t have to compete against the best auto technology in the world.”

CAFE standards are important because the United States is the world’s biggest oil guzzler, consuming 20 million barrels (840 million gallons) per day — 20% of the world’s oil use. Transportation is the biggest consumer of that oil, making strong auto standards the most effective way to cut pollution and oil use.

By resetting standards back to 2022, the administration will allow automakers to build up credits for meeting or surpassing the standards for the last four years.

“Adding injury to insult, the administration is gutting standards for past as well as future years,” said Becker. “This will hobble a future administration in setting strong standards since carmakers will be able to evade them with the ‘get out of jail free’ credits collected under Trump.”

Today, Groundwork Collaborative unveiled a Shoppers’ Bill of Rights, 12 basic protections aimed at reining in the hidden fees, pricing games, and corporate tactics that make everyday life more expensive.

Authors Lindsay Owens, Nia Law, and Elizabeth Pancotti argue that existing regulations to safeguard the shopper were written for a bygone era of newspaper coupon inserts, mail-order catalogs, and checkbooks. Technology is now a step ahead of shoppers every time they reach for their wallet.

Today, two shoppers can unknowingly be charged a different price for the same item at the same store. Cancelling a subscription can require clicking through dozens of screens. Even if you can look up a tutorial on YouTube to fix something when it breaks, you may be beholden to the manufacturer to get the parts you need for a repair. And with the rise of AI-powered shopping assistants like Sparky, Alexa, and Muse, consumers may be in store for high-tech pickpockets disguised as personal shoppers.

Consumer protections have been rewritten before. Women-led butcher shop boycotts in the early 20th century helped turn outrage over rising prices into an organized movement that helped win a Federal Trade Commission that answered to consumers. In 1962, President Kennedy articulated four basic consumer rights: the right to safety, the right to be informed, the right to choose, and the right to be heard. The generation he spoke for secured honest labels, upfront loan terms, and a product safety watchdog. And after the 2008 financial crisis wiped out trillions in household wealth, more than 200 consumer, labor, civil rights, and faith groups helped win the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Each time, the rules caught up with the marketplace. Now, the marketplace has changed again, and the rules have not.

According to new polling from Blue Rose Research, two-thirds of Americans support the Shopper’s Bill of Rights. Support is even higher for several individual protections it includes: nearly 75% support making it as easy to cancel a subscription as it was to sign up, nearly 7 in 10 support upfront, all-in pricing, and 65% support banning surveillance pricing.

Groundwork Collaborative President and CEO Lindsay Owens said:

“Companies are deploying a dizzying array of tricks and tactics to reinvent the ripoff and squeeze American consumers. Shoppers shouldn’t have to outsmart an algorithm, decode the fine print, or fight their way out of a subscription just to get a fair deal. Policymakers should put simple guardrails in place to protect consumers from the high-tech ways corporations are gouging us – the Shoppers’ Bill of Rights is a good place to start.”

Owens is the author of Gouged: The End of a Fair Price – and What That Means for Your Wallet (Viking Penguin 2026), providing a detailed look at how corporations use modern technology and market power to quietly raise prices across everyday goods and services – and what consumers and policymakers can do to fight back.

The Shoppers’ Bill of Rights

• Right to an All-In Price: Require companies to include all mandatory fees in the advertised price. A hotel room advertised for $149 should not become a $200 room at checkout.
• Right to a Fair Price: Prevent companies from using consumers’ browsing history, location, income, or other personal data to decide the price they pay. Uber has reportedly raised prices for riders with dwindling phone batteries and the Princeton Review has charged more for SAT prep in ZIP codes with large Asian populations.
• Right to a Predictable Price: Prohibit companies from raising the price of products in real time, even when the company’s costs to make or provide the product don’t change. As Walmart and Kroger are installing electronic shelf labels capable of adjusting prices up to six times a minute, companies shouldn’t be able to jack up the price of groceries or other essentials in real time simply because demand spikes.
• Right to Cancellation: Require companies to make cancelling a subscription as easy as signing up. Cancelling an Uber One subscription can take as many as 32 actions across 23 screens.
• Right to Repair: Require manufacturers to make the parts, tools, software, and repair manuals available so people can fix what they own. If iPhone owners use third-party repair shops when they crack their phone screens, they may find themselves unable to adjust the brightness settings.
• Right to Your Own Agent: Require AI assistants to act in the customer’s best interest, not the interests of the company behind them. A recent study found that LLMs steer users toward sponsored products over cheaper alternatives.
• Right to Resale: Consumers should be able to sell, transfer, or give away what they buy without platforms or professional scalpers rigging the resale market. For items that do not appreciate, like tickets, resale prices should be capped at the original face value. Tickets with a face value around $250 for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour resold for an average of upward of $3,800.
• Right to a Level Playing Field: Enforce and modernize the Robinson-Patman Act so suppliers charge small, independent stores the same price they charge big-box chains. A small grocer often pays more than Walmart for the same bag of chips before it ever reaches the shelf, leaving Main Street shops without a fair shot and customers who shop locally paying more.
• Right to Comparison Shop: Require stores to post the price per ounce, pound, or other standard size unit on shelf tags so the better value is clear. “Family Size” and “Party Size” Doritos bags have differed by just one ounce, making it harder to tell which is actually the better deal.
• Right to a Refund: Ban restocking and arbitrary return fees and require refunds in the original form of payment when a purchase is cancelled, never delivered, or does not work as advertised. Returning an online purchase by mail to Marshalls or TJ Maxx can cost $11.99, while Best Buy charges a 15% restocking fee on some electronics. Consumers shouldn’t have to pay another round of fees just to get their money back.
• Right to Proper Billing: Require accurate bills to arrive within a set period after a service is provided. Companies shouldn’t be able to turn their own billing mistakes into a surprise expense months later. After Duke Energy rolled out new billing software, it made more than 100,000 billing errors in a year. Thousands of customers went months without bills, and 15,000 were later hit with delayed charges.
• Right to a Competitive Price: Refresh the antitrust rulebook for the algorithmic age by closing loopholes that allow common pricing software to price-fix. Landlords’ common pricing software, RealPage, allegedly spiked rents by as much as $180 per month, while gas stations used Kalibrate which allegedly hiked gas prices by as much 30 cents per gallon.

Atop all the others inflicted on us came last week's sickening spectacle of two vengeful, lying, broken old men - one a longtime killer of children, one a petty useful idiot abetting him - alternately celebrating and threatening genocide before "we the peoples of the United Nations." Born of "the defiance of hope" to enable us to "live together in peace," the forum now hosts the perpetrators of unspeakable atrocities. Omar El Akkad: "One day everyone will have always been against this."

Even before war criminals spoke at the U.N., everyone was already against everything Trump's done, from his insane, drone-packed arch to the other $1.8 billion vanity projects to his latest tantrum over the media. Despite multiple court rulings against it, an ensuing press ban is still partly, messily in place, with CNN, MS NOW and Politico facing dubious access, other major media finally finding their spine and solidarity, and the havoc offering us the droll sight of a needy guy who never met a camera he didn’t like in a farcical silent movie, a “shrinking figure gesticulating wildly into the wind.” Ever the attention whore, he tried to compensate with weird, illegal PR stunts: Claiming an entire hemisphere, boasting, "Only Trump" and an ad pleading "Love Me" on the taxpayer dime in "an astonishing misuse of public resources more fitting for North Korea."

The final own goal of his attack on the press, teased by a frantic promo, was the launch of Trump TV: The Essentials Station, the White House YouTube channel recast as a 24/7 livestream of Trump's "greatest hits." Cue a July rant at Mt. Rushmore about "the communist menace," last year's speech at dinner with King Charles, a 2016 whine in Kentucky about the wet stairs he overcame. YouTube's real-time data let the "king of ratings" see it quickly crash and burn, from a paltry 8,000 viewers to half that to 1,000 to 704 (LOL) as J.D. announced stripping health care from 760,000 people - way below the 2,000-plus then watching birds snack on seeds and nuts. Many relished the flop - "Fascism is awesome!" - or suggested new slots: "Wake Up & Rage Tweet, Ketchup-Throwing, They’re Eating our Pets, The Great MAGA Crypto Scam, Wheel of Pardons" and, from 2:01 to 2:02 a.m., “Covfefe.”

Then came a clumsy, swooning welcome - "the deference was deafening" - for his strongman soulmate Chinese President Xi Jinping, the world's biggest jailer of journalists and never mind the "communist menace," with its empty pomp, cartoonish tour of a hole-in-the-ground ballroom and million-year helipad: "He has a great interest in granite." Accomplished: nada. The next day, with his approval rating "somewhere between Ebola and Ed Sheeran," he waddled into the 81st session of the UN General Assembly and threatened one of its130 participants with war crimes, musing, "Do I annihilate the Islamic Republic quickly and drive them into hell?" Iran's delegation swiftly walked out. Mehdi Hasan: "For shame. The president of the United States goes to the United Nations and threatens genocide against a member state in front of the world. This is where we’re at."

Slurring, stumbling, wandering at unhinged, racist length - details here - Trump boasted about murdering over 200 people “at war with civilization” in illegal boat strikes, celebrated (and inflated) the theft of Venezuela’s oil, charged trans people are a national security risk, inanely declaimed “to the (raping and plundering) victor belong the spoils” - the inept, terrifying vision of a "demagogue who hijacked American democracy devolving into a mad king before our eyes." The speech, a "sad and dangerous national embarrassment" with its "ridiculous braggadocio, narcissistic puffery, absurd demonstrable lies, open criminality and deranged, murderous threats" landed "with silence inside the hall and a pile of fact checks outside it, (the) death rattle of a rapist president and what’s left of America’s reputation on the world stage."

Afterwards, normal world leaders "went back to making plans that don't include the United States." Or, in the case of Denmark, trolling. Trump has created a fictional backstory for a "deal" on Greenland "long in the making - you could go back many, many decades, probably centuries" - that just repackages an existing 1951 deal; ahead of a meeting held later at the U.N., officials played the Sondheim song Send In The Clowns, with a long zoom to Rubio. At this point, writes Paul Krugman, it's "Underwear on the Outside” time, a callback to Woody Allen's 1971 film Bananas about a third-world nation's absurd strongman. Coverage of the U.N., he noted, focused on Trump's rabid rejection of global cooperation or the fact almost everything he said was a lie. The bigger story: "The leader of what used to be the world’s most powerful nation, now collapsing before our eyes, has clearly, undeniably lost his mind."

Other speakers tried to steer the conversation back to reality. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the primacy of international law, especially in Palestine, calling the birth of the U.N. "an act of defiance (by) people who refuse to surrender the future to fear...who know our futures are bound together." But with accountability: The U.N. deems Gaza "a collective crime," a "live-streamed atrocity...sustained by the complicity of influential third states"; their complicity must be confronted for the rule of law to survive. Holding photos of Iranian children killed in U. S. strikes, Iran's president Masoud Pezeshkian argued it is Trump who has defied international law, while Iran has remained committed to negotiations. “We have only defended ourselves. We are not terrorists." He also called for accountability on all sides, asking "why Israel kills, yet Iran is subject to sanction.”

Israel kills. And Benjamin Netanyahu offered a bellicose "potpourri of lies and incitement" to deny it. In his "furious, ugly and disgraceful" diatribe, he called universal charges of genocide "the biggest lie of the century," summoning the chutzpah to call the carnage in Gaza "the opposite of genocide." Anyone who disagreed, he raved, was "a moral coward." They include about half the Assembly, who walked out as Zionist allies chanted “Am Yisrael Chai," "the Nation of Israel lives"; hundreds of protesters outside, with about 100 arrested, among them Brooklyn Council Member Chi Ossé, who later posted a selfie in handcuffs with “Free Palestine. Netanyahu burn in hell"; and world leaders "spreading lies about my country and our brave soldiers." They are all "tyrants (in) a global anti-Jewish conspiracy (to) erase us from the face of the Earth," Bibi brayed. "Instead of collapsing, we delivered devastating blows to all of them with our great American friends."

There was much more. He brandished a pager in tribute to Israel's 2024 operation targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon that killed 12 and wounded over 3,000. He dismissed settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank as the work of "juvenile delinquents." He said bombing Iran was "’one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever had to make." Truly shameless, he claimed Israel still has "the most moral army in the world.” He denied a Haaretz report, confirmed by the New York Times, that Egypt's intel chief warned him in September 2023 that Hamas was planning "a major attack" but he declined to pass the tip on to his intelligence agencies. He assailed as "anti-Semitic" the duly elected mayor of his host city, who deems him a war criminal and wants the ICC's arrest warrant against him enacted. He claimed "many Jews no longer feel safe in New York." He evidently doesn't either; he flew into New Jersey.

He ended his speech with a Bible verse from Samuel that describes the genocide of the Amalek, enemies of Israel, after God orders King Saul, "‘Go and completely destroy those wicked people." Saul mostly does, but spares their king and “the best of the sheep and cattle." Then the prophet Samuel admonishes him: "(God) sent you on a mission, but you have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel." Samuel's murderous gist: “Nezah Israel lo yeshaker,” or "the eternity of Israel will not falter.” The lesson Bibi draws: "We have no choice but genocide." And so they undertook it: Over 73,900 direct deaths, about half women and children. Over 175,000 wounded, often gravely. An estimated, obscene 641,000 ultimately dead, from destruction of the healthcare system, malnutrition, disease. The bodies of perhaps 10,000 more still lie under the rubble.

And the devastation goes on. Under Israel's blockade, there is widespread hunger, 90% of Gazans remain homeless, trauma and illness go untreated. More than 900 wheelchairs donated by two Australian non-profits for over 11,000 disabled children - Gaza has the most child amputees per capita in the world - are held hostage in Jordan warehouses by outlandish Israeli restrictions on anything that could "serve a military purpose." Other targets of insane "dual-use" ban: Portable toilets, sleeping bags, tarps. bandages, diapers, shampoo, tent poles. And evidently kites after Bibi declared "targeted strikes”against the launch of any kites, balloons or drones, with the IDF ordered to "act forcefully" against perps in a besieged hellhole where Palestinian children are deemed “explosives of the future." "What a childhood in Gaza teaches: Want less."

The cruelty, madness, loss continue to spark palpable rage. Actor Mandy Patinkin, a Jew aware of history, on the corrosive effect of "the revenge business": "How could it be done to you and your ancestors, and you turn around and do it to someone else?!” Omar El Akkad - born in Egypt, raised in Qatar and Canada, a US citizen - on "what it means to live under an ordering of the world that abides slaughter, and whether any ordering ever stood for anything at all." He wrote the book One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, though its full title is One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will always have been against this,” what one critic calls "a cathartic savaging" of empire, Western hypocrisy on Gaza, selective empathy in "the most privileged sliver of global society."

"When the unspeakable happens, the world should stop but it doesn't," he writes of the comforting bubble of a white nationalist world run by broken men and their accomplices. They blithely "shrug at one kind of slaughter," having developed "a terrible immunity...When it mattered, who sided with justice and who sided with power?” The time to choose is now, he adds, and hindsight will not undo or excuse their crimes: "At the time they say, 'Yes, this is tragic, but necessary'...The alternative to the countless killed and maimed and orphaned...screaming from under the rubble (is) barbarism.” "There is no way to finish the sentence, 'It is unfortunate that tens of thousands of children are dead but...'" he movingly writes. "There is no such thing as someone else’s children."

The evening after Netanyahu attacked Zohran Mamdani as anti-Semitic - Mamdani dismissed the "baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide against Palestinians" - the good mayor was home at Gracie Mansion, busy with one of Carver's "small, good things." The mayor hosted Palestinian families from Gaza who have lost family members or made their way to America as refugees to "honor their contributions (and) acknowledge the losses they have endured." They ate a meal; a smiling Mamdani glided around the table, filling water glasses. They also planted an olive tree - for Palestinians, source of food, wood, fuel and symbol of peace, hope, resilience, a deep connection to their heritage and ancestral land. Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish: ‘"Here we remain, as long as thyme and olives remain." Zohran Mamdani: "May peace be our future."

A young boy in Gaza mourns his murdered mother Getty Image