Governors' Biofuels Coalition

Now we enter the dreaded lame duck session where decisions are being made by people who won’t have to live with the consequences of those decisions. That makes for a dangerous, unpredictable situation. For farmers everywhere, the Farm Bill and ag appropriations impact you directly, yet remain unresolved. Are the same people that cut food assistance programs, refuse to clear the way for E15, and couldn’t get their work done on time now suddenly going to come to agreement on these contentious issues? For those who did not lose their seats or retire and must work with a Democratic majority next year, perhaps they will, if for no other reason than self-survival. Both the House and Senate Ag committees will be under new leadership.

A long list of congressional priorities and political obstacles faces the farm bill during the lame-duck session, including stagnant Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) negotiations.

Both chambers return to Washington Monday with roughly 20 scheduled legislative days remaining, and 53 calendar days until the end of the year.

Despite its historical value and expired status in farm country, the farm bill may not rank among Congress’ highest priorities in 2026.

“The farm bill is probably on the short list of things,” said Tim Gannon, an Iowa native and former USDA official under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden who is now a principal at Invariant’s food and agriculture practice in Washington, D.C.

 Congress kicks off a lame-duck session on Monday with a long list of tasks and not much time to complete them. Democratic control of the House and Senate doesn’t start until early next year, but the new political climate will influence actions out of Capitol Hill right away. Over the next five or so weeks, lawmakers must vote on leaders for the 120th Congress, deal with a new funding agreement to avoid a government shutdown next month, pass annual defense legislation and figure out how to handle a long-delayed farm bill.

The world is meeting for a course correction on global warming. The world’s energy demand has other plans.

This year’s United Nations climate conference, which kicks off in this resort city on Monday, must confront the grim new reality that the world is now certain to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming above pre-industrial levels, the most ambitious target that nations agreed on in 2015.

The U.N. said last month that the world’s best hope now is to prevent temperatures from soaring past 1.8 degrees — with the remote possibility of invoking unprecedented political action and massive amounts of carbon removal technologies to bring them back to 1.5C.

While voters of all stripes rebuked President Trump’s tariff policies and the war with Iran on Tuesday, those issues were top of mind in farming and ranching communities across the country, catapulting Democrats into top positions in Iowa, Kansas and Texas.

That’s because farmers “have kind of been like the canary in the coal mine,” said Lesly McNitt, the vice president of public policy at the National Corn Growers Association. Over the past two years, farmers and ranchers immediately felt the effects of some of the Trump administration’s decisions and executive orders, she said.

Months before tariffs drove up the prices of imported consumer goods, China stopped buying American soybeans in retaliation, depriving farmers of expected income. Weeks before gas prices soared, the war in Iran caused a spike in fertilizerprices, raising farm costs.

Canada’s biofuels industry warned that some gaps remain in the government’s proposed rules aimed at matching US incentives, and that the changes are unlikely to spur investment in the world’s top canola producer.

Under the proposed rules, unveiled over the weekend, Canadian biofuel producers would receive more credits from the government for producing biofuels in Canada. To meet low carbon emissions intensity limits, they can either produce low-intensity fuels themselves or buy credits from others.

Some politicians have skeletons in their closet. Iowa’s Democratic governor-elect, Rob Sand, has a Prada coat in his.

At least metaphorically.

While attending Brown University, Sand, a state auditor who was elected governor on Tuesday, balanced his studies with runway modeling in Europe.

He walked in shows for design houses like Number Nine, a culty Japanese label, and made repeat appearances on the Prada catwalk.

President Trump spent much of the past two years promising to bring down energy prices.

Instead, his war with Iran, as well as other policies, drove up the cost of gasoline, diesel and electricity. At the same time his administration worked to thwart efforts to fight climate change, blocking renewable energy investments that could have reduced the country’s reliance on fossil fuels or brought down costs.

On Tuesday, voters’ frustration with soaring energy prices helped propel Democrats to a blowout, with Republicans losing control of the House and the Senate, as well as the governorships of many historically conservative states.

The blockbuster oil profits this year highlight longstanding concerns about who gains, and who pays the price, when wars interrupt the flow of energy. As of this week, Americans had spent an extra $147 billion on gasoline and diesel since the United States and Israel began striking Iran on Feb. 28, according to an analysis by Brown University’s Climate Solutions Lab. That amounts to more than $1,100 per household.

Some companies are benefiting more than others. U.S. refiners have fared especially well because fuel-making plants have been badly damaged by hostilities in the Middle East and Russia. With fewer refineries available to meet global demand, profit margins soared for those that remain online.

In less than two weeks, U.S. Senate leaders plan to take an initial vote on the divisive permitting reform bill aimed at easing regulatory barriers that can delay energy projects. As the date nears, some of the country’s leading environmental groups are ramping up their opposition, arguing that the measure would do more harm than good.

A new report from Resources for the Future, a research nonprofit, projects that the bill’s power-sector provisions would cut carbon emissions by 1.8 gigatons by 2041 and reduce annual electricity-system costs by an average of 3.5 percent to 7 percent compared to a scenario without the bill.

But the projected benefits are unlikely to convince the bill’s critics, partly because the analysis doesn’t address the provisions that have drawn the most opposition, including changes to the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.