North Carolinian congresswoman Virginia Foxx has never shied away from regressive takes.
Over her many decades in politics, the 82-year-old representative has opposed everything from the release of the Epstein files and abortion for sexual assault survivors to legalized gay marriage and even aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
But as flagged by the Daily Beast, the octogenarian politician’s latest broadside may take the cake. When a 10-year-old child wrote her a letter expressing support for electric cars, Foxx didn’t agree to disagree — instead, she fulminated at the poor kid in a response that sounds more like a late night Donald Trump post on social media than a polite rejoinder to an engaged member of the public.
“Your request that ‘the federal government should give a $5,000 tax rebate for all new electric car purchases’ means that the federal government must take that money out of the pockets of hardworking people who may not have the means to buy an electric vehicle in the first place,” Foxx seethed in the letter, posted on social media by the boy’s mother.
Back in the real world, research on the effects of EV tax credits suggests the type of convoluted trade-offs familiars to policy wonks everywhere. A 2024 Stanford study found that while they decrease pollution and help domestic auto manufacturers, they do impose certain costs on taxpayers. There are also hearty downstream benefits: researchers at Georgia Tech recently found that simply getting more EVs on the road pushes down energy bills and gas prices for everybody by a striking margin — a compelling proposition in an era of surging gas prices caused by the Trump’s war on Iran.
Looming over all that are the more existential stakes: that while Foxx will die before the worst effects of climate change hit, future generations like the concerned kid who wrote to her will have to deal with the brunt of the repercussions, which will almost certainly be brutal.
Foxx didn’t have time for nuance, though, as she scolded the boy for the national debt crisis that her generation created, even attacking his teachers.
“YOU and your classmates will be responsible for paying down the national debt,” she fumed, directing the child to watch Fox News and read the National Review for more reliable information on the environment. “While I will never be able to know, my guess is that your teachers will not give you a good educational experience and help you learn to think, as they are too interested in indoctrinating you. How sad.”
More on electric cars: Cybertruck Recalled to Keep Its Wheels From Flying Off While Driving
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