At a rally this past April in Michigan, surrounded by a cadre of law-enforcement officials, Donald Trump suddenly began railing against electric cars. President Joe Biden’s decision to support EVs, he decried, “is one of the dumbest I’ve ever heard.” Minutes later, he was back to praising the sheriffs behind him: “We have to get law and order back. These are the best people in the world,” he said to a smattering of applause.
Support for law enforcement and skepticism of electric cars both abound on the right. Police officers are more likely to identify as Republican than the communities they serve, and their unions widely endorsed Trump in 2020. Meanwhile, the Americans buying electric cars tend to be Democratic. And yet, more and more law-enforcement officers seem to be taken by EVs. When they “get into and experience the [electric] cars firsthand themselves,” Tony Abdalla, a sergeant with the South Pasadena Police Department, told me, “they’re like, Okay, I think I get it now.” READ FULL ARTICLE