Enlarge / "The IRA and the EV tax credits must be implemented according to the Congressional intent to ensure the United States, as the superpower of the world, is not beholden to countries that don’t share our values," Senator Joe Manchin said in a statement sent to Ars. (credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is unimpressed with the temporary leniency shown toward electric vehicles in terms of the federal tax credit, and he's determined to do something about it. On Wednesday, the senator introduced a new bill, "the American Vehicle Security Act of 2023." The bill would immediately implement the much stricter new tax credit rules contained in last year's Inflation Reduction Act even though the Department of the Treasury hasn't finished working out how to do that. Should Manchin's bill pass, it looks unlikely that any EV would qualify.

"It is unacceptable that the US Treasury has failed to issue updated guidance for the 30D electric vehicle tax credits and continues to make the full $7,500 credits available without meeting all of the clear requirements included in the Inflation Reduction Act," Manchin said in a statement sent to Ars.

That's not all. According to some outlets, the senator wants anyone who might have been issued an EV tax credit in 2023 to have to repay it, unless they could prove the car satisfied the domestic sourcing requirements. And that could be costly news for anyone who rushed out to buy a new Tesla after that company slashed prices to allow more of its EVs to qualify for the new tax credit rules.

Enlarge / Chicken eggs are disposed of at a quarantined farm in Israel's northern Moshav (village) of Margaliot on January 3, 2022. (credit: Getty | JALAA MAREY / AFP))

The ongoing bird flu outbreak in the US is now the longest and deadliest on record. More than 57 million birds have been killed by the virus or culled since a year ago, and the deadly disruption has helped propel skyrocketing egg prices and a spike in egg smuggling.

Since highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) A(H5N1) was first detected in US birds in January 2022, the price of a carton of a dozen eggs has shot up from an average of about $1.79 in December 2021 to $4.25 in December 2022, a 137 percent increase, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Although inflation and supply chain issues partly explain the rise, eggs saw the largest percentage increase of any specific food, according to the consumer price index.

And the steep pricing is leading some at the US-Mexico border to try to smuggle in illegal cartons, which is prohibited. A US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson told NPR this week that people in El Paso, Texas, are buying eggs in Juárez, Mexico, because they are "significantly less expensive." Meanwhile, a customs official in San Diego tweeted a reminder amid a rise in egg interceptions that failure to declare such agriculture items at a port of entry can result in penalties up to $10,000.