Trump Adviser Carl Icahn Lobbies for Rule Change That Benefits Icahn

Late in the day on Feb. 27, Michael McAdams’s phone lit up with a flurry of calls and messages. McAdams runs a biofuels trade group, and in the arcane world of fuel policy, the news couldn’t have been bigger: The White House was considering a radical change to the U.S. renewable fuel mandate, which governs the amount of ethanol blended into the country’s gasoline supply. To the surprise of many, the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), a major trade group that represents ethanol producers, was dropping its opposition to the proposal, which would shift the responsibility for meeting biofuel quotas away from refineries. “I nearly fell out of my chair,” says McAdams.

By the time he got to the office the next morning, McAdams had messages from most of his 33 members, who were worried the proposal would upend the biofuel market and dry up demand for their products. It took him almost two days to get back to them all and try to explain what was happening, to the degree that he even knew himself. “We’re in an information void,” he says. “There’s a vacuum here on who the hell is running what.”