PrairiePundit

  Project Constitution @ProjectConstitu · 9h SHOCKING: $113 BILLION Heist in 78 Days — Biden’s Admin Looted the Treasury on Their Way Out After Trump Was Elected But Before He Took Office In just 78 days after Trump WON the election — but before he took office — the Biden Admin shoveled $113,000,000,000 out the door through the Dept. of Energy & EPA… to entities that weren’t even qualified to get it. This wasn’t policy. This was a smash-and-grab on your dime. Senator John Kennedy is and says EXACTLY what we’re all thinking — people need to be locked up for this. They thought no one would notice. We noticed. They thought no one would care. We care. WATCH: No one exposes corruption like Kennedy This is an extraordinary abuse by the Biden administration that is throwing money away. Those responsible for this abuse should be held accountable.

 Blaze: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency announced the discovery last week that the Biden-Harris administration parked roughly $20 billion at an outside financial institution as part of a scheme "purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight." In the days since, Zeldin has raised questions about one of the intended recipients of the funds — a new nonprofit linked to a staunch ally of the former president and vice president, failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. "I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars, and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word," Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon, which highlighted the connection in a report Wednesday. "When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organiz...

 NY Post: The Environmental Protection Agency released what it calls the “strongest-ever pollution standards for cars,” which it claims will “expand consumer choice in clean vehicles.” That’s a stretch: These new regulations, which are clearly beyond EPA’s defined powers, will limit overall vehicle choice and force Americans into expensive and unreliable electric vehicles. The EPA expects plug-in electric vehicles to make up between 62% and 70% of the automotive market. But this unrealistic target ignores two key facts: First, consumers are not lining up to purchase electric vehicles, which made up only 7.6% of 2023 vehicle sales despite heavy subsidies. American drivers simply aren’t embracing EVs because they know these vehicles have shorter driving ranges and longer refueling times. Not to mention that they’re significantly more expensive. The five-year cost to own an average electric vehicle is more than $92,000, according to the North American Auto Dealers Association. Compar...

 Washington Examiner: I f the federal government wants to restructure an entire sector of the economy, it needs explicit authority from Congress, the Supreme Court held Thursday. Its ruling in  EPA v. West Virginia  will save consumers billions of dollars in energy costs. More importantly, it takes power away from unelected bureaucrats and returns it to the people’s elected leaders. A number of states with large coal economies had challenged an Obama-era regulation from the  Environmental Protection Agency  that essentially capped the carbon emissions that could be emitted by existing coal power plants. The Obama EPA regulation came after Congress had specifically debated and rejected an economy-wide cap-and-trade policy in 2010. After winning reelection in 2012, however,  President Barack Obama  famously told his Cabinet, “I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” meaning he would use his pen to sign executive actions bypassing Congress wherever possible...

  The Lid: AOCs Latest Stupid Demand: Dissolve SCOTUS ‘For The Sake Of The Planet’ I predict the planet will survive.  ... The EPA decision was based on the constitutional separation of powers. The EPA went beyond the powers given to them by congress. Congress could give them the power, but the EPA couldn’t just take power. ... The EPA overstepped and the court reined it in. 

  NY Times: Deals Blow to White House Efforts to Address Climate Change The decision appeared to rule out approaches to regulation like a cap-and-trade system at a time when experts are issuing dire warnings on climate change. The ruling further signals that the court’s conservative majority is deeply skeptical of the power of administrative agencies to address major issues. Follow updates. I think the court is saying that some decisions must be made by Congress.  That is where the Constitution requires it.  This ruling will likely apply to other federal agencies. 

 Fox News: ... West Virginia vs. the EPA asks whether important policies that impact the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected D.C. bureaucrats or by Congress. This SCOTUS could well decide that ruling by executive agency fiat is no longer acceptable. The case involves the Clean Power Plan, which was adopted under President Barack Obama to fight climate change; the program was estimated to cost as much as $33 billion per year and would have completely reordered our nation’s power grid. The state of West Virginia, joined by two coal companies and others, sued the EPA, arguing the plan was an abuse of power. By deciding in favor of West Virginia, the court could begin to rein in the vast powers of the alphabet agencies in D.C. that run our lives and return it to legislators whom we elect to create…legislation. Just as the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade that abortion laws are more appropriately left up to the people’s elected representatives, it may decide in West ...

 Victoria Taft: ... In 2019, the  Trump administration  repealed the Clean Power Plan and installed another policy, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule (ACE), that gave states more latitude in setting power plant and greenhouse gas standards. Indeed, under the Trump Administration policies and market forces, the original Clean Power Plan emissions standards were already being met. But the deep state moved into action.  SCOTUSblog  relates that on Trump’s last full day in office, “the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit vacated the repeal of the Clean Power Plan, vacated the ACE Rule, and sent the issue back  to the EPA  for additional proceedings.” Now the fight over this power play is at the U.S. Supreme Court. According to the energy states, the lower court gave the EPA unchecked authority to dictate policy, subsuming what is supposed to be Congress’s power under the “major questions” and “non-delegation” policies. The court heard...

Washington Post Editorial: Even the fossil-fuel industry doesn’t like the EPA’s methane rollback If they do not like the EPA ruling they are free to continue to use the more restricted rules they have operated under.  No one is forcing them to emit more.

Washington Post: As a candidate, Trump vowed to dismantle the EPA ‘in almost every form.’ As president, he’s making headway on that promise. During the first 18 months of the Trump administration, nearly 1,600 workers left the agency. Fewer than 400 were hired. Obama pushed control freak policies which hit ordinary Americans from mud puddles to other aspects of life.  Under Obama, the EPA was seen as a vehicle to attack political enemies.  Cutting back on excessive regulations has helped to free up the economy and the air is still cleaner.

Washington Post: Emails reveal close ties between top EPA officials and those they regulate Littered among tens of thousands of emails that have surfaced in recent weeks are dozens of requests for regulatory relief by industry players. Many have been granted. On some occasions, agency officials pushed back on the idea that they would automatically grant industry requests. Would I send a request for regulatory relief to a clerk or to a "top EPA official"?  Who would be more likely to be able to grant the relief? The fact is that under Obama the EPA became a rogue agency that imposed burdensome and unnecessary regulations on businesses and individuals.  It tried to regulate mud puddles and ponds.  It was hostile to the use of fossil fuels which are needed to make the US economy work.

Daily Signal: A proposed rule announced Tuesday by Scott Pruitt, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is intended to bring much-needed transparency to agency rule-making. The environmental lobby is positively apoplectic about the proposal (naturally), even though it aligns perfectly with its long-held commitment to the public’s “right to know” principle. The proposed regulation would require the EPA to ensure that the scientific data and research models “pivotal” to significant regulation are “publicly available in a manner sufficient for validation and analysis.” Despite existing rules on government use of scientific research, federal agencies routinely mask politically driven regulations as scientifically-based imperatives. The supposed science underlying these rules is often hidden from the general public and unavailable for vetting by experts. But credible science and transparency are necessary elements of sound policy. The opposition from greens and much of th...

Steve Forbes: It should come as no surprise how the man who is boldly redirecting the EPA — a once rogue agency that operated far beyond its constitutional authority — is now the subject of routine attacks from liberal news outlets and activists who want him fired. Scott Pruitt has taken his job as EPA Administrator seriously and has done more to reinstate the EPA's true, core mission than any of his modern-day predecessors. Pruitt's sharp focus is correct — to restore contaminated lands, safeguard our nation's air and water, and do so by respecting real science rather than the ideologically driven fake science of his predecessors. He is demonstrating that we can both have a cleaner environment and greater economic growth and job creation. Contrary to the extreme environmentalist, prosperity and a safer environment can go hand-in-hand. As Scott Pruitt observes, our nation can be, "pro-growth, pro-jobs and pro-environment." He is absolutely correct. In j...

James Delingpole: Scott Pruitt is the greatest-ever Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. To be fair, though, the competition was never exactly stiff. The bar was set low right from the start, under the Nixon-era administrator William Ruckelshaus. Ruckelshaus is best known for his decision to ban the use of the insecticide DDT in the US. This, in turn, led to a near-global ban which deprived the world of its most effective prophylactic against the malarial mosquito, arguably causing millions of unnecessary deaths. But what was perhaps most shocking about Ruckelshaus’s decision was that it ran roughshod over science and due process. At the time, the EPA had just finished a seven-month hearing under Judge Edmund Sweeney concluding in a 9,000-page document that DDT was essentially harmless to humans and wildlife. Ruckelshaus decided to go with the green activists rather than the scientific evidence and banned it anyway. This puts into perspective the liberal media’...

Erick Erickson: It is an open secret in Washington that a leftwing opposition research firm has hired investigators to dig into Trump Administration officials. It is no coincidence that many of the accusations, like with former Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price, involve private air travel and the like. It is what these investigators focus on to give the media easy stories. There really is not much unusual about that and, frankly, given the outrageous hostility of the left and the ongoing, targeted harassment of Trump Administration officials, private air travel makes a ton of sense for the other passengers and the Cabinet level official. But here we are with Scott Pruitt. The left is out to get him not because he has done anything wrong, but because he is highly effective. Pruitt has not, contrary to media accusations, abused the use of private aviation. Likewise, he is paying a rent that career EPA bureaucrats have determined is "reasonable fair market value....

Fox News: Scientific studies used by the Obama administration to help justify tough environmental regulations are coming under intensifying scrutiny, with critics questioning their merit as the Trump EPA reverses or delays some of those rules. In one case, agencies determined the research used to prop up a ban on a pesticide was questionable. On another front, the Environmental Protection Agency never complied with a congressional subpoena for the data used to justify most Obama administration air quality rules. “EPA regulations are based on secret data developed in the 1990s,” Steve Milloy, who served on President Trump’s EPA transition team, told Fox News. “For the EPA, coming up with cherry-picked data is standard operating procedure.” Milloy, author of “Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA,” was previously a lawyer for the Securities and Exchange Commission and is among critics who accuse federal agencies of carefully selecting scientific research to fit a political ...

NY Times: E.P.A. Officials, Disheartened, Are Leaving in Droves Among the departures are nearly 200 biologists, chemists and toxicologists, draining the agency of scientific expertise needed to address pollution threats. This is the agency that has been abusing people for years ordering expensive and unnecessary steps to comply with the whims of bureaucrats who don't care about the lives they destroy.  Under the Obama administration, the abuses accelerated.  Too many times they ignored a cost-benefit analysis of what was ordered.  It became a bloated out of control agency that attempted to impose its will in secret at time.

NY Times: E.P.A. Contractor Scoured Agency for Anti-Trump Officials A top executive has submitted at least 40 Freedom of Information Act requests targeting employees known to be questioning management at the E.P.A. The EPA is infested with true believers in climate change who think they are on a "mission from God' in the words of the Blues Brothers.  They have been acting as if they are above the laws for longer than the Trump administration has been in power.  Finding them and sending them to more suitable occupations is a way to avoid the insubordination by deep state operatives.

Kimberley Strassel: In a better world, Americans would never hear the name Samantha Dravis. She wouldn’t be pictured on the front page of the New York Times or added to environmentalist “watch lists.” This is no knock on Ms. Dravis, who is a talented attorney. Rather, it’s an acknowledgment that in the grand scheme of the federal government, she’s one of hundreds upon hundreds of “staffers.” As associate administrator for policy at the Environmental Protection Agency, she didn’t need Senate confirmation. She’s no cabinet secretary and never chose a public role. But in today’s anti- Trump “resistance,” that counts for nothing. The left lost the election, lost the argument, and is losing President Obama’s precious legacy. Its response is a scorched-earth campaign against not only EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, but anyone who works for him. ... High-ranking appointees have always been demonized, but what makes this environmentalist campaign different is its purposeful extension o...

NY Times: Pruitt Is Carrying Out E.P.A. Agenda in Secret, Critics Say The head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, has made it clear that he intends to dismantle the E.P.A.’s environmental mission. His critics say he is deploying extraordinary secrecy as he does so. In recent years the EPA has acted like a rogue agency ignoring Congress and its initial role as an agency to pursue a radical environmental agenda.  What in the world do mud puddles and ditches have to do with even global warming?  Pruit is right to rein in the rogues and get control of the agenda at the agency.