Free Republic

It could be a coincidence—or it could foretell an historic Supreme Court term. The Court has now accepted two cases for this term that could threaten the essential legal underpinnings of the federal administrative state. The first is American Hospital Association v. Becerra, in which the plaintiff questions the Chevron doctrine—a rule fashioned by the Supreme Court itself in 1984 that requires lower federal courts to defer to administrative agencies’ interpretation of their delegated authorities, where the statute is ambiguous and the agency’s decision is “reasonable.” Under this rubric, lower federal courts have given administrative agencies wide leeway to interpret...

Author and activist Naomi Klein was on a visit to Sydney last November when Donald Trump shocked the US and Western political establishment by taking the White House. "I think a great many of us felt that the world had just turned upside down, but [in Australia] I literally felt the world had turned upside down," she says, recalling that moment of supreme disorientation. Since then, unlike many American liberals, Klein has been fixated less by the drip-drip of revelations about the Trump campaign's murky links to the Kremlin, and more with what she calls the "corporate coup" taking place...

“I like you. You and me, we’re going to be best friends.” It is early January, and Eric Schneiderman is sitting in his 25th-floor office above Lower Manhattan, doing his best Donald Trump impression, puckering his lips into a duck face, scrunching up his nose and lowering his voice into something that resembles the president’s outer-borough growl. Schneiderman is recalling his meeting with Trump in 2010. Back then, Schneiderman was running for attorney general of New York, and Trump was still in his pre-birther, reality TV host phase. Trump had donated money to one of Schneiderman’s opponents in the Democratic...

Jerry Taylor believes he can change the minds of conservative climate skeptics. After all, he helped plant the doubts for many in the first place. He’s president of the Niskanen Center, a libertarian-leaning Washington, DC, think tank he founded in 2014. He and his colleagues there are trying to build support for the passage of an aggressive federal carbon tax, through discussions with Washington insiders, with a particular focus on Republican legislators and their staff. Lesson one: Pick the right targets Political scientists consistently find that mass opinion doesn’t drive the policy debate, so much as the other way around....

We’re three weeks out from Virginia’s gubernatorial race and it’s been mostly relegated to the backburner thanks to the endless news that emanates from the Trump White House. It’s an off-year election, but it’s in D.C.'s backyard. The state has increasingly become more bluish since the Bush years, albeit the state legislature is Republican. The House of Delegates, the lower chamber, is reliably Republican where they hold a supermajority. The state Senate is more competitive. Anti-gun groups under the Bloomberg umbrella tried and failed to flip the Senate in 2015. Those groups are mounting a second invasion of the state...

WASHINGTON, DC, Oct 13 – “The ‘climate changers’ came out in full force when the EPA announced earlier this week that it was ending the Obama-era war on coal by scrapping Mr. Obama’s Clean Power Plan. But, America has the world’s largest reserves of coal—an asset that should not be dismissed out of hand for a variety of reasons, according to Dan Weber, president of the Association of Mature American Citizens [AMAC].Weber says that extreme restrictions on the use of coal to generate electricity “acted like a national energy tax. They minimized the positive impact of our lowest cost and...

Suppose a crooked prosecutor framed someone and was determined to get a conviction. So he built an entire case on tainted, circumstantial evidence, and testimony from witnesses who had their reasons for wanting the guy in jail. Suppose the prosecutor ignored or hid exculpatory evidence and colluded with the judge to prevent the defendant from presenting a robust defense or cross-examining adverse witnesses. You know what would happen – at least in a fair and just society. The victim would be exonerated and compensated. The prosecutor and judge would be disbarred, fined and jailed. What you may not know is...

Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-NC) told Breitbart News that Republicans will only succeed in the midterm elections if “they get behind the Trump agenda.”The congressman said that the Freedom Caucus remains committed to passing a dynamic tax reform package for middle-class families as well as repealing and replacing Obamacare. Meadows also cheered the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed repeal of Obama’s Clean Power Plan. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced on Tuesday that he will propose to repeal the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). An EPA analysis revealed that repealing the Clean Power Plan will save roughly $33 billion in compliance...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told coal miners in Kentucky on Monday that he will move to repeal a rule limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, assuring them, “The war against coal is over.” Speaking at an event in Hazard, Ky., with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Pruitt said his agency will publish the new proposed rule Tuesday. “Tomorrow, in Washington, D.C., I’ll be a signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration, and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule,” Pruitt said.

The Environmental Protection Agency is expected to soon formally repeal the Clean Power Plan (CPP) in what would be one of the biggest blows yet to former President Barack Obama’s legacy on climate change. A draft proposal of the EPA’s conclusions, leaked to news outlets over the past 24 hours, argues that the plan — which would limit carbon emissions from power plants and, in the process, drastically reduce the amount of coal-generated electricity in the U.S. — goes beyond the bounds of federal law and unnecessarily hikes energy prices for consumers. ~snip~ “The EPA is proposing to repeal the...

Judicial Watch Sues for Info Obama/Enviro Attack on Key Energy Project Obama’s EPA Lied About Its Clean Power Plan’s Benefits What is Rahm Emanuel Hiding About the Controversial Police Shooting? Judicial Watch Sues for Info Obama/Enviro Attack on Key Energy Project Your Judicial Watch is leading the way in uncovering the corrupt maneuvering by the Obama administration to impose its leftist agenda on our country. As Obama holdovers and the federal Deep State continue to push this agenda even now in the Trump administration, our work is essential. A good example of this is our new lawsuit on the...

Realists must now sway public opinion firmly against global warming scare President Donald Trump is right to kill the hugely expensive Clean Power Plan (CPP). After all, it only controls carbon dioxide (CO2), which is simply plant food. The Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change cites over 1,000 peer-reviewed studies showing that rising atmospheric CO2 enhances productivity of forests and grasslands. Commercial greenhouses run at up to about four times the outside level of CO2 to boost plant growth.

This is an excellent example of why it is important to have the presidency in sane hands: (EPA chief: Trump to undo Obama plan to curb global warming) President Donald Trump in the coming days will sign a new executive order that unravels his predecessor’s sweeping plan to curb global warming, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday. EPA chief Scott Pruitt said the executive order to be signed Tuesday will undo the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, an environmental regulation that restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants. The 2015 rule has been on hold since...

The fact that it’s being proposed by Republicans doesn’t make it any more economically palatable. Madness is rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule — Friedrich Nietzsche ‘Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way,” Barack Obama declared after Democrats’ disastrous losses in the 2010 midterm elections. That shellacking finally killed off the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. From it was born the EPA’s Clean Power Plan and the Obama administration’s war on coal, in turn a contributory factor to Donald Trump’s election and Republicans’...

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency is telling staff to quickly finish up the last round of regulations before President-elect Donald Trump enters the Oval Office next year. "As I've mentioned to you before, we're running — not walking — through the finish line of President Obama's presidency," EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a staff memo obtained by the Washington Examiner after Trump was declared the winner of Tuesday's election. The agency is currently working on regulations for the oil and gas sector, and is finalizing new annual regulations for the nation's ethanol mandate and renewable fuel blending...

Most people across the world do not care about climate change On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments in the litigation over President Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan (CPP). If implemented, CPP regulations will require states to develop and bring into force plans to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing power plants. Arguments against the CPP focussed primarily on its questionable legality. However, the ten judges considering the case should also keep in mind that the rules are pointless. No matter what one believes about the causes of climate change, the...

Building that bridge or expanding that highway just became more difficult under a rigorous standard issued Tuesday by the Obama administration that will make it easier to block a wide range of projects in the name of climate change. The final guidance broadens the National Environmental Policy Act by requiring agencies to quantify the impact of activities that require federal permits not just on the environment but also on “projected direct and indirect GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions.” ... Republicans blasted the guidance as the latest in a flurry of resident Obama’s end-of-term executive actions, led by the Clean Power Plan,...

Environment: President Obama's "Clean Power Plan" is on pause, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling in March after more than two dozen states filed suit to stop it. A new report shows why the plan should be scrapped entirely, and the EPA sued for fraud.

Opponents of the Obama administration’s landmark climate change rule will have to wait three more months to argue their case in federal court. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said Monday that oral arguments in the case over the Clean Power Plan will be held Sept. 27, rather than June 2, when they were originally scheduled earlier this year. Additionally, the case will be heard by a full panel of nine of the court’s judges. Chief Judge Merrick Garland, who President Obama has nominated to sit on the Supreme Court, has recused himself from all cases,...

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials are moving ahead with a key part of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) despite the Supreme Court issuing a stay against the agency’s global warming plan in February. The EPA submitted a proposal to the White House for green energy subsidies for states that meet the federally mandated carbon dioxide reduction goals early. The Clean Energy Incentive Program would give “credit for power generated by new wind and solar projects in 2020 and 2021” and a “double credit for energy efficiency measures in low-income communities,” according to Politico’s Morning Energy.The move seems to violate the...