Free Republic

The Biden administration has saddled the U.S. economy with more than $1 trillion worth of final rules and regulations thus far in 2024, according to analysis conducted by the American Action Forum (AAF).The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) final emissions regulations for light- and medium-duty vehicles, which some have characterized as an electric vehicle (EV) mandate, pushed the costs of the Biden administration’s regulatory agenda over the $1 trillion threshold for 2024, alone, according to AAF’s analysis. Across all agencies and regulatory actions last week, the federal government published regulations imposing $103 billion worth of total costs and 11.6 million annual...

If you are having trouble keeping track of all the major regulations President Joe Biden has issued recently, you’re not alone. In just the past two weeks, the Biden administration has functionally banned all coal power plants, forced college women to accept men in their locker rooms and dorm rooms, and empowered government regulators to set price controls on internet services. That is all on top of previous Biden regulations banning the sale of cars with internal combustion engines, banning the sale of new gas stoves, and making refrigerators far more expensive than they currently are. Biden is radically transforming...

Without so much as a whisper of pushback from Congress, the White House is bulldozing forward with a regulatory proposal that could cost the average household up to $10,000 extra in water costs. But it’s not only President Joe Biden‘s campaign that is scared of this latest forefront of the president’s green agenda — Biden’s own Pentagon is panicking over the proposal. The World Health Organization now recommends that governments limit polyfluoroalkyl substances, also known as PFAS or “forever plastics” that are resistant to breaking down in either the environment or the human body, at a level of 100 parts...

The Department of Education is, like many of the departments in the federal government, a waste of time, money, and an intrusion on local control. It doens't have many good reasons for its existence and, if we're being honest, acts more as a vanity project that administrations can use to say they're doing something new and good for the kids. It should rightfully be destroyed and that's what Kentucky's Thomas Massie is trying to do. On Wednesday, Massie announced on X that he introduced H.R. 899, a bill that would obliterate the DoE. "I introduced a bill to end the...

Topline: The Environmental Protection Agency isn’t traditionally associated with ranged weaponry, but the federal government has spent almost $620,000 since 2018 to buy guns, ammunition, and more for EPA employees. Key facts: Auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found that between 2018 and 2022, the EPA spent close to $400,000 of federal funds just on ammunition. That came after the EPA purchased 500,000 rounds of ammo and 600 guns from 2010-2017. Over $100,000 went to buying armor for EPA employees. Funds were also used for “optical sighting and ranging equipment,” for “night vision equipment” and “security vehicles.” Background: The EPA has a Criminal...

The greatest collapse of a mighty state, a large human so­ciety and a fruitful civilization of which we possess a reasonably ac­curate record, has been immortal­ized by Edward Gibbon’s histori­cal classic, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire. Henry Adams remarked that Gibbon did not really explain the fall; but this criticism is not altogether just. As the following excerpts from The Decline and Fall show, the philosophic historian offered a number of reflections on the symp­toms and causes of the drama which he set out to describe: "This long peace and the uni­form government of the Romans introduced...

This. Is. Crazy. We've heard a ton about how Democrats 'fortified' the 2020 election, but this thread from Millie Weaver about far-Left US Government employees working to basically steer the 2020 election is just ... we have no words. Vile. Underhanded. SHOULD be illegal. There are some words. Thread: 1. Far-Left US Government Employees Conspired To Subvert President Trump, Gum Up Bureaucratic Processes, Strike, and Leak To The Media A network of radical marxist bureaucrats conspired in secret meetings, plotting how to use their official positions inside the US… pic.twitter.com/WCpZsETLNj — Millie Weaver 🇺🇸 (@Millie__Weaver) January 24, 2024 We'll let...

Paul Sperry @paulsperry BREAKING: Judicial Watch Sues Defense Department for Details of Alleged Conversation between CIA Employees Seeking to ‘Get Rid’ of then-President Trump

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in two related cases challenging a 40-year-old precedent that requires courts to defer to the judgment of federal agencies in administrative law cases. At the end of three-and-a-half hours of arguments, a majority seemed disposed to overturn Chevron vs. Natural Resources Defense Council, and consign the so-called "Chevron deference" principle to the compost heap of terrible Supreme Court precedents.Ever since the creation of the administrative state during the administration of our first socialist president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, federal agencies have assumed the authority to interpret federal statutes pretty much as they please. This became...

The Supreme Court on Wednesday is taking up challenges by commercial fishermen to a fee requirement that could achieve a long-sought goal of business and conservative interests: limiting a wide swath of government regulations. Billions of dollars are potentially at stake in front of a court that, like the rest of the federal judiciary, was remade during Donald Trump’s presidency by conservative interests that were motivated as much by weakening the regulatory state as social issues including abortion. Lawyers for the fishermen are asking the justices to overturn a 40-year-old decision that is among the most frequently cited high court...

“Treason”. A former State Department official has warned that deep state insiders and elements of the military are planning to derail Trump’s presidency should he win the election. On Sunday, NBC reported that “a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers” are planning to use lawfare and other tactics to block Trump from exercising power on day one of his return to the Oval Office. According to the article, these insiders will go all out “to foil any efforts to expand presidential power,” even if Trump has been given a mandate to do so by the American people. “Those...

Last week, a federal appeals court overturned a Biden administration rule governing dishwashers. This week, the Supreme Court will hear a case involving the regulation of commercial fishing.Both are seemingly minor regulatory scuffles that normally would attract little public attention.But they could mark the beginning of the end of the bloated, unaccountable, extra-constitutional “administrative state” – which today imposes $2 trillion in costs on businesses and consumers and every day eats away at our freedom.The dishwasher story began during the previous administration when President Donald Trump pushed regulators to allow consumers to buy dishwashers that, well, wash dishes.As we noted...

NBC published an extensive article outlining how the DC administrative state is responding to the potential for another President Trump victory [SEE HERE]. Once again, a very specific name surfaces who is part of the organizational effort to stop Donald Trump. {EMPHASIS mine} (NBC) – […] Now, bracing for Trump’s potential return, a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers is quietly devising plans to try to foil any efforts to expand presidential power, which could include pressuring the military to cater to his political needs. Those taking part in the effort told NBC News they are studying Trump’s...

Right now, it’s hypothetical but it’s pretty clear that they tend to overthrow the military in the event Trump returns as Commander-in-Chief. Mutiny is on the menu should Trump win again. That’s according to an allegedly “secret” plan, that’s being widely trumpeted on NBC News, for the military to refuse to follow orders from Trump. Part of this is pre-election posturing, but part of this is entirely consistent with the post-Obama military, up to and including the execrable Mark “White Rage” Milley. Section 2, Article II of the United States Constitution is extremely clear that the President calls the shots...

When Justice John Paul Stephens issued his 1984 opinion in Chevron U.S.A. v. National Resources Defense Council, he started what legal scholar Gary Lawson later called “nothing less than a bloodless constitutional revolution.” At long last, on Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that may signal the beginning of the end to that revolution. Article I of the Constitution explicitly directs that “All legislative Power herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States,” not regulatory agencies. Yet Justice Stephens’ opinion found that “agenc[ies] may . . . properly rely upon the incumbent administration’s views...

Concerns are intensifying among far-left national security “experts” and Pentagon insiders over the possibility that former President Donald Trump might leverage the U.S. military to enforce his political will if he returns to the Oval Office. In a detailed report, NBC News inadvertently admitted the existence of a “Deep State,” allegedly working to facilitate a military coup against former President Trump if he is freely and fairly elected by Americans. The NBC article paints a portrait of a left-wing plot to disrupt military allegiance to civilian control.

Anatomy of the Administrative StateOne can’t blame people for their devotion. Most of them have lived their lives under the nanny state – or the “administrative state,” as it is more formally known. They think that government exists to manage society and solve social problems for the common good. What else is government for?But now some people are not so sure. The COVID-19 train wreck unfolded before their eyes. One senseless government diktat followed another. Close your business. Keep your kids home from school. Stay out of the park. Wear a mask to go into the store. Take a vaccine...

James Landis is widely credited with crafting the theoretical architecture supporting President Roosevelt’s radical reconstruction—and expansion—of the federal government. Landis shrewdly both established and legitimized the regulatory state, including Roosevelt’s creation of new federal administrative agencies, by offering the regulatory state as the solution to the problem of modern governance: the administrative state “is, in essence, our generation’s answer to the inadequacy of the judicial and legislative process.” The Landis premise took concrete shape through Roosevelt’s expansion of the regulatory state, and in doing so, it brought to fruition Woodrow Wilson’s progressive intellectual project: rule by experts, insulated from the...

EXCLUSIVE: Congressman Paul A. Gosar of Arizona's essay on the Biden regime's anti-American zealotry is a direct appeal to hold the House accountable. On June 1st, the Biden administration will launch a particularly egregious assault against law-abiding firearms owners through the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)’s “Factoring Criteria for Firearms with Attached ‘Stabilizing Braces’” rule — and Congress may not even vote on the proposed change. By no stretch of the imagination is this a partisan issue, despite some vulnerable members’ concern that this is a controversial topic — far from it! On the contrary, supporting this...

Should the Food and Drug Administration be allowed to approve whatever drugs it wants however it wants because the FDA is the expert on drug safety and efficacy? Should Congress defer to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and let stand a rule that is nonsensical and harmful? And here’s the general question: should executive branch agencies have broad authority to make whatever rules they want to accomplish their aims, as long as Congress hasn’t explicitly prohibited it? For too many politicians, regulators, and commentators, the answer is “yes.” “Believe in Science” or “Trust the Experts” has come to...