Free Republic

Have you heard of the “Endangerment Finding” (EF)? You have if you have been reading this blog for any period of time. The 2009 EF is likely the most consequential, expensive and destructive regulatory action ever put in place by the federal bureaucracy. In that action, EPA claimed to find that carbon dioxide and several other so-called “greenhouse gases” constitute a “danger” to human health and welfare. Using the EF as the predicate, the administrative state under the Obama and Biden presidencies implemented dozens of major regulations intended to transform the entire energy sector of the U.S. economy. Obama/Biden regulations...

The Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court's ruling, which will allow gas trade associations to continue their legal challenges against Biden-era restrictions on consumer furnaces powered by natural gas. The efficiency rules finalized during the Biden administration would make non-condensing furnaces, which account for approximately 55% of natural gas furnaces on the market, illegal in 2028, according to the American Gas Association, a trade organization. The rules, they said, would drive up home heating costs. “Their removal from the market would saddle families with costly renovations or eliminate gas as a home heating option all together,” the industry...

The Environmental Protection Agency announced steps this week to speed up efforts to replace animal testing with so-called "New Approach Methods" for chemical and pesticide safety checks, a historic move that would appear praiseworthy by groups such as PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), but the animal rights organization has so far been silent. Another prominent animal rights group, however, praised the move. Justin Goodman, senior vice president for White Coat Waste, told Just The News exclusively that one of the top priorities for his group was to get the Trump administration to reinstate the president's EPA’s landmark...

Glyphosate-based formulations (GBFs), such as Roundup, are the most heavily used herbicides in the world. In 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that glyphosate and GBFs are probably carcinogenic to humans, mainly for non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL)... In 2021, the French Institute of Health and Medical Research... also found that many studies demonstrated genotoxic damage (DNA breaks or structural changes) consistent with the induction of oxidative stress by glyphosate/GBFs, sometimes at exposure levels experienced by human populations... In a recent study of Thai farmers, a high frequency (97.6%) of those spraying GBFs with backpack sprayers had high...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has taken the ax to over $22 billion in environmental-justice and DEI grants and contracts in order to help reprioritize the agency’s commitment to protecting human health and the environment, rather than allowing it and its mission to be co-opted by progressives who use them to further its own socialist agenda. While former President Joe Biden was in office, his administration handed out billions of taxpayer dollars to a number of activist organizations that placed their ideological agenda ahead of taking action to legitimately provide solutions for environmental issues impacting communities across the United...

This week, Lee Zeldin’s EPA announced “approving nationwide E15,” pitching it as “fortifying the domestic fuel supply.” What that means exactly is that the federal government will allow more stations to cut gasoline with ethanol, which, yes, makes it cheaper, but it also yields less power and worse fuel economy in your engine.

Omega-3 supplements are popular among many older adults to help combat age-related issues. They are often marketed as supporting cardiovascular health and reducing the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. However, a new study published in The Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer's Disease suggests that these oral capsules may actually be linked to a faster decline in cognitive function. Many senior citizens swear by oral supplements and the benefits they bring. However, the scientific evidence is mixed. While animal and observational studies have indicated possible protective effects on the aging brain, controlled trials with humans have not shown such cognitive...

Four hundred inquiries from American farmers poured in after a single interview. Not for a John Deere. Not for a Case IH. For a tractor built in Alberta with a remanufactured 1990s diesel engine and zero electronics. Ursa Ag, a small Canadian manufacturer, is assembling tractors powered by 12-valve Cummins engines — the same mechanically injected workhorses that powered combines and pickup trucks decades ago — and selling them for roughly half the price of comparable machines from established brands. The 150-horsepower model starts at $129,900 CAD, about $95,000 USD. The range-topping 260-hp version runs $199,900 CAD, around $146,000. Try...

Environmental Protection Agency chief Lee Zeldin confirmed Monday the Trump administration wants to intensify efforts to get state and local regulators to drop burdensome, costly zoning laws — including on homes built on assembly lines — to help the next generation afford the American dream of home ownership. The Palisades Fire in Southern California last year destroyed roughly 13,000 homes in the Palisades and Eaton neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Over a year later, a little more than 3,000 rebuilding permits have been issued and only a few dozen homes have been built, according to The New York Post. Zeldin detailed...

BOLSTERING NATIONAL SECURITY BY PRESERVING CRITICAL SUPPLY CHAINS: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order mobilizing the Defense Production Act to protect domestic production of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides — two critical inputs essential to military readiness and America’s agricultural strength, respectively. The Order finds that any interruption of supply of either of these critical materials could leave our defense industrial base and food supply vulnerable to hostile foreign actors. The Order delegates the President’s authority under the Defense Production Act to the Secretary of Agriculture to require the performance of contracts or orders related to these...

On Thursday (February 12) President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin held a press briefing at the White House where they announced the issuance of the final rescission of what is known as the “Endangerment Finding” — the 2009 Obama-era regulatory edict purporting to find that CO2 and other “greenhouse gases” are a “danger to human health and welfare.” The regulatory document finalizing the rescission then came out the next day, February 13. The Rescission Document has the title “Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act.” It is...

The good news is that the Trump administration has announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding.” As Matthew Hennessey puts it in the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression newsletter this morning, the finding is the “2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. It was the legal basis for most federal climate regulation, allowing Washington technocrats to treat carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases as pollutants.” The White House trumpeted the repeal as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” Let us cheer while we can. Woo hoo! It represents a victory...

The Trump administration said it's ending a credit for automakers that install a so-called "start/stop feature" in the vehicles, part of a broader rollback of environmental regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The start/stop feature, which is today widely used in newer vehicles, shuts off gas engines when cars idle, such as when they're stopped at a red light or stuck in traffic. The Environmental Protection Agency described the technology as "almost universally hated" in its Thursday announcement about the broader overhaul. About two-thirds of cars are now manufactured with the start/stop feature, which is aimed at making internal combustion...

President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday announced the repeal of a 2009 policy allowing the federal government to regulate the emissions of fossil fuels by declaring them dangerous to public health. Trump called the repeal “the single largest deregulatory action in American history” and said it would “save American consumers trillions of dollars.” “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said in the White House Roosevelt Room. “Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding...

Word on the street is that tomorrow is the big day when the federal government’s phony-baloney greenhouse gas “Endangerment Finding” will finally get rescinded by EPA. It has now been more than 16 years since this idiotic and massive government power grab got foisted on the American people by the Obama EPA in December 2009. I don’t have any good insight into what the rescission documentation will look like. If the people writing it do what is really appropriate, they will heap mounds of scorn, derision and ridicule upon the Finding itself, and upon the legions fools, dopes and grifters...

WASHINGTON (AP) — On New Year’s Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans’ air and water. He announced new restrictions on five chemicals commonly used in building materials, plastic products and adhesives, and he cheered it as a “MAHA win.”It was one of many signs of a fragile collaboration that’s been building between a Republican administration that’s traditionally supported big business and a Make America Healthy Again movement that argues corporate environmental harms are putting people’s health in danger. The unlikely pairing...

Under Trump, the media elites treat the executive branch as an evil empire, but under Biden, journalists were so eager to help promote the Democrats that they sometimes offered their sources the ability to edit their articles to their liking. New documents shared exclusively with MRC Business just exposed the latest example of elitist media hacks violating every modicum of journalistic integrity to genuflect to the Biden administration’s whims and wishes. Forbes contributor Rhett Buttle and his associate Abdullah Kahn offered to delay a story schmoozing President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan on his “environmental justice” focus...

DELIVERING A WIN FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES AND AUTOMAKERS: Today, President Donald J. Trump is delivering major relief to American families by resetting the Biden Administration’s costly and unlawful Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards.President Trump is returning CAFE standards to levels that can actually be met with conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles. The Biden Administration standards imposed unrealistic fuel economy targets that effectively resulted in an electric vehicle (EV) mandate.The Trump Administration’s reset of the CAFE standards ensures the program’s fidelity to the legal restrictions set forth by Congress.The Biden standards broke the law by going far beyond the requirements...

The Environmental Protection Agency has removed references to human-caused climate change from its website - tweaking some pages to focus on the “natural processes” driving climate change and wiping other pages from the internet. In October, the EPA page on “Causes of Climate Change,” for example, included a statement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that noted, “It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean, and land.” That clear statement has been deleted from the page, which now mentions only climate changes from natural sources, such as volcanic activity and variations in solar activity. Another page,...

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump will eliminate fuel standard regulations imposed by President Joe Biden when he signs an executive order on Dec. 3 in the Oval Office. His directive will reduce the number of miles a vehicle must travel on a mile of gasoline, a move that will mitigate car price increases of about $1,000 and save Americans approximately $109 billion, according to administration officials. Representatives from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis are expected to join the president for the signing ceremony. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a division of the Department of Transportation, oversees the Corporate Average Fuel Economy...