Free Republic

Eighteen states on Tuesday sued President Trump’s administration over its push to “reconsider” greenhouse-gas-emission rules for the nation’s auto fleet, launching a legal battle over one of Barack Obama’s most significant efforts to address climate change. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt in April said he would revisit the Obama-era rules, which aim to raise efficiency requirements to about 50 miles per gallon by 2025. Pruitt’s agency said that the standards are “based on outdated information” and that new data suggests “the current standards may be too stringent.” But in the lawsuit, the states contend that the EPA acted “arbitrarily...

Did you happen to catch CNN’s latest smear? Anderson Cooper’s show recently featured a “two-part exclusive” that claims Donald Trump’s EPA director had conspired with the CEO of a mining company to “withdraw environmental restrictions” so the company could dig “the largest open pit mine in the world in an extremely sensitive watershed in wild Alaska.” The report was enough to horrify any caring person. CNN showed beautiful pictures of colorful salmon swimming in Bristol Bay, and the reporter intoned dramatically, “EPA staffers were shocked to receive this email obtained exclusively by CNN which says ‘we have been directed by...

The new comedy War Dogs tells the true story of two cynical young men who took advantage of bureaucratic failures to become successful weapons dealers. These two men — who sold weapons to the government during the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq —ultimately secured a $300 million contract with the United States military. The film, which was inspired by a true story, operates as both a comedy and a hard-to-imagine drama that shows how these two guys in their twenties were able to take advantage of a lax governmental policy.

It's a regulation considered the most ambitious expansion of EPA's control over American waterways in history and a federal court has issued an injunction blocking its implementation. The Hill: “We conclude that petitioners have demonstrated a substantial possibility of success on the merits of their claims,” the judges wrote in their decision, explaining that the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) new guidelines for determining whether water is subject to federal control — based mostly on the water’s distance and connection to larger water bodies — is “at odds” with a key Supreme Court ruling.

Energy and environmental regulations finalized by the Obama administration in the past five years come with a hefty price tag of $460.5 billion, according to data compiled by a center-right think tank. The American Action Forum’s Regulation Rodeo database shows that the Obama administration finalized 275 energy and environment regulations between 2009 and 2014, with the price tag of each regulation averaging $1.75 billion. And that doesn’t even consider the paperwork companies will have to complete. AAF data shows that Obama’s energy regulations have burdened Americans with 24.3 million paperwork hours. That means every year, Americans have to complete an...

Regulation: Funny how this always happens: Right before a big holiday weekend, when almost no one is paying attention, the Obama administration announces hundreds, sometimes thousands, of new regulations. Early Christmas Season Surprise: 3,000 New Federal Regulations Earlier this week, news broke that businesses and consumers should get ready for more than 3,000 new regulations that will hit the economy in 2015. The national media yawned.

Thanks, Environmental Protection Agency! You’ve required sewage treatment plants, catalytic converters on cars and other things that made the world cleaner than the world in which I grew up. Good work. Today, America’s waterways are so much cleaner that I swim in New York City’s once-filthy Hudson River – right beside skyscrapers in which millions of people, uh, flush. The air we breathe is also cleaner than it’s been for 60 years. In a rational world, environmental bureaucrats would now say, “Mission accomplished. We set tough standards, so we don’t need to keep doing more. Stick a fork in it!...

Senate Republicans maintain the Obama administration has kept the American public “in the dark” over detrimental regulations implemented to address global climate change. A report issued by GOP lawmakers on the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee maintains the White House Climate Action Plan released earlier this year is “sweeping in breadth” and requires greater oversight than has thus far been provided, since it “has every area of the federal government working towards its goal of justifying a carbon-constrained economy.”