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Trump Announces ‘Largest Deregulatory Action In American History’

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After nearly 20 years, the climate policy responsible for a generation of greenhouse gas regulations has been repealed, President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Thursday.

The regulation, known as the Endangerment Finding, expanded the definition of harmful air pollutants to include greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, allowing the EPA to regulate them under the Clean Air Act. Zeldin said Thursday that the rule allowed EPA regulatory power beyond its congressional authority and announced that the Endangerment Finding is officially eliminated.

President Donald Trump described the action as the “largest deregulatory action in American history” on Thursday, joined by Zeldin at the White House. Zeldin noted that the endangerment finding has been referred to as the “holy grail of regulatory overreach” and that the Clean Air Act does not permit the regulations that former administrations have used it to enact. Trump added that the repeal is estimated to lower the average cost of a new vehicle by around $3,000.

“In this final rule, EPA is saving American taxpayers over $1.3 trillion, eliminating both the Obama-era 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding and all subsequent federal GHG emission standards for all vehicles and engines of model years 2012 to 2027 and beyond. The action also eliminates all off-cycle credits, including for the almost universally hated start-stop feature,” the EPA announced Thursday.

Several energy policy experts and agency insiders told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the 2009 Endangerment Finding was enacted by the Obama administration for political reasons, relied on “cherry-picked data” and its rescission ends years of regulatory overreach. Trump administration officials also touted consumer savings the repeal is expected to usher in. (Read more from “Trump Announces ‘Largest Deregulatory Action In American History’” HERE)

The Supreme Court Can Protect Families or Protect Corporate Cover-Ups

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When you get pregnant, doctors warn you to avoid everything from coffee to deli meat. When you build a home — as a spouse, parent, or homeowner — you make careful choices about what comes through the front door, onto your table, and into your yard.

But what if those precautions don’t matter? What if the food you serve, the lawn your kids play on, or the weeds you spray carry a poison approved through fraud, sold without warnings, and protected from accountability by the Supreme Court?

That isn’t paranoia. It’s the situation Americans may soon face.

The Supreme Court last week agreed to hear Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, a case pushed aggressively by Bayer, the German pharmaceutical giant that bought Monsanto in 2018. The justices will decide one narrow but decisive question this term: Does federal pesticide law block state failure-to-warn lawsuits when the Environmental Protection Agency has not required a cancer warning on the label?

Bayer wants the answer to be yes. It wants federal pre-emption — a legal shield that turns an EPA-approved label into immunity. If Bayer wins, state juries could lose the ability to hold companies accountable even when families prove they used a product as directed, got sick, and never received a warning. (Read more from “The Supreme Court Can Protect Families or Protect Corporate Cover-Ups” HERE)

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Are Popular Abortion Pills Poisoning Americans’ Tap Water?

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It is well established that the abortion drug regimen is harmful for women and fatal for unborn babies. A new letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, however, asks it to probe whether mifepristone pills and their “endocrine-disrupting effects” pose a danger to all Americans and even animals due to their potential contamination of U.S. drinking water.

In their request to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Sen. James Lankford and Rep. Josh Brecheen ask the regulatory agency to consider “evaluating the potential contaminant effects of this drug as the agency develops the Unregulated Contaminant Monitoring Rule 6 (UCMR 6).”

“The American people deserve to know what contaminants might be present in their drinking water and their potential impacts on public health,” the letter states.

Mifepristone is the most popular abortifacient on the market. As the letter notes, its proliferation, which can be attributed to abortion giants such as Planned Parenthood and the elimination of safeguards that opened the door for mail-order abortifacients, is often understated due to the “unrecorded number” of DIY drug-induced abortions “performed without the oversight of a clinician.”

Despite rapidly increasing use of the abortion drug, the letter acknowledges that the “EPA has yet to review its potential contaminant effects.” (Read more from “Are Popular Abortion Pills Poisoning Americans’ Tap Water?” HERE)

EPA Administrator Confronts New York Times Reporter for Claiming He Had ‘No Evidence’ of Waste, Fraud, Abuse

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Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin confronted a New York Times reporter during a press conference Monday for claiming that he presented “no evidence” to back up his claims of waste, fraud, and abuse from the previous Biden administration.

“I have a duty to make sure that we don’t light on fire billions of dollars of tax dollars,” Zeldin said. “And I’m not going to stand before any member of the media and get bullied into lighting billions of dollars on fire.”

Zeldin hosted the news conference Monday morning at the EPA headquarters, announcing his forthcoming Earth Day trip to San Diego to investigate the crisis of Mexico pouring five million gallons of wastewater daily into the Tijuana River.

At the end of the conference, Zeldin mentioned the media bias against his claims of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Biden EPA.

The waste and self-dealing

He mentioned a video unearthed by Project Veritas in December 2024 in which a Biden administration political appointee at EPA said that bureaucrats were rushing to get billions of dollars out the door like “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.” Zeldin pledged to Congress that he would investigate the matter. (Read more from “EPA Administrator Confronts New York Times Reporter for Claiming He Had ‘No Evidence’ of Waste, Fraud, Abuse” HERE)

EPA Rule Could Put Small Meat Processors Out of Business — And Leave Consumers Out in the Cold

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing new limits on how much nitrogen, phosphate and other pollutants meat processing facilities can discharge into surface waters.

The EPA said the proposed rule change will “improve water quality and protect human health and the environment.”

But some critics argue it also will hurt small processing facilities that won’t be able to afford the upgrades required to comply with the new rule.

Small facilities will either shut down, resulting in fewer local meat sources for consumers. Or they’ll sell out larger corporations, contributing to even greater consolidation in the meat industry.

Describing it as “a direct attack on the buy local foods movement” and local meat producers, American Stewards of Liberty, the Kansas Natural Resource Coalition and other organizations submitted comments opposing the proposed rule. (Read more from “EPA Rule Could Put Small Meat Processors Out of Business — And Leave Consumers Out in the Cold” HERE)

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Biden Admin’s New Climate Rule Would Cause Rolling Blackouts in Huge Swath of America, Analysis Finds

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Proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rules regulating carbon dioxide emissions for power plants would lead to blackouts in a large slice of the Midwest and impose costs of nearly $250 billion, according to new analysis by the Center of the American Experiment (CAE).

The EPA’s proposed regulations would require fossil fuel-fired power plants to adopt developing technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen blending, in order to significantly bring down their greenhouse gas emissions over the coming decades. CAE filed comments this week in response to the EPA’s proposals, highlighting in its analysis that the EPA has overestimated the efficacy of wind and solar while exposing the 45 million people living in the area served by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) power grid to elevated blackout risks.

The EPA “does not appear to have the expertise necessary to enact such a sweeping regulation on the American power sector,” CAE wrote in its comments.

CAE’s analysis found that the EPA’s modeled MISO grid could result in massive blackouts across the 15 states it serves, with one stress test scenario estimating that nearly one in five MISO-served households would be without power. Additionally, CAE calculated that building up enough capacity to avoid its projected blackouts in the MISO region would cost $246 billion in total by 2055. (Read more from “Biden Admin’s New Climate Rule Would Cause Rolling Blackouts in Huge Swath of America, Analysis Finds” HERE)

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Former EPA Official Says Deep State Is Taking Another Scalp as Agency Comes Under Fire

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A member of the so-called deep state is trying to knock out one of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Andrew Wheeler’s top lieutenants, a former EPA official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan is out to get EPA Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson, Mandy Gunasekara, a former official with the agency’s air and radiation department, told the DCNF on Friday. Sheehan told Congress in October that Jackson is refusing to participate in ongoing probes.

“It is very telling. It’s just an attempt to embarrass Ryan. Make a big public spectacle. This is the way the deep state works,” Gunasekara said. She was referring to Sheehan’s probe of Jackson’s alleged efforts to pressure a former agency scientist ahead of her congressional testimony.

“To countenance open defiance even in one instance — much less two, both by a senior official setting precedent for himself and all agency staff — is ruinous,” Sheehan wrote in the Oct. 29 letter.

EPA officials said Jackson did the best he could to provide documentation to Sheehan. (Read more from “Former EPA Official Says Deep State Is Taking Another Scalp as Agency Comes Under Fire” HERE)

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EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Resigns Amidst Ethics Questions

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By The Blaze. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt tendered his resignation on Thursday.

President Donald Trump announced in a tweet that he had accepted Pruitt’s resignation and that he thought Pruitt had done an “outstanding job.”

Pruitt has been part of the Trump administration since the beginning. He had recently faced questions about his spending habits at the EPA, which included purchasing a $43,000 secure phone booth without congressional approval, and allegedly using agency resources to find a $200,000 job for his wife.

The EPA is currently facing 13 separate federal inquiries into allegations of mismanagement and irresponsible spending practices.

On May 1, two of Pruitt’s employees at the EPA resigned during this ongoing ethics investigation. The staffers did not give reasons for their resignations. (Read more from “EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt Resigns Amidst Ethics Questions” HERE)

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EPA Leader Scott Pruitt Resigns After Scandals Engulf His Agency

By CNBC. . . President Donald Trump tweeted on Thursday that he has accepted Pruitt’s resignation. Trump said that the agency’s deputy administrator and former coal industry lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, will become the acting head of EPA.

The departure follows months of scrutiny that gathered momentum following reports that Pruitt had rented a Capitol Hill condominium linked to an energy lobbyist on favorable terms. The revelation exacerbated concerns about the high cost of Pruitt’s travel and security detail and triggered a flood of allegations that Pruitt fostered a culture of workplace retaliation, wasteful spending and self-dealing at EPA.

The steady flow of negative news stories prompted multiple government investigators to open several inquiries into Pruitt. His EPA now faces about a dozen probes into its spending, ethics and policy decisions.

“It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it as a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also because of the transformative work that is occurring,” Pruitt said in his resignation letter. (Read more from “EPA Leader Scott Pruitt Resigns After Scandals Engulf His Agency” HERE)

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Democrat Letters to Trump Reveal a Likely Source of Leaks About EPA’s Scott Pruitt

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Democratic lawmakers sent letters to the White House and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that revealed a likely source of leaks to the media regarding Administrator Scott Pruitt.

Democrats want EPA to handover documents in an effort to substantiate allegations EPA Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations Kevin Chmielewski made. Chmielewski detailed allegations previously reported from news outlets related to Pruitt’s first-class travel, living arrangements, and giving raises to close aides.

Chmielewski featured prominently in a recent The New York Times story on Pruitt’s removing or reassigning of five agency officials, including the former deputy. Many claims made in NYT’s article are also made by Chmielewski in Democrats’ letter.

“The new information provided by Mr. Chmielewski, if accurate, leaves us certain that your leadership at EPA has been fraught with numerous and repeated unethical and potentially illegal actions on a wide range of consequential matters that you and some members of your staff directed,” five Democratic lawmakers wrote in their letter.

NYT’s own write-up of Democrats’ letter notes it “corroborates details previously reported by The New York Times, including that Mr. Pruitt and others at the agency retaliated against staff members, including Mr. Chmielewski, when they objected to the spending requests.” (Read more from “Democrat Letters to Trump Reveal a Likely Source of Leaks About EPA’s Scott Pruitt” HERE)

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Report: EPA Staff Could Be Cut in HALF Under Trump Admin

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On the campaign trail in 2016, President Donald Trump promised to drastically scale back the Environmental Protection Agency, vowing to “take a tremendous amount out.” A new report from the Washington Examiner shows that after the first year of the Trump presidency, the administration is on schedule to reduce the EPA workforce by half.

“We’re proud to report that we’re reducing the size of government, protecting taxpayer dollars and staying true to our core mission of protecting the environment,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told the Examiner.

According to the report, if everyone scheduled to retire leaves by 2021, the EPA’s staff will have been reduced from nearly 15,000 employees to below 8,000, a 47 percent cut. To get these numbers, Administrator Pruitt has instituted a hiring freeze and has offered attractive retirement benefits to encourage people to leave.

“We’re happy to be at Reagan-level employment numbers and the future retirements shows a preview of how low we could get during this administration. It would be fair to say anywhere from 25 to 47 percent of EPA could retire during this administration,” an EPA official said.

Speaking at a 2016 Republican presidential primary debate in Michigan, Trump pledged that if he were elected president, there would only be “tidbits” of the EPA left. “Department of Environmental Protection: We are going to get rid of it in almost every form. We’re going to have little tidbits left. But we’re going to take a tremendous amount out,” he said.

Consider this another swamp-draining promise the president is on track to keeping. (For more from the author of “Report: EPA Staff Could Be Cut in HALF Under Trump Admin” please click HERE)

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