Solar Picnic Tables? How The Federal Government Has Treated Your Tax Dollars With Utter Disdain thumbnail

Solar Picnic Tables? How The Federal Government Has Treated Your Tax Dollars With Utter Disdain

By The Daily Caller

The House Oversight Committee’s subpanel on government efficiency held a hearing Tuesday exposing billions of taxpayer dollars wasted annually on outdated federal buildings.

Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who leads the Subcommittee on Delivering Government Efficiency (DOGE), opened the hearing by slamming federal agencies for maintaining a bloated real estate footprint. She pledged to continue pushing to “right-size” the federal government’s real estate portfolio.

“Here in D.C., [the Government Accountability Office] found in 2023 that the vast majority of federal agency headquarters buildings were less than 25% occupied — some much less,” Greene said. “Meanwhile, from 2022 to 2024, the backlog of deferred maintenance on the aging buildings the government owns grew from $216 billion to $370 billion. That’s more than one-third of a trillion dollars it will cost to restore them — if we don’t sell them.”

Under Biden, D.C. crumbled—overgrown lots, vacant offices, wasted cash.

By working with @DOGECommittee, we will ensure that the federal government is not impeding growth.

We will slash federal real estate leases, save billions, and rebuild a capital we can be proud of. pic.twitter.com/Q04mT6WYJd

— Congressman William Timmons (@RepTimmons) April 8, 2025

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has flagged federal property management as a “high-risk” area since 2003. Yet despite two decades of warnings, the Biden administration allowed billions to be spent not only to maintain vacant offices but also on lavish furniture purchases, according to the subcommittee’s review.

Greene highlighted early Trump administration moves, including canceling nearly 700 federal leases totaling 7.9 million square feet of space — moves she said saved taxpayers around $400 million. One such canceled lease was a 15-year, quarter-billion-dollar agreement for luxury office space on Pennsylvania Avenue, signed by the Biden administration to house Voice of America and the U.S. Agency for Global Media. The building, Greene said, had zero broadcasting capabilities, and taxpayers would have been on the hook for another $130 million in renovations.

John Hart, CEO of the watchdog group OpenTheBooks, framed the issue in visceral terms.

“Today’s expansive, excessive and sometimes opulent federal real estate portfolio is both a monument to the administrative state and a mausoleum of lost dreams, opportunity and freedom for American taxpayers,” Hart said in his opening statement. “Do federal employees need seven figures worth of abstract modern art to make the government run?”

Hart testified that agencies spent $4.6 billion on furniture since FY 2021, including $284,000 on FEMA conference rooms and nearly $120,000 on leather recliners for the U.S. embassy in Islamabad. Hart also cited the $238,000 the CDC spent on solar-powered picnic tables which, by the agency’s own social distancing rules, “should have sat unoccupied,” he said.

David Marroni of the GAO echoed the concern over dysfunction and inertia inside the federal property apparatus.

“The pandemic shined a spotlight on these long-standing problems,” Marroni told lawmakers. “The federal government has held on to too much space and has been too slow in shedding underused properties … Progress has been slow. Agencies were in a wait-and-see mode for too long.”

Marroni said that, for the first time, agencies are being forced to begin tracking actual building utilization data starting this summer.

Democrats on the panel said the Trump administration’s rapid disposal plan was ideologically driven and economically reckless.

“I think it’s very clear that part of the agenda here is really about dismantling the administrative state and using real assets of the federal government to do that,” Democratic New Mexico Rep. Melanie Stansbury, the ranking member of the subcommittee, said in the hearing. “The point here is that things are not always as they appear in Washington, D.C., and I think it’s very clear that this is not about the federal taxpayers and the American people. This is about disposing of federal property and a fire sale to make the wealthy more wealthy. Thanks.”

Republicans fired back. Texas Rep. Pat Fallon cited GAO findings that 17 of the 24 largest federal agencies used less than 25% of their office capacity. Republican South Carolina Rep. William Timmons said the goal was to offload waste and inject new life into dead office space. They cited reforms under the Federal Property Management Act and the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act of 2016 as a roadmap for future consolidation.

“I guarantee you that a developer — a big bad developer — is going to come in,” Timmons said. “They’ll build this massive building, put housing in it and pay taxes. That’s the highest and best use.”

Greene said the DOGE subcommittee intends to introduce legislation aimed at streamlining the disposal process for surplus federal property and imposing stricter accountability measures for future real estate acquisitions. She also said the subcommittee would work closely with the White House and the GAO to accelerate selloffs and lease terminations.

AUTHOR

Thomas English

Comtributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Senate Continues Dismantling Biden’s Green Energy Agenda By Voting To Repeal Gas Water Heater Ban

‘Do Not Respond’: Trump Press Sec Confirms They Ignore Reporters With Pronouns In Email Signatures

EXCLUSIVE: Possible GOP Senate Candidate’s Bill Takes Aim At ‘Rogue Regulators’

‘The Party Has Been Taken Over’: Doug Schoen Tells Harris Faulkner ‘Far Left’ Made Democratic Party ‘Unrecognizable’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

US Military Exits Climate Change After Wasteful Decade thumbnail

US Military Exits Climate Change After Wasteful Decade

By Steve Goreham

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

The United States military has pursued an increasing number of programs to try to fight climate change for more than a decade. The Air Force, Army, and Navy each developed programs to use alternative energy and to reduce hydrocarbon-based fuels, with aggressive carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction plans. But under the Trump Administration, climate change mitigation will no longer be an objective.

Earlier this month, the new Department of Defense (DoD) Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote “The Dept of Defense does not do climate change crap. We do training and warfighting.” The DoD is now cutting Pentagon programs that involve climate change. So begins a new age of realistic military policy and an end to more than 15 years of wasteful climate change spending.

Under President Joe Biden, the US government adopted a goal of net-zero emissions for both the US economy and the federal government by 2050. At the direction of the administration, all branches of the US military developed plans to try to get to Net Zero, the elimination of all hydrocarbon-based energy.

ADVERTISEMENT

The US military is the largest institutional user of petroleum-derived fuel in the world. It is estimated that the DoD uses 4.6 billion gallons of fuel each year. According to the DoD, military emissions in FY 2021 were Air Force (56%), Navy (31%), Army (9%), and Marine Corps (5%). Aircraft accounted for 76% of emissions and ships emitted most of the remainder at 17%.

Navy

The Navy began climate change programs more than a decade ago during the administration of President Barack Obama. In 2011, US Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus stated, “By no later than 2020, at least half of the energy that the navy uses, both afloat and ashore, will come from non-fossil fuel sources.” The Great Green Fleet initiative was a key part of this effort.

The Great Green Fleet program attempted to use a drop-in blend of biofuels to replace diesel fuel in ships. In 2016, the navy deployed a carrier task force using a fuel mixture of 90% diesel and 10% biofuels. But the biofuel portion cost about $14 per gallon, seven times as much as the diesel portion. The navy also proposed to install hybrid electric-drive engines in 34 “green destroyers” to allow them to run on either fuel or electricity generated from fuel.

But the Great Green Fleet was a dismal failure. Biofuels were high cost and not available around the world, requiring the use of traditional diesel fuel in overseas ports. The hybrid electric-drive destroyers could not keep up with nuclear-powered carriers when using electric engines.

By the end of 2017, the Navy had spent $57 billion on green fuel programs. The electric-drive destroyer program was cancelled in 2018. By 2022, except for nuclear-powered ships, more than 99 percent of the US Navy’s fuel still came from petroleum.

But the Biden Administration urged the navy to double down on climate change objectives. The Navy issued its Climate Action 2030 plan in May of 2022, pursing a “department-wide pathway to net-zero by 2050.” The written plan lauds recent climate change “achievements,” including the “Mekong Delta Climate Research Collaboration” with the government of Vietnam, the “California Organic Recycling and Composting” project, and a partnership with the armed forces of Ghana to “combat vector-borne diseases that are exacerbated by climate change.” It’s not clear that these programs improve navy military readiness in any way.

ADVERTISEMENT

Air Force

Since aircraft emit the most CO2, the US Air Force has focused on reducing aircraft emissions. But aircraft emissions are very difficult to eliminate. An aircraft on a long mission produces as much CO2 as the weight of the plane. Fuel engines deliver a 20-to-one energy advantage compared to batteries and electric engines, making electric aircraft impractical.

Air force climate plans count on Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF). SAF is made from biomass or waste, with claims of lower CO2 emissions. SAF would have the same specifications as current aviation fuel, allowing it to be “dropped-in” to existing aircraft operations. Military SAF would be similar to planned commercial aviation SAF.

But SAF is expensive, not available in large quantities, and may not even reduce CO2 emissions. Jet fuel emits 3.16 tons of CO2 for each metric ton of burned fuel. When you burn SAF, 3.16 metric tons of CO2 are also exhausted for each ton of SAF burned. Both jet fuel and SAF are produced in refineries. So how can SAF reduce emissions? In any case, the use of SAF provides no military value, so Secretary Hegseth will likely shut down all SAF programs.

Army

The “Army Climate Strategy” plan of February 2022 called for the near-term use of microgrids and renewable electricity at military bases. It called for a 100% transition of the “non-tactical vehicle fleet” to electric vehicles (EVs) by FY 2027. Spending would amount to about $2 billion per year from 2023 to 2027.

The plan also proposed to begin a transition of light, medium, and even heavy battlefield tactical vehicles to electric drive by 2027, and the development of “battlefield chargers” for these vehicles. Charging electric tanks on the battlefield is another example of “climate change crap” with no military value.

Department of Defense climate plans call for adaptation measures, such as building sea walls, erecting flood barriers, hardening military installations, and constructing backup power systems. These adaptation measures are sensible policies to build resilience to weather events. But here is no evidence that climate change can be “mitigated” enough to be measurable. Switching all US military vehicles to EVs will have no measurable effect on storms or sea-level rise.

Coast Guard

Earlier this month, the US Coast Guard Academy announced that it was removing “climate change” from its academic curriculum. The Coast Guard is part of the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, the only branch of the military that is not part of the DoD.

Conclusion

Military climate policies under the Biden Administration, even if fully implemented, would not have had a measurable effect on global temperatures. But they would continue to waste hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. Secretary Hegseth will put these funds to better use to strengthen the US military.

*****

This article was published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

Court Delivers Massive Blow To Famed Climate Scientist Who Sued Critics thumbnail

Court Delivers Massive Blow To Famed Climate Scientist Who Sued Critics

By Nick Pope

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Editors’ Note: This decision has implications not just for freedom and speech, but also for conservative media. Mann’s work and his famous hockey stick, which alleges a connection between the warming of the Earth and C02, is at the heart of much of the modern environmentalist movement. Not content with removing pollution and saving species, the movement has morphed into an almost Luddite type of movement by declaring C02, which is produced by humans and all other animals, and is food for plants, as a pollutant. To challenge Mann successfully is to challenge Al Gore and most of what has been taught in schools for the past 25 years. 

A Washington, D.C., court rejected University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann’s bid to postpone his required payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars to National Review on Thursday.

The Superior Court of the District of Columbia ruled in January that Mann owes National Review approximately $530,000 to cover the outlet’s legal fees after spending more than a decade locked in defamation litigation against the organization, and Mann subsequently requested a stay to postpone the payments. On Thursday, the court denied Mann’s request, meaning that he will likely have to pony up cash to an outlet he once described in emails as a “threat to our children.” (RELATED: DC Jury Found ‘Hockey Stick’ Critics Defamed Scientist. What Does That Mean For Scientific Discourse Going Forward?)

ADVERTISEMENT

Mann Filing by Nick Pope on Scribd

Mann initially sued National Review in 2012, when Canadian conservative Mark Steyn knocked Mann and his famed “hockey stick” climate model in a post on National Review’s website. National Review editor Rich Lowry then authored a follow-up post backing Steyn’s, and Mann decided to sue the outlet for defamation along with Steyn and Rand Simberg, a former adjunct for the Competitive Enterprise Institute. While Mann’s lawsuit against Steyn and Simberg prevailed initially, the superior court judge determined in January that Mann would have to pay the $531,000 within 30 days, National Review’s editors announced at the time.

In a filing opposing National Review’s request for compensation, Mann argued that the move was a “mean-spirited and unjustified request by a powerful organization” intending to intimidate and silence him.

Notably, Judge Albert Irving wrote in March that Mann and his lawyers had presented misleading information to the jury while the defamation case was at trial. Specifically, Mann and his representation misled the jury as to how much grant funding he missed out on due to the actions of the defendants, a key element of his defamation case, with Irving describing the deception as “extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent.”

*****

This article was published by The Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

ADVERTISEMENT

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

Georgia Bill Sparks MAHA Concerns About Alleged Chinese Poison Chemicals thumbnail

Georgia Bill Sparks MAHA Concerns About Alleged Chinese Poison Chemicals

By The Daily Caller

MAHA advocates are warning about a bill Georgia lawmakers passed in March that they allege would allow manufacturers of pesticides to escape liability for poisoning customers.

Senate Bill 144 would make it so “that a manufacturer cannot be held liable for failing to warn consumers of health risks above those required by the United States Environmental Protection Agency with respect to pesticides.”

Environmentalists and regenerative farming advocates warn that the bill would be detrimental to public health.

“Stripping our right to be able to sue if we have a different opinion than what the EPA has is really going to be catastrophic for public health, because then we have no recourse whatsoever,” Kelly Ryerson, the founder of American Regenerative and Glyphosate Facts, told the Daily Caller. Ryerson, a Stanford University MBA, has a certificate in public health policy from Stanford Business School.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Republican Georgia State Sen. Sam Watson, pushed back on the idea that the bill would prevent Americans from being able to sue manufacturers.

“It’s dealing with failure to warn, it’s not providing immunity,” Sen. Watson told the Caller. “It’s not preventing anyone to go after [manufacturers] because they thought that a product caused cancer. You can still do that, you just can’t do it for failure to warn of it causing cancer.”

Manufacturers that would be covered under Georgia’s bill include Bayer, who owns Monsanto, the maker of RoundUp. A Georgia jury is fresh off awarding a plaintiff over $2 billion in a judgement against Bayer after he blamed RoundUp for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a lawsuit.

Why did the Georgia State Legislature rush to pass SB144 aka The Pesticide Bill?

There are $2.1 BILLION reasons why!

Bayer was ordered to pay a plaintiff when they proved his cancer was caused by their pesticide (Round-Up).

Over 60,000 cases are still pending against Bayer.… pic.twitter.com/TH8YPs77yk

— Kylie Jane Kremer (@KylieJaneKremer) March 24, 2025

RoundUp’s active ingredient is glyphosate, the most commonly used pesticide in the United States. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said glyphosate likely causes cancer in 2015, labelling it as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”

“It says it’s likely and we saw that same report. It doesn’t say it does. It says that it suggests or it may be or probably or could cause,” Sen. Watson told the Caller.

The EPA reached a different conclusion. After a February 2020 review, the agency found “that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label,” according to its website.

The IARC was accused of manipulating their data in 2017. A draft document of IARC’s 2015 study was unearthed and, according to Reuters, showed the agency dismissed and edited out conclusions contrary to their final report.

Watson claimed that the study which the IARC based its carcinogenic conclusion on also found a number of other common American lifestyle choices increased the risk of cancer.

“If you’ll keep reading in that study it also says that red meat is carcinogenic and night shift work is carcinogenic and a lot of other things that people do are carcinogenic. So, I mean, you need to read the whole study because one studies shift and dictate,” Watson told the Caller.

While the EPA did not concur with the IARC’s conclusion that glyphosate is a carcinogen, Ryerson alleged that the research they based that conclusion on was manipulated by Bayer/Monsanto.

Wisner Baum, a law firm which Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once worked for, published a trove of documents that appeared to implicate Monsanto in ghostwriting a number of reports on glyphosate’s toxicity.

Science journal highlights Baum Hedlund’s work un-sealing and exposing the Monsanto Papers. “Scientific misconduct by private firms threatens the integrity of public science, and it threatens to undermine the public’s trust in science.” #ScienceEthics https://t.co/ww31mf94ZW pic.twitter.com/5ibdhgMreV

— Wisner Baum (@WisnerBaum) July 20, 2021

One email published by the firm allegedly shows that Monsanto commissioned scientist David Saltmiras and former Monsanto consultant Larry Keir to recruit respected names to write a review of glyphosate’s toxicity. “[E]ven though we feel confident that glyphosate is not genotoxic, this became a very difficult story to tell given all the complicated ‘noise’ out there,” the correspondence reads.

Keir’s name appears on the review that was eventually published, according to the documents obtained by Wisner Baum.

Other manufacturers that could benefit from the limited liability include Chinese chemical manufacturers. When ChemChina, a Chinese state-controlled chemical manufacturer, bought Swiss AgTech company Syngenta for $43 billion in 2017, it was forced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to divest its rights to the company’s paraquat chemical business in the U.S. to an American firm.

However, China is still the primary producer of paraquat used in the U.S. while America is the world’s biggest importer, according to global shipping tracker Volza. The U.S. imports from 4,000 to 5,000 tons of the product annually, making up over 10 percent of China’s export supply, according to agropages.com

Like glyphosate, the EPA found “no dietary risks of concern associated with paraquat when it is used according to the label.” But others have called it “the deadliest chemical in US agriculture.”

National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies have linked the chemical to Parkinson’s disease, finding that people who used paraquat were 2.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s. Over 50 countries have banned its use, including China.

Sen. Watson, a vegetable farmer who uses RoundUp himself, argued it’s China’s very stranglehold over the paraquat market that makes SB 144 so necessary.

“If the Chinese become the only manufacturer of a product, you can’t go after them. It’s very difficult to go after a Chinese manufacturer for any kind of negligence claim,” he told the Caller.

“So I feel like they’re already protected, which makes it even more important to keep manufacturers in the United States because those are the ones that we can have recourse if they here in the United States.”

Ryerson disagreed. “I actually don’t care who manufactures it,” she said. “I just don’t want it anywhere in our system.”

Additionally, 99 percent of glyphosate used in the U.S. originated from China in 2024, according to a Farm Business Network survey.

You can’t make this up.

A German pharmaceutical company that helped Hitler during World War 2 (@Bayer) bought Monsanto and is now sending mailers in states saying lawmakers are pro-China if they don’t vote for a bill giving glyphosate legal immunity. https://t.co/6IbbIVD9Xe

— Calley Means (@calleymeans) February 15, 2025

The bill now sits on Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for him to sign. “Our office has 40 days following the last day of the legislative session to conduct a thorough review of legislation that received final passage by the Georgia General Assembly. We will make an announcement upon the conclusion of that review process,” a spokesperson for Kemp’s office told the Caller.

Georgia’s legislative session ended April 4, giving the governor until May 14 to make a decision.

The bill represents a test of power for RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) coalition. Self-proclaimed “MAHA moms” have been lobbying hard against its passage, imploring Kemp not to sign it. RFK, who tried and won cases on behalf of Monsanto victims in his past life as an attorney, has yet to publicly comment on the bill.

The Daily Caller reached out to HHS to get Secretary Kennedy’s thoughts on the bill but did not receive a response.

AUTHOR

Robert McGreevy

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

RFK Jr. Targets America’s Most Obese State For Aggressive MAHA Reforms

Top Maryland Dem Backs Green Energy Bill That Could Line His Own Company’s Pockets

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WINNING! Vile Anti-American Globalist WEF Founder Klaus Schwab Resigns thumbnail

WINNING! Vile Anti-American Globalist WEF Founder Klaus Schwab Resigns

By The Geller Report

The feral anti-American globalist and the founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), Klaus Schwab, has announced his decision to step down as the organization’s chairman. This decision comes after a tenure of five decades at the helm of the WEF. The announcement follows a board investigation into the workplace culture at the WEF, though specific details of the investigation have not been disclosed.

The universally-recognized public face of the “Great Reset.” Klaus Schwab is the current chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), an organization that meets annually, determines the economic policy direction of the developed world and counts presidents, prime ministers, billionaires — essentially the “ruling class,” the elite — as its members.

Founder Klaus Schwab to step down as World Economic Forum’s chair

April 3 (Reuters) – The World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, will “start the process” of stepping down as chair of its board of trustees, a spokesperson for the Geneva-based institution told Reuters on Thursday.

Schwab said the forum, which convenes annual gatherings in the Swiss resort of Davos, must recover its “sense of mission” after a period of turmoil, the Financial Times first reported, citing a letter to trustee board members and confirmation by two people with knowledge of the situation.

Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

G20: WEF’s Klaus Schwab Vows To ‘Structurally Restructure’ the World Despite ‘Extensive Social Tensions’

World Economic Forum Promotes ‘Brain Implants’ for Children

World Economic Forum Chairman: “Isn’t The Only Hope … That the Industrialized Civilizations Collapse?”

POSTS ON X:

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Inside the now-shuttered ‘East German-style’ EPA Museum — Gore says goodbye to USA?! thumbnail

Inside the now-shuttered ‘East German-style’ EPA Museum — Gore says goodbye to USA?!

By Marc Morano from Climate Depot

WATCH: Peek inside the now-shuttered EPA Museum that closed because it cost $4mil to build, $600k annually to operate & received less than 2000 visitors

Climate Depot’s Marc Morano: “The now-defunct EPA Museum evokes memories of an old East German government propaganda effort. Future generations will look back on this climate-obsessed era and marvel that a civilization ever took this climate crap seriously.”

Watch Fox News Video: EPA MUSEUM CLOSED: Cost $4 million of taxpayer dollars to build and no visitors!

RELATED ARTICLES:

EPA shuttering museum that cost $315 per visitor to stay open — with barely anyone showing up

‘Climate change may make it harder to spot submarines,’ new NATO study finds – Claim ‘warmer oceans alter how sound travels underwater’

The Climate Change movement might be nearing the end of its political lifespan – ‘Possible that Trump Admin is going to deal the death blows to the long-running climate change hysteria’

Even the EU, the motherlode of climate action, backs away from Climate Plans

Al Gore says goodbye to USA?!
NYT: ‘Gore Is Shifting His Climate Activism Abroad’ – ‘He has watched with alarm’ as Trump guts climate regs – Gore ‘is looking to the developing world for the next generation of climate activism’

UK Guardian: ‘Groundbreaking book argues climate crisis was sparked by colonization’ – Claims ‘climate breakdown is the mutant offspring of European scientific racism & colonialism’

Mag: ‘Bill Gates Gives Up on Climate Change’ – Gates signaling the end of a ‘major chapter in climate giving’ as ‘billionaires are pulling (climate) support at an alarming rate’

‘The Bill Gates Era of Climate Giving Has Ended’ – ‘Closing his (climate) policy & advocacy office and has laid off much of its staff’ – Gates was ‘instrumental to the lobbying effort to pass the IRA’

NYT claims ‘vicious cycle of extreme heat leading to more fossil fuel use’ – 

Realty Check: ‘As planet warms projected decrease in energy demand for heating is ~5x larger than projected increase due to more cooling’

Dogs Could Be Among ‘the First Victims of Climate Change’ – ‘Excessive panting, drooling, & lethargy’ from ‘increased risk of heat stress’

Climate Buzzwords Vanish From Corporate Earnings Calls As Trump Puts Green Energy Industry ‘On Its Heels’

Bill Gates in 2024: ‘My carbon footprint is high, & that’s partly why I’m so avid that we need to get all sources of emissions to zero’

Bill Gates says AI will replace doctors, & teachers within 10 years — & claims humans won’t be needed ‘for most things’

‘Climate Change Is Must-See Theater in London’ – New Play ‘Kyoto’ ‘draws sold-out audiences’ – Produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the play ‘dramatizes the first legally binding global pact’

Lomborg: ‘The global evidence is clear: Not a single country that relies heavily on wind & solar power has low average electricity costs’

Rolling Stone mag laments: ‘Trump Wants to Convince the World That Climate Change Is a Good Thing’ – He’s ‘ready to argue that climate change would benefit humans’

Watch: Morano on OAN TV talking DOGE climate cuts & EPA ‘gold bar’ spending

Listen: Morano on Joe Piscopo Show talking Greenpeace, offshore wind & Amazon taking over healthcare

Progress! US Supreme Court will not hear novel youth-led climate change case ‘claiming the U.S. govt’s energy policies violate their rights to be protected from climate change’

Watch: Morano on The First TV talking how Trump’s EPA is taking a blow torch to climate regulations

Watch: Princeton Prof. William Happer: The Climate Crisis Is a Made-Up Scare Story – ‘Saving the planet from one & a half degrees of warming is just crazy’

Climate Craziness Would Eliminate Air Travel – Except for the ‘Privileged’ as Airbus to use ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ which will add an expensive ‘green premium’ to airfares

©2025 . All rights reserved.

How Trump Is Decimating the Left’s Patronage Networks thumbnail

How Trump Is Decimating the Left’s Patronage Networks

By Jarrett Stepman

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

President Donald Trump has launched a political counterrevolution in the early days of his second presidency. One of the most profound ways he’s doing this is by effectively cutting off the Left’s massive, government-funded patronage networks. 

What’s making Trump’s moves so effective is that many of these networks are based on government functions that long ago either waned in usefulness or have completely abandoned their purpose.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin appeared on One America News Wednesday and explained how the Left has insidiously transformed the federal government into a Democratic Party funding apparatus. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Zeldin explained how the EPA under the Biden administration was used as a slush fund to give money to activists.

“The EPA was absolutely being used to push out this green slush fund to their friends,” Zeldin said. “By design, the director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction fund leaves one of these NGOs, goes to work for the Biden administration to design this whole setup, and then sees his former employer get $5 billion.”

Zeldin said that this scheme applied to contracts, large and small, to both green nongovernmental organization executives and to low-level activists. The EPA has been acting as a conduit to transfer huge amounts of taxpayer money to the Left’s base.

“Are we providing clean air, land, and water?” Zeldin asked rhetorically. “This wasn’t money spent toward remediating environmental issues. This was money going through their friends.”

Indeed, it was. Zeldin has canceled hundreds of contracts worth $1.5 billion that were tabbed to go to essentially leftwing activist networks focused on “environmental justice.”

Democrats are apoplectic about the move, of course. Big surprise.

ADVERTISEMENT

Zeldin is going ham on other climate change initiatives too where big money is at stake for the Left’s green client network.

This is only the tip of the iceberg. One of the real misunderstandings about the modern administrative state, which has been demolished in recent years, is that it’s operated by “nonpartisan experts.” 

Nearly a century and a half after civil service reform was supposed to eliminate the “spoils system,” we have a vast federal leviathan that has not only failed to eliminate partisan administration, it has spread its corruption to an almost unimaginable scale.

Since at least Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society this modern spoils system has been used to the benefit of one party, the Democrats who run the system no matter who is in the White House.

In his second term, Trump is waging political war on that network. It’s not just the EPA. Department by department, Trump’s secretaries—assisted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency—are severing the ties that bind this vast, corrupt octopus.

That’s what freezing U.S. Agency for International Development funding was partly about. Foreign aid is already deeply unpopular with the American people, but what we are spending money on is not just generic aid to potential international partners.

Like many of the federal government’s projects, USAID is in many ways a relic of a bygone era when the U.S. aimed to stop the influence of communism around the globe. Sometime after the fall of the USSR it became a vehicle to fund various leftist projects around the globe with little relation to U.S. national interest. In fact, many of these projects were downright loathed in countries that weren’t too pleased with the U.S. government funding Pride parades in their capital city.

The Trump administration is pulling the plug on the unofficially established church of the Left too. They are withdrawing, or threatening to withdraw, hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money directed at colleges and universities that failed to protect their students from antisemitism on campus.

They are threatening schools with removing even more funds if they continue their illegal, racially discriminatory DEI programs too. And one might add that the problem goes far beyond antisemitism and DEI.

American universities, which have in many cases become hedge funds with schools attached, are increasingly failing to serve the public good. Much of what they call vital “research” is bogus. In addition, there’s no question that taxpayer-funded research grants allow universities to fund their obnoxious humanities departments that are politically monolithic at nearly every school.

They are in the business of gatekeeping the American elite and turning out generations of activists who not only run the show on campus but populate newsrooms, corporate boardrooms, and government institutions.

Want to know why nearly everyone who runs an elite institution sounds the same, spouts the same dogmas, and went along with every insanity of the 2020 Great Awokening? There’s your source.

Again, this vast machine, the “Regime,” is underwritten by the taxpayer. Trump is breaking up that system. He’s targeting its power at the source. 

To complete Trump’s revolution, Congress is going to have to get involved at some point. For instance, National Public Radio’s taxpayer-funded scam to fund leftwing journalists was completely exposed by the disastrous testimony of its CEO at a House hearing on Wednesday. There’s no excuse for keeping the money flowing to a blatantly partisan news network that lost its public function long ago.

Musk had it right when he called NPR an “taxpayer-funded” arm of the DNC.

This is why the Left’s instititions are often so powerful. They are often grafted on to a money spigot coming from the federal government. The Right is used to operating without that kind of support and has found ways to thrive without it. How will the Left function without their massive financial cushion? For now, probably not too well.

What the Trump administration has accomplished already is remarkable. They’ve disrupted the Left’s government funding racket in ways no president has before. Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has called this a “Second American Revolution,” and in many ways it is.

Self-government is being restored, the Left’s spoils system is being defunded, and there is now hope that a downsized and more efficient federal government can begin again to serve the American people, all the people, rather than bilking them.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

Arizona Lawmakers Look At Way To Prevent Gasoline Price Hikes thumbnail

Arizona Lawmakers Look At Way To Prevent Gasoline Price Hikes

By Dave Mason

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

Editors’ Note: This short article is worth reading carefully. Phoenix uses a gasoline “unique blend” to fight ozone. No one else uses this special concoction, and it is produced in California’s dwindling, over-regulated refineries, leaving us vulnerable to all the crazy environmental zealots in California. This destroys the gasoline market as no other competing gas can be used. Denver is a large metro area in a basin with pollution issues, and their gas is almost always cheaper than Phoenix’s. Secondly, 80% of our ozone problem comes from outside the state. That means all that extra expense does nothing for “the environment.” Good grief, millions are taken from working people’s budgets as a “virtue signal” to Gaia? We are glad to see Republicans in the legislature finally take some action. Where are the Democrats? If the gasoline rules really did the job, we could understand their opposition, but since gasoline consumption is not the cause of ozone violations, why are they not on board? Phoenix is a car city that was designed when cars were developed. It is a vast area. Maricopa County is the size of Israel. All the 700 miles of bike paths don’t work six months out of the year when it is too hot; that idea is for young people only. Slightly more than 2% of our traffic is carried between light rail, bike paths, and the bus system. These ideas can’t solve our traffic issues. We must spend our money on road repair and making Phoenix independent of California gasoline supplies.

Republicans in the Arizona Legislature say they’re working to keep gas prices down.

The party, which holds majorities in the Senate and House, is considering legislation that would allow Maricopa County — the state’s most populous county with more than 4.5 million people and its biggest city, Phoenix — to use gas blends with formulas being used in neighboring states.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Senate Natural Resources, Energy and Water Committee was scheduled Tuesday afternoon to hear Senate President Pro Tempore T.J. Shope’s proposed amendment to House Bill 2300 to expand the list of approved blends, which Republicans say would prevent price hikes. (Republican Rep. Leo Biasiucci is the sponsor of HB 2300.)

Arizona law currently requires drivers in Maricopa County to use a blend called “Cleaner Burning Gas” during the spring and summer to meet the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s clean air requirements for ozone attainment. According to an Arizona Senate Republican Caucus news release, the state is the only one using this blend, which is produced outside Arizona.

When routine disruptions prevent the blend from entering the state, the result is price increases, Republicans said.

Gas Tuesday in Arizona costs an average of $3.34 a gallon, slightly above the national average of $3.14, according to AAA. Maricopa County, which has been seeing the state’s highest price, saw an average of $3.54 a gallon.

While Arizonans are no longer experiencing gas at the $4 and $5 a gallon levels from recent years, they’re still paying about $1 a gallon more than in 2020, Senate Republicans said.

“Modeling shows that 80% of the ozone in Maricopa County travels here from outside of the state. This includes wildfires, pollution from Mexico and emissions from California,” said Shope, R-Coolidge. “Even if 4 million gas burning cars were removed from our roads, Arizona would still not attain the impossible ozone standards set by the EPA.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Senate President Warren Petersen has asked EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin that Arizonans not be penalized for something the state didn’t cause.

In a news release, the EPA said it would work with and not against states to help them protect their air quality while they expand their economies.

Petersen said HB 2300 is the first step toward Arizona becoming able to reduce gas prices, coupled with Zeldin’s upcoming action.

The nation’s highest gas prices continue to be in California, which saw an average of $4.65 a gallon Tuesday, according to AAA. The second highest average Tuesday, $4.53 a gallon, was in Hawaii.

*****

This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

EXCLUSIVE: How Small Town America Stopped A Chinese Communist Party Takeover thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: How Small Town America Stopped A Chinese Communist Party Takeover

By The Daily Caller

A U.S. electric vehicle battery manufacturer with ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has suspended its permit application to build a plant near a Michigan National Guard base following fierce opposition.

Chuck Thelen, CEO of Gotion Inc. — a “wholly owned and controlled” subsidiary of Chinese company Hefei Gotion High-Tech Power Energy Co. Ltd. (Gotion High-Tech) — said the decision stemmed from the firm’s ongoing breach of contract lawsuit against Green Charter Township, according to the Big Rapids Pioneer. The township soured on the $2.4 billion project in November 2023 after voters recalled numerous officials following a series of reports revealing Gotion and its Chinese parent company’s ties to the CCP.

“I applaud the people of Mecosta County as Gotion pauses their permitting process, but their fight is not over,” Republican Michigan Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the House Select Committee on the CCP, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Gotion must announce it will finally listen to the people, and end its projects for good.”

“Over the last two years the residents of Green Charter Township, a small town of just 3,200 people, came together to defend American interests and stop Gotion from bullying its way into their community,” Moolenaar said. “The opposition to the CCP-affiliated company attended board meetings to voice their concerns and rallied their neighbors in true grassroots efforts against Gotion.”

‘National Security Risks’

Questions about Gotion’s CCP-ties began to arise around March 2023 when The Midwesterner reported Gotion High-Tech’s “Articles of Association” required the firm to establish a “Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”

Later, in August 2023, the DCNF found Gotion High-Tech’s Chinese-language annual reports from the previous year revealing the firm employed 923 CCP members at that time. The same month, the DCNF also discovered footage on the firm’s Chinese-language website showing employees visiting CCP memorials dressed as Red Army soldiers to pledge their lives to the Party.

Gotion Inc.’s parent firm ran field trips to #CCP sites in China, during which staff wore RED ARMY uniforms & swore CCP OATHS

“…to fight for communism as long as I live…”@DailyCaller recently reported Gotion High-Tech employs 923 CCP members (including its CEO)

WATCH: pic.twitter.com/Tpn2Jwynb9

— Philip Lenczycki 蔡岳 (@LenczyckiPhilip) August 31, 2023

Other Chinese-language announcements on Gotion High-Tech’s website unearthed by the DCNF showed Gotion’s Chief Technology Officer, Steven Cai, at the internal CCP committee meetings of its Chinese parent company.

The House Select Committee on the CCP investigated Gotion High-Tech in 2024 and “found their supply chains are reliant on forced labor as part of the CCP’s ongoing genocide of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang Province,” Mooleenaar told the DCNF.

“The full extent of Gotion’s ties to the CCP were uncovered, with the help of the investigative reporting by the Daily Caller News Foundation, as well as the national security risks posed by companies like Gotion,” Moolenaar said.

‘We Love Our Freedom’

Meanwhile, Michigan residents — like Joseph Cella, the director of the Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group — engaged in grassroots activism to oppose the CCP-tied company. Cella served as the U.S. Ambassador to Fiji during the first Trump administration.

The former ambassador told the DCNF he blames local leaders for allowing such a company the opportunity to build a base of operations in Michigan.

“[They] refused to follow the directives given to state and local governments on dealings with China-based companies to exercise vigilance, conduct due diligence, and ensure transparency, integrity, and accountability are built into the partnership to guard against potential foreign government exploitation,” Cella said. “It is important that executive branch agencies, Congress, the Michigan Legislature, and citizens continue to scrutinize and investigate this ‘deal.’”

Cella credits other local activists, lawmakers, and journalists for their work in opposing Gotion’s project.

“This was a first-in-the-nation moment where a subnational incursion via a ‘deal’ with a China-based and CCP-tied company led to the recall and defeat of elected officials,” Cella said, referencing the November 2023 Green Charter Township election. “The totality of those activities for nearly two years resulted in this ‘deal’ being in grave trouble and facing a dim future.”

Dr. Ormand Hook, co-strategist for the “No Gotion” movement in Big Rapids, Michigan, told the DCNF that “people who just wanted to live in freedom” are “responsible for our victory.”

“We were motivated by the fact that we love our freedom and are not willing to give up our freedom to America’s number one geopolitical adversary. Plain and simple,” Hook said. “We had to push back at every opportunity because we had no playbook. We found the weaknesses and exploited them as best we could. Our biggest objective was to replace the fraudulent elected officials, which we were successful in doing.”

Among other things, Hook told the DCNF that many in the No Gotion movement were galvanized into action after the Michigan state Senate Appropriations Committee granted Gotion $175 million in taxpayer funding to support their project. The funding allocation passed with a 10-9 vote, despite every committee Republican and three Democrats voting against it.

“We found out most local politicians were in bed with the governor and our enemies,” Hook said.

Lori Brock, another leader of the No Gotion movement, told the DCNF that she was “cautiously optimistic that this disastrous project may finally be coming to an end.”

“We will continue to fight until it is completely gone from our community, and it’s my hope that our political leaders have learned a valuable lesson from this experience: in America, you don’t get to completely upend a community and our way of life without the consent of the people who live here, and American tax dollars should never, ever be used to subsidize anything associated with the CCP,” Brock said.

Thelen and Gotion did not respond to requests for comment.

AUTHOR

Philip Lenczycki

RELATED ARTICLE: EXCLUSIVE: Pentagon, Energy Dept. Nuclear Research Projects Tapped Sanctioned Chinese Communist Party Supercomputers

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

‘Years of Climate Action Demolished in 52 Days’ By Trump — A ‘Climate Onslaught’ thumbnail

‘Years of Climate Action Demolished in 52 Days’ By Trump — A ‘Climate Onslaught’

By Marc Morano from Climate Depot

WATCH: Morano on Fox & Friends on Amazon rainforest being clear-cut for 4-lane highway for UN climate summit:

‘This is beyond parody. If they really cared about the rainforest or the climate, they would have a Zoom conference’

‘Years of Climate Action Demolished in Days’ By Trump! — A ‘Climate Onslaught’ — Reveals ‘how little anyone ever really cared about global warming’

‘Climate protest group Just Stop Oil says it will stop direct action’

Plus: Warmist turns on ‘sketchy’ LA Wildfire ‘attribution’ study

Former spokeswoman for Extinction Rebellion red-pilled on ‘green groups’ — ‘They have ‘nothing to do with protecting the Earth’

Cheers! Bloomberg columnists: ‘Years of Climate Action Demolished in Days’ By Trump – ’82 actions across 20 govt bodies…in 1st 52 DAYS’ – ‘Climate Onslaught’ –
Unleashed ‘climate demolition’
Morano: ‘This is how it’s done! Thank you, Mr. President!’

NYT’s moment of clarity: Paper shopping bags ‘might not be as green as you think’ – ‘Paper bags tend to require more energy to produce than plastic ones’ & ‘In landfills, paper bags produce methane & CO2’

Warmist Sabine Hossenfelder disgusted with climate scientists over media hyped LA wildfires climate ‘attribution’ study:
‘Many climate scientists know how sketchy the studies are…but they keep their mouth shut’ – ‘They don’t say a word because it’d be politically inconvenient’

WaPo: ‘Growing weed takes more energy than mining bitcoin’ –Uses 1% of all American energy, ‘warms the planet about as much as 10 million cars’

Mag: ‘Email signatures are harming the planet & could cost people their lives — it’s time to stop using them’ – Adding ‘gender pronouns in emails…may contribute to the premature deaths of one person a year’

Watch: Energy Sec. Wright: ‘Net Zero by 2050 is just nonsense. It’s an activist thing, & it’s a top-down, big government justification to do mostly anti-human things’

Think EVs are ‘green’?! 

‘Typical Tesla EV battery weighs 1,000 pounds & includes 26lbs of lithium, 10lbs of cobalt, 110lbs of nickel, 9lbs of manganese, 55lbs of copper, 44lbs of aluminum, 154lbs of graphite, plus, steel, plastic, & other metals’

Watch: Democrat Sen. Angus King grills Tulsi Gabbard: ‘Who decided climate change should be left out of this (threat assessment) report after it’s been in the prior 11?’

Bloomberg News goes all in for China! ‘This Is China’s Chance to Prove It’s a Climate Leader’ – Trump’s rejection of UN climate goals ‘has offered China a rare opportunity to expand its global influence’ – ‘China can produce the kind of change the world actually wants to see’

Lomborg: ‘Hunger keeps declining, even with climate change’ – ‘Over the past century, hunger has declined dramatically’

Study finds Trump Effect in U.S. over belief in ‘climate change’: In 2016, Republicans had ‘a noticeable rise’ of being ‘climate change believers’ after UN Paris pact –
But ‘by 2018, after Trump withdrew from the UN Paris Agreement…belief partially reversed, with more (GOP) individuals returning to higher skepticism’

Whitmer’s Michigan spent $670 million on green energy & EV corporate welfare — ZERO jobs created after three years!

The Climate Scam is Over: Peer-reviewed AI analysis completely debunks all of the ‘man-made’ claims

NYT claims ‘vicious cycle of extreme heat leading to more fossil fuel use’ –
Realty Check: ‘As planet warms projected decrease in energy demand for heating is ~5x larger than projected increase due to more cooling’

The downfall of climate change poster boy Michael Mann:
‘If Mann cannot even be trusted to tell the truth when he’s under oath & in court on pain of perjury, why on earth should any of us take him seriously on the subject of climate change?’

Lomborg: ‘The global evidence is clear: Not a single country that relies heavily on wind & solar power has low average electricity costs’

Morano on WMAL on Trump’s EPA reversing Obama/Biden regs: ‘We are seeing the climate movement collapse before our eyes’

Watch: ‘Germany detonates its most modern coal-fired power plant after just six years’ – Able ‘to power the entire city’ of Hamburg – ‘They demolished it because Greta said so’

Meanwhile:

© 2025 . All rights reserved.

House Republicans Seek To Repeal More Biden Green Energy Regulations thumbnail

House Republicans Seek To Repeal More Biden Green Energy Regulations

By The Daily Caller

The House of Representatives will seek to overturn several Biden administration climate regulations limiting consumer choice later this week.

Speaker Mike Johnson is slated to bring two joint resolutions of disapproval to the House floor to repeal green energy standards for home appliances including refrigerators and freezers. The regulations were issued by the Department of Energy (DOE) during the final weeks of President Joe Biden’s term, allowing congressional Republicans to repeal the Biden regulations using the Congressional Review Act (CRA).

“Republicans are getting the country back on track,” GOP House Conference Chair Lisa McClain said at a leadership press conference Tuesday. “House Republicans are securing the border. We are protecting women, and we are passing legislation to lower costs for American families.”

Congress can rescind recently issued regulations from the prior administration by a simple majority vote under the CRA.

Republican Reps. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma and Craig Goldman of Texas are the lead sponsors of the joint resolutions of disapproval — H.J. Res. 24 and H.J. Res. 75 — taking aim at the DOE green energy standards for walk-in coolers and freezers and commercial refrigerators and freezers.

This week, the House will vote on H.J.Res.24 and H.J.Res.75. These Congressional Review Act resolutions will reverse two Biden-era regulations that have increased costs and made America less competitive.

House Republicans are keeping our promise to restore common-sense, empower… https://t.co/3H6DUH1ewm

— Chairwoman Lisa McClain (@RepLisaMcClain) March 25, 2025

“The Biden administration has done everything it can to regulate all aspects of our homes and businesses,” Bice told Fox News Digital on Jan. 16. “Walk-in coolers and freezers are used everywhere; from pharmacies, convenience stores, food processing facilities, food banks, restaurants, and more.”

“President Biden’s DOE consistently abused their authority to push a radical energy agenda on American consumers, attempting to implement conservation standards that are neither economically justifiable nor significantly more energy efficient for several household appliances like refrigerators and washing machines,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise wrote in a statement Sunday. “These overreaching rules take away consumer choice, burden American families, and force Americans to use expensive appliances that do not perform as well.”

The House also passed a joint resolution of disapproval repealing the Biden EPA’s tax on the methane emissions of oil and gas operators on Feb. 26. President Donald Trump signed the resolution overturning the methane tax on March 17.

AUTHOR

Adam Pack

Contributor.

RELATED ARTILE: Climate Activists Want To Blame Americans’ Soaring Utility Bills On Anything But Green Energy

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Reversing Biden’s Red Tape: Trump’s Deregulation Agenda Drives Down Inflation thumbnail

Reversing Biden’s Red Tape: Trump’s Deregulation Agenda Drives Down Inflation

By Carrie Sheffield

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

U.S. inflation fell last month, with core prices at their lowest level in four years. It’s a harbinger for future price drops to come, thanks to planned spending cuts and tax reforms that will drop inflation further.

Inflation will also likely decline thanks to President Donald Trump’s herculean deregulation efforts. The White House estimates that already since the start of the second Trump administration, Americans are saving $180 billion in regulatory costs—$2,100 for a family of four.

In 2024, the Biden administration set an all-time record by publishing 107,262 pages of final rules, proposed rules, and other public notices in the Federal Register that have the force of law.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Trump White House estimates that during its four years, the Biden administration added more than $1.8 trillion, or $21,090 per family of four, in new regulatory costs, far surpassing any other administration.

The Trump administration estimates that 72% of that Biden regulatory burden ($1.3 trillion or $15,457 per family of four) came from rules at the Environmental Protection Agency. Under the Biden regime, the EPA slapped on several draconian Green New Deal measures.

Even after the flurry of initial executive orders from Trump after his inauguration, this month, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced even greater regulatory reforms, which the White House is calling the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”

The Institute for Energy Research noted this would entail reviewing 31 of the costliest regulations EPA regulators imposed—with the intent of reversing them. These regulations include backdoor electric vehicle mandates, the greenhouse gas endangerment finding, the Clean Power Plan, the social cost of carbon, and the mercury and air toxicity standards.

Other Trump executive orders also have the potential to reduce inflation by repealing regulations that choked or outright banned energy production and the mining of critical minerals.

In addition to unleashing American energy, the Trump administration also suspended enforcement of invasive, burdensome reporting requirements that saddled small businesses with unnecessary red tape.

ADVERTISEMENT

The National Federation of Independent Business, a group of nearly 300,000 small and independent business owners, heralded this move, saying it “greatly appreciates President Trump’s strong support in this important effort to protect America’s small business owners from what he correctly labeled an ‘outrageous and invasive’ Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirement.”

This reporting requirement created burdensome paperwork (e.g. documentation filings about a business’ ownership structure required by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the Treasury Department) without much proven public benefit, yet failure to file could have resulted in fines up to $10,000 or more and possible jail time.

Trump’s Small Business Administration also implemented a series of reforms to put American citizens first—including requiring citizenship verification on loan applications and relocating offices out of so-called sanctuary cities.

As agency heads work with the Department of Government Efficiency to root out waste, fraud, and abuse, they should not be halted by any future needless government shutdown. A whopping 75% of Americans support the Trump deregulatory, cost-cutting agenda. They want Democrats to join that mission.

The regulatory red tape added during the Biden administration alone would have cost each American family nearly $50,000 over 10 years, according to a Committee to Unleash Prosperity report by Trump economist Casey Mulligan, a University of Chicago professor. But under executive orders from Trump, these burdensome regulations are beginning to halt.

Trump’s key changes to lower inflation through deregulation and increased energy production—in addition to his plans for spending and tax cuts—offer a more prosperous future for American families.

*****

This article was first published on The Daily Signal, and is reproduced here with permission

Image credit: Grok image generator

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

No, Smithsonian Magazine, Climate Change Is Not the Main Driver of Satellite Collision Risk—The Sun Is thumbnail

No, Smithsonian Magazine, Climate Change Is Not the Main Driver of Satellite Collision Risk—The Sun Is

By Anthony Watts

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

A recent article from Smithsonian Magazine (SM) titled “Climate Change Might Increase Satellite Collisions, Limiting How Many Can Safely Orbit Earth, Study Finds” claims that human-induced climate change is causing the upper atmosphere to contract, reducing drag on satellites and space debris, which could lead to more collisions. This is misleading if not outright false. Multiple studies show the dominant factor influencing the density and temperature of the upper atmosphere—where some satellites orbit—is solar activity, not carbon dioxide emissions. Data from decades of space research confirm that variations in solar radiation, particularly changes in ultraviolet (UV) output and solar wind, have far greater impacts on atmospheric density than any CO₂-driven effects.

The study, referenced by the SM article, is summarized as: “The thermosphere, which begins around 50 miles (80 kilometers) above Earth’s surface, is contracting. This is because as greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane accumulate in the lower atmosphere, they radiate heat into space and cause the upper atmosphere to cool and shrink.” This claim exaggerates the role of human greenhouse gas emissions while ignoring the well-documented influence of solar variability.

The thermosphere, seen in the graphic from The Canadian Space Agency below, is primarily heated by the Sun’s intense ultraviolet radiation, and its temperature and density fluctuate significantly in response to the 11-year solar cycle. When solar activity is high, the thermosphere expands, increasing drag on satellites and space debris. Conversely, during solar minima, the thermosphere contracts. These natural solar-driven variations completely overshadow any potential effect from anthropogenic CO₂.

ADVERTISEMENT


The Earth’s atmosphere has five primary layers: the troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, and the exosphere. Image: Canadian Space Agency

A study in the Journal of Space Research confirms that thermospheric temperature fluctuations are overwhelmingly linked to solar output, not greenhouse gases. Similarly, research in Space Weather Science demonstrates that solar activity is the primary driver of upper atmospheric density changes, affecting satellite drag far more than any CO₂-related cooling. In addition, a report in EOS shows that during a weaker-than-normal solar cycle, the thermosphere cooled and contracted more than expected. This aligns with long-term observations that solar variability dictates thermospheric behavior. NASA also credits the sun as driving the changes in the thermosphere.

While many satellites orbit Earth in the thermosphere, most Earth-orbiting satellites reside in the exosphere, such as geostationary satellites with orbits at 22,500 miles even higher than the exosphere, the outermost layer of the Earth’s atmosphere, where the atmosphere thins out and merges with outer space. So, the concerns about the thermosphere in the SM article are mostly moot, especially since many satellites that orbit in the thermosphere can boost with thrusters to a higher orbit if needed. Engineers plan for this.

The SM article also fails to consider historical data. If CO₂ were truly the primary driver of thermospheric contraction, we would expect to see a steady, predictable decline in atmospheric density as CO2 emissions have increased. Instead, we observe clear cyclical patterns that correspond with the 11 year solar cycle, not industrial CO₂ emissions. During past solar minima, such as the Dalton Minimum (1790–1830) and the Maunder Minimum (1645–1715), similar thermospheric contractions occurred—long before human activity significantly increased CO₂ levels.

By pushing a climate change-driven explanation while ignoring the Sun’s dominant role, and ignoring where most satellites orbit Earth, Smithsonian Magazine is misrepresenting what science tells us about the atmosphere and what drives change in it. Space debris is a real issue that requires attention, but CO2 neither creates space debris nor is making collision with such debris more likely. Blaming CO₂ emissions for upper-atmospheric changes is a false narrative and distracts attention from the real problem of how to handle space debris.

*****

ADVERTISEMENT

This article was published by Climate Realism, a publication of the Heartland Institute, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: GROK Image generator

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

Burgum Says U.S. Natural Resources Could Equal $100 Trillion as Trump Expands Alaskan Drilling thumbnail

Burgum Says U.S. Natural Resources Could Equal $100 Trillion as Trump Expands Alaskan Drilling

By Family Research Council

In a move to vastly expand energy production within the United States, the Trump administration announced on Thursday that it will reopen over 80% of Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas drilling. The action comes as U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum suggested that the total value of America’s energy natural resources may approach $100 trillion.

According to an agency press release, the plan would reopen 82% of the reserve for oil and natural gas leasing as well as expand “energy development opportunities” inside the 23-million-acre area to encompass previous undeveloped land. In addition, the department will reinstate a program “that makes the entire 1.56-million-acre Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge available for oil and gas leasing.”

A third action named by the department would open up the “Trans-Alaska Pipeline Corridor and Dalton Highway north of the Yukon River” in order to allow the construction of a natural gas pipeline and a mining road. These two projects “stand to increase job opportunities and encourage Alaska’s economic growth,” Burgum noted.

“It’s time for the U.S. to embrace Alaska’s abundant and largely untapped resources as a pathway to prosperity for the nation, including Alaskans,” Burgum summarized. “For far too long, the federal government has created too many barriers to capitalizing on the state’s energy potential. Interior is committed to recognizing the central role the State of Alaska plays in meeting our nation’s energy needs, while providing tremendous economic opportunity for Alaskans.”

The previous administration under former President Joe Biden had “reduced oil and gas drilling to less than half of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska’s Western Arctic, down from 82% during Mr. Trump’s first term.” A year ago, the administration levied new oil and gas leasing restrictions within 13 million acres of federal Alaskan land. Then just before leaving office in January, Biden prohibited oil and gas leasing in the Northern Bering Sea and implemented new constraints on drilling in 1.3 million acres of the Alaskan North Slope.

In contrast, President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term vowing to “unleash America’s affordable and reliable energy and natural resources,” as well as a second EO focused on Alaskan resources, which Thursday’s Department of the Interior (DOI) action was designed to implement.

Alaskan lawmakers welcomed the move. “Today marks a new day for Alaska and American energy security,” Rep. Nick Begich (R) stated. Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) concurred, remarking that the DOI initiative “will provide more investment opportunities, more jobs, and a better future for Alaskans.”

At a Breitbart News event in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, Burgum further detailed how the massive scale of America’s natural resources could help address the U.S.’s spiraling national debt.

“[W]hat’s our debt? $36.5 trillion. What are our assets?” he asked. “… I can tell you, as the head of Interior … we’ve got 500 million acres of surface. Brooke Rollins has another 200 million in the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. grasslands. So 700 million acres of surface. There [are] 700 million acres of subsurface that we have the mineral rights, critical minerals, oil and gas, metallurgical and thermal coal resources. And there’s 2.5 billion acres of offshore, [much] of which have not been even explored, all of which represent huge, huge assets for us.”

He continued, “So if you take our forests, our lands, our grasslands, our lands that are near urban areas, our mineral resources, our offshore resources, I think the number is … double, triple what our national debt is. It could be $100 trillion. … [I]f we had published America’s balance sheet and said, ‘You know, our assets are triple what our debt is,’ just [that] announcement might lower the 10-year rate on interest rates because people say, ‘Wow, these guys got it covered, and they have a plan on how they’re going to be able to pay down this debt. And they’re actually in really good shape.’”

Notably, in the weeks since Trump’s inauguration, prices at the gas pump have fallen, with the average price of gas dropping for the fourth straight week on Monday to $3.078 per gallon.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Left-wing Activists Ordered to Pay $667 Million for 2016 Demonstrations against Dakota Access Pipeline

RELATED VIDEO: Tesla attacks and domestic terrorism: Kyle Shideler

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

It Rhymes With ‘Greenies’ thumbnail

It Rhymes With ‘Greenies’

By The Daily Caller

IT RHYMES WITH ‘GREENIES’

It looks like Greenpeace could go kaput.

Nine North Dakotan jurors in a defamation, trespass, nuisance, and civil conspiracy case awarded Dallas-based Energy Transfer a $660 million judgment Wednesday against Greenpeace. The case revolves around the activist group’s actions to prevent the Dakota Access pipeline.

The award, should it stand, would amount to roughly 25 times Greenpeace’s yearly operating budget. In other words, the most renowned lefty environmental activist group in the world would cease to exist.

And the news doesn’t get much better for these weenies.

A leaked UK Government assessment of the left wing’s “Net Zero” commitment details what everyone always said would happen if the West transitions to so-called “green energy”: Economic apocalypse.

Fully 10 percent of the UK’s economy would disappear in 10 years. And who would be the hardest hit, according to this report? Well, the poor obviously, just like every right-of-center energy analyst has said for decades.

They should have known too. The proverbial canary keeled over for the green weenies last year when Bill Gates of all people decided to restart the infamous Three Mile Island. RELATED: Gates’s big green energy group “Breakthrough Energy” literally just shitcanned most of their policy staff.

New York Times frames this as Gates “retooling” for the “Trump era,” but his deal to restart Three Mile Island’s reactors dates well before Trump won in November.

The writing on the wall is clear, but just in case, I’ll spell it out: Serious industry analysts have always known green energy wouldn’t work for big modern cities, burgeoning economies, and third world countries struggling to modernize.

It was a truth we could afford to shove off for years as mega-rich liberals virtue-signalled for decades in places like Paris.

Until now, and not because the polar ice caps are disappearing. No. It’s because the explosion of tech needs real answers and not fake solutions, like thousands of acres of wind turbines that don’t work.

Everyone always knew, for the most part. And the most poetic part is it’ll be to power business advancements, not to achieve some dances with wolves’ fantasy about oneness with nature*.

*(Worth noting here that installation of solar panels or wind turbines utterly annihilates nature in the area. Food for thought.)

The once-reliably “green” tech gods on Earth are all buying into nuclear technology. Zuck, Bezos, Musk, Sam Altman. Not only do they need it to power their burgeoning AI tech but to get ahead of energy costs once cities become truly addicted to robotics and artificial intelligence.

They know full well that also becoming energy companies of the future could be very lucrative, in addition to tech.

Coal and especially oil will be required resources in perpetuity as they’re both required for construction and fabrication. Nuclear will boom to provide cheap, consistent, tidal flows of energy to megacities of the future.

We’ll go “carbon neutral” and not one lick of it will be due to the incessant whining of weenies at Greenpeace or private-jet flying Hollywood dinguses named after Ninja Turtles.

WHAT I’M READING

Carville predicts insurrection in the Democrat Party.

‘I’m Mad’: James Carville Predicts There Could Be ‘Uprising Within The Democratic Party’ In Coming Months

Speaking of weenies, what kind of goofy pretend rebellion was this?

EXCLUSIVE: Inside A Taxpayer-Funded Think Tank’s Aborted Rebellion Against DOGE

OOPSIES

Democrats Entire Theory Of Politics Blown Up By One Poll

AUTHOR

Geoffrey Ingersoll

Editor at Large

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Trump Dismantling Bogas Climate Policies and COVID, It’s Safe to Tell Truths Now! thumbnail

PODCAST: Trump Dismantling Bogas Climate Policies and COVID, It’s Safe to Tell Truths Now!

By Conservative Commandos Radio Show and AUN-TV

GUESTS AND TOPICS

STEVE GORHAM

Steve Goreham is Executive Director of the Climate Science Coalition of America and author of four books on energy, climate change, and sustainable development, with over 100,000 copies in print. Steve’s new book, Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure, came out August last year.

TOPIC: Trump dismantling bogas climate policies

HELEN RALEIGH

Helen Raleigh is an American entrepreneur, writer, and speaker. She’s a senior contributor at The Federalist. Her writings appear in other national media, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News. Helen is the author of several books, including “Confucius Never Said” and “Backlash: How Communist China’s Aggression Has Backfired.” Her latest book is the 2nd edition of “The Broken Welcome Mat: America’s UnAmerican immigration policy, and how we should fix it.”

TOPIC: COVID, It’s Safe to Tell Truths Now!

©2025 . All rights reserved.

Trump Is Right About Greenland’s National Security Implications thumbnail

Trump Is Right About Greenland’s National Security Implications

By Paul Dragu

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

President Donald Trump is serious about acquiring Greenland. But his administration is not the first to make overtures for this strategic island with national security implications and an abundance of valuable natural resources.

The Greenland issue came up again Thursday during an Oval Office news briefing with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte.

Responding to a question from a reporter about his desire to obtain the territory, Trump said, “I think it will happen.” He added:

ADVERTISEMENT

We’ve been dealing with Denmark, we’ve been dealing with Greenland, and we have to do it. We really need it for national security. I think that’s why NATO might have to get involved . . . We really need Greenland for national security . . . We have a couple of bases on Greenland already, and we have quite a few soldiers. Maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers go there. I don’t know.

Greenland is a pseudo-sovereign territory of NATO member Denmark. The United States has one military base on the island, the Pituffik Space Base, formerly Thule Air Base. It did have more, but they have since been closed.

Rutte, for his part, was apprehensive about commenting on this sensitive issue. He said he didn’t want to drag NATO into the matter.

As for Greenlanders, it likely will take some convincing to warm them up to the idea of becoming part of the U.S. Earlier in March, the center-right Democrats defeated the governing left-wing coalition, while a pro-U.S. party notched its best showing ever. The winning party supports Greenland’s independence, but gradually and only after the icy territory, which has a total population of less than 60,000, becomes more politically and economically developed. The party’s leader, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, has said Greenland is not for sale. Nielsen has called Trump’s interest in acquiring it “a threat to our political independence,” and wrote on Facebook:

Trump’s statement from the US is inappropriate and just shows once again that we must stand together in such situations.

Whatever route the Trump administration takes in its effort to obtain Greenland, it must rule out force and rely on economic incentives and diplomatic means.

History of U.S. Attempts to Acquire Greenland

The U.S. has had its eye on Greenland for more than a century.

In 1941, America made a pact with Denmark that rendered us responsible for Greenland’s defense during World War II. This gave the U.S. military permission to build facilities to land its planes. The Pentagon saw Greenland as the world’s largest aircraft carrier. The military used the island as a refueling stop for bombing runs into Germany. Top officials in the Harry Truman administration so appreciated the strategic asset the island proved to be during the war that they offered Denmark $100 million in gold for it, but to no avail.

ADVERTISEMENT

This wasn’t the first time the U.S. had tried to acquire the island. Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of state, William Seward, who spearheaded the purchase of Alaska, also tried to buy Greenland, as did Howard Taft’s U.S. Ambassador to Denmark Maurice Egan in 1910. Taft’s administration proposed a three-way trade that would have made Greenland a U.S. territory. The proposal was this: Denmark would cede Greenland to the United States, and in exchange the United States would give Denmark a group of islands in the Philippines, after which Denmark would turn around and give those islands to Germany in exchange for the Schleswig-Holstein territory Denmark had recently lost. But nothing came of that.

In 1951 the United States signed a new treaty with Denmark that provided wider military latitude to use Greenland as a base of Arctic operations. The U.S. military built the massive Thule Air Base on the northwest coast of the island. Its construction has been compared to that of the Panama Canal because of its complexity.

National Security Implications

Greenland’s strategic national security value was acknowledged long before the U.S. built up China into the threat it is today. General H.H. “Hap” Arnold once said, “If there is a third world war, its strategic center will be the north pole.”

As talk of another world war and tensions with China intensify in today’s multipolar world order, Greenland’s national security value is once again at a focal point.

Matthew Shoemaker, a former intelligence officer with the Navy and the Defense Intelligence Agency who served on the Russia desk as part of European Command and the NATO Intelligence Fusion Centre, made the American case for Greenland back in December in an op-ed for The Hill.

The U.S. must assert greater control over Greenland to safeguard its national security interests, he said. Trump’s goal is based on the legal framework established by the 1951 Defense of Greenland Agreement. “This agreement empowers the U.S. to significantly influence and potentially control this strategically vital territory, making a compelling case for action that Congress and diplomats cannot ignore,” Shoemaker wrote. The 1951 agreement gave the U.S. significant rights and responsibilities within Greenland. “The agreement’s provisions grant significant authority for increased American control when national security is invoked,” Shoemaker added. The pact gives the U.S. broad access rights within Greenland, including the use of air, land and sea spaces near defense areas.

Shoemaker said Greenland’s strategic value has only increased, writing:

A warming Arctic is opening new shipping routes and exposing vast mineral resources, attracting the attention of global powers like China and Russia. In this context, the provisions of the 1951 agreement take on renewed significance.

Alexander Gray, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and former chief of staff of the National Security Council under Trump, seconds Shoemaker’s sentiment. He penned a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Why Trump Really Should ‘Buy’ Greenland.” Among his points:

If [Greenland] separates from Denmark, it would be responsible for its own security, a task it is ill-equipped to handle. This is a grave concern given the second important development: Russia and China are threatening the status quo in the Arctic. Moscow has claimed significant chunks of the Arctic Sea, including inside Greenland’s Exclusive Economic Zone . . . China has declared itself a “near-Arctic state,” [and] established a shipping network called the “Polar Silk Road” to bind Arctic communities closer to Beijing’s economic and political agenda . . . Western security and economic interests would be threatened if an independent Greenland surrounded by predatory foreign actors lacked outside protection. Mr. Trump has the chance to negotiate the deal of the century.

Rare Earth Minerals Galore

If there is at least one thing the Joe Biden and Trump administrations agreed on, it was that mining rare earth minerals is a matter of national security.

Greenland is home to a goldmine of rare earths. It is filled with oil, natural gas, and a long list of mineral resources including rare earth metals, graphite, copper, nickel, zinc, gold, diamonds, iron ore, titanium, vanadium, tungsten, and uranium. 

The world’s superpowers see access to rare earth minerals as a must. These resources are critical to high-tech products, including cell phones, computer hard drives, electric and hybrid vehicle parts, and flat screen TVs and monitors. They’re used in medicine and energy storage as well. But, more importantly, these minerals are also crucial for national defense. They are used to make electronic displays, guidance systems, lasers, and radar and sonar systems.

Most rare earths used for products today come out of China, with recent reports sayingChina processes 90 percent globally. In 2019, the U.S. imported 78 percent of its rare earth minerals from China.

The United States is trying to wean itself off China’s rare earths, and in 2023 it accounted for 12.3 percent of global production. The reopening of Mountain Pass Mine in California was a big step toward reducing reliance on China. And, of course, there’s Trump’s attempt to gain access to Ukraine’s rare earths. The abundance of these resources in Greenland makes the Artic island all the more valuable.

*****

This article was published on The New American, and is reproduced here with permission.

Image credit: Grok Image Generator

Your Support is Critical

The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”

To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.

Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!

EPA Slashes Climate Change Red Tape, Claws Back $20B Climate Slush Fund thumbnail

EPA Slashes Climate Change Red Tape, Claws Back $20B Climate Slush Fund

By Family Research Council

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has initiated a vast reversal of the regulatory-heavy, climate change fear-based policies of the Biden administration, announcing Wednesday that it is taking 31 actions to remove red tape for the energy and automotive industries and lower the cost of living for Americans. The agency also announced the termination of a $20 billion fund parked in a commercial bank by the Biden administration to avoid government oversight that was used to award money to climate activist groups.

Characterizing Wednesday’s initiative as “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin remarked that the effort “driv[es] a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion” by “roll[ing] back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” The EPA further declared that the venture will “unleash American energy” by reconsidering regulations on power plants, the oil and gas industry, coal-fired power plants, the steam electric power industry, wastewater, and other measures.

The plan would also address “lowering the cost of living for American families” by reconsidering electric car mandates, grocery store regulations, environmental regulations that “shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses,” and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) arms of the agency, among other actions.

On Tuesday, the EPA also announced that it was shutting down a Biden administration program that it described as a “‘gold bar’ scheme,” in which an eye-popping $20 billion was released in the final week of former President Joe Biden’s term to award to various pop-up climate activist groups via a program known as the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. In a hidden video, a former Biden administration official described the program as “throwing gold bars off the edge” of the Titanic.

Since President Trump assumed office on January 20, the funds have been held in a Citibank account in order to avoid federal scrutiny. Zeldin described how the funds were moved through eight “pass-through, politically connected, unqualified and in some cases brand-new NGOs.” The EPA and the Department of the Treasury ordered that the funds be frozen, and the Department of Justice and FBI have opened a criminal investigation into the matter.

Lawmakers such as Senator Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) welcomed news of the EPA cutting red tape and cracking down on wasteful taxpayer spending.

“[C]ommon sense is finally back at the EPA,” he declared during Thursday’s “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “… For example, … I remember starting that fight back in the Obama administration back in 2015, and both Obama and Biden tried to stretch the rule to expand EPA’s authority to things like roadside ditches or farm ditches or farm ponds, things that were clearly not navigable waters. The Clean Water Act of 1972 says ‘navigable waters’ 50 times, and they totally tried to get rid of that meaning. … [W]e’re also going to be rolling back the Clean Power Plan, which was going to do things such as shut down our very clean burning coal plant in Nebraska. They’re going to get rid of the greenhouse gas reporting rule, which would be an attack on our natural gas facilities, which again, is a big source of power for Nebraska and many states. And frankly, natural gas is one of the reasons why we are the only industrialized country that’s actually reducing our greenhouse gases.”

Ricketts went on to note the EPA’s rolling back of the electric vehicle (EV) mandate. “This is one that I’ve been fighting because EVs don’t make sense in big rural states with cold weather. The adoption rate in Nebraska is 2%, and under the Biden administration, they wanted two-thirds of all new vehicles being sold in 2032 to be EVs. That just wasn’t going to happen.”

Ricketts further emphasized the cost that the Biden-era regulations imposed on American families and businesses. “[T]he Biden administration rolled out 5,000 regulations. … [T]he average cost of that to the American family was $3,300 a year. And not just once. It’s $3,300 every year until those regulations are rolled back … so this is going to be a good start in rolling those regulations back and saving American households money. But when you put this layer of regulation on, you put a wet blanket on innovation and small businesses who create most of our jobs in this country.

Ricketts concluded by expressing confidence that the EPA’s actions will be part of a revitalized economy that will thrive under the second Trump administration.

“[T]his will be part of how the Trump administration unleashes the economy again,” he predicted. “I mean, we saw some of the best economy we’ve ever seen under the first Trump administration. You go look at the job participation rate by Americans. … We saw great unleashing of our economic power here, and it’s because, in part, the Trump administration took off a bunch of regulations that were preventing our innovators, our small businesses, and our families from being able to invest or spend the money that they otherwise would have.”

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Is Efficiency a Biblical Idea?

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

EPA Announces 31 ‘Historic Actions’ to Unleash American Energy thumbnail

EPA Announces 31 ‘Historic Actions’ to Unleash American Energy

By The Geller Report

Sweeping Deregulation, Cancels Over 400 Grants Saving Taxpayers $1.7 Billion. 

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” said EPA Administrator Zeldin.

“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” added EPA Administrator Zeldin. 

“The greatest day of deregulation in American history.”

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will undertake 31 historic actions in the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history, to advance President Trump’s Day One executive orders and Power the Great American Comeback. Combined, these announcements represent the most momentous day in the history of the EPA. While accomplishing EPA’s core mission of protecting the environment, the agency is committed to fulfilling President Trump’s promise to unleash American energy, lower cost of living for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, restore the rule of law, and give power back to states to make their own decisions.

These historic actions will roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden “taxes” on U.S. families. As a result of these announcements, the cost of living for American families will decrease. It will be more affordable to purchase a car, heat homes, and operate a business. It will be more affordable to bring manufacturing into local communities while individuals widely benefit from the tangible economic impacts.

These actions will create American jobs, including incredible progress to bring back American auto jobs. The Biden and Obama era regulations being reconsidered have suffocated nearly every single sector of the American economy.

Today, EPA Administrator Zeldin announced the following actions:

UNLEASHING AMERICAN ENERGY 

  • Reconsideration of regulations on power plants (Clean Power Plan 2.0)
  • Reconsideration of regulations throttling the oil and gas industry (OOOO b/c)
  • Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants (MATS)
  • Reconsideration of mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that imposed significant costs on the American energy supply (GHG Reporting Program)
  • Reconsideration of limitations, guidelines and standards (ELG) for the Steam Electric Power Generating Industry to ensure low-cost electricity while protecting water resources (Steam Electric ELG)
  • Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for coal power plants to help unleash American energy (Oil and Gas ELG)
  • Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Administration Risk Management Program rule that made America’s oil and natural gas refineries and chemical facilities less safe (Risk Management Program Rule)

LOWERING THE COST OF LIVING FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES

  • Reconsideration of light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicle regulations that provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate (Car GHG Rules)
  • Reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and regulations and actions that rely on that Finding (Endangerment Finding)
  • Reconsideration of technology transition rule that forces companies to use certain technologies that increased costs on food at grocery stores and semiconductor manufacturing (Technology Transition Rule)
  • Reconsideration of Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards that shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses (PM 2.5 NAAQS)
  • Reconsideration of multiple National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for American energy and manufacturing sectors (NESHAPs)
  • Restructuring the Regional Haze Program that threatened the supply of affordable energy for American families (Regional Haze)
  • Overhauling Biden-Harris Administration’s “Social Cost of Carbon”
  • Redirecting enforcement resources to EPA’s core mission to relieve the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers (Enforcement Discretion)
  • Terminating Biden’s Environmental Justice and DEI arms of the agency (EJ/DEI)

ADVANCING COOPERATIVE FEDERALISM 

  • Ending so-called “Good Neighbor Plan” which the Biden-Harris Administration used to expand federal rules to more states and sectors beyond the program’s traditional focus and led to the rejection of nearly all State Implementation Plans
  • Working with states and tribes to resolve massive backlog with State Implementation Plans and Tribal Implementation Plans that the Biden-Harris Administration refused to resolve (SIPs/TIPs)
  • Reconsideration of exceptional events rulemaking to work with states to prioritize the allowance of prescribed fires within State and Tribal Implementation Plans (Exceptional Events)
  • Reconstituting Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (SAB/CASAC)
  • Prioritizing coal ash program to expedite state permit reviews and update coal ash regulations (CCR Rule)
  • Utilizing enforcement discretion to further North Carolina’s recovery from Hurricane Helene

Just the News: Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Wednesday that the agency will take 31 “historic actions” to roll back the Biden administration’s climate agenda in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order to “Unleash American Energy.” Zeldin said the actions will lower costs for things like purchasing a car, heating homes and operating businesses. Among the regulations Zeldin said the EPA would reconsider are the “illegal” Clean Power Plan 2.0., the endangerment finding, the electric vehicle mandate, and rules regarding particulate matter (Just the News).

Lee Zeldin: EPA is initiating 31 historic actions to Power the Great American Comeback in the greatest day of deregulation in American history (X)!

EPA Cancels Over 400 Grants Saving Taxpayers $1.7 Billion

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin, with the assistance of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), identified and cancelled more than 400 additional grants across nine unnecessary programs totaling $1.7 billion in savings for the American people. This marks the fourth round of EPA-DOGE partnered cancellations as the Administrator oversees a line-by-line review of spending, bringing the total taxpayer dollars saved to more than $2 billion since being sworn in (EPA).

Daily Wire: The agency is working to claw back $20 billion in funds that the Biden administration doled out under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The funds were turned over to Citibank in the months leading up to the election and held under the names of eight nonprofits. Those nonprofits intended to disperse the funds to other groups and programs. Citibank has frozen the funds while the Department of Justice probes the issue (Daily Wire).

Zeldin moves to undo Biden ‘Green New Deal’ and EV rules with sweeping deregulation

By: Callie Patteson and Maydeen Merino, Washington Examiner, March 12, 2025:

he Environmental Protection Agency initiated over two dozen actions overhauling numerous green and climate-related regulations implemented by the Biden administration in what Administrator Lee Zeldin described as an effort to “end the Green New Deal.”

The EPA announced 31 actions Wednesday afternoon, with Zeldin describing it as the “greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen.”

Through these actions, the agency is overhauling, walking back, and reconsidering dozens of Biden administration environmental standards, such as the Clean Power Plan 2.0, Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, vehicle emissions rules, the Good Neighbor Plan, air quality standards, water regulations, and more.

“By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,” Zeldin wrote in an opinion article published in the Wall Street Journal.

He said deregulation would lower the cost of living, including for vehicles, heating, and other business operations.

“Today marks the death of the Green New Scam. The EPA recognizes that environmental protection and economic prosperity aren’t mutually exclusive goals,” Zeldin said. “Under President Trump’s leadership, we are recommitting to the core American values of innovation, growth, exceptionalism and opportunity.”
Continue reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: “Everything Was Destroyed”: Tens of Thousands of Amazon Rainforest Cut Down To Build Highway For UN CLIMATE Summit

RELATED VIDEO: Marc Morano from Climate Depot explaining the rot that has festered in the EPA since 2009

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Mann vs Science: Science Wins! — a.k.a. Mann v Steyn, et. al. thumbnail

Mann vs Science: Science Wins! — a.k.a. Mann v Steyn, et. al.

By John Droz, Jr.

The public perception is that Dr. Michael Mann has become the standard bearer of climate change. After all, he invented the climate hockey stick idea, which has been relentlessly seared into the public’s consciousness by a complicit lamestream media. In effect, his graph has arguably been the premier example of real Science having been taken over by political science. It appears that this has largely been successful because 95%± of the population is technically challenged, so they are relatively easy pickings on complex scientific matters.

To critically thinking scientists, Mann has been a major stoker of climate alarmism. They understood that the “hockey stick” concept had several major weaknesses, rarely (if ever) acknowledged by Mann or the media.

For example, Mann apparently constructed his graph by pasting together two rather different sets of data. This is a scientific no-no. For example, Mann’s earlier data appears to be based on tree ring evidence from one or two trees in Siberia. There are several scientific concerns with this, like: 1) tree ring estimates of temperature are not very accurate, 2) having a sample size of 2± trees in a situation like this is not usually sufficient to draw meaningful conclusions from, 3) it is highly speculative that what happened in a tiny section of Siberia is representative of what happened in the rest of the planet, etc.

This is my layperson overview of the hockey stick issue. If you’d like a more in-depth technical discussion of the scientific weaknesses of this matter, there are several good references, like this (also here, here, here, etc.).

One of several people who had the temerity to speak up and object to Mann’s contentions was Mark Steyn. The short story is that Mann decided to sue Steyn (et. al.). This became a very public case (in which Steyn defended himself), and where the judge awarded Mann $1 million. Not surprisingly the lamestream media trumpeted this as a vindication of their sloven and uncritical thinking regarding the highly technical climate matter.

I wrote two Substack commentaries about the disturbing Mann v Steyn matter: here and here.

Now that you have a bit of background, this week there was a major development. As expected, Steyn et al appealed. Here is the 3-12-25 court verdict. (Good discussions about what transpired are here, here, and here.)

The $1 million fine was reduced to $5000. Among several other determinations (page 43 & 44) it appears that Steyn will be awarded compensation of his legal fees. Most importantly, following a very detailed dozens of pages of evidence, the judge ripped Mann and his attorney. For example (page 40 [my emphasis]):

The record plainly shows the deliberate and knowing misconduct of Dr. Mann’s counsel in eliciting false testimony from Dr. Mann and misrepresenting his grant funding.

For example (page 41):

Exhibit 517A was appropriately admitted because Dr. Mann gave the information in Exhibit 517A under penalty of perjury…[but]… Dr. Mann gave testimony at trial inconsistent with the information in Exhibit 517A.

For example (page 41 & 42):

Dr. Mann’s arguments about Defendants’ alleged failure to preserve their objection are not well taken. Dr. Mann’s counsel’s bad faith misconduct is an affront to the Court’s authority and an attack on the integrity of the proceedings warranting sanctions… It bears repeating that Dr. Mann and his counsel should not have engaged in the falsehoods and misrepresentations to the jury and the Court in the first place.

When determining sanctions, the Judge went on with exceptional frankness (page 42):

The Court arrives at such a sanction because the misconduct of Dr. Mann and his counsel: (1) was extraordinary in its scope, extent, and intent; (2) subjected a jury not only to false evidence and grievous misrepresentations about a crucial part of Dr. Mann’s case, but also to additional trial proceedings for correcting the record and the jury’s impressions thereof that otherwise likely would have been unnecessary; (3) further complicated a trial already rife with convoluted and difficult legal and factual issues; and (4) burdened Defendants and the Court with the time- and resource-intensive task of ascertaining the true extent of the misconduct and determining appropriate remedial measures for the same, all without any meaningful acknowledgement of the nature of the misconduct by Dr. Mann or his attorneys.

I did a quick search to see how many articles about this there were from his media allies. So far crickets.

©2025   All rights reserved.

Here is other information from this scientist that you might find interesting:

I am now offering incentives for you to sign up new subscribers!

I also consider reader submissions on Critical Thinking on my topics of interest.

Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.

WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.

C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.

Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.

Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the State where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?

STAY INFORMED

Receive regular news, commentary, and analysis straight to your inbox.

POWERED BY

DrRichSwier.com | ThePricklyPear.org

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.