Tag Archive for: climate change

Energy Prices Shot Up 72% Under Harris-Biden and Their ‘War On American Energy’

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“Green” energy – green as in money for leftwing scammers.

Who, in their right mind, will vote for this?

Energy Prices Shot Up 72% Thanks To Biden And Harris’ War On American Energy

By: Bill Peacock, The Federalist, November 01, 2024

Critics of former President Donald Trump often claim he is lying. Much of the time, however, the critics fail to recognize he is simply using hyperbole to highlight the problems Democrats and establishment Republicans are causing across our country.

Sunday night, Trump was at it again during his campaign rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden. He told the crowd, “We will achieve energy independence … We’re gonna drill, baby, drill. And I will terminate the green new scam and will cut your energy prices in half, 50 percent, within one year from Jan. 20.”

Trump was not spreading fake news. During the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration, electricity prices nationwide have skyrocketed. There is hope for major reductions in energy prices — if American politicians will repent of their support for renewable energy.

As I show in a new study by the Energy Alliance, wholesale electricity prices increased 72 percent during the first three years of the Biden-Harris administration. The energy prices for the seven U.S. independent regional service areas averaged $70 per megawatt hour during that period, up from $41 from 2018 to 2020.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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

The weaponization of weather: When ‘climate control’ is mass marketed as ‘climate change’

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The corporate mainstream media told us ahead of time, nine years ago, what the government and its mad scientists have planned for us. And yes, it involves hurricanes.

There is “climate change” and there is “climate control.” The former is fake but the latter is very much a real thing.

The mainstream corporate media says that reports about intentional weather modification are “conspiracy theories.” And, yet, CBS News reported nine years ago that government-funded scientists were able to do exactly that. It doesn’t get much more mainstream than CBS News.

WATCH VIDEO BELOW in light of today’s headlines in which Hurricane Milton strengthened in a matter of hours from a Category 3 to a Category 5 monster storm, headed straight for the heart of central Florida (Trump territory just like rural North Carolina areas hit by Hurricane Helene).

This hurricane they call Milton is coming into Florida at a very unusual angle, horizontally from Mexico making a bee line to Tampa, Florida. The storm is generating wind gusts right now of 200 mph. Nobody, no buildings, can survive that. If you live in the greater Tampa-St. Petersburg area, I’d advise you to get out now.

At the very end of the above video report, the professor from City College of New York lets the cat out of the bag when he lists a number of potential uses of weather modification. He says:

“And even hurricanes… all of this could be subject to weather modification.”

CBS News also suggested in the report that the U.S. government used weather-modification technology against our enemies in Vietnam, decades ago.

So, why wouldn’t the government use this same technology against its enemies today?

And who is seen as more of an enemy by the government than its own people?

To prove exactly who the government sees as its most feared enemy, all you need to do is read the U.S. Department of Homeland Security bulletin issued Feb. 7, 2022, National Terrorism Advisory. Hint: It’s not Russia, China or Iran. It’s we the people.

The only thing that could cause the government to release such an aggressively hateful document targeting its own people would be pure desperation.

According to this 2022 bulletin, we the people have been reclassified from citizens to terrorists; we the people pose a grave “threat” to the nation because we are guilty of promoting “mis- dis- and mal-information,” which is code language for anyone who criticizes the government’s policies on vaccines, election integrity, endless wars, and theoretically any other hot-button issue they don’t want to hear your opinion about.

Were you aware that we no longer have the right to express an opinion in “free” America” unless it lines up with that of the government and its corporate partners who own the legacy media, Big Tech and Big Pharma?

There’s no mention of al-Qaida, Boko Haram, ISIS, Iran or the Chinese Communist Party in this 2022 bulletin issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. But there are a lot of references to things that regular, everyday Americans do every day, which is write and speak publicly about what they see happening to their country.

That the DHS would go to such an extreme as to condemn and criminalize everyday, protected political speech tells you they must be on the ropes. They must realize the narrative they’ve spent the last five years building sits on the verge of crumbling. Their lies have been exposed and they are afraid they could be held accountable.

I think we can expect to see more “climate control” being spun for public consumption as “climate change.”

©2024. Leo Hohmann. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: “This is HAARP on steroids” Whistleblower reveals MASSIVE weather machine at South Pole | Redacted

Please visit Leo’s Newsletter substack.

‘My Grammar’s Not Always Correct’: Fact-Checking Harris and Walz’s CNN Interview

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A full 39 days after being anointed the Democratic Party’s presumptive leader, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris sat down for her first in-depth interview. As CNN’s Dana Bash rattled off numerous flip-flops and apparent lies, Harris said her “values have not changed,” that she is “very proud” of her record on inflation and illegal immigration, and that she has no regrets over describing Joe Biden’s mental health as “strong” in late June. Meanwhile, vice presidential candidate Tim Walz blamed his misstatements about serving “in war” on poor grammar and before pivoting to an alleged “national abortion ban.”

Unlike most presidential candidates, who are elected in primaries and vetted by voters, Kamala Harris — who received the nomination through a virtual roll call 27 days ago — has yet to hold an extended in-person interview. To date, she has not held an in-depth interview or press conference on her own, opting to have Walz at her side throughout the process.

Word Salad

The interview got off to a rocky start. When asked what she would do on day one, Harris replied she would “do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class,” to “look at the aspirations, the goals, the ambitions of the American people,” and provide “a new way forward” filled with “hope and optimism.”

“So, what would you do day one?” Bash repeated.

Twice, Harris said she represents “a new way forward” from polarization “dividing our nation,” because “the last decade … I believe has been contrary to where the spirit of our country really lies.” Bash pointed out Harris has served as vice president for 40% of the last decade.

In a question about her apparently evolving views on fracking and climate change (see below), Harris said: “I believe it is very important that we take seriously what we must do to guard against what is a clear crisis in terms of the climate. And to do that, we can do what we have accomplished thus far.”

Harris also received mockery for saying, since “the climate crisis is real, that it is an urgent matter,” the U.S. government “should apply metrics that include holding ourselves to deadlines around time.”

Perhaps the most memorable comments of the interview came, not from Harris, but from Walz, when he tried to explain allegations of stolen valor.

Walz Blames ‘Stolen Valor’ Claim on Poor Grammar

Tim Walz has stated he carried “weapons of war … in war,” allowed others to say he served in active combat zones during the War on Terror without correction, and claimed for two decades to have retired from the National Guard at a higher rank than he earned. Critics accuse him of stolen valor, which is viewed as perhaps the most shameful activity among veterans. The Harris-Walz campaign claimed the Minnesota governor “misspoke” in his remarks.

In his CNN interview, Walz blamed poor English skills.

“You said that you were in war,” pressed Bash. “Did you misspeak, as the campaign has said?”

“Yeah,” replied Walz. “My wife the English teacher told me my grammar’s not always correct.”

Walz taught English during a stint in the People’s Republic of China, leading to a long series of trips to the communist nation.

Walz’s explanation was “hilarious,” said former collegiate athlete Riley Gaines, scoffing at the notion that falsely “claiming you fought in war is just a silly grammar mistake.”

“I certainly own my mistakes when I make them,” claimed Walz, moments after replying he made counter-factual statements, because “I speak like” the American people.

Bash also asked about Walz’s erroneous remarks that he conceived through IVF. Walz replied his comments cut “quite a contrast [against] folks that are trying to take those rights away from us.” Ultimately, Walz refused to offer any remorse for his statements, saying, “I won’t apologize for speaking passionately, whether it’s guns in schools or protection of reproductive rights.”

Walz then pivoted to a hypothetical “abortion ban.” Most Americans, he said, are not splitting “hairs on IVF or IUI. I think what they’re cutting hairs on is an abortion ban and the ability to be able to deny families the chance to have a beautiful child.”

Donald Trump — who has repeatedly announced he opposes any abortion ban at the federal level during his second term — earlier in the day announced during a rally in Potterville, Michigan, that “under the Trump administration, your government will pay for, or your insurance company will be mandated to pay for, all costs associated with IVF treatment, fertilization for women.” During an unscripted interview, he also implied he would vote for Florida’s Amendment 4 to institute an on-demand abortion regime in Florida before his campaign released a statement walking his remarks back.

‘My Values Have Not Changed’ about Fracking, et. al.

Faced with a series reversals and flip-flops from her previous policy proposals, Harris repeated a variation of the phrase “My values have not changed” three times.

“Let’s be clear. My values have not changed” on “the Green New Deal,” which she supported as a 2020 presidential candidate and co-sponsored as a U.S. senator. “I have always believed and I have worked on it, that the climate crisis is real,” she said. She repeated the phrase on her anti-fracking stance.

Harris forcefully rejected the notion that she had changed her mind on fracking, despite recordings showing her saying there is “no question” fracking should be banned.

“No, and I made that clear on the debate stage in 2020, that I would not ban fracking,” answered Harris. “In 2020 I made very clear where I stand. We are in 2024, and I have not changed that position, nor will I going forward. I kept my word, and I will keep my word.”

Harris appears to be referring to her debate with then-Vice President Mike Pence at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City on October 7, 2020. Yet she did not say she opposed a fracking ban during the debate — commenting only that Pennsylvania native Joe Biden did.

“Joe Biden will not end fracking,” said Harris in 2020. Later, she repeated, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact. That is a fact.”

“Nowhere in there does she make clear that she had abandoned her previous support for a fracking ban,” noted CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale about an hour after the interview. “Rather, she repeated that Joe Biden, the head of the Democratic ticket at the time, would himself not ban fracking.”

During the campaign, Harris had endorsed a fracking ban. At a 2019 town hall meeting, a participant asked Harris, “Will you commit to implementing a federal ban on fracking your first day in office, adding the United States [to] the list of countries [that] have banned this devastating practice.”

“There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking. Yes,” replied Harris.

“It makes perfect sense that at the time she was speaking on behalf of Biden, the president, not the vice president,” said Dale. “I certainly did not hear anywhere in there Kamala Harris saying she personally had abandoned her 2019 view rather she was speaking for Joe Biden.”

Did Kamala Harris Reduce Illegal Immigration?

Harris defended her record on illegal immigration, as well.

“Why did the Biden-Harris administration wait three and a half years to implement sweeping asylum restrictions?” asked Bash.

“Thee root causes work that I did as vice president, that I was asked to do by the president has actually resulted in a number of benefits,” replied Harris. “The number of immigrants coming from that region has actually reduced since we’ve began that work.”

It’s not clear that is correct. After being appointed Border Czar by Joe Biden, Harris raced to pare down the job, saying she merely examined the “root causes” of “migration” from the three countries in Central America that had historically provided the largest share of illegal immigrants aside from Mexico: the “Northern Triangle” nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The number of apprehensions at the southern border fell from 684,000 in fiscal year 2021 to 447,000 in 2023. But experts say those statistics alone do not tell the full story.

The number of illegal immigrants from the Northern Triangle processed for removal under Title 8 exploded from 177,000 in fiscal year 2022 to more than 309,000 in 2023, and the Border Patrol is “on track to make about 418,600 Title 8 apprehensions by September 30,” reported the Center for Immigration Studies. At the same time, illegal entrants from the region who were denied admission at ports of entry steadily rose from about 17,000 in fiscal year 2021, to 21,000 in the following year, to about 48,000 in fiscal year 2023. “In other words, while total apprehensions FY2022-24 (projected) declined by roughly 20 percent, apprehensions under Title 8 grew by 138 percent over the same time period,” states CIS.

In raw numbers, Title 8 expulsions rose by 241,000 in just one year of the Biden-Harris administration, not including other illegal entries. Nor does this include Biden-Harris programs to expedite the legal entry of putative “refugees” from these and other countries.

There are two additional reasons to question the relevance of the statement: While most illegal immigration has come from Mexico and the Northern Triangle, “in December 2023, 54% of encounters involved citizens of countries other than these four nations,” according to the Pew Research Center. And the number of illegal immigrants has broken historic records each consecutive year since Joe Biden and Kamala Harris took office.

No Regrets about Telling Americans Joe Biden Is ‘Extraordinarily Strong’

“Right after the debate, you insisted that President Biden is extraordinarily strong. Given where we are now, do you have any regrets about what you told the American people?” Bash asked.

“No, not at all,” replied Harris, reiterating, “Not at all.”

A mere 63 days earlier, Harris not only described Joe Biden as the picture of health but placed an onus on those who questioned his acuity. Moments after Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate with former President Donald Trump, Harris told ABC News Biden had “a slow start, but a strong finish.”

“Joe Biden is extraordinarily strong, and that cannot be debated,” she quipped.

The legacy media have revealed it was precisely the threat of a cognitive test that helped force Biden out of the presidential race. The New York Times reported that, according to two attendees of a July 11 meeting between Biden and U.S. senators, Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) issued an ultimatum (in the Times’ words): “If Mr. Biden wanted to stay in the race after a disastrous debate performance that underscored concerns about his condition and mental acuity, he should submit to examination by two independent neurologists who were willing to report their findings at a news conference.”

Harris ‘Very Proud’ of Bidenomics

“You have been vice president for three and a half years. The steps that you’re talking about now, why haven’t you done them already?” Bash asked Harris.

“I’m very proud of the work that we have done that has brought inflation down to less than 3%,” the vice president responded.

“So, you maintain Bidenomics is a success?” asked Bash.

After rattling off a list of the administration’s putative accomplishments, Harris concluded, “I’ll say that that’s good work. There’s more to do, but that’s good work.”

Inflation for 2023 stood at 4.1%, a marked increase from the 1.2% the Biden-Harris administration inherited. Wages have barely kept pace with inflation, as groceries, gasoline, and other household staples have increased by double digits — the highest inflation level in 40 years.

Despite pressing for clear answers from the pair, many observers faulted Bash for not following up on key assertions made by both Harris and Walz, as well as her question choice. Megyn Kelly noted Bash asked “not a single Q on the Emotional Support Governor’s radical trans policies.”

CNN also appeared to make a few misstatements about the interview. Although the network prerecorded the interview, the network’s feed claimed it was aired “live.” After the interview, anchor Abby Phillip referred to the closed-doors segment as a “town hall” event.

Despite reports that CNN would not offer a transcript of the interview, CNN has issued its official transcript of the historic interview.

Kamala Harris will debate former President Donald Trump on ABC News September 10 at 9 p.m.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

‘Third Rail’: Here’s Why Team Kamala Isn’t Peddling The Typical Dem Climate Panic This Election

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Vice President Kamala Harris has been tight-lipped about her record on climate change while major green groups continue to support her anyways — a dynamic that political pundits and energy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation is no accident.

Harris — who called climate change an “existential threat” in 2019 —  previously probed major oil corporations as California’s attorney general and co-sponsored the Green New Deal as a senator, but she has mostly avoided climate change and green energy on the campaign trail, framing the issues in terms of economics, jobs and investment when she does bring up the subject. That many major eco-activist groups are still supporting her indicates that Harris is trying to broaden her appeal to more moderate voters in order to win the election and subsequently govern as a climate hardliner once in office, energy experts and political strategists told the DCNF.

“The Democrats have figured out that the apocalyptic vibe isn’t really likely to bring people along for this particular ride,” Mike McKenna, a GOP strategist with extensive energy sector experience, told the DCNF. “So, they have obviously made a command decision to focus only on the carrots and ignore anything that looks like a stick.”

Harris and her running mate, Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have campaigned on climate issues in passing, but eco-activist leaders are generally unconcerned about the lack of focus on the issue, according to The New York Times. Walz did not address climate change during his Wednesday night speech at the Democratic National Convention , sticking primarily to his background as a rural American.

Even after the Harris campaign walked back her previous support for a fracking ban, a slew of environmental organizations opposed to fracking endorsed her candidacy. The campaign’s apparent strategy of not focusing much on climate change “suggests that Democrats see talking about the environment as a lose-lose proposition” in this election cycle, The Washington Post reported on Thursday.

“They know what she’s going to do. There’s no upside to talking about climate,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute, told the DCNF. “Keep in mind, I believe it was in July of 2022, The New York Times ran a poll reporting that only 1% of voters prioritize climate. So it’s a loser issue … And they can’t afford to lose Pennsylvania. So, they don’t want to talk about climate, because when you talk about climate, then you have to talk about fracking, and then they’re going to have to talk about how she wants to stop fracking, regardless of what she says.”

Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, who has pursued one of the most aggressive state-level climate agendas in the U.S. in his tenure as governor, recently told the NYT that he doesn’t think Harris needs to leverage her climate record on the campaign trail.

“I am not concerned,” Inslee told the NYT. “I am totally confident that when she is in a position to effect positive change, she will.”

Moreover, the political wings of three green groups — the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and the Environmental Defense Fund — are spending $55 million on swing state advertisements to boost Harris, but the first three ads released do not actually address climate change. The ads back into the subject of green energy and pitch Harris’ record on the issue as centered on protecting ordinary Americans from greedy corporations and promoting “advanced manufacturing and clean energy” as a means of helping the middle class.

This approach is different than the one Harris used during her first run for the presidency in the 2020 cycle, in which Harris attempted to outflank many of her Democratic opponents from the left by endorsing policies like carbon taxes, changes to dietary guidelines to decrease red meat consumption and a ban on plastic straws to complement a fracking ban.

Eco-activists and climate-focused voters “definitely believe she will go left, left, left on climate and energy,” Scott Jennings, a political strategist and on-air pundit for CNN, told the DCNF. “Of course they do. Her 2020 campaign agenda is what they are banking on. And I assume she will deliver for them if she wins.”

President Joe Biden also made climate a key aspect of his successful 2020 campaign, guaranteeing that he would end fossil fuels and calling former President Donald Trump a “climate arsonist” who was failing to protect Americans from the “ravages of climate change,” according to Inside Climate News. Nevertheless, Biden and his top officials still frequently drew the ire of hardline climate activists despite the administration pursuing what it describes as the “most ambitious climate agenda in history.”

Harris cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to secure the 2022 passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s signature climate bill. While its price tag has ballooned from initial estimates and some contend that the bill has actually worsened inflation, the IRA unleashed hundreds of billions of dollars of private and public spending on green energy and manufacturing projects.

The Biden-Harris administration touts that investment as evidence that its domestic agenda is working.

“The climate activists in the Democrat Party have finally realized that no one is buying their ‘climate emergency’ claptrap anymore or their claims of 5, 10, or 20 years left to ‘save the planet.’ Instead, they are pedaling a barrage of silly economic claims that somehow pouring hundreds of billions and now trillions of dollars into government centrally planned projects,” Marc Morano, the publisher of Climate Depot, told the DCNF. “This new Democrat climate messaging, where they don’t mention climate, is part of the legacy of the Inflation Reduction Act, where local communities and certain states get unlimited federal funds poured into them via taxpayers to create a ‘green economy.’”

Len Foxwell, a Democratic strategist based in Maryland, said that the Harris campaign’s lack of attention to climate change and green energy issues is deliberate given her need to secure the support of a broad coalition if she is to win in November.

“First and foremost, Kamala Harris’ responsibility in this race is to win it. And to do so, she has to present her priorities in a way that resonates with those who are concerned about the economy and frustrated with their own financial situations. Specifically, she has to emphasize the opportunities that exist for better jobs, higher wages and long-term cost savings for the ratepayers,” Foxwell told the DCNF. “This is particularly imperative when discussing renewable energy investment, because the upfront costs tend to be considerable and the financial benefits to the middle class are largely speculative.”

As the Democratic candidate for the presidency, Harris “has to communicate her vision and values in a way that attracts the broadest possible coalition,” though it remains to be seen how she would actually govern if elected given uncertainty about the future balance of power in Congress, according to Foxwell. Harris and her team must take care to not propose policies that would increase the cost of living for middle class Americans, which would be “third rail” politics given how concerned people are about the economy, he added.

The Harris campaign did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

Nick Pope

Contributor.

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

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Eco-Extremists Choose Bizarre Targets

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Fans at the 18th green of the PGA Travelers Championship got to see two sports for one on Sunday, when the sudden intrusion of climate hooligans — soon tackled by security — introduced a wrestling component, very nearly turning the world’s quietest sport into hockey.

Just as tournament leaders Scottie Scheffler and Tom Kim arrived to putt, protestors armed with traffic flares ran onto the green, spewing red and white powder on the close-cut grass. The emblems on their white t-shirts revealed that they were members of an American branch of “Extinction Rebellion,” a British eco-extremist group.

Extremists motivated by climate change are now disrupting or defacing high-profile cultural symbols at a rate of more than once per week. On June 19, climate activists associated with “Just Stop Oil” sprayed orange paint on Stonehenge, a World Heritage Site in the U.K. On June 13, “Climate Defiance” activists stormed the field at the Congressional Baseball Game.

The international campaign targeting culturally important symbols has made itself infamous since 2022. So far, climate activists have targeted Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” painting, Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” the Magna Charta, the Wimbledon tennis tournament, cycling’s premier event the Tour de France, the Brooklyn Bridge, and (unsuccessfully) Taylor Swift’s private jet, among many other incidents.

In most of these incidents, whatever name the extremists claim that day, the tactics are the same. The activists call their behavior “direct action,” but a more accurate description would be “illegal behavior.” They spray paint, throw soup, glue themselves to, or otherwise seek to injure or deface an object of great cultural value, in the name of drawing attention to what they allege is an existential climate crisis poised to wipe out humanity.

But, from a “climate-conscious” perspective, nearly all of their targets are bizarre.

Take golf, for instance. Here is a sport that requires large swaths of land to be turned into literal parks. Players walk around — or, for longer distances, drive electric carts — enjoying the outdoors. For someone concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, golf seems like an ideal pastime. It doesn’t even necessarily induce heavy breathing!

Obviously, that perspective is not shared by the climate extremists who stormed the green on Sunday. Lest they be drowned out by the “boos” of the crowd, the attention-grasping delinquents bore their message printed on their outfits: “No golf on a dead planet.”

It’s hard to imagine a more facially absurd message. If the planet were really dead, golfers would putt on a “brown” or “gray,” not a “green.” Not that that would stop them — golfing on the moon might get dusty, but the first billionaire golfers to attempt it will probably manage.

More to the point, these activists decided to make a scene while surrounded by a crowd who assembled for the purpose of watching a fun, outdoor event on a beautiful summer day. After trotting around a golf course all day, these fans could easily tell that the planet was far from dead — in fact, that it is still enjoyable. As usual, spending time in the Great Outdoors is an effective antidote to crackpot theories.

The argument for baseball is much the same as for golf. The pre-electronic contest of skill takes place in a field, helping players enjoy nature without burning a single drop of fossil fuels.

Then there is Stonehenge. Older than the Pyramids, this still-standing stone structure is a striking example of what ancient architects were able to achieve without industrial machinery or modern construction equipment. One would think this relic from the pre-Arthurian era of druidic nature-worship would make it a symbol for the world modern environmentalists want to create, instead of a symbol for the civilization they seek to destroy.

And make no mistake. Destruction is exactly what these climate radicals are creating. Their intention is to wake people up, to draw attention to the alleged climate crisis, which might destroy human civilization, by targeting the icons and activities other people care about. But these cultural symbols are often the best products of our civilization, things that have stood the test of time and are themselves worth preserving.

The climate radicals’ nihilistic attempt to save humanity by wrecking everything humanity cares about was always doomed to fail. Even if their tactics were successful and assumptions were correct, human civilization would survive only as an exhausted, divided wreck of its former self. Fortunately, however, these extremists seem likely to fail simply because they annoy rather than persuade.

The conclusion to the Travelers Championship was nearly as exciting as the disruptive interlude. Underdog Tom Kim rallied from behind with a birdie on the final hole to tie Scottie Scheffler at 22-under-par and send the pair to a playoff. The dominant Scheffler eventually won the playoff, marking his sixth win this year. With this win, Scheffler became the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six PGA tournaments before July. That is what golf fans really care about, not the preposterous activists who just tried to ruin the fun for everyone else.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Congress Inches Closer To Unshackling American Nuclear Energy

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The Senate sent one of the most significant pro-nuclear energy bills in recent history to President Joe Biden’s desk this week, but the bill alone is unlikely to spur a nuclear renaissance in the U.S.

The ADVANCE Act passed the Senate on Tuesday by a strong 88-2 bipartisan vote to the applause of pro-nuclear organizations who described the bill as a major step forward for America’s energy future. The bill is a first step toward freeing up a nuclear industry that has long been shackled, but it does not address some impediments the industry faces, according to nuclear energy experts.

The bill is designed to bring down the costs of nuclear licensing, create new opportunities for old industrial sites to eventually be converted to host reactors and give the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) more staffers and resources to execute their mission, according to the office of Republican West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, a key architect of the bill. The bill is a welcomed development for the nuclear industry, which has struggled to expand for decades despite growing momentum — especially on the environmental left — to decarbonize the U.S. power system and wider economy.

“This bipartisan legislative package ensures the U.S. maintains its leadership on the global stage and helps meet our climate and national energy security goals,” Maria Korsnick, president and chief executive officer at the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), said of the bill. “The passage of the ADVANCE Act allows us to bolster U.S. international competitiveness at this crucial junction, accelerate the domestic deployments of innovative advanced nuclear technologies, and modernize the oversight and licensing of the operating fleet of reactors.”

However, the bill is not a total victory for those hoping to see a speedy expansion of the technology’s footprint, as issues like the NRC’s general attitude of risk aversion and a lack of robust financial protection against cost overruns are not addressed directly by the legislation.

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made recent progress to become more efficient while maintaining its focus on safety, but there is more work to be done,” Korsnick added. “The bill will support efforts to further modernize the NRC as it prepares to review an ever-increasing number of applications for subsequent license renewals, power uprates and next generation nuclear deployments.”

John Starkey, the director of public policy for the American Nuclear Society, told the DCNF that the bill is a “step in the right direction,” but probably will not be enough to singlehandedly usher in a nuclear renaissance.

“ANS applauds the long awaited passage of the ADVANCE Act. This bill provides common sense direction to enable the accelerated deployment of advanced nuclear reactors needed to meet the world’s clean energy goals,” Starkey told the DCNF. “The bill alone won’t open any floodgates, but it’s a necessary step in the right direction due to added workforce and the streamlined approach the NRC can take when regulating advanced reactors.”

While the NRC is set to get a boost from the new bill should it be signed into law, the institution is thought by some energy experts — including Dan Kish, a senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research — to be too conservative and risk-averse in its approach to regulating the industry. Kish believes that the NRC has created a “regulatory morass” out of risk aversion over time that holds nuclear power back by significantly driving up costs, as he previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As of August 2023, there were 54 operational nuclear power plants and 93 commercial reactors in America, which together provide approximately 19% of America’s power, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). The average nuclear reactor is about 42 years old, while licensing rules limit their lifespans to an upper limit ranging from 40 to 80 years, according to EIA.

Nuclear power capacity grew rapidly between roughly 1967 and 1997, but it has generally stayed flat since then, according to the EIA. Only a handful of new nuclear reactors have come online in the past twenty years, but nuclear generally remains a more reliable low-carbon source of power than solar and wind, an important consideration when taking stock of the Biden administration’s goals to decarbonize the U.S. power sector by 2035 and the overall economy by 2050.

Grid watchers have warned consistently that the nation’s grid may not be able to sustain considerable growth in electricity demand amid simultaneous retirement of reliable fossil fuel-fired generation and its replacement with intermittent solar and wind, for example. Hence, nuclear power may hold the keys to recognizing the decarbonized future Biden and his appointees are pursuing with aggressive regulation and spending.

To that end, the Biden administration evidently recognizes the promise of nuclear power, and is making a big push to advance it.

The Biden administration signed onto a pledge at last year’s United Nations climate summit to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050, and has also extended “billions and billions and billions” of dollars to spur a nuclear revival in the U.S., as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said at a nuclear energy conference in June. On Monday, Granholm’s Department of Energy (DOE) announced $900 million in funding to advance deployment of next-generation small modular reactors.

Two of the most recent nuclear reactors to come online are Unit 3 and Unit 4 at the Alvin W. Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, a nuclear power plant located in Georgia. Those reactors finally came online after years of delays and billions of dollars of cost overruns, demonstrating the challenges that the complex nature of nuclear engineering and construction can pose.

Tim Echols, a commissioner on the Georgia Public Service Commission, also praised the bill, but he raised different issues than other energy sector experts who focused more on the role of the NRC. Echols was involved in getting the Vogtle projects over the finish line in his capacity as a commissioner for the entity regulating the state’s utilities.

“What I am most encouraged about with ADVANCE is the bipartisan support for nuclear. For too long, only Republican-run states have been interested in new nuclear — and those times seem to be coming to an end,” Echols told the DCNF. “While ADVANCE doesn’t have the federal financial backstop I have been asking for, which would protect against overruns caused by bankruptcies, it still is very positive. “Speeding up licensing will allow the technology to be deployed sooner — assuming you have states stepping forward with the courage to build new nuclear.”

The backstop that Echols describes would be some sort of federal bankruptcy protection, which would incentivize policymakers and developers to move forward with new projects because “building new nuclear power is still incredibly risky,” and  utility commissioners across America may hesitate to do so without some protection against what we went through in Georgia.”

“Clearly, ADVANCE, and the recent White House efforts on behalf of nuclear energy represent a push to accelerate new nuclear deployment in the United States that we haven’t seen since I was a boy,” Echols told the DCNF.

The DOE did not respond immediately to a request for comment, and the NRC declined to comment because the legislation has yet to be signed into law.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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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.

It’s Time to Make a Strategic PR Pivot in Dealing with the Climate Change Issue

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Nothing short of Traditional Science is at stake here.

This is a follow-up to my post: Who is Winning the Climate Change War?

There have been numerous twists-and-turns regarding the Climate Change/Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) matter over the last 35± years. For those of us immersed in this fight on a daily basis, the danger is that (without periodically stepping back), we can easily lose track of the forest through the trees. Let’s pause for a minute and consider the big picture here…

There are two fundamentally different parts to the AGW fight:

  1. the scientific facts, and
  2. how these facts are communicated to the public.

The latter is Public Relations (PR). The evidence indicates that realists are doing well with #1, but not with #2. The reality is that ultimately this is a PR fight!

Most of the people leading the realists are scientists or other technical experts. Science deals with facts, so most scientists believe that the facts will win the day.

The problem is: that belief is FALSE! Just having the facts will not win a PR fight.

Unless we incorporate sophisticated communication techniques and effective PR strategies, we will lose the AGW war — and that’s the direction we are heading.

Why are we losing this PR war? Because:

a) most scientists are not proficient with communication or PR,

b) the whole AGW issue crept up on us, starting 35± years ago, and from the beginning, no one formulated a communication/PR plan — it just evolved,

c) to date, no one has critically analyzed our AGW communication/PR, and

d) no one has proposed an updated, sophisticated communication/PR plan.

Clearly what’s needed are items “c” and “d”. Ideally, an updated, advanced PR plan will not only be more communicable, but will also put us on stronger, more defendable ground. If nothing else it will be a fresh tactic.

Briefly regarding “c”: to date, we have employed a shotgun strategy — i.e., we have fought the AGW hypothesis on a wide variety of fronts. There are some PR advantages to a shotgun strategy, but it can also run its course and gradually become less effective. That’s where we appear to be today.

An alternative strategy is the rifle tactic. This amounts to a unified approach where we all focus on a narrowly defined target. With everyone aiming at the same vulnerable spot, the chance for success is much better than with a scattershot strategy.

An Example of the Rifle Strategy

The important question is: what spot should we focus on? There are a few possibilities, but let me recommend one for serious consideration: Scientific protocol.

In other words, rather than debate AGW proponents about the dozens of technical details of the AGW hypothesis (clouds, feedback loops, solar influences, etc., etc.), that instead we zero in on their adherence to traditional scientific methodology.

AGW advocates have NOT followed traditional scientific methodology, and they have used multiple justifications to rationalize their disconnect. For example, they say: a) it’s too time-consuming to follow Science protocol, b) AGW is too complicated to be analyzed by traditional Science, c) AGW is not falsifiable, etc., etc.

All these are debatable excuses, but the REAL reason they object to following traditional scientific methodology, is that it does not support their hypothesis. We should be focused on objecting to this scientific deviance, which is an attempt to disguise the reality that their AGW arguments are scientifically weak.

The Left has become so enthused by their success at disavowing scientific methodology — particularly by the lack of a cohesive response — that they have moved onto the next step: attacking the Scientific Method! For example, the K-12 Science curriculum of 48 states now has scrapped the traditional Scientific Method.

What’s worse is that since this started 10+ years ago, almost no teachers, parents, scientists, conservative organizations, etc. have publicly objected to this. (See my Report that goes into more details about this audacious travesty.)

BTW, note that their calling the Climate matter a “theory” is another of numerous examples where the Left is superior at manipulating the words in the public conversation, but also where they have discarded scientific tradition.

The fact is the AGW matter is a scientific hypothesis, and we should strongly object to it being inappropriately elevated to the status of being a scientific theory.

Briefly, some of the major advantages of making this PR change:

  1. It’s much easier for citizens and legislators to understand the methodology issue, as compared to the numbing complexities of the AGW hypothesis.
  2. This changes the battlefield to where we have the high ground. It’s irrefutable that alarmists have short-circuited traditional scientific protocol.
  3. This position makes it clearer to our opponents what they need to do to win us over — so they may actually welcome this position.
  4. We won’t know for sure about the AGW facts for 30± years. However, we can be sure about whether AGW advocates followed scientific protocol, today.
  5. We can no longer be labeled as deniers. Our position should be: “I’m 100% open to the possibility that the AGW hypothesis might be true — but I can not accept it until it has been fully and objectively subjected to the rigors of traditional Science.”

An example of how this works is the exchange I had with a climatologist. Here is an article where he makes his Climate claims. Here is my response — which focuses on his departure from traditional science methodology. {Note: he had no rejoinder.]

A suggested soundbite is Science, not Political Science.

Another possible soundbite is: Show me the Science!

We are Losing the PR War against Real Science

For example, what’s going on in our K-12 schools (particularly in Science) is simply atrocious. EVERY YEAR some four million propagandized, non-critical thinking students graduate from US high schools.

The really petrifying part is that these individuals will soon become voting citizens. This represents a tsunami rapidly bearing down on us.

It should be crystal clear that regarding Climate Change and K-12 education, business as usual is the height of folly, if not suicidal.

©2024. John Droz, Jr. All rights reserved.

RELATED VIDEO: Eco-Terrorists Attack Stonehenge | TONIGHT on TIPPING POINT

Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:

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?

Young adults losing the climate faith in the U.S. and only one third of voters think the IPCC experts are right

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Good news: despite 2023 being the hottest year since Homo Erectus, there was a 17% fall in the number of 18 to 34-year-olds who call “Climate change”  a very serious problem. Even though there were hottest-ever-headlines month after month, the punters lost the faith.

No one is cracking champagne because 50% of young adults still tell pollsters they think it is a “very serious problem”. But when all is said and done, at least half the generation that was drip-fed the dogma since kindergarten can not only see through the catastrophism but they are brave enough to tell a pollster that, too.

For the most part, after a few hot El Nino years, “climate fear” is back where it was in 2016 or so. Most people still want the government to solve the weather with someone else’s money. But where younger people were once much more enthusiastic about a Big Government fix than older people were, now that gap is almost closed. What was a 21% difference between those age groups is now only 2%. That’s a whopping fall in faith in the government to do something useful, or probably, a recognition that whatever the government does will cost too much.

Looks like young adults are learning to be cynical adults faster?

The Monmouth University group polled 804 people in late April:

Climate Change Concerns Dip:  Younger adults express less urgency than in prior polls

The percentage of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 who see climate change as a very serious problem has fallen by 17 points in the past three years (50%, down from 67% in 2021), compared with smaller declines among those who are 35 to 54 years old (44%, down from 48%) and those age 55 and older (44%, down from 54%).

Click here to the infographic: American Attitudes on Climate Change by Age.

But what does “a very serious problem” even mean?

Anyone can say, “It’s serious,” but only 1 in 6 people can even be bothered pretending to a pollster that climate change influences their vote:

A Monmouth poll released last month found only 15% of voters view climate change as a determinative issue in how they will vote in the 2024 presidential election, ranking far lower than inflation, immigration, and abortion.

People used to lie to pollsters and say they cared and it would affect their vote, but now most don’t even pretend. In 2019, in the UK, two-thirds of people agreed climate was the biggest issue facing humankind. The Guardian writers were sure that climate change would determine how most of the voters would vote, but the party promising to give them better weather lost in a landslide.

In 2015, when nearly half of US voters said climate was a “very serious problem”, other surveys showed only 3% ranked climate change as the most important issue.

If a twenty-something really believed the Antarctic ice cap was about to melt, wouldn’t it rate as a voting issue?

So let’s be clear, year after year, we see the same results. The voters don’t want to spend money on climate change and won’t change their vote, but the politicians act as though their career depends upon it, and the public is “demanding action”.

After years of surveys like this, we know the politicians know the voters don’t care, but they go and force climate action on the voters anyway. Who are they really working for? Their donors? The people who give them “jobs” after they leave office, or the people who employ their children now? Or are they working to appease “the media” — cowed into submission because someone might call them a denier if they don’t grovel before the Climate Demi-God?

Last year, a survey showed more then half of the US are wondering the same question and agree that the people who really “run” the country are not known to voters.

Fully 92% of Democrat voters say they think climate change is real. (What else could they say; they’d be excommunicated from friends and family if they said anything else.) Only 51% of Republicans tell pollsters they think climate change is real. But imagine how fast that would plummet if skeptical professors were interviewed on TV, and half of Republican politicians spoke for half the Republican voters?

Only a third of voters agree with the UN Experts that climate change is mainly a human-driven thing

Despite the UN experts being 97% certain, only one-third of voters completely agree with them. That’s really quite astounding.

Public opinion remains mixed on the degree to which human behavior contributes to change in the climate. Just over one-third (34%) say climate change is caused mainly by human activity, while 31% say human activity and natural changes in the environment play equal roles. Another 7% put climate change down mainly to natural causes, with the remainder saying climate change is not happening (23%) or are not sure if it is happening (4%). Just over half of Americans (51%) say there is still time to prevent the worst effects of climate change, while just 17% say it is too late.

After thirty years of scientific and media purity, only one-third think climate change is “mostly human”. Another third thinks the UN must be exaggerating, and the last third knows the UN is wrong.

AUTHOR

Joanne Nova

REFERENCES

The Monmouth University poll, Climate Change Concerns Dip, May 6th, 2024

CFACT Monthly Climate Fact Check

RELATED ARTICLE: POLL: 47% of Voters Believe the American Republic Has Fallen

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Biden Admin Weighs California’s Latest Green Gambit That Could Set Off Chain Reaction Of Economic Pain

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The Biden administration could allow California to implement a rule designed to push green locomotives, but a growing list of stakeholders are warning that the regulation would severely impact the state’s economy and the national rail industry.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could soon determine whether it will allow the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to move forward with a state regulation that would ban the use of locomotives that are more than 23 years past their manufacturing date unless they run using zero-emissions technology, according to Progressive Railroading.

The rule could disrupt supply chains and saddle the state’s railway industry with huge new costs that would flow to consumers, with the effects of the rule potentially spilling out in other parts of the country, according to numerous trade groups, lawmakers and policy experts who believe the Biden administration should reject CARB’s request.

CARB passed the locomotive rule in April 2023, but the agency must first receive the EPA’s permission before it enacts a regulation that goes above and beyond federal rules, according to the EPA’s Federal Register entry on the request. Monday was the last day to file comments with the EPA about the matter, signaling that a final determination could be coming soon.

“When you look at regulations in California, they’re being promulgated by people who don’t really understand the ramifications of what they’re requiring,” Edward Ring, a veteran of the railroad industry who is now the director of water and energy policy for the California Policy Center, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “CARB is asking for something — zero-emissions locomotives — that do not yet exist. And what’s going to happen is it’s going to dramatically raise the cost of shipping anywhere in California, and that’s going to have a ripple effect across the country. This is another example of California’s environmentalist regulations raising the cost of living.”

The rule for locomotives would take effect in 2030, assuming EPA allows CARB to proceed. Some of the rule’s critics say that timeline is too tight to meet given the current lack of dependable, affordable zero-emissions technology available for locomotives on the market.

Moreover, the rule also would require locomotive operators to pay into their own trust accounts to fund the acquisition of zero-emissions locomotives and related infrastructure, according to CARB. The payment structure requires operators to contribute more into the accounts for operating dirtier locomotives than they have to put up for running cleaner ones.

Because many other states adhere to CARB guidelines, the EPA’s approval could set off a chain reaction expanding the impact of the rule well beyond California’s borders, according to Ted Greener, vice president of public affairs for the Association of American Railroads (AAR).

“If EPA approves the waiver the rule becomes a national matter on the first day. Roughly 65% of the locomotive fleet goes in and out of California and almost all of the freight rail traffic that moves in the state of California traverses state lines,” Ted Greener, vice president of public affairs for the Association of American Railroads (AAR), told the DCNF. “Moreover, EPA granting the waiver enables other states to opt-in and replicate the regulation in full – including the phase out dates and the spending accounts. Such a balkanized system would be unspeakably costly, but also disruptive to the flow of goods.”

A “large number” of locomotives would be impacted by the rule, Greener told the DCNF. Typically, locomotives have a lifespan ranging from 30 to 50 years, and they are regularly upgraded or otherwise modified to be more fuel-efficient, Greener added.

Other rail industry interest groups, such as the American Short Line and Railroad Association (ASLRRA), have also opposed the rule.

“While the spirit behind this rule is consistent with short lines’ environmental commitment, the rule itself is impractical, unworkable, and simply not feasible for most short lines,” Chuck Baker, president of ASLRRA, said of CARB’s rule in May 2023. “In addition, this rulemaking does not acknowledge the impact of the elimination of some short line rail service to Californians … Short lines would not in fact be able to pass on these costs to their customers and some of them would be eliminated by this rule.”

For its part, CARB downplays most of these criticisms and concerns.

“Despite the availability of cleaner options, railroad companies have failed to make investments to replace their outdated, dirty locomotives that contribute to the state’s air quality problems and endanger the lives and health of Californians,” a CARB spokesperson told the DCNF. “Passenger vehicles, heavy-duty trucks, ocean-going vessels, heavy off-road equipment, small off-road engines used in landscaping, among other emissions sectors are all doing their part. It’s time for the rail industry to join and work with us to become part of the solution rather than focusing their efforts on litigation and PR campaigns.”

“In addition, under CARB’s Locomotive Regulation, railroads need not purchase new locomotives, but instead have many options available to them, including the use of zero-emission tender cars, rail electrification, or retrofitting of their existing locomotive fleet to ensure zero-emission operation while operating within California,” the spokesperson continued.

Labor unions, including the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, have filed comments with EPA making their opposition to CARB’s rule clear.

Moreover, a diverse coalition of more than 60 trade groups — including the National Association of Manufacturers, the Beer Institute and the Aluminum Association — wrote a letter Friday to Karl Simon, the director of EPA’s Transportation and Climate Division, expressing significant concerns with the rule should CARB be allowed to proceed.

“This regulation from CARB has the potential to create significant disruptions in the supply chain for all sectors of the U.S. economy, especially manufacturers and shippers who rely on consistent, reliable rail service,” the letter reads. “This rule could lead to delays for businesses and increased costs for both shippers and consumers that could ultimately lead to a massive supply chain crisis. If railroads are forced to spend large amounts of money to ensure compliance with this rule, those costs will be passed along the entire supply chain and could inhibit rail service at facilities across the country – not just in California.”

“The issue is that no viable technology exists today to move freight beyond yards on a zero-emissions basis,” the letter continues. “Despite aggressive [research and development] and innovation in the rail sector and significant private investments, the technologies to achieve this rule simply do not exist at this point.”

Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin and 11 Republican Senators also wrote their own letter expressing concern about the CARB rule to EPA Administrator Michael Reagan on April 16. In addition to raising questions about the legality of CARB’s rule, the lawmakers urged the EPA to “carefully consider the environmental, supply chain, and modal shift implications that EPA approving CARB’s waiver request would have.”

The EPA did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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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.

DAVID BLACKMON: Having Biden Declare A Climate Emergency Is A Crazy Idea

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I recorded a podcast this week in which the host told me I am an “outlier” for being willing to write the truth about the destructive nature of the Biden administration’s energy policies. It was one of the kindest things anyone has ever said to me, frankly.

So, I guess I will be an outlier again when I write that the idea being considered again by White House officials of having President Biden declare a climate emergency so he can implement a draconian crackdown on the domestic oil and gas industry is frankly crazy. That’s the truth.

Bloomberg reported Thursday that unnamed officials inside the White House said the idea of declaring a climate emergency, first considered in 2021 and again in 2022, is once again under consideration. The only “emergency,” of course, is the president’s flagging approval ratings among impressionable young voters that threaten to derail his re-election chances. Declaring a climate emergency would arm the president with dictatorial powers to hamstring the domestic industry more than his regulators and hundreds of executive orders have already managed to do.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, actions being considered would include suspending offshore drilling, restricting exports of oil and LNG, and “throttling” the industry’s ability to transport its production via pipelines and rail. Given the industry’s crucial nature, it all sounds like a recipe for massive economic disaster.

“The average American is certainly not demanding a climate emergency declaration. It’s the losing team of left-wing Democrat activists and the shrinking base of elites who are,” U.S. Oil and Gas Association President Tim Stewart told me in an interview. “It’s not about climate, it’s about control: Control over the entire U.S. economy, control of production, manufacturing, distribution, and consumption. If you control energy, you control all these things. Which means you have control of the people.”

Stewart notes that the use of emergency powers in this instance would represent the same playbook used by federal, state, and local governments to restrict citizens’ freedoms and choices during COVID pandemic. But for the president, it would also be a means of shoring up support among the billionaire class that funds both the climate alarmist movement and so many Democrat Party campaigns, including his own campaign for re-election.

That angle was echoed by Tom Pyle, president of the D.C.-based think tank, the Institute for Energy Research. “By now, we have gotten used to incredibly damaging and stupid decisions from the Biden administration, but the idea of declaring a ‘climate emergency’ is in a class by itself,” Pyle told me. “Like the freeze on new LNG permits, the only emergency President Biden is seeking to address with this latest threat is his slippage in the polls among young voters.”

Others with whom I spoke on the matter were skeptical that the White House would really take such an extreme step in the middle of a re-election effort, but that outlook seems naïve, really. After all, who would have predicted last December that the administration would halt all permitting of new LNG export facilities purely for political reasons? Who would have predicted in late 2021 that the president would order the draining of 40% of the nation’s wartime Strategic Petroleum Reserve for no reason other than a pure political calculation designed to try to influence the 2022 midterm election?

Anyone thinking such a move would be made out of a real, good faith effort to somehow impact climate change needs to consider this: Demand for oil and natural gas is a global phenomenon that will not be reduced just because Biden cracks down on the U.S. domestic industry. Such a crackdown would inevitably create the flight of billions of dollars in capital to other parts of the world where environmental regulations are far less stringent than in the United States.

The climate alarmists advocating for this crazy policy action like to ignore the reality that the Earth has only one atmosphere which everyone shares. The U.S. oil and gas industry has dramatically cut emissions of both methane and CO2 even as it has achieved new records in production. No other nation on Earth can make a similar claim.

This is indeed a crazy idea, but it would be a mistake to assume it is not being seriously considered, and for all the wrong reasons.

AUTHOR

DAVID BLACKMON

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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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.

This Video Builds A Rock Solid Case For Only Trump As The Commander-in-Chief

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We have written about why Donald J. Trump is the only real choice for America’s patriots to become the 47th President of the United States, here, here and here.

It appears that World Net Daily’s Bob Unruh agrees with us. In his April 15th, 2024 article titled “Stunning video builds case for only Trump as commander-in-chief”  Bob wrote,

A stunning new video has been delivered that makes the case for ONLY President Donald Trump as commander-in-chief.

The Gateway Pundit explains it is the “most powerful pro-Trump ad of the year” – “It is that good.”

It is from Claremont Institute chairman Tom Klingenstein, a philanthropist, public speaker, writer, and playwright.

He explains:

Now that President Trump is the Republican nominee for President in 2024, it’s time for Republicans, including those who doubt him or even can’t stand him to get behind him. The times demand it. We are in a war fighting an enemy of revolutionaries that kick and spit on America. I call our enemy the Woke regime or the Group quota regime. This war is a contest between those who love America and those who hate it. But we do not have a commander-in-chief. You can’t win a war without one. We shouldn’t much care whether our commander-in-chief is a real conservative, whether he is a role model for children, or says lots of silly things, or whether he is modest or dignified.

What we should care about is whether he knows we are in a war, knows who the enemy is, and knows how to win.

Trump does. His policies are important but not as important as the rest of him. Trump grasps the essential things. He understands the Group quota regime is evil and will not stop until it destroys America. He is a fighter, bold, brave, and decisive, who has confidence in himself and his country.

Trump never apologizes for America. He rightly believes America is the greatest country in history. Trump says, in effect, we have our culture. It’s exceptional, and that’s the way we want to keep it. And we won’t keep it if we usher in millions of immigrants with cultures different from our own. Trump knows his job is to protect Americans and just Americans. Protect them not just from enemies abroad, but from the woke globalists within. He knows that America does not need more diversity. It needs more cohesion. The woke radicals tell the Trump voters they are a threat to democracy. Think about that. They’re saying, You Trumpsters are a threat to democracy. The woke radicals also tell us ad nauseam that America is systemically racist. Trump knows this is deadly nonsense, and he says so. This charge of systemic racism bounces off Trump because he has no white guilt, or any guilt for that matter. Trump tells his supporters what they already know. They are not racist, and they do not have white privilege. The woke radicals shut up those who disagree. Trump will not be shut up. If they manage to put him in jail, he will still roar like a lion.

The woke radicals have the moral arrogance of fanatics. Trump, God bless him, knows we are all sinners. Trump rejects the utopian fanaticism of the woke radicals. He is a businessman who takes the world on its own terms and navigates by facts and common sense. Trump’s base knows firsthand the America that Trump wants to recover. They love him, and they know he loves them. They will fight for him because they know he will fight for them. Trump speaks to his supporters as fellow citizens without any condescension or poll-tested BS. Despite his billions, he is one of them, an outsider looking in, a man who takes catsup on his steak. And is as disgusted as they are with the anti-American elite.

This natural appeal has molded everyday patriotic Americans into an army. We cannot stop the left’s revolution and retake the nation without these men and women. Unlike most Conservatives, they will actually fight for America. But they follow Trump. Without him, they stay home. With him, they are united and determined. At his rallies, his audience invariably breaks into chants of USA, USA. In these moments, Trump and his audience mutually pledge to each other their fidelity and their sacred honor.

His enemies hate him with an indescribable fierceness. Another Hitler, they say. Elect him and he will be a dictator. We should take this hysteria as reason for hope.

The America-haters rightly fear that Trump and his party are on the threshold of a successful counter-revolution. Trump hates his enemies every bit as much as they hate him. His enemies are America’s enemies. Trump is the most towering figure of our time. He has changed politics, not just in America, but in the West. If we are to take back America, we need someone who is unmovable, who has proven that he can stand up against the immensely powerful army of woke modernity that will attack him with all its might. Someone who will go after the deep state without pity or compassion. And someone who has the conviction that America is still the last best hope of Earth. That someone is Trump. Trump, the politician, came out of the blue. An unconventional commander against an unconventional enemy. Almost inconceivable as President at any other time.

Trump fits this turbulent moment to a T. Is it too much to wonder whether the appearance of this most unconventional man is providential?

Lincoln spoke of Americans as the almost chosen people. Trump gives us hope that the God who has never forsaken his almost chosen people will not do so now.

Read full article.

WATCH: Claremont Institute chairman Tom Klingenstein on Trump’s Virtues – Part II.

The Bottom Line

In our column Comparing Two Democrats: Confederate Jefferson Davis and Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. we warned that America is in a Civil War 2.0.

American Civil War 2.0 is about destroying our Constitutional Republic and replacing it with a one world order. It also requires the enslaving of the American people.

It is yet to be seen if it will become a fully armed conflict, although we are witnessing groups like the pro-Hamas supporters calling for “the death of America” and their storming of the White House and violent marches across America waving the flag of the terrorist group Hamas and the burning of the American flag.

Unlike the Civil War of 1861, the American Civil War 2.0 is in essence not seceding from the United States but rather destroying it from within by a cabal of traitors.

Abraham Lincoln wrote, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

We know what President Donald J. Trump must do when inaugurated on January 20th, 2025.

He must drain the swamp from the schoolhouse to the White House, completely and totally.

©2024. Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

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Bruised BlackRock Slapped with Cease and Desist for Lying to Investors

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It had been a relatively quiet 2024 for embattled BlackRock CEO Larry Fink — until about two weeks ago. Texas, in a massive blow to his woke firm, pulled the pin on an $8.5 billion dollar grenade, announcing that it was following through on its threat to drop Fink’s services where its school fund management was concerned. A firm that shuns oil and gas investments doesn’t have Texas’s best interests at heart, leaders decided. Turns out, that move — the single largest punch to BlackRock’s gut to date — was just the beginning of Fink’s spring headaches.

Late last week, Mississippi dropped another bombshell: a cease and desist order aimed at the firm’s blatant dishonesty about its ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing. When Fink cleverly withdrew BlackRock’s name from the controversial Climate Action 100+ initiative in February, he created the appearance that the world’s largest asset management firm wasn’t putting its environmental activism over its financial responsibilities. But looks can be deceiving. According to several sources, BlackRock’s anti-fossil fuel agenda is still very much alive, a fact that Secretary of State Michael Watson made abundantly clear in his complaint.

“BlackRock has made and continues to make untrue statements of material fact, and to omit material facts to make its statements not misleading to investors and potential investors in Mississippi,” the 29-page order read. “These misrepresentations pertain to BlackRock’s provision of investment services, especially its involvement in pushing Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) factors on portfolio companies. Additionally, many of BlackRock’s acts, practices, and courses of business operate or would operate as fraud or deceit upon investors and potential investors in Mississippi.”

With this legal action, Fink could face “an administrative penalty, potentially a multi-million dollar fine,” National Review warns. As far as the Magnolia State is concerned, BlackRock is openly double-crossing investors — an allegation that certainly won’t help rehabilitate the firm’s damaged image. Fink admitted last year that his company had already lost around $4 billion in business as a result of the backlash meted out by states. If he’s not careful, another serving of boycotts could be headed his way.

BlackRock claims to care about clients’ “long-term financial prospects,” Watson writes, but “[t]hese statements are untrue … because the consideration of ESG factors does not provide an indication of better financial returns or current or future risk profiles.” That, the secretary insists, is “misleading to investors who are interested in ESG for financial (as opposed to social or political) reasons, and who are led to believe that BlackRock’s ESG funds will receive a financial benefit from BlackRock’s consideration of ESG criteria.” Not to mention, he adds, “BlackRock charges higher fees for some of its ESG funds than it does for comparable non-ESG funds.”

Interestingly, Mississippi isn’t one of the 12 states who’ve either divested from BlackRock or passed laws that make that decision likely in the near future. This action, as Wild Hild of Consumers Research explained, is unique — a “first-of-its-kind” attack on the leftist agenda driving so many of these funds. BlackRock’s CEO continues “to pretend that the only time they engage in ESG, it is with permission of the shareholders — but in reality, ESG policies have seeped into every facet of BlackRock’s asset management. They’ve been lying to their customers,” Hild added.

This doesn’t surprise The Political Forum’s Stephen Soukup, author of “The Dictatorship of Woke Capital,” who pointed out to The Washington Stand, “Larry Fink wanted to be famous. Now that he is, he’s learning that one of the perils of fame is that everyone, everywhere knows what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Among those paying the closest attention to the now-famous Fink and his massive asset management firm are elected officials, who have a clear responsibility to protect the interests of their constituents.” He believes that what we’re seeing “in Mississippi, Texas, and in other red states is the consequence of Fink’s quest for fame, wealth, and power as it collides with Republican elected officials’ quest to do their jobs to the best of their abilities.”

Publicly, the wave of 2022 backlash that led states to quit BlackRock seemed to humble Fink. Last summer, he decided to drop ESG from his lexicon because the term was too toxic. He pivoted to “energy pragmatism,” which he explained as investing in clean energy while also backing “traditional energy sources, like fossil fuels.” The firm even showed more restraint on ESG shareholder proposals, supporting just 7% of the 400 submitted according to the last annual report. “That is a marked shift,” the Washington Examiner pointed out. “BlackRock supported nearly a quarter of such proposals in the previous cycle and 47% of environmental and social proposals the cycle before that.”

And yet, none of these surface-level changes seemed to comfort Texas, where local officials warn that the firm’s anti-fossil fuel agenda will ultimately haunt the state. “BlackRock’s dominant and persistent leadership in the ESG movement immeasurably damages our state’s oil & gas economy and the very companies that generate revenues for our Permanent School Fund (PSF),” State Board of Education Chairman Aaron Kinsey argued. “Texas and the PSF have worked to grow this fund to build Texas’ schools. BlackRock’s destructive approach toward the energy companies that this state and our world depend on is incompatible with our fiduciary duty to Texans. Today represents a major step forward for the Texas PSF and our state as a whole. The PSF will not stand idly by while our financial future is attacked by Wall Street.”

Both Texas and Mississippi are committed to holding BlackRock’s feet to the fire — a move that the 1792 Exchange’s Paul Fitzpatrick applauds.

“It’s troubling to see the largest asset manager in the world, which has an army of lawyers and a fiduciary duty to customers, including state pensions for nearly all 50 states, making clearly contradictory statements,” Fitzpatrick told TWS. “To fulfill its ESG and ‘sustainable’ commitments to coalitions like the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, BlackRock pledges to use ‘all assets under management,’ not just the funds labeled ESG, to change behavior of companies to advance political goals. This doublespeak includes the use of proxy voting, whereby BlackRock uses its customers’ funds to vote for various ESG proposals. Many customers who did not opt into ESG funds would never have voted for a ‘racial equity audit’ at The Home Depot or for Exxon Mobil to pursue net zero goals, among other resolutions,” he points out.

“We hope Secretary Watson’s courage inspires other state leaders to hold all fiduciaries accountable.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Woke Investment Managers Pull $15.7 Trillion from Climate Activism Pact

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BlackRock and other U.S.-based investment management conglomerates have chosen to withdraw from a controversial initiative, Climate Action 100+ (CA100+), that pressured companies to “reduce greenhouse gas emissions” to “net-zero emissions by 2050 [or] sooner,” in pursuit of “limiting global average temperature increase” to 1.5 degrees above “pre-industrial levels.” The withdrawals follow financial and legal pressure from U.S. state officials, as well a new phase of cooperation for CA100+ that would move “from words to action.”

As of last June, more than 700 firms had joined CA100+, controlling a breathtaking $68 trillion, or nearly 2.5 times the U.S.A.’s annual GDP.

However, last week, Reuters reported that some of the world’s largest investment managers had withdrawn from CA100+. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm with $9 trillion assets under management (AUM), withdrew its U.S. arm, worth $6.6 trillion. State Street (4th largest with $4.1 trillion AUM), J.P. Morgan (6th largest with $3.1 trillion AUM), and PIMCO (14th largest with $1.9 trillion AUM) all withdrew entirely. However, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, Invesco, and Franklin Templeton (U.S. firms among the world’s 20 largest asset managers) are still signatories.

With the withdrawal of these four firms, CA100+ lost influence over the $15.7 trillion in assets they managed, cutting its influence by 23%.

At least in part, the withdrawals were triggered last summer, when the Steering Committee for CA100+ announced a “Phase Two” for their campaign of corporate climate activism, expected to last until 2030. “In phase two, the overarching goal is to go from words to action,” explained CA100+ Steering Committee Chairman Francois Humbert. The new phase would mean “more accountability, more transparency, more seniority.” The new guidelines would require investment managers to disclose how they vote on climate-related motions at shareholder meetings, as well as how often they lobby corporations and policymakers with their climate agenda.

When CA100+ upped the ante, several major U.S. investment firms promptly folded. BlackRock and State Street cited independence concerns, J.P. Morgan said it had developed “its own climate risk engagement framework,” while PIMCO claimed it “operates its own portfolio-relevant engagement activities with issuers on sustainability.”

In other words, these investment managers do not object to leveraging their fiduciary trust to pursue climate activism. All four of them are still doing climate activism on their own. They did object to the loss of independence of having an international organization micromanage their climate activism — how very American.

However, independence concerns over CA100+’s move to “Phase Two” does not fully explain the abrupt withdrawal of these investment management firms. After all, they still basically share CA100+’s goal of leveraging the investments they manage to advance their climate activism agenda. And these firms did decide to join CA100+ in the first place, knowing that it might inevitably lead to phases that required more action and accountability. Here, grasping the full picture requires viewing the scenery from more than one vantage point.

On March 30, 2023, 21 state attorneys general wrote a letter to the largest U.S.-based asset managers, expressing concern over their political activism and warning that such behavior could violate federal securities laws. The letter, led by Montana AG Austin Knudsen (R), specifically highlighted the CA100+ agenda as “potential unlawful coordination” to “push policies through the financial system that cannot be achieved at the ballot box.” It put investment managers on notice that “ongoing investigations” would “continue to evaluate” whether the firms were engaged in “potential unlawful coordination and other violations … as part of Climate Action 100+, Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative [NZAM], or the like.”

Woke asset managers have sustained considerable pressure from state governments in recent years, as the vast scale of their political activism became known. State officials have issued opinions declaring political activism with public funds illegal, published blacklists of politicized corporations the state won’t do business with, opposed woke companies’ purchases of public utility shares, and demonstrated the public support for doing so by winning subsequent elections.

Asset management firms are wilting before the ire of these state officials. Last summer, after 11 state governments pulled more than $5 billion in assets from his firm’s management, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared he was abandoning the acronym “ESG” (for left-wing “environmental, social, and governance causes) — but not the spirit. In December 2022, Vanguard (the world’s second largest asset manager, with approximately $7 trillion AUM) announced plans to withdraw from the NZAM after pressure from state governments.

The mini-exodus from CA100+ seems to be undertaken with the same goal in mind. The firms withdrawing from the climate pact haven’t abandoned their commitment to climate activism, but they would prefer not to become the next Bud Light in doing so. Re-asserting their “independence” from CA100+ frees them to evaluate the political or legal costs of any particular deed of climate activism and avoid provoking uncomfortable investigations or costly lawsuits. Even without changing their behavior, distancing themselves from the climate organization can help them avoid charges of “unlawful coordination” without distancing themselves from the climate agenda.

The backdrop to this performative calculus is that much left-wing corporate activism is neither essential nor profitable. In a 2022 survey of top executives, 59% of CEOs said they would “plan to pause or reconsider their organization’s ESG efforts” in response to a recession. That’s the sort of numbers you would expect from an optional extra — like a soft-serve machine in the breakroom. It might keep the workforce happy, and it might help mute outside criticism, but it doesn’t help a business achieve its core mission — to produce, move, or sell a product, or to provide certain services.

In the case of asset management firms, they provide the service of managing assets, in hopes of providing a better return for investors than they could obtain on their own. Climate activism is not relevant to the goal of asset management. In fact, climate activism can hamper an asset manager’s goal (obtaining the best return for his client) by forcing a company to adopt costly “green” policies that reduce its profitability and thus the profitability of assets invested in that company.

“Broadly, [federal securities] laws require you to act as a fiduciary, in the best interests of your clients and exercising due care and loyalty,” the attorneys general wrote the asset management firms. “Simply put, you are not the same as political or social activists and you should not be allowing the vast savings entrusted to you to be commandeered by activists to advance non-financial goals.” Asset management firms aren’t yet convinced of this argument and continue to pursue climate activism, but changes in their behavior indicate the pressure is having an effect.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. ©2024 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.

Explaining “Everything Leftism”

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It’s a simple question: How can “Queers for Palestine,” the slogan on protest signs of pro-Palestinian (or anti-anti-Hamas) protesters, be a thing? (Homosexuality is stigmatized and criminalized in the Palestinian territories, while in Israel it is legal, and in secular spaces not stigmatized. As a practical matter, one would much rather be queer in Tel Aviv than Khan Yunis.)

To answer the question, one must consider the operating ideology of left-wing activism, which for lack of a better term might be called “Everything Leftism.”

An Ideology and a Structure

Everything Leftism operates on two levels, as an ideology and as an institutional structure. As an ideology, it is a corruption of or derivative from intersectionality. As intersectionality views all oppressed identities as linked in compounding dimensions, Everything Leftism views all left-of-center issues as linked in compounding dimensions.

Thus, for the Everything Leftist all issues are mutually dependent. In this view, the interests of 2SLGBTQI+ people in the United States depend on Palestinian sovereignty, which depends on radical decarbonization of the economy, which depends on widespread access to taxpayer-funded abortion, which depends on de facto open borders, which depends on every other issue in the progressive playbook.

As an institutional structure, Everything Leftism operationalizes this ideology in the philanthropic and governmental spaces. Charitable organizations and advocacy groups seeking support from left-wing institutional Big Philanthropy will be pressured to align with Everything Leftism not only on any single issue but on all issues, or at least to silence themselves on issues on which they do not align. Meanwhile, where and when administrations aligned with Big Philanthropy hold power, they will use their discretion in government grantmaking, regulatory policy, and prosecutorial decision making to carry out the tenets of Everything Leftism. The Biden administration has announced and carried out a series of “whole of government” schemes related to Everything Leftism, most notably regarding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and climate change.

Everything Leftism in Practice

Everything Leftism is much easier to see than to define. Groups associated with left-of-center causes sometimes just “tweet it out,” with graphics in the typical corporate-liberal pastel-style demonstrating how all issues are mutually dependent.

Consider the following image from the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug legalization group tied to George Soros and funded by him and numerous other prominent liberal institutional funders:

Sometimes the issue lists of supposedly single-issue groups show the depths of Everything Leftism. The Sunrise Movement is ostensibly a campaign group for an immediate severe cut in carbon emissions to stop the supposed “climate crisis.” But its list of “our demands” includes “union jobs for all,” “abolish the police,” and “ensuring that indigenous communities are well resourced and safe.” Sunrise Movement claims that these Everything Leftist positions are inherent to its environmental mission, but in reality they are extraneous.

In the labor-union space, this is why the United Auto Workers (UAW), driven to strike in part due to the consequences of the shift to electric vehicle production driven by the American and international governments’ war on cars, supports the “just transition” away from conventional fuels. Labor unions in many ways pioneered Everything Leftism with “social justice unionism.” After John Sweeney, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member aligned with government-worker unions and unionism’s radical Left, replaced the George Meany-Lane Kirkland center-left Truman-LBJ regime at the AFL-CIO in the 1990s, they turned their dues-funded treasuries into general-purpose piggy banks for left-wing economic and social movements.

In a sense, the Everything Leftist intersectional politics of the DSA replaced the old industrial-class politics of Meany, Kirkland, and their turn-of-the-20th-century predecessor Samuel Gompers. Those industrial-class politics may have been left-of-center—they gave America the capital-P Progressive Movement, the New Deal, and the Great Society, which all had many political-economic problems. But they were also patriotic and recognizably American in their liberalism, as evidenced by Gompers’s resistance to European socialisms of his day and the Meany-Kirkland regime’s work against international Communism during the Cold War. But in the new post-Sweeney era, Big Labor has joined the Everything Leftists, backing causes further left than the liberalism of the Biden administration, and so the UAW demands Israel not defeat Hamas in battle.

Concluding Thoughts

Once the concept of Everything Leftism is introduced, it is easy to find examples. Blaming school choice on “racism, homophobia, and xenophobia”? Everything Leftism. Calling everything “x justice” – “racial justice,” “environmental justice,” “economic justice,” “algorithmic justice”? Everything Leftism. California offering government-funded sex changes to illegal immigrants? Everything Leftism.

Knowledge of Everything Leftism, like knowledge of the related social justice unionism, should teach that there is no prospect of long-term alignment with the Left for moderate concession on a single issue. For a real-world example, ask the Republican and conservative groups that allied with liberals for moderate relaxation of criminal justice policies whether they expected their erstwhile partners to jump headlong into defunding police and de facto legalizing mass criminality in the name of “racial justice.”

But the Permanent Revolution is the demand of the Everything Leftist, so the move to abolish the police was inevitable. That was the ultimate objective for many of the left-wing groups, and it was published in the New York Times as such.

So to answer the opening question, how can “Queers for Palestine” be a thing? Everything Leftists saw an opportunity to combine two or more supposedly oppressed identities into a novel intersectional combination and took it. This happens often and across issues.

Let any conservative seeking to work with (or worse, appease) a left-wing faction beware.

AUTHOR

Michael Watson

Michael is Research Director for Capital Research Center and serves as the managing editor for InfluenceWatch. A graduate of the College of William and Mary, he previously worked for a Washington, D.C. public relations firm.

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‘Tremendously Damaging’: Here’s The Most Aggressive Restrictions Biden’s EPA Pushed On Americans In 2023

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) pushed several aggressive climate regulations in 2023 that could seriously harm the American economy, energy policy experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The agency proposed or finalized rules that would spur the electric vehicle (EV) transition, decrease power grid reliability by imposing costly restrictions on power plants, tighten air quality standards and more in 2023. Under the Biden administration, the EPA has made considerable efforts to further regulations that would nominally help to counter climate change, often at the expense of the American economy, energy policy experts told the DCNF.

“The EPA took a disturbing trend to a new level in 2023: a willingness to use its regulatory power to kill off industries, dictate or influence what businesses can operate and limit what goods and services are available to the public,” Daren Bakst, the director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, told the DCNF. “Congress never envisioned the agency’s authorized regulatory power would be used as a tool for the agency to engage in central planning, reshape industries and limit consumer choice.”

The “Clean Power Plan 2.0″

The EPA’s May proposal to slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants would require fossil fuel-fired generation facilities to adopt expensive developing technologies, such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and hydrogen blending, in order to come into compliance over the coming decades. If finalized in its current form, the regulations— which the EPA contends are legal under the auspices of the Clean Air Act— would significantly raise the chances of blackouts in a massive swath of the Midwest while imposing costs to stakeholders totaling nearly $250 billion, according to analysis conducted by the Center of the American Experiment (CAE).

Power the Future, an energy advocacy organization, dubbed the proposal the “Clean Power Plan 2.0” in a November report because of its strong resemblance to the Obama administration’s “Clean Power Plan” proposal, which the Supreme Court struck down in its landmark decision in West Virginia v. EPAin 2022.

The EPA is moving forward with the proposal, despite the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and a key official for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission warning that the premature retirement of fossil fuel-fired baseload generation and increased reliance on intermittent green energy, like wind and solar, threatens future grid reliability.

“The proposed rule does not require that plants go offline,” an EPA spokesperson told the DCNF in August. “The proposed rule would require plants to install proven technology to abate greenhouse gas emissions. The proposal provides owners and operators of power plants with ample lead time and substantial compliance flexibilities, allowing power companies and grid operators to make sound long-term planning and investment decisions, and supporting the power sector’s ability to continue delivering reliable and affordable electricity.”

However, CAE and one of its leading grid experts, Isaac Orr, are not convinced.

The agency “does not appear to have the expertise necessary to enact such a sweeping regulation on the American power sector,” CAE wrote in its August comments in response to the agency’s proposal.

“This is the regulatory equivalent of studying the structural integrity of the top floor of a 100-story building without doing so for the preceding 99 floors,” Orr told the DCNF.

Tailpipe Emissions Standards

In April, the agency unveiled its proposal for new tailpipe emissions standards in an effort to curb emissions attributable to transportation. The proposed standards would be historically stringent if finalized and they would effectively mandate that 67% of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 are EVs, according to the EPA.

Under the proposed rules, 46% of medium-duty vehicle sales and 25% of heavy-duty sales will be EVs, according to the agency’s projections.

The proposal could be “tremendously damaging for the American people,” Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, told the DCNF. “The reason the agency is pushing these rules is because Congress would never pass these as laws … this rule would be very damaging for Americans and get rid of an iconic means of transportation.”

The administration has spent billions to facilitate its ambitious EV push, and other agencies, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, have promulgated their own similar rules as well. Despite these efforts, the American EV market is on tenuous footing: consumer demand is not growing as rapidly as anticipated, companies are losing large sums of money on their EV product lines, auto executives are starting to back away from short-term EV production targets and the nation’s EV charging infrastructure remains inconsistent and unevenly distributed across the country.

Notably, the House passed a bill that would effectively nullify the proposal earlier in December by a bipartisan vote, but it is unlikely to make it through the Senate, and the White House has suggested that President Joe Biden will veto the bill if it lands on his desk, according to The Hill.

Fine Particulate Pollution Standards

In January, the EPA proposed to tighten the existing National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for fine particulate pollution (PM 2.5) in order “to better protect communities, including those most overburdened by pollution,” the agency announced in a press release.

More than 70 industrial executives penned a letter to White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients warning him that it could lead to massive swaths of the nation falling out of compliance with the rule, which would in turn choke economic development and complicate key goals of Biden’s own green industrial agenda, according to its text.

The states that would be most directly impacted by a finalized PM 2.5 NAAQS update would be Texas, California, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona and Illinois, according to the letter’s text.

“PM 2.5 is the most demonstrable science fraud going on at the EPA,” Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow for the Energy and Environment Legal Institute, previously told the DCNF. “There is more than enough scientific research to demonstrate that what EPA is doing here is fraud, and it is really a testament to the corruption of the scientific community.”

If finalized, the proposal would kill jobs and put the EPA in a position to deny local economies the right to develop, because states that can not comply with the tightened standards would have to receive approval from the agency to develop new industrial factories and power facilities, Milloy told the DCNF.

The EPA projects that the policy would generate up to $43 billion in net health benefits in 2032, as well as prevent 4,200 premature deaths per year and restore 270,000 lost workdays per year by reducing the current standard of allowable fine particle pollution by up to 25%.

Waters of the United States

In January, the agency proposed a regulation that would define the “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) under the EPA’s regulatory purview as “navigable waters” to include lands containing small streams and wetlands. A federal court blocked the January proposal in April, finding that the 24 states that sued the agency had “persuasively shown that the new 2023 Rule poses a threat to their sovereign rights and amounts to irreparable harm.”

Then, in May, the Supreme Court limited the EPA’s authority under the Clean Water Act — which it had cited as the enabling statute for the January proposal — in its decision in Sackett v. EPA, a case brought by a couple whom the EPA tried to stop from constructing a house on their land in Idaho.

In August, the agency “finalized amendments to its January rule, which are just a half-hearted and incomplete set of corrections to try and fix the flawed rule,” Bakst told the DCNF. “These amendments don’t properly comply with the Sackett opinion and fail to provide needed clarity to implement the opinion. And they did so without seeking public comment.”

The EPA exhibited a “complete disregard for private property owners and the rule of law” in its proceedings pursuant to WOTUS regulation in 2023, Bakst told the DCNF.

Neither the EPA nor the White House responded immediately to a request for comment.

AUTHOR

NICK POPE

Contributor.

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