Carthage Must Be Destroyed!

By Rich Kozlovich  

 

Editor's Note:  I originally published this on January 8, 2014 and some of the links not longer work.  RK 

In 2013 the United States Congress was criticized for not getting things done. The Congress “only” passed 65 new laws. Of course we have to understand that one year they passed over three hundred new laws.

What is really important to understand is when new laws are passed the baton of power is passed to the permanent bureaucracies, whose function is to make even more laws called – “rules”! In 2013 there was an average of 56 new regulations resulting from each law passed totaling 3659 new laws called – “rules”! That multiplier has been as low as 12 per new law, but that was in 2006 when Congress passed 321 new laws. If you average out the multipliers over the last ten years the average multiplier is 25.36.

So what’s the rest of the story? Last year the states passed over 40,000 new laws. If we make a broad assumption that the average multiplier applies to the states we now have a potential of 1,014,400 new laws called – “rules!” Rules created by unaccountable bureaucrats, with their own agendas and views of reality, and who, generally speaking, went to college and then into government.

During the first five years of the Obama administration regulatory costs increased by $500 billion dollars, “with $112 billion in regulatory compliance costs in 2013 alone, and predicted that the burden would continue to increase this year to as much as $143 billion”.  The federal registry, where all the regulations are listed, contain 80,224 pages this year alone.  It’s estimated that in ten years at the current rate of regulatory growth there will generate approximately 900,000 new pages of regulations, which will be on top of the approximately 800,000 pages of regulations passed in the previous ten years.

All of these regulations do one thing for sure - create jobs – for non-productive bureaucrats.  It took government employees 10.38 billion hours to do “the paperwork for the federal government in 2013, and will take 78,000 full-time employees to complete the additional paperwork.”

We also have to look at who benefits from laws and the regulations they generate.  In this kind of hyper-regulatory, high tax economy many of these laws and regulations are promoted by businesses that want to make it harder for companies that will be, or are, competitors.  As a “all aspects of business, entrepreneurship degenerates into “bribery and diplomacy.” Instead of focusing on creating value for customers, entrepreneurs spend their time lobbying for favors or to avoid penalties, trying to discern the government’s next move, anticipating or adapting to the newest regulations.”  But this was to be expected from a party that loves big government and “more” laws and regulations - all the better to control our lives.  What about the administrations that have been considered conservative, anti-big government and opposed to all these regulations?  There were more regulations passed during George W. Bush’s administration than any president since Richard Nixon.  Furthermore this idea there is some invisible divide between the left and the so-called right regarding regulations and the promotion of the all powerful state is an illusion.   

“The modern regulatory state is a bipartisan enterprise: During the half-century before President Obama's election, the greatest growth in regulation came under Presidents Richard Nixon and George W. Bush.  And the Bush administration set the stage for many of the Obama initiatives that Republicans are now attacking. Dodd-Frank's policy of designating some financial firms as "too big to fail" is a codification of the Paulson-Bernanke bailout approach of 2008. It was the Bush Treasury Department that first proposed a financial consumer-protection agency, and the Bush Environmental Protection Agency that first proposed regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. The Obama energy rules were authorized — and in some cases, such as the light-bulb ban, required — by a 2007 statute that President Bush vigorously championed.”

What about Richard M. Nixon?  Nixon as a strange man and still an enigma to many, and understandably so, because Nixon was the first to advocate what was called a New Federalism, which would ‘devolve’ power to state and local governments.  But he was the first one to jump on the environmental band wagon promoted by the first Earth Day in 1970.  He believed this was a precursor of public concern and he wanted to benefit from it politically.   

Eventually he passed the Clear Air Act, the Clear Water Act the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act, requiring environmental impact statements for federal projects.   He created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).  All of which create virtual lava flows of scientifically dubious regulations, creating outrageous burdens on the American people, and the American economy.   Furthermore, all these laws and agencies give rise to lawsuits by activists that plague economic development with legal costs, studies and delays. 

What is the cost of all these federal regulations to the nation’s people?  One point eight trillion dollars a year!  And I have no idea what kind of costs of all these state laws impose on society.  So what is the solution - at least at the federal level?

No one can fix this piecemeal because it is a foundational issue and until that foundational problem is recognized it will never be solved. So what is that foundational issue? Passage of the 16^th and 17^th amendments in 1913, which laid the foundation for our doom. 

The 16^th amendment gave the federal government the right to tax income.  This gave them the right to confiscate an unending amount of society’s money, [called their fair share] and spend it like drunken sailors. That turned the federal government into an insatiable beast that can never be fed to satisfaction, creating debt that is threatening the stability of not only the nation, but the world.

The 17^th amendment changed how Senators are chosen. The Founding Fathers were determined to prevent the federal government from becoming an all too powerful entity that was centralized and out of control. In order to do this they created a government that wasn’t supposed to do very much creating a true balance of power between the central government and the state governments. In those days the word ‘state’ didn’t mean province, it meant an independent nation. So the Senators were chosen by the state governments to be ambassadors to the federal government in order to stop power grabbing by the central government.

After passage of the 17^th amendment they would be elected by popular vote, exactly what the Founding Fathers wanted to avoid, because that was already what the House of Representatives was for. That amendment destroyed the balance of power - the 10^th amendment notwithstanding. As long as the 17^th exists the 10^th is meaningless, and by misusing the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution the federal government can overturn any and all local authority, and individual rights guaranteed under the Constitution.

“The deterioration of the Constitution’s separation of, and balance of, powers means that regulators and bureaucrats now make most laws……The executive branch increasingly imposes its will: President Obama and his administration repeatedly say they are not going to wait for Congress…...”

What about the Supreme Court?  Don’t they understand how the Commerce Clause is being misused?  Until the Rehnquist court in 1995 SCOTUS never saw a law that exceeded Congress’s power under the Commerce Clause for sixty years.  In fact, they held the view that no matter how slight the impact might be on commerce it would now be subject to federal control.  If there ever was a system for abuse and tyranny this was it, and now the states were powerless to do anything about it. 

Roman Senator Cato the Elder was born in 234 BC and believed that Carthage was too dangerous to be allowed to exist. Therefore he gave speeches ending in the phrase [no matter the topic of the speech] “Carthago delenda est”, “Carthage Must be Destroyed". 

The 16th and 17th amendments are our modern Carthage – too dangerous to exist.   This is foundational. The only fix is the repeal of the 16th and 17th amendments.   After that - everything else will fall into place.   But first we must be willing to recognize the 16th and 17th amendments really are the enemy - our modern Carthage! 

Sedecim et septemdecim delenda est!

Comment Filed In Support Of EPA's Repeal Of The 2009 Endangerment Finding

 September 17, 2025 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

Yesterday, along with two excellent colleagues, I submitted a Comment to EPA on the subject of the proposed and pending repeal of the so-called Endangerment Finding of 2009. The Endangerment Finding (EF) is the absurd regulatory action by which the Obama-era EPA purported to find that the trace gas carbon dioxide (CO2) constitutes a “danger” to human health and welfare as it accumulates in the atmosphere from the current level of about 0.04%, to perhaps 0.05% or maybe even (the horror!) 0.06% by some time later this century. 

The EF is then the basis for all the subsequent regulatory initiatives by the Obama and Biden administrations to regulate and suppress the production and use of hydrocarbon fuels. These initiatives have included things like rules to force the closure of all coal and natural gas power plants by some time in the 2030s; mileage rules for automobiles that would ratchet up over time until no gasoline-powered car could comply (also by some time in the 2030s); restrictions on oil and gas leases on federal lands; blocking the construction of pipelines; and even regulations that have made it so that dishwashers and washing machines don’t work very well any more.

Here is a link to our Comment.

Some background for those who have not been following closely, or maybe who have lost track of the status of this long-running saga: The EF was always absurd, but as long as Obama was in office it was pointless to try to get his EPA to reconsider it. However, after Trump first got elected in 2016, I got together with a group of friends and colleagues to see if we could encourage, or maybe even force, the new Trump administration to get rid of this very destructive regulation. On January 20, 2017 — Inauguration Day of the Trump 45 administration — we filed a Petition for Reconsideration of the EF. The Petition was based on scientific research that had come out during the time after the 2009 EF, and that undermined what was already the slim basis for the finding of endangerment.

But then, sadly, the first Trump administration did not make this issue one of its priorities. In the period from 2017 to 2020, we filed seven Supplements to our initial Petition, each time using citations to new information or research further undermining the basis for the EF in an effort to get EPA’s attention. But the first Trump administration never undertook the effort to repeal it.

Then Biden came into office, and issued a final rejection of our Petition for Reconsideration in 2022. We proceeded to appeal that rejection to the D.C. Circuit. Actually, we had no illusions that a Biden EPA would undo the EF, even if ordered to reconsider it by the D.C. Circuit or Supreme Court. However, we did think that by keeping the issue alive during the four Biden years, we could increase the chance that a new Republican administration in 2025 (whether Trump or someone else) would undertake the task, either on its own initiative or by compulsion from a court.

As it happened, we lost in the D.C. Circuit in 2023, and then got a final rejection in our certiorari petition by the Supreme Court in 2024. But then Trump got re-elected. Apparently, he had been paying attention to this issue during his four years out of office, perhaps in part as a result of our efforts. Promptly upon taking office for his second term, Trump issued an Executive Order directing the new EPA administrator to look into this issue. In July 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin initiated the formal process of repealing the EF. The EPA document initiating the reconsideration specifically stated that the Biden administration rejection of our Petition had been reversed! The comment period on the proposed repeal is currently open through September 22.

Our Comment focuses on two aspects of the supposed scientific basis for the EF that are just completely wrong, and without which the EF cannot stand. The first is the reliance of the EF on supposed evidence of what is called the “Global Average Surface Temperature” (GAST) records allegedly showing strong warming from the late 19th century to the early 21st; and the second is supposed evidence of increasing severe weather events, allegedly arising from warming derived from increased CO2 in the atmosphere.

Unfortunately for the EF, the GAST records are useless for any policy purpose, because they have been substantially created not by actual observations but by infilling (aka fabrication) by bureaucrats. From our Petition, pages 5-6:

The scientific basis for the 2009 GHG Endangerment Finding has been shown to have been built on quicksand because the Global Average Surface Temperature data have been, and continue to be, totally fabricated because, for a very significant portion of the planet and a substantial portion of the time periods in question, there was no surface temperature data whatsoever. This fabrication was done to support for global warming claims and was carried out by all three entities providing GAST data measurement, NOAA, NASA and the UK’s Hadley CRU. . . . 

For example, the Southern Hemisphere is 80.9% ocean, and prior to the year 2000 there was virtually no credible monthly ocean surface temperature data whatsoever for this massive area. This fact alone means that until 2000, the surface temperature record had virtually no data whatsoever for over 40% (50%*0.809) of the planet. But the situation is even worse than that because for much of the quoted surface temperature record since about 1850, there are virtually no credible monthly surface temperature data outside of North America and Europe.

Lots more detail on this issue is available in the Comment.

As bad or worse was EPA’s reliance in making the EF on claims of supposedly increasing and worsening severe weather events. Overwhelming amounts of research, ongoing since the 2009 EF, show these claims to be completely false. Our Comment contains multiple quotes from EPA’s EF documenting their reliance on worsening severe weather as a critical source of the claimed “endangerment” from atmospheric CO2. From our Comment, page 11, quoting the text of EPA’s EF:

“The evidence concerning how human-induced climate change may alter extreme weather events also clearly supports a finding of endangerment” [74 Fed. Reg.] at 66497:3. An entire subheading of the Endangerment Finding, Section IV(B)(1)(c), is devoted to explaining that the “Effects on Extreme Weather Events” “Endanger Public Health.” Id. at 66525:2. There is simply no question but that EPA grounded the 2009 Endangerment Findings in part on the claim that GHG emissions cause increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events.

The Comment then at pages 12-14 cites the latest research and data on every sort of extreme weather event — heat waves, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, floods, wild fires, snowfall, and so forth. The supposedly worsening trends in every case are missing from the data. You would think that the Biden EPA would have been embarrassed by this as the data continued to accumulate, but these people are beyond embarrassment.

I encourage readers to read the entire Comment, which is 20 pages long, for much more detail. Even at that, we did not by any means try to cover the whole range of arguments for rescinding the EF, but only a subset of the most important pieces of scientific data and logic that invalidate it.

Undoubtedly EPA will get some thousands of comments from various grifters and fake “scientists” living off government handouts, arguing for retaining the EF. If you happen to review any of those, see if they have any answer to the these two main points that we made. I don’t think that any good answer exists.

Many thanks to my colleagues Harry MacDougald and Jim Wallace, who did the main work in drafting this Comment. They were kind enough to let me participate.

EPA Finally Proposes To Rescind The Endangerment Finding

July 29, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian

It’s been a long time coming. But today the EPA, through its Administrator Lee Zeldin, finally began the formal process of rescinding the so-called “Endangerment Finding” (EF). The EF is the 2009 regulatory action by which the Obama-era EPA purported to determine that CO2 and other greenhouse gases constitute a “danger to human health and welfare.” That Finding then formed the basis for all subsequent federal greenhouse gas regulations, including efforts of Obama and Biden regulators to force the closure of all power plants running on coal and natural gas, and to mandate increased vehicle mileage to levels that no internal combustion engine could meet.

EPA initiated the rescission process today by means of an announcement in a speech by Zeldin, who appeared at an event in Indianapolis, and also through this document, titled “Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards.” The document looks to be about a couple of hundred pages long, although it’s hard to know exactly, because the pages aren’t numbered.

Long time readers here will know that I have been an active participant in efforts, beginning when President Trump first took office in 2017, to get the EF rescinded. Immediately after Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, co-counsel Harry MacDougald and I filed a Petition to EPA, on behalf of the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC), seeking the rescission. Here is a post I wrote in April 2017, describing the initiation of the petition process, and also linking to our Petition. But during Trump’s first term, despite the critical importance of the EF in supporting all of the burdensome “climate” regulations, EPA never undertook the rescission process. We continued to press the point, filing some seven supplements to our Petition during the four years of Trump’s first term. For example, here is a post from July 2017 announcing the first of the Supplements to our Petition, based on new research at the time.

Ultimately our Petition was denied in 2022 by the Biden EPA. We then appealed that denial to the DC Circuit, where our appeal was denied in 2023, and to the U.S. Supreme Court, where certiorari was denied in 2024.

Well, the proposal in today’s document will reverse the denial of our Petition. I can’t give you a page cite, but this quote is from the page of the EPA document that contains footnote 15:

If finalized, this action would also rescind denial[] of petitions for reconsideration of the Endangerment Finding in 2022 . . . entitled “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act; Final Action on Petitions,” 87 FR 25412 (Apr. 29, 2022). . . .

Vindication!

As to the grounds for the prospective rescission, EPA appears ready to take on both the legal and scientific bases of the EF. As to the legal analysis, the following quote comes from the page preceding footnote 42:

Section IV.A of this preamble describes our primary proposal to rescind the Endangerment Finding by concluding that CAA section 202(a) does not authorize the EPA to prescribe standards for GHG emissions based on global climate change concerns or to issue standalone findings that do not apply the statutory standard for regulation as a cohesive whole. If finalized, this proposal would require rescinding the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations because we lacked statutory authority to issue them in the first instance. . . . 

Next, we propose that the Nation’s response to global climate change concerns generally, and specifically whether that response should include regulating GHG emissions from new motor vehicles and engines, is an economically and politically significant issue that triggers the major questions doctrine under UARG and West Virginia, and that Congress did not clearly authorize the EPA to decide it by empowering the Administrator to “prescribe … standards” under CAA section 202(a). Throughout this section, we propose that the Endangerment Finding relied on various forms of Chevron deference to depart from the best reading of the statute and exceeded the EPA’s authority in several fundamental respects, any one of which would independently require rescission to conform to the best reading of the law.

On the subject of “climate science,” the following quote comes from the document’s pre-amble:

[T]he Administrator has serious concerns that many of the scientific underpinnings of the Endangerment Finding are materially weaker than previously believed and contradicted by empirical data, peer-reviewed studies, and scientific developments since 2009.

Then, on the page with footnote 87 there begins a lengthy section titled “Climate Science Discussion.” The gist of this entire section is that the alarmists have not proved their claims. There are lengthy paragraphs reviewing data on all the major “extreme weather” claims, and citing work showing no increasing or accelerating trends in things like hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, sea level and the like. Here is a paragraph that reiterates a theme of our Petition, namely that the amount of human caused global warming cannot be separated from what may be caused by natural factors:

The Administrator is also troubled by the Endangerment Finding’s seemingly inconsistent treatment of the nature and extent of the role human action with respect to climate change. The Endangerment Finding attributes the entirety of adverse impacts from climate change to increased GHG concentrations, and it attributes virtually the entirety of increased GHG concentrations to anthropogenic emissions from all sources. 

But the causal role of anthropogenic emissions is not the exclusive source of these phenomena, and any projections and conclusions bearing on the issue should be appropriately discounted to reflect additional factors. Moreover, recent data and analyses suggest that attributing adverse impacts from climate change to anthropogenic emissions in a reliable manner is more difficult than previously believed and demand additional analysis of the role of natural factors and other anthropogenic factors such as urbanization and localized population growth (2025 CWG Draft Report at 14-22, 82-92).

The process here will likely take until around the end of this year for EPA to formally enact the rescission. And then the legal battles begin — first to the DC Circuit, and then to the Supreme Court. The big question: Can the administration get this process to the Supreme Court in time to avoid a reversal of this whole regulatory effort by a Democratic administration that could be elected in 2028? I would think that if the Supremes have upheld this effort of Trump’s EPA before January 2029, it will be very difficult for a subsequent administration to reverse. On the other hand, if the status as of January 2029 is that the DC Circuit has struck down EPA’s rescission and the matter is pending in the Supreme Court, it would be much easier to attempt a reversal. But the ongoing failure of “net zero” energy transition plans in places like New York, California, Germany and the UK may make reversal a dead letter anyway.

I want to offer my thanks and gratitude to the small band of independent thinkers who have fought this lonely battle all these years, in the face of the billions of dollars at the hands of the climate industrial juggernaut. For particular mention: the members of CHECC (including its moving force, James Wallace); my co-counsel Harry MacDougald; the few think tanks that have taken on this issue, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute (who filed a Petition for rescission of the EF along with ours) and the Heartland Institute; the CO2 Coalition, including its Chair Will Happer and Executive Director Greg Wrightstone; CFACT; the Global Warming Policy Foundation (I serve on its Board); and Anthony Watts and Charles Rotter at Watts Up With That. I’m sure that there are a few that I have forgotten. Congratulations to all!

EV Update: Will The Market Survive The Expiration Of The Federal Tax Credit?

July 26, 2025/ Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 20 Comments

How quickly things change. 

It was barely more than a year ago that climate activists and federal bureaucrats thought they had maneuvered the internal combustion engine (ICE) automobile to the brink of extinction. ICE vehicles had become like dinosaurs, inferior to their new competitors the EVs, and therefore headed for the scrap heap of history. Customers were flocking to the trendy new EVs, which were seeing rapidly rising sales.

And the all-powerful federal bureaucracy was going to give the final push to put ICE vehicles out of their misery. On June 7, 2024 President Biden’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had issued a final rule (“Corporate Average Fuel Economy [CAFE] Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027 and Beyond and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030 and Beyond”) jacking up mandatory average vehicle mileage to 50+ [mpg] as of 2031, with further increases to follow from there. Since no ICE vehicles bigger than a baby carriage could achieve that mileage, the only path forward for vehicle manufacturers would be rapid conversion to making only EVs. NHTSA’s mileage rule had also quickly followed an equally draconian mandate from EPA, finalized on April 18, 2024 (“Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles”) setting strict and declining limits for CO2 emissions that no ICE vehicles would be able to meet by the early 2030s. And meanwhile, 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act had extended a $7500 tax credit to buyers of new EVs through December 31, 2032.

So all the pieces were in place. By some time in the early 2030s, it would be effectively illegal to sell new ICE cars, and they would be rapidly disappearing from the roads.

Well, not so fast. Suddenly, the rapid advance of the EV may have stalled out completely. The federal regulators have reversed their direction. And customer preferences seemingly favorable to EVs may turn out to evaporate as soon as federal tax benefits end, an event now just a couple of months away.

NHTSA’s CAFE standards just got eviscerated by the “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act. Although the standards themselves have not yet been rescinded, the OBBB re-set the enforcement mechanism to have a maximum penalty of zero. This is from a July 8, 2025 memo from the law firm Sidley & Austin:

In one of its many changes, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, enacted on July 4, 2025, eliminated civil penalties for noncompliance with federal fuel economy standards.  Specifically, Section 40006 of the Act amends the language of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) statute to reset the maximum civil penalty to $0.00.  Although the statute and its implementing regulations otherwise remain in place, this amendment removes any civil penalties for producing passenger cars and light trucks that do not meet fuel economy requirements.

As to the EPA-mandated CO2 emissions limits for vehicles, EPA announced on March 12, 2025 that it was beginning a process of reconsidering the vehicle greenhouse gas emissions rule that had just been adopted less than a year before. Excerpt:

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency will reconsider the Model Year 2027 and Later Light-Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles regulation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles. In addition to imposing over $700 billion in regulatory and compliance costs, these rules provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate that takes away Americans’ ability to choose a safe and affordable car for their family and increases the cost of living on all products that trucks deliver. 

That one may be in the regulatory grinder for many months, but with little doubt as to what the final result will be, namely full rescission.

And the $7500 per new vehicle tax credit? After just having been extended to 2032 by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the credit has now been modified by the OBBBA to end as of September 30, 2025. From Kiplinger, July 12:

With the passage of President Donald Trump’s 2025 tax reform, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) the federal EV tax credit will expire for vehicles purchased or leased after September 30, 2025. As a result, buyers have only a short window left to take advantage of these federal savings.

All of a sudden, EVs and ICE vehicles are set to compete on a completely level playing field, with no mandates or tax credits propping up the EV side of the competition. How will that turn out? It remains to be seen, but data from the first half of the year indicate that the previous rapid increase in EV sales may already be stalling out. In a reversal for a previously rapidly-growing market segment, sales of EVs in the second quarter of 2025 declined significantly from the same period the prior year. From Cox Automotive, July 14, 2025:

[S]ales of new electric vehicles (EVs) in the second quarter of 2025 were lower year over year by 6.3%, in line with the Cox Automotive forecast. A total of 310,839 new EVs were sold in the U.S, down from 331,853 in the same period a year earlier. Sales in Q2 were higher than in Q1 by 4.9%, and total EV sales through the first half of 2025 set a record at 607,089, representing a 1.5% year-over-year increase.

Cox continues to predict a spike in EV sales in the third quarter of 2025, in the run-up to the expiration of the tax credit on September 30. However, after that, it is entirely likely that there will be a significant decline. Without the government mandates and subsidies, it’s hard to see EVs expanding much beyond being a niche product used as a second (or third) vehicle by affluent buyers.

The EPA Grows A Pair And Takes A Stand On Glyphosate

By Josh Bloom,  Aug 13, 2019 @ American Council on Science and Health

 

Sometimes facts beat hype. This week was one of those times. The EPA, after years of compiling and evaluating data, declared that it would not approve labels for the herbicide glyphosate that contained a cancer warning. This puts the U.S. agency in direct opposition to California's absurd Proposition 65, which would require a cancer warning label on the chemical -- even though it would be incorrect. The U.S. now joins a dozen other countries that have already determined glyphosate is safe as used.

You might as well get pissed off in advance because if you don't much care for scientific evidence you're not going to enjoy this a whole lot. Sorry, but facts are facts, and in this case, the US EPA has them right while the State of California has them wrong.

By any measure, California's Proposition 65 is an exercise in madness. 

The law, which is officially titled "The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986," was well-intended at the time it was written – to stop pollutants from being discharged into water. Now it has nothing to do with water; it is merely an excuse for predatory trial lawyers, to file lawsuits against companies, small and large, with the laughable goal of "protecting the public" by suing companies that fail to "warn the public" about harmless products like purses, shoes, Tiffany lamps, and bird feeders, as well as hotel rooms, and amusement parks. How, did these evil companies –many being small family businesses – fail to adequately warn us? By not putting an immensely stupid label on things that cannot possibly hurt you. (See Should California Put A Warning Label On Your Penis?). So it should not be surprising that California wants a Prop 65 label put on the controversial herbicide glyphosate.

Except, the EPA doesn't see it that way when it comes to glyphosate (1). The agency recently announced that it would not permit California to put a cancer label on the chemical. And rightly so. 

Some will write off the EPA's recent decision to reject a cancer warning label for glyphosate as partisan politics or big money influencing a government agency. It is neither. Instead, we are seeing a rare case of honesty that is based on scientific evidence, not nonsense. The EPAs decision is scientifically sound on every level. 

"We will not allow California's flawed program to dictate federal policy, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler 

Good for him. Wheeler is dead-on. The "evidence" supporting the carcinogenicity of the chemical is not only flimsy; it is a product of fraudulent research by the International Agency on Cancer Research (IARC). Here is an excerpt from my colleague Dr. Alex Berezow's complete annihilation of IARC and its findings:

"We now have an answer... The Times reports that Christopher Portier, a key IARC advisor who lobbied to have glyphosate listed as a carcinogen, accepted $160,000 from trial lawyers representing cancer patients who stood to profit handsomely by suing glyphosate manufacturers. Mr. Portier's failure to disclose such an obvious conflict of interest has exploded into a textbook case of scientific fraud." Dr. Alex Berezow, Glyphosate-Gate: IARC's Scientific Fraud, October 2017

IARC's "evidence," such as it is, was the lone culprit in designating glyphosate as a carcinogen. Epidemiological studies have found no connection between cancer industrial workers who routinely handle the stuff. Biochemical assays that are suggestive of DNA damage or mutation all come up negative. Aside from IARC's made-up baloney, there are no valid animal studies that show that it causes cancer. Regulatory agencies from the US, Canada, the EU, France, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, Australia, and Korea all state that glyphosate does not pose a risk of toxicity or carcinogenicity. 

Yet, California, based on IARC's phony findings wanted to slap an incorrect label on it based on the findings of a corrupt group. 

A rare win for science and a loss for faulty activism. How refreshing. 

NOTE:

(1) This week's announcement was not the first time that EPA has objected to the cancer label. In 2017 the agency released the Glyphosate Human Health Risk Assessment, which was a basis for the 2019 decision.

Related content:

Why Did the EPA Delay Its Glyphosate Safety Report?

If You Accept Science, You Accept Roundup Does Not Cause Cancer

Glyphosate Bee Death Story Is Bee-S

Glyphosate: A Slow But Steady Vindication

How to 'Prove' a Chemical is Dangerous: The Glyphosate Case Study

 

Tags:

• glyphosate
• IARC
• IARC corruption
• cancer warning labels

Category

Chemicals & Chemistry

 

Josh Bloom

Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science

Dr. Josh Bloom, the Director of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Science, comes from the world of drug discovery, where he did research for more than 20 years. He holds a Ph.D. in chemistry.

Recent articles by this author:

The Perfect Rocket Fuel: No Fires, No Chemicals. Just Energy.

CNN (and Others) Issue Terrifying Warning on Soaring Microplastics. But Did They Read the Study?

It's Summer. Some Stuff You Should Know About the Ocean

Ridiculous Supplements with Ridiculous Names

Dead Wrong: What West Virginia’s OD Deaths Tell Us About U.S. Opioid Policy

EPA Gets Moving On Its Push For Energy Deregulation

June 16, 2025/ Francis Menton @ International Liberty, Tags: Energy and the Environment, Trump, Federal Regulations,  12 Comments

Now coming into view are the specifics of EPA’s strategy to end the Obama/Biden efforts to strangle the energy sector of the economy in the name of “saving the planet” from climate change. A document released by EPA last week on June 11 lays out the plan for repeal of the absurd (and dangerous) regulation that would have ended use of fossil fuels to generate electricity by some time in the 2030s. This EPA document is particularly interesting for the way it treats — and effectively sidelines — the so-called Endangerment Finding, the 2009 regulatory action that is the basis for all of the Obama/Biden fossil fuel suppression efforts.

President Trump made it clear from the first day of his new administration that he intended to undo as many as possible of the Obama/Biden era burdens and restriction on American energy production and use. Among the Executive Orders that Trump signed on “Day 1” (January 20, 2025) was one titled “Unleashing American Energy.” All agency heads were directed to review existing energy regulations for potential rescission as being overly burdensome. Excerpt:

Sec. 3.  . . .  (a)  The heads of all agencies shall review all existing regulations, orders, guidance documents, policies, settlements, consent orders, and any other agency actions . . . to identify those agency actions that impose an undue burden on the identification, development, or use of domestic energy resources — with particular attention to oil, natural gas, coal, hydropower, biofuels, critical mineral, and nuclear energy resources. . . .

On March 12, EPA followed through with an announcement of what it called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” The announcement identified and listed some 31 EPA regulations and programs as unduly burdening the American economy, and therefore targeted for extinction. These ranged from rules designed to eliminate fossil fuel-fired power plants (called “Clean Power Plan 2.0,” or CPP 2.0), to rules restricting automobile emissions (and effectively mandating electric vehicles), to the massive “greenhouse gas reporting program,” and many, many more. The first item at the top of the list for elimination was CPP 2.0. However, at that time, the actual process for rescinding these various rules had not yet begun, and it remained unclear what approach EPA might take to effect the rescissions.

As regards CPP 2.0, that ambiguity ended on June 11, when there appeared on EPA’s website a “pre-publication” version of the document intended to initiate the rescission of CPP 2.0. The title is “Repeal of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units” The actual regulatory rescission process formally begins when this document gets published in what is called the Federal Register. Apparently, that will occur tomorrow, June 17.

There are several notable things about this document. First, it signals that CPP 2.0 will be eliminated through a process of formal “notice and comment” rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act. Second, it lays out the schedule and procedures for the rescission, thus giving an indication of when the process will be concluded (and ripe for judicial review). Third, it provides the rationale for the rescission, grounding that rationale in the language of the relevant statute (here Clean Air Act Section 111). And fourth — and most significant in my view — it uses a rationale that implicitly undoes and undermines the Biden-era “Endangerment Finding” that underlies all of the government’s greenhouse gas regulations. And it does that without ever confronting the so-called “science” of greenhouse warming. I’ll take these points one at a time.

The first seven or so pages of EPA’s document set forth the procedure and schedule of the prospective rescission. There will be a virtual public hearing 15 days after Federal Register publication (thus, in early July). Comments will be due 45 days after Federal Register publication. That means that the comment period can be closed by some time in early August. After that, EPA must respond to the comments before finalizing its action. They will want to be careful in doing that. (Any slip-up can give an opening to a court to enjoin its action.) However, relative to other rule makings, there will be no occasion in this one to modify the rule’s language in response to comments, since the rule is being eliminated entirely. I highly doubt that any commenter is going to dissuade the current EPA from rescinding this rule. While this is somewhat speculative, I expect that the rescission can be finalized by early fall. And then, on to the litigation!

Note that EPA is not taking the alternative route of just asserting that CPP 2.0 is illegal as unauthorized by the Clean Air Act and beyond the powers of the executive branch pursuant to the Major Question Doctrine as articulated in West Virginia v. EPA. The administration may well use that theory as an alternative basis to support repeal of CPP 2.0 when their regulatory action gets challenged in court. However, I think they are wise to add a second rationale to support the repeal.

Now to the interesting part of EPA’s document. The basic approach to getting rid of CPP 2.0 is not to try to attack it on the basis of the badly flawed so-called “science” of greenhouse gases and global warming. Rather, the approach is to carefully parse the language of Clean Air Act Section 111 to emphasize words that were ignored or downplayed in the previous regulatory actions.

Many discussions of the Obama-era Endangerment Finding speak of EPA supporting its prior regulatory action by having made a determination that greenhouse gases constitute “a danger to public health and welfare.” That is a shorthand which I admit I have myself been guilty of using. But the actual words of the applicable statute are different. Here are the relevant words of Clean Air Act Section 111(b)(1)(A):

[The EPA Administrator] shall include a category of sources in such list [of sources of pollutants] if in his judgment it causes, or contributes significantly to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.

Thus, it is not sufficient to satisfy the words of the statute that greenhouse gases in the aggregate or in general might be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare in some way. Rather, there must be a determination that emissions from this category of sources specifically (here, U.S. electric power plants) are reasonably anticipated to cause or contribute significantly to a danger to public health or welfare. And also, by the words of the statute, this determination is committed to the judgment of the EPA Administrator.

There is some endless discussion in the document of the impact of these semantic nuances. Here is a small sample from pages 52-53:

Consistent with its ordinary meaning, the term “significant[]” is defined as “having or likely to have influence or effect: important.” “Important” is similarly defined, in turn, as “marked by or indicative of significant worth or consequence : valuable in content or relationship.” Whether a source category’s contribution to air pollution should be considered “important” or “valuable” entails consideration of the influence, effect, or usefulness of finding such contribution. If regulating emissions of a particular pollutant from a source category would have little effect on dangerous air pollution, that source category’s contribution to the air pollution is not significant. 

By the same token, if regulating emissions would not be useful, taking into account, inter alia, the impacts on, and the Administration’s policies concerning, the source category, that source category’s contribution to the air pollution is not significant. An inquiry into the effect of a finding of significance necessarily involves policy considerations that will inform any subsequent regulation when making the significance determination in the first instance.

The Biden administration’s CPP 2.0 had sought to eliminate fossil fuel-fired power plants by imposing an uneconomic requirement of carbon capture and storage on any such remaining plants. But this document explains that that approach cannot comply with the statutory text:

Thus, the control options available to reduce GHGs from fossil fuel-fired EGUs [Electricity Generating Units] are not permissible as BSER {Best System of Emissions Reduction], not adequately demonstrated, cost unreasonable, or potentially ineffective in reducing emissions. Because it is likely that the Agency may be unable to develop a BSER that would result in any meaningful, cost-reasonable GHG emission reductions, the contribution of this source category to GHG air pollution is not significant.

And the Trump EPA has also caught on that greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. power plant sector have no “significance” when the broader international picture is considered. From page 63:

Unlike other air pollutants that can have a localized or regional impact and direct consequences to human health, GHGs are global pollutants. The share of GHG emissions from the U.S. power sector, including CO2, to global concentrations of GHGs in the atmosphere is relatively minor and has been declining over time. In 2005, U.S. electric power sector GHG emissions comprised 5.5 percent of total global GHG emissions. 

This percentage has fallen steadily since then to 4.6 percent in 2010, to 3.7 percent in 2015, and comprising 3 percent of total global emissions by 2022. This relative decline is driven in part by increases in GHG emissions from developing countries that are rapidly electrifying and increasing their energy demands, including through the robust deployment of fossil fuel-fired EGUs —a trend that is likely to persist going forward. Further, many other countries burn much more coal than is utilized by the U.S. power sector. For example, in 2024, China used more than 13 times as much coal as the U.S. . . . Limiting the use of coal and other fossil fuels in U.S. EGUs does not significantly impact global GHG concentrations when other countries continue to increase their use of fossil fuels.

There is lots of other good stuff in this document — far more than I can quote here. To be fair, EPA is following the tried and true regulatory strategy of burying the public in verbiage as a way to make it as difficult as possible for a court to intervene.

As can be seen from the above, this proposed regulatory action relates to CPP 2.0 specifically, and not to the Endangerment Finding more generally. Nevertheless, the logic expressed in this document has the effect of undermining the EF and rendering it essentially ineffective. 

The same arguments as to “significance” of U.S.-based emissions, and as to the EPA Administrator’s right to exercise his judgment under statutory language, will apply to all other sectors where the Obama/Biden administrations had sought to suppress the use of fossil fuels. 

All the environmental groups that have been gearing up to defend the “science” of global warming are going to need to totally re-tool their arguments.

Trump Closes Notorious EPA Lab that Conducted Illegal Human Experiments

Steve Milloy Jun 17, 2025 @ Townhall 

President Trump is trying to save money by terminating leases on facilities used by federal agencies. One of these is EPA’s Human Studies Facility located at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. “Scientists are trying to save it,” reports Nature magazine. But being a waste of money is the least interesting aspect of the infamous lab.

In 2011, through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), I exposed the lab’s illegal experimentation on humans with air pollutants that EPA considers to be deadly. The lab’s central feature is an actual gas chamber into which EPA pumped exhaust from a diesel truck idling outside in a parking lot. You can see a photo of the twisted arrangement here.

After filtering out the carbon monoxide, EPA concentrated the exhaust’s fine particulate matter (soot, called “PM2.5” by EPA) to unrealistically high levels and pumped it into the chamber in which human guinea pigs inhaled it for periods of two hours. The purpose of the experiments was to observe the effects, if any, of inhaling PM2.5. For these experiments, EPA had recruited: asthmatics; people with heart disease and diabetes; and elderly persons up to 80 years of age. EPA paid its human guinea pigs as much as a couple thousand dollars for their participation in the experiments.

All this may seem harmless enough. But was it? EPA had previously concluded that PM2.5 was, essentially, the most toxic substance known to man. Any inhalation could cause death within hours, the agency had determined.  It had also stated that the people most at risk from inhaling PM2.5 were: asthmatics; people with heart disease and diabetes; and the elderly. Those at risk from PM2.5 were the very sort of people upon whom it had been experimenting.

But EPA had not disclosed any of this to, and so did not obtain legally required “informed consent” from its human guinea pigs. Instead of informing its human guinea pigs in writing that the agency believed the experiments could kill them, as was required by federal regulations, state law and the Nuremberg Code on human experimentation, the agency’s consent forms only disclosed that some temporary coughing or wheezing may result from the experiments.

Upon learning of the horrific experiments, a group to which I belonged sued the agency in federal court to stop them. The documents filed by EPA in response to our lawsuit revealed some shocking facts and admissions.

In an affidavit filed with the court, an EPA employee stated that he verbally warned the human guinea pigs: “There is a possibility you may die from this [experiment].” Although such important information would have had to be disclosed, and consent obtained in writing (versus merely verbally), it has simply been illegal since the discovery of the Nazi concentration camp research to risk human lives in non-therapeutic medical experiments. Conducting experiments for the purpose of issuing regulations clearly falls outside of that exception.

In the Department of Justice memorandum filed on behalf of the agency, EPA made the shocking admissionthat, in fact, the science (i.e., epidemiology studies) that it relied on to conclude that PM2.5 was deadly, wasn’t actually sufficient scientifically for making its PM2.5 claims. In fact, the reason the EPA was conducting the human experiments, it admitted, was to develop biological evidence or plausibility to back up the lethality of PM2.5 it told the public the epidemiology studies indicated. This meant that EPA was trying to harm (kill?) the patients to back up its mere hypothesis about the lethality of PM2.5.

Fortunately for EPA, it could also admit that no one had been harmed by PM2.5 in its experiments, which failed to elicit a cough or a wheeze among the hundreds of allegedly 

The court eventually dismissed our lawsuit for lack of standing, not on the merits. It ruled that only the human guinea pigs could bring such a lawsuit, a bizarre outcome since EPA had lied to them about what it was doing in the first place. But EPA’s conduct had been exposed to the world and the agency was shamed into halting the illegal experiments. The agency tried to rehabilitate itself with subsequent white wash investigations by its own Inspector General and the National Academy of Sciences. But neither effort was successful.

Fast forward to today and there have been real world consequences to EPA’s illegal experiments and the Trump EPA must address them to implement its deregulatory agenda.

PM2.5 has been the most powerful regulatory weapon of the Clinton, Obama and Biden EPAs. The Obama-Biden and, later, the Biden-Harris war-on-coal air quality rules for greenhouse gases and mercury emissions all actually depend on the validity of its PM2.5 claims. Just this week, the Trump EPA announced it was going to roll back those two rules.

When first issued by the Obama and Biden EPAs, the regulations couldn’t survive a standard cost-benefit analysis with respect to greenhouse gas or mercury emissions. To make the rules politically defensible cost-benefit-wise, the agency claimed that by reducing coal plant greenhouse gas and mercury emissions, the new rules would also reduce emissions of PM2.5.  Given that EPA had claimed that PM2.5 killed about 570,000 Americans per year and the agency valued each death $10 million, there has been no regulatory cost that could balance, much less overcome, the claimed benefits of the rules.

But EPA’s PM2.5 claims were all lies. We now know that because of the illegal human experiments and our lawsuit. Closing the infamous lab is great start. But the EPA should apply the results of the human experiments controversy to shut down the EPA’s many PM2.5-based regulatory abuses.

Steve Milloy is a biostatistician and lawyer, publishes JunkScience.com and is on X @JunkScience.  Steve has fought this battle for many years. Some of these links have multiple articles linked dealing with this corruption by the EPA. 

1. PM2.5: The Latest Air Pollution Scam 
2. Swamp Diving: The EPA's Secret Human Experiment Regime
3. WashTimes: EPA told human test subjects – ‘there’s a possibility you may die from this’
4. The EPA Human Testing Saga Continues
5. Blockbuster: EPA sued in federal court for conducting illegal human experiments
6. Important Announcement From Steve Milloy on Monday

The Latest On The Federal War Against Internal Combustion Vehicles

June 08, 2024/ Francis Menton  @ Manhattan Contrarian

I’m old enough to remember a time when there were serious environmental concerns with internal combustion engine vehicles. NOx and SOx emissions caused a thick layer of brown smog in the atmosphere during calm weather spells in summer and winter; and a layer of black soot would cover the snow along the roadside in the winter. But gradually that all got cleaned up. Today the bona fide serious environmental concerns about internal combustion engines are far in the past. But the war to eliminate them — supposedly on environmental grounds — is just ramping up.

The Biden Administration is all in with the plan to get rid of the ICE car. Why? It seems to have something to do with the non-existent “climate crisis.” Meanwhile, Congress has passed no legislation authorizing the executive agencies to force ICE vehicles off the market. Nor is the Administration honest enough to admit that they are engaged in outlawing the vehicles that 90+% of the people drive.

Instead we get massive and thoroughly dishonest regulations effectively forcing the approaching end of the ICE vehicle without ever directly saying so. All with effective dates far enough into the future that the public will not notice that anything is happening in time for the upcoming election.

Two big new regulations on this subject have just gone final. First, there was EPA’s “Multi-Pollutant Emissions Standards for Model Years 2027 and Later Light- Duty and Medium-Duty Vehicles,” issued on April 18. And then yesterday from the NHTSA (part of the Department of Transportation) we get “Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards for Passenger Cars and Light Trucks for Model Years 2027 and Beyond and Fuel Efficiency Standards for Heavy-Duty Pickup Trucks and Vans for Model Years 2030 and Beyond.” The first is 373 pages in the three-column, single-spaced format of the Federal Register. The second is 1004 pages in standard double-spaced typing.

If you should take the time to read some or all of the 1377 pages of text, don’t expect to find anywhere in all of that an admission that the plan is to suppress and ultimately eliminate the internal combustion car. Instead it’s happy sweet talk about the supposed “health” benefits of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Here is an example from among many, this from page 27,844 of Volume 89 of the Federal Register:

EPA is establishing both criteria pollutant and GHG standards in this rulemaking given the need for additional reductions in emissions of these air pollutants to protect public health and welfare and based on EPA’s assessment of the suite of available control technologies for those pollutants, some of which are effective in controlling both GHGs and criteria pollutant emissions. Under these performance-based emissions standards, manufacturers have the discretion to choose the mix of technologies that achieve compliance across their fleets. EPA’s modeling provides information about several potential compliance paths manufacturers could use to comply with the standards, based on multiple inputs and assumptions (e.g., in what we have termed the central case, that manufacturers will seek the lowest cost compliance path).

“Manufacturers have the discretion to choose the mix of technologies that achieve compliance . . . .” Right. Everybody knows that the point of this is to force the majority of new car sales to be EVs or plug-in hybrids by some time in the early 2030s. But they’ll never say it straight.

And it’s the same with the new NHTSA Rule. This Rule sets new fleet-average fuel economy standards. NHTSA — aren’t they supposed to be in the business of “Highway Traffic Safety” (that’s the “HTS” part of their name)? Yes, but in the ultimate mission-creep, they are now the people behind the so-called “CAFE” (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards. Obviously, the people cannot be expected on their own to make appropriate trade-offs between fuel economy and other transportation needs (like carrying capacity). Thus, NHTSA now determines that beginning in the early 2030s, manufacturers must achieve average fuel economy for their fleets of 50+ miles per gallon.

But, you say, vehicles with internal combustion engines can’t achieve that figure if they are bigger than a thimble. Exactly. So here is a small piece of NHTSA’s justification:

Reducing gasoline consumption has multiple benefits – it improves our nation’s energy security, it saves consumers money, and reduces harmful pollutant emissions that lead to adverse human and environmental health outcomes and climate change. NHTSA estimates that relative to the reference baseline, this final rule will reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 659 million metric tons for passenger cars and light trucks, and by 55 million metric tons for HDPUVs through calendar year 2050. Again, these relative reductions are greater if the rule is compared to the alternative baseline, but demonstrating a similar level of absolute carbon dioxide emissions.

You say that you have a need for a vehicle that can actually carry a couple of passengers and maybe a few suitcases? What kind of a traitor are you? Your options are to buy an EV or hire a ricksha.

The agencies know full well that they are forcing a transition to EVs that customers do not want. How fast must the forced transition be? This piece from Atlas EV Hub from March 25 estimates that EPA’s Rule by itself will force EV sales to be up to 69% of new vehicle sales by 2032:

The regulation is set to bring significant changes to the auto industry, potentially putting the United States on the glide path to full electrification. Manufacturers have several options to meet the new standards, and electric vehicles (EVs) will play a pivotal role in ensuring manufacturer compliance with these regulations. Under this final rule, battery electric and plug-in hybrid electric light-duty vehicles could make up 32 percent of all new vehicle sales in model year 2027, increasing to 69 percent by model year 2032.

The NHTSA CAFE Rule would require comparable, or perhaps even higher, percentages of EVs in manufacturer sales to achieve compliance.

Do you believe that the U.S. new vehicle market will switch over to mostly EVs so quickly over the next several years? I don’t believe it for a minute. So what happens when manufacturers produce mostly EVs to comply with these Rules, and then nobody will buy them? This could be very entertaining.

It's Past Time to Disarm the FBI, ATF, and the Rest of the Deep State

By Rich Kozlovich 

For law and order people like myself this goes beyond disturbing. The purpose of an armed police force is to defend the innocent, arrest the guilty, to "serve and protect". What happens when we arm bureaucrats beyond what's reasonable or rational? We get the KGB, and society will serve them.....or else!  And have no doubt, the corruption at the FBI and the DOJ is substantial.

Over the years I've posted and written about this outrageous and highly dangerous trend to arm these bureaucrats.  Senator Grassley wants to know why the EPA needs a "mobile command post", what's it for, and who's using it?

.............under Joe Biden's leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent millions of dollars in taxpayer funds on military grade hardware. The supplies include advanced combat equipment, reconnaissance supplies, guns, ammunition and more. And now a U.S. senator wants to know what's going on.......... Biden's EPA already has spent $2,892,770 on those items, a surge of 143% from what was spent during the entire Trump administration.   Sen. Chuck Grassley......described the EPA’s militarization as 'frightening.'............Since 2006, the report noted, the EPA has purchased $10 million worth of various pieces, including "unmanned aircraft, night vision, and radar equipment."...........

 

“There was a pretty extreme edge to the regulatory enforcement agents that interacted with my constituents, especially in rural areas,” ........ “I was surprised to find that these regulatory agencies had armed police officers rolling up into my constituents’ properties to enforce their regulations.”.......

The EPA's response:

“Our agents carry weapons as a critically important public safety measure, for the safety of the agents themselves, and for EPA’s ability to effectively enforce environmental laws.”

Well, that's a load of horsepucky.  The ethics of the EPA is abysmal, filled with radical environmental activists.  These activist bureaucrats make up their own laws, called regulations. These are rules the Congress never sees, nor votes on, and they're out of control, totally destroying the rule of law.   An excellent example is the EPA issues new WOTUS rule after Supreme Court slap down.  

This came about over EPA abuses involving the Sackett family, initiated by a EPA bureaucrats in Idaho.  And these are the people we want to be armed to the hilt?  What we need to do is abolish the EPA. 

Along with the EPA, why is the IRS, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Small Business Administration, and more  armed to the hilt?

• An IRS Thief Stripped Privacy From "Tens of Thousands" of Americans. Here's How the Government Responded.

NASA has it's own militarized SWAT team with "armored vehicles, submachine guns, and breeching shotguns. The Environmental Protection Agency has purchased drones, GPS trackers, radar equipment, and night vision goggles, in addition to stockpiling firearms." Why?

In 2022 Mark Hemingway published this piece, Bureaucrats authorized to pack heat now outnumber ... armed Marines!, saying;

'It's quite shocking how much they try to not have their stuff tracked on any level'.  A report issued last year by the watchdog group Open The Books, “The Militarization of The U.S. Executive Agencies,” found that more than 200,000 federal bureaucrats now have been granted the authority to carry guns and make arrests – more than the 186,000 Americans serving in the U.S. Marine Corps. “One hundred three executive agencies outside of the Department of Defense spent $2.7 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment between fiscal years 2006 and 2019 (inflation adjusted),” notes the report. “Nearly $1 billion ($944.9 million) was spent between fiscal years 2015 and 2019 alone.”..........

 

On May 29, 2024 Patricia McCarthy posted this article asking,  Why do our FBI agents so regularly abuse their power? noting:

The American people are learning by dribs and drabs that the raid on Mar-a-Lago was not only unconstitutional, it was a set-up, an attempt to frame former President Trump for having documents illegally stored there.  The set-up proves the lie. Both the National Archives and the FBI knew said documents, which Trump was legally allowed to have, were carefully stored in a locked storage room.  Many of those boxes were packed and sent there by the National Archives; they likely knew what was in those boxes better than Trump did.  In short, it was a Gestapo-like ploy to both incriminate and humiliate Donald Trump.  As the truth of the raid leaks out (such as the authorization of lethal force)............ it is becoming clearer and clearer that it is the FBI and the National Archives working with the Biden administration that plotted to create a situation by which they could indict Trump.

When the FBI was formed they weren’t armed, and when they were it was to respond to the public’s outrage over bank robbers like John Dillinger who fled in fast cars across state borders. There were many who were opposed because they were concerned about, and warned about, what were seeing right now.  It isn’t just the FBI, now were seeing a lot of mightily armed government bureaucracies. 

 

McCarthy goes on to state:  "The FBI has long been abusing its power to the point that it has become something like Hitler’s Brownshirts or Stalin’s NKVD who were charged with carrying out the Great Purge."

• The FBI  raided and abused the family of pro-life activist Mark Houck, for having shoved a man who accosted his son while peacefully protesting across the street from an abortion clinic. 
• Tina Peters, a Colorado county clerk, had her home raided, her front door broken in by a battering ram.  Had they knocked, she would have opened the door. 
•  Consider the FBI-conceived kidnapping of Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer.  Agents honed in on a few men who seemed easily led, and then provided the plans and weapons and arrested them.
•  Even the ACLU has made a list of “The Ten Most Disturbing Things You Should Know About the FBI.”

This article,  The murder of Bryan Malinowski on May 30, 2024 By John Dietrich is profound:

 

On March 19, the ATF, accompanied by members of the Little Rock Police Department, raided the home of Bryan Malinowski.  Malinowski was the executive director of the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock.  He had no criminal record and did not even know that he was under investigation.  The announced reason for the raid was to execute a search warrant.  The actual reason was to deliver a message to American gun owners that the ATF has the power to end their lives.  This was an example of premeditated murder.  A week prior to the raid, the ATF had assembled to carry out the raid; this raid was canceled allegedly because Malinowski was not home, and it was necessary for him to be there in order for him to set an example.

 

At six in the morning they initiated a no know knock search warrant kicking in the door, never announcing who they were and Malinowski reacted the way many people would react to strangers breaking into their home as such an hour.  He shot at them.  They murdered him, and then just like the FBI abused Mark Houck's family, they abused his wife.  The AFT conducts 11,000 of these raid per year, and this is their standard operating procedure, which was "written by the KGB."

 

"Great Reset. Green New Deal. Build Back Better. New World Order.  Council on Foreign Relations.  The list of secretive global societies and their mission directives for humanity are daunting. Many people who would prefer to be left alone to live their lives free from government interference have an understandable sense of impending doom."

 

It's time to disarm these people, including the FBI.   Let the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigate, and then let them explain to the U.S. Marshall service or local law enforcement why armed action needs to be taken.  We already know the FBI is corrupt, at least at the leadership level, and how deep that goes is of yet unknown, but if Trump is elected, that's going to change.

 

 Two FBI Agents Call for the Agency’s Abolition After Revealing That It Has Adopted “Marxist Culture” and Basically Gone Rogue

 

We absolutely know the Bureau can't be trusted to obey the law, or concern themselves with the Constitutionally guaranteed rights of American citizens. It's time to Return to Enumerated Powers America.