President-elect Donald Trump just announced his sweeping plan to slash the size of the federal government through a new government agency run by businessmen Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.
The temporary agency, which Trump has named the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will be tasked with slashing government bureaucracy, ending nonsensical regulations, and cutting wasteful expenditures, initiatives the American people appear all too happy to see put into action.
Read More
A new report claims that the Biden Administration is attempting to implement federal regulations that will be difficult to reverse by a future president, as polls increasingly suggest that Joe Biden will lose the November election to former President Donald Trump.
According to the Daily Caller, the report says that President Trump plans to sign multiple resolutions under the 1996 Congressional Review Act if he wins a second term, aimed at reversing many of Biden’s regulations. In response, officials in the Biden White House are examining methods to make regulations more permanent or harder to undo.
Read More
President Joe Biden and his administration have taken over 200 actions against the U.S. oil and natural gas industry as energy prices have gone up, according to a new report.
“President Biden and Democrats have a plan for American energy: make it harder to produce and more expensive to purchase,” the Institute for Energy Research states in a new report. “Since Mr. Biden took office, his administration and its allies have taken over 200 actions deliberately designed to make it harder to produce energy here in America.”
Read More
Looking under the hood of today’s jobs report shows it isn’t the home run that Democrats and the media claim.
Approximately half of the 303,000 jobs created last month came in the unproductive government or quasi-government healthcare sectors. These are not the types of jobs that drive growth and improve Americans’ living standards.
Read More
The Biden administration has outpaced other recent presidents in issuing significant regulations that place a financial burden on taxpayers, according to a report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Under President Joe Biden, the federal government completed 89 economically significant rules in 2022, defined as those with at least a $100 million economic impact, which is higher than any point in the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations when deregulation is accounted for, according to CEI’s “Ten Thousand Commandments Report.” Regulations as a whole resulted in $1.939 trillion in added costs for the average American in 2022, exceeding every form of tax except income tax, which it rivals at $2.263 trillion.
Read More
An overwhelming majority of Americans support the idea of tearing up regulations to boost domestic energy production and independence, according to a new poll by Power the Future (PTF) obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Of those surveyed, 90% found at least somewhat convincing the argument that permitting reform would strengthen U.S. energy independence, enhance national security and allow the country to stand tall in the face of geopolitical challenges, with 64% of respondents saying that the idea was extremely or very convincing to them, the PTF poll found. Eighty-eight percent of the poll’s respondents support improvements to the federal permitting system for energy infrastructure projects in order to keep energy affordable and reliable.
Read More
Labor productivity remains below COVID-19 pandemic levels after its first increase year-over-year was announced Thursday since 2021, with experts citing Biden administration regulations as one of the causes for the lackluster results.
Nonfarm business labor productivity reached 1.3% growth year-over-year for the second quarter of 2023 after declining for five straight quarters starting with the first quarter of 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The Biden administration has imposed a large amount of regulations that have hindered productivity, and the recent return to modest growth is in spite of these costly regulations , experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Read More
In May, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations that will require power plants to capture almost all their CO2 emissions, compress them, transport them via a network of pipelines, and store them underground. The plan is economic folly, but the problems go beyond money: CO2 injected underground may well escape into the atmosphere or contaminate underground water supplies, either of which could yield deadly results and create a feeding frenzy of litigation. The liability risks will be another nail in the coffin for the country’s reliance on fossil fuels to supply electricity, which in 2022 accounted for about 60% of all generation.
Read More
Whatever one thinks about President Donald J. Trump’s personality, his policies were the most conservative reforms that America has seen since President Ronald Wilson Reagan left office — and perhaps even before he arrived.
Read More
President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is placing new emissions regulations on coal plants to shut down the nation’s remaining coal-fired power stations, according to a Reuters interview with EPA Administrator Michael Regan published on Friday.
The EPA will implement regulations on coal ash and ozone to further target coal plants’ carbon emissions and environmental pollution, according to Reuters. Regan’s strategy is part of the Biden administration’s ambitious climate plan to decarbonize the power sector in the face of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to limit the regulatory powers of the EPA.
Read More
No, this is not another Qanon or Pizzagate conspiracy theory. It’s a sober recitation of the facts and incidents that can support no other conclusion.
Let’s start with one important stage-setting fact: According to OpenSecrets.org two organizations account for practically all of the contributions made by teachers unions: The National Education Association (about $20 million in 2016) and the American Federation of Teachers (almost $12 million). Both groups — which compete for members, but also collaborate with each other through the NEA-AFT Partnership — are consistently among the organizations that contribute the most money to candidates and political groups. From 2004 to 2016, their donations grew from $4.3 million to more than $32 million — an all-time high.
Even more than most labor unions, they have little use for Republicans, giving Democrats at least 94 percent of the funds they contributed to candidates and parties since as far back as 1990, where the Open Secrets’ data begins. Go here for a detailed breakdown of teachers union political giving.
Read More
The Navy and Air Force are allegedly issuing predetermined blanket denials of requests for religious exemptions from the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, in violation of federal law and regulations.
Vice Admiral John Nowell, deputy chief of naval operations for manpower, personnel, training, and education, created a 50-step standard operating procedure streamlining the denials of these requests, known as religious accommodation requests (RARs).
The military is required by law to evaluate RARs on an individual basis to ensure due process under the Fifth Amendment and protect service members’ First Amendment right to religious freedom.
Read More
Michael Regan began his tenure as President Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency administrator by dismissing dozens of outside scientific advisers appointed during the previous administration — part of an effort to “ensure the agency receives the best possible scientific insight to support our work.”
At the time, Regan (pictured) called it a “reset.” Opponents grumbled that it looked more like “a purge.” Now, one of those advisers, Stanley Young, has filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the agency of violating U.S. law; the suit also seeks an injunction to halt the work of his former committee.
The legal dustup is the latest rearguard action from the right on environmental issues. Conservatives see the case as their best chance to thwart the Biden administration’s multi-agency approach to combating climate change, seen as hostile to the fossil fuel industry.
Read More
The backlash from the incendiary language in a recent letter from the National School Board Association to President Biden asking for federal law enforcement to intervene on outspoken parents at school board meetings escalated this week when the group’s Ohio and Missouri chapters withdrew their respective memberships.
The Missouri School Boards Association in announcing its departure said the national group “demonstrated it does not currently align with MSBA’s guiding principles of local governance.”
The Ohio chapter was more direct, saying in its letter Monday that its departure was a “direct result” of the Sept. 29 letter to Biden.
Read More
The majority of Americans oppose the Biden administration’s plans to monitor and investigate outspoken parents at school boards meetings, new polling from Convention of States Action reveals.
The poll found 57% of those surveyed do not support the announcement while 19.8% are in favor. The rest are not sure.
“…One can plainly see that those who are aware that Merrick Garland made this announcement oppose him by large majorities, while there’s a group who marked ‘not sure’ because they don’t know about his announcement or don’t know enough about it,” said Mark Meckler, president of Convention of States Action.
Read More
State attorneys general of 36 states and the District of Columbia filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google on Wednesday alleging the company engaged in anticompetitive practices in its Play Store for Android.
The complaint argues Google holds and unlawfully maintains a monopoly in the market of “Android app distribution,” using anticompetitive tactics such as blocking competitors from accessing the Play Store, discouraging the creation of competing app stores, and acquiring smaller app developers. The complaint also alleges Google charges app developers up to a 30% commission when customers purchase their products through the Google Play Store.
“Google has taken steps to close the ecosystem from competition and insert itself as the middleman between app developers and consumers,” the plaintiffs argue.
Read More
As a very young man, I was fortunate enough to start my own company out of my apartment using a small amount of investment capital from friends and family. Over time, that business grew to have over 6,000 employees and revenues in excess of $2 billion. Over nearly a 40-year span, my team and I built what some would consider a remarkable track record, as measured by both sales and profits.
Because of my experience growing that business, I feel a special kinship with small, privately owned businesses and their owners. I also come from a middle-class background, one that shaped me into the person I am today. It is through both the lens of entrepreneur and member of the middle-class that I look through when reflecting upon this Independence Day.
Read More
Microsoft was given an advance copy of major antitrust legislation, a document given to Republican Rep. Thomas Massie by a whistleblower appeared to show.
The document is the original version of the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, one of Democrats’ six pending antitrust bills targeting Big Tech, according to Rep. Thomas Massie. Every page of the document, which the Daily Caller News Foundation obtained on Wednesday, is watermarked with the text “CONFIDENTIAL – Microsoft.”
“I just came into possession of a document that everyone needs to know about,” Massie said during the Judiciary Committee markup of the legislation on Wednesday. “It’s marked ‘CONFIDENTIAL – Microsoft.’ A whistleblower provided this. It’s the first draft of one of these bills that would’ve covered Microsoft. This begs the question: did Microsoft have this bill and the other bills that we are voting on today before I had this bill?”
Read More
Novavax announced on Monday that its two-dose COVID-19 vaccine is 90% effective, according to a press release on Novavax’s website.
The phase-3 trial enrolled 29,960 participants ages 18 and older in the U.S. and Mexico. The study found that 77 of the participants tested positive for COVID-19, with 63 testing positive in the placebo group and 14 in the vaccine group, according to the press release.
“Today, Novavax is one step closer to addressing the critical and persistent global public health need for additional COVID-19 vaccines. These clinical results reinforce that NVX-CoV2373 is extremely effective and offers complete protection against both moderate and severe COVID-19 infection,” Stanley C. Erck, President, and CEO of Novavax said in the press release.
Read More
The Arizona House passed a bill Thursday that bans abortions based on diagnosis of genetic abnormality, such as Down syndrome.
S.B. 1457 states that the rights of “an unborn child at every stage of development” must be acknowledged and prohibits abortions based on the sex, race, or genetic abnormality of the child. The bill makes exceptions for medical emergencies.
“A person who knowingly” performs such an abortion “is guilty of a class 3 felony,” according to the legislation.
Read More
President Donald Trump announced the preliminary results of his administration’s efforts to deregulate the federal government.
Before taking office, Trump pledged to roll back two regulations for every new regulation added in Washington, D.C. However, that ratio has since increased to seven regulations rolled back for every new one created, Trump said.
Read More
The Environmental Protection Agency finalized a rule Thursday afternoon scaling back an Obama-era regulation farmers and energy producers said saddled them with unnecessary burdens.
Read More
by David R. Henderson Many good things have happened both in the United States and worldwide this century. In the U.S., we have the lowest unemployment rate in half a century. Worldwide prosperity is growing so fast that the rate of extreme poverty fell by half between 1990 and…
Read More
by Derek Draplin Berthoud and Broomfield are the latest local governments in Colorado to implement a moratorium on oil and gas development following passage of new industry regulations signed into law last month. The Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the state’s regulatory body, issued “objective criteria” that will require…
Read More
by Robert Romano In 1963, Karl Popper proposed that the central criterion of the scientific method should be its testability, or the ability to falsify a theory. Absent that, he wrote that such a theory could not be considered scientific. Popper wrote, “A theory which is not refutable by…
Read More
by Robert Moffit The Trump administration just announced a major regulatory change, effective Jan. 1, 2020, that could significantly expand access to affordable health coverage and increase the choice of health plans, particularly among workers and their families in small businesses. The proposed rule, jointly developed by the Department…
Read More
by Tim Pearce President Donald Trump signed a memorandum Friday ordering Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross to cut regulations slowing water supply and hydroelectric projects. The Trump administration’s memo is aimed at speeding up environmental reviews and simplifying the approval process for building permits in…
Read More