Free Republic

REMOVING BARRIERS TO BUILDING HOMES: Today, President Donald J. Trump signed an Executive Order to eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens that delay housing construction and increase housing costs for American families.The Order directs the EPA Administrator and the Secretary of the Army to review and revise stormwater, wetlands, and other water-related permitting requirements to reduce building and ownership costs, streamline Federal regulatory approvals, and increase home insurability.The Order also directs the Secretary of Commerce, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Transportation, and the Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to eliminate unduly burdensome rules and reform programs...

The Trump administration on Wednesday waived regulations on the types of gasoline that are sold during the summer in an effort to ease surging fuel prices during the Iran war. The Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency waiver to lift restrictions on the sale of E15 gas, a fuel blended with 15% ethanol. The sale of E15 is restricted from June through September due to regulations designed to reduce air pollution. The EPA also issued a waiver to remove all federal impediments to selling E10 gas, which is blended with 10% ethanol. The waivers will take effect on May 1.

Texas challenged the rule, arguing it threatened the availability of affordable housing. A federal court has struck down a Biden-era rule that imposed “green energy” requirements for new housing constructions, threatening the availability of affordable housing. The case, co-led with Utah, was argued by Attorney General Ken Paxton in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Tyler. “The Corrupt Biden Administration’s radical policies were reducing the availability of affordable homes and making it harder for Americans to achieve the dream of homeownership,” stated Paxton. “This ruling is a major victory for homebuyers, builders, and families and...

In New York’s large suite of self-destructive public policies, it’s hard to choose which one is the very worst. But an excellent candidate is the regime for regulation of residential rents, mostly going by the name of Rent Stabilization. Because of rent regulation, New York’s rental housing stock is older, more outdated, and less well-maintained than the housing of any other American city. If you got yourself into one of the regulated apartments a few decades ago, you likely enjoy a significant bargain on your monthly rent versus comparable space, to go along with your 30- or 40-year old kitchen...

The good news is that the Trump administration has announced its repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “endangerment finding.” As Matthew Hennessey puts it in the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression newsletter this morning, the finding is the “2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. It was the legal basis for most federal climate regulation, allowing Washington technocrats to treat carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases as pollutants.” The White House trumpeted the repeal as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” Let us cheer while we can. Woo hoo! It represents a victory...

President Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Thursday announced the repeal of a 2009 policy allowing the federal government to regulate the emissions of fossil fuels by declaring them dangerous to public health. Trump called the repeal “the single largest deregulatory action in American history” and said it would “save American consumers trillions of dollars.” “We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said in the White House Roosevelt Room. “Effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding...

WASHINGTON (AP) — On New Year’s Eve, Lee Zeldin did something out of character for an Environmental Protection Agency leader who has been hacking away at regulations intended to protect Americans’ air and water. He announced new restrictions on five chemicals commonly used in building materials, plastic products and adhesives, and he cheered it as a “MAHA win.”It was one of many signs of a fragile collaboration that’s been building between a Republican administration that’s traditionally supported big business and a Make America Healthy Again movement that argues corporate environmental harms are putting people’s health in danger. The unlikely pairing...

The Most Socialist System in America Is the One Feeding Us—and It’s FailingAmerica loves to debate socialism. We argue about universal healthcare, guaranteed income, student loan forgiveness, and government dependency. We pride ourselves on our rugged independence and belief in free markets. We warn that socialism destroys innovation, freedom, and personal responsibility. But here’s the uncomfortable truth most Americans never stop to consider: the most centrally planned, government-dependent, subsidy-driven system in the United States isn’t medicine, housing, or energy—it’s food.Our food system is not a free market. It is not capitalism in any recognizable form. It is a government-engineered economy...

President Trump’s deregulation effort has already delivered permitting reform.Today, the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) took the final administrative action to complete one of the Trump Administration’s most significant deregulatory efforts, affirming the removal of CEQ’s National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) implementing regulations. CEQ rescinded these regulations last year; this final rule reaffirms that rescission and responds to comments received on the initial action. This final rule is now available for public inspection here, ahead of its forthcoming official publication in the Federal Register.On February 25, 2025, CEQ published an Interim Final Rule (IFR), which went into effect on April...

A procurement forester was preparing to clear timber from part of some 300 acres of Mississippi land in August. But when he passed along the coordinates of the land parcel to the buyer – a standard traceability practice – the buyer suddenly asked a question he wasn’t expecting.The buyer was Georgia-Pacific, one of the world’s largest producers and distributors of paper, pulp, tissues, packaging and other forestry products, and the predominant buyer of Mississippi-grown timber. But the company had noted that the landowner had converted some land from timber production to another agricultural use in 2024. If the owner had...

Liberal judges on a federal appeals court just sided with unelected Washington bureaucrats and gutted one of Congress’s most powerful tools to rein in the runaway Administrative State, the Congressional Review Act (CRA). The CRA is clear, when Congress repeals a regulation—and the President signs that repeal—federal agencies are barred from bringing back the same or “substantially similar” rules. That safeguard is critical to protect American workers, families, and businesses from suffocating regulation. But according to Senator Eric Schmitt, that safeguard has now been shredded. “Led by liberal judges, a federal court just undermined one of Congress’s most powerful tools...

The Trump administration's DOGE developed a new tool that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to review federal regulations for potential elimination, according a new report. The "DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool" was designed to review about 200,000 federal regulations and assess which can be eliminated, The Washington Post reported after reviewing a PowerPoint presentation about the tool and its findings that was dated July 1. The Post reported that about 100,000 of those rules should be considered for elimination on the grounds that they're no longer required under federal law based on the AI tool's review and some feedback from DOGE...

The U.S. DOGE Service is using a new artificial intelligence tool to slash federal regulations, with the goal of eliminating half of Washington’s regulatory mandates by the first anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and four government officials familiar with the plans. The tool, called the “DOGE AI Deregulation Decision Tool,” is supposed to analyze roughly 200,000 federal regulations to determine which can be eliminated because they are no longer required by law, according to a PowerPoint presentation obtained by The Post that is dated July 1 and outlines DOGE’s plans. Roughly...

Amid disastrous green diktats and crippling cuts to farmers’ livelihoods, the out-of-touch elites in Brussels seem to have forgotten where their food comes from. This afternoon, farmers from all over the European Union met outside the European Parliament to march on the Berlaymont, the European Commission’s HQ. Organised by COPA-COGECA, the umbrella body for 22 million European farmers, the demonstration should by all rights be a wake-up call for Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. The unions will hand over a petition signed by 6,335 organisations, along with a symbolic pair of boots, in protest of the EU’s plans to...

A Missouri judge ruled Thursday that the state cannot enforce several laws regarding abortion — including a law restricting most abortions, a 72-hour waiting period, and a law requiring abortion facilities to meet special licensing requirements. With the ruling, abortions — which had largely been paused — are set to resume in the state. The state Supreme Court had lifted the judge’s previous injunction. Key Takeaways: * Circuit Court Judge Jerri Zhang’s ruling blocked state enforcement of a waiting period law and laws meant to ensure that abortion facilities meet specific licensing requirements. * Her ruling re-imposes a preliminary injunction...

The enactment of President Trump's Big, Beautiful Bill (BBB) earned sharp criticism from former President Joe Biden who lamented "all the damn hard work I did will be undone. Trump and his congressional lackeys have doomed the future I had envisioned for America. This is not only reckless — it's cruel." "First and worst, it funds an effort to deport the millions of folks I invited to come to America during my presidency," Biden complained. "We need more immigrants to produce the children that natural born citizens refuse to birth. As we saw when I was president these newcomers stimulated...

The Trump administration just dealt another blow to the anti-energy, anti-prosperity agenda pursued by the Biden administration underpinned by the man-made “climate change” hypothesis. Under the proposed repeal of previous “climate” regulations on energy production announced this month, many of the power plants targeted for destruction could remain open, and CO2 would no longer be considered dangerous “pollution.” Naturally, that has the “climate” movement screaming bloody murder. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the effect of the so-called greenhouse gases coming from U.S. energy production using hydrocarbons (or “fossil fuels”) is so small as to be negligible. The agency...

Two large California oil refineries are shutting down, triggering mounting concerns from state legislators, industry groups and many others.Assemblymember Mike A. Gipson of the Gardena district bluntly described his concern during a recent Sacramento hearing.“This is a tremendous loss,” Gipson told NBC Los Angeles, referring to the looming closure of the Phillips 66 plant near L.A. "The jobs that it holds, the individuals… working each and every day, those individuals live in my district, they shop in my district, they add to the economy in my district."Shutting down refinery powerhousesThe Phillips 66 and Valero’s Benicia sites are set to close...

As California braces for another wildfire season, forestry experts warn that decades of regulatory mismanagement — not climate change or Trump-era budget cuts — have left forests dangerously overloaded with fuel. Democrats have blamed climate change and agency rollbacks for creating tinderbox conditions, but forestry experts see a self-inflicted wound that began festering as far back as the Clinton administration. Three decades of environmental litigation, they say, has warped forest management into a Byzantine maze of legal delays and procedural dead ends — leaving millions of acres to accumulate fuel faster than anyone can clear it. The blame game intensified...

The Supreme Court sided Friday with oil companies seeking to challenge California’s electric vehicle regulations. In a 7-2 ruling, the court allowed energy producers to continue their lawsuit challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to approve California regulations that require manufacturing more electric vehicles. “The government generally may not target a business or industry through stringent and allegedly unlawful regulation, and then evade the resulting lawsuits by claiming that the targets of its regulation should be locked out of court as unaffected bystanders,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “In light of this Court’s precedents and the evidence...