Although there isn’t much public information available about the Justice Climate Fund, it appears to have been an overnight success.
After gaining nonprofit status in August 2023, the organization was awarded $940 million by the Biden administration just eight months later in connection with the White House’s $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which aims to provide financial assistance to reduce carbon emissions and reduce pollution.
Read the full story
Federal regulations added record-breaking costs of $2.1 trillion for the average American in 2023, according to a study from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) released Tuesday.
The eye-popping sum, which incorporates the calculated impact of federal regulations as well as compliance costs, resulted in a “hidden tax” of $15,788 per U.S. household, and was equivalent to nearly 8 percent of GDP, the CEI’s annual “Ten Thousand Commandments” report found. The Biden administration helped drive the surge in regulatory costs, completing 97 rules with costs of $100 million or more.
Read the full story
Dozens of energy policy and advocacy groups signed a Monday letter to Congress to express their opposition to a bill they say could be the first step toward carbon taxes or tariffs.
The letter urges House lawmakers to vote against the PROVE IT Act, a bill that has not yet been introduced in the lower chamber but is expected to be soon. The PROVE IT Act — which has already been introduced in the Senate — would have the Department of Energy (DOE) study the carbon intensity of goods, including aluminum, steel, plastic and crude oil, produced in the U.S. and the carbon intensity of products from other countries, according to E&E News.
Read the full story
After recent wins, the United Auto Workers (UAW) looks poised to take on the non-unionized automakers and, if successful, could disrupt the whole industry.
The UAW recently filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold a vote at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which employs around 4,000 autoworkers, as it looks to expand its reach to other automakers. A successful union vote in Chattanooga could be a key stepping stone in the UAW’s effort to break into the currently non-unionized auto plants, especially in the south, which has historically been less receptive to unions, all the while the UAW is being emboldened by labor-friendly regulators from the Biden administration, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Read the full story
The National Review is suing Penn State climate celebrity scientist Michael Mann for $1 million. “We cannot recover the time and effort that Mann has wasted, but we can recover more than a million of the dollars that we have lost defending our unalienable right to free speech,” the Review’s editors wrote Wednesday.
Mann won a defamation suit against two conservative writers who had criticized his “hockey stick” graph, which other climate scientists have questioned. Mann and his colleagues say the research demonstrates a sharp rise in unprecedented temperatures in the past few decades.
Read the full story
The EPA finalized air pollution standards that create more stringent limits for soot exposure, as it is called. This despite a 42% decrease in the national average over the last 22 years, according to the agency’s own data.
“It’s going to hurt economies. It’s going to hurt manufacturing. It’s a real problem,” Daren Bakst, senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), told Just The News.
Read the full story
Three Republican Pennsylvania lawmakers are preparing to introduce a resolution calling on Congress to pass a new rail-safety statute in light of February’s train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio.
State Representative Jim Marshall (R-Beaver Falls) told The Pennsylvania Daily Star he is co-sponsoring the resolution to encourage an “all-in approach” to reduce the likelihood of freight-train accidents. State Representatives Natalie Mihalek (R-Pittsburgh) and Ryan Warner (R-Connellsville) spearhead the measure.
Read the full story
A Republican Pennsylvania lawmaker is urging colleagues to cosponsor state-level legislation to limit a freight train’s length to no greater than 8,500 feet.
State Representative Louis Schmitt, Jr. (R-Altoona) reasoned in a memorandum describing his proposal that the February 3 derailment in East Palestine, less than half a mile from Pennsylvania’s western border, shows current rail-safety requirements are inadequate.
Read the full story
U.S. Congressman Mike Gallagher (R-WI-8) this week touted an emerging effort in both houses of Congress to ban the video-sharing application TikTok nationwide.
Gallagher and U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) penned an opinion piece for The Washington Post last month insisting Americans should not have access to the app. In a discussion with WISN CHANNEL 12 on Monday, Gallagher said he will introduce bipartisan legislation to that effect this month and he anticipates it will get a vote early next year.
Read the full story
The Columbus, OH-based Buckeye Institute filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday defending Minnesota widow Geraldine Tyler’s right to the profit from the forced sale of her home.
Tyler’s one-bedroom Minneapolis condominium was taken and sold by Hennepin County after the elderly resident could no longer afford her real-estate taxes. She quickly moved out of the condo in 2010, determining she could not safely stay in light of rising violent crime. For five years she incurred tax debt on the original residence while paying rent on a new apartment.
Read the full story
Monday morning on the Tennessee Star Report, host Michael Patrick Leahy welcomed author and Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, John Berlau in studio to discuss the founding fathers, entrepreneurism, and capitalism.
Read the full story
U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN-02) this week introduced the Protecting Jobs and Wages from Regulations Act of 2020, which he said would, if enacted into law, reform the federal regulatory process.
This, according to a press release that Burchett’s staff published on his website about the bill.
Read the full story