Members of the United States Senate are demanding to see President Joe Biden's plans to comply with a United States Supreme Court ruling striking down a massive Environmental Protection Agency power grab โ after the Biden administration already attempted to defy a 2021 Court ruling curbing his claimed powers to stop tenant evictions.
U.S. Senator Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and U.S. Reps. Sam Graves (R-MO) and David Rouzer (R-NC), have asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in a written letter, for โinformation on how the Biden administration plans to implement the Supreme Court's recent decision in Sackett v. EPA,โ Lummis' office reports.
That ruling struck down a plan by Biden to dramatically increase the EPA's authority under the Clean Water Act, which lets the agency regulate the โwaters of the United States.โ
That term has long been defined as only navigable bodies of water, giving the EPA the power to stop pollution that threatens rivers, lakes and oceans.
But liberals have long proposed, and Biden acted on, a plan to simply change the definition of โwaters of the United Statesโ to mean virtually any standing body of water, including ditches, and intermittent puddles.
The Court struck down that plan, which exceeded the Clean Water Act's written authority and was imposed without a vote of Congress.
โWhile the Supreme Court's rejection of the Biden administration's proposed new definition of Waters of the United States (WOTUS) was a major victory for ranchers and land owners across Wyoming, the EPA needs to provide regulatory clarity by detailing their next steps,โ a statement from Lummis' office states.
But many expect Biden to openly defy the ruling or make only a minimal effort to comply, as Biden did in 2021 when the Court struck down Biden's plan to invoke COVID-19 emergency powers to make it illegal for landlords to evict tenants for non-payment of rent.ย Despite the Court's clear ruling, Biden attempted to enforce the ban anyway.ย That act is has been cited as an Article of Impeachment in past proposed impeachment efforts.
ย โThe Court's ruling reinforces property owners' rights, protects the separation of powers by limiting your Agencies' authority to what Congress has delegated in statute, and ensures adherence to the congressional intent in writing the Clean Water Act (CWA),โ the lawmakers write.
โAdditionally, the Court upholds the cooperative federalism framework of the CWA, as well as the states' authority and responsibility to regulate non-Federal waters within their borders. All nine Supreme Court justices agreed that the Biden Administration's definition of โwaters of the United States' (WOTUS) based on โsignificant nexus' is illegitimate, and a majority of the Court articulated a clear, easily administrable definition of WOTUS,โ they write.
โIn implementing the Court's decision, the Agencies must adhere to the majority opinion and not slow-walk compliance with the decision. The Agencies wasted valuable time and resources by prioritizing the promulgation of a rule over the first two years of the Biden Administration; that is now clearly unlawful,โ they warn.ย
โNotably, this Administration ignored our repeated admonitions that the Agencies should wait until the Supreme Court acted to proceed, and our warnings that the rule being drafted would not be โdurable.' Now the EPA and the Corps must work to bring the application of WOTUS quickly and effectively in line with Sackett II,โ they note.
They ask the agencies to explain:
1. What concrete steps are the Agencies taking following Sackett II to implement the majority's opinion?
2. Will you direct the Corps to immediately resume the issuance of jurisdictional determinations? If not, please provide a detailed explanation justifying the failure to resume issuance.
The Biden administration appears to have not provided that information by a requested June 28 deadline.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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2 Comments
When in the world are those moronic idiots (I know a couple) who feel Biden is doing the good, right things for our country, going to realize that senile old wannabe dictator is methodically taking away every freedom and right we still have? in addition to many other things, Biden wants to control all the water we use. Don’t kid yourself, he’ll eventually take control of private wells and ration the amount of water we can even drink or bathe in each week. Not each day, each week! Personally, I’m beginning to wonder if Biden’s a Chinese spy because he seems to be more interested in representing that Communist dictatorship than the country that gave him everything and made him a multi-millionaire.
NO we dont need this BS