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Anthony P's avatar

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.”

Given the rollback of environmental protections which ignores decades of scientific evidence, destruction will be our lot unless we act. There’s nothing patriotic about poisoning the planet or woke about protecting it.

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency has promised to “drive a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion.” Climate change, however, is not a religion. It’s a grim reality grounded in science, which may be an inconvenient truth, but it is still the truth nonetheless.

Our choice is to either fatten the already obscene bank accounts of the oligarchs which this administration has pledged to serve or to hold our elected representatives accountable to the people who they have sworn to serve. Failure to act will consign our planet to a death sentence.

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Will Pattiz's avatar

That’s the perfect quote and tragically apt here. We ourselves must be its author and finisher.

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Gary Gadwa's avatar

This is absolutely insane. The Trump Administration must be stopped. The EPA's mission must stand firm.

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Judith Windhausen's avatar

Thanks for the info! Some days, it is unimaginable that this is all happening!

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

They’re definitely “flooding the zone”

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Naima  (NM)'s avatar

This is indeed insane. I am still feeling buoyed by Norm Eisen’s post a few minutes ago, so I will leave it right here to help left some spirits! https://contrarian.substack.com/p/live-with-norman-eisen?r=1hfuu&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=audio-player

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

I wouldn’t be surprised if they got a stay of that order pending appeals. It may well go to SCOTUS. But yes it’s great news.

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Michael Roseman's avatar

It should be renamed the Environmental Pollution Agency, striving to put more CO2 in the air, more mercury in the fish and more lead everywhere.

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

It would certainly be a more fitting name. It’s hard to believe that in 2025, Americans could hold such wanton contempt for the very environment that sustains them. Have we learned nothing?

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Michael Roseman's avatar

Overall, nothing. Zilch, crickets, nada, nix, ничего.

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Mark G (Last of the Wild)'s avatar

What a disaster. Many of these changes (EPA, USAID, etc.) risk being irreversible and it’s very hard to see where things can go from here.

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

You're absolutely right—that’s the goal. To inflict as much damage as possible, as quickly as possible. Meanwhile, the democrats, largely spineless and stunned, do nothing but watch as the government is systematically dismantled.

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Mark G (Last of the Wild)'s avatar

Totally, as someone watching from outside the US, it seems weird that there doesn’t appear to be anything stopping him. Scary.

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Kollibri terre Sonnenblume's avatar

The Dems have never been as supportive of environmental issues as they need to be, but yeah, their current non-response is a new low. Even worse than I would've predicted tbh.

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Michael's avatar

They will fail, they will certainly fail. This blitzkrieg is noticeably slowing down as they get mired in ligation. Which cheers me no end.

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John Taylor's avatar

And a long awaited coup by industry.

I am not so sure that all those who voted for Trump thought that this would happen.

Next up, immunization of the petroleum industry.

With the consumer protection agency gone, and now this, the public will have no recourse to protect themselves from fraud nor environmental pollution.

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Will Pattiz's avatar

I agree John - am thinking (hoping) there’s a decent amount of buyers remorse at this point based on policy shocks. And in such a short amount of time.

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Michael's avatar

Most likely the buyers remorse will rapidly increase. I have very few republican friends, but the few I do know are expressing shock on how far things have gotten out of hand.

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Will Pattiz's avatar

That’s great to hear, Michael. I know some folks in the federal government who voted for him and are shocked to have lost their jobs. Seeing is usually believing perhaps should be amended to experiencing is believing in this case.

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John Taylor's avatar

That will hopefully reflect itself during the midterms. At least one wing of government should be able to slow things down. In this instance, no government is good government.

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

I would caution against too much optimism about the midterms. Almost everything this administration is doing is via executive orders pushing and exceeding the limits of its constitutional authority. These battles will be won and lost in the courts.

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John Taylor's avatar

In agreement, but if republicans get crushed it sends a message and it’s now the house and the courts against the executive branch. One can only hope that trying to impeach a third time, is off the radar. Unless you’ve got 2/3 support in the senate, all it would do is rile up the base.

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Dennis Couch's avatar

Great article! The only thing I disagree with is "pretending the wildfires, hurricanes, and floods devastating communities every year don’t actually exist." They do acknowledge that wildfires exist and are a problem. Their solution to that problem is to cut down all the nasty burny trees in the forests and give them to the timber industry. /s

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

Good point! In my haste, I failed to call that one correctly. I'll have to update it to accurately reflect that reality.

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Rebecca Hamalian's avatar

Sold 👎🏼😣

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Kathleen Litterer's avatar

It took years to get a handle on air pollution, etc. Took Trump no time at all to repeal everything. Worst President ever!!

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Hannah Harder, Eco-advocacy's avatar

Important piece. There’s a lot of subscribers here— what can we do as a collective?

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Jef Spalding's avatar

The EPA is being gutted because it has become a puppet of the synthetic chemical production industry. Instead of stopping / putting and end to dumping manufacturing waste and synthetic environmental poisons, the EPA sets limits, yet still allows them. And when they start to exceed the set limits, it merely raises them. The best example is PTFEs, the limitless varieties of forever chemicals. The EPA has raised the allowable amount of this cmpds found in most plastics, instead of just requiring manufacturers to halt their use. And this is just one example out of many synthetic poisons, that we know of.

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Kollibri terre Sonnenblume's avatar

So heinous

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Ken Barber's avatar

Actually, it’s fully sane.

The grownups are back in charge. EPA will be dealing with REAL pollution, not environmentalist propaganda designed to weaken America.

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

Ken! You're back! I was beginning to think the woke mob had gotten you!

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Ken Barber's avatar

I muted you so I wouldn’t have to get my blood pressure raised by your Marxist propaganda.

The next day, you unsubscribed from my Substack. ‘Twas almost as if you had somehow been notified that I’d muted you.

But someone re-stacked your post and it showed up in my feed anyway.

Substack needs to work on their algorithms.

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Jim Pattiz's avatar

I've actually never been subscribed to you. That could've been my brother though (the other one who writes these). Regardless I still appreciate you chiming in. All are welcome here.

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Walt Svirsky's avatar

Hurry hurry hurry…to our ultimate destruction! These miserable MAGATS care not one whit about the extinction of millions of species of animals and the fact that our biosphere will soon be uninhabitable. MAGATS = Lemmings…sorry lemmings.

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