Federal Judge Delivers a Major Blow to the Biden Admin

Tada Images / shutterstock.com
Tada Images / shutterstock.com

If you know much about the Joe Biden administration, it’s that they are attempting to take more and more control of the public and our lives. And they are using their so-called climate change or environmental crisis as their main excuse.

Case in point is a recently announced new rule by Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency or EPA. In December, the agency created the “Waters of the United States” or WOTUS rule, which basically just expands the federal jurisdiction of the agency to cover more local lakes, ponds, streams, and other waterways all across the nation.

Usually, these waters are under state control, as this allows them to be more closely regulated and taken care of by those that know the areas and their needs well.

However, in typical Democrat fashion, Biden’s administration believes that regulation of most US waterways and such should be under their charge.

The rule was scheduled to take effect on Monday.

However, just before this, on Sunday, US District Court Judge for the Southern District of Texas Jeffrey Brown issued an injunction on the rule. According to him, the EPA doesn’t have the authority to issue such regulations or rules.

Additionally, Brown sided with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in saying that such a widespread rule by the EPA would cause “irreparable harm” to the states being affected.

To be clear, the issue here is not water or even access to it exactly. After all, the rule isn’t really changing anything about how water is kept clean, purified, or accessed. And most of us would probably agree that these are important things to maintain.

Instead, the problem is that the rule seeks to transfer control of those aspects from the state to the federal level.

And that’s something we should have a problem with.

As a democracy and as our Constitution clearly states, this nation is to be governed for and by the people. That means Big Government, as Biden and his administration apparently see it, has no place. Yes, we need Congress; we should have an executive branch, complete with a president and federal agencies.

However, checks and balances of those are crucial. There are lines that they should not overstep to ensure that this is still a democracy and not an authoritarian society led by a dictator or similarly elite group.

It seems Biden and his ilk have forgotten that. And that is precisely why those like Brown and Paxton have a problem with the rule.

The state of Idaho has joined Paxton in suing the EPA for the harm this rule would cause.

In a Monday statement, Paxton praised the injunction, calling it a “major blow” to the “radical environmental agenda” of the Biden administration. He stated that the rule would have implemented new and “crushing” regulations all across Texas that would ultimately slow the state’s economy and limit job growth.

Idaho officials such as Attorney General Raul Labrador said similar things about the rule, calling it “massive federal overreach” by Biden’s EPA and one that would create even more division.

As he noted on Monday, the rule can potentially create a “barrier” between the state’s farmers and the small businesses that depend on them and their access to land and waterways throughout the state. Additionally, it would hinder economic growth and add untold, unnecessary, and expensive costs to the population’s already strained economies.

It is noted that this preliminary injunction only covers the states of Texas and Idaho, who, as I mentioned before, have come together to sue the Biden admin over the rule. Twenty-five other states also have filed similar lawsuits against the EPA for this. But Brown felt he could not issue a nationwide injunction on the WOTUS rule.

However, with Brown’s decision, other states will likely issue similar rulings. And hopefully, it will convince the EPA to drop its overreaching expansion.