Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, demanded the Biden administration show how government agencies are obeying the Supreme Court's decision limiting the EPA's power to unilaterally regulate emissions, the Daily Caller reported.
The House Judiciary Committee ranking member sent letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property Kathi Vidal, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan asking whether their agencies are complying with the court's June ruling in West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency.
The court ruled the EPA could not set carbon dioxide emissions caps for power plants in order to force a national transition away from coal power without explicit congressional authorization.
The letters demand recipients provide the committee all documentation about responses to and policy changes based on the court ruling by Nov. 15 and explain how all of the relevant rules made since President Joe Biden entered office are consistent with the decision and backed by statute.
The letters also asked the recipients to provide lists of all the pending cases the agencies are involved in that are relevant to West Virginia v. EPA or the Supreme Court's "major questions doctrine," which states that agencies must have clear authorization by Congress on matters of "vast 'economic and political significance.'"
The Supreme Court found in West Virginia v. EPA that Congress had not given the EPA full carbon emissions capping authority through the Clean Air Act, according to the Daily Caller.
The letters argue that Biden has approved more major rules than any recent president, with his administration trying to mobilize the administrative state to make policies beyond congressionally authorized authority.
"The broader concern generally is this idea that the left has, that it's 'the experts' who should be making policy, not the elected officials," Jordan told the Daily Caller.
That is "just not how our constitutional system works," he continued. "It's the folks that We the People put in office. They're the ones who are supposed to be making the laws, making the rules, not the so-called experts in the bureaucracy."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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