Losing It! Leftists React as Supreme Court Limits EPA Authority on Climate

Jeffrey Clark
July 1st, 2022 3:50 PM

Text to Speech

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Leftists in the media and on Twitter whined after the U.S. Supreme Court delivered victory to constitutional originalists, this time on energy policy.

Alexandria Ocasio-CortezThe Court’s decision will limit the ability of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate climate pollution, with Chief Justice John Roberts explaining that “Congress did not grant EPA in Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act the authority to devise emissions caps based on the generation shifting approach the Agency took in the Clean Power Plan.” 

The ruling on the case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, dropped on June 30. But it only took minutes for many on the left to erupt with tweets attacking the Court and the justices for opposing the Biden administration’s attempted EPA power grab. 

For her part, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) called for the Supreme Court to be scrapped completely “for the sake of the planet” from her personal Twitter account. Rolling Stone complained that the Court’s decision gave another “victory” to conservatives. And Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson said that the country has entered “a full-blown Constitutional crisis” because of the Supreme Court’s actions. 

Those were only a few of the most absurd responses to the Court’s ruling. 

Journalist Dan Rather wrote a mock letter to the Supreme Court: “Dear Supreme Court, Thanks for nothing. - Planet Earth.”

Ocasio-Cortez called for the Supreme Court to be scrapped completely: “Catastrophic. A filibuster carveout is not enough. We need to reform or do away with the whole thing, for the sake of the planet.”

The View co-host Joy Behar wrote in a tweet: “OMG, this Supreme Court is going to kill us.” She added soon after, “Why do they hate our children? More guns, unbreathable air and women can fend for themselves as well as the unwanted children they will have. This is disgusting. The six of them have to be stopped.” 

The New York Times’s so-called economist Paul Krugman piled on to the anti-Supreme Court train roughly an hour after the decision dropped: “Undoing Roe is awful. Kneecapping environmental regulation is existential. This Supreme Court has just come down on the side of civilizational collapse.”

Rolling Stone published a story headlined “Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That the Planet Should Burn” just minutes after SCOTUSblog tweeted out the announcement of the decision on West Virginia. “The court ruling marks another victory for a conservative effort to thwart climate action on a federal level,” the Rolling Stone story says. “Using the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions was at best a backup plan, as Democrats had initially hoped to curb climate emissions via comprehensive climate legislation.”

Richardson tweeted to her over 300,000 followers: “The Supreme Court has gone rogue. We are in a full-blown Constitutional crisis. Congress must act. And we must pressure Congress to act, while it still can. #TheMajority.” 

Richardson didn’t stop there, responding to another user who claimed they were “having an anxiety attack” over the decision. “I thought hard before saying it,” Richardson said in a second tweet “I’m sorry to cause you distress, but the EPA ruling and the Courts [sic] willingness to review the independent state legislature doctrine are fundamental attacks on our government.”

Former President Barack Obama tweeted: “The 6-3 decision strikes a blow to the EPA’s authority to regulate power plant emissions—paving the way to dismantle some of the most impactful provisions of the Clean Air Act and limit our ability to reduce carbon pollution.”

Conservatives are under attack. Contact ABC News at 818-460-7477, CBS News at 212-975-3247 and NBC News at 212-664-6192 and demand they report the truth about the climate and call out liberals for their extremist takes over a decision that restores authority on climate regulation to Congress.