Green Energy Provisions In The One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Unfortunately, A Mixed Bag

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  • On July 4 President Trump signed what everyone is now calling the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” (Doesn’t it cease being a “Bill” when it becomes an “Act”? Not this one, apparently.).

  • The Act is a compendium of dozens of provisions relating to all aspects of the federal budget and taxation. As a result, many summaries that you may read focus on things like income tax rates and deductions, and other such matters directly relevant to individuals. That leaves some other important subjects of the Act getting short shrift, particularly the provisions dealing with various aspects of the ongoing green energy scam. So I will try to hit the highlights on that subject here.

  • I previously had a post on May 24 covering the provisions on this subject in the version of the Bill that had just been passed by the House. That post was highly optimistic that the House’s language, if it could survive wrestling with the Senate, could essentially put an end to almost all of the green energy subsidies. Unfortunately, as you might expect from the swamp of Washington, the final language will likely let some of the scam continue.

  • But let’s start with the positive news. For your reference, in case you want to read the actual provisions of the Act, here is a link to the Table of Contents, with ongoing links to each section.

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The Left Not So Happy With The Monster They Created

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  • The pervasive talking point of the Left since President Trump returned to office is that he is trying to make himself into a “dictator.”

  • Starting in the early weeks of his new term, the main evidence for the “dictator” claim was said to be Trump’s actions to make the government respond to his policies, via actions like large-scale lay-offs, issuance of Executive Orders, and cancellation of grants and contracts.

  • (Here for example is a piece from the Guardian from February 13, complaining of what they called Trump’s “illegitimate power grab” by, among other things, cancelling grants and downsizing agencies from USAID to the CFPB. See also, numerous comments on this site from frequent commenter Richard Greene.)

  • And now, in recent weeks, the “dictator” rhetoric has ramped up to a new level, specifically in response to Trump’s assertive enforcement of the immigration laws. The new claim is that Trump is trying to make himself the “King.”

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Defund The National Academy of Sciences!

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Defund The National Academy of Sciences!

  • Here’s an article you might find interesting from Science magazine on June 2. The headline is “National Academies, staggering from Trump cuts, on brink of dramatic downsizing.”

  • Science magazine is one of those formerly-prestigious “peer-reviewed” journals where for many decades you just had to get your research published in order to become someone in a scientific field. Somewhere along the way, Science turned from scientific inquiry to orthodoxy enforcement.

  • The National Academy of Sciences (“NAS,” and along with two fellow Academies of Engineering and Medicine sometimes called “NASEM”), meanwhile, is a federally-chartered but supposedly private entity set up to give “independent” scientific advice to the government. The Academies raise meaningful amounts of private funds, but in the most recent reported year (2023) got the substantial majority of their funding (over $200 million) via contracts from the feds. (See Treasurer’s Statement here.). As far as I can determine, the main business of the National Academies, and particularly of the NAS, is also orthodoxy enforcement.

  • The latest, from the June 2 Science article, is that the National Academy of Sciences “is navigating a tense situation as the organization faces unprecedented contract losses and layoffs.” The President of the NAS is named Marcia McNutt.

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We Don't Need To Welcome In People Who Hate Us

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  • Yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, a perpetrator sprayed a flammable liquid on a group of mostly elderly Jews protesting the continued holding of hostages in Gaza. Then he threw Molotov cocktails to set several of the demonstrators on fire. The New York Post reports here that 8 were injured, ranging in age from 52 to 88 years old.

  • Police arrested a man named named Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who was caught on video committing the acts. Oh, and also shouting slogans, including “They are killers! How many children you killed?” and “End Zionists.”

  • It quickly emerged that Soliman was an Egyptian illegally in the country. He had originally entered legally in 2022 on a tourist visa, but then overstayed. In 2023 he was granted a permit to work in the U.S. by the Biden administration. That expired in March 2025, after which he stayed on illegally.

  • Which raises the question, why was Soliman in the country in the first place?

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Legitimate Scope Of Judicial Restraints On Presidential Power -- Trump Tariffs Edition

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  • In my last post a couple of days ago (May 28), I was critical of the blizzard of injunctions issued by the courts against seemingly every policy change that President Trump seeks to implement. I went so far as to call this the “opposite of democracy.”

  • But I also noted that there are instances where judicial restraints on the executive are legitimate, most notably where the statute on which the President relies to implement a sweeping policy does not in fact grant him the authority he claims. Thus, on finding a lack of grant of authority in the statutes cited, the Supreme Court had reined in President Biden when he sought to implement policies forgiving student loans and banning fossil fuel power plants.

  • I ended that article by asking whether President Trump’s actions with regard to imposition of tariffs may fall into the same category of overreach as Biden’s student loan and power plant gambits. I also noted that multiple law suits had already been brought challenging the legal basis for the tariffs unilaterally imposed by the President.

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The Legitimate Scope Of Judicial Restraints On Presidential Authority; The Need For Politically Neutral Principles

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  • Now more than four months into President Trump’s second term, there have been dozens of District Court injunctions blocking policies that the new administration has sought to implement.

  • Deportations of gang members illegally in the U.S. back to El Salvador? Enjoined! Mass firings at USAID? Enjoined! Other mass firings at 22 other agencies and departments? Enjoined! Cancellation of funding of certain grants for Harvard? Enjoined! Ending of eligibility for Harvard to participate in foreign student visa program? Enjoined! Termination of federal funding for public schools maintaining DEI programs? Enjoined! Termination of security clearances for certain prominent law firms? Enjoined! And these are just examples among many more.

  • It seems that whatever new policy President Trump tries to implement, it will be enjoined within days by some left wing federal judge.

  • But before you get too outraged about the courts (and Democrat-appointed judges) blocking President Trump’s every move, let’s not forget about a few constraints that the courts imposed on prior President Biden.

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