TRACK EPA

“From Iran's perspective, they feel emboldened... It discovered the Strait Of Hormuz and what havoc it can wreak, not only on The Gulf, but on the entire globe. Brent crude oil, the international standard, is above $96 a barrel in Asia ahead of talks in Pakistan Saturday on a potential permanent ceasefire.”

“Zeldin celebrated the EPA's decision to stop regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant. He says that policy was government overreach and focused too much on the worst case scenarios. Zeldin spoke at a conference of the Heartland Institute, a free market group that denies that humans are contributing to climate change.”

“The IRGC, Iran, is demanding payment roughly 2 to $3,000,000 per transit payable in Bitcoin. And then after this ceasefire, Iran immediately sent a volley of rockets into Israel. Because of this, Iran is saying that they are threatening to end this ceasefire and close the Strait Of Hormuz, and this is why everyone kinda just feels shaky about the state of things.”

“Israeli and Lebanese diplomats are now preparing to hold their first direct meeting between government officials in decades on Tuesday. Israel and Lebanon's ambassadors to The US are set to meet in Washington to discuss a ceasefire. But at a Hezbollah rally in downtown Beirut, Saturday, supporters filled the streets for blocks, waving flags and chanting against negotiations.”

“Iran is believed to have placed mines in the strait, and a US official who's not authorized to speak publicly told NPR's Tom Bowman that minesweepers will also be used as part of the blockade. There are a lot of unknowns. You know, will any ships try to break a US blockade? And and if so, how will the US military respond? And what will Iran do?”

“So let me just say about the DC. Circuit, there are 11 active judges on it, seven appointed by Democratic presidents, four nominated by Republican presidents. There is, I ran the numbers, there is a 28.11 percent chance that the three-judge panel that's randomly chosen has at least two Republican members. Can I just point out that in some ways that's the worst possible outcome for the Trump administration because then it would almost certainly go to the en banc court. And the en banc court is likely to be much less sympathetic to the Trump administration.”

“Emergency management officials are asking residents to have multiple ways to receive warning alerts tonight.”

“Market analysts are warning of potential volatility ahead of Monday's Consumer Price Index release.”

“Feels pretty close to script, more or less. You know, the president has gone down this path in other ways. And when push comes to shove, when markets start to react, when stock prices are down, when interest rates are up, and in this case, when oil prices are up, he figures out a way to pivot, to stand down, and to declare victory and hopefully move on.”

“According to a study by the Associated Press, Major League Baseball's average salary has climbed 3.4% to a record of more than $5,300,000. The AP says the New York Mets topped spending at the season start for the fourth straight year with Mets' outfielder, Juan Soto, the highest paid player for the second consecutive season.”

“The depth of bearishness that we saw in the first couple months of the year feels like it's stabilising a little bit. People are kind of saying, okay, we're probably gonna be okay. People are more forward looking now, talking about things like quantum, I feel like, okay, how do we solve this problem as opposed to, oh my god, the sky is falling.”

“Riverside County sheriff Chad Bianco, a Republican, obtained them to investigate an alleged vote count discrepancy in a statewide election last year. Most disturbingly, there doesn't seem to be any indication of criminal wrongdoing. The California Supreme Court has halted Bianco's investigation while it reviews the case.”

“So these cases began more than 20 years ago, and for several years the big issue was whether they belong in state court or federal court. They've finally landed in state court. The oil industry and others have been trying for years to get the Supreme Court to knock it out. There was a case from Baltimore that the Supreme Court took but it relied but ruled on very narrow procedural grounds. Then the Supreme Court rejected an effort to take a case out of Hawaii. Then there was an effort by Alabama. But here they just granted cert.”

“The Anthropic release of the world's most powerful model, a model so powerful that they're keeping it behind closed doors, and, only select companies get private access to it to harden their security before the rest of the world gets it. Q Day is dividing the crypto industry while some are preparing, others are saying don't look up.”

“It's not impossible that while we, have seen a slight dip over the last week that we certainly could see gas prices reaccelerating, and it's not impossible that new records, with prices eventually rising above $5 a gallon remain possible.”

“And a third is that the aviation industry wants to leave the endangerment finding in place for the aviation industry. It's a separate endangerment finding, but the going in order to sell its airplanes to a lot of other countries needs a certification of compliance with greenhouse gas standards. And if the US is no longer issuing the certification, then they would have difficulty selling the airplanes, which would be a big problem for them.”

“Maryland attorney general Anthony Brown says the states reached a settlement with Grace Ocean Private and Synergy Marine Group, the owner and manager of the Dali. The insurance company paid out $350,000,000 to the state of Maryland after the incident. There are still more than 50 parties, including the city of Baltimore, suing Grace Ocean and Synergy over the crash.”

“Congressman Eric Swalwell says he is suspending his campaign for California governor as he faces allegations of sexual assault, which he says are false. He had already decided not to run for reelection to the house. President Trump says The US will blockade the Strait Of Hormuz.”

“Then they go on to say that for purposes of Section 202, which is EPA's authority to regulate, you know, we find that the term air pollutant and air pollution read in context is only designed to deal with pollution that what they call local or regional air pollution. I refer to it as sort of through direct exposure. EPA can only regulate when air pollution harms people or things when they're exposed to it.”

“Iran is charging $2,000,000 for every ship that passes through the Strait Of Hormuz. And they have said in the agreement that they have full sovereignty over the Strait, and now they're gonna charge people for moving goods through it. So I guess the question is, one, do you think that that holds? And two, how significant is it from an inflation perspective? Because it seems like that is, yes, ships can pass through, but now there's a toll.”

“AI bots will generate more internet traffic than humans by 2027.”

“AI bots will generate more internet traffic than humans by 2027.”

“The US is a big economy—it's the largest on the planet—so, you know, it's still gonna play a very central role, but increasingly less of one as we move forward. We have benefited enormously from the globalization process and the fact that The US is central and the US dollar is central to everything that goes on in the world. And that is now gonna be under pressure; it was under pressure before all this, and it will be under even more pressure going forward.”

“So I don't think there's any likelihood of that kind of legislation during the Trump administration, but I'm optimistic that some sort of bipartisan climate change legislation is still possible. It would not go nearly as far as I'm sure the environmentalists would like, because there would I think have to be compromises on all sides. But I do think there is a chance of in two Congresses from now that there could be bipartisan legislation.”

“On vehicles, it's more complicated because California has taken the position that if EPA is not regulating these, then, well, I should take a step back. Ordinarily, under the Clean Air Act, it's very clear that only EPA is allowed to regulate, so there's not a patchwork of different states. There's one exception for California, and EPA can grant a waiver to California that allows them to have more stringent standards, and then other states can adopt that so there wouldn't be more than two different standards.”

“The new white paper outlines how agencies must disclose their use of automated decision-making systems.”

“Campaigns are ramping up their ground games as several states prepare to head to the polls this Tuesday.”

“I think, at least so far, people have exaggerated the importance of the endangerment finding, at least when it comes to actually reducing emissions. It's been in place since 2009 The EPA has tried multiple times to impose pretty aggressive regulations. But they've been upended either by the courts or by the Trump administration. But other things like the revocation of the IRA tax credits are much more important when it comes to impacts on US greenhouse gas emissions.”

“Delegations have returned home after the latest ceasefire negotiations failed to produce an agreement.”

“Well, can I just point out, the auto industry did not support the reversal of the endangerment finding. They actually, in the written comments and in the public statements, just urged the administration not to revoke the endangerment finding. They did say, you know, the Biden rules are unreasonable and perhaps unachievable, and we'd like you to relax those to make them more reasonable. But they said we'd much prefer, you know, durable, reasonable regulations than having the endangerment finding revoked.”

“I view this as a part of a broader, a very corrosive trend, and that that's the deglobalization of the economy that The US is pulling away from the rest of the world very quickly. I mean, you know, tariffs, immigration policy, what we're doing geopolitically. And then, of course, now the rest of the world is pulling away from us very quickly. If we are deglobalizing and this is just one more thing that will cause that process to continue and potentially even accelerate, it has all kinds of corrosive effects.”

“The White House weighs in on the stablecoin debate. Which side did they choose? We have the White House weighing in on the stablecoin yield debate regarding the effects of stablecoin yield prohibition on bank lending. This is a massive topic as the market feels stable on the surface while bigger risks continue to build.”

“So, the basic idea is that if despite what the text of a statute says, an agency can't regulate something of enormous political or economic significance without explicit authorization from Congress. So, the idea has been around for years, but in 2022, in the case of West Virginia versus EPA, the Supreme Court used that to throw out a version of the Clean Power Plan. And the nature of the Major Question Doctrine is it's sort of looming over all of administrative law.”

“Magdia's victory was hard won in an electoral system that over the past sixteen years, Orban had stacked in his favor from gerrymandering to controlling the media. As Brussels now looks forward to working with a more pro European Hungarian leader, Moscow and the current White House administration have lost in Orban, a key ally in Europe.”

“I think prices are permanently higher. I mean, when I say permanent, nothing's permanent, but at least in the foreseeable future, this year, next year, the year after. You know, we're not there's no going back to the $60, $65 bucks a barrel we were paying before all this mess. You're still left with a fee that's not inconsequential, and then, of course, insurance companies are gonna demand a higher insurance premium for insuring the traffic that moves through this strait because, you know, who knows what will happen in the future.”

“Shaky is probably the best way to describe it, is it seems like there's so much posturing from both sides that it's very hard to tell what the reality is and what the real contingencies in. Things have stabilized, and it seems like it's in everyone's interest for things to stabilize. But the markets are not fully buying it, and you see it in the oil prices as well.”