The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has initiated a vast reversal of the regulatory-heavy, climate change fear-based policies of the Biden administration, announcing Wednesday that it is taking 31 actions to remove red tape for the energy and automotive industries and lower the cost of living for Americans. The agency also announced the termination of a $20 billion fund parked in a commercial bank by the Biden administration to avoid government oversight that was used to award money to climate activist groups.

Characterizing Wednesday’s initiative as “the greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin remarked that the effort “driv[es] a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion” by “roll[ing] back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” The EPA further declared that the venture will “unleash American energy” by reconsidering regulations on power plants, the oil and gas industry, coal-fired power plants, the steam electric power industry, wastewater, and other measures.

The plan would also address “lowering the cost of living for American families” by reconsidering electric car mandates, grocery store regulations, environmental regulations that “shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses,” and terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) arms of the agency, among other actions.

On Tuesday, the EPA also announced that it was shutting down a Biden administration program that it described as a “‘gold bar’ scheme,” in which an eye-popping $20 billion was released in the final week of former President Joe Biden’s term to award to various pop-up climate activist groups via a program known as the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator. In a hidden video, a former Biden administration official described the program as “throwing gold bars off the edge” of the Titanic.

Since President Trump assumed office on January 20, the funds have been held in a Citibank account in order to avoid federal scrutiny. Zeldin described how the funds were moved through eight “pass-through, politically connected, unqualified and in some cases brand-new NGOs.” The EPA and the Department of the Treasury ordered that the funds be frozen, and the Department of Justice and FBI have opened a criminal investigation into the matter.

Lawmakers such as Senator Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.) welcomed news of the EPA cutting red tape and cracking down on wasteful taxpayer spending.

“[C]ommon sense is finally back at the EPA,” he declared during Thursday’s “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “… For example, … I remember starting that fight back in the Obama administration back in 2015, and both Obama and Biden tried to stretch the rule to expand EPA’s authority to things like roadside ditches or farm ditches or farm ponds, things that were clearly not navigable waters. The Clean Water Act of 1972 says ‘navigable waters’ 50 times, and they totally tried to get rid of that meaning. … [W]e’re also going to be rolling back the Clean Power Plan, which was going to do things such as shut down our very clean burning coal plant in Nebraska. They’re going to get rid of the greenhouse gas reporting rule, which would be an attack on our natural gas facilities, which again, is a big source of power for Nebraska and many states. And frankly, natural gas is one of the reasons why we are the only industrialized country that’s actually reducing our greenhouse gases.”

Ricketts went on to note the EPA’s rolling back of the electric vehicle (EV) mandate. “This is one that I’ve been fighting because EVs don’t make sense in big rural states with cold weather. The adoption rate in Nebraska is 2%, and under the Biden administration, they wanted two-thirds of all new vehicles being sold in 2032 to be EVs. That just wasn’t going to happen.”

Ricketts further emphasized the cost that the Biden-era regulations imposed on American families and businesses. “[T]he Biden administration rolled out 5,000 regulations. … [T]he average cost of that to the American family was $3,300 a year. And not just once. It’s $3,300 every year until those regulations are rolled back … so this is going to be a good start in rolling those regulations back and saving American households money. But when you put this layer of regulation on, you put a wet blanket on innovation and small businesses who create most of our jobs in this country.

Ricketts concluded by expressing confidence that the EPA’s actions will be part of a revitalized economy that will thrive under the second Trump administration.

“[T]his will be part of how the Trump administration unleashes the economy again,” he predicted. “I mean, we saw some of the best economy we’ve ever seen under the first Trump administration. You go look at the job participation rate by Americans. … We saw great unleashing of our economic power here, and it’s because, in part, the Trump administration took off a bunch of regulations that were preventing our innovators, our small businesses, and our families from being able to invest or spend the money that they otherwise would have.”