States’ rights to the rescue

OPINION:

In Founding Fathers’ days, it was the Federalists versus the Anti-Federalists. In Joe Biden’s presidential days, it’s the radical environmentalists versus the state treasurers.

And watch and wait: If states stand strong, they’ll get the win on this one.

Here’s the background: Biden, over the span of just a few months, has messaged his intent to shove far-left, redistribution-of-wealth type climate change policy down the throats of Americans. 

“[T]his order directs all executive departments and agencies … to immediately commence work to confront the climate crisis,” Biden wrote in Executive Order 13990 in January.

“[We are] putting the climate crisis at the center of United States foreign policy and national security,” Biden wrote in Executive Order 14008 in January.

“There is established within the Department of State … a temporary organization to be known as the Climate Change Support Office,” Biden wrote in Executive Order 14027 in May.

And most recently was Executive Order 14030, titled “Climate-Related Financial Risk” and directing the likes of Treasury to assess how regulators can include climate change within their assessments. That means, in essence, banks that don’t comply with Biden’s lunatic fringe zero-emissions visions won’t be able to loan in ways that make them competitive. That means, in essence, businesses that do business on Wall Street won’t be able to do business as normal if they don’t obey the environmental dictates of Team Biden’s ruling Green classes. 

“The Secretary of the Treasury … shall [issue] a report to the president within 180 days … on any efforts by Financial Stability Oversight Council member agencies to integrate consideration of climate-related financial risk in their policies and programs,” the order states.

“[T]he Secretary of Labor shall … assess,” the order states, “how the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board has taken environmental, social and governance factors, including climate-related financial risk, into account.”

“The Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council … shall … ensure that major federal agency procurements minimize the risk of climate change, including requiring the social cost of greenhouse gas emissions to be considered in procurement decisions,” the order states.

“The Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall consider approaches to better integrate climate-related financial risk into underwriting standards, loan terms and conditions and asset management and servicing procedures,” the order states.

See where this is headed?

A total top-down federal bureaucrat takeover of pretty much all activities that can be conducted by humans, from buying and selling to growing produce and trading on Wall Street to seeking a loan and granting a loan. Everything.

It’s the ultimate in Federalist policy.

It’s why the Anti-Federalists refused to ratify the Constitution and demanded a Bill of Rights.

Now come the Republican state treasurers, representing a sort of modern-day Anti-Federalist movement, taking a stand against Biden’s obvious and obnoxious executive overreach as it pertains to environmentalism.

In March, CNBC reported this: “Biden climate envoy John Kerry talking to banks, asset managers about mobilizing capital for clean energy.”

Kerry’s also stolen a tactic from Eric Holder, former U.S. attorney general to Barack Obama, who used his platform to pressure banks to stop doing business with the gun industry — and now we’re seeing Biden’s climate envoy attempt the same. He’s pressuring banks to stop doing business with companies tied to coal, oil, even natural gas.

Republicans in Congress are seething about it, too. In a letter to Kerry in April, the GOP members of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs wrote: “We are concerned by reports you have been pressuring banks to make extralegal commitments regarding energy-related lending and investment activities. These commitments would result in discrimination against lawful U.S. energy companies and their employees, higher energy costs for American consumers and slower economic growth.”

Of course, the White House turned deaf ears to the complaint.

But now — but finally — states are kicking into gear.

“States threaten to pull assets from banks that drop coal,” Yahoo! Finance wrote in a headline.

The story went on to report how more than a dozen Republican state treasurers have threatened to pull out their collective billions in dollars of assets from banks and financial institutions that try to implement this Obama-Turned-Kerry chokehold.

“As a collective, we strongly oppose command-and-control economic policies that attempt to bend the free market to the political will of government officials,” these treasurers wrote to Kerry, in a letter dated May 24. “It is simply antithetical to our nation’s … capitalist economy for the executive branch to bully corporations into curtailing legal activities.”

It’s not quite the shot heard ‘round the world.

But it is a solid Anti-Federalist moment.

Finally, states’ rights to the rescue. 

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.