Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., defended her reintroduction of the Green New Deal on Sunday, admitting the bill was ‘massive,’ but saying the threat of climate change is even greater.

Ocasio-Cortez made the comments during a Sunday interview with MSNBC host Jen Psaki. The divisive lawmaker introduced her Green New Deal for the second time last week, arguing that it is time to ‘aggressively’ transform the American workforce.

‘You just reintroduced the Green New Deal,’ Psaki began. ‘When you talk about big, expensive new programs, that’s where you sometimes hit resistance, I think. How do you convince those people, people who believe climate change is real, it is a crisis, but they’re concerned that some of these proposed solutions are too grand?’

‘It is important to acknowledge that the scale and the scope of what we are proposing is massive, but the scale and the scope of the climate crisis is even bigger,’ Ocasio-Cortez responded. ‘If we are not proactive about very aggressively and transformationally addressing our infrastructure, our workforce, our preparation for the climate crisis, then the costs of not addressing it are going to be far greater.’

Ocasio-Cortez reintroduced her trillion-dollar Green New Deal last week, and analysts say it could end up costing the U.S. up to $92.9 trillion if passed.

The Democrats – led by Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. – said their legislation, if enacted, would ‘tackle the climate crisis’ with a decade-long mobilization that creates millions of good-paying, union jobs. They added the bill would strengthen U.S. infrastructure and combat pollution.

Ocasio-Cortez had released her previous version of the Green New Deal in 2019 to widespread criticism. She brushed passed those criticisms in a statement announcing her second version of the bill.

‘When we first introduced the Green New Deal, we were told that our vision for the future was too aspirational,’ Ocasio-Cortez said. ‘Four years later, we see core tenets of the Green New Deal reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act – the largest ever federal investment in fighting climate change, with a focus on creating good, green jobs.’

‘But there is still much, much more to do to make environmental justice the center of U.S. climate policy,’ she continued. ‘Today’s reintroduction marks the beginning of that process – of strengthening and broadening our coalition, and of laying the policy groundwork for the next fight.’

While the Green New Deal is just 14 pages and includes little detail about how it would achieve its lofty greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals, the legislation would effectively end fossil fuel extraction and include massive investments in green energy alternatives.

Fox News Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report.

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Minn., admitted Sunday she is ‘worried’ American taxpayer money may be flowing to terrorist groups, following a bombshell claim by Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko that he could not guarantee taxpayer dollars are not funding the Taliban.

‘Well, I sincerely hope that our money is not flowing to terrorism,’ Dingell told ‘Fox News Sunday’ host Shannon Bream. ‘I think the Pentagon’s got to do a better job of showing us that that is not happening. But I am worried.’

Dingell’s statements come just a few days after Sopko testified to lawmakers on the House Oversight Committeer regarding the Biden administration’s ‘unprecedented’ lack of cooperation with his watchdog office. 

‘I’ve spent so much of my career trying to help the women in Afghanistan. And what is happening to them now makes me so devastated that we need to ensure that those dollars are going where they’re intended to do in a way that we can get them there,’ Dingell said. ‘And I think we need to ask questions and get answers.’

During his testimony, Sopko warned that the Taliban is likely taking funds meant to assist the people of Afghanistan. The funds include billions of dollars meant for food aid,  health care, agriculture, civil society and human rights. 

‘Unfortunately, as I sit here today, I cannot assure this committee or the American taxpayer we are not currently funding the Taliban, nor can I assure you that the Taliban are not diverting the money we are sending from the intended recipients, which are the poor Afghan people,’ Sopko said during his opening remarks. 

The inspector general specifically called on lawmakers to end ‘obfuscation and delay’ by the State Department in turning over information that would allow him to conduct full oversight over the more than $8 billion in U.S. funding made available to the Afghan people since President Biden withdrew military forces from the country in 2021. 

A SIGAR report released prior to Sopko’s testimony detailed the ‘serious risks’ posed to U.S.-funded programs in Afghanistan, of which Sopko identified Taliban interference with the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as the top concern for oversight entities. 

According to the report, the Taliban accesses international funds by levying customs charges on imports and taxes and fees on NGOs. The report also details how rampant corruption and interference from the Taliban have gravely undermined the official U.S. policy of continuing to support the Afghan people.

Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report. 

The future of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is ‘in her own hands,’ Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Sunday, as Feinstein’s extended absence from the panel due to health issues has some fellow Democrats calling for her resignation.

Durbin, who succeeded Feinstein as chair of the Judiciary Committee, said during an appearance on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ that the longtime lawmaker has undergone ‘several weeks of travail’ over a health issue involving shingles, but still wants to return to serve the committee. 

‘She said to Chuck Schumer last week that ‘I want to get on a plane next Monday and be there,’’ Durbin said. ‘I want her to come back, too, but her future is in her own hands and her family’s consultation. I wish her the best and I hope she can return very soon.’

Feinstein has been sidelined since early March after her office announced she was being treated for shingles at a San Francisco hospital.

When asked if he had ‘any regrets’ over keeping Feinstein on the committee despite the senator’s health challenges, Durbin cited Feinstein’s record of service and claimed that it was the right call when he made it.

‘She’s served on this committee for decades and served with distinction,’ Durbin said. ‘She stepped aside from the chairmanship and gave me an opportunity to serve as chairman. She wanted to stay on the committee for other issues that were important to her. It made sense and I think it was the right decision at the time.’

While Durbin said he would not call for Feinstein’s resignation, other Democrats have.

Earlier this month, Reps. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Dean Phillips, D-Minn., both commended Feinstein’s lifetime of public service but said it was time for her to step down if she could no longer fulfill her duties.

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a 2024 GOP presidential hopeful, went on the attack mode Sunday against former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. 

During an interview with Fox News Sunday host Shannon Bream, Hutchinson namely criticized DeSantis over his handling of Disney.

‘I think it is important that we make sure that we don’t become heavy-handed in government to punish those that are creating jobs for Americans and creating income and growing private sector. That’s not what Republicanism is about. It’s not what a conservative is about,’ Hutchinson said. 

DeSantis, who is presumed to be running in 2024, though he hasn’t formally declared, defended his approach to Disney at an event in National Harbor, Maryland, Friday. 

‘In reality, Disney was enjoying unprecedented privileges and subsidies. They controlled their own government in central Florida. They were exempt from laws that virtually everybody else has to follow,’ DeSantis said. ‘That’s not free enterprise, but it’s certainly even worse, when a company takes all those privileges that have been bestowed over many, many decades and uses that to wage war on state policies regarding families and children.’ 

In response, Hutchinson said, ‘I don’t believe whether you’re on the left or right of the political spectrum, government should not be telling business what they can and cannot do in terms of speech. And however, you describe it, it appears to me that the governor did not like what Disney was doing in terms of what they were saying in exercising speech, so they’re being punished.’

FLORIDA GOV. RON DESANTIS SUPER PAC MAKES HIRES IN IOWA, NEW HAMPSHIRE AND SOUTH CAROLINA 

The former Arkansas governor, who is polling at barely 1%, said he sided with Trump in agreeing DeSantis is ‘getting it wrong on Disney,’ but added that ‘Disney is getting it wrong on themselves. ‘I don’t agree with how Disney has handled things, but you don’t use the heavy hand of government to punish a business,’ Hutchinson said. ‘I think that’s wrong, and I think’s that’s indicating motivation to go after business because you disagree with their policies or what they’re saying. The left does that. I don’t want the right or conservatives to do that either.’ 

Asked if he would support Trump if the former president received the 2024 Republican nomination, Hutchinson said he discussed the terms with the Republican National Committee. 

‘I expect to be on the debate stage. I don’t prefer party loyalty oaths, but it’s important to have the competition,’ Hutchinson said. ‘I want to participate in the debate, so I’ll see exactly what that pledge is, but I expect to be on the debate stage.’  

‘What America does not want is another repeat of 2020 where we have Joe Biden and Donald Trump running against each other. That’s reflected in the polls, certainly on the Democrat side,’ Hutchinson added. ‘And so we don’t want to repeat that it takes alternatives.’

Fox News Digital reached out to Trump and DeSantis’ office for comment. 

Vice President Kamala Harris mistakenly said last week that a government agency called the ‘Federal Drug Administration’ approved the abortion pill mifepristone 20 years ago.

While the Federal Drug Administration may seem to be the likely breakdown of the acronym for FDA, the correct agency is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Harris sat down for an interview with Noticias Telemundo’s Vanessa Hauc, which aired Friday evening, where the vice president spoke about abortion and the changes taking place in the U.S.

‘Let’s set the scene. Many months ago, the highest court in our land, the United States Supreme Court, took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America – from the women of America – which is the right to make [a] decision about your own body and your own reproductive health,’ Harris said. ‘The government should not be telling that woman what to do with her body. This evokes, in my mind, very fundamental rights, including the right to freedom for each individual about what is in their best interest.’

The vice president then turned her attention to mifepristone, an abortion pill approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000.

A case challenging the FDA’s approval of the drug, which was brought on by pro-life doctors and medical groups, challenges not the pill directly but whether the FDA acted appropriately when it approved the drug more than 20 years ago.

‘On the mifepristone issue, it’s politicians finding a court, targeting a specific court that they thought would be helpful to them, to take a medication off the market, which was approved 20 years ago by the Federal Drug Administration,’ Harris said.

She then asked anyone to look into their medical cabinet and look at any drug in there that was prescribed by a doctor.

Harris said any of the drugs prescribed, whether to help with pain or extend a person’s quality of life, was FDA approved.

‘Arguably, what they’re doing with mifepristone could happen to any one of those drugs in your medicine cabinet,’ she said.

On Friday, the same day the interview with Harris aired, the Supreme Court ruled that full access to the abortion pill could continue as the lawsuit works its way through the lower federal courts.

The case reached the Supreme Court after Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk issued a ruling that sided with pro-life groups by halting the FDA approval of mifepristone.

Kacsmaryk’s order was partially overturned by the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appears, but the appeals court preserved restrictions that made the drug available only to be dispensed up to seven weeks, not 10, and not by mail.

The Justice Department argued that allowing restrictions on the drug to remain in place would create chaos.

Complicating things, a federal judge in Washington ordered the FDA to preserve access to mifepristone under the current rules in response to a separate lawsuit brought by 17 Democrat-led states and the District of Columbia.

Mifepristone is taken with misoprostol in a two-drug regimen that first blocks hormones needed to keep an unborn baby alive and then causes cramps and contractions to expel the dead fetus from the mother’s womb.

The drug is 97% effective in terminating early pregnancy, though approximately 3% of women who take it will ‘require surgical intervention for ongoing pregnancy, heavy bleeding, incomplete expulsion or other reasons such as patient request,’ according to the manufacturer.

Christ Pandolfo, Adam Sabes, Shannon Bream and Bill Mears of Fox News contributed to this report.

U.S. Climate Envoy John Kerry and former White House press secretary Jen Psaki chatted about the dire state of the planet and ‘Forrest Gump’ over ice cream Sunday on Psaki’s new MSNBC show.

Psaki, who served as Kerry’s spokesperson at the State Department during the Obama administration, introduced the segment on ‘Inside with Jen Psaki’ by saying she caught up with Kerry ‘on the National Mall for a wide-ranging discussion and a little dessert.’

The discussion remained very light, with Kerry recalling his mother’s influence on his environmental activism and him praising younger generations for leading the fight on climate change. Immediately after Kerry declared ‘the planet is at risk,’ Psaki suggested an ice cream break. —

‘It sounds kind of highfalutin, probably, to say that, but the planet is at risk. I mean, it is at risk,’ Kerry said.

‘Now,’ Psaki pivoted, ‘I remember well that you have a bit of a sweet tooth. Do you want to go get some ice cream over there?’

‘That would be hitting the nail on the head,’ Kerry responded.

‘Let’s do it,’ Psaki said.

Some jazz music then played in the segment as Psaki and Kerry strolled over to a mall vendor and looked over the menu. They both quickly settled on the $4.50 Dove bar.

‘What do we have here? A Dove bar,’ Psaki said.

‘Dove bar? Oh, Dove, I love Dove,’ Kerry exclaimed. ‘Dove bar – I’ll have a Dove bar. What do you want?’

‘I’ll have a Dove bar, too,’ Psaki replied.

The two then ate their ice cream as they walked along the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

‘So I know you like ‘Forrest Gump’ a little bit,’ Psaki said. ‘Does this remind you – you’ve lived a life a little bit like Forrest Gump.’

‘I’ve had some Forrest Gump moments,’ Kerry said. ‘Every time I’m around here I always think of him screaming to Jenny in the pool over here.’

At the end of the brief segment, Kerry and Psaki did a ‘cheers with Dove bars.’

The Republican National Committee mocked the ‘hard-hitting interview’ on Twitter.

Steve Guest, Sen. Cruz’s, R-Texas, special adviser for communications, recirculated a 2014 photo showing Psaki wearing a Russian hat bearing the communist hammer-and-sickle logo while posing with then-Secretary of State Kerry. 

Camryn Kinsey, who previously worked in the Trump administration and serves as the spokesperson for Maritime Classic Foundation, took a shot at Psaki, saying she couldn’t answer tough questions as White House press secretary and can’t ask tough questions at MSNBC.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took a swipe at former President Donald Trump over Dr. Anthony Fauci’s role during the COVID-19 pandemic while delivering a keynote speech at a Republican event.

‘A leader must have the confidence to stand all alone if need be,’ DeSantis said at the Utah GOP Convention on Saturday. ‘And so for us, as I got into office, COVID presented that situation for us because we were in a situation – the third-largest state in the country – one of the highest percentage of elderly, economy based on tourism, which we needed to travel to continue.’

‘So, this situation was an existential threat to our state, but I made the judgment. Leaders take the bull by the horns and make the decisions for themselves. They don’t subcontract out their leadership to health bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci,’ he continued.

Fauci, who retired as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases last year, served as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force in the Trump administration, helping craft guidelines for Americans during the pandemic.

Trump and Fauci’s relationship became contentious during the pandemic, with the former president suggesting ahead of the 2020 election that he might fire Fauci. Trump called out the health leader and his colleague, Dr. Deborah Birx, for their ‘bad policy decisions’ in 2021.

‘Based on their interviews, I felt it was time to speak up about Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx, two self-promoters trying to reinvent history to cover for their bad instincts and faulty recommendations, which I fortunately almost always overturned,’ Trump said in 2021 after Fauci and Birx conducted interviews with CNN for a documentary that year.

‘They had bad policy decisions that would have left our country open to China and others, closed to reopening our economy, and years away from an approved vaccine – putting millions of lives at risk.’

Trump did award Fauci and other members of Operation Warp Speed, which accelerated the development and distribution of the COVID vaccines, with presidential commendations for their work in 2021.

Upon President Joe Biden taking office, Fauci went on to serve as the administration’s chief medical adviser to the president until last year, when he retired.

The governor has previously taken shots at Trump and Fauci for their leadership during the pandemic, saying last month that he would have ‘fired’ Fauci if he had been president.

‘Well, I think there’s a few things,’ DeSantis told journalist Piers Morgan last month when asked about his differences with Trump. ‘The approach to COVID was different. I would have fired somebody like Fauci. I think he got way too big for his britches, and I think he did a lot of damage.’

DeSantis was invited to deliver the keynote speech on Saturday for the Utah Republican Party’s 2023 organizing convention. The Florida governor has not announced an official run for president in 2024, but he is anticipated to throw his hat in the ring, which would tee him up against Trump and a handful of other Republicans for the nomination.

‘Utah is one of the best-governed states in the United States,’ DeSantis told the delegates in his speech. ‘Utah, like Florida, is where freedom works. Maybe Florida is the Utah of the southeast.’

His speech focused on his work in Florida during the pandemic as well as his ongoing fight against Disney as he railed against ‘wokeness.’

‘It’s what I refer to as the ‘woke mind virus.’ We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die,’ DeSantis said.

Though DeSantis has yet to announce a presidential run, various polls show he’s trailing Trump, who has already announced a run for next year’s election. Trump took a shot at DeSantis during an appearance on the ‘Full Send’ podcast that aired last week, describing him as a ‘rocket man that’s crashing.’

‘You have a guy from Florida, Ron DeSantis, who I got in with my endorsement. He was at three points. He was nothing, he was not going to win. He was going to lose, and I endorsed him,’ Trump said on the podcast.

‘He was dead politically. I endorsed him and saved him. He was losing by like 25, 30 points very shortly before the election. When I endorsed him, he went like a rocket ship,’ Trump continued. ‘I should call him rocket man, but now he’s rocket man that’s crashing.’

A new poll shows nearly 3 out of 4 Americans do not believe President Joe Biden should run for reelection, following multiple reports that he will announce his bid for a second term this upcoming week.

According to the survey from NBC News, 70% of Americans, including 51% of Democrats, do not think Biden should run for reelection, with 26% supporting the president.

Almost half of the respondents who voted no cited Biden’s age as their ‘major’ concern with Biden running again – 48% categorized their concern as ‘major’ while 21% said it was a minor concern; 29% of respondents said the issue of his age did not pose a reason in their logic whatsoever.

In February, Biden, 80, admitted that concerns over his age were ‘totally legitimate’ amid growing concerns from both his critics and supporters.

‘No,’ Biden said. ‘But it’s legitimate for people to raise issues about my age. It’s totally legitimate to do that. And the only thing I can say is, watch me.’

On the flip side, 60% of Americans said they do not think former President Donald Trump should run for president in 2024, with only 35% voting yes. The numbers come a few weeks after Trump pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records linked to 2016 hush-money payments. About 68% of GOP primary voters agreed with the statement that the investigations into the former president are politically motivated.

When asked which GOP candidate they would vote for if the presidential primary were to be held today, 46% voted for Trump and 31% voted for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has yet to make an announcement on his own presidential bid but has been going head-to-head with Trump in the polls over recent months.

Former Vice President Mike Pence had 6% of votes, followed by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott.

Multiple reports out this past week have said Biden and his team are expected to make the announcement via a campaign video on April 25, which will be the four-year anniversary of his 2020 campaign launch.

Speculation swirled for months over whether Biden would run for reelection, with his team only saying he intends on running but not making any other statements in the affirmative. However, Biden recently admitted that an announcement about his potential candidacy would come ‘relatively soon.’

Fox News’ Brandon Gillespie contributed to this report.

The Biden administration is pushing full steam ahead to massively expand offshore wind development across millions of acres of federal waters, actions that critics warn would have dire ecological and economic impacts.

Days after taking office, President Biden issued an executive action ordering his administration to expand opportunities for the offshore wind industry as part of his aggressive climate agenda to curb greenhouse gas emissions and stop global warming. Months later, he outlined goals to deploy 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy by 2030, the most ambitious goal of its kind worldwide.

‘Two years ago, President Biden issued a bold challenge to move America towards a clean energy future,’ Deb Haaland, the secretary of the Department of the Interior (DOI), said earlier this month. ‘The Interior Department answered that call and is moving rapidly to create a robust and sustainable clean energy economy with good-paying union jobs.’

In May 2021, the DOI’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) approved the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project 12 miles off the coast of Massachusetts, marking the first ever large-scale offshore wind approval. Then, in November 2021, the agency approved the 130-megawatt Southfork Wind project off the coast of Long Island, New York, the second commercial-scale offshore project.

A number of other proposed offshore wind projects along the Atlantic coast are under development and in the federal permitting stage. The Biden administration has leased hundreds of thousands of acres to energy corporations and plans future lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of California.

‘This is an environmental wrecking ball,’ David Stevenson, the president of the American Coalition for Ocean Protection (ACOP), told Fox News Digital in an interview. ‘It’s an economic disaster. From an environmental — from a climate change standpoint, it’s also useless.’

‘It is going to turn the oceans into an industrial park, particularly at night when you’ve got red flashing lights. It’s going to look like the industrial area in northern New Jersey,’ added Stevenson, who founded ACOP to mount legal defenses in response to offshore wind development on behalf of local shoreline communities.

Stevenson and other opponents of large-scale offshore wind development have noted that BOEM has acknowledged the negative impacts of the proposals it has approved. 

According to a report ACOP published in February, BOEM has stated that wind turbine structures will lead to radar interference, increasing likelihood of vessel collisions and complicating search-and-rescue missions; likely harm wildlife; industrialize ocean views, possibly harming tourism industries; impede key military operations; and impair oceanic scientific research.

BOEM has admitted that the commercial fishing industry would shoulder millions of dollars in economic damages. 

‘While Vineyard Wind is not authorized to prevent free access to the entire wind development area, due to the placement of the turbines it is likely that the entire 75,614 acre area will be abandoned by commercial fisheries due to difficulties with navigation,’ BOEM stated in its May 10, 2021, record of decision green-lighting the Vineyard Wind project, for example.

‘The extent of impact to commercial fisheries and loss of economic income is estimated to total $14 million over the expected 30-year lifetime of the Project,’ it continued.

In another example, BOEM’s environmental impact analysis published last summer for Ocean Wind 1 — a 1,100-megawatt project proposed off the southern New Jersey coast — the agency concluded that impacts on commercial fisheries, navigation and views would all be ‘major.’

‘This is the industrialization of our oceans,’ Bonnie Brady, executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, told Fox News Digital. 

‘This is creating a construction zone, pile-driving a 4,000-kilojoule hammer that’s about 30 to 40 feet wide, pounding giant steel, thousand-foot poles into the ocean floor and then jet-plowing, which is liquefying the ocean floor up to 10 or 12 feet, and laying giant 100,000-volt cables in the ocean floor and then turning on the switch and seeing what happens,’ she continued.

‘I mean, that’s a problem,’ Brady said. ‘These are areas of extreme productivity for not just fish, but marine mammals.’

Brady’s Long Island Commercial Fishing Association is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit led by the Rhode Island-based fishing company Seafreeze challenging the Biden administration’s approval of Vineyard Wind. An attorney representing plaintiffs said the project was an example of the administration’s ‘stubborn pursuit of increasing renewable energy generation regardless of who it hurts.’

According to Brady, the federal wind lease area off the shores of Massachusetts and Rhode Island is larger than Rhode Island, Long Island and much of the 1,902-square-mile Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona. And offshore wind turbines are massive, nearly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty.

‘Imagine that we’re all standing on that beautiful [Grand Canyon] vista and there’s a turbine a mile apart in every single direction, a thousand feet tall,’ Brady said. ‘There you go, that’s your picture. And that’s going to be the picture all up and down every single coastline.’

Overall, the Biden administration’s rapid development of offshore wind has faced resistance from environmental groups, fishing industry groups, federally-established fishery councils, small business organizations, local officials, lawmakers and, most recently, the Department of Defense.

Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., who represents New Jersey’s southern coastline, including Atlantic City, has criticized the White House over the last several months for looking the other way at wildlife impacts of offshore wind projects.

‘In Joe Biden’s mad rush to a net zero energy economy, federal agencies responsible for the implementation of offshore wind have hastily pushed forward these projects with little regard to industries like fishing and maritime transports, ignored the concerns of coastal communities who rely on the ocean for jobs and tourism, ignored the national security concerns raised by our own military, and have been negligent in properly studying the harmful impacts these turbines will have on our environment,’ Van Drew told Fox News Digital.

‘And despite these concerns and warnings from communities, stakeholders, and members of Congress, this administration pushes it aside with the sole excuse being that the industrialization of our oceans will save the planet by ‘stopping climate change,’’ he continued. 

Since the beginning of the year, more than 20 humpback whales and endangered North Atlantic right whales have been discovered dead along the East Coast, with most beaching in New Jersey, New York and Virginia, according to federal data. The uptick in whale deaths has led to calls from lawmakers, local officials and conservation organizations for a federal moratorium on wind development in the Atlantic Ocean.

While administration officials and some environmental groups have said there is no evidence suggesting that wind turbine construction is killing whales and that the deaths are part of an ‘unusual mortality event’ for both whale species dating back years, the region is on pace to far surpass death figures set since the mortality events were declared.

‘The agencies admit it themselves in their environmental impact statements that offshore wind will increase impacts on climate change unless it completely replaces the fossil fuel industry,’ Van Drew said. ‘That’s their goal — to make America completely reliant on an unreliable renewable energy source. And that’s the crux of this situation.’ 

‘These industrial wind grids are money grabs for major corporations and legacy builders for politicians,’ he added. ‘To replace fossil fuels, they will need to lease millions upon millions of acres of our oceans and lakes to generate the power we are already producing.’

‘Think about it: a wall of turbines lining our horizons for decades to come, generating more expensive energy for homes and businesses, killing sea life, destroying generational industries.’

Van Drew noted that wind turbine technology is mainly manufactured overseas and that, over the long-term, offshore wind projects will create a few dozen permanent jobs.

‘The warnings are clear, and our president and our government need to listen and act before it is too late.’

The Biden administration is reportedly finalizing a proposal that would force fossil fuel-fired power plants to substantially curb emissions or utilize costly carbon capture technology.

The proposal — which will soon be released by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — is expected to require coal- and natural gas-fired power plants to cut or capture the vast majority of their carbon dioxide emissions by 2040, The New York Times reported on Saturday, citing officials briefed on a draft of the plan. The regulation, if finalized, would represent the first-ever federal action curbing power plant emissions.

‘EPA cannot comment because the proposals are currently under interagency review,’ EPA spokesperson Maria Michalos told Fox News Digital in a statement. 

‘But we have been clear from the start that we will use all of our legally-upheld tools, grounded in decades-old bipartisan laws, to address dangerous air pollution and protect the air our children breathe today and for generations to come,’ Michalos said.

An Office of Management and Budget filing from late last year stated that the EPA anticipates issuing a proposed rule for the action, described as a proposal to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing fossil fuel-fired plants, in spring 2023 and promulgating a final rule by summer 2024. The filing noted there are no EPA regulations on the books limiting emissions from existing electric generating units.

Overall, there are 3,393 fossil fuel-fired power plants nationwide, the majority of which are natural gas plants, according to the most recent federal data. Those plants generate more than 60% of the nation’s electricity, compared to the roughly 14% of electricity generated by wind and solar projects.

However, EPA data shows that the electric power sector accounts for about 25% of total U.S. emissions, placing it behind only the transportation sector and slightly ahead of the industrial sector. As such, fossil fuel power plants have been targeted by environmentalists and Democratic lawmakers who argue that emissions must be reduced in an effort to stave off cataclysmic climate change.

Shortly after he took office, President Biden pledged to enable the nation to achieve an up to 52% total emission reduction by 2030 and to create a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035.

‘Setting effective, affordable power plant carbon standards under the Clean Air Act now can ensure that the power industry delivers the emissions reductions needed to help meet the climate crisis,’ argued an issue brief released this month by the Natural Resources Defense Council, an influential environmental group. ‘Time is of the essence.’ 

‘The EPA needs to move expeditiously, proposing power plant carbon standards soon as promised and finalizing them by early next year,’ the brief added. ‘This will allow states and power companies to get to work on implementing them, so we can curb this dangerous pollution and safeguard the climate as soon as possible.’

However, the fossil fuel industry has pushed back, arguing the U.S. power grid is still deeply reliant on coal, natural gas and petroleum.

‘The expected EPA regulation is just the latest in President Biden’s anti-fossil fuels agenda, coercing the retirement of electricity sources that are needed during the grid transition,’ Michelle Bloodworth, the president and CEO of America’s Power, a coal power trade group, told Fox News Digital. 

‘EPA’s actions are contrary to the concerns of grid operators and other energy experts who have warned about possible electricity shortages,’ she continued.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that an Obama-era rule limiting power plant emissions under the Clean Air Act was unconstitutional, since Congress never granted the EPA the explicit power to issue such regulations. But the Inflation Reduction Act passed two months after that ruling allows the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.