The Environmental Protection Agency had its way with each the Clean Air Act and the U.S. Constitution for decades. The Supreme Court’s decision Thursday in West Virginia v. EPA may well be the commencing of the conclusion of this baleful era. It closes the window on sweeping local weather action by federal companies with no a congressional mandate.

In a 6-3 determination by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court held that the Clear Air Act does not authorize the Clean up Electric power Plan, or CPP, as a result of which the Obama administration sought to power America’s electrical energy sector to swap to renewable resources. The prepare would restrict every single state’s full allowable greenhouse fuel-emissions below the banner of “performance standards” for ability crops. That was the strategy the EPA experienced pursued for nearly a 10 years as its ideal choice for imposing weather restrictions by unilateral govt action.

July 4 is the most sacred day on the American civic calendar. This year marks the 246th time Us residents have celebrated the monumental accomplishment of founding a nation that, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, was “conceived in liberty, and committed to the proposition that all guys are produced equivalent.”

But the celebration arrives with tough truths of background. The Fourth reminds us of Americans’ struggle, as the Structure puts it, to “form a extra perfect union.” The stain of human bondage sparked the Civil War. The suffragettes of the 19th and early 20th generations fought for the correct to vote. Japanese-Us residents through Environment War II were being pressured into internment camps. And adult males these kinds of as Medgar Evers and Martin Luther King Jr. paid with their life to achieve equality prolonged denied to African-Us citizens. When we consider our past, sober reflection should accompany joyful celebration.

When the U.K. handed Hong Kong about to China on July 1, 1997, the town was one of Asia’s freest and most open. Now it is a repressive police condition. What went improper?

For the to start with handful of decades just after the handover, Beijing behaved—at minimum on the surface—reasonably nicely. When I remaining in 2002, I was cautiously optimistic that the “one nation, two systems” theory would persist. Only above the previous decade did it start out to come to be evident that Beijing’s iron grip was tightening. Soon after the 2014 Umbrella Motion protests demanding common suffrage, freedoms began to erode visibly. Protests in 2019 were fulfilled with stunning police brutality. The closing straw was the imposition of the draconian Countrywide Security Law two several years back, which eradicated any remaining liberties and landed previous legislators, journalists, trade unionists and civil-society activists in jail.