A purple-haired Democrat congresswoman would like you to know that, no matter what the Supreme Court justice says, you don’t have to listen because no one has a “right to deny climate change.” And the left is calling this a victory for purple-hair.
So, yeah, if you’re a Republican and needed a reason to vote in this fall’s midterms — think about what happens when people like Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro and her party are in control of the House of Representatives.
For those who are unfamiliar with DeLauro, she’s the 83-year-old representative for Connecticut’s 3rd Congressional District who adorns herself like she went to a Phish show in 1991 and never left. No shame upon that, except jam band fans tend to be mellow and despite being an octogenarian and the ranking Democrat member of the House Appropriations Committee, she seems a little more Rage Against the Machine-centric than anything else.
On Monday, she had an exchange with Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, about regulatory authority. Despite the fact that the discussion was — at least once you look at it — nuanced, the pull-quotes that left-bubble social media took from her harangue were “You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it’s a hoax!” and “I don’t have to listen to this BS.”
The idea of celebrating this as a win was curious on a number of levels, but celebrate it lefties did — like clip-monger Aaron Rupar, for instance, who framed it as DeLauro being “fed up with Lee Zeldin’s arrogance and condescension.”
“The budget proposal reads like a climate change denier’s manifesto,” DeLauro told the EPA administrator. “When climate change is flooding our streets, poisoning our air, driving up health care and disaster costs… how can the EPA justify abandoning that duty to protect Americans through appeased polluters under the false flag of economic growth?”
Zeldin’s response was professionally lacking in DeLauro’s histrionics.
“Following the law — Section 202 of the Clean Air Act — where does it say anything about fighting global climate change?” Zeldin responded, pointing to a Supreme Court decision known as “Loper Bright.” That’ll become important in a second, although it flew over the head of most — including Rep. DeLauro.
“Maybe others are not, I’m not,” she said. But let me ask …”
Zeldin cut in.
“That’s really important as a member of Congress,” he said. “Loper Bright says that we as an agency don’t have the authority to get creative if Section 202 of the Clean Air Act.”
DeLaurao wasn’t apparently listening.
“No, no — but you do not have — excuse me! You do not have the right to say climate change doesn’t exist! That it’s a hoax! And that’s where this administration is coming from!” DeLauro shouted.
Zeldin was calm, but he was clearly disdainful of a lawmaker who knew so little about the law she was arguing.
“I understand you’re upset. You don’t know what Loper Bright is,” he said. “Do you know what the major questions doctrine is? You’re a member of Congress, you should know … do you want me to tell you what the two biggest Supreme Court cases are of the last few years?”
She did not, and she said she was sick of “this BS.” Oh snaps.
DeLauro gets fed up with Lee Zeldin’s arrogance and condescension: “You do not have the right to say climate change does not exist, that it’s a hoax! And that’s where this administration is coming from … I don’t have to listen to this BS.” pic.twitter.com/FR6NGASCFA
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 27, 2026
This is not the own that leftists apparently think it is, for two reasons.
First thing, I think we ought to acknowledge the slip here. Americans, including Lee Zeldin, do have a right to say whatever they want, so long as it is not legally libelous, defamatory or inciting immediate violence.
I have a right to say that I not only think Bigfoot exists, but that he is actually D.B. Cooper. I have a right to say Joey Buttafuoco should be appointed ambassador to San Marino. I have a right to say that the designated hitter rule is a tool of Satan. This is true whether I’m just some random writer joking around on an article, as I am here, or whether I’m the administrator of the EPA. (But seriously for a second: The DH does have a whiff of the demonic about it, no?)
When a Democrat specifically talks about what you have the “right” to say, your ears should perk up: This is not just a slip of the tongue but the thought police coming out and saying that you cannot be a “denier,” as if climate change were the Holocaust and we had laws against this sort of thing (which we don’t).
However, I’m burying the substance here, because what everyone seemed to miss is that the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee went into a subcommittee hearing with the EPA head and didn’t seem to know how the Supreme Court cases of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo or West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency affected Section 202 of the Clean Air Act.
This is a pretty simple thing to explain: Section 202 of the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to set emissions standards for motor vehicles. The 2024 Loper Bright decision, however, significantly curtailed the authority of regulatory agencies to set these sorts of things by fiat, in this case involving a rule set by the National Marine Fisheries Service.
It also overruled a previous decision, Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, and declared that the Supreme Court and lower courts should not defer to federal agency interpretations of the law, as Oyez notes. Instead, it strengthened the so-called “major questions doctrine,” in which major decisions about policy must be made by elected members of Congress, accountable to voters, not by bureaucrats staffing the administrative state.
In West Virginia v. EPA, decided two years earlier, the court ruled that greenhouse gas emissions were not specifically covered under the Clean Air Act.
By deductive reasoning, therefore, what DeLauro was ranting about — the EPA not setting greenhouse gas emission standards for motor vehicles because it lacks the regulatory authority to do so under the Clean Air Act, as explicitly stated in two separate Supreme Court decisions — was something she was also in the wrong about.
This is true no matter how severe or mild or nonexistent climate change may or may not be. Nobody has to weigh in on that, because what she is advocating for is unconstitutional and illegal. It’s a non-issue.
She’s wrong. Period. End of story. Finito.
But then, why should we be surprised? She’s 83 and was in the wrong about the First Amendment, too.
But boy, she was certainly loudly in the wrong about it! She sure showed that guy who was correct who’s boss! And her hair is purple, too!
These are the people the Democrats want you to believe are the Responsible Adults in the Room™. It’d be hilarious if it weren’t so serious.
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