By MICHAEL PHILLIS and MATTHEW DALY

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Republican-controlled Congress has voted to repeal a federal fee on oil and gas producers who release high levels of methane, undoing a major piece of former President Joe Biden’s climate policy aimed at controlling the planet-warming “super pollutant.” The fee, which had not gone into effect, was expected to bring in billions of dollars.

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The Senate on Thursday voted along party lines 52-47 to repeal the fee, following a similar House vote on Wednesday. The measure now goes to President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it.

Methane is a much stronger global warming gas than carbon dioxide, especially in the short term, and is to blame for about one-third of the world’s warming so far. Oil and gas producers are among the biggest U.S. methane emitters and controlling it is critical to address climate change.

Most major oil and gas companies do not release enough methane to trigger the fee, which is $900 per ton, an amount that would increase to $1,500 by 2026. The measure was part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, but the Environmental Protection Agency didn’t formally set rules until late last year.

That timing made it vulnerable to the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to pass a resolution to undo rules that are finalized towards the end of a president’s term. If those resolutions pass and the president signs them, the rule is terminated and agencies can’t issue a similar one again.

“It’s a sorry testament to the influence of Big Oil on Capitol Hill that one of the top priorities of Congress is a blatant handout to the worst actors in the fossil fuel industry,” said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen’s energy program.

The American Petroleum Institute, the largest lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, applauded the move, calling the fee a “duplicative, punitive tax on American energy production that stifles innovation.”

“Thanks to industry action, methane emissions continue to decline as production increases, and we support building on this progress through smart and effective regulation,” said Amanda Eversole, the executive vice president and chief advocacy officer at API.

Globally, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been steadily climbing.

Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who chairs the Senate’s Environment and Public Works committee, spoke in favor of repeal on the Senate floor.

“We should be expanding natural gas production, not restricting it. Instead, the natural gas tax will constrain American natural gas production, leading to increased energy prices and providing a boost to the production of natural gas in Russia,” she said.

Repeal of the methane fee is the latest of several pro-oil and gas moves Republicans have taken since the start of Trump’s term. On his first day, he declared a national energy emergency, calling for more oil and gas production, and fewer environmental reviews. Democrats failed to overturn that declaration yesterday. Trump has also lifted a pause on new applications for liquified natural gas export terminals, removed the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement and moved to open up more areas of public lands and waters for oil and gas drilling.

The fee on methane releases was aimed at pushing companies to adopt better practices to curb emissions and make their operations more efficient. Technology exists to prevent leaks and to fix them. The EPA had said the fee was expected to reduce 1.2 million metric tons of methane emissions by 2035 — that’s about the same as removing 8 million cars from the road for a year.

The Biden administration had also implemented methane regulations on existing oil and gas wells, after addressing methane escaping from new wells. The EPA at the time meant for the fee to complement that rule and focus on the worst polluters.

About half of all methane emissions from wells are from just 6% that are smaller producers, according to a recent study.

Phillis reported from St. Louis.

The Associated Press receives support from the Walton Family Foundation for coverage of water and environmental policy. The AP is solely responsible for all content. For all of AP’s environmental coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

INDIANAPOLIS — As he addressed some of the Vikings’ biggest needs this week at the 2025 NFL Combine, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah acknowledged the importance of being able to generate pressure without having to blitz.

That’s exactly how the Philadelphia throttled the Kansas City on their way to winning the Super Bowl. The Eagles’ interior defensive line was dominant at the point of attack, and it allowed them to make life miserable for the Chiefs without sending a single blitz throughout the entire game.

The best way for the Vikings to try to emulate that model would be to spend significant draft capital on the interior of their defensive line. To say they have rarely done that as of late would be a massive understatement.

The last time the Vikings invested so heavily on the interior of the defensive line came when they selected defensive tackle Sharif Floyd in the first round of the 2013 NFL Draft. You have to go back another decade for the previous time the Vikings selected DT — Kevin Williams in the first round of the 2003 NFL Draft.

It would behoove the Vikings to buck that in a couple of months. They have the No. 24 pick in April 24-26 draft, and if they decide not to trade down, they should consider using it on the best defensive tackle available.

This is widely regarded as deep draft class at defensive tackle. Though it’s a certainty that Michigan defensive tackle Mason Graham will be long gone by the time the Vikings are on the clock, there should be a number of options available.

A potential fit could be somebody like Michigan’s Kenneth Grant, whose 6-foot-4, 330-pound frame could help him make a major impact as a rookie.

“Most guys think I’m just a run stopper,” Grant said. “I’m super athletic and can rush the passer.”

Maybe somebody like Ole Miss’s Walter Nolen, who prides himself on an intensity that allows him to play even bigger than his 6-foot-4, 295-pound frame would suggest.

“I feel like I do everything,” Nolen said. “It’s hard to find someone who looks like me and does the things I do.”

Then there is Oregon’s Derrick Harmon, who has the versatility needed to play multiple positions with a 6-foot-4, 315-pound frame to match. “I’ve got that dog in me,” he said. “A real gritty player who’s trying to get to the ball and make a play.”

Now, if the Vikings decide to trade down, they should still have options, whether that’s Toledo’s Darius Alexander, South Carolina’s T.J. Sanders or Kentucky’s Deone Walker, among a handful of others.

“It’s a ‘starter’s draft’ is how I would phrase it,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah said. “Some positions maybe don’t have that super star that we have had in years past. We do have a boatload of starters, particularly the defensive line. A bunch of really, really good players.”

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President Donald Trump is poised to address a joint session of Congress on March 4, the first-year equivalent of the annual State of the Union address. Whatever one thinks of this administration’s policies and many executive orders, the presidency has grown too powerful, and reformers from every political party should work to pare it back.

If America’s Founders had one overriding principle, it is this: Don’t put too much power in one place. As we approach 2026 and America’s semi-quincentennial (quarter millennial), celebrating 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, it’s an apt time to realize the center of power has long since moved away from the states and toward Washington, to the detriment of us all. And within Washington, power has increasingly centralized in the president at the expense of Congress and the judiciary.

For his part, Trump has already usurped Congress’s power of the purse to impose trade tariffs, and he has floated the idea of creating a sovereign wealth fund without Congress. He can cite a precedent as recent as President Joe Biden’s attempt to spend $400 billion on student loans without congressional involvement. When courts blocked Biden, he continued the same policy, in smaller chunks.

Before that, President Barack Obama infamously pledged to use his pen and phone when Congress threatened to block his policies. Before that, President George W. Bush started two wars without congressional approval, one more than his father. Going back even further, President Woodrow Wilson jailed political opponents during World War I in violation of court orders.

Trump’s annual speech itself is arguably an indicator of burgeoning presidential power. Thomas Jefferson transmitted his State of the Union addresses to Congress in written form, partly because he felt that appearing in person before Congress looked too much like a king pressuring the legislature. Jefferson’s tradition of respecting congressional independence continued for more than a century until Woodrow Wilson, whose grand views of presidential power mirror Trump’s, began giving in-person speeches annually.

The separation of powers is one of the most essential principles in American government. Yet, there are also political and economic reasons to oppose unilateral presidential policymaking. One is the yo-yo effect. While it is easy to enact sweeping policy changes via executive order, it is just as easy for the next president to overturn them. The result is policy whiplash every time there is a change in power, on issues ranging from environmental policy to labor regulations. This instability discourages investment and slows innovation and growth.

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For example, many of Trump’s first-term executive orders on regulation were overturned by Biden on his first day in office. Now, some of those same orders are back in effect, and the odds are the next Democratic president will overturn them again.

Tariffs provide another example. The Constitution gives all taxing powers to Congress and none to the president. In the 1960s and 1970s, Congress delegated its tariff-making powers to the president for expediency reasons. Trump has used these powers to impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars of goods, often announced on social media with little to no notice and certainly with no congressional input.

Congress hasn’t raised tariffs since the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs that worsened the Great Depression — and for good reason. Trump’s 2018 steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, created 1,000 jobs in those industries but cost 75,000 jobs in steel- and aluminum-using industries ranging from autos to beverages.

Trump’s speech to Congress will inspire and provoke. There should be one thing everyone can agree on: the presidency has grown too powerful.

Congress rightly has sole legislative and spending power, not the president. To restore constitutional government, Congress must either codify Trump’s executive orders in legislation or repeal them outright, on a case-by-case basis. And the courts must stop unconstitutional behavior from Congress and the president while upholding policies that are constitutional.

The state of our union is that America is in good shape. However, our Founding institutions are undergoing another stress test. It is up to Congress, the courts and to each of us to see that it passes.

Ryan Young is a senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

“Every few weeks,” wrote one of our more interesting critics, Walt Zlotow, on his Substack last spring, “the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board publishes an editorial misrepresenting the war in Ukraine.”

Zlotow’s complaints included this statement in an editorial, also published last April: “We have never wavered in our support for the Ukrainian people against Russian aggression, stretching back to the beginning of Putin’s brutal, illegal war. We’ve never heard any reasonable argument to the contrary.”

In that piece, we lauded Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, for potentially risking his job by pushing continued Ukraine aid over the objections of Republican “firebrands.”

Zlotow disagreed, writing: “It’s the Trib Editorial Board Members that wear the moniker ‘firebrands’ for engaging in radical promotion of endless war destroying Ukraine.”

Since the election of Donald J. Trump, a president with far too cozy a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Zlotow’s views have become more common, especially in MAGA circles. Zlotow makes the ascendent point of view better than most: The Tribune editorial board “knows the war is hopeless. It knows that continued war will simply kill hundreds of thousands more Ukrainian soldiers. It knows negotiations are the only way this war will end.”

Well, it’s been more than a few weeks and we are back again, in a city that has quietly welcomed thousands of Ukrainian refugees, to reaffirm the statement of our never wavering support for the people of Ukraine.

And, for that matter, for the people of the Republic of Georgia, who have been watching the war in Ukraine with growing horror, realizing that their own fledgling democracy is yet more vulnerable to the same force, to the same man with a friend now back in one of the world’s highest places, if not the highest.

Yes, we know that war extracts a terrible price. We don’t view Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as some kind of saint, nor do we doubt for a moment that some of the money America sent to defend Ukraine has been wasted or siphoned away by bad actors. It was ever thus. And Zlotow is right when he says that negotiations will be necessary to end the war, just as has been the case with most any war humans have ever fought.

We’re glad Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others are engaging in that process and we’re even open to the notion that whatever special relationship Trump claims to have with Putin might be helpful in weaning him away from China and back more into a place where his name does not strike fear and loathing into so many. All true.

But let’s not engage in some Orwellian rewriting of history to do so. And let’s not forget that if tyrants are allowed to send tanks rolling across borders not their own without invitation and with expansionist ambitions, the world must rise up in support of their quarry, lest said tyrants decide a few more borders could also fall with the right kind of violent coaxing. The MAGA crowd are very conscious of the movements of unauthorized migrants; why must they be so enabling of Putin’s far more dangerous excursions? It defies logic.

So when the U.S. voted with Russia against a United Nations General Assembly resolution Monday that was criticizing Russia for its aggression against Ukraine of three years ago, we say “for shame.” All peace-loving people should want an end to this war, and the realities of Realpolitik means that will come with a price we will have to swallow, but it’s a bridge way too far for the U.S. to formally balk at the notion that Putin started this war.

So let’s be clear. Again.

Russia invaded a sovereign nation. Period. Any zeal to end the war must not compromise a fair and full acknowledgment of how this particular war began. If this was a tactical appeasement decision on the part of Trump, Rubio or anyone else, and there can be no other explanation not too terrible to contemplate, it was both a dangerous and a morally bankrupt one.

All Americans with actual, functioning memories know that. So do the Ukrainian and Russian people. And so do we.

— The Chicago Tribune