💬 The Rubin Recap: The Sunday return to normalcy ...

Calming of the climate hysteria

President Trump along with EPA chief Lee Zeldin this week announced the termination of the “endangerment finding,” a 2009 declaration by the federal government that has ever since been the basis for intense regulation on U.S. industries in pursuit of fighting climate change. Trump hailed the rollback as “the single largest deregulatory action in American history” and said the move would “save American consumers trillions of dollars” going forward.

It’s been 17 years since the endangerment finding and just think of all of the climate hysteria you and everyone else has been subjected to over that time. Sure, Al Gore was out there prior to 2009 flying around the world in private jets to fear-monger about climate change. But after 2009, the government not only ramped up the propaganda, it also enacted legislation that negatively impacted the lives of real Americans. And gave other countries a template for doing the same.

Some will celebrate the tremendous amount of money this move is expected to save each American taxpayer. And that’s great. But even more important, with this deregulation, Trump is bringing back some semblance of normalcy, returning us to a time when we weren’t relentlessly preached to and guilted for questioning climate dogma — or just trying to live our lives.

Trump has enabled part of a larger movement not only in the U.S., but around the world. The reality is that climate hysteria and alarmism is on a downward trend in 2026. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, didn’t even mention it once in her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this year. She's made climate dogma a mainstay of her Davos speeches in previous years.

As Bjorn Lomborg, president of the Copenhagen Consensus and visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, pointed out, climate change isn’t even close to being a priority for voters around the world. “Voters have become sick and tired of constant climate alarmism,” he wrote in a recent op-ed.

You may remember the term ESG (and throw up in your mouth a little whenever you hear it).

Even ESG, which climate hysteria is often cloaked in, is on the decline now. Investment funds that have ESG goals, one of the surreptitious ways ESG has been foisted on the American people, saw $84 billion in withdrawals in 2025. It was the first year in Europe that there was a downswing in ESG investment. In the U.S., it was the third straight year of declines. People clearly saw the writing on the wall as Trump barreled toward his election victory in 2024. Now, $84 billion isn’t the biggest number, but it’s a move in the right direction.

You often see people on X saying, “the country is healing,” and this is one of those moments. Again, the climate deregulation and the decline of ESG are small victories, and you can be certain climate crazies and ESG scolds will still be out there. But Trump’s move to deregulate, on top of the atmosphere he’s already established, will hopefully have a far-reaching, positive effect on Americans, which many will likely recognize, and will have the power to influence policy around the world.

Bravo to the Trump administration for getting things back to normal on this front.

Harmeet Dhillon on the indictment and arrest of Don Lemon

You know her, you love her. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the Justice Department Harmeet Dhillon sat down with me to discuss everything that led to the indictment of Don Lemon for his role in the storming of a Minnesota church with a bunch of anti-ICE protesters — while congregants were in the middle of Sunday services.

Harmeet explained the origin and nuances of the FACE Act, and discussed free speech versus unlawful obstruction and intimidation, and talked about a key piece of evidence that could seal Lemon’s legal fate. We also touched on voting integrity, Second Amendment protections, religious liberty, unraveling the DEI programs that have infested public institutions, and restoring the equal application of federal law.