OPINION:
One of the biggest reasons Donald Trump won the presidency was because the American people were fed up with the Biden administration’s constant attempts to control their lives. Under President Biden, Americans were told they had to take the vaccine, limit their alcohol intake to two drinks per week, and abide by an endless stream of regulations that dictated how they could live, work and do business.
The Biden nanny state thrived on telling people what to do, and voters rejected that overreach in November. Even now, Biden holdovers in the government are doing everything they can to continue advancing his regulatory agenda, directly undermining Mr. Trump’s efforts to restore personal freedom and common sense in governance.
One of the clearest examples is Mr. Trump’s swift rescission of Mr. Biden’s misguided menthol cigarette ban on his second day back in office. Mr. Trump recognized that banning menthol cigarettes would not protect public health and would undermine consumer choice.
This is precisely why he stepped in to save flavored vapes in November 2019. “If you don’t give it to them, it is going to come here illegally,” Mr. Trump said. “They could be selling something on a street corner that could be horrible.” Unfortunately, after Mr. Biden took office, he immediately reversed Mr. Trump’s policies on flavored vapes and led a job-killing government crackdown on the industry. After Mr. Biden’s anti-science nanny state attack on flavored vapes, Mr. Trump promised to “save vaping again” on Truth Social during the heat of the presidential campaign.
Despite Mr. Trump’s clear policy of supporting tobacco freedom for adults, Biden and Obama holdovers at the International Trade Commission have launched a new attack on consumer choice and personal freedom.
Just days after Mr. Trump rescinded Mr. Biden’s menthol cigarette ban, the ITC moved to ban the only legal menthol vape products from the marketplace. In other words, since Mr. Biden’s people couldn’t get their way with menthol cigarettes, they decided to target menthol vapes instead — an outright defiance of Mr. Trump’s agenda.
Let’s be clear: This move is nothing short of an attack on the president’s policies and a blatant attempt to keep Mr. Biden’s nanny state alive. Every single commissioner on the ITC was appointed by either Mr. Biden or President Obama. They have no loyalty to Mr. Trump and every incentive to stick it to him whenever they can. That’s exactly what they’re doing: Working behind the scenes to push Mr. Biden’s regulatory agenda, even though the American people rejected it at the ballot box. This is bureaucratic sabotage at its finest.
Worse, they are ramming this decision through without giving Mr. Trump a chance to appoint people to the two vacant positions at the ITC, which, according to reporting in the Free Beacon, “is required by law to have an equal number of Democrats and Republicans.”
As someone who cares deeply about Mr. Trump’s “America First” policy agenda, it drives me crazy to see smug, left-wing bureaucrats doing this behind the scenes.
Fortunately, Mr. Trump has the power to stop this nonsense. He has 60 days to veto the ITC’s decision, which vapers everywhere are hopeful he will do. Hopefully, his U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer, and Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick will urge him to quickly protect American consumers and end the Biden holdovers’ regulatory games.
The American people didn’t vote for four more years of Mr. Biden’s overreach; they voted for Mr. Trump’s vision of freedom of choice for adults and commonsense governance. It’s time to remind the Washington bureaucracy who’s in charge.
Mr. Biden’s nanny state might still have some holdovers lurking in the shadows of the federal government, but they don’t get to run the show anymore. Mr. Trump has already shown that he is willing to take bold action to protect Americans from unnecessary government interference. Now, he must do it again by vetoing the ITC’s absurd decision. The battle against the leftist nanny state isn’t over, but with Mr. Trump back in office, freedom has a fighting chance.
• Andy Surabian is a Republican strategist and a longtime political adviser to Vice President J.D. Vance.
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