"(Reuters) - Fourteen U.S. states including Louisiana and Wyoming filed lawsuits on Wednesday against President Joe Biden's administration, challenging his pause on new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.

"The legal actions, which seek to restore regular federal drilling auctions, came a day before the administration is set to launch a review of the oil and gas leasing program.

"Biden, a Democrat, in January signed an executive order putting on hold new leasing pending that review. During his election campaign, he pledged to end new federal leasing as part of a sweeping plan to address climate change.

"The pause has triggered heavy criticism from the oil industry and producing states that receive half of the revenues generated from federal lands drilling within their borders.

"'We believe that the president's actions are illegal and unlawful, and we're going to hold him accountable for them to try to make sure that the gains that we've made over the years to help protect domestic oil and gas and energy continue,' Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry said in an interview."

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"In its first two months, the Biden administration and the 117th Congress have launched a breathtaking assault on state autonomy and the Tenth Amendment.

"The PRO Act would usurp the most significant state labor laws. The For the People Act, H.R. 1, would do the same for state election laws. And with the recently signed American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), the federal government has baited a financial trap for state governments. Billions of dollars are available for their spending . . . if they surrender to Washington their prerogatives to reduce taxes and to manage their unfunded liabilities."

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"A New York judge slammed The New York Times for blurring the lines between news and opinion. The paper had attempted to get a defamation lawsuit against it dismissed on the grounds that, among other things, its reporters were just expressing their personal opinions when they disparaged the investigative journalists at Project Veritas.

"The judge ruled the lawsuit can go forward, finding that Project Veritas showed sufficient evidence that The New York Times may have been motivated by 'actual malice' and acted with 'reckless disregard' when it ran several articles against the investigative journalism outfit.

"'[I]f a writer interjects an opinion in a news article (and will seek to claim legal protections as opinion) it stands to reason that the writer should have an obligation to alert the reader, including a court that may need to determine whether it is factor opinion, that it is opinion,' Judge Charles Wood of the New York State Supreme Court said in his March 18, 2021 ruling.

"The lawsuit stems from The New York Times' coverage of an explosive video released in September purporting to show illegal voting practices within the Somali-American community in Rep. Ilhan Omar's congressional district in Minneapolis, Minnesota."

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"Biden had the chance to reach out to moderate Senate Republicans, who were drafting a scaled back coronavirus relief bill earlier this year. Instead, Biden took the more feasible but more costly route of passing the massive $2 trillion bill with the reconciliation process. The final legislation includes several provisions that are both inflationary and untargeted.

"Now there are talks that Senate Democrats could weaken or eliminate the filibuster, a mistake I strongly hope my party will not make. It is important to maintain the filibuster so there is a level of bipartisanship built into the system. Even if Senate Democrats can somehow get their entire coalition on board with deploying the nuclear option, doing so would continue the dangerous precedent for the Senate, where the party in control uses that measure in the narrowly divided chamber to dismiss the opposition party, effectively shutting the door to key legislative compromises.

"It is clear that the left has taken over the Democrats. If the administration continues working to appease the progressive wing, while bipartisanship falls, then it could set Democrats up for some losses in 2022."

"Parents are fed up. According to a new Gallup poll, 79 percent of parents want their kids back in the classroom, in spite of the pandemic. For working parents, the figure is 82 percent.

"Any politician -- Democratic or Republican -- who does not seize this moment to rein in the excessive power of our largest labor unions is actively working against our children. They are abandoning in particular Black and Brown youngsters who so desperately need the advantages that come with a solid education.

"Democrats, in thrall to the tens of millions of dollars they receive in political donations from the teacher unions, cannot bite the hands that so generously feed them. Republicans can and should own this issue.

"Can challenging the teacher unions and fighting to give parents more choices in how they spend their education dollars win elections?

"Yes. Allowing parents to choose where their kids go to school is wildly popular, with 69 percent of voters approving of the concept. A proposed federal tax credit that would support scholarships to broaden school choice gains even more supporters, with 78 percent backing the initiative. That includes 83 percent of both Latino and Black voters, and even 77 percent of Democrats."

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"Thirty-five states currently have photo ID requirements for a voter to prove their identity before they are handed a ballot at a polling place. If Nancy Pelosi's 'HR 1' bill makes it past the Senate and to President Biden's desk, those laws will be nullified.

"Supporters of this abomination will call that assertion a lie or partial truth or whatever other euphemism 'fact-checkers' wish to utilize. But that's only because they ignore the English language.

"HR 1 nullifies existing state photo ID requirements. Nullifies them.

"HR 1 does not ban photo ID requirements. It does not erase photo ID requirements. It does not do away with photo ID requirements. It nullifies them. The state photo ID laws will remain on the books in those thirty-five states; they will just be useless.

"HR 1 would force a state with photo ID laws (which the bill describes as 'excessively onerous') to offer a voter without photo ID the option to sign a statement under penalty of perjury that they are who they claim to be. Then that voter would be allowed to vote without presenting a photo ID for identification.

"HR 1 nullifies existing state photo ID requirements.

"Fact check that."

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"When people vote -- with a moving van or a U-Haul truck -- they vote for lower taxes and smaller government. That's the conclusion from comparing a new report on freedom at the state level with the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data.

"Over the course of a year a net of 788,381 people moved to Florida, New Hampshire, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, the 'freest' five states in America, according to the Fraser Institute's annual Economic Freedom in North America index.

"The annual report, published by Canada's Fraser Institute, ranks the states and provinces of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico using objective measures of government spending, tax rates and labor market freedom. The least-free U.S. state is New York. West Virginia, Alaska, California and Vermont round out the bottom five.

"According to Census Bureau state-to-state migration estimates through mid-2018, the freest five states attracted a net of 270,608 people from other states while the bottom five saw a net outbound loss of 398,067 residents through domestic migration. New York lost the most, as 458,014 left the state and 254,447 moved in for a net loss of 203,567. California's net loss was 190,122 for the year."

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"While Democrats aim to eliminate voter ID laws under the 800-page election bill H.R. 1, also known as the 'For the People Act,' they contrarily flirt with the idea of mandating citizens show proof of COVID-19 vaccine or testing results.

"According to H.R. 1, states are to be prohibited from requiring voter identification, including things like witness signatures, and notary stamps. This would ultimately overturn laws in 36 states, as noted by the National Conference of State Legislatures.

"'A state may not require an individual to provide any form of identification as a condition of obtaining an absentee ballot,' the legislation states, which passed in the House 220 to 210 on March 3. ...

"Why would mandating proof of vaccination be acceptable if laws that reasonably mandate people demonstrate they are an American citizen by ID are not?

"In an executive order in January, President Joe Biden urged government agencies 'to assess the feasibility' of having COVID-19 vaccination certificates, and documents available for digital purposes. Subsequently, 30 airlines and travel organizations penned a letter to Jeff Zients, the COVID-19 Recovery Team Coordinator, telling Zients to take action on vaccine passports for international travel."

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"Cuomo's single accomplishment of late has been to unite both parties against him, with fellow Democrats and Republicans in nearly equal numbers calling for him to resign or be impeached. The wave reached a peak Friday when New York's senators, Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, called for him to step down.

"The media, much of which lavished praise on him not long ago, is similarly uniform now, with not a single major outlet defending Cuomo.

"Among their sordid revelations, the scandals show the governor to be a one-trick pony, as his defense against the assault claims mirrors his defense against the 15,000 nursing-home deaths. In both, presented with evidence of his own mistakes and misconduct, he attacks, blaming everyone else. ...

"As the cases increase and the outrage mounts, the only surprise now is that Cuomo still thinks he can hang on to power. Earth to him: Tick tock, tick tock."

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"Among many things, H.R. 1 would shift control of elections from cities, counties and states to Washington, D.C. It would make mass mail-in ballots permanent, prohibit voter ID, launch automatic voter registration (whether people want to vote or not), allow same-day registration and voting (allowing zero time to vet potential voters for eligibility), enshrine ballot harvesting, and funnel all appeals into one court -- the traditionally Democrat-controlled D.C. Circuit Court.

"What could go wrong?

"Step one in foiling the Democrat Party, the party of vote fraud, is to follow the advice that former first lady Nancy Reagan might have offered:

"Just say No to H.R. 1."