As an emboldened Vladimir Putin causes mayhem on the global stage, it’s important to remember how much our own government is harming the prospects of the United States, as if deliberately humbling our country to bring us down:

Upcoming federal oil and gas lease sales will be delayed as the Interior Department figures out how to weigh the climate impact of those sales without using a key tool for measuring those risks, according to a court filing issued on Saturday evening.

The length of the delay was not specified, but it stems from a Feb. 11 decision by a Louisiana federal district court judge that blocked the Biden administration from using the “social cost of carbon” – an interim estimate of $50 per ton of greenhouse gases emitted – to factor the risks of climate change into federal decision-making for permitting, investment and regulatory issues.

This whole thing feels like a deliberate performance between an administration that doesn’t want to allow Americans to be energy independent and judges who are happy to abet the subversion of the laws that permit our freedom.