[This header picture is my cherished, heirloom-quality gas can with a vent and a gimmick-free spout. – Buck]
There was a huge victory for normal Americans last week in the battle against our bureaucratic overlords in Washington DC, who are both hostile to freedom and bereft of common sense.
The national gas can nightmare is over. Thank you, Donald Trump! Thank you, Lee Zeldin!
Urban dwellers and those who have servants do all their manual labor may not have understood how despised the vent-less gas cans were, but to that huge group of Americans who actually work with power tools, the gas can regulation was probably the most hated and ridiculed government regulation since the 55-mph national speed limit.
Elections matter, and the election of Donald Trump as president, and his appointment of Lee Zeldin as EPA Administrator, are resulting in a profound rollback of the eco-communist agenda that Democrats were imposing through EPA regulations.
Lee Zeldin’s EPA put out this press release last week:
“Make Gas Cans Great Again by Improving Flow” [EPA Press Release – 7/24/2025]
Today, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued letters to portable fuel container (PFC or gas can) manufacturers encouraging them to add vents to gas cans to ensure safe and effective refueling. This announcement comes in response to years of complaints about slow, frustrating fuel flow from modern gas cans.
Concurrent with the EPA’s press release, Administrator Zeldin tweeted this mockery of the EPA regulation that he is casting aside, ”Gas cans used to POUR gas. Now they just DRIBBLE like a child’s sippy cup. The Trump EPA’s message to gas can makers: VENT THE DARN CAN and let it FLOW BABY FLOW!”
What is so important about Mr. Zeldin’s announcement of gas can freedom is that he isn’t just triumphantly announcing the return of vented gas cans. No, he is also inviting ridicule upon anyone who might try to defend the government-mandated dribble-cans. No Democrat president (or “polite” Republican president) would ever roll back this regulation, but now that Trump and Zeldin have done so, it is not possible for any Democrat or RINO politician to advocate for the return of the ventless gas can without bringing ridicule upon themselves.
These awful gas cans have been a subject I have written about many times here at Ace of Spades. In fact, it was shortly after I started contributing here in late 2019 that I wrote the first column of mine that was widely linked at conservative websites and social media. While I’ll note that “Make something Great Again” is not terribly original in the Trump era, I am tickled that the title of the EPA’s press release led off with, “Make Gas Cans Great Again…”
My piece back in December 2019 was titled, “Make Gas Cans Great Again & Lock Up the ‘Snow Blower Vote’"
If you’ll indulge me in a quick touchdown dance, here is a bit of what I wrote at the time:
In 2009 the EPA banned the sale of gas cans that functionally pour gas. To be specific, the scientifically illiterate bureaucrats at the EPA outlawed gas cans with vents, mandating that all new gas cans must have crazy contraptions that require three hands to operate. Unlike the old gas cans, the new ones spill gas all over the user and onto the ground. The result of the EPA’s incompetence is a new gas can that is much worse for the environment than the one it replaced. The incompetent regulators at the EPA are so scientifically illiterate that they honestly believed that the vents on gas cans were there to allow gas fumes to escape, rather than the actual purpose of allowing air to flow in to the can so that gas can be poured out. Having received their “science” education in Oppression Studies classes at Grievance State University, these morons making rules for how we gas up our power tools have likely never handled a tool more powerful than their own personal groomers.
The government-mandated, non-functioning gas can may be the most unpopular government-imposed regulatory rule since the 55 mile per hour speed limit. If you don’t know someone who mocks and despises these stupid red canisters, then you are living a very sheltered urban or upscale lifestyle. Most all working-class and middle-class Americans deal with these awful containers, and they mock the government for imposing them on us.
Congress never passed a law which outlawed the old gas cans. Instead, these abhorrent new gas cans were simply foisted on us by zealous government imbeciles who have never mowed a blade of grass or poured a drop of gas out of a gas can.
And once again I’ll point out that the “True Conservatives” at National Review, Wall Street Journal, Dispatch, etc worked feverishly to keep Donald Trump out of the White House over the past three elections, and to elect Hillary, Biden, and Kamala instead. Had they been successful in “saving conservatism,” this triumphant day would not have arrived.
My latest piece at The Blaze has been published, “Time to Redraw America’s Borders — Cities, Counties, and Beyond.”
It discusses how borders and boundaries have always changed over the course of human history - and American history - but too many are stuck right now. There are blue cities that need be carved up, rural counties in blue states that should be emancipated to join neighboring red states, and even a Canadian province or two that would be more of a fit in the United States.
During the Civil War, when Virginia seceded from the Union, West Virginia was born — its counties carved out and reorganized under federal protection. Today, as California’s officials promise to defy federal law and actively rebel against national authority, it may be time to ask: If rebellion defines California’s government, why not liberate its non-rebellious counties?
I genuinely believe that redrawing borders and political boundaries will become an issue like school choice in coming years - an issue that first seemed limited and isolated, but soon becomes a prominent political issue in the battle for liberty.
It’s behind a paywall, but if you’re a Blaze subscriber, I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.
[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]