For a time, President Joe Biden 's Consumer Product Safety Commission tried to spread a bogus health scare as a pretext for banning gas stoves. Since then, his Department of Energy has floated a separate proposal (still in play) that would ban almost all models of gas stoves by prescribing such stringent performance standards that 96% of the gas stoves currently on the market would no longer be legal . This, of course, is a ban in all but name.

Despite these efforts, online leftists have made the ludicrous and obviously false claim that no one is trying to ban gas stoves. But even if you could brainwash yourself to forget what has already happened just this year at the federal level, Democratic-controlled states are still out there trying to prove the point: They are in various stages of banning the use of natural gas for cooking or heating. No, this isn't a right-wing conspiracy theory — this is your life.

The latest development comes from New York state. Democrats, who control the governorship and both houses of the state legislature, have included in their 2024 budget an agreement to abolish new gas hookups in stages. Their plan bans gas hookups from new smaller buildings starting in 2025, from new larger buildings (more than seven stories) starting in 2026 and from "industrial and commercial properties" starting in 2029. Similarly, in Northern California, the Bay Area Air Quality District Board voted late last month to ban the installation of new gas-powered water heaters and furnaces starting in 2027 — although this measure does not specifically cover gas stoves.

At least when the states try to take away your gas, they openly admit that their motive is based on global warming alarmism — they don't try to concoct a pretext based on health or a well-meaning desire to save consumers money on their energy costs the way Biden's agencies have.

At the federal level, Biden is doing his level best to circumvent Congress in order to abolish the use of natural gas. The effort to ban or almost ban gas stoves is an anti-democratic one, reliant upon false information and the opacity of federal regulation.

But at the state level, at least in New York, this is what people actually voted for when they supported Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and the Democrats who run the legislature. Is it any surprise that so many people who live according to practical and not ideological concerns are now leaving New York — that the state lost more than half a million residents overall between April 2020 and July 2022 despite its long-standing status as a center of culture and commerce?

If you live in New York and you really hate natural gas, then congratulations — you have done it. For everyone else in New York, instead of leaving the state (a perfectly reasonable option that many people are taking), why don't you try voting out of office the politicians who are doing this to you?