Squad member Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) said the Biden administration is not working to ban gas stoves, even as it pushes measures that would ban half of all gas stoves on the U.S. market.
"This proposed rule is not a ban on gas stoves, we are regulating indoor air pollution," Bush said in defense of proposed guidance from the Biden Energy Department that would impose cooking appliance efficiency regulations. If adopted, the rules would prohibit half of American gas stoves currently on the market from being sold.
Bush also suggested her constituents need to be saved by the Biden administration from the dangers of cooking with gas stoves.
"I can only imagine the number of my constituents who are unknowingly being poisoned by their gas stove," Bush said, "without this proposed rule being in effect."
The firestorm over gas stoves began in January when U.S. Consumer Product Safety commissioner Richard Trumka Jr., a Biden appointee, said a ban on gas stoves was "on the table." "This is a hidden hazard," Trumka Jr. said of cooking with gas. "Any option is on the table. Products that can't be made safe can be banned."
Both the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the White House tried to walk back the claim in the following weeks. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said "the president does not support banning gas stoves."
The push to ban gas stoves follows a controversial December study that connected 13 percent of U.S. childhood asthma cases to cooking with gas-stoves. The group behind that study, the nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute, has partnered with the Chinese government to engineer an "economy-wide transformation" away from gas and oil, the Washington Free Beacon reported in January.
Liberal media outlets have downplayed fears of a ban on gas stoves as an unfounded conspiracy, even as Democratic cities and states across the country have pushed forward with such bans.