(Natural News) Natural News founder/editor Mike Adams said in a recent podcast that two government agencies that shouldn’t be — the Environmental Protection Agency and the Food and Drug Administration — are now arming up with military-style equipment such as body armor, spending tens of millions of dollars on such gear over the last few years.

OpenTheBooks.com has been tracking this government spending on military-style equipment, revealing a frightening pattern of regulatory agencies — which should be pushing paper — now building their own PRIVATE ARMIES to be used as weapons of intimidation and coercion against the People, Adams says in a recent podcast.

“The regulatory police state has arrived! When an ‘environmental’ protection agency is building its own private army with military weapons, body armor, and assault gear, you know something has gone horribly wrong with the federal government,” he noted.

Just imagine, he points out, that now farmers can be subjected to military-style EPA raids and intimidation tactics, almost as if the government itself is engaging in state-sponsored terror against American citizens.

What’s even odder is that the FDA, too, has begun building its own military-style ‘government militia’ of armed assault teams.

“Is this part of the FDA’s continued mission to destroy natural products that compete with the profits of Big Pharma?” Adams asked, noting that most of the “militarization” of these and other federal agencies took place under the Obama administration.

The Health Ranger said that he’s been documenting for years the United States’ slow but steady progression towards a North Korea-style police state in which the central government has supreme control over all Americans, and where even state governments would be completely powerless against Washington’s power.

While the trend has certainly slowed since President Donald J. Trump was inaugurated in January, he still has a long way to go before he drains the swamp and cleans out Obama-era (and previous) federal appointees and holdovers who believe in an all-powerful federal government that dictates mandates to the people.

“How is it protecting the environment when you’re all geared up as a military assault team?” Adams said, in reference to the EPA’s SWAT-style units.

And of course, the taxpayer doesn’t get off the hook either, Adams said, quoting published sources claiming that these federal agencies were spending tens of millions of dollars to purchase SWAT-style gear and weapons.

“Forty-four federal agencies have spent over $71 million on items like body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition,” Adams said during his podcast, quoting one of those reports, which used the watchdog organization Open the Books as a source.

That amount is in addition to nearly $400 million spent on similar gear and weapons by legitimate federal spy and law enforcement agencies like the FBI, CIA, Secret Service and the Diplomatic Security Service, the latter of which falls under the State Department.

There are 440 federal agencies in all, by the way, proving that once an agency is created, it never goes away.

Later in his podcast, Adams noted again that “America is already a police state,” and that citizens are “living under a totalitarian regime right now.”

He also said he believes we’re living in a “food fascism police state” as well since the FDA also has armed units and can impose the agency’s will — literally at the point of a gun — anytime it wants, with no recourse for the citizens.

“They want to be able to raid your herbal manufacturing facility, and they want to make sure that you are shootable and defenseless” when they come, Adams said of the FDA, mockingly.

There’s much more to his podcast and you can hear it in its entirety below or by clicking here.