Even as hearings on the fiscal year 2025 budget get underway this week, Congress has until Friday to pass appropriations for three-quarters of federal discretionary spending for fiscal year 2024, although it’s nearly half over. The six spending packages are State-Foreign Operations, Defense, Homeland Security, Labor-HHS, Legislative Branch and Financial Services-General Government, with Homeland Security’s border provisions the remaining sticking point. However, yet again House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) has no real leverage, so the Senate-determined deal will eventually go through.

Government officials and oil and gas executives are gathering this week in Houston and Geneva for the CERAWeek fossil fest and the United Nations’ Global Methane Forum, respectively. CERAWeek gets higher-ranking officials, though. Speakers on Monday alone include Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, White House climate envoy John Podesta, White House international LNG czar Amos Hochstein, Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Department of Energy officials Jigar Shah, Noah Deich, Kelly Cummins, David Crane, Katheryn Scott, and Joshua Volz. CERAWeek will also see the CEOs of climate killers ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, ConocoPhillips, Oxy, TotalEnergies, Equinor, Hess, Southern Company, NRG Energy, Dominion Energy, National Grid, Cheniere, Hunt Energy, Baker Hughes, PNM Resources, Enbridge, NextEra Energy, Schlumberger, Dow, Engie, Eni, Kuwait Petroleum, ADNOC, Saudi Aramco, Korea National Oil Corporation, the American Petroleum Institute and any number of other fossil-fuel sponsors of The New York Times, Axios, Politico, and other media organizations. Also, billionaire Bill Gates.

Those fossil-fuel executives and lobbyists will not be welcome, however, at this month’s Green New Deal happy hour, taking place Wednesday afternoon at Alero Restaurant in DC.

Monday, March 18

On Monday morning, House Financial Services oversight chair Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) held a field hearing in Lebanon, Tennessee on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s newly finalized climate disclosure rule. Because the rule excludes downstream (Scope 3) pollution and compliance is voluntary, the testimony of the Republican witnesses mostly attacked what was in the stronger draft rule. The Republicans celebrated the decision on Friday by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to place an emergency stay on the rule at the behest of fracking companies, even though the rule doesn’t require any climate disclosures until March 2026. Republican officials from the states of West Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Alaska, New Hampshire, Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Wyoming, Virginia have also filed suit to kill the rule, as have GOP officials from Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

Fiscal Year 2025 Budget Hearings

Wednesday, March 20

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm returns from Houston to the capital to appear before House appropriators on Wednesday at 10 am to discuss the $51.42 billion Department of Energy FY2025 budget request, which has a 9 percent increase in defense spending and a 5 percent increase in non-defense spending from FY2023. The budget includes $10.6 billion in DOE climate and clean energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment programs.

At the same time, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Bacerra presents the the $130.7 billion Department of Health and Human Services budget request to House appropriators, including $4.1 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, $40 million for climate research by the National Institutes of Health, an increase of $10 million for lead poisoning testing, and $10 million for climate programs in the Centers for Disease Control.

Thursday, March 21

On Thursday at 10 am, Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young reviews the full $7.3 trillion budget, with $1.9 trillion in discretionary spending, before the House Budget committee, while Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen does the same for the Senate Finance committee. Then Yellen and Young are joined by White House Council of Economic Advisors chair Jared Bernstein at 2:30 pm before the House Appropriations government subcommittee to discuss the budget and economic outlook.

Also on Thursday at 10 am, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack presents the FY2025 Department of Agriculture budget request, with $31.6 billion in discretionary spending, with another $10 billion in discretionary spending already authorized. The department considers $11.6 billion of the budget to be climate-related, in addition to $19.5 billion already authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act. The climate spending including $7.5 billion in rural electric programs and $5.1 billion in forest management.

Other Hearings

Wednesday, March 20

At 10 am, the Senate Environment Committee examines PFAS as hazardous substances. Environmental Working Group’s Scott Faber, a long-time advocate for the banning of PFAS, New Mexico environmental secretary James Kenney, who has fought for years to regulate PFAS, and the Water Coalition Against PFAS’s Michael Witt are joined by Congressional Research Service lawyer Kate Bowers and industrial polluter lobbyist Robert Fox. Witt will argue that water commissions should not be held liable for cleaning up PFAS contamination, while Fox will argue industrial polluters should not be held liable.

Meanwhile, Budget chair Sheldon Whitehouse holds his latest climate hearing, looking at the cost of global warming to the recreational industry, with Olympic cross-country skier Gus Schumacher, fly fisherwoman Hilary Hutcheson, camping gear executive Theresa McKenney, macroeconomist Joao Gomes, and climate denier Scott Walter.

Also at 10 am, House Science marks up oceanic research cybersecurity, pipeline research, low-pollution cement research, satellite commercialization, and other bills.

At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources federal lands subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez’s (D-N.M.) bill supporting tree seedlings (H.R. 5015) and several Republican bills limiting environmental protections for federal lands. Notably, H.R. 5499 from Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Calif.) would limit the creation of national monuments and H.R. 7006 from Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) would block the as-yet-theoretical natural asset companies from his state.

At 2:15 pm, the House Natural Resources energy subcommittee holds a hearing assessing domestic offshore energy reserves, but strangely the Republicans in charge are only interested in oil and gas reserves, not wind or geothermal. Gulf South climate justice advocate Kendall Dix and U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management deputy director Walter Cruickshank will be joined by several offshore oil and gas industry advocates.

Thursday, March 21

At 10 am, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee interviews the nominess for the Federal Energy Resources Commission who were recently announced by the White House: one climate hawk, Judy Cheng, and two industry stooges, Manchin staffer David Rosner and Republican zealot Lindsay See. As solicitor general of Manchin’s state West Virginia, See won the Supreme Court West Virginia v. EPA decision rolling back the EPA’s power to regulate climate pollution. Cheng is a real climate hawk who has thought long and hard about decarbonizing every sector of the economy. In contrast, Rosner’s main qualification is being a reliable policy booster for the fossil-fuel industry.

In addition, the House Natural Resources water and wildlife subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on bills for the Delaware River Basin, kelp forests, Great Lakes mapping, and using oil and gas rigs as artificial reefs.

Other hearings which will touch on issues of environmental and climate interest include:

• At 10 am, the House Financial Services holds a hearing on global capital rules and American financial regulation, similar to a subcommittee hearing in November;

• At 11 am, House Veterans’ Affairs looks at the Toxic Exposure Fund Improvement Act of 2024;

• At 2 pm, House Foreign Affairs subcommittees hold hearings on using U.S. business to advance economic and national security goals in the Indo-Pacific and on assessing State Department compliance with oversight.

Thanks to the trillion-dollar fossil-fuel juggernaut that every year pumps billions of tons of greenhouse pollution into the air and sea and hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of politicians, think tanks, media organizations, lobbyists, and lawyers in Washington D.C., the cherry trees of Washington D.C. are on track to have one of their earliest peak blooms in history this year. As the biggest wildfire in Texas history continues to smolder, Congress holds two hearings on the growing fossil-fueled wildfire threat this week.

Clocks across the United States (except for most of Arizona) were turned back an hour, in a collective assault on our health and safety, increasing strokes, heart attacks, cancer, depression, suicides, accidents, and medical errors. As Hill Heat reported two years ago, Daylight Saving Time is grossly misaligned with the solar day, chronically disrupting circadian clocks. Despite the clear medical consensus in favor of making standard time permanent, Senate Democrats such as Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who consistently decry science denial when it comes to climate change, persist in advocating for the harmful imposition of permanent daylight saving time.

Today, the White House released President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal, even as the FY2024 budget remains incompletely passed. As indicated in his State of the Union address, Biden is emphasizing pocketbook issues, with weatherization assistance the most climate-friendly of his top priorities. Big Oil is mentioned in the context of closing corporate tax loopholes.

The Aspen Ideas: Climate Festival and Mayors Climate Leadership Forum are taking place this week in increasingly flooded Miami; speakers on Monday include Secretary of Interior Deb Haaland, Secretary of Energy Gina McCarthy, and former White House official Gina McCarthy; Tuesday has a plenary with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. The mayors of New Orleans, Cleveland, Madison, New Bedford, Jacksonville, and many other cities are also attending.

Tuesday, March 12

In the Senate, the Environment and Public Works Committee led by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) marks up three bipartisan pieces of legislation:

• The Economic Development Reauthorization Act of 2024 (S. 3891), which reauthorizes the Public Works and Economic Development Act of 1965 with a recognition of environmental justice and climate disasters;

• America’s Conservation Enhancement (ACE) Reauthorization Act (S. 3791), reauthorizing the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund and the Chesapeake Bay Program and supporting public-private conservation partnerships; and

• The Legacy Mine Clean Up Act 2024 (S. 3858), which would make permanent an EPA office dedicated to remediation of abandoned mine sites.

The Senate Finance Committee chaired by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) discusses growing U.S. manufacturing through the tax code and the uneven climate implications of Biden’s legislative legacy (CHIPS/IIJA/IRA) with solar-panel CEO Mark Widmer, petrochemical CEO Peter Huntsman, and United Steelworkers director Anna Fendley.

Also at 10 am, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee run by Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is holding a hearing to examine the findings and recommendations of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission. The two commissioners testifying are forestry industry representative Cody Desautel, and Denver Water scientist Madelene McDonald. Also testifying are Agriculture climate official Meryl Harrell and Interior budget official Joan Mooney and Wyoming state forester Kelly Norris.

At 10:15 am, Budget chair Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) receives Office of Management and Budget director Shalanda Young to discuss the president’s fiscal year 2025 budget proposal.

House Republicans stay on message with their re-branding of fighting renewable electricity in the name of “grid reliability” (see previous hearings in February and last September). The House Oversight energy subcommittee, with chair Pat Fallon (R-Texas) and ranking member Cori Bush (D-Mo.), holds a hearing at 10 am on the reliability and security of America’s electrical grid with polluter lawyer and Trump FERC appointee James Danly of Skadden Arps, lifelong Koch-network troll Travis Fisher, now at Cato, and grid security expert Jonathon Monken.

Also at 10 am, in a meeting rescheduled from February, Transportation’s emergency management subcommittee interrogates FEMA head Deanne Criswell about the propriety of FEMA being engaged with emergency management other than climate disasters, such as the Covid and border crises, and supporting the resettlement of Afghan refugees.

At 2 pm, the Europe subcommittee of House Foreign Affairs holds a hearing also rescheduled from February discussing the Russian nuclear energy sector.

Thursday, March 14

On Pi Day, the Senate Homeland Security Committee gathers federal, state and local officials for a hearing on the increasing wildfire threat, including U.S. Fire Administrator Lori Moore-Merrell, GAO disaster response official Christopher Currie, and officials from Nevada, Utah, and Arizona at 10 am.

At 10:30 am, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee reviews U.S. strategy in the Pacific Islands region with State official Daniel Kritenbrink, Defense official Ely Ratner, and USAID official Michael Schiffer.

It’s Super Tuesday tomorrow, though with President Joe Biden and Donald Trump the presumptive nominees, the electoral excitement will be downballot. On Thursday night, President Biden delivers his State of the Union address before Congress. We at Hill Heat will be watching to find out how his speechwriters reconcile the United States becoming the world’s largest gas exporter with this:

There are several big races in blizzard-battered California tomorrow, including the U.S. Senate primary pitting Democratic Reps. Katie Porter, the heavy-spending Adam Schiff, and Barbara Lee against each other. The 47th Congressional District race to replace Porter has featured an onslaught of dark money from AIPAC attacking the progressive climate-hawk state representative David Min. The GOP-billionaire-backed AIPAC also has incumbent Green New Dealers Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) in their sights.

Appropriators have finally released the omnibus funding package for the first six appropriations bills for the year, including the spending for Interior, Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as earmarks. As the team at the KKR-Axel Springer-Politico-owned E&E News summarizes: “The legislation slashes funding for EPA and several Interior Department bureaus. But appropriators spared popular Department of Energy programs.”

Most of EPA cuts were to the Superfund program, which can also use “polluter pays” taxes to finance its budget, so the damage will be limited. E&E News also notes that the rider blocking Interior from protecting the greater sage grouse, first inserted in 2015, is still there, and that lawmakers decreed that “wood gained from forest thinning can qualify as renewable biomass under the federal renewable fuel standard.”

Tuesday, March 5

Tomorrow night at 7 pm, the People’s Action coalition is holding the People’s House Party, a live webinar on electing and defending progressive leaders up and down the ballot in 2024. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), mentioned above, will be a special guest.

Wednesday, March 6

At 9 am, Axios is hosting White House climate czar John Podesta, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and climate-hawk Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.) for a breakfast discussion of the Inflation Reduction Act’s support for clean-energy investment. There will also be big money in the room, with LinkedIn multimillionaire Allen Blue and Dawn Lippert, the CEO of climate-tech venture capital firm Earthshot Ventures. Investors in Earthshot include Laurene Powell Jobs, John Doerr, Tom Steyer, Microsoft, and the Employees’ Retirement System of Hawaii.

At 10 am, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discusses global food security with USAID food security official Dina Esposito and Special Envoy for Global Food Security Dr. Cary Fowler, the founder of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, and the Senate Commerce Committee reviews the National Transportation Safety Board Investigations Report with NTSB chair Jennifer Homendy, including the East Palestine train disaster and natural gas pipeline explosions.

There are several hearings of interest in the House as well.

At 10 am, the Science environment subcommittee holds a hearing on U.S. competitiveness in weather forecasting, with a push towards increased privatization of the weather enterprise bolstered by a panel of private weather company CEOs, including former Trump NOAA administrator Neil Jacobs.

Also at 10 am, the Agriculture committee hears from Rostin Behnam, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources wildlife subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on the so-called America’s Wildlife Habitat Conservation Act (H.R. 7408), a Republican bill to water down the Endangered Species Act. An all-male panel of witnesses will testify, with Audubon’s Glenn Olson the one environmentalist witness.

At 2 PM, the House Natural Resources energy subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on multiple geothermal and onshore fossil-fuel lease bills. Reps. Ross Fulcher (R-Idaho), John Curtis (R-Utah), and Young Kim (R-Calif.) have bills to cut regulations for geothermal projects, while Reps. Harriet Hagemann (R-Wyo.) and Will Hunt (R-Texas) propose to cut fees for oil and gas leases. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has proposed a bill authorizing the Department of Interior to charge standard fees for geothermal leases. It’s another all-male panel of witnesses; the environmental-labor leader (and inspiring musician) Joe Uehlein of the Labor Network for Sustainability is testifying on behalf of AOC’s legislation.

Thursday, March 7

On Thursday morning at 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources oversight subcommittee holds another hearing on natural capital accounting. In February, the subcommittee interrogated BLM advisor Henry Wykowski on the administration’s framework for environmental-economic accounting, which includes ecological health in the valuation of public lands. Witnesses have not yet been announced, so we do not know whether this is an all-male hearing.

As mentioned above, at 9 pm President Joe Biden offers his annual State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress.

Thanks to the unrestrained burning of fossil fuels, record heat is broiling the world, from Japan to Australia. There’s a 90+° heat wave in Texas fueling out-of-control brushfires and a tornadic storm front sweeping across the Midwest. Wildfires have closed the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs and threaten Fort Carson nearby. Zombie fires burn in Canada and Mexico City is running out of water.

It’s still February.

With the partial government shutdown looming on Friday, members of Congress are grudgingly getting back to work this week. The U.S. Senate is in full swing on Tuesday, but the U.S. House’s only full scheduled day of work is Thursday.

President Joe Biden is going to try to get Congress to get a move on, with a White House meeting Tuesday morning with Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.).

In case you’re tracking, September 30th was the original government funding deadline, which was pushed to November 17th by then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), for which he was defenestrated by his caucus. Right before the November deadline, the novice Speaker Johnson broke up the continuing resolution into two parts, with January 19th and February 2nd as deadlines; right before January 19th, Congress set new deadlines of March 1st and March 8th. And now we’re only days away from that, with the House Republican caucus still in near-total deadlock.

Leaders of both parties agreed on topline numbers for the FY2024 budget months ago, but the spirit of procrastination is in their hearts.

Meanwhile, there are some hearings of interest this week, including Sen. Jeff Merkley’s (D-Ore.) hearing on microplastics, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) celebrating geologic hydrogen, and the latest Republican attack on electric vehicles.

Tuesday, February 27

At 11:30 am, the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee is holding a business meeting in executive session to vote on the long-delayed nominations of acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su for Secretary of Labor, Moshe Marvit for the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, and Stephen Ravas as the Inspector General for Americorps. The mine safety commission has only had four members for years now; Marvit would bring it to a full complement.

At 2:30 pm, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) holds his next hearing on the plastics industry, with a focus on understanding the presence of microplastics in water. The witnesses include the ecotoxicologist Dr. Susanne M. Brander of Oregon State, freshwater plastic pollution expert Dr. Sherri A. Mason of Penn State Behrend, and membrane filtration expert Brent Alspach.

Wednesday, February 28

At 10 am, the Senate Energy Committee chaired by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) will discuss developing geologic hydrogen in the United States with the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) director Evelyn Wang, U.S. Geological Survey petroleum geologist Dr. Geoffrey Ellis, and hydrogen mining company Koloma CEO Pete Johnson (no relation). Ellis is bullish on mining hydrogen. Hill Heat will be interested to discover if anyone mentions the problem that hydrogen is a powerful greenhouse pollutant.

Also at 10 am, the Environment and Public Works Committee interviews Army Corps of Engineers officials on their priorities for the Water Resources Development Act, and the Commerce Committee will interview Federal Maritime Commissioners Daniel Maffei and Rebecca Dye, both of whom have been renominated to serve a further term.

At 2:30 pm, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will participate in a rare Senate Agriculture Committee hearing, the first of the year.

Thursday, February 29

At 10:30 am, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-Calif.), chair of the House Science oversight subcommitee, will hold a hearing on electric vehicle fires and first responders, following up on a GOP hearing earlier this month on lithium battery fires. The witnesses are San Bernardino County fire chief Dan Munsey, and UL Electrochemical Safety Research Institute director Dr. Judy Jeevarajan. Strangely, House Republicans are not holding hearings on any of the other threats first responders face thanks to the fossil-fuel industry, such as extreme heat, wildfires, exploding gasoline engines, exploding gas pipelines, exploding oil refineries, or, say, the foot of rain that struck Obernolte’s district last month.

After a freak fossil-fueled tornado struck freakishly warm Wisconsin on Friday, the U.S. Senate pressed forward this weekend to approve a $95.3 billion military-aid bill—$61 billion for Ukraine, $14 billion for Israel, and a rounding-error $5 billion for Taiwan—cutting into its planned two-week break. The senators met yesterday—on Super Bowl Sunday, horrors—to vote 67-27 to limit debate on the legislative package, setting up a final vote this week. Notably, the bill forbids any support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, the main aid group in Gaza, which also operates in Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

After that, the U.S. Senate is hoping to go on holiday, though the mega-storm sweeping up the coast may interrupt their flights. When the senators return on February 23rd, there will be only a week left to put together a spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown on March 1st.

The House of Representatives, under the putative leadership of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) is in session this week. Don’t fret—Republicans have a full-throttle extractive-industry week planned, with attacks on environmental protections and clean technology. Burn baby burn!

Tuesday, February 13

At 4 pm, the House Rules Committee will set the floor debate rules for the Unlocking our Domestic LNG Potential Act of 2024, a provision to limit restrictions on liquefied natural gas imports Republicans have been trying to pass all session, given new legs by President Joe Biden’s limited pause on new LNG export construction.

Wednesday, February 14

At 2 pm in the afternoon, the Rural Climate Partnership, a new grantmaking organization backed by the Wallace Global Fund, McKnight Foundation, and Stolte Family Foundation, is hosting a webinar on new communications research on rural renewable energy siting, which is a hotly contentious issue, with local communities trying to ban solar and wind farms across the nation.

In the House, Republicans are going after environmental policies on multiple fronts:

• At 10 am, the Small Business Committee has a hearing on how the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is destroying small business, particularly Texas oil and gas drillers.

• At 10:30 am, Energy and Commerce has a hearing with state utility regulators on grid reliability, with Republican officials from Indiana and Arizona complaining about being forced to shut down coal plants.

• Most importantly, at 10:15 am, the Natural Resources wildlife subcommittee holds a legislative hearing on bills to weaken protections for endangered species and against illegal logging on behalf of the timber industry. Logging and wood products executives will testify in favor of Rep. Pete Stauber’s (R-Minn.) Endangered Species Act Flexibility Act (H.R. 6784), written in particular to allow logging of the endangered Northern Long-Eared Bat’s habitat; and the so-called Strengthen Wood Product Supply Chains Act (H.R. 7157), cosponsored by Reps. John Duarte (R-Calif.) and Jim Costa (D-Calif.), which would severely curtail Lacey Act restrictions on importing illegal timber or wildlife. Alexander von Bismark, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agency, will testify on the importance of not destroying complex ecosystems.

Also at 10 am, Agriculture holds a hearing with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Budget holds a hearing with Congressional Budget Office director Phill Swagel, and Transportation’s emergency management subcommittee interrogates FEMA head Deanne Criswell about the propriety of FEMA being engaged with emergency management other than climate disasters, such as the Covid and border crises, and supporting the resettlement of Afghan refugees.

Thursday, February 15

The monthly open meeting of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, now dominated by a pro-fracking majority, begins at 1 pm, and will be held at Howard University School of Law. Among the agenda items is the Saguaro Connector Pipeline, intended to carry nearly 3 billion cubic feet of natural gas from Texas’s Permian Basin across the Mexican border for export across the Pacific.

In the House, Republicans are going after environmental policies on multiple fronts:

• At 10 am, the Homeland Security subcommittee chaired by Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) will investigate the fire threat of lithium-ion batteries, instead of, say, the fire threat of gasoline, natural gas, oil, and other combustible fossil fuels.

• At 2 pm, the Natural Resources oversight subcommittee attacks the Biden administration’s land management policies, which incorporate environmental considerations into land use decisions through natural capital accounting. Republicans are aghast that the Biden administration wants to “fight the climate crisis, build a strong and sustainable economy, and advance economic equity.” The witness is Bureau of Land Management advisor Henry Wykowski, a former staffer for Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.).

• The primary anti-environmental hearing of the day is the Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee’s 10:30 am hearing about constraining EPA’s ability to regulate soot pollution with new legislation that would completely gut the National Ambient Air Quality Standards, in response to the EPA’s long-awaited strengthening of soot standards last week.

Also, the Science Committee hosts top federal science officials for a hearing on securing the U.S. science and technology enterprise at 10 am, and Foreign Affairs discusses the Russian nuclear energy sector at 2 pm.

Even so, the policy vision drove the presidential campaigns of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) in 2020, thus raising the ambition of now-President Joe Biden with his considerably more moderate Build Back Better agenda, which was eventually whittled down and dirtied up by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) into the Inflation Reduction Act. Meanwhile, leaders at the local, state, and even international level have continued the push for Green New Deal policies.

In celebration of the fifth anniversary of the introduction of the Green New Deal resolution, the Green New Deal Network is throwing a party Tuesday night starting at 6:30 pm at the Ugly Mug near Eastern Market, with Sen. Markey, the Network’s Kaniela Ing, and others.

As California drowns in another deadly deluge that NPR’s Nathan Rott wants us to wait a few decades before connecting it to fossil-fueled global warming, the fossil-fueled members of Congress—Republicans, Sen. Manchin and Rep. Mary Petola (D-Alaska)—are pushing forward with their defense of climate polluters in this week’s hearings.

In particular, they’re pushing back with hearings in both chambers on President Biden’s recent decision to pause approvals of liquefied natural gas export projects. On the merits, this is a very modest action that will barely dent the United States’ LNG export boom, but it does challenge the total political supremacy of the fracking industry.

The big news in Washington is the Senate deal of a right-wing immigrant crackdown tied to over $100 billion in war materiel for Ukraine and Israel, which President Biden has been seeking since November. But Donald Trump is throwing shade at it, and the House Republicans will keep pushing for more eco-fascist cruelty before they let it through. Their drumbeat of anti-immigrant propaganda includes an Arizona field hearing on Thursday where climate migrants will be blamed for environmental damage.

Tuesday, February 6

At 10 am, the House Energy and Commerce climate subcommittee investigates the implications of the Administration’s pause on LNG export approvals. The GOP witnesses are Toby Z. Rice, CEO of EQT Corporation, the largest producer of natural gas in the nation; Brigham McCown, a Bush and Trump official who went on to run a pipeline company and is now at the Hudson Institute; and Southwest Louisiana Chamber Economic Development Alliance official Eric Cormier. The lone Democratic witness is NRDC’s Gillian Gianetti.

Cormier will unironically testify that we need to increase our production of fossil fuels because his region is being destroyed by climate disasters.

Rice’s testimony argues that the COP28 climate agreement brokered in Dubai was controlled by fossil-fuel interests and is toothless:

First and foremost, the signatory parties rejected calls to “phase out” or even “phase down” fossil fuels – as was fiercely advocated for by a select number privileged nations – landing instead on a call to “transition away from fossil fuels… in a just, orderly and equitable manner … so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.” While some have attempted to draw an equivalency between the final language and that of a “phase out” or “phase down,” no equivalency exists, a fact that becomes readily apparent with a continued reading of the Global Stocktake. 

At 2 pm, the House Natural Resources Committee will hold a markup to push forward the Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (H.R. 2925), co-sponsored by Reps. Petola and Mark Amodei (R-Nev.), to overturn the Ninth Circuit’s Rosemont decision protecting sacred sites from mine waste, allowing mine operations to use, occupy, and conduct operations on public land regardless of whether a mineral deposit has been discovered.

Another hearing of interest: at 10 am, water and tech officials will testify on cybersecurity threats to our water supply; there is no mention of climate change in the prepared testimony.

Wednesday, February 7

At 9 am, the House Ways and Means trade subcommittee receives testimony from corporate lobbyists and former Trump officials on the World Trade Organization’s 13th ministerial meeting happening in Abu Dhabi at the end of the month.

Thursday, February 8

On Thursday at 9:30 am, it’s Manchin’s turn to attack the LNG export approval pause. The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee will hear testimony first from Department of Energy official David Turk and then from domestic LNG industry lobbyist Charlie Riedl and European LNG industry lobbyist James Watson.

At 10:30 am, Senate Indian Affairs receives testimony on Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D-Colo.) Tribal Access to Clean Water Act (S. 2385) and other Indian affairs bills.

At 1:30 pm Mountain Standard Time, the federal lands subcommittee of the House Natural Resources Committee will hold a field hearing in Sierra Vista, Arizona, 15 miles north of Mexico, to attack the Biden administration’s handling of border issues.

Taking a swing in the eco-fascist direction, President Joe Biden is expressing excitement about a plan crafted by Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and James Lankford (R-Okla.) to give the president the authority to block asylum seekers, or as Biden put it, to “shut down the border.”

But, as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) points out, it doesn’t shut down the border enough to satisfy Donald Trump, so that’s pretty much that.

Speaking of Sinema, Sam Brodey reports that she’s been racking up the frequent-flyer miles on private jets paid for with her Senate stipend. Since 2020, she’s spent least $210,000 of her Senate office budget on private charter jets, including short-hop flights that would take only a two-hour drive. When Sinema is gallivanting to the border to claim asylum seekers are planted by cartels, she’s burning thousands of gallons of fossil fuels to do so. But sure, the families fleeing drought and famine and flood and fire and storms are the real threat to the American people.

There are several hearings this week on the border crisis, the expanding military conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, and heightening tension with China, all of which are driven by climate pollution.

Below, we’ll be looking at the more specifically climate-focused hearings, including a House GOP attack on the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund on Tuesday and a Senate hearing on methane pollution from landfills on Wednesday.

Tuesday, January 30

On Tuesday morning House Energy and Commerce subcommittees launch attacks on Biden administration environmental actions.

At 10 am is the latest hearing criticizing the agreement with tribal nations to remove the Lower Snake River dams in Washington state. Government witnesses include Council on Environment Quality chief Brenda Mallory, Department of Energy official Jeremiah Baumann, NOAA fisheries official Janet Coit, Bonneville Power Administration CEO John Hairston, and Army Civil Works assistant secretary Michael Connor. Industry complainants include Jim Matheson, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA); Casey Chumrau, CEO, Washington Grain Commission; and Neil Maunu, Executive Director, Pacific Northwest Waterways Association. The one tribal representative testifying is the Yakama Nation’s Jeremy Takala.

At 10:30 am, the oversight subcommittee looks into the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a $27 billion initiative in the Inflation Reduction Act for the Environmental Protection Agency to set up local green banks financing and funding clean-energy and sustainability projects. Notably, the EPA has to spend out all the funds by the end of this year. So, oversight is reasonable, but given that the title of the hearing is “Fighting the Misuse of Biden’s Green Bank Giveaway,” one can’t expect the Republicans in charge of the committee to be reasonable. The one witness is EPA IRA implementation advisor Zealan Hoover, who was a climate staffer in the Obama White House and spent the Trump years at McKinsey.

At 2 pm, the House Science research subcommittee holds a hearing on reauthorizing the earthquake and windstorm hazards reduction programs with National Institute of Standards and Technology hazard-reduction expert Jason Averill, Federal Emergency Management Agency safety planning director Edward Laatsch, U.S. Geological Survey earthquake hazards director Dr. Gavin Hayes, and National Science Foundation engineering director Dr. Susan Margulies. The GOP hearing memo admits that windstorm and hurricane damage is getting worse but managed not to mention climate change.

Wednesday, January 31

At 10 am, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing on avoiding, detecting, and capturing methane pollution from landfills with Carbon Mapper scientist Tia Scarpelli, Rocky Mountain Institute methane specialist Tom Frankiewicz, and landfill engineer and lobbyist Anne Germain.

House Natural Resources subcommittees are holding two hearings on proposed legislation on Wednesday.

In the morning, the federal lands subcommittee holds a hearing on five bills, notably the Root and Stem Project Authorization Act (H.R. 674), to authorize industry-run environmental impact approvals for “healthy forest” logging; as well as climate-disaster-related Restoring Our Unopened Trails for Enjoyment and Safety (ROUTES) Act (H.R. 6994), which require federal land managers to prioritize reopening trails, campsites, recreation areas, and roads within two years of a closure caused by a natural disaster, and gives them emergency authority to do so without environmental reviews. There is also H.R. 7072, which would mandate the sale of a 14-acre plot of federal forest in Wisconsin to the concrete company Tony’s Wabeno Redi-Mix. Witnesses include Hannah Downey of the Property and Environment Research Center, a polluter front group, and Sandy Adomatis, a green-building advocate and president of the Appraisal Institute.

In the afternoon, the energy and mineral resources subcommittee holds a hearing on two bills to overturn limits on mining and one for landslide preparedness. Rep. Mark Amodei’s (R-Nev.) Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (H.R. 2925) would overturn the Ninth Circuit’s Rosemont decision protecting sacred sites from mine waste, allowing mine operations to use, occupy, and conduct operations on public land regardless of whether a mineral deposit has been discovered; and Rep. Doug Lamborn’s (R-Colo.) bill (H.R. 6862) would amend the FAST Act to include all mineral mining activities as a covered project granted fast-track approval, overturning the Biden administration’s rule which limits it to critical minerals. Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) has introduced H.R. 7003 to reauthorize the National Landslide Preparedness Act. Witnesses include Dr. Steven Feldgus of the Department of the Interior, gold mine lawyer Rich Haddock, and Jeffrey Stiffarm, president of the Fort Belknap Indian Community in Montana.

Our fossil-fueled climate continues its assault on society: A furious deluge struck southern California on Monday, the wettest January day in San Diego history, “shutting down highways, swamping roads and leaving some residents to watch helplessly as water swept away their cars or wreaked havoc on their homes.” In the Europe, hurricane-force Storm Isha killed two and knocked out power for tens of thousands; Storm Jocelyn is on its way.

As a broken polar vortex allowed Arctic cold to sweep down into the United States, killing dozens, in the southern hemisphere Liberia’s new president Joseph Boakai suffered heat exhaustion, fights broke out at a sweltering soccer match in Ivory Coast, and Australia broiled under severe heat. Cyclone Kirrily is now bearing down on Queensland.

Meanwhile, the Republican Party is lining up behind Donald Trump, who can’t even pronounce the word “climate,” as their presidential candidate. On the more mannerly side of right-wing obeisance polluting industries, the Supreme Court is preparing to knock down the Chevron doctrine which underlies how courts deal with disputes over federal rule-making, putatively on behalf of herring fishermen, even though they don’t actually have any grievance.

The GOP-run House of Representatives is taking the week off, but the Senate is in session, with several hearings of interest.

Wednesday, January 24

There are three climate and environmental hearings at 10 am.

Budget chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) holds his latest climate hearing, this time on the climate-change threat to ocean industries. Witnesses include paleoclimatologist Dr. Andrea Dutton, environmental economist and fisheries expert Dr. Rashid Sumaila, marine ecologist Dr. Thomas Frazer, global-trade economist Dr. Phil Levy, and fly-fishing climate activist Kyle Schaefer.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee conducts oversight of implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act amendments, with Michal Freedhoff, Ph.D., assistant administrator at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. The EPA proposed amendments to TSCA last year, including strengthening controls on the class of “forever chemicals” (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). As Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) has been investigating, the fracking boom has led to an explosion in the production of toxic plastics and petrochemicals with almost no constraint from the EPA.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Relations Committee is voting on several Biden nominees, including Kurt Campbell, the current presidential advisor for Asian affairs, to be deputy Secretary of State; former Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney to be the U.S. representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development; Jeffrey Prescott, now the deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, to be the U.S. Representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture; and diplomat Joann Lockard to be ambassador to war-torn Burkina Faso.

Thursday, January 25

At 10 am, the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee led by chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) looks at reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program with witnesses Daniel Kaniewski, the Trump administration’s Deputy Administrator for Resilience at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and now a director at Marsh McLennan, and Michael Hecht, the president of Greater New Orleans, an economic development organization for southeastern Louisiana.

Meanwhile, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee interviews more Biden nominees, including career diplomat Kamala Shirin Lakhdhir to be ambassador to Indonesia; former Airbnb lobbyist Courtney Diesel O’Donnell to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); and career diplomat Andrew Plitt to be the assistant administrator for Middle Eastern affairs at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

After a glorious snow day—DC’s first inch of snow in 728 days—Congress is lurching forward on the job of keeping the federal government open. The U.S. Senate went into session Tuesday evening to invoke cloture on a continuing resolution to keep the government funded through early March, in order to give the needed appropriation bills time to be written and voted on. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) has little control over his caucus, so the bills will almost definitely be passed with a two-thirds threshold (under a suspension of the rules), requiring Democratic support.

Donald Trump won the Iowa caucuses, which is news only in the sense that it means that Election Day draws closer.

Meanwhile, there are several hearings of interest this week, including further criticism from House Republicans of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate disclosure rules, and House Republican advocacy on behalf of nuclear energy industry. The bipartisan EXPLORE and PROVE IT bills are also getting marked up.

Wednesday, January 17

At 10 am on Wednesday morning, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee reviews the state of transportation with Virginia Port Authority head Stephen Edwards, Washington state Secretary of Transportation Roger Millar, and transportation logistics lobbyist Jeffrey Tucker and construction industry lobbyist Lauren Benford.

At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources Committee marks up eight bills; the right-wing bill opposed by the Democrats is Rep. Harriet Hageman’s (R-Wyo.) Energy Poverty Prevention and Accountability Act (H.R. 5482), which would “require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study to identify laws, regulations, and state standards that impact at-risk communities and categorize barriers to at-risk communities from accessing ‘reliable and affordable energy,’” defined to be fossil fuels. Ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) has an amendment to include the public health costs of fossil-fuel pollution; Rep. Jared Huffman’s (D-Calif.) amendment removes the anti-renewable bias; and Rep. Mike Levin’s (D-Calif.) amendment would include the goal of increasing renewable energy deployment.

The other controversial bill on the agenda is Rep. Michelle Steel’s (R-Calif.) bill (H.R. 6474) to “expedite geothermal exploration and development in previously studied or developed areas.”

Bipartisan bills expected to move by unanimous consent include Rep. Huffman’s Coastal Habitat Conservation Act (H.R. 2950), Rep. Joe Neguse’s (D-Colo.) Water Data Improvement Act (H.R. 5770), and Rep. Bruce Westerman’s (R-Ark.) Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act (H.R. 6492).

At 2 pm, a House Financial Services subcommittee chaired by Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) looks at international financing of nuclear energy, framing U.S. subsidies for nuclear power as a competition with China and Russia.

Thursday, January 18

Thursday morning begins with the House Financial Services’s oversight committee bringing in industry lobbyists to complain about the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule. Charles Crain of the National Association of Manufacturers; Lawrence Cunningham of the banking law firm Mayer Brown; and Michigan fruit farmer Bill Schultz will testify. Schultz’s testimony unironically complains about the climate pollution rules while bemoaning the challenges of “weather events” such as a “devastating spring frost” or when “mother nature delivers a bad weather year.” The Democratic witness is George Georgiev, an Emory law professor who has previously responded to critics of the SEC rule.

At 10 am, the House Natural Resources water, wildlife and fisheries subcommittee receives testimony on four pieces of coastal fishing and protection legislation—a bill to set limited protections for Alabama’s coastal cypress; one to continue restoration of Long Island Sound; another to continue algal bloom research; and one to promote youth coastal fishing.

At 10:30 am, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has a legislative markup including the Providing Reliable, Objective, Verifiable Emissions Intensity and Transparency (PROVE IT) Act (S. 1863) and the Good Samaritan Remediation of Abandoned Hardrock Mines Act (S. 2781). The PROVE IT Act is a bipartisan bill—Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.)—that would have the Department of Energy compare the greenhouse pollution of goods such as metals, cement, plastics, oil, natural gas, batteries, paper, solar cells, uranium, and wind turbines manufactured in the United States to the pollution generated by the same goods manufactured in other countries.

At 2 PM, the House oversight’s energy policy subcommittee chaired by Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) holds a hearing on empowering American nuclear energy with federal officials Dr. Kathryn Huff of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Daniel Dorman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and Dr. David Ortiz, director of the Office of Electric Reliability at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Thanks to the support of Hill Heat subscribers, the transition away from Substack is moving forward; in the meantime, posting will continue to be lighter than usual.

Thanks to an unrelenting rise in fossil-fuel pollution, 2023 was off the charts.

Welcome to 2024.

Congress is hobbling towards the January 19th partial government shutdown deadline established by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation). Over the weekend, Johnson and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) agreed on topline numbers for the 2024 budget, which hews closely to the agreement forged a year ago with former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Now the funding legislation has to be written and approved. The Congressional Progressive Caucus Center has the details on the agreement, noting:

Given the Freedom Caucus’ angry response to this weekend’s deal, it seems safe to assume that at least some of its members will not vote for the “rule” to consider corresponding FY2024 spending bills. Since the minority party typically opposes the rule unanimously, the Speaker’s razor-thin margins make it all but certain that any rule to consider FY2024 spending bills will fail. That means the House will have to consider them under suspension of the rules, which does not allow for amendments and, critically, requires ⅔ of House members’ support to pass. Thus, Speaker Johnson would have to rely heavily on Democratic votes—a ploy that could further enrage the same far-right members who forced out former Speaker McCarthy. 

As Andrew Solender reports, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has told Johnson that it’s highly unlikely the Senate will pass the four appropriations bills needed by the 19th, which means yet another short-term continuing resolution to avoid a Republican-induced shutdown.

At noon on Wednesday, 350 is hosting a webinar on the high costs of war and militarism for climate change, moderated by Guardian reporter Dharna Noor, who reported on the U.S. military’s tremendous carbon footprint in 2021. She will be speaking with Dr. Neta Crawford of the Costs of War Project, the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance’s Ramón Mejia, a former Marine; Ashley LaMont of Honor the Earth; and 350’s Zaki Mamdoo from South Africa. On Tuesday, Noor’s colleague Nina Lakhani reported on new research about the astounding carbon footprint of Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, which is greater than the annual climate pollution from most of the world’s nations.

And now, the week’s climate hearings.

Wednesday, January 10

At 10 am, the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials, chaired by Rep. Bill Johnson (R-Ohio, no relation), investigates U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulations for the oil and natural gas sector, particularly new methane pollution rules. The Republicans are calling natural gas “clean energy” yet oppose limits on its pollution. EPA official Joe Goffman will testify that “significant and sustained cuts in methane emissions are among the most crucial actions we can take to slow the rate of climate change.” He will be followed by oil and gas executives who will testify against the particulars of the new rules, with Democratic witness Jon Goldstein of the Environmental Defense Fund offering rebuttal.

Also at 10 am, Senate Budget chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) continues his climate-budget hearings with a look at safeguarding municipal bonds from climate risk (see the photos above). Witnesses include municipal industry expert Tom Doe of Municipal Market Analytics, Columbus, Ohio auditor Megan Kilgore, climate risk technologist Chris Hartshorn, environmental economist Matthew Kahn, and the centrist economist Eric Leeper, who has no published work on climate risk.

At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources Oversight and Federal Lands subcomittees investigate the National Park Service’s deferred maintenance backlog with Cardell Johnson of the Government Accountability Office, which just released a report on the backlog, and Department of the Interior Inspector General Mark Greenblatt, whose office issued a report in 2021.

Thursday, January 11

There are three climate hearings at 10 am on Thursday:

Senate Energy and Natural Resources chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) holds a hearing on the implementation of the new federal electric vehicle incentives included in his Inflation Reduction Act; Manchin stripped labor provisions and added domestic mining and manufacturing provisions to the rules, which the Biden administration has been trying to interpret in a way to allow them to apply to electric cars actually being made. The administration witnesses are Department of Energy deputy secretary David Turk and Treasury deputy secretary Adewale Adeyemo.

The House Natural Resources Energy and Mineral Resources subcommittee will look at the Biden Administration’s protections of the Outer Continental Shelf. Unsurprisingly, House Republicans and their oil-and-gas-friendly witnesses are unhappy about the limits placed on drilling. Dr. Walter Cruickshank, deputy director, of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, will testify on behalf of the administration, and Public Citizen’s Houston community organizer Erandi Treviño will testify in favor of the protections.

Finally, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Water Resources and the Environment subcommittee continues its hearings on proposals for a Water Resources Development Act of 2024 with a member’s day hearing.

State Elections

Arizona

In her first year in office, Democratic governor Katie Hobbs has issued a record-breaking number of vetoes, blocking 143 bills sent to her by the extremist Republican legislature, including proposals to deregulate transmission lines, deprioritize clean energy deployment by utilities, and restrict responsible investing. Republicans hold only a 31-29 edge in the state House, and a 16-14 majority in the Senate. Flipping two seats in both chambers would give Democrats their first trifecta in state history. Arizonans elect one senator and two representatives from each of 30 legislative districts (LDs), and the most competitive races are likely to be in LDs 2, 9, 13, and 16. Democrats’ strategy will hinge on defending incumbents in these districts, while also defeating Republican representatives Justin Wilmeth (LD 2), Julie Willoughby (LD 13), and Teresa Martinez (LD 16). Democrats may also try to win the seat of Republican state representative Michelle Pena, who won an upset 2022 victory in LD 23 surrounding Yuma. In the Senate, the most competitive elections will likely be challenges to Republican senators Shawna Bolick (LD 2), Javan Daniel Mansard (LD 13), and Thomas Shope (LD 16).

Delaware

With centrist Democratic governor John Carney termed out in a state where progressives have made legislative gains in recent years, a competitive primary may dictate the future of the party here. Carney has endorsed Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long, who shares the governor’s business friendly orientation. New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer has also been in the race for months. In early December, the Republican-friendly National Wildlife Federation president Collin O’Mara, who was previously a state environmental regulator, suggested that he might enter the race and bring a focus on climate.

Michigan

After months of delay, Democrats finally used the trifecta they won in 2022 to send a 100% clean energy bill to governor Gretchen Whitmer. State senate seats are not up in 2024, but Democrats will need to play effective defense to maintain their majority in the evenly divided state House.

Minnesota

The Democratic Farmer Labor (DFL) party won a trifecta in 2022, and kicked off a strong series of progressive policy accomplishments with a 100% clean energy law and a transportation policy overhaul. As in Michigan, state senators will not be up in 2024, but the DFL will need to defend seats to hold its 69-64 edge in the state House.

Montana

Much of the focus in the Big Sky State will be federal, as Democratic Senator Jon Tester defends one of the most competitive Senate seats, and utility critic Monica Tranel seeks a rematch against Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke, a climate villain. Democrats tried to hold the governor’s office here in 2020, but Republican governor Greg Gianforte prevailed. The only declared Democrat challenging Gianforte so far is Ryan Busse, a firearms manufacturer turned gun safety advocate.

New Hampshire

Republican governor Chris Sununu—whose father played an early and key role in cementing the GOP’s status as climate obstructionists—has made weak gestures to posture as a moderate in the MAGA era, though he hasn’t strayed from the ecofascist line of climate change denial. Sununu will not seek another term in 2024, creating a competitive open seat race. The Republican primary is between former state senate president Chuck Morse, and former Senator Kelly Ayotte, whose acknowledgement of basic climate science caused the Koch brothers to cut her off in 2016. Ayotte’s stance is that Republicans should embrace renewable energy, although that has not prevented her from supporting climate foe Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation to the Supreme Court or the spread of misinformation by News Corp.

On the Democratic side, the primary will be between Manchester mayor Joyce Craig and Executive Councilor Cinde Warmington. Democrats will try to flip Republicans’ 14-10 majority in the state Senate, as well as Republicans’ razor-thin majority in the 400-seat state House.

Pennsylvania

2024 will be a critical year for determining the fate of climate goals that Democratic governor Josh Shapiro campaigned on, as well as the uncertain future of the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, and any further progress away from the grip that fossil fuel interests have historically held over state government. In order to secure the first Democratic trifecta in the Keystone State since 1993, Democrats must maintain or expand their one-seat state House majority and flip at least three seats in the state Senate.

There are also going to be competitive elections for state attorney general and auditor. After winning by a narrow margin in 2020, Republican Treasurer Stacy Garrity is likely to face a competitive re-election. Garrity has been an active member of the State Financial Officers Foundation (or SFOF, the organization of Republican treasurers leading the charge against responsible investing/ESG/Biden climate policy). Garrity’s opponent will likely be state representative Ryan Bizzarro, who announced his candidacy in late September. 

Oregon

Politics in the Beaver State moved to the right somewhat in 2022, as Democrats lost ground in the legislature and Tina Kotek narrowly won the governorship. Kotek had a volatile first year in office, as she fended off association with a scandal that prompted the resignation of Secretary of State Shemia Fagan. Meanwhile, the legislature tried to protect consumers (somewhat) against the havoc that fossil-fueled wildfires are causing in insurance markets, and Republican walkouts once again impeded climate policy. (The Oregon Supreme Court will soon rule on whether a voter-approved ballot initiative bars some of those Republican senators from running in 2024.)

Treasurer Tobias Read has pushed back against Republican attacks on responsible investing, but he is otherwise viewed with skepticism by Oregon's climate left, which helps explain his loss in the 2022 primary campaign for governor. Part of the story there was his decisive 2017 vote to sell off public land to a logging company while serving on the state lands commission. Now Read is running for secretary of state against state senator James Manning, who has an A rating from Climate Cabinet. The secretary of state’s duties also include serving on the state lands commission alongside Governor Kotek and whoever replaces Read as treasurer. The Democratic candidates for treasurer are state senator Elizabeth Steiner, who has an A+ rating from Climate Cabinet, and Lake Oswego Councilmember Jeff Gudman, who previously sought the office as a Republican.

Washington

Governor Jay Inslee, long one of the nation’s most prominent climate hawks, announced that he will not seek a fourth term in 2024, and has laid out an ambitious climate agenda for his final year in office. The frontrunner to replace Inslee is Attorney General Bob Ferguson, known as a leader among state AGs in challenging corporate monopolies. Also running are former Rep. Dave Reichert, a moderate Republican who caucused with the feckless Climate Solutions Caucus while in Congress, and state senator Mark Mullet, who barely won a 2020 Democratic primary challenge over his refusal to raise the capital gains tax.

Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler has been in office since 2001, and alongside former California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones, he was an early leader in the work to get better climate risk disclosure and integration of climate into insurance regulation. Facing accusations of misconduct and calls for his resignation, Kreidler announced he would not run for another term, creating the first vacancy in this office in over 20 years. So far, the only declared candidate is state senator Patty Kuderer, a seemingly well-liked Democrat with an A+ Climate Cabinet rating. Although wildfire risk is proving enormously disruptive to Washington's insurance markets, Kuderer’s stated reason for being interested in the office seems to be health insurance.

Wisconsin

Gerrymandered legislative maps in the Badger State are deeply unrepresentative, and Democratic governor Tony Evers has been forced by Republicans’ large legislative majorities to veto right-wing legislation and take climate action via executive order. In late December, the new Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court struck down Republicans’ gerrymander. In the likely event that the legislature and Evers cannot agree on new maps, the Court will draw maps in March, paving the way for competitive legislative elections in Wisconsin for the first time in over a decade. Only half of the state Senate is up this year, but the Democrats have a legitimate shot of flipping the state Assembly.

Welcome to the next installment of our electoral preview for 2024. Our last post looked at key congressional open seats and primaries. Below, we take a deep look at North Carolina’s statewide races.

Republican extremists have placed the Tar Heel State in a stranglehold. Last time Republicans held the governorship here, they enacted a host of far-right policies, eviscerating coal ash cleanup rules and blocking research into sea level rise. A Democratic majority on the state Supreme Court and Democratic governor Roy Cooper’s veto power kept extremist North Carolina Republicans in check until 2022, when Republicans won a majority on the court. Then, a donor-orchestrated party switch by state representative Tricia Cotham gave Republicans veto-proof legislative supermajorities. Republicans overrode Cooper’s vetoes of several anti-climate bills, before drawing heavily gerrymandered congressional and legislative maps that lock in big Republican majorities, despite the state’s even political divide. This has forced several Democrats to retire, but also produced multiple strong statewide candidacies.

Governor

With Cooper termed out, there is a hugely consequential race for governor, and although there are primaries on both sides, the general election is expected to feature Democratic Attorney General Josh Stein against Republican Lieutenant Governor and Nazi sympathizer Mark Robinson.

Attorney General

With Stein running for governor, there is an open election for AG, and Democratic Rep. Jeff Jackson is likely to face Republican Rep. Dan Bishop, a Freedom Caucus extremist best known as the author of North Carolina’s notorious “bathroom bill.” Treasurer Dale Folwell— a State Financial Officers Foundation member in good standing— is running for governor, creating an open-seat election for treasurer in a state where that is an especially powerful role. For the Democrats, the candidates in the March primary will be state representative Wesley Harris and Gabriel Esparza, a Small Business Administration staffer endorsed by labor and several local officials. On the Republican side, the candidates are A.J. Daoud, Rachel Johnson, and UNC trustee/Bloomberg money manager Brad Briner.

State Supreme Court

The 2024 election for the seat held by state Supreme Court justice (and Cooper appointee) Allison Riggs will be critical to Democrats’ multi-cycle strategy to win back a majority on the court.

Insurance Commissioner

There is growing evidence that insurance market dysfunction, rapidly accelerating due to fossil fuel pollution, is becoming a more salient political issue. A wide range of policy interventions were adopted by states over the last year, and there is some polling data suggesting that Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s industry-friendly 2022 insurance overhaul remains an electoral liability for him.

There are few better testing grounds for the political relevance of insurance policy than the open seat race for insurance commissioner in the swing state of North Carolina, which is projected to lose over 1 percent of its land mass in the next 20 years.1 Democrats held the Insurance Commissioner post relatively recently, but Insurance Commissioner Wayne Goodwin lost a close election in 2016 to Republican Mike Causey, a former lobbyist who had previously sought the office five times.

Causey was re-elected in 2020, and opened his bid for a third term by criticizing Republican state legislators for being beholden to a health insurance giant. Causey has had poor relationships with Republican legislators, who acted recently to strip Causey’s office of its power as state fire marshal, thus depriving Causey of the ability to tour the state handing out checks to fire departments. Causey faces a primary challenge from former state representative C. Robert Brawley.

For months, the only Democrat running was David Wheeler, an opposition researcher who labels Causey “Rate Hike Mike” on his website, and links to a recent Charlotte News & Observer story depicting an insurance commissioner office that seems to prioritize graft and political patronage over its regulatory responsibilities. Wheeler agreed to drop out when Republican gerrymandering pushed state senator Natasha Marcus into the race. Marcus, described as “an outspoken thorn in the Republican legislative majority’s side” is emphasizing an anti-corruption message that “puts people over corporations.” With an A+ rating from Climate Cabinet, Marcus claims to be a “strong advocate for environmental policies to combat climate change.”

Thanks again for reading; your comments and suggestions are welcome. Next up, a post on other state elections.

The dominant question in American politics in 2024 will be whether President Joe Biden can ride a depleted Democratic Party infrastructure to re-election over an alarming authoritarian threat with explicit plans to dismantle climate policy and “drill, drill, drill,” as disasters fed by climate pollution reshape the nation. But there are many important elections beyond the presidency that will alter the course of climate policy for years to come. This preview will focus on congressional open seats and primaries, to be followed by a post on state elections.

With organizations like Justice Democrats and the Sunrise Movement in a weaker position than in the past, big money forces resisting the Green New Deal—including fossil-fuel barons, tech billionaires, crypto grifters, and Israeli militarist forces like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—may be even more prevalent than in previous cycles. However, organizations like the Cleantech Party, Climate Cabinet, and Lead Locally are continuing the electoral fight, while groups like the Green New Deal Network, the Climate Organizing Hub, and Climate Defiance push the political conversation towards real climate action.

US Senate

There are safe Democratic Senate seats opening up in Maryland and Delaware, but those seem very likely to go to Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks and Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, respectively.

California

The retirement and death of Sen. Dianne Feinstein has opened up a crucial vacancy to represent a state that really should have two senators who don’t scold young climate activists. Most polls have shown Rep. Adam Schiff with a small lead— a fact seemingly owed to the massive fundraising advantage Schiff built up from close ties to media companies and Hollywood, along with a constant cable news presence during the Trump years. Schiff is hardly an empty suit, however. He has been praised for his management of Trump’s first impeachment, and recently introduced legislation to confront California’s fossil fueled wildfire insurance problem. Schiff’s voting record has gotten more progressive since his days as a Blue Dog, though he retains a hawkish stance on national security and intelligence issues. Following Feinstein’s death, there are now only 18 Members of Congress remaining who voted for the Iraq war, and Schiff is one of them. Recently, Schiff lost an endorsement from the mayor of Burbank over his refusal to support a ceasefire in Palestine.

Polls also show Rep. Katie Porter advancing to the general election with a second place finish. Porter is endorsed by her mentor Elizabeth Warren, and she has emulated Warren’s penchant for tough congressional oversight and financial regulation through investigations into Big Oil and proposed legislation to strengthen oversight of Wall Street shadow banks. Rep. Barbara Lee has been the most committed candidate to the Green New Deal, and her progressive record shows most strongly through her steadfast career-long push for peace. Lee is beloved by the party base, but has trailed in fundraising and polling, with one recent poll showing her behind retired baseball player Steve Garvey, a Republican.

New Jersey

Almost cartoonish corruption by Sen. Bob Menendez has created a competitive primary for this seat. Most of the state’s congressional delegation, county leaders, and party bosses have lined up behind Tammy Murphy, the wife of governor Phil Murphy and a former Republican. Rep. Andy Kim is running as a progressive, and has been endorsed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee. Notwithstanding the strong pressure of the “county line” and party leadership, Kim just released a poll showing him with a pretty healthy lead.

US House

Democrats enjoy much better odds of re-claiming the House majority from the fanatical grip of extremist Republicans than they do of maintaining their Senate majority. Nonetheless, many House Democrats have announced their retirement, creating open seats in a number of safe Democratic districts that will help determine how much support the Green New Deal has within the caucus.

California’s 16th

Democratic Rep. Anna Eshoo, a close ally of Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi, announced her retirement after a lengthy career representing a rapidly changing Silicon Valley, which included holding a powerful perch on the Energy and Commerce Committee. There are thirteen candidates in the field to replace Eshoo, and the top two March primary will likely extend to a general election in November between two Democrats.

Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian starts with a fundraising edge, having laid the groundwork to run for this seat for over a decade. At 70, Simitian is only 10 years younger than Eshoo, but he’s well respected from decades of serving in elected office. In a Mercury News editorial asserting that he’s the climate hawk in the race, Simitian described his work to establish Silicon Valley Clean Energy and co-author the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Assemblymember Evan Low is another contender, though is “almost a parody of a Silicon Valley corporate stooge.” He has been regarded as a rising star since winning election as the nation’s youngest ever openly gay mayor in 2009, winning a seat in the state Assembly in 2014. Low’s climate record is pretty middling, including abstaining from the oil drilling setback law that Big Oil is now spending heavily to overturn on the 2024 ballot.

Another formidable candidate is Sam Liccardo, the business-aligned candidate who prevailed over labor’s preferred pick when elected mayor of San Jose in 2014. Liccardo went on to lead the the city in establishing a community-choice aggregation energy program to compete with PG&E. The only woman in the field is Palo Alto city councilmember Julie Lythcott-Haims, best known as Stanford’s freshman dean turned best-selling author. Lychcott-Haims bucked NIMBYism and supported affordable housing development during her 2022 election to the council, and now counts climate change as a top priority. Also running are former Obama administration staffer Peter Dixon; former Saratoga councilmember Rishi Kumar (a Green New Deal supporter, but also a BJP partisan); and Palo Alto councilmember Greg Tanaka.

California’s 30th

With Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff running for California’s open Senate seat, this West Hollywood and Pasadena-based district is now open. The clear climate hawk in the race is Assemblymember Laura Friedman, who has won endorsements from Climate Hawks Vote, the League of Conservation Voters, and Food and Water Action. Running against Friedman are former Los Angeles City Attorney Mike Feuer, whose involvement in a Department of Water and Power billing scandal scuttled his mayoral campaign, and state senator Anthony Portantino, the Senate Appropriations Chair who blocked transit-oriented development. In a truly remarkable endorsement of Friedman, consumer advocate Jamie Court wrote that Feuer and Portantino “represent the worst in California politics,” highlighting in particular Portantino’s actions to thwart legislation allowing oil drillers to be held liable when their activity makes residents sick.

Delaware At-Large

Even as Delaware became a reliably blue state throughout the 2000s, it maintained its bipartisan political culture of enabling regulatory and tax evasion by corporations. President Biden even acknowledged this legacy in announcing his initiatives to revitalize antitrust enforcement against entrenched corporate power. Delaware’s political culture began to change in 2016, when a young progressive named Eugene Young nearly won the Wilmington mayor’s race. Many members of Young’s campaign team were behind Kerri Harris’s spirited but unsuccessful 2018 primary challenge to Senate Environment and Public Works Chair Tom Carper, and progressives have made substantial gains in the legislature several cycles in a row.

Carper announced his retirement this year, and practically anointed Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester as his successor, creating a vacancy for Delaware’s at-large congressional seat. The two leading contenders are Eugene Young, still popular with the left and now director of the state Housing Authority, and state senator Sarah McBride, who would be the first openly trans member of Congress if elected. Treasurer Colleen Davis is also running.

Minnesota’s 3rd

Democratic Rep. Dean Phillips has decided to wage a quixotic presidential campaign rather than run for re-election. Even before Phillips bowed out, Ron Harris had launched a campaign, titling his opening ad “Resilience” in a nod to his experience as Minneapolis’ chief resilience officer. The DFL primary will likely be a close contest between Harris and state senator Kelly Morrison, who has an A rating from Climate Cabinet, and has said her major focus will be addressing the climate crisis.

Illinois’ 11th

With endorsements from several labor organizations, human rights lawyer Qasim Rashid seems to be posing a strong challenge to Rep. Bill Foster, a New Democrat centrist with a background as a physicist. In 2020, Foster survived a surprisingly strong challenge from Rachel Ventura (now a state representative), who challenged him on his opposition to a Green New Deal and 2009 vote against the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill. Foster sits on the Financial Services Committee, and voted for the 2018 financial deregulation package that played a role in fueling last March’s spate of regional bank failures. AIPAC has endorsed Foster.

New Jersey’s 8th

Rep. Rob Menendez, the son of the aforementioned Bob Menendez, is being challenged by Hoboken mayor Ravi Bhalla. Bhalla has emphasized the Menendez family’s corruption, but also seems vaguely to be challenging Menendez from the left.

New York’s 26th

There will be a special election to replace retiring Rep. Brian Higgins, but the choice for the Democratic Party candidate is up to Erie County Democratic leaders. Those leaders seem inclined to support state senator Tim Kennedy over Erie County legislator Jeanne Vinal and Buffalo mayor Byron Brown, who used Republican votes and donors to win re-election in 2021 after losing the primary to democratic socialist India Walton.

Texas’ 32nd

With Rep. Colin Allred running against oily ecofascist Sen. Ted Cruz, there is an open seat in this Democratic district outside Dallas. In a crowded race with many centrist options, state representative Rhetta Bowers seems to be angling for the progressive vote against state representative Julie Johnson, former Dallas councilmember Kevin Felder, and civil rights attorney Justin Moore, among others.

Oregon’s 3rd

The announced retirement of Portland Rep. Earl Blumenauer means the loss of a Green New Deal champion and a leader on climate. Running in the progressive lane for Blumenauer’s seat are state representative Maxine Dexter, who has an A+ rating from Climate Cabinet, and former Multnomah County Commissioner Susheela Jayapal, sister of Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal. AIPAC is reportedly looking to get involved in this race against the left, though it’s unclear whether they’ll back moderate Gresham councilmember Eddy Morales or another candidate.

Virginia’s 10th

Rep. Jennifer Wexton announced her retirement, creating an opening in this Dem-leaning northern Virginia seat. The declared Democratic candidates so far are Del. Michelle Lopes Maldonado, who has an A rating from Climate Cabinet, and Travis Nembhard, an attorney and former financial regulator who won support from Climate Cabinet and Chesapeake Climate Action Network in his 2023 run for the House of Delegates, which he narrowly lost.

Washington’s 6th

When former New Democrat Chair Derek Kilmer announced his retirement, it prompted Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz, who emphasized the climate crisis during her brief campaign for governor, to drop out and run for Congress instead. Kilmer then endorsed Franz, as did several building and constructed trades such as LIUNA Local 252. Progressives seem to be more excited about state senator Emily Randall, who has an A+ rating from Climate Cabinet. Also running with the support of several local mayors is Jefferson County Commissioner Kate Dean.

The Squad (NY-14; NY-16; MI-12; MN-05)

Efforts by AIPAC and other big money outfits to defeat Congress’ most vocal proponents of a Green New Deal, often referred to as “The Squad,” are intensifying this cycle. The most competitive primaries to watch are in NY-16, where Westchester County Executive George Latimer is challenging Rep. Jamaal Bowman, and in MN-05, where things have already gotten nasty in the rematch between former Minneapolis Councilmember Don Evans and Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Tennessee tornadoes left least 6 dead and dozens hurt on Saturday before the same mega-storm pummeled the northeast with rain, wind and snow; on the other side of the globe, it’s 110°F in Sydney as Cyclone Jasper nears Queensland. Halfway in between lies the COP28 climate summit in Dubai.

We’ve discussed the miasmic influence of the global fossil-fuel industry on COP28, but it’s not just metaphorical. The city-state’s air is a toxic haze from the United Arab Emirates’ massive oil and gas production. According to the Emirati hosts, the eye-watering smaze choking the negotiators is “sandstorms from the desert.”

That’s not the only Emirati smokescreen. Protesters at the COP28 climate summit demonstrated on Saturday for imprisoned human rights activists in Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, the past and current host of the negotiations. Obeying U.N. orders, the protesters folded over their posters to hide the Emirati detainees’ names from view, and avoided saying the words “Egypt” or “United Arab Emirates.” During the talks, the Emirates is conducting a mass trial of nearly 90 political prisoners on terrorism charges, including Ahmed Mansoor, who has been jailed since 2017. The death penalty is a possibility.

The United States has earned the “biggest, baddest” Colossal Fossil award for blocking negotiations on the next to last day of COP 28, leading to a “grossly insufficient” and “incoherent” near-final draft that avoids calling for a phase-out of fossil fuels.

In contrast, a Dutch-led coalition of a dozen nations committed to “publish an inventory of their own fossil fuel subsidies within a year, with the aim of creating a clear strategy for eliminating them.” China and the United States did not join the effort. Canada is the one major fossil-fuel producer to sign on.

Naveena Sadasivam tried to keep up with the whirlwind climate activist Harjeet Singh, the head of global political strategy at Climate Action Network International, the network of non-governmental organizations that pushes the diplomats for meaningful action every COP.

Not to worry, though, next year’s COP will be hosted not by a Middle Eastern petrostate, but by an Eastern European petrostate. After Russia vetoed every other option, Azerbaijan was selected to host COP29.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR:

On Wednesday evening at 6 pm, the Green New Deal Network is hosting a happy hour/holiday party at Sonny’s Pizza. Everyone except for Darren Woods and other fossil-fuel industry representatives are welcome.

On Thursday morning, from 8 am to 10 am, The Hill is offering a free breakfast forum on energy efficiency and cutting carbon pollution featuring Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), climate denier and COP28 polluter Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) (who “pressed U.S. special climate envoy John Kerry to slow down proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules meant to improve vehicle fuel economy”), Department of Energy official Carla Frisch, and top energy-efficiency lobbyists Paula Glover, Jamal Lewis, Steven Nadel, and Rose Stephens-Booker. The event is sponsored by the Samsung lobbying shop.

Tuesday, December 12

There are two hearings on Tuesday about the future of critical-mineral mining. At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources oversight subcommittee has invited witnesses to discuss space mining! At 2:30 pm, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources mining subcommittee holds a more prosaic hearing on Sen. Martin Heinrich’s (D-N.M.) Clean Energy Minerals Reform Act (S. 1742) and Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto’s (D-Nev.) Mining Regulatory Clarity Act (S. 1281). Witnesses include federal mining-policy officials, Trout Unlimited CEO Chris Wood, and National Mining Association COO Katie Sweeney.

At 10 am, a House Financial Services subcommittee chaired by Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-Mo.) will hold a hearing on strengthening energy sanctions on Russia, Iran, and Venezuela; witnesses include Dr. Anna Mikulska on Russia, Dr. Ryan Berg on Venezuela, and Claire Jungman on Iran.

House Natural Resources subcommittees are holding two hearings on Tuesday:

• At 10:30 am, Reps. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) receive witness testimony on two fossil-fuel-subsidy bills from Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and a bill to expedite geothermal projects by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.). One of Hageman’s bills, H.R. 5482, purports to fight “energy poverty” by fighting regulations on oil, gas, and coal projects—strangely it does not mention energy efficiency or the costs of fossil-fuel pollution on at-risk communities. The witness speaking against the bill is just-transition expert Dr. J. Mijin Cha.

• At 2 pm, Reps. Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.) and Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) spar at a hearing on the lower Snake River hydropower dams in the Columbia basin. The federal government is open to dismantling the dams to save endangered salmon and steelhead populations. Witnesses include Trout Unlimited’s Lindsay Slater.

It’s a busy day for those who speak for the trout.

Wednesday, December 13

Wednesday offers two serious policy hearings from House Transportation and Infrastructure subcommittees:

• At 10 am, the highways and transit subcommittee receives testimony from five top federal transportation officials on the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act investments.

• At 2 pm, the water resources subcommittee discusses proposals for a Water Resources Development Act of 2024 with national water district association lobbyist Dave Mitamura and local advocates from Missouri, North Carolina, the Great Lakes, and Tampa Bay.

Thursday, December 14

At 9 am, Senate Energy and Natural Resources chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) oversees a marathon markup of 23 bills, including legislation on federal lands management, small-scale hydropower, wildlife, and federal water management.

The absurd fabulist Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) is a member of the House of Representatives no longer, expelled by a vote of 311 to 114 on December 1st. The last time Congress expelled a member who hadn’t been convicted of a felony was during the Civil War.

Senators will be working “long days and nights, and potentially weekends” this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky is speaking remotely to senators this afternoon, but Republicans are conditioning further military support for Ukraine on a crackdown on asylum-seekers and other immigrants. Despite earlier reports that the White House was open to a deal, Democrats have since rejected the Republicans’ insistence on cruelty towards climate migrants.

Meanwhile, support in Congress for the campaign of ethnic cleansing waged by Benjamin Netanyahu’s government against Gaza after the brutal Hamas attacks is wavering as the U.S.-backed reign of retaliatory terror turns a light of human civilization into toxic rubble. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) announced last night that emergency military funds for the “right-wing, extremist government in Israel” sought by President Joe Biden would be “irresponsible”:

“What the Netanyahu government is doing is immoral. It is in violation of international law ― and the United States should not be complicit in those actions.”

John F. Kirby, the spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, defended the Israeli military on ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos, saying he believed “they have been receptive to our messages here of trying to minimalize [sic] civilian casualties.”

In less than a month, Israeli Defense Forces have launched over 10,000 airstrikes in the densely populated Gaza Strip, killing more than 15,000 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, as they systematically erase the cities in the territory from north to south.

The eco-fascist turn of the collapsing Republican Party is accelerating. As Tori Otten writes, the National Republican Congressional Committee released a wildly xenophobic ad on Monday, falsely depicting several national parks from Acadia to Zion overrun with immigrants, using graphics made by AI image generators. The ad promotes the House’s vote last week to pass H.R. 5283, legislation from anti-immigrant demagogue Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) that bans the use of federal lands for asylum seekers and climate migrants. The six Democrats who joined every Republican but Santos (who voted present) in support of the bill were Reps. Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (N.C.), Jared Golden (Maine), Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), Mary Peltola (Alaska), and Marie Gluesenkamp Pérez (Wash.).

Which leads us to today’s hearings, featuring more New York Republican eco-fascist demagoguery.

Tuesday, December 5

All of the hearings listed for Tuesday are in the House of Representatives.

At 10 am, Homeland Security Committee emergency management subcommittee chair Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) holds a hearing backing the right-wing immigration fearmongering entitled “Protecting our Preparedness: Assessing the Impact of the Border Crisis on Emergency Management.” It’s an all-male, all New-York-City-region panel: Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman, Clinton County sheriff David Favro, Uniformed Firefighters Association of Greater New York president Andrew Ansbro, and, as the Democratic witness, New York Immigration Coalition executive director Murad Awawdeh, the son of Palestinian immigrants.

Also at 10 am, the climate subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing directed at the ongoing COP 28 climate talks, backing “all-of-the-above” energy policy. Witnesses include oil lobbyist Anne Bradbury, nuclear-energy advocate David Gattie, and energy economist Noah Kaufman of the industry-backed Columbia Center on Global Energy Policy.

And the Transportation water subcommittee looks at the future of the Water Resources Development Acts, which determine water management for the desertifying American West, with Army Corps of Engineers leaders Michael Connor and Scott Spellmon.

At 10:30 am, the Natural Resources oversight subcommittee holds a hearing attacking limits on national parks air tourism.

The hearings in the afternoon are more consequential than that, however. At noon, the Foreign Affairs Africa subcommittee, led by chair John James (R-Mich.) and ranking member Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), speaks with top State and Defense officials on the overwhelming crisis unfolding in the Sahel, with every country collapsing into war, terror, and dictatorship under the relentless pressure of global-warming driven drought and desertification. As USAID official Bob Jenkins plans to testify,

“Climate shocks – dangerously high temperatures, changing rainfall patterns, and frequent droughts – exacerbate conflict by pushing people to herd, farm, or fish in areas controlled by violent extremists like Jama’a Nusrat ul-Islam wa al-Muslimin (JNIM), the Islamic State, and Boko Haram.”

At 2 pm, Energy and Commerce marks up 44 pieces of legislation, including two pro-nuclear bills (H.R. 6544 and H.R. 5718), a suite of legislation to block energy efficiency standards for transformers, appliances, the electric grid, and pre-fab housing (H.R. 4167, H.R. 6192, H.R. 6185, and H.R. 6421), and a bill backing small-scale hydropower (H.R. 4045).

Also at 2 pm, the federal lands subcommittee of the Natural Resources Committee discusses the timber industry and forest management on Tribal lands. The subcommittee is led by climate denier Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wisc.), with Green New Dealer Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) the ranking member.

Wednesday, December 6

At 10 am, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing on Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act investments in habitat and ecosystem restoration, pollinators, and wildlife crossings with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service director Martha Williams and Federal Highway Administration Associate Administrator for Federal Lands Brian Fouch.

In the House, the Natural Resources Committee will mark up eight pieces of legislation, including two bills to revert Biden administration oil and gas policies: H.R. 6009 from Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) to block the implementation of federally mandated increases in oil and gas lease pricing, and H.R. 6285 from Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) to kill limits on drilling Alaska’s coastal plain. Other legislation being marked up include H.R. 1449 from Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho), which encourages the development of major geothermal projects on federal lands, and the bipartisan BEACH Act (H.R. 5490), which expands existing limits on development of coastal barrier regions.

Simultaneously, the House Transportation and Infrastructure will hold a markup of the bipartisan Pipeline Efficiency and Safety Act of 2023 (H.R. 6494) and other legislation.

At 12 pm, the House Agriculture Committee holds its Member Day, in which members of Congress advocate for earmarks and special programs of interest to their districts (usually businesses within their districts).

Thursday, December 7

At 11 am, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will consider the nomination of Kurt Campbell to be Deputy Secretary of State. Campbell, currently Biden’s top White House official for the Indo-Pacific, is the co-founder of the Center for New American Security, a think tank he established in 2007 for departing Obama Administration military and diplomatic officials and financed by defense contractors.

Hearings on the Hill Today:

• 10 AM: House Energy and Commerce
  Energy, Climate, and Grid Security
  America's Carbon Pollution Future

• 10 AM: House Homeland Security
  Emergency Management and Technology
  Immigration and Emergency Management

• 10 AM: House Transportation and Infrastructure
  Water Resources and the Environment
  Water Resources Development Acts: Status of Past Provisions and Future Needs

• 10:30 AM: House Natural Resources
  Oversight and Investigations
  Examining the National Parks Air Tour Management Program

• 12 PM: House Foreign Affairs
  Africa
  The Sahel in Crisis: Examining U.S. Policy Options

• 2 PM: House Energy and Commerce
  Markup of Nuclear, Anti-Efficiency, and Other LegislationHydropower,

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources
  Federal Lands
  Examining Opportunities to Promote and Enhance Tribal Forest Management

ABU DHABI

The twenty-eighth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) officially begins Thursday in Abu Dhabi, led by COP28 President Sultan Ahmed al Jaber, who just happens to be the head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc). As I wrote when his presidency was announced in January:

I suppose the positive way of looking at this is that the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has finally, after thirty years, become consequential enough that fossil-fuel interests need to be more aggressive and open in their contestation of the outcome of the negotiations.

BBC climate editor Justin Rowlatt and Centre for Climate Reporting’s Ben Stockton report that, yes indeed, al Jaber has been planning to aggressively and openly pursue fossil-fuel deals during COP28.

The reporters obtained documents “prepared by the UAE’s COP28 team for meetings with at least 27 foreign governments ahead of the COP28 summit”—including “plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 nations.” The briefing documents for al Jaber mention that Adnoc is interested in deals with China, Columbia, Egypt, and Brazil, among other countries, and pledge that the oil interests of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela will be protected in the climate negotiations.

It should be noted that in addition to the fossil-fuel corruption, the UAE also planned to use the formal diplomatic talks to push the interests of its renewable company, Masdar, also run by al Jaber.1 Al Jaber has ignored calls to step down from the United Arab Emirates’ energy companies while he serves as the ostensibly neutral president of the international climate negotiations, instead using his “access to world leaders across the globe” to further the host nation’s petro-economic agenda.

Stockton’s report also mentions that “COP28 meetings are still regularly held at Adnoc headquarters and Al Jaber frequently works on summit business from his office at the oil company.”

WASHINGTON, D.C.

In genuinely exciting news, Ben Beachy, one of the most committed and effective Green New Dealers in D.C. policy circles, who worked at the Sierra Club and the BlueGreen Alliance during the Build Back Better-Inflation Reduction Act battles, is joining the White House as a Special Assistant to the President for Climate Policy, Industrial Sector, and Community Investment.

In less exciting news, Congress is returning from its Thanksgiving break, with the House Republican in-fighting starting up where it left off.

Tuesday, November 28

On Tuesday morning, House Homeland Security’s emergency management subcommittee chair Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.) and ranking member Troy Carter (D-La.) are holding a field hearing in New Orleans on federal, state, and local coordination of emergency preparedness in coastal communities. D’Esposito represents a coastal New York district ravaged by Superstorm Sandy, and New Orleans, of course, was permanently reshaped by Hurricane Katrina.

Wednesday, November 29

At 10 am, House Energy and Commerce’s environment and manufacturing subcommittee is holding a hearing on America’s history as the world’s greatest carbon polluter, aimed at the COP28 talks. The Republicans will present the U.S. record as the “global leader” in “reducing emissions.” Witnesses have not yet been announced.

Also at 10 am, the House Homeland Security Committee holds a hearing entitled “The High North: How US Arctic Strategy Impacts Homeland Security.” Witnesses have not yet been announced.

Speaking of US Arctic strategy, at 10:15 am, House Natural Resources
Energy and Mineral Resources chair Pete Stauber (R-Minn.) is holding a hearing on his legislation, Alaska’s Right to Produce Act (H.R. 6285), which would overturn all of the Biden administration’s protections of Alaska’s coastal plain from oil and gas drilling and fast-track all proposed projects. Witnesses have not yet been announced.

At 11 am, the House Transportation and Infrastructure railroads subcommittee led by chair Troy Nehls (R-Texas) and ranking member Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) receives testimony on the future of intercity passenger rail in America. Witnesses have not yet been announced.

Thursday, November 30

Thursday includes two Republican-led hearings on the mining industry, under the “critical minerals” rubric. At 10 am, the House Science Committee holds a hearing on the role of federal research in establishing a robust U.S. supply chain of critical minerals and materials The all-male panel includes DOE oil and gas official Ryan Peay, the mining-industry-funded Stanford mining engineer Jef Caers, rare-earth miner and former Trump DOE official Drew Horn, solar-energy supply-chain scientist Dustin Mulvaney, and chemical process CEO Tom Baroody. And at 2 pm, there is a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing on safety and security in the critical mineral supply chain.

Other Thursday 10 am hearings:

• A Senate Energy and Natural Resources hearing on advanced nuclear reactor commercialization;

• A House Natural Resources subcommittee hearing on the bipartisan Expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act, with witnesses from the National Forest System, the National Park Service, lobbyists for outdoor recreation industry, and rock climber Sasha DiGiulian and mountaineer Luis Benitez; and

• A Senate Agriculture nomination hearing for former Virginia agriculture secretary Dr. Basil Gooden to be Undersecretary of Rural Development, and Republican lobbyist Summer Mersinger to be reappointed to the Commodities Future Trading Commission.

Thursday’s other 2 pm hearings include a House Science oversight subcommittee hearing attacking the Biden administration’s proposed Disclosure of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Climate-Related Financial Risk rule. In particular, this hearing will feature testimony from White House Council on Environmental Quality Chief Sustainability Officer Andrew Mayock, who will be pressed on the administration’s crafting of the rule to use the privately-backed Science Based Targets Initiative organization as the overseer of corporate compliance with the rule. Republicans will, without irony, question why a private organization with extensive ties to industry should be trusted with ensuring compliance to climate targets for industry.2

Also at 2 pm, a House Foreign Affairs hearing on border security, Trump style, with white nationalists Chad Wolf of the ecofascist America First Policy Institute and Gene Hamilton of Stephen Miller’s America First Legal.

As Donald Trump calls for the extermination of the “vermin” of the American left and Benjamin Netanyahu targets Gaza’s hospitals, we’re now counting down the days to the latest federal government-funding shutdown on November 17th before the Thanksgiving recess.

The House Rules Committee is meeting this afternoon at 4 pm to consider House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La., no relation) unnecessarily complicated “laddered” two-step continuing resolution, which would fund the part of the government until January 19th, and the rest of the government through February 2nd.1 This continuing resolution is “clean” —without the budget cuts and right-wing riders much of the Republican caucus wants. And this proposal lacks emergency funding for military support for Ukraine or Israel, or further disaster relief, which the Biden administration desperately wants.

So it does not have enough Republican support to pass the House. Support from the Democrats for Johnson’s plan is far from certain—and if Democrats do help Johnson pass a clean CR, that could lead to the same hard-right revolt that deposed former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).2

The Republican House has passed 7 of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal year 2024, all with draconian cuts and extremist riders attacking climate action and civil rights. This week, House Republican leadership will attempt to pass their Labor-Health-Education, Commerce-Justice-Science, Transportation-HUD funding bills amid vicious internal fighting.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Senate is moving forward to use H.R. 815 as its shell for a continuing resolution. Although Democrats strongly prefer a CR that has a pre-Christmas expiration, they have signaled openness to Johnson’s approach.

Meanwhile, committee work continues, with a busy Tuesday and Wednesday.

Tuesday, November 14

At 10 am, the Senate Agriculture Committee looks at new agricultural technology, including so-called artificial intelligence; the all-male panel of witnesses include John Deere’s top technologist, Dr. Jahmy Hindman; former Apple technologist and agricultural machine-learning scientist Dr. Mason Earles; and agricultural technology lawyer Todd Janzen.

Also at 10 am, the House Transportation’s Coast Guard subcommittee looks at the Coast Guard’s efforts in drug enforcement, illegal migration, and illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing.

At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources energy subcommittee examines the Biden Administration’s abandoned coal mine lands and active coal mining programs, which have been significantly modified by the bipartisan infrastructure act. Witnesses include Interior mining deputy director Glenda Owens, coal-mining officials from Wyoming, Alabama, and Ohio, and Sierra Club senior attorney Peter Morgan.

At 10:30 am, the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee holds a hearing on EPA’s proposed greenhouse pollution standards for the power sector. The Biden administration is taking yet another crack at setting greenhouse pollution standards for electric utilities, after Trump and the Supreme Court killed Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan. The proposed standards include shifting gas-fired plants over to carbon-capture and hydrogen in the 2030s. Witnesses are Republican officials from North Dakota, Wyoming, and Tennessee as well as Maryland secretary of the environment Serena McIlwain.

House Natural Resources subcommittees are holding two hearings to receive testimony on proposed legislation. At 10:30 am, the water subcommittee looks at four non-controversial waterways bills. At 2 pm, the federal lands subcommittee looks at seven bills, including Rep. Young Kim’s (R-Calif.) wildfire technology bill and Rep. Bruce Westerman’s (R-Ark.) biochar research bill.

At 2:30 pm, Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) chairs an environmental subcommittee hearing on wildlife migration corridors with California fish and wildlife director Chuck Bonham, Center for Public Lands director Madeleine West, and Wyoming game warden Richard King.

Wednesday, November 15

The House Financial Services Committee starts bright and early with a 9:30 am oversight hearing of federal banking regulators, with the Federal Reserve vice chair for supervision Michael Barr, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation chair Vice Chairman for Supervision Martin Gruenberg, National Credit Union Administration chair Todd Harper, and acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu. Among many proposed rules under the committee’s eye are the principles for climate-related financial risk management for large financial institutions.

At 10 am, Senate Environment chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) holds a hearing on industrial decarbonization with an all-female panel of Breakthrough Energy’s Dr. Abigail Regitsky, Dr. Leah Ellis of the low-carbon cement startup Sublime Systems, and corporate hydrogen and carbon-capture lobbyist Shannon Angielski.

At 2:30 pm, Senate Indian Affairs marks up the Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project Amendments Act, for the major project to supply water to Navajo Nation and Gallup, New Mexico by diverting it from the San Juan River.

At 3:30 pm, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee holds a hearing on the Veteran Affairs’s fourth mission: supporting emergency preparedness and response. That has included both Covid response as well as growing deployment of VA personnel and resources in the wake of climate disasters.

Thursday, November 16

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s monthly open meeting begins at 10 am.

The incumbent governors in Kentucky and Mississippi were re-elected in Tuesday’s two gubernatorial elections. Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear was re-elected, and used his acceptance speech to personally thank Hadley Duvall, a rape survivor who spoke out powerfully against the extreme position on abortion held by Beshear’s opponent. Beshear will now get another term to promote new manufacturing and EV jobs despite the legislature’s best efforts to prop up King Coal.

In Mississippi, Republican governor Tate Reeves defeated Democratic Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley, whose campaign for Medicaid expansion and against Reeves’ corruption was not enough to overcome Mississippi’s strong Republican tilt.

Virginia

In Virginia, Democrats kept their majority in the state senate by a 21-19 margin, and flipped control of the House of Delegates, winning at least a 51-48 majority. (The Republican candidate is holding on to a slim lead in the race for HD 82, but that race has not been called.) The majority maker was Climate Cabinet-endorsed Michael Feggans in HD 97, where investments to protect Virginia Beach from flooding are an important issue. Joshua Cole, a Mountain Valley Pipeline opponent endorsed by both Climate Cabinet and Lead Locally, won his election for HD 65 around Fredericksburg. With Lead Locally’s support, activist Nadarius Clark was elected to represent the Suffolk-based HD 84.

Climate Cabinet also endorsed Russet Perry in her successful Loudon County race for SD 31, where she prevailed over a far-right son of a billionaire. For his leadership backing clean energy investments in a swing district centered around Newport News, Climate Cabinet had endorsed Democratic senator Monty Mason (D-SD 24). Mason was narrowly defeated by Danny Diggs, causing a net loss of one seat for Virginia Senate Democrats. Nevertheless, the June primary victories of Senators-elect Lachrese Aird, Jennifer Carrol Foy, and Saddam Azlan Salim, along with the retirement of Dominion Energy ally Dick Saslaw, will likely add up to a more progressive and unified Democratic caucus in the senate next year.

With these results, Virginia is likely to continue as the clean energy leader of the South. Democrats have dealt a serious blow to governor Glenn Youngkin’s plans to dismantle the climate progress made under his predecessor. In interviews with Inside Climate News, environmental leaders previewed their strategy for expanding rooftop solar and offshore wind even as Youngkin, who is described as “mostly hostile to climate policy,” remains in office for two more years. Inside Climate News notes:

One area where the Democrats now hold complete control is over the State Corporation Commission, or SCC, the regulatory body that oversees insurance, businesses, and—critically for the state’s climate goals—utilities. In Virginia, the dominant utilities are Dominion Energy and Appalachian Power Company. 

The SCC is meant to set utility rates that are fair for both consumers and companies. It also approves or denies the utilities’ decarbonization plans, which are needed to comply with emissions reductions mandated in the Clean Economy Act. 

At the moment, the SCC is not fully operational. While two members are needed for the SCC to issue rulings, only one seat on the three-person board is filled. But SCC positions are legislative appointments, meaning with Democrats in the majority, they now control who will fill the two empty positions. 

“The future of the SCC is in their hands,” said Shelby Green, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, a watchdog group.

Pennsylvania

With Virginia’s legislature now under unified Democratic control, Pennsylvania now holds the distinction of being the only state in the nation with divided partisan control of its legislative chambers. Democrats’ efforts to hold the state house and flip the state senate will be another area where the Keystone State is a pivotal electoral battleground in 2024.

In advance of those elections next year, Democrats had a pretty good night in Pennsylvania. The headline was Dan McCaffery’s victory in the open race for Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which allowed Democrats to maintain a 5-2 majority on the court against a deluge of money from climate denier and GOP megadonor Jeffrey Yass. Yass was also unsuccessful in his effort to beat progressive climate hawk Sara Innamorato, who won her election for Allegheny County Executive. It wasn’t a clean sweep in Allegheny County, however, as Yass spent big to help District Attorney Stephen Zappala win re-election as an independent after he lost the Democratic primary. Carl Redwood, who’d been endorsed by Lead Locally, lost his bid for the County Council seat held by centrist incumbent DeWitt Walton.

Democrats held their majorities in the swing Philadelphia suburban counties of Bucks and Chester, and won their first majority on the Dauphin County (Harrisburg) Commission in over 100 years. One of the most remarkable stories occurred in Luzerne County, the competitive northeastern county that encompasses Wilkes-Barre. This region is arguably one of the most politically consequential in the country. It swung heavily away from Democrats and toward Trump in 2016 and 2020, contributing to a 10-1 Republican majority on the County Council. With six of these seats up in 2023, Climate Cabinet endorsed Democrats Brittany Stephenson, Jimmy Sabatino, Joanna Bryn Smith, Patrick Kurhnowski, and Michelle Rothenbecker, in a bid to bring the council closer to parity in a county that is home to 16 hazardous waste sites, 13 abandoned mines, and six superfund sites. All but Rothenbecker won, substantially expanding Democrats’ presence on a legislative body that will oversee crucial gas line expansion proposals and environmental justice issues in the years to come.

Governor Josh Shapiro— who resolved a feud with his left flank over school vouchers earlier this year— again made nice with the left by bucking the Philadelphia Democratic establishment and supporting Working Families Party (WFP) Kendra Brooks’ re-election to her at-large council seat. After Brooks and fellow WFP candidate Nicholas O’Rourke both won council seats, there will be no Republicans on Philadelphia’s city council for the first time in modern history.

Ballot Measures

In a potentially fortuitous sign for democracy,1 voters in Ohio exerted their will over Republicans’ gerrymandered legislative supermajorities, and approved Issues 1 and 2, enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution and legalizing marijuana. Nonetheless, Republican state legislative leaders are saying “this is not the end of the conversation” with respect to abortion rights.

After utilities outspent proponents by a huge ratio, voters in Maine rejected Question 3, which would have converted Maine’s investor-owned utilities into the publicly owned Pine Tree Power Company.

In Texas, voters approved Prop 7, authorizing a $10 billion fund that will be used mostly for subsidized loans to gas projects. The initiative had backing from ConocoPhillips, the Texas Oil and Gas Association, and Koch Industries, among other fossil fuel interests. The grid-reliability arguments that fossil fuel companies used to support Prop 7 are demonstrable lies, and as E&E News reports, there are “open questions about whether the loans will be able to attract significant new investment, since gas plants are more expensive to operate and may not bring in enough revenue on the electricity market.”

In Midland, Texas, voters passed a $1.4 billion school bond over the strenuous opposition of ecofascist oil tycoon Tim Dunn, who has worked hard to stop school funding measures in the Lone Star State.

Municipal Results

Our electoral preview focused on municipal elections in Houston, Spokane, and Duluth. In the Houston mayoral race, centrist Democratic state senator John Whitmire finished first with a little over 42% of the vote, while Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee came in second with about 35% of the vote. The two will compete in a runoff on December 9, and Whitmire is seen as the favorite.

In Spokane, most of Lead Locally's endorsed climate hawks appear to have won. Former Washington Senate majority leader Lisa Brown holds a lead over Republican mayor Nadine Woodward, and Paul Dillon and Kitty Klitzke are leading in their council elections. Meanwhile, in so-called “climate proof Duluth,” the results weren’t so kind to climate action. Propelled by Republican donations, self-described “business Democrat” Roger Reinert defeated incumbent “climate-friendly” mayor Emily Larson, and Arik Foreman and Lynn Marie Nephew won at-large council seats over progressives Jenna Yeakle and Miranda Pacheco. Elsewhere in Minnesota, it was a better night for the left, as voters elected a progressive majority on the Minneapolis City Council, an all-female city council in St. Paul, and St. Louis Park elected 27-year old Nadia Mohammed as the country’s first Somali American mayor.

A number of candidates on Lead Locally’s Green New Deal slate pulled off big wins: Tucson mayor Regina Romero was re-elected; former Environmental League of Massachusetts director Juan Jaramillo won election to Revere’s city council; and utility critic Shammas Malik was elected mayor of Akron, Ohio. Climate organizer Dalton George was re-elected to his seat on the Boone, NC council. Dejuana Bigelow will continue her advocacy against the Mountain Valley Pipeline on the Burlington, NC city council, and Eugene Councilmember Lyndsey Leech will continue to press forward with prohibiting fossil fuels in new residential hookups. Don Orange, an incumbent on Vancouver, Washington’s Port Commission, won re-election after helping to block an oil export terminal. In another race with implications for fossil fuel exports, Maggie Sanders holds a narrow lead in her race for Olympia Port commissioner. Seattle Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda likely clinched a seat on the King County Council.

In other Washington races, WFP candidate John Boyd won a Kent council district over a candidate who claimed that people experiencing homeless have “an agenda.” Maren Costa— who was fired from Amazon after supporting unionization efforts and founding an organization called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice — had come in first in her primary election for Seattle Council District 1. The empire struck back, however, and a Chamber of Commerce front group spent heavily in support of Costa’s opponent, Facebook attorney Rob Saka. Saka ended up beating Costa for the Seattle council seat.

The Fort Collins, Colorado city council exerts control over the Platte River Power Authority (PRPA), which makes it key to keeping PRPA on track for its goal of being carbon free by 2030. Accordingly, Climate Cabinet endorsed incumbent council members Emily Francis and Julie Pignataro, as well as Melanie Potyondy, in their campaigns for Fort Collins Council. All three were victorious, as Potyondy prevailed over a council member who had blocked a minimum wage increase, Pignatoro defeated a NIMBY, and Francis beat an opponent who clarified that he was “not a white supremacist anymore.” In another northern Colorado election, Climate Cabinet had endorsed Loveland council candidate Kat McManus, but she fell short— a setback in the attempt to shift the balance of power away from fracking interests.

Another Climate Cabinet endorsee, Monica Montgomery Steppe, won a special election for the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, giving Democrats a majority on the Board as the county prepares to update its climate action plan.

In Holyoke, Massachusetts, Lead Locally-endorsed Guy O’Donnell was defeated in his run for city council, and Green New Deal slate member Samantha Perlman narrowly lost her race for mayor of Marlborough, Mass. Jonathan Gray lost his race for Taunton council. Former Republican Congressman Mike Coffman— a climate change denier—was re-elected as mayor of Aurora, Colorado over Lead Locally endorsee Juan Marcano. Lead Locally also supported Durham, NC council candidate Khalilah Karim, but she finished fourth in a top three election.

After many delays, Michigan Democrats finally used their newly won trifecta to approve a suite of policies shifting the state to a 100% clean energy mandate. This victory came not a moment too soon, as Democratic state representatives Lori Stone and Kevin Coleman won contests on Tuesday to become mayor in the cities of Warren and Westland, respectively. The majority in the Michigan House of Representatives will now be evenly divided, although Speaker Joe Tate (D-Detroit) will remain in charge of the tied chamber until special elections take place for Stone and Coleman’s seats.

Remaining Races

Louisiana’s runoff elections for treasurer, attorney general, and secretary of state will be held on November 18. Anti-pipeline and coal ash organizer Pearl Walker, who is endorsed by Lead Locally, will also compete in a runoff election for Memphis city council on that date. Lead Locally has endorsed Jonathan Greider in a Waterloo, Iowa council election that is headed to a runoff in four weeks. Finally, Lead Locally is supporting several mayoral and council candidates poised to implement a new Utah law empowering municipalities to pursue 100% clean energy. Runoff elections will be taking place in Murray and Salt Lake City, Utah on November 21.

Tomorrow, voters go to the polls in states across the nation. In a two-part series, Hill Heat previewed many of the top climate elections: in Virginia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, and Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maine, and other municipal races. There’s still time to help get out the vote for Maine’s Pine Tree Power initiative.

The government-funding deadline of November 17 is nearing quickly. Speaker Mike “Monitor My” Johnson (R-La., no relation) of the Rolling Coal party is now proposing rolling shutdowns, with a “bizarre” plan for a laddered continuing resolution that would “shut down sections of the government at different times.”

Although ethno-nationalist war is dominating Hill debate,1 let’s look ahead at the week’s climate hearings.

Tuesday, November 7

At 10 am, Senate Commerce tourism subcommittee chair Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) holds a hearing on sustainable tourism in the age of fossil-fueled drought, fires, and floods, with a rare all-female panel of witnesses: Tahoe Regional Planning Agency director Julie Regan, Hilton sustainability director Jean Garris Hand, and North Carolina Appalachian tourism Amy Allison.

Also at 10 am, House Financial Services subcommittee chair Andy Barr (R-Ky.) holds a hearing on financial regulators’ proposed Basel III Endgame rules and climate-risk principles for large banks. The witnesses include Thomas Hoenig of the Koch-backed Mercatus Center, conservative Wharton School professor Christina Parajon Skinner, Bryan Bashur of the Koch-backed Americans for Tax Reform, and Democratic witness Renita Marcellin of American for Financial Reform.

Again at 10 am, House Ways and Means chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) holds a hearing attacking responsible investing principles (environmental, social, governance, aka ESG). Witnesses include former Trump official Preston Rutledge, extremist climate denier Jason Isaac, anti-ESG crusader Utah treasurer Marlo Oaks, and American Bankers Association representative Mason Bolay. The Democratic witness is the AFL-CIO’s Brandon Rees.

At 11:15 am, House Foreign Affairs holds a markup on several bills, including a resolution demanding Mexico send more of its water to Texas.

And at 2:30 pm, the Senate Environment transportation subcommittee looks at roadway safety, with another all-female panel of witnesses: Pittsburgh car skeptic Karina Ricks, trucking lobbyist Brenda Neville, and North Dakota highway safety director Karin Mongeon.

Wednesday, November 8

All of Wednesday’s climate hearings begin at 10 am.

Senate Environment chair Tom Carper (D-Del.) chairs a hearing on clean water infrastructure assistance for disadvantaged communities with rural community advocate Olga Morales-Pate, south Texas’s Nueces River Authority director John Byrum, and Oklahoma water quality director Shellie Chard.

The House Small Business Committee has a hearing attacking Department of Energy energy-efficiency rules, with refrigerator lobbyist Jeff Bauman, climate denier Ben Lieberman of the Koch-backed Competitive Enterprise Institute, home-builder lobbyist Alicia Huey, and Democratic witness Emily Hammond, a climate policy expert and GW law professor who recently served in the Biden DOE.

House Natural Resources has a legislative markup with two absurd GOP fossil-fuel bills: Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-S.C.) fracking-protection bill (H.R. 1121), which would ban a federal moratorium and opposes national regulation of fracking; and Rep. Garret Graves’s (R-La.) bill to prevent rules protecting the highly endangered Rice’s whale from Gulf of Mexico drilling (H.R. 6008). Rep. Joe Neguse’s (D-Colo.) bill to extend western drought relief programs to 2028 (H.R. 4385) is also on the docket.

The House Science Committee is marking up the bipartisan Weather Act Reauthorization Act (H.R. 6093), which is a complex bill to expand forecasting and support privatization of the weather enterprise.

Thursday, November 9

At 10 am, Senate Energy chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) heads a hearing on the
implementation of federal coal mine land reclamation and abandoned coal mine land economic revitalization programs, which cynics might consider to be pork-barrel boondoggles letting coal-mining companies off the hook for leaving communities with sites of devastation.

Congratulations to longtime Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) staffer Mike Casca, who is replacing the departing Gerardo “G” Bonilla Chavez as chief of staff for Green New Deal champion Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

Kentucky

Democratic governor Andy Beshear’s engaged response to numerous climate disasters is part of why he has remained relatively popular in conservative coal-seam Kentucky. His Republican opponent is Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who has acted aggressively to promote the falsehood that the state’s economy remains dependent on fossil fuel production. Prior to winning election as AG, Cameron was an aide to Mitch McConnell, and helped oversee the confirmation process for radical anti-climate Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. Beshear has used his fundraising advantage over Cameron on a big bet that Kentucky voters do not share Cameron’s extreme opposition to reproductive rights. In one powerful ad, a rape survivor directly addressed Cameron to challenge his position against any exceptions to the state’s abortion ban. Last year, voters rejected a proposed amendment that would have affirmatively removed protections for abortion from the state constitution. Aside from the tossup governor’s race, Republicans are favored in elections for the other statewide offices.

Pennsylvania

Jeff Yass, Pennsylvania’s wealthiest resident and a climate-denying Republican megadonor, is spending heavily to influence several elections in the Keystone State this November. His top priority seems to be electing Republican Supreme Court justice candidate Carolyn Carluccio over Democratic candidate Dan McCaffery. A win by Carluccio, who seems unsure who won the 2020 presidential election, would bring Republicans one seat closer to reclaiming a majority on the state Supreme Court. This has profound implications for democracy, as well as for pipeline permitting, and the state’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

Yass has also spent big to boost Republican Joe Rockey in his bid for Allegheny County Executive against Democrat Sara Innamorato, a progressive who overcame fracking and coal money to win the May primary.

Maine

Maine voters will decide on Question 3, a ballot initiative that asks whether the public should convert Maine’s deeply unpopular investor-owned utilities (IOUs), Central Maine Power (CMP) and Versant, into a consumer-owned non-profit called the Pine Tree Power Company. If Question 3 is approved, it will trigger a sale of the IOUs to the state of Maine. The sale would cost an estimated $5-13 billion and would be completed within about five years. Pine Tree Power would then be governed by a 13-member board, a majority of whom would be elected by Maine voters. Maine would become the first state to establish a publicly-owned utility statewide.

IOUs serve over 70 percent of utility customers in the US, compared with 14 percent of customers who have some form of publicly owned utility. Publicly-owned utilities generally outperform IOUs on rates, reliability, and resilient grid investments. In theory, they’re also better positioned to shift more rapidly to clean energy sources, and proponents point to Nebraska for evidence of consumer-owned utilities making faster climate progress.

Pine Tree Power advocates submitted nearly 70,000 signatures to qualify Question 3 for the ballot after Democratic governor Janet Mills vetoed a previous attempt to refer the question to voters. After that veto in 2021, Mills hinted she was open to a consumer-owned structure in the future, acknowledging the “abysmal” performance of Maine’s IOUs, and citing problems from a 2015 merger that made CMP predominantly foreign-owned. But Mills has come out strongly against Question 3, insisting that the measure will be caught up in litigation and casting doubt on the expertise of publicly accountable board members.

Maine was one of three states that enacted legislation this year restricting utilities from using ratepayer money to obstruct climate action via their political spending. But that legislation became law too late to prevent the utilities from deploying over $34 million against Question 3. Though there is some noisy data, polls seem to indicate that Question 3 is headed toward failure in the face of this powerful opposition. Proponents can try again in the future, but will face stronger barriers if Question 1— a competing initiative that the IOUs placed on the ballot prohibiting consumer-owned utilities from taking on debt without voter approval— passes.

The Pine Tree Power initiative is also opposed by unions representing utility workers, who are worried that they’ll have weakened power to bargain if classified as public employees. Labor spokespersons acknowledged that Pine Tree Power advocates dispute their interpretation. There were reportedly efforts by Pine Tree Power to address labor’s concerns, but in the end the dialogue was unsuccessful.

The Pine Tree Power initiative is hardly the only example of a blue-green rift creating friction during our energy transition, but as Bill McKibben writes, there are hopeful signs of progress in Maine and beyond: earlier this year, successful negotiations between climate advocates and the Maine Lobstering Union resulted in the state AFL-CIO signing off on a plan for offshore wind expansion.

Municipal Elections

Dozens of municipalities will also hold elections on November 7. Check out Lead Locally’s list of endorsements to read about the Green New Deal slate running in elections from Tucson, Arizona to Vancouver, Washington to Holyoke, Massachusetts. Here’s a deeper look at Houston, Spokane, and Duluth.

Houston

The largest municipal contest is the race for mayor of the increasingly unlivable oil hub of Houston, where voters have listed flooding as one of their top concerns. In a race likely headed to a December 9 runoff, centrist Democratic state senator John Whitmire is seen as the favorite against longtime Congressional Progressive Caucus Member Sheila Jackson-Lee. Whitmire’s experiencing dealing with a legislature that is constantly trying to strip Houston of local control is seen as a plus, while Jackson-Lee’s mistreatment of staff has caught up with her. Early on in the year, there seemed to be some promising candidates in the race, but as detailed in a scathing Primary School post, they all dropped out when Jackson-Lee got in, leaving Houston with a choice between a notoriously abusive boss and a “de facto Republican.”

Spokane

Spokane is Washington’s second largest city. Located on the eastern side of the state near the Idaho border, it has a very different political culture than the more populous Seattle, as exemplified by its Republican mayor Nadine Woodward and its congressional representative, climate-change-denying Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Fossil fuel pollution has fed more intense wildfires in the region surrounding Spokane. Woodward decided to respond to the Gray fire that devastated thousands of acres this summer by attending a prayer event organized by Christian nationalist Sean Feucht, who urged the crowd to “pray for a fire that would consume Spokane.” A few weeks later, Spokane’s city council censured Woodward for participating in that event and appearing on stage with former state representative Matt Shea, author of the “Biblical Basis for War” manifesto.

Woodward is being challenged by Democrat Lisa Brown, who served as the Washington Senate majority leader from 2005 through 2012 and as Washington’s commerce department director until last year. Brown has been endorsed by firefighters, and has joined with council leaders to call for a pause on residential development in the rural Latah Valley neighborhood until adequate fire response measures can be put in place. Woodward has said Brown allegedly represents “radical left policy coming from the West Coast,” and refused to appear at a climate forum organized by Gonzaga University. Lead Locally has endorsed Brown and council candidates Paul Dillon, Kitty Klitzke, and Lindsey Shaw on the basis that they will work to preserve the city’s power to limit gas hookups in new development.

Duluth

A fascinating dynamic in Duluth, Minnesota’s elections signals a new phase in our climate crisis. In 2019, Tulane professor Jesse Keenan gave a “tongue-in-cheek” lecture dubbing the city “climate proof Duluth.” Keenan’s lecture spawned copious media coverage, including numerous New York Times features about Duluth as a climate haven. Incumbent mayor Emily Larson has been quoted in many of these stories. Now running for a third term, Larson touts her climate policy accomplishments, including reducing fossil fuel pollution across the city. Larson is endorsed by the Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) party and governor Tim Walz, who signed a tremendous bevy of climate policy into law during 2023’s legislative session.

Larson’s re-election campaign comes as Duluth faces a potential uneven growth spurt following decades of stagnant population numbers, and there have been controversial fights over sustainable development and affordable housing. Larson is being challenged by former state senator Roger Reinert, a “business Democrat” who declined to seek the DFL endorsement, but still finished well ahead of Larson in the August primary. Larson’s campaign has sent mailers calling Reinert “silent on climate action.” Unprecedented outside spending has flowed into the race, with Reinert’s support mostly coming from Republican donors, while Larson’s climate record has been praised through an independent expenditure by the League of Conservation Voters, which emphasizes that “Duluth needs a climate-friendly mayor.”

“The climate refugee phenomenon is a real thing,” Lynn Marie Nephew told the Duluth News-Tribune in a story about the four candidates competing for two at-large council positions. Although that campaign has centered around issues like rent control, there is a discernible difference in the candidates’ views about fossil fuel infrastructure. Incumbent Councilmember Arik Forsman is a utility employee and a proponent of Line 3. He and Nephew are endorsed by the pro-pipeline union LiUNA, while progressive candidates Jenna Yeakle and Miranda Pacheco are endorsed by the DFL.