Hill Heat

Republican President Donald Trump is fiercely defending fossil-fueled artificial-intelligence data centers against a national backlash, and many Republican politicians are falling in line. Their line of argument is that local concerns about the pollution and costs are mistaken and stupid.

Donald Trump:

“But the construction jobs are enormous. We’re building the biggest plants anywhere in the world. And I can say, if I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center, I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid are just enormous. And if you don’t take it, you’re going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it. So, I would say that maybe you can use a little public relations help. But if I were a governor or mayor, I would want that plant in my community and many of them are designed in a very beautiful way. It’s really very positive.” [Roll Call, 8/19/2026]

“We’re leading China in AI by a lot… I’m letting them build their own power plants… Communities that don’t take a data center, they’re making a mistake, because there are plenty of communities that want them… The smart ones are saying, ‘I want them so badly.’” [WABC, 8/25/2026 starting at 32:40]

“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor. If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign. The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them. If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame. China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening! President DJT” [Truth Social, 8/31/2026]

“Well, I say this, we’re leading China on AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world and frankly I want to keep it that way. Whoever wins AI, wins.” At his golf club in Doonbeg, Ireland. [Washington Post, 9/13/2026]

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.):

“There’s some communities like mine in Louisiana that welcome them with open arms. We have many of them under construction and my district and my constituents are delighted to have them.” [CBS Colorado, 8/14/2026]

Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.):

“There are tremendous benefits for communities who embrace data centers … They’re good customers, they’re good neighbors and studies prove that they don’t add to the cost of the grid. They’re paying their own way.” [Politico, 8/26/2026]

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.):

“People are scared of things that they don’t even realize aren’t reality. They’re not loud, they’re not hot, they’re not consuming … it’s gonna be really good for the economy.” [Fox News, 8/26/2026]

Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.):

“Anybody seen this [SpaceX rocket technology]? It’s amazing. That’s possible because of AI and computing power. Without computing power, you wouldn’t be able to do that. What that’s going to allow us is the ability to truly dominate commercial space, frankly, out of Florida, over everybody else in the Western Hemisphere.” [Florida Politics, 9/1/2026]

Full Donalds excerpt:

Now, let’s talk about the uses of data centers, because this is the part that doesn’t get talked about. The truth is we are in a race for computing power with the Chinese. That is the truth. I’ve seen the stuff online. I’m quite sure some of you have seen the stuff online. I’m just telling you as a member of Congress, now I’m going to take the governor’s race hat off for a moment. As a member of Congress who has a security clearance, who has seen the information, we are in a race of computing power with the Chinese. That is a race that America does need to win. Number two, the need for computing power is not just about ChatGPT or Grock or or Gemini. It’s about the innovations in medicine. It is about the future of being able to construct housing more efficiently. It’s about how are we going to actually create more efficient water systems and have those designs happen quicker so that we can have the fresh water and the fresh and the raw power that we are going to need going into the future. You need computing power for that. Everybody like the space race, the commercial space race that’s going on right now where Florida is dominating. Like we’re number one. We really are. We really are number one. Part of the reason how Elon is allowed to launch a rocket and have the booster come back down and land in the arms… Anybody seen this? It’s amazing. That’s possible because of AI and computing power. Without computing power, you wouldn’t be able to do that. What that’s going to allow us is the ability to truly dominate commercial space, frankly out of Florida, over everybody else in the Western Hemisphere. So the computing power I look at it as industrial infrastructure, the same way nuclear power is industrial infrastructure. The United States stopped building nuclear reactors 50 years ago. Now we stopped building them because of political dogma from the environmentalist left who said they were concerned about nuclear fallout and nuclear rods and what happens if the reactors melt down. And as a nation, we put in regulatory policy that made it impossible to build nuclear power plants. It’s our technology. We made it. So now we’re to the point where now I think America is coming back around and saying, “Well, why did we stop building nuclear power plants?”

John Horton, DoorDash head of North American policy

The delivery giant DoorDash is trying to cripple District of Columbia’s fiscal self-governance, in response to the D.C. Council’s recent vote to add a twenty-cent fee to third-party deliveries. DoorDash is the lead supporter of the D.C. Taxing Authority Review Act (H.R. 9720), which would require a resolution of approval by Congress of any D.C. action under title 47 of the D.C. Code, which covers taxation, licensing, permits, assessments, and fees.

In a letter to House Oversight chair James Comer (R-Ky.), Council chair Phil Mendelson excoriated the bill, saying it would “straightjacket the District because it would paralyze our tax code,” as it “applies to both tax increases AND decreases” and would “also freeze our General License Law.” He cited several examples of the specific measures which would be affected, and noted the new revenue restrictions would likely lead to a downgrade of the District’s bond rating.

The bill was also opposed by the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), who submitted a letter saying it “endangers public services in D.C.” as it would “would cause serious, structural challenges for D.C.’s budget and undermines core principles of home rule.” The League of Women Voters opposed the bill as well, calling it “the latest in a long line of attacks on DC’s democracy and the stability of its finances.”

In Wednesday’s House Oversight markup of the bill, Comer cited DoorDash’s support and entered the company’s letter of support into the official record. The markup was packed with local residents opposing the legislation, including D.C. shadow senator Ankit Jain.

Hill Heat has acquired the letter, which was signed by lobbyist John Horton, DoorDash’s head of North American Policy. Horton previously lobbied for the vaping company Juul and for Lyft after working on Capitol Hill for Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), former chair of the House Science Committee. He is a director of the board of LGBTQ+ Victory and of its c(4) arm, LBGTQ+ Victory Action.

Although the legislation applies to all fiscal changes to D.C. code, DoorDash’s Horton misrepresented the bill as requiring congressional approval only “before the District of Columbia can impose or increase a tax or fee.” Horton continued: “We believe this is a reasonable check against the hastily enacted local taxes and fees that fall hardest on small businesses and the residents who depend on them.”

DoorDash has a market capitalization of $81 billion, with $14 billion in annual revenue.

In response to DoorDash’s attack on DC home rule, the Free DC organization has launched a flash campaign encouraging people to boycott the company, delete the DoorDash app, and post screenshots of account cancellations with the hashtag #DeleteDoorDash.

The oversight committee reported H.R. 9720 favorably on a party-line vote of 23 to 18, with Reps. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), Mike Turner (R-Ohio), Shontel Brown (D-Ohio), Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) not voting.

Read the DoorDash letter in support of H.R. 9720 in full:

On Tuesday, April 28, Senate Republicans moved 49 Trump nominees towards final confirmation on Thursday, with a procedural vote on S. Res. 690, an en-bloc consideration of nominees including

• the notorious Steve Pearce to be BLM Director
• Project 2025 contributor David LaCerte to a full 5-year term on FERC
• auctioneer and IRS commissioner Billy Long to be ambassador to Iceland
• self-driving car executive Seval Oz, Mehmet’s sister, to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Research and Technology
• Kyle Haustveit, a petroleum engineer and fracking executive, as Under Secretary of Energy
• Republican operative Wesley Brooks as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs
• corporate Space Force lobbyist Matthew Anderson as Deputy Administrator of NASA
• Purdue engineering dean Arvind Raman, an Indian immigrant, to head NIST, which is barring foreign scientists from working there
• Doug Weaver for a full five-year term to the NRC
• January 6 participant Darin Smith to be US Attorney for the District of Wyoming

Full list:

NCAR in silhouette. Credit: im me

In a lawsuit filed Monday, the university coalition that manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in Boulder, Colo., defended it against the Trump regime’s planned breakup. The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) accused the Trump White House of using the National Science Foundation (NSF) to inflict “unlawful retaliation” against the Colorado state government.

The suit cites the ongoing case Colorado v. Trump, over the Trump administration’s blockage of SNAP food benefits for the state. The judge in that case agreed the Trump regime’s administrative actions against Colorado are tied to Trump’s efforts to overturn Colorado’s conviction of county clerk Tina Peters, who conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

The lawsuit, filed by the boutique California litigation firm Hueston Hennigan on behalf of UCAR, notes a “cascading series of retaliatory measures” against UCAR and NCAR in addition to NSF’s plans to disintegrate NCAR:

Since then, the Agencies have taken concrete retaliatory actions targeting UCAR and NCAR across multiple fronts. The cascading series of retaliatory measures has included:

• NSF’s decision to divest UCAR of its stewardship of the NCARWyoming Supercomputing Center (“NWSC”) that UCAR built, financed with tax-exempt bonds, and has operated since 2012;
• NOAA’s termination of a multi-million-dollar cooperative agreement with UCAR designed to fund climate adaptation and mitigation research;
• NSF’s use of disparate and undue reporting requirements calculated to saddle UCAR and NCAR with pointless bureaucratic burdens; and
• NSF’s imposition of gag orders that unconstitutionally restrain the speech of UCAR and NCAR officials to prevent them from communicating with the public and their employees.

The defendants named for their “series of ongoing unconstitutional, arbitrary, and capricious actions” are the National Science Foundation, NSF director Brian Stone, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA director Neil Jacobs, the White House Office of Management and Budget, and OMB director Russ Vought.

In 2011, climate scientist Kevin Trenberth wrote one of the most important scientific papers on climate change in history. Its lessons remain unlearned.

In “Attribution of climate variations and trends to human influences and natural variability,” published in WIREs Climate Change in 2011, NCAR climatologist Kevin Trenberth shattered the lie implicit in almost all scientific communication, policymaking, and journalistic coverage of climate change and its causal relationship with extreme weather.

As the abstract explains in scientific terms:

Past attribution studies of climate change have assumed a null hypothesis of no role of human activities. The challenge, then, is to prove that there is an anthropogenic component. I argue that because global warming is ‘‘unequivocal’’ and ‘very likely’ caused by human activities, the reverse should now be the case. The task, then, could be to prove there is no anthropogenic component to a particular observed change in climate, although a more useful task is to determine what it is. In Bayesian statistics, this change might be thought of as adding a ‘prior’. The benefit of doubt and uncertainties about observations and models are then switched. Moreover, the science community is much too conservative on this issue and too many authors make what are called ‘Type II errors’ whereby they erroneously accept the null hypothesis. Global warming is contributing to a changing incidence of extreme weather because the environment in which all storms form has changed from human activities.

Trenberth’s article precisely described the phenomenon identified in climate science communication at the time by writers like myself. In a 2010 article entitled “If Doctors Were Climate Scientists, We’d Be Dead,” I listed several examples of climate journalism and quotations from climate scientists privileging the false null hypothesis:

“it is impossible to blame mankind for single severe weather events”

“language — which suggests that we can, in fact, attribute specific weather events to global warming — should be strictly avoided”

“the usual caveat that no current weather event can be said to be ‘caused’ by climate change”

“As we continually stress, one extreme weather event, or even a series of weather events, is not caused by global warming or climate change”

“you cannot say a single event or a single summer is unequivocally due to climate change — by definition it’s weather, and not climate”

“a single weather event cannot be blamed on climate change”

“climate change cannot be said to cause an individual event”

“You can’t attribute any single weather-related event to a hotter planet”

This seeding of false doubt continues to this day, to the benefit of no one but the polluters profiting from our inaction.

“The result of bad and misleading statements about attribution, of which there have been many, is to grossly underestimate the role of humans in climate events of note in recent times to the detriment of perceptions about climate change and subsequent policy debates,” Trenberth wrote in 2011. “Humans are changing our climate. There is no doubt whatsoever.”

We have exactly one planet to live on, and it’s one whose climate system is now being driven by manmade pollution. The coming changes which are known with absolute certainty — sea level rise, glacial decline, ocean acidification — presage suffering on an apocalyptic scale. There is no alternate planet with everything the same except with pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide to compare against. Weather phenomena are determined through physical processes by the state of the ocean-atmosphere system, making greenhouse pollution one of the causative agents of today’s weather.

The following was submitted by pre-eminent climate scientist Kevin Trenberth, who was employed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research from 1984 to 2019, to the National Science Foundation.

Comment on Dear Colleague Letter on the National Center for Atmospheric Research

This letter focusses on the second topic, “NCAR weather modeling and atmospheric observing capabilities.”

I am writing as an individual who is a U.S. citizen (and also a New Zealand citizen). I lived in the United States for over 45 years and was employed by NCAR until 2019. Earlier, for 7 years from 1977 to 1984, as a professor at the University of Illinois, I visited NCAR every summer and had my students using the NCAR computers and data archives remotely.

I believe my credentials are second to none as a climate scientist:

My publication record includes a total (as of January 2026) of 80 books or book chapters, and 308 journal articles, plus 26 non-technical articles on The Conversation and 22 on New Zealand’s Newsroom, for a total of 662 publications plus 4 videos. On Google Scholar, there are > 137,500 citations and an H index of 142 (or 89 since 2021). I have been heavily involved in the World Climate Research Programme.

I am appalled at the attacks on NCAR and attempts to break it up. That is not to say that its operations could not be improved, but much of the U.S. Administration’s rhetoric is misguided and scientifically quite wrong.

NCAR is a national and even international center for research on the atmosphere and Earth system. It plays a major role as a center for 125 or so universities in education of students and provides facilities for research. Many students visit over the summer and participate in specially designed programs and seminars, and many doctoral theses are written jointly with NCAR scientists as co-advisors. Altering NCAR would be a major setback for the entire community, and it would also ultimately negatively impact every person in the U.S. and on Earth, and the impact would be felt for decades to come. NCAR activities include maintaining a major community super-computing center along with enormous data archives; heavily instrumented airplanes and many other instruments for field programs and exploring the Sun, and maintaining and developing community weather and Earth system models that are used widely in the US and around the world. The latter range from specialized models, such as for FAA and aircraft and airport management, a hydrology model, a major weather model (Weather Research and Forecasting Model: WRF), and the Community Earth System Model. The CESM has evolved from being a climate model to much more. A key aspect of all of these is that the atmosphere is global and it interacts with the land and oceans, and solar radiation. The land includes all of the complexity of the topography and vegetation, as well as ice and snow cover. Accordingly, it is an exceedingly challenging problem and through NCAR the entire community can participate fully.

NCAR’s science is diverse, and involves all aspects of atmospheric sciences, including atmospheric chemistry, and also the upper atmosphere and the Sun. It increasingly goes further to embrace all Earth sciences, including the entire climate system (atmosphere, oceans, land and ice), and social science aspects on how to best utilize this information for societal benefit. Climate change is a tiny component of all this, but has to be included because all the Earth systems are changing, and now most of that change is driven by human activities. But even in the absence of climate change, climate study and understanding is essential for all of human endeavours, especially farming, forestry, air travel, shipping and transport.

It has been argued that NCAR should not do climate but should focus on improving weather forecasting. However, the main challenges and scope to improve weather forecasts on all time scales are by improving the way interactions of the atmosphere occur with the land hydrology, vegetation, ice, and ocean. Rainfall fundamentally involves the hydrological cycle. It includes evaporation from the surface and oceans, transport of water vapor onto land, precipitation, stream flow back to the ocean, and storage in ponds and lakes. These are inherently all climate processes.

As another critical example, in early days dealing with hurricanes was regarded as a problem for meteorologists. Now hurricanes are recognized to depend on heat and moisture from the oceans which fuel the storms and result in heavy rainfalls and potentially flooding on land. A new major review highlights the complexities and why hurricanes are inherently a climate problem.

Ma, Z., L. Cheng, S. Camargo, K.E Trenberth, I.I. Lin, G. R Foltz, D. R. Chavas, D. Zhang, E. A Ritchie, J. Fei, C. Pasquero, K. J. E. Walsh, Z. Tan, R. L. Sriver, H. Ye and L. Zhou, 2026: Interactions of tropical cyclones with global energy and water cycles. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, doi:10.1038/s43017-026-00770-6, in press.

I am included among the mix of authors here, involving 16 different institutions, which highlights also the global nature of the scientific issues- and that leadership is moving towards China.

None of the statements from the administration nor from NSF make sense physically and would amount to a major step backwards and loss of progress in improving skill in forecasting on all time scales. The observations, data processing, assimilation, modeling, and simulations must all be strongly linked. Climate and the atmosphere are inherently global, and their simulation have necessarily always utilized the biggest and fastest super computers available.

NCAR has been a unique leader and major center in the global and coupled aspects of climate and Earth system science, as well as in training early career scientists and graduate students. No doubt some aspects of NCAR could be improved in some way, but the component links are there because they reflect the physical and biogeochemical links in the real world and the global nature of the atmosphere.

Kevin E Trenberth

Jared Isaacman

By a vote of 67-30, the U.S. Senate confirmed billionaire SpaceX enthusiast Jared Isaacman to be the administrator of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration on Wednesday afternoon, in the wake of the Trump administration’s announcement it was dismantling NASA’s sister earth-science institution National Center for Atmospheric Research for “climate alarmism.”

Sixteen Democrats, including Commerce ranking member Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), joined all Republicans who voted. The other Democrats who backed the Elon Musk ally include Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois, DSCC chair Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Commerce members Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Andy Kim of New Jersey; Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich of New Mexico; former astronaut and EPW member Mark Kelly of Arizona and his fellow senator Ruben Gallego; EPW member Adam Schiff of California, Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner of Virginia; Elissa Slotkin of Michigan; and Angus King of Maine.

Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and the Iowa Republicans Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst were absent.

Jared Isaacman made his billions as CEO of the Shift4 payment processing firm and has flown to space twice on SpaceX missions he financed himself. He co-founded Draken International, which trains pilots for the U.S. military. Isaacman is a pal and an extreme admirer of Elon Musk.

In committee, Cantwell, Baldwin, and Fetterman joined Republicans to support his confirmation.

Isaacman’s confirmation hearing took place on December 3rd, as NASA illegally moved forward with the rapid downsizing of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Isaacman was nominated in the spring to be NASA administrator, with his nomination hearing on April 9th. Right before the vote on his confirmation, the White House pulled his nomination. He was renominated this fall.

According to a recent reporting by Ars Technica, the Trump administration is looking to slash the space agency’s science budget by as much as 50 percent, which could prove disastrous for the future of space research.

You’d think that would be top of mind for Isaacman, but his head is instead blissfully empty.

“I’m a humble nominee on the outside, hoping for a chance to contribute,” he tweeted, responding to a post that referenced the news. “I don’t know anything about those supposed cuts, but the President said he’s targeting fraud, waste & abuse w/ a scalpel — not a hatchet.”

Isaacman’s confidential plans for the agency, titled Project Athena, circulated around Washington before being circulated around Washington before being leaked. “Take NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and leave it for academia to determine,” Isaacman wrote. Given the opportunity to disavow that plan at his confirmation hearing, Isaacman refused.

In a private sign-on letter delivered today, the Federal Unionists Network and 35 union locals representing tens of thousands of federal workers are calling on Congressional leadership to oppose any budget that undermines access to affordable healthcare for millions of Americans or weakens Social Security, the VA, scientific agencies, regulatory protections, and the other services and programs tens of millions of Americans rely upon, even if it means a government shutdown. The letter, titled “No Bad Budget in Our Name,” was delivered to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Full text:

The Trump administration is making the conspiratorial denial of climate science the official policy of the United States government.

The Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin has proposed a new rulemaking, “Reconsideration of 2009 Endangerment Finding and Greenhouse Gas Vehicle Standards.”

The proposed rule relies on a report by a group of five prominent climate deniers commissioned by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate.”

Wright, a former fracking executive, formed the “Climate Working Group” of evangelical conservatives John Christy and Roy Spencer, oil-industry consultant Judith Curry, Canadian evangelical economist Ross McKitrick, and BP physicist Steve Koonin.

Public comment on the proposed rule is open until September 21, with a virtual public hearing scheduled for August 19 and 20. EPA economist Beth Miller is the contact person for the hearing, at (734) 214–4703 or [email protected]. People wishing to speak will be given three minutes each.

The introduction to the reconsideration:

Following days of furious wrangling to fit their multi-trillion-dollar omnibus through budget reconciliation guiderails, the Senate Republican leadership released the full text of their version of the One Big Brutal Bill Act (H.R. 1) at midnight Saturday morning.

The bill’s guiding purpose is to kill the Green New Deal, the sweeping legislative vision of climate, social, and economic justice that President Joe Biden disavowed, even as his Inflation Reduction Act made compromised moves in that direction.

Below is the 13-page, 315-section table of contents for this gargantuan assault on the nation: