Hill Heat

Full committee business meeting to vote on nominees.

Nominees:

• Stephen Vaden, of Tennessee, to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, vice Xochitl Torres Small, resigned
• Tyler Clarkson, of Virginia, to be General Counsel of the Department of Agriculture, vice Janie Simms Hipp

The nomination hearing took place on April 8.

Subcommitee hearing entitled “Made in the USA: Igniting the Industrial Renaissance of the United States.”

Witnesses:

• Kevin Czinger, Founder and Executive Chairman, Divergent 3D
• Chris Power, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Hadrian
• Austin Bishop, Chief Executive Officer, New American Industrial Alliance

On Tuesday, April 29, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., in room 1334 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold a legislative hearing on the following bills:

• H.R. 528 (Rep. Pettersen), “Post-Disaster Reforestation and Restoration Act of 2025”
• H.R. 655 (Rep. Bentz), “The Dalles Watershed Development Act”
• H.R. 1276 (Rep. Comer), To remove restrictions from a parcel of land in Paducah, Kentucky.
• H.R. 2876 (Rep. Moore of Utah), “University of Utah Research Park Act.”

Subcommittee hearing.

On Tuesday, April 29, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight hearing titled “Exploring the Potential of Deep-Sea Mining to Expand American Mineral Production.”

Witnesses:

• Gerard Barron, CEO and Chairman, The Metals Company and The Metals Company USA
• Oliver Gunasekara, CEO and Co-Founder, Impossible Metals
• Thomas Peacock, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director, Environmental Dynamics Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Duncan Currie (Democratic witness), Legal Advisor, Deep Sea Conservation Coalition

A hearing of the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit.

Republicans are calling for a new fee on electric vehicles.

Witnesses:

• Carlos M. Braceras, P.E., Executive Director, Utah Department of Transportation; on behalf of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO)
• Ty Johnson, President, Fred Smith Company; on behalf of the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA)
• Jeff Davis, Senior Fellow, Eno Center for Transportation
• Brian Burkhard, P.E., Vice President and Global Principal for Advanced Mobility Systems, Jacobs
• Adie Tomer, Senior Fellow, Brookings Metro

Full committee markup.

Legislation:

• H.R. 2984, ASTRO Act, to amend title 31, United States Code, to authorize transportation for United States government astronauts returning from space between their residence and various locations.
• H.R. 2600, ASCEND Act, to direct the NASA Administrator to establish a commercial satellite data acquisition program under NASA’s Science Mission Directorate to satisfy the scientific, operational, and educational requirements of the Administration.
• H.R. 2313, Celestial Time Standardization Act, to direct the NASA Administrator to develop a celestial time standard to support future operations and infrastructure on and around the Moon and other celestial bodies.
• H.R. 2613, Next Generation Pipelines Research and Development Act, to strengthen public-private partnerships, increase federal research, development, and demonstration related to the evolution of next-generation fossil-fuel pipeline systems, and modernize existing infrastructure.
• H.R. 1223, ANCHOR Act, to strengthen the cyberinfrastructure and communication systems of the U.S. Academic Research Fleet to better support and safeguard oceanographic research in remote locations.
• H.R. 3029, the Nucleic Acid Standards for Biosecurity Act, to strengthen biosecurity without regulation by supporting voluntary, stakeholder-driven nucleic acid synthesis standards, safeguarding innovation and national security.

House Speaker Mike Johnson had three weeks to bring the DC Local Funds Act to the floor for a vote. His failure to act is now causing financial chaos for DC.

After years of sterling finances, DC’s bond rating just got downgraded. Our FY26 budget is delayed because of this chaos, and cuts to our schools, emergency first responders, and many more critical services are now imminent.

The House returns from recess on Tuesday and we want to make sure they know DC wants our money unfrozen. Join us on Tuesday April 29 starting at 8:30 AM in Spirit of Justice Park. We start with a training and practice session from 8:30-9:00 AM which everyone is encouraged to attend.

Join us for the second teach-in of our series leading up to Earth Day 2025. This month, we plan to highlight the impact of U.S. war, militarism, and imperialism on people and the planet. This second teach-in will cover the cost of the physical launching pads of war and the imperialism, militarism, and colonialism: US bases, military exercises, and other aspects of its global presence. The US has over 800 bases around the world, which act as testing sites, mini-terriorites and colonies, and are extremely poisonous and dangerous to those around them.

In order to combat the climate crisis, we need to confront US militarism and imperialism. The U.S. military is the #1 institutional polluter in the world, with over 800 poisonous bases around the world, consistently building up pointless escalation and presence in every hemisphere. In moments of crisis at every level, we need to center our movements toward common targets and our collective futures.

Speakers list in formation including:

• Nodutol for Korean Community Development
• O’ahu Water Protectors
• David Vine

RSVP

The engines of green capitalism are on shaky ground. In the US, the Trump Administration has pledged to “terminate the Green New Deal,” putting an immediate freeze on all federal climate spending as part of its targeted “war on woke.” In Europe, policies designed to encourage sustainable energy investments are being rolled back, signalling a rapid decline in state support for the green energy transition after two decades of ESG (“Environmental, Social, and Governance”) investing. Yet as state incentives crumble, fossil fuel industry giants and the private sector in the US are continuing to build out renewable infrastructures, reminding us that for the energy sector, energy transition has always meant energy addition. Meanwhile, China’s push into renewables is hastening the dawn of an Age of Metals alongside the era of Fossil Capital.

Livestreamed from the People’s Forum in New York City, this free roundtable discussion brings together organizers, political theorists, and environmental policy analysts to make sense of the crisis in green capitalism. Can the green energy industry in the US and EU survive the aggressive withdrawal of state support, or are we witnessing the end of green capitalism? How is the political-economic landscape transforming with the reconfiguration of carbon markets, green finance, and infrastructure subsidies? And how might new alliances between communities, environmental movements, and the working class emerge from this contradictory landscape—to fight not only against retrenchment, but for a liveable climate future for the global working class?

RSVP: Zoom

RSVP: In Person

SPEAKERS

Ajay Singh Chaudhary is the executive director of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and a core faculty member specializing in social and political theory. He has written for The Guardian, The Nation, The Baffler, n+1, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other venues. Ajay’s book on the politics of climate change, The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World (2024) outlines the politics and the power needed to alter the course of our burning world.

Alyssa Battistoni is assistant professor of political science at Barnard College. She is the coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The Guardian, Boston Review, n+1, Dissent, The New Statesman, Jacobin, and New Left Review. Her forthcoming book, Free Gifts: Capitalism and the Politics of Nature (2025) explores capitalism’s persistent failure to value nature and imagines how we might live freely while valuing nature’s gifts.

Brett Christophers is professor of human geography in the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is also the author of The New Enclosure (2019), Rentier Capitalism (2022), Our Lives in Their Portfolios (2023), and The Price is Wrong (2024), all published by Verso Books.

Ashley Dawson is a Distinguished Professor of postcolonial studies at the Graduate Center, City University of New York, and the College of Staten Island. His recent books include Environmentalism from Below (2024), Decolonize Conservation (2023), People’s Power (2020), Extreme Cities (2017), and Extinction (2016). A member of the Social Text Collective, founder of the Public Power Observatory, and a Red Natural History Fellow, Dawson is a dedicated climate justice activist. His work focuses on global people’s movements and Indigenous self-determination, aiming to address environmental challenges through grassroots activism and scholarly research.

Kai Bosworth is a geographer and Assistant Professor of International Studies in the School of World Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a Red Natural History Fellow with The Natural History Museum. His first book, Pipeline Populism: Grassroots Environmentalism in the 21st Century (2022) investigates how contemporary environmental struggles and resistance to pipeline development became populist struggles.

This event is curated by Kai Bosworth and Ashley Dawson as part of Natural History for a World in Crisis, a programming series organized by the 2023-2025 cohort of Red Natural History Fellows with The Natural History Museum. Made possible with support from the Henry Luce Foundation and 4Culture.

The in-person event is hosted by The People’s Forum.