Hill Heat

Netroots Nation panel: Chester, Pennsylvania is a poster child for environmental justice in the U.S. State EJ legislation would require all toxic facilities to consider the cumulative impacts of their operations and allow citizens input as a factor in permitting decisions.

Speakers:

• Maurice Sampson, Eastern Pennsylvania Director for Clean Water Action
• Zulene Mayfield, Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living
• Philadelphia City Councillor Mark Squilla
• Teea Tynes, Trash Academy
• State Rep. Napoleon Nelson (PA-HD-154)

This panel brings together veteran organizers and strategists to name what’s actually broken in a political system designed to block majorities, insulate power, and make accountability structurally impossible. The crises we’re living through have a common source. For decades, organizers have won hearts, minds, and votes — only to watch those wins dissolved by the Supreme Court, buried in the Senate, or gutted by executive power grabs. This panel brings together veteran organizers and strategists to name what’s actually broken: the veto points, the malapportionment, the chokepoints that protect minority rule. They’ll discuss where the real openings for structural reform are in the next few years, what coalitions are forming around them, and what more democratic systems elsewhere have actually required to take hold.

Speakers

• Lauren Maunus, Democracy Revival Center
• Kunoor Ojha, Democracy Revival Center
• Aru Shiney-Ajay, Sunrise Movement
• John-Paul Mejia, Big Country
• Kaniela Ing, Our Hawaii
• Maxwell Love, Hold the Line

Current political wisdom requires Democrats to stop talking about climate change and instead couch their campaign plans as “energy affordability” or even a return to the Obama-era “all of the above” rhetoric giving equal footing to fossil fuels and renewable energy. This session will flip the script by spotlighting Democrats who have won their races by talking about climate change. Yes, the Beltway pundits are wrong. Again.

Speakers:

• RL Miller, Climate Hawks Vote
• Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ)
• Michelle Deatrick, DNC Climate and Environmental Caucus
• Ryan O’Donnell, Executive Director, Data For Progress

Join Hill Heat, Lead Locally, GrayPAC, Jane Fonda PAC, and more for a happy hour at City Tap House during Netroots Nation on Friday, June 5th to raise money for progressive climate champions running in critical elections in Pennsylvania. We’ll hear from State Rep Chris Rabb, running for PA-03, PA State Rep Izzy Smith-Wade-El and Fern Leard who’s running for PA HD120.

RSVP

Every cycle pulls our movement back into the urgent. Rapid news shifts, electoral deadlines, and reactive messaging make it hard to stay anchored to long-term narrative goals — and the results are showing. Our messaging isn’t landing with enough working class voters to build a durable governing coalition. So how do we resist that gravity and build a narrative strategy designed to last beyond a single election or media moment and build a bigger coalition?

This panel will focus on working class voters and will bring together leaders from labor, climate, and movement research to unpack how they balance urgency with strategy. Panelists will share how they integrate field learning, message testing, and experimentation into a broader narrative framework, and how they navigate the real tradeoffs between saying what’s popular and building the narratives that shift public opinion for working class voters over time.

Speakers:

• Savannah Kinchen, Grow Progress
• Mansoor Khan, Research Director, SEIU
• Joe Dinkin, Working Families Party
• Kimberly Larson, Climate Solutions

Subcommittee markup.

On Thursday, June 4, 2026, at 10:15 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources, Subcommittee on Federal Lands will hold an oversight hearing titled “The State of Our Nation’s Federal Forests and Outlook for the 2026 Wildfire Year.”

Hearing memo

Witness:

• Tom Schultz, Chief, U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Subcommittee hearing entitled “Advancing Environmental Protection Through Science and Technology.”

Hearing charter

Witness:

• Dr. Maureen Gwinn, Deputy Associate Administrator for Science, Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions, Environmental Protection Agency

Dr. Maureen Gwinn serves as the Deputy Associate Administrator for Science (DAA-S) in OASES. Dr. Gwinn previously served as the Acting Assistant Administrator for Research and Development (ORD) and Science Advisor at the US Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA). In this role, she provided direction to ORD on overall program goals, objectives, policies, strategies, technical and scientific approaches, and program plans, based on a recognized scientific expertise. She also chaired the Agency Science Technology and Policy Council and oversaw the Agency’s scientific integrity program.

Dr. Gwinn held multiple leadership roles within ORD including Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator, Chief Scientist, National Program Director for ORD’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities (SHC) National Research Program, Director of the Biomolecular and Computational Toxicology Division within ORD’s Center for Computational Toxicology Exposure, Senior Science Advisor to the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science and Associate National Program Director for Community Public Health in SHC.

Dr. Gwinn joined the US EPA in ORD’s National Center for Environmental Assessment, where she worked on human health hazard assessments for the Integrated Risk Information System program.

Dr. Gwinn earned her BS degree in Biology at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and her MS and PhD in Oral Biology at the State University of New York in Buffalo, New York. She became a diplomate of the American Board of Toxicology in 2007 and was nominated to the Academy of Toxicological Sciences in 2014.

EPA was created during the Nixon Administration by Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1970 as a response to growing public concern over widespread environmental pollution and frustration with the fragmented approach to environmental protection. It was formed to consolidate environmental responsibilities from across the Federal government, including from the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Health, Education, and Welfare. From the outset, a majority of research and development (R&D) activities at the Agency were concentrated in a single program office, the Office of Research and Development (ORD). In May 2025, the EPA announced a major reorganization plan that would integrate scientific staff from ORD into the regulatory program offices for Air and Radiation, Water, Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, and Land and Emergency Management.9 The remaining staff of ORD would be transferred to a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES) to “align research and put science at the forefront of the agency’s rulemakings and technical assistance to states.”

Full committee hearing for the purpose of receiving testimony from the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Witness:

• Brooke L. Rollins, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) invites you to join the public launch of Science Rising, a new initiative mobilizing the science community to speak out and take action against the Trump administration’s anti-science and authoritarian actions, while laying the foundation for reimagining federal science policy for the public good.

Speakers will share insights based on their leadership positions and expertise on protecting science and democracy, outline our strategy to take action together, and highlight the many ways you can make a difference in these pivotal times.

Our launch event will feature esteemed guests:

• Arati Prabhakar, PhD, Former Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Chief Science Advisor to the President, Biden Administration
• Erica Chenoweth, PhD, Leading Democracy Scholar; Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, Harvard Kennedy School UCS President and CEO Gretchen Goldman, PhD, will share remarks, along with the leaders of Science Rising, Matt Heid and Melissa Varga.