Rep. Kathy Castor (Fla.), chair of the House Select Committee on the
Climate Crisis, has announced the Democratic members: Reps. Ben Ray
Luján (N.M.), Suzanne Bonamici (Ore.), Julia Brownley (Calif.), Sean
Casten (Ill.), Jared Huffman (Calif.), Mike Levin (Calif.), Donald
McEachin (Va.) and Joe Neguse (Colo.).
Luján is by far the biggest recipient among the committee of
fossil-fuel dollars. He received
$159,600
in campaign contributions from oil & gas, mining, chemical, electric
utilities, and other energy interests in the last election cycle. Over
his career, he has received
$386,150
from oil & gas and electric utility companies and their employees. As
Assistant Democratic Leader, he is now the number four Democrat in the
House.
“We are in a
race against time,” Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the incoming chair of
the new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, told reporters. In an
interview with USA Today’s Ledyard King, Castor highlighted not just
the urgency of the climate crisis but also her interest in pursuing new
fuel economy standards and flood insurance reform, practical policy
problems that have remained stalled under the Republican Congress and
Trump administration.
While not enforcing a band on fossil-fuel contributions for members of
the committee, Castor has pledged that she will not accept such
donations as chair to “help build confidence in the committee.”
Castor’s plans come in the context of the vigorous push by youth climate
activists and new members of Congress for an ambitious Green New Deal,
that arguably would build on elements of President Obama’s economic
stimulus package of 2009.
“There’s some fabulous proposals in the Green New Deal, and I’m excited
about all that. You may see some similar language. Clearly, the focuses
are going to be the same,” Castor told The Hill. “This will be a
committee clearly in the spirit of the Green New Deal.”
“People don’t understand how forward-leaning the stimulus was on climate
issues,” Castor told Michael
Grunwald
in a Politico interview. “It’s a road map for a Green New Deal.”
“I’m hoping that folks will come to this committee ready to take on
the corporate polluters and special interests. There shouldn’t be a
purity test, that if a member of Congress has ever accepted
contributions,” she said.
Castor said she has decided not to take any donations from fossil fuel
companies.
“I think me saying that right now will help build confidence in the
committee,” she said, noting that such a pledge won’t be a “huge
sacrifice,” since she has received just about $2,000 in campaign
donations from the oil and natural gas industries during 12 years in
office.
However, with the House moving to Democratic control, Congressional
oversight will become a renewed priority. That primarily involves
overseeing the work of the Executive Branch, but also includes corporate
behavior of national interest.
The “ExxonKnew” controversy is the evidence that Exxon and other oil
majors knew for decades that their products cause dangerous global
warming but decided to run a disinformation and political interference
campaign to avoid regulation of their pollution.
A leading Congressman in calling for investigation is Rep. Ted Lieu
(D-Calif.) who repeatedly called for Congressional
investigations
in 2016. However, he is not currently on the committees with
jurisdiction (that could change in the new year).
Another is Rep. Jared
Huffman
(D-Calif.), a former attorney for NRDC, who
sits on the Natural Resources Committee and Committee on Transportation
and Infrastructure, both of which potentially have oversight
jurisdiction.
Nineteen members-elect of the U.S. House of Representatives took the No
Fossil Fuel Money pledge, refusing to
accept campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industry and running
on a climate-justice platform. The freshmen No Fossil Fuel Money class
is remarkably diverse, in terms of race, gender, geography, and district
partisanship.
During the third day of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, Sen.
Kennedy (R-La.) questioned
Kavanaugh
about “getting into trouble” at the elite all-boys school Georgetown
Prep, eliciting nervous laughter.
Dodging the question, Kavanaugh told Kennedy that at Georgetown Prep, “I
had a lot of friends, I’ve talked a lot about my friends. And they’ve
been here. So it was very formative.”
When Kennedy pressed his question about “trouble,” Kavanaugh replied,
“That’s encompassed by the friends, I think.”
Access denied. Bad request or the link you used is invalid.
There might be a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the
app or website owner. Abort, Retry,
Fail?
Kennedy concluded by saying he’s decided to not ask Kavanaugh whether
his underage friends were “sneaking a few beers past Jesus.” Kavanaugh
shook his head, said “Hey,” and giggled again in response to a comment
not caught by the microphone.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) took the microphone, saying, “I for one am
grateful for the senator’s self-restraint.”
It is unknown what motivated Kennedy’s questions at the time, although
Kavanaugh’s close friend and classmate Mike G. Judge recorded in his
book
Wasted
the binge drinking that dominated those years at Georgetown Prep.
Similarly, Kavanaugh’s yearbook entry made repeated references to keg
parties and
vomiting.
After the hearing, it was revealed that professor Christine Blasey Ford
had informed members of Congress that Kavanaugh and Judge had sexually
assaulted her while they were all in high school.
In a 2015 address to
Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law, Trump Supreme Court
nominee Brett Kavanaugh discusses his friendships with and envy of
America’s corporate elite. Arguing in favor of an “impartial” judiciary,
Kavanaugh discusses how he knows these men, whether from his days at the
boy’s-only Georgetown Prep, Yale, in the George W. Bush White House, or
at the corporate law powerhouse Kirkland & Ellis.
In his prepared
remarks
for the speech given March 30, 2015, Kavanaugh planned to make a joke
about how popular one of his wealthiest friends, Mike Bidwell, is:
I am proud to say that three Georgetown Prep classmates of mine—Mike
Bidwill, Don Urgo, and Phil Merkle—happen to be 1990
graduates of this law school. They remain very good friends of mine,
and they well reflect the values and excellence of both Georgetown
Prep and this law school. You may recognize Mike Bidwill’s name. He is
the President of the Arizona Cardinals football team. I am pretty sure
he is on the Dean’s speed dial. Yet he is the same humble, generous,
friendly guy he was when he was fourteen years old.
Kavanaugh diverged from his prepared remarks, however:
By coincidence, three classmates of mine at Georgetown Prep were
graduates of this law school in 1990. And are really really good
friends of mine: Mike Bidwill, Don Urgo and Phil Merkle.
And they were good friends of mine then. And are still good friends of
mine; as recently as this weekend, when we were all on email together.
Bidwill has used his team’s
website
to support Kavanaugh’s nomination. As Deadspin writer Samer Kalaf notes,
he then “went on a conservative radio show to continue to push for his
old high school pal” and
“bellyached
about how unfair it is to be criticized for requiring that
NFL players only protest or demonstrate where
no one can see them.”
But fortunately, we had a good saying that we’ve held firm to to this
day, as the Dean was reminding me before the talk, which is, “What
happens at Georgetown Prep stays at Georgetown Prep.” That’s been a
good thing for all of us, I think.
This line earned some mild chuckles from the audience.
Now that Kavanaugh is in line to join fellow Georgetown Prep alumnus
Neil Gorsuch on the highest court in the land, it appears that “what
happens at Georgetown Prep” may not stay there. He and fellow classmate
Mark G. Judge have been accused of sexual
assault
by professor Christine Blasey Ford. There is no statute of limitations
on such a crime in Maryland.
Kavanaugh continued:
The Dean [Dan Attridge] is a wonderful man. He and I worked
together at Kirkland and Ellis. We had memorable cases and lawyers at
Kirkland and Ellis. I think back at those times.
Dan Attridge’s Kirkland &
Ellis
page notes one of his “ground-breaking” victories:
Counsel for Nationwide Insurance in over 400 Hurricane Katrina
coverage cases in Mississippi, winning the ground-breaking first
case to go
to trial and defeating the Attorney General’s challenge to the
policy’s flood exclusion.
At the time, Kavanaugh was working in the Bush White House, as the
administration’s racist neglect in the run-up to and aftermath of
Katrina led to the death of 3000 Americans. The White House and Senator
Grassley have refused to make public Kavanaugh’s
role
in the Katrina disaster.
Kavanaugh went on to describe his envy of another fellow corporate
lawer:
And one person comes to mind that we worked with, was a guy who was a
little younger than I was, named Ted Ullyot. And Ted was a great
lawyer, great guy, and he worked with us at Kirkland. Then, when I was
at the White House and became this job called staff secretary, I had
to hire a deputy. And Ted was a great lawyer and I brought him in as
my deputy. And then I went on to be a judge. And I remember getting a
call from him in 2007 or 2008. And he said, “Yeah, I’m gonna go take
this job in California.” “Oh wow, doing what?” “I’m gonna be general
counsel of this company.” And I had never heard of the company he was
talking about. It was a general counsel of Facebook. And that turned
out to be a really good move. Yeah. And that’s been a…
You know, I am committed to public service, as I said, but I do spend
some time reading Robert Frost, “The road not taken.”
Claiming
unified opposition to the nomination of Trump Supreme Court pick Brett
Kavanaugh, Senate Democrats are fundraising to help re-elect incumbents
who are not opposing Kavanaugh. In an email to its list in Sen. Mazie
Hirono (D-Hawaii)’s voice, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee
wrote, “We need to stand together. So much is at stake.”
The email linked to a
petition to “oppose
Kavanaugh’s nomination” and then to a fundraising
page
to “Save the Supreme Court” and “Help Elect Senate Democrats.”
It is unclear how contributing to the DSCC
would help save the Supreme Court from Kavanaugh, described in the
DSCC email as a ” pre-selected political
ideologue, nominated possibly because he believes a sitting president
should be shielded from civil lawsuits, criminal investigation, and
prosecution—no matter the facts.”
For there to be any likelihood of Kavanaugh’s nomination failing, the
49-member Democratic caucus would need to be unanimous in their
opposition. But that is not the case—in particular with the vulnerable
Democrats most heavily backed by the DSCC. As
CNNreports,
“Senators signal Kavanaugh appears on solid ground to win confirmation”
:
“Not so far,” Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, a North Dakota Democrat, told
CNN Wednesday afternoon when asked if
anything she’s heard so far would be considered disqualifying.
“No, I haven’t seen anything from that standpoint,” Sen. Joe Manchin,
a West Virginia Democrat, said when asked if he’s heard anything that
would lead him to vote no. “He’s handled himself very professionally.”
Sen. Doug Jones, the Democrat from Alabama who won his special
election after Gorsuch was confirmed, was non-committal when asked
about Kavanaugh on Wednesday.
In addition to Heitkamp, Manchin, and Jones, Claire
McCaskill
of Missouri, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jon Tester of Montana, Joe Donnelly
of Indiana are
equivocal
on Kavanaugh.
“There is universal confidence in the Democratic Caucus for Sen.
Schumer, whether they’re the progressives or the more conservative
members of our caucus. There’s strong respect and admiration for how
he handles diversity in our caucus,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.
“They’re the people that you can’t be pure enough for,” said Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.). of Schumer’s detractors. “Unless we can
convince a few Republicans, then we don’t have the votes. That’s goal
No. 1 and the outside groups should stay focused on that.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). praised Schumer for “holding a very
wide ranging caucus together in a way that has made strong points in
the hearing without causing problems for our 2018 candidates.”
“There is what I call Democrat disease, which is to waste our time
fighting with each other and quarreling over purity contests,”
Whitehouse said. “And of all times to lose our way in those quarrels,
this is perhaps the worst.”
In an
interview
with The Hill, Democratic whip Dick Durbin of Illinois was similarly
critical: “The Senate doesn’t work that way, and the groups that are
asking for it are not in touch with reality.”
As whip, Durbin is the senator officially responsible for wrangling the
votes of the Democratic caucus.
In an
interview
with NPR’s Audie Cornish, Whitehouse similarly
criticized the hearing protesters for being “not helpful” particularly
for “the states in which we have, you know, our Senate races.”
Everett and Schor editorialize that letting Kavanaugh onto the Supreme
Court in return for electoral victories in November would “vindicate”
Schumer: “If a handful of red-state Democrats eventually support
Kavanaugh and then win reelection, Schumer’s strategy will be
vindicated.”
Trump Supreme Court nominee and former George W. Bush White House
official Brett Kavanaugh has ruled repeatedly on behalf of industrial
polluters, particularly on climate change. As a judge on the United
States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (the D.C. Circuit),
Kavanaugh has argued, sometimes successfully, to block action on carbon
pollution.
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), unlike some other
environmental groups which support a ban on
fracking,
argues that natural gas
extraction can be
done responsibly, perhaps reflecting the views of board members
profiting from active fracking investments.
“Hydraulic
fracturing
isn’t all good, but it doesn’t have to be all bad, either,” an
EDF blog post summarized in May of this year.
“The risks associated with hydraulic fracturing and unconventional oil
and natural gas development are so serious,
EDF believes that every state has the right
to decide whether or not development is consistent with the interests
and wishes of its citizens. New York State has made its decision—but
with or without drilling here, New York remains the country’s fifth
largest natural gas consumer, with an extensive network of gas
transmission and distribution lines. Methane leaking from these
systems has more than 80 times the climate-warming power of carbon
dioxide over a 20-year timeframe. State officials and the companies
that operate these pipes need to find and fix those leaks as part of
the ongoing effort to modernize New York’s electric and gas
infrastructure and accelerate the state’s transition to cleaner,
renewable, and more efficient energy.”
Meanwhile, several members of EDF’s board of
trustees, who provide millions in funding for the organization, are
actively
invested
in fracking. (This is far from unique among environmental non-profits.)
The board member with the strongest conflict of interest is Edward
Stern, an active investor in fracking and a direct funder of
pro-fracking front groups in New York, although he is not the only
problematic trustee.
Two
more members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Senator Patrick
Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of
North Dakota, are publicly opposing the confirmation of Sam Clovis,
Trump’s nominee to be USDA chief scientist.
Ranking Member Debbie Stabenow of Michigan announced her
opposition
in September.
Clovis, long under criticism for his lack of scientific credentials, is
now embroiled in the Mueller investigation for his role as a top Donald
Trump presidential campaign official. Clovis directed his subordinate on
the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos, to “make the trip” to Moscow to
collude with Russian agents.
“If his anti-science record were not enough cause for concern,” Leahy’s
statement
reads, “the latest reporting suggesting that Mr. Clovis may have
facilitated Russian collusion in our elections raises these concerns to
an alarming level. Even for this administration, that should be
disqualifying.”
“Sam Clovis is uniquely unqualified to serve as
USDA’s top scientist, and his confirmation
would be harmful to North Dakota’s farmers, ranchers, and rural
communities,” Heitkamp said in a statement to Politco. “North Dakota’s
farmers and ranchers need and deserve someone in this role who will work
in their best interest – and that is not Sam Clovis. I’ll oppose his
nomination.”
With Leahy and Heitkamp’s announcements, there are ten senators,
including three on the Agriculture Committee, to publicly oppose the
nominee, who rejected the science of climate change, promoted the
conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States,
and argued that homosexuality is a choice.
A growing coalition of environmental, science, and sustainable farming
organizations oppose
Clovis.
Senators in public opposition to Sam Clovis:
Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Brian Schatz (D-HI)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)*
Tom Udall (D-NM)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)*
Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND)*
Members of the agriculture committee are marked with an asterisk.
“We are in a
race against time,” Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), the incoming chair of
the new Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, told reporters. In an
interview with USA Today’s Ledyard King, Castor highlighted not just
the urgency of the climate crisis but also her interest in pursuing new
fuel economy standards and flood insurance reform, practical policy
problems that have remained stalled under the Republican Congress and
Trump administration.
With both houses of
Congress under a Republican majority, investigating the malfeasance of
the oil industry has not been a priority. Instead, Republicans have held
Claiming
unified opposition to the nomination of Trump Supreme Court pick Brett
Kavanaugh, Senate Democrats are fundraising to help re-elect incumbents
who are not opposing Kavanaugh. In an email to its list in Sen. Mazie
Hirono (D-Hawaii)’s voice, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee
wrote, “We need to stand together. So much is at stake.”
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), unlike some other
environmental groups which support a 
Two
more members of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Senator Patrick
Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Democrat of
North Dakota, are publicly opposing the confirmation of Sam Clovis,
Trump’s nominee to be