The schedule for the next vote on the radically anti-environmental, anti-democratic BAAJA has been announced. The Senate will vote to cut off debate and deliberation, requiring 60 Senators in support, only two more times before final passage:

On Tuesday in between these two votes is the No Dirty Data Center Deal rally against BAAJA and for a data center moratorium on Capitol Hill. Attendance is highly encouraged.

New analyses find that BAAJA won’t stop Trump’s war on wind and won’t address skyrocketing energy bills.

A more detailed preview of the expected vote schedule is later in the newsletter.

On Monday, November 9th, hours before the first Senate vote on BAAJA, seventeen Democratic attorneys general, including two governors-elect, notified the U.S. Senate that they oppose BAAJA’s threat to state and tribal sovereignty, and do not want the legislation considered during the lame-duck session.

They sent the letter in response to the Saturday release of the 494-page managers’ amendment and before the first vote to bring the legislation (now attached to H.R. 2347), to the floor.

“We ask that Senate leadership delay the upcoming vote,” the states’ top legal officers wrote, “to allow for continued discussion and stakeholder engagement to protect our natural resources, historic and tribal sites, and state regulatory prerogatives.”

The signatories are Attorneys General Letitia James (N.Y.), Rob Bonta (Calif.), Governor-elect Philip J. Weiser (Colo.), Kathleen Jennings (Del.), Kwame Raoul (Ill.), Anne E. Lopez (Hawaii), Aaron M. Frey (Maine), Andrea Joy Campbell (Mass.), Anthony Brown (Md.), Dana Nessel (Mich.), Keith Ellison (Minn.), Governor-elect Aaron Ford (Nev.), Dan Rayfield (Ore.), Jay Jones (Va.), Charity Clark (Vt.), Nicholas Brown (Wash.), and Brian Schwalb (D.C.).

They warned: “BAAJA would harm states’ and tribes’ abilities to protect water, historic, cultural, and natural resources under the Clean Water Act, the National Historic Preservation Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act, and would impinge on state and tribal sovereignty.”

The bill “provides federal agencies with nearly unfettered discretion to make key determinations with no input from states or tribes.” As Washington, D.C. is a federal district with much of its land under direct federal control, BAAJA poses a particular threat to D.C.’s cases against Trump’s destructive vanity projects.

Thirteen of the 73 senators who then voted on Monday in favor of bringing BAAJA to the floor represent these seventeen states. They are: Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), John Hickenlooper (Colo.), Christopher Coons (Del.), Brian Schatz (Hawaii), Susan Collins and Angus King, Jr. (Maine), Gary Peters and Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), Governor-elect Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen (Nev.), and Mark Warner (Va.).

Klobuchar, Collins and Peters are leaving the U.S. Senate. Klobuchar plans to appoint her temporary successor before a special election; Collins and Peters will be succeeded in January by Troy Jackson and Abdul El-Sayed.

On Thursday, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) announced his plans to run against Schumer as Senate Majority Leader. Although the caucus will hold its election in early December, the race could be over by next Wednesday.

If Schumer continues whipping for BAAJA, he might as well just concede the leadership fight to Van Hollen, as Van Hollen is arguing that Schumer folds too easily to Trump and doesn't do enough to fight corruption. Schumer is proving his case.

Schumer fast-tracking this corrupt data-center deal will drive the vast and growing civic coalition against BAAJA—the Democratic AGs, the NAACP, Sierra Club, Public Citizen, the Detention Watch Network, the Climate Justice Alliance, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the National Parks Conservation Association, Tribal nations, National Wildlife Federation, and leaders like Al Gore—to align with Indivisible, MoveOn, and the Sunrise Movement in support of Van Hollen. 

Knocking out civil society’s support for Schumer will mean that his backing will be even more blatantly corrupt—the Silicon Valley and Wall Street and energy billionaires that are demanding BAAJA pass to protect the AI bubble.

Schumer’s only shot to win is to strategically disentangle himself and his supporters from BAAJA’s bad bet, thwarting Van Hollen’s case that Schumer always, always folds to Trump.¹

Other than Monday’s vote, the exact timing has not been announced and is pending a unanimous-consent agreement which will determine more of the timing and which amendments may be offered As Majority Leader, Thune controls how many amendments may be offered, and will try to trade more amendment votes for a faster schedule.

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