The Senate has not exactly decided to heed the command in yesterday’s Hill Heat.¹ At 9:02 pm, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) moved to adjourn to noon today, Veterans Day, to continue debate on H.R. 2347, the legislative vehicle for BAAJA.

Instead of returning next Monday, Senate is WORKING TODAY ON VETERANS DAY to speed to the cloture votes on BAAJA and then to a final vote before the end of the week.

The U.S. Capitol Switchboard, (202) 224-3121, can connect callers to any Senate office.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and the Democratic caucus signed off on this plot. BAAJA co-sponsor Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) may not even be there for the key votes for his American Petroleum Institute-backed bill, since he just flew off to Turkey to preen before the international climate talks alongside the other AI and petrostate lobbyists who have taken over the proceedings.

The Senate will soon conclude its debate on BAAJA with a 60-vote-margin cloture vote. That vote is the last best chance for Americans to stop Trump’s gulags and golf courses, stop Musk’s launch pads and hyperscalers, and save the Endangered Species Act, National Historic Preservation Act, and other bedrock laws.

If it passes the Senate, BAAJA will be quickly taken up by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) in the House.

The catastrophe of this bill’s passage cannot be overstated. 

Incoming Congressman Will Lawrence (D-Mich.): “I think it would be a terrible mistake after an election that was about corruption to pass this bill, which further empowers the wealthiest corporations in the country to run roughshod over local communities to build community-polluting projects.”

Former Sierra Club chief counsel David Bookbinder: “BAAJA wreaks havoc with environmental laws, legislative norms and, by insulating countless projects from the reach of all federal laws, our democracy. It must be stopped.”

Al Gore: Passing BAAJA “would be an extremely serious mistake, in my opinion, and would do far more harm than good. Given how this Administration has run roughshod over the environmental laws and protections that are currently in place, now is not the time to give the Trump administration freer rein to double down on fossil fuels — which is what President Trump would surely do. And after last week’s historic election, we will have a new Congress in January that can strike a far better balance.”

Free DC co-founder Keya Chatterjee: “BAAJA is dangerous. Trump just cut down hundreds of trees against a judge’s orders, wants drones and snipers in an arch pointed at where the March on Washington occurred, ran the Kennedy Center finances into the ground which made it shut down, made a mockery and a mess of the reflecting pool and the East Wing, and is egging on the data centers that are driving up electricity prices everywhere. Not a single senator should vote to remove guardrails that are preventing Trump from causing even more damage.”

National Wildlife Federation: “While wildlife survival urgently requires accelerating emission reductions, those gains are not guaranteed under this bill. Meanwhile, adverse impacts to wildlife, waters, Tribal lands, public lands, and communities will result from the package's statutory concessions affecting the Clean Water Act, National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and National Historic Preservation Act, as well as from restrictions on judicial remedies and the ability to revisit ecologically harmful decisions. These certain impacts on nature and wildlife should not be traded away for uncertain climate benefits.”

Detention Watch Network: BAAJA will “pave a path for detention expansion by making immigration detention facilities easier to build and much harder to stop. It would undermine years of work by organizations across the country to protect communities and resist detention expansion, weakening the tools we use to hold immigration agencies accountable.”

The U.S. Capitol Switchboard, (202) 224-3121, can connect callers to any Senate office.

Hearings on the Hill:

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