Ruben Gallego Smells Like Joe Manchin

PRESENTED BY TAS TEPELER

Action alert: At 8 pm tonight, Bill McKibben’s Third Act hosts an online discussion on the value of robust climate journalism to a healthy planet and strong democracy, with the great climate journalists Amy Westervelt, Sammy Roth, Adam Mahoney, and Kyle Pope.

First, the good news! Backed by Lead Locally and Food and Water Action, climate hawks swept the special elections in Jersey City, N.J. yesterday. James Solomon won the mayor’s race, defeating ex-governor Jim McGreevey, and Michael Griffin (at large), Mamta Singh (at large), Rolando Lavarro (at large), Denise Ridley (Ward A), Joel Brooks (Ward B), and Jake Ephros (Ward D) won city council seats.

Although Matt Van Epps beat climate hawk Aftyn Behl in the Tennessee Seventh special election, there was a 13-point swing toward Democrats from 2024, because Americans actually don’t like Republicans becoming a fascist anti-American party.

Now on to the bad news.

Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.), the Harvard classmate of Jared Kushner and Matt Yglesias, has unveiled “Fostering American Energy Innovation and Affordability,” a glossy “energy policy” document exuded by the fracking-powered universal-paperclip climate-denial AI slop machine. The document, glistening with Gallego’s presidential dreams, calls for “meeting increasing demand from AI and data centers,” celebrates oil, gasoline, and natural gas, recommends “more categorical exclusions to NEPA,” and calls for slowing the deployment of renewable electricity projects (“transition deliberately”). The investments that technofascist egg Marc Andreessen has made into grooming Gallego as the new Joe Manchin have paid off.

[Editor’s note: Hill Heat does not yet have direct knowledge whether Gallego in fact has the same odor as Manchin; pending further research, the title is purely metaphorical.]

At 10 am, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held the nomination hearing of Lee Beaman to be a member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Douglas Weaver to be a member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Weaver is a seasoned nuclear regulator, who has been a corporate nuclear lobbyist for the past decade after twenty years at the NRC. At least in this public setting, he agreed with the senators that the Trump administration’s assault on the NRC’s independence and integrity needs to end.

In contrast, Beaman is a Nashville auto executive, Republican mega-donor, and sexual miscreant. He has no professional experience in nuclear oversight, utility planning, or grid operations. As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) noted, his qualifications are “that he is a Trump loyalist and 2020 election denier.”

He is the former CEO of Beaman Automotive Group, a chain of car dealerships he sold in 2020, and now operates Beaman Ventures, a private investment firm, and serves on the board of Belmont University, a private Christian college in Nashville. As the Energy and Policy Institute notes, Beaman is also a member of the Council for National Policy, “a secretive, invitation-only, Christian nationalist network whose members have opposed environmental regulation, denied climate science, and pushed to roll back democratic safeguards.” In court documents, his fourth wife described being forced into watching Beaman having sex with a prostitute for her “training,” and being exposed to pornography in the presence of her minor son. Kelly Beaman accused her husband of “degradation, control, manipulation and abuse” in the marriage.

Most notably, Beaman owns a Capitol Hill townhouse once occupied by abolitionist Frederick Douglass, which serves as a residence for Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation), Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), Christian nationalist pastor Steve Berger, and other GOP politicians and operatives. Berger, a virulent bigot and right-wing operative, sat behind Beaman at the hearing.

Also at 10 am, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee held a hearing on on the nominations of Jared Isaacman to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Steven Haines to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Analysis. Isaacman, a tech billionaire and human Moncheechee, is an extreme admirer of Elon Musk and SpaceX. Isaacman was nominated in the spring to be NASA administrator, with his nomination hearing on April 9th. Right before the vote on his confirmation, the White House pulled his nomination. He was renominated this fall. Sens. Andy Kim (D-N.J.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) brought up Isaacman’s leaked plans for gutting NASA’s climate science programs. Luján got Isaacman to promise to “execute the funds appropriated by Congress for NASA’s critical science missions exactly as Congress has directed.” Unfortunately, no senator brought up how NASA is illegally moving forward with the rapid downsizing of the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., an obvious example of the Trump administration doing the exact opposite of Isaacman’s (soon to be violated) promise.

Haines emphasized the importance of promoting domestic mining, the subject of a 2 pm House Natural Resources Committee Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing with several mining executives and technologist Walter Copan.

Also at 10 am, the House Natural Resources Committee’s Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee held a hearing on sea lions and salmon in the Pacific Northwest. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) mocked the GOP enthusiasm for killing lots of sea lions to save the salmon that the GOP have been trying to kill off on behalf of extractive industry and developers. Even more importantly, Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) made it abundantly clear that the Department of Commerce’s plans for radically reshaping NOAA, including eliminating NOAA Fisheries, are illegal and unconstitutional.

The fossil-fueled snow storm sweeping across the nation and striking New England today is flirting with bomb cyclone status. What a coquettish minx! The storm sweeping into Houston will bring localized flooding and maybe even some tornadoes. The death toll in Sumatra from the fossil-fueled Cyclone Senyar is now nearing 800. It’s a climate warning! Zillow has deleted climate risk data on its real-estate listings after industry complained it was hurting sales. Of course, as Mark Gongloff notes, hiding the information doesn’t make the risks go away.

Finally, Dave Levitan has more details on the purported renaming of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory—in an all-staff meeting, oil executive Audrey Robertson, now the Assistant Secretary for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency, chortled about making the change, saying she “hates” “clean energy.”

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee
  Sea Lions and Salmon in the Pacific Northwest

• 10 AM: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
  Nominations of Lee Beaman to be a Member of the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority and Douglas Weaver to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission

• 10 AM: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
  Nominations of Jared Isaacman to be Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and Steven Haines to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Industry and Analysis

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee
  Domestic Mining

Climate Action Today:

• 8 PM: Third Act
  News, Climate & Our Constitution: The Value of Robust Climate Journalism to a Healthy Planet and Strong Democracy

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