the climate is broken. have you tried turning it off and then on?

PRESENTED BY ZILLENNIALS FOR ZOHRAN

It’s Tuesday, June 24, 2025. The nation’s capital buckles under a fossil-fueled heat wave. The Trump regime has shut down climate.gov.

Backed by thousands of sweaty corporate lobbyists, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) is trying desperately to jam Trump’s omnibus One Big Brutal Bill (H.R. 1) through the Senate this week. Every day that the Senate GOP squabble over the details of a slapdash bill—which showers trillions in tax cuts on billionaires and mega-corporations while slashing Medicaid and food stamps and killing Biden’s huge investments in climate action—is a day that more of the American people learn how catastrophic it is.

To pass the OBBB through the filibuster-proof budget-reconciliation process, the bill’s language must be washed clean by the Senate parliamentarian’s “Byrd bath.” House Republicans didn’t try very hard to write a version that would pass muster, and neither have Senate Republicans. So every day, major provisions in the bill have been dumped by parliamentarian rulings. Overnight, the parliamentarian knocked out several sections in the natural resources title: automatic pay-for-permits for oil and gas drilling, and two provisions added by Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah): construction of the Ambler Road to open up a new mining district in the heart of Alaska, and a wildly unpopular massive sell-off of public lands.

Even though beauty parlor lobbyists are excited about new tax loopholes, the One Big Brutal Bill is already wildly unliked. This entire week, American citizens are flooding the halls of the Senate to kill the bill.

• Today, fired federal workers are making their weekly Tuesday visits to the Senate, targeting OBBB

• On Wednesday morning, Moms Rising organizes families to protest the cuts to health care, food assistance, and education

• Also on Wednesday morning, Popular Democracy is leading a day of action against the brutal budget bill

• On Thursday, young feminists are gathering to say “F the Cuts!”

I admit I don’t understand what’s up with DC’s climate groups, who seem to be deciding that it’s too hot to mobilize an action against the climate destruction of the OBBB during a record-shattering, fossil-fueled heat wave. If I’m missing the action, let me know! Post a comment or email me at [email protected].

China’s solar installations are surging, and none too soon. Killer heat is sweeping across northern China, while southern China is submerged by torrential floods.

Florida is getting funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to build a massive immigrant prison camp at an abandoned airstrip in the the Big Cypress National Preserve in the Everglades, which Florida’s lawless attorney general James Uthmeier has dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Trump is moving forward to cut down all the forests.

I appreciate Carl Pope’s half-hearted apology in the New York Times for being a fracking apologist while he ran the Sierra Club, but he left out a key part. “As the executive director of the Sierra Club, I decided the organization should largely ignore methane, a potent greenhouse gas [after taking $25 million from Chesapeake Energy].”

Tomorrow, another “environmentalist” on the Chesapeake payroll, Usha-Maria Turner, has her nomination hearing to be EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of International and Tribal Affairs. The EPA Office of International Affairs has already eliminated climate and environmental justice from its list of activities, and Turner will turn the office into another arm of the U.S. liquefied-natural-gas export lobbying machine.

Also tomorrow, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) speaks at Sixth and I on her new book, I Feel Sorta Bad About Being A Republican These Days.

Oh yeah, Andrew Cuomo is terrible on climate, too.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Appropriations Committee
  Full Committee Markup of FY26 Homeland Security Bill

• 10 AM: House Oversight and Government Reform Committee
     Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee
  Locking in the DOGE Cuts

• 10 AM: House Small Business Committee
  Domestic Rare-Earth Mining

• 10 AM: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
     Railroads, Pipelines, and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee
  Rail Modernization

• 10:15 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee
  Water, Wildlife, and Fisheries legislation

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected], @climatebrad on Threads, and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.