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The one oil-backed, anti-abortion Democrat in the House

House leadership is going all out to protect the oily Henry Cuellar

Author

Brad Johnson
May 04, 2022

PRESENTED BY TEXAN BUNTINGS

Green New Dealer Jessica Cisneros is headed to a May 24th runoff against incumbent Henry Cuellar, the lone House Democrat to vote last fall with Republicans against codifying Roe v. Wade.1

Despite representing a safe Democratic and nearly 80% Latino district based in Laredo, Rep. Henry Cuellar has been the most conservative Democrat in the US House for decades now. He has been labeled “Big Oil’s Favorite Democrat,” and was backed by heavy spending by the American Petroleum Institute (API) in his 2020 contest against Cisneros. Last July, Cuellar’s chief of staff Amy Trevioso left his office to become senior director for federal relations at API.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) have denounced the Supreme Court’s planned overturning of Roe, but have endorsed Cuellar for re-election, because protecting incumbents is more important to them than any espoused principles on any issue.

Today, Clyburn is flying to San Antonio for a fundraiser with Cuellar.

Coal baron Joe Manchin (D-W.V.)’s latest Kabuki-theater nonsense is bipartisan climate meetings with the likes of Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). How are they going, you ask?

“Senator Cramer skipped yesterday’s bipartisan climate meeting to fly back to North Dakota to celebrate a coal plant staying open,” notes League of Conservation Voters state communications director Nick Abraham. “Republicans are not serious about this. Democrats have to stop pretending they’ll come around to reality and pass a damn bill on their own.”

I was with Nick until that very last clause. The problem being, of course, that the Democrats’ fiftieth vote is Manchin, who recently took time off to fly to Alberta to celebrate their tar sands. There’s no deal coming, friends.

Again, maybe the Democratic Party needs to stop trying to protect disloyal corrupt snakes.

“We now propose a ban on Russian oil,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Wednesday. Crude oil imports will be phased out in six months and refined oil imports by the end of the year.

As the Colorado River dries up, Las Vegas is taking the smart step of banning and digging up water-thirsty lawns. Retirees who want to live in a fantasy world of a verdant desert are upset, Henry Fountain reports.

The deadly 120-degree south Asia heat wave is merely a warning of what is to come.

BP’s quarterly profit soared to $6.2 billion from $2.6 billion last year, planning $2.5 billion in share buybacks for its investors on top of an increased dividend.

ExxonMobil is working on another profit stream for wasteful drilling—using flared methane to power on-site bitcoin mining. The fracked-gas Mountain Valley Pipeline “will again seek new permits that have twice been cast aside by the courts, delaying completion to the second half of 2023 and boosting the project’s cost to $6.6 billion.”

JERBS: Greenpeace USA is hiring a Fire Drill Fridays director ($90K) to lead their program with Jane Fonda and a brand and insights director ($90K) to “refine, build, and bring to life a refreshed Greenpeace USA brand.”

Finally, a little reminder of how great Texas can be:

Hearings on the Hill:

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. DMs are open—@climatebrad

1 The Senate voted down the codification 46-48 in February, with ostensibly pro-Roe Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), and Susan Collins (R-Maine) voting against moving the bill forward. Ostensibly Democratic Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) has vowed to protect the filibuster at all costs, to allow the Republican minority to prevent any future attempts at passage.

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