The Week in Climate Hearings: A House Divided

Hill Heat will be at Netroots Nation June 4 to 6 in Philadelphia. We’re co-sponsoring the Netroots Climate Happy Hour featuring state Sen.Chris Rabb (D-Pa.) on Friday at 5 pm at City Tap House. Drop us a line if you’re going to be there.

In breaking news: a judge has enjoined Russ Vought and the National Science Foundation (NSF) from dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). Judge R. Brooke Jackson found for the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the consortium which has run this flagship of climate science since 1960, which now includes the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center (NWSC). She did not mince words:

The United States has a fundamental political tension of being a petrostate that is also a liberal democracy—it is a house divided against itself. Global warming presents the hard fact that the tension must be resolved. As Abraham Lincoln said in 1858 about the nation’s previous morally untenable economy, the union “will become all one thing or all the other.”

The Republican Party is simply a political arm of the fossil-fuel industry, while the Democratic Party is a coalition of extractive interests and democratic ones. Thus, Republican political stance on climate change is outright denial or Garrett Hardin-style white nationalism; whereas the Democratic Party vacillates between strong advocacy for action and fallow periods of uncomfortable silence.

As previously noted, we are now in one of those fallow periods. The term of art right now to describe advocacy of climate silence by members of the Democratic coalition is “climate hushing.”¹ Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) is the lead champion on the Hill against this censorious wing of the Democratic Party. In an interview with Elizabeth Kolbert, Whitehouse notes the absurdity of the claim that climate silence is smart politics:

And that leads us to the week in climate hearings, featuring the machinations of many of these dark-money-backed mustache twirlers.

Tuesday, June 2

It’s primary day in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, and New Mexico, so the House isn’t in session until Wednesday. The House schedule under Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) is in shambles, as the Trump regime has no interest in a functioning Congress and is unconcerned by the unpopularity of their fascist consolidation of power. Democrats are expected to force a successful war-powers vote against Trump’s Iran war. The Senate is still crippled by the GOP need to pass the ICE-CBP reconciliation bill and the anger over Trump’s IRS-immunity J6er slush fund.

At 10 am, the logging-friendly Tom Schultz, Chief of the U.S. Forest Service, testifies before the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee as our now year-round wildfire season intensifies.

Also at 10 am, Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) leads a Senate Commerce fisheries subcommittee hearing on Alaskan fisheries and other coastal economies.

At 4 pm, the House Rules Committee meets to schedule floor votes on H.R. 8646, Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agency Appropriations Act, 2027, and other bills.

Wednesday, June 3

At 10 am, the House Appropriations Committee holds a full committee markup of the FY27 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Bill and FY27 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Bill. The Interior-Environment bill includes a rider banning the use of the social cost of carbon, while also requiring all power generated from wood incineration to be considered carbon neutral.

At the same time, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee considers the Federal Highway Administration’s proposed Fiscal Year 2027 budget with FHA Administrator Sean McMaster. We can expect Democrats to advocate for a gas tax holiday to transfer even more wealth to the oil industry.

In the afternoon, the House Energy and Commerce environment subcommittee
examines nine bills to weaken the Clean Air Act's Mobile Source Requirements; that is, legislation to permit more pollution from cars and trucks.

At the same time, the House Natural Resources fisheries subcommittee receives testimony on legislation including a bill that would state-level authority over Gulf of Mexico waters for fisheries and offshore drilling from three nautical miles to nine.

Thursday, June 4

At 10 am, the House Science environment subcommittee discusses
environmental protection technology with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Maureen Gwinn, Deputy Associate Administrator for Science, Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), and the House Agriculture Committee
receives testimony from the Secretary of Agriculture, climate denier and white Christian nationalist Brooke Rollins.

At 10:15 am, the House Natural Resources federal lands subcommittee looks at the state of our federal forests and the outlook for the 2026 wildfire year, which, as mentioned, is already well underway.

Friday, June 5

At 8 am, House Appropriators mark up the FY27 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Bill and the Fiscal Year 2027 Homeland Security Bill, even while the immigration-enforcement arm of DHS remains unfunded and in unconstitutional operation.

1  “Climate hushing” emerged in mid-2025 as a term from “greenhushing,” a term for corporate avoidance of sustainability claims, itself a play on “greenwashing,” the term for corporate advertising making false or misleading environmental claims which is a decades-old play of words on the term “whitewashing,” which has been used since the 1700s to describe cosmetic efforts to improve one’s reputation.