The average first 90-degree day in D.C. is May 18.

A fossil-fueled heat wave is bring the carbon summer to the District of Columbia region as Congress returns from a two-week break after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) blocked the Senate deal (S.Amdt. 4790) to resolve the funding impasse for most of the Department of Homeland Security, excluding Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the border security operations of the U.S. Customs and Border ProtectionBorder Security Operations.

Thus, the entire Department of Homeland Security remains without federal appropriations for the remainder of fiscal year 2026. DHS employees and operations are being paid for illegally and unconstitutionally by the Trump regime, without a peep of protest from members of Congress. Republican Congressional leadership are hoping to use the budgetary loophole of the reconciliation process, by which they jammed through the One Big Brutal Bill Act last year, to provide appropriations on a party-line basis to DHS for the remainder of Trump’s term.

Rock the Vought

Now that Congress has retreated from another of the White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s forays to seize the federal purse, the institution is moving to consider the fiscal year 2027 budget process.

Vought’s proposed budget consolidates the regime’s victories in implementing Project 2025 through the DOGE chainsaw in the pursuit of a Big Brutal Box landscape of warehouses for incarcerating people and housing fracking-fueled hyperclusters, while burning through one-and-a-half trillion dollars a year on feckless yet genocidal fossil-fuel imperialism.

As celebrated in a White House document attacking “the globalist climate agenda,” the budget proposes massive cuts for climate and environmental programs, including cutting the Environmental Protection Agency budget in half, slashing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration budget for the thoughtcrime of “efforts to radicalize students against markets,” killing the National Aeronautic and Space Administration’s climate research, and eliminating $15 billion in renewable energy infrastructure funding from the Biden-era infrastructure law. Vought is seeking similar cuts across the entire American scientific enterprise, led by slashing the National Science Foundation budget in half. The Department of Energy is redirected to rebuilding the U.S. nuclear arsenal and supporting the fossil-fuel, mining, and artificial-intelligence industries.

Vought’s budget is “just an out-of-touch plea for more money for guns and bombs,” Senate Budget ranking member Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) commented, “and less for the things people need, like housing, healthcare, education, roads, scientific research, and environmental protection.”

Vought is scheduled to testify before the House budget committee, led by OBBBA shepherd Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) and ranking member Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), on Wednesday, and before the Senate budget committee, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Merkley, on Thursday.

If Vought does testify, this will be the first time he appears before Congress this term.

So Wright It’s Wrong

Fracking executive, climate denier, and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright testifies on the nuclear-winter-or-global-burning DOE budget before House appropriators on Wednesday afternoon and the House Energy and Commerce energy subcommittee on Thursday morning.

While Wright testifies on Wednesday, other committees are negotiating the data center industry’s insatiable pressure on planetary limits. A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hears testimony from industry and academics on global competition in the semiconductor industry, from mining and chip design to manufacturing; and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources energy subcommittee hears testimony from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff on bills to feed the data center boom, including an industry-designed proposal for liquid cooling of data centers co-sponsored by a bipartisan team of AI enthusiasts, Sens. Dave McCormick (R-Pa.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), which could lead to a catastrophic rise in superpolluting greenhouse gases.

The Liquid Cooling for AI Act of 2025 has support from the AI Supply Chain Alliance, Chemours, UNICOM Engineering, the American Chemistry Council, SEMI Americas, Vertiv, the Grenzebach Group, Accelsius, 2CRSi, Alcatex, Cool Filtration, Schneider Electric, EneosUSA, Modine, and the University of Delaware.

In a related hearing about addressing the ravenous demand for electricity and chips on Thursday morning, the House Science energy subcommittee discusses subsurface science and technology for domestic mining and geothermal energy with industry, federal, and academic witnesses.

More Climate Hearings This Week

Tuesday, April 14 - Historical Record High of 91°F (1960)

At 4 pm, the House Rules Committee prepares for floor consideration three bills to weaken the Clean Air and a FISA Amendments Act extension. Two of the anti-Clean Air Act bills arbitrarily exclude air pollution from air quality standards; from wildfires (FIRE Act, H.R. 6387) and foreign sources (FENCES Act, H.R. 6409). The third eliminates EPA review of federal projects separately covered by the National Environmental Policy Act (RED Tape Act, H.R. 6398).

Wednesday, April 15 - Historical Record High of 89°F (1941)

At 10 am, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee oversight subcommittee looks at the state of scientific publishing, in line with the Trump regime’s efforts to cut off federal scientists from access to scientific journals.

Meanwhile, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hears testimony on restoration efforts in the Great Lakes region, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee discusses the United Nations with Trump officials Mike Waltz, the disgraced Signalgate national security advisor and current U.S. representative to the U.N., and Jeff Bartos, a failed Republican politician and the U.S. representative for U.N. reform.

Thursday, April 16 - Historical Record High of 92°F (2002)

House Appropriations chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) decided to celebrate Emancipation Day by stacking Thursday with eight different budget hearings. In addition to the aforementioned DOE budget hearing, they include:

• 10 am: Department of Homeland Security: CBP, ICE, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with the agency heads

• 10 am: Army Corps of Engineers and Bureau of Reclamation

• 10:30 am: Department of Agriculture with white-nationalist Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins

• 11 am: The Office of the United States Trade Representative

• 2 pm: Department of Homeland Security: CISA, TSA, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Secret Service, and FEMA

• 4 pm: United States Forest Service with Chief Tom Schultz

Friday, April 17 - Historical Record High of 95°F (2002)

The heat wave will break in D.C. as this blob of hot air pushes back out over the Atlantic. As is true every day now, most of the rest of the world is gripped by brutal heat and faced with fossil-fueled disaster.

At 8 am, House Appropriations is holding a joint subcommittee meeting to mark up both the Fiscal Year 2027 Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Bill and the Fiscal Year 2027 Financial Services and General Government Bill. The latter covers the Department of Treasury, the Executive Office of the President, the Judiciary, and dozens of agencies and institutions gutted, crippled, or eliminated by DOGE, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Office of Inspector General, as well as 700,000 residents of the District of Columbia.