The Week in Climate Hearings: Choking on Smoke? Blame the Valve Turners (and Canada)

On October 11, 2016, nearly a decade ago, five climate activists simultaneously turned valves to temporarily shut off five fossil-fuel pipelines in different parts of the country as a symbolic and practical protest against the deadly product the pipelines carried. Four of the activists—Emily Johnston, Annette Klapstein, Leonard Higgins, and Ken Ward—served either minimal or no jail time. Michael Foster served one year of a three-year sentence.

On February 4, 2019, four members of the Catholic Worker Movement—Michele Naar-Obed, Allyson Polman, Brenna Cussen Anglada, and Daniel Yildirim—were arrested after informing Enbridge they planned to turn off the valves for the company’s dangerous Line 4 pipeline in Minnesota. Enbridge temporarily shut off the pipeline. In 2021, the climate activists, after being allowed a limited necessity defense, were fined a total of $75.

These nine climate activists, driven by the complete failure of elected officials to protect humanity from the existential threat of unlimited carbon pollution, have inspired millions and struck terror into carbon capitalists. And the agents of Big Oil are striking back, warping our justice system ever more in favor of criminal petrochemical producers.

Back from sharing in Argentina’s humiliation at the World Cup final, President Donald Trump published a rant Sunday evening against the National Academies of Science over climate science, specifically targeting a chapter on manmade climate change in a scientific reference manual for judges. The chapter was shamefully withdrawn in February after attacks from right-wing climate deniers, but is still available on the National Academies of Science website. Last week, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan testified before Congress, cowardly distancing herself from the work with outright climate-denier language: “The purpose of this book is not to really take positions on contested and contestable matters.”

Monday, July 20

On Monday afternoon, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began a full committee markup of electric grid, pipeline, mining, and other legislation with opening statements. The grid bills are mild responses to the data-center boom, including H.R. 9340 from Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) and the vulnerable Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.) to encourage states to require large-load customers to recover the costs of upgrading the grid to serve them.

Other bills include Rep. Randy Weber’s (R-Texas) dangerously industry-friendly Pipeline Safety Authorization Act (H.R. 9338), which included a provision to expand the federal criminalization of protests against pipelines or pipeline construction to any action that “impairs” pipelines, without that term being defined. Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) questioned the provision but agreed with the Republicans, “You can’t turn off the valves.”

After Democrats such as Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-Texas) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) criticized the provision in the wake of Trump’s felony charges against people for touching the Reflecting Pool, Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) promised to amend the bill to carefully define the term.

Tuesday, July 21

In the substitute the committee is considering on Tuesday, the provision was rewritten. Protests like those of the Valve Turners involving shutting off pipelines by “the unauthorized or unplanned turning or manipulation of a valve” are specifically criminalized, as is sabotage of pipeline components, with at most a 10 year prison term.

The votes on the bills will commence at 10 am on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, the House Education and Labor Committee will mark up bills including one preventing heat workforce standards. The deliberately misnamed Heat Workforce Standards Act of 2025 (H.R. 6213) would prohibit the Secretary of Labor from finalizing, implementing, or enforcing any standard with respect to heat injury and illness prevention.

At the same time, the House Oversight DOGE subcommittee, now run by Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) departure, is holding a hearing attacking the independence and academic integrity of Smithsonian's portrayal of American history, the House Natural Resources energy and mineral Resources Subcommittee hears testimony on mining fast-tracking and mapping Legislation, and the Senate Commerce science subcommittee hears from witnesses who favor moving American science towards defensive isolationism to “combat China.”

In the afternoon, another House Natural Resources subcommittee receives testimony on bills to permit killing sea lions that eat salmon, to establish voluntary protections for the North Atlantic Right Whale, to redirect resources to combat invasive screwworm, and to manage aquatic invasive species.

At 2:30 pm, the Senate Appropriations Committee interviews Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins on the White House $88 billion supplemental funding request to pay for Trump’s illegal Iran war and bail out agribusiness hurt by surging fuel costs and accelerating climate disasters.

At 4:30 pm, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee national parks subcommittee receives testimony on National Parks System legislation. The most dangerous bill is S. 2498, which would extend contractor leases without competitive bidding.

Wednesday, July 22

At 9:30 am, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee conducts oversight of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, interviewing the now Trump-dominated commissioners, who have become “a rubber stamp for polluters to run roughshod over our climate and communities,” in the words of the relentless Beyond Extreme Energy activists who attend and protest every public FERC meeting.

At the same time, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee votes on several key Trump nominees, including Cam Hamilton to be Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Though unqualified for the position, Hamilton was briefly acting FEMA administrator last year before being fired for publicly defending the agency’s mission. Other nominees include the racist, Republican, anti-labor operative Charlton Allen to be general counsel of the Federal Labor Relations Authority, conservative movement activist Bradford Pentony Wilson to be Archivist of the United States, anti-Constitution radical Hal Duncan to be OMB Deputy Director, and James J. Woodruff III, a prominent conservative legal activist’s son, to head the now eviscerated Merit Systems Protection Board.

At 10 am, the House Natural Resources Committee holds a rare markup of natural resources bills with bipartisan support while the House Oversight Committee marks up radical right-wing bills, including one that would require Congressional approval of any DC tax, license, permit, or fee laws (H.R. 9720); and another to abolish the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (H.R. 9725).

At 10:15 am, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee examines the priorities of the FY2027 research and technology enterprise with the DOGE and AI operative Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

At 10:30 am, Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee plans to push forward ome bipartisan legislation to improve disaster communications coordination and to authorize NOAA to buy new hurricane hunter aircraft, as well as a private-prison executive named David Cummins to run the Transportation Security Administration. Cummins is the senior vice president of the Citizen Services Business Group at Serco, a major provider of private prisons and aircraft transport. They are known as the “ICE of Europe” for their deportation infrastructure.

At 2 pm, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee plans to hold a
vote on the nomination of Kevin Lilly to be Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks for the Department of Interior, deferred from last week. Lilly holds the position in an acting role illegally, putting him in charge of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Parks Service. He is completely unqualified for the role, being a Texas wealth manager with no conservation experience.

The House and Senate are both cutting committee work short this week, avoiding hearings on Thursday (other than some required committee votes on Trump nominees to move them towards the floor) to clear space for contentious floor votes on a backlog of required work before heading for an extended August recess and the campaign trail. The legislative agenda includes a continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown on September 30 and push the deadline into the lame-duck period of December, the $90 billion reconciliation package to fund Trump’s unending Iran war, and the National Defense Authorization Act. The GOP caucus is tearing itself apart as Trump’s hardline supporters are trying to attach Trump’s voter suppression legislation to every bill.

Despite choking on wildfire smoke for more than a week, Republicans in our military-occupied capital have no response other than a new round of feckless Trump tariffs on Canada, which will work out great.

Now the smoke is giving way to storms, floods, and heat, with the torrential threat of Tropical Storm Bertha in the Gulf and intense thunderstorms everywhere from North Carolina to Chicago to Boston to Utah, deadly heat in southern California and Alabama. Fittingly, the gasoline extravaganza of the Borchetta Bourbon Music City Indycar Grand Prix in Nashville was delayed by fossil-fueled storms and then cut from 300 to 225 laps because of the fossil-fueled heat.