The Week in Climate Hearings: Hill Heat Extremism Warning

At 1 pm on Wednesday, Climate Central and Covering Climate Now host a webinar looking forward to the 2026 hurricane season ahead of NOAA’s Outlook.

This is the last week Congress is in session in May. It’s officially Hill Heat season: a fossil-fueled heat wave is shattering D.C. temperature records, with highs in the 90s on Monday, potentially crossing the 100°F mark on Tuesday.

This afternoon, the Senate convenes to confirm 49 Trump nominees on a party-line vote, including the notoriously anti-federal lands Steve Pearce to be Director of the Bureau of Land Management; Project 2025 contributor David LaCerte to a full 5-year term on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; auctioneer and very-briefly IRS commissioner Billy Long to be ambassador to Iceland; self-driving car executive Seval Oz, Mehmet’s sister, to be Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Research and Technology; Kyle Haustveit, a petroleum engineer and fracking executive, as Under Secretary of Energy; Republican operative Wesley Brooks as Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs; corporate Space Force lobbyist Matthew Anderson as Deputy Administrator of NASA; Purdue engineering dean Arvind Raman, an Indian immigrant, to head NIST, which is barring foreign scientists from working there; Doug Weaver for a full five-year term to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission; and the dangerously unqualified January 6 participant Darin Smith to be US Attorney for the District of Wyoming.

The Republican leadership is struggling to complete their party-line Trump secret-police funding package—$70 billion-plus for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection, and a few other slush funds—in a budget reconciliation bill. Trump is hoping for $1 billion for his East Wing ballroom-bunker. The Senate Homeland Security Committee meets for a rewrite on Tuesday morning at 8 am before a Budget Committee markup Wednesday morning.

Congress will also be debating the Iran war this week, though continuing to fail to authorize or reject it, as the regime moves towards an invasion of Cuba. On Tuesday morning, the House Armed Services Committee holds a hearing on the U.S. military posture and national security challenges in the greater Middle East and Africa with the U.S. military commanders for the region.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will be on the hot seat for his “super duper ultra cool” wildly corrupt family-vacation road-show, paid for by the companies his department regulates, including Shell, Google, Toyota, Boeing, United Airlines, and Royal Caribbean. He is testifying on the Department of Transportation budget—which slashes passenger rail by 82% and public transit by 23%—before Senate appropriators on Tuesday afternoon and House appropriators on Thursday afternoon.

Tuesday’s Primaries

As the deadly heat wave grips the eastern United States on Tuesday, Alabama, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Oregon, and Pennsylvania hold their primaries, although Alabama’s white-supremacist leadership has already scheduled August primaries to void the results of the May primaries, so as to eliminate one of the state’s majority-Black congressional districts. The heat will suppress turnout, especially in the hardest-hit Pennsylvania, though it will also raise the salience of climate change with voters, who strongly trust the Democratic Party over Republicans to act on climate and clean energy and against the fossil-fuel industry, even before Trump’s shambolic Iran war.

Two races to watch are Georgia’s 13th, where Jasmine Clark is the progressive favorite to fill Rep. David Scott’s seat, and Pennsylvania’s 3rd, where climate champion Chris Rabb is vying to succeed the retiring Democrat Rep. Dwight Evans.

Now, for more climate hearings.

Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Appropriations

At 11 am on Wednesday, House appropriators tackle a marathon full-committee markup of both the Energy and Water Development and the Legislative Branch appropriations bills. Energy and Water Development is the appropriations package that includes the Department of Energy and the dwindling Western water supply supported by the Bureau of Reclamation, as well as the nation’s other U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil engineering projects. The Department of Energy’s renewable and energy efficiency portfolio, already renamed “Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation,” is being slashed by 40 percent, and $3 billion in Biden-era clean-energy funding is being rescinded. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s budget is cut by 11 percent, and Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) is cut by 14 percent. House Republicans plan to similarly starve Congress’s budget, in particular a 25 percent cut to the Government Accountability Office.

That morning, a House Natural Resources subcommittee holds a hearing on the Bureau of Reclamation’s long-term plans, and in the afternoon, the leadership of the Bureau of Reclamation and Army Corps of Engineers testify before Senate appropriators on their budget request.

On Thursday morning, House appropriators hold a joint-subcommittee markup of both the FY27 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Bill and the FY27 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Bill. The budgets by Russ Vought for the Department of Interior, Environmental Protection Agency, and Department of Housing and Urban Development, similar to the aforementioned Transportation budget, would be disastrous.

Other Climate Hearings

Wednesday, May 20

At 10 am, the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee holds a
markup of research and development acts for surface transportation, next-generation geothermal, and water power.

At the same time, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s nuclear safety subcommittee, recently rebranded at the “nuclear innovation and safety” subcommittee, gets testimony from nuclear industry lobbyists in support of nuclear power plant deregulation bills, including climate denier Nick Loris, the Breakthrough Institute’s Adam Stein, and fusion booster Patrick White.

At 10:15 am, the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee investigates the collapse of the Potomac Interceptor sewage tunnel, with witnesses including D.C. Water CEO David Gadis and officials from the EPA, National Park Service, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

At 2 pm in the afternoon, the House Natural Resources oversight subcommittee holds a mock investigation of environmental nonprofits, with Jonathan Wood of the climate-denial shop Property and Environment Research Center and Ken Braun of the climate-denial outfit Capital Research Center, as well as industry lobbyist and lawyer Lawson Fite.

Thursday, May 21

The House Natural Resources federal lands subcommittee receives testimony on another round of bills to accelerate logging on federal lands in the morning, and its Indian and Insular Affairs subcommittee hears testimony on a bill for buffalo management and other tribal affairs bills in the afternoon. Even before Pearce’s official BLM takeover, the agency has already started to move to kick bison off of grazing land in favor of cattle ranchers.

At 2 pm, the House Science environment subcommittee holds a hearing on securing U.S. water systems from cyber threats.