The Week in Climate Hearings: It's Trump's Kakistocracy. We're Just Living in It.

On Saturday, millions of Americans flooded the streets in cities in national “No Kings” rallies to protest Donald Trump’s authoritarian kakocracy for destroying the founders’ vision of the United States as a democratic republic. Trump responded by using fracking-powered paper-clip machines to virtually enshittify the protesters and by tearing down the the White House.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) is keeping the House of Representatives closed indefinitely, belying his argument that he doesn’t view Trump as king.

The Senate is open for business—including the timber and pipeline industries—this week.

Tuesday, October 21

At 9:15 am, the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee held a markup of the Fix Our Forests Act and other federal lands legislation. The Orwellian Fix Our Forests Act (S. 1462), a timber-industry giveaway in the name of wildfire management which expands timber “biomass” subsidies, eviscerates public review of timber projects, and cuts the judicial review window from six years to 150 days, was reported favorably as amended with the strong support of ranking member Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), joined by the Democratic senators Ben Ray Lujan (D-N.M.), Ralph Warnock (D-Ga.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and all Republicans.

At 10 am, Commerce, Science, and Transportation Chair Ted Cruz (R-Texas) managed to find a quorum for the business meeting he had tried to hold on October 8th. The nominations of fossil-fuel and renewable energy-industry lobbyist Harry Kumar to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and Republican operative Joyce Meyer to be Under Secretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs in charge of the U.S. Census were reported favorably on party lines; the nomination of self-driving car executive Dr. Seval Oz (sister of Mehmet Oz) to be the Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Research and Technology was reported favorably by Republicans and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.).

The PIPELINE Safety Act of 2025 (S. 2975) was reported favorably by voice vote after Sen. Lujan’s amendment including extreme heat and cold as pipeline threats was included. After several of Sen. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) amendments were rejected on party lines, the Global Investment in American Jobs Act of 2025 (S. 2563) on a Commerce report on foreign investment was reported favorably by voice vote. Several other bills, including an aviation safety bill inspired by this year’s National Airport helicopter disaster, also moved forward by voice vote.

Wednesday, October 22

At 10 am, the Environment and Public Works Committee holds a nomination hearing for four seats on the board of directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, which has been crippled by Trump’s illegal firings down to three members. Trump fired board member Michelle Moore on March 27. Trump fired chair Joe Ritsch on April 1. On June 10, Trump fired Beth Geer, chief of staff to former Vice President Al Gore. No public explanation of the firings has been offered. Nominee Mitch Graves is a Tennessee healthcare executive who serves on Memphis Light, Gas & Water’s board of commissioners. Jeff Hagood is a Knoxville lawyer and Republican fundraiser. Randall “Randy” Jones is a well-connected insurance agent in Alabama who sits on the Guntersville Electric Board. Arthur “Art” Graham, a chemical engineer who formerly worked for Koch-owned Georgia Pacific, has since 2010 served on the Florida Public Service Commission.

At 10:30 am, the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee holds a nomination hearing for maritime and fisheries nominees. Dr. Tim Petty, a hydrogeologist, Republican policy staffer, and the Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science in the first Trump administration, is the nominee to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere for NOAA Fisheries. During the climate-denial Bush administration, he was the Department of Interior principal review team leader for the Interagency Panel for Climate Change. He was recently a National Academies of Science Climate Crossroads Congressional Fellow as a Republican staffer for House Transportation and Infrastructure. Maersk executive Stephen Carmel is nominated as Administrator of the Maritime Administration. Florida Republican business lobbyists Laura DiBella and Robert Harvey are nominees to be Federal Maritime Commissioners.

The hearing is timely, as maritime issues are heating up. “A United Nations-backed plan to decarbonize the shipping industry was put on ice Friday amid fierce opposition from the Trump administration,” the Wall Street Journal’s Ed Ballard and Costas Paris report. “The U.S. threatened countries that endorsed the International Maritime Organization’s net-zero plan with retaliatory measures, including sanctions on officials, visa restrictions, port fees and blocking vessels from American ports.“

That ice is melting fast, Norimitsu Onishi writes. Similarly, Maxine Joselow and Lisa Friedman report: “Five months before catastrophic floods swept through the Alaska Native village of Kipnuk on Sunday, tearing many houses off their foundations, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant intended to protect the community from such extreme flooding… Climate change is heating the Arctic region more rapidly than the rest of the planet and the permafrost has started to thaw.”