The Week in Climate Hearings: March Toward Extremes

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This Week’s Top Climate Hearings

This week, Senate Homeland Security chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is fast-tracking confirmation of plumbing executive and oil-soaked climate denier Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, with a confirmation hearing on Wednesday and a committee vote on Thursday.

The department remains without budget authority; while the Trump regime has established an illegal carveout to keep paying ICE and CBP agents from the One Big Brutal Bill Act slush fund, employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other DHS divisions are furloughed or working without pay. The shuttering of normal FEMA operations is suboptimal, as fossil-fueled weather is running amok, with “a blizzard burying the upper Midwest, wildfires spreading across the Plains, dangerous flooding in Hawaii and triple-digit temperatures in the Southwest.”

The climate deniers Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), Chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy, have organized a hearing for Tuesday morning at 10 am on increasing climate disasters and fossil-fuel and renewable electricity generation. Their argument is that rising extreme weather necessitates an energy grid powered by fossil fuels, which might make sense if fossil-fuel pollution wasn’t responsible for the rising extreme weather.

Democratic climate hawks are responding with a roundtable Tuesday afternoon at 3:15 pm on the skyrocketing energy costs due to Trump regime policies aligned with Big Oil interests. Organized by Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), the roundtable will include Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.), as well as Robert Reich, the Sierra Club’s Greg Wannier, GRID Alternatives tribal programs director Talia Martin, Arcadia Center’s Anna Poplavska, and former Arkansas Public Service Commission chair Ted Thomas:

House appropriators are hearing two full days of testimony of representatives of American Indian and Alaska Native tribes and tribal organizations starting at 9 am on Tuesday. There are 24 witnesses scheduled on Tuesday morning, 14 more in the afternoon (including seven Indian Health board witnesses), 21 witnesses on Wednesday morning, and 21 more in the afternoon. The wide range of testimony includes the Enbridge Line 3 tar-sands pipeline in northern Minnesota, Columbia River fisheries, opposition to the uranium mine being fast-tracked in Mt. Taylor, N.M., the Central Arizona Project water management, relocating coastal villages inundated by sea level rise, the General Motors Superfund site in Massena, N.Y., buffalo herds, and the tribal timber industry.

More Climate Hearings of Interest, In Brief

Tuesday, March 17

• 10 AM: House Judiciary Committee
     the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust Subcommittee
  Regulation and Competition in Maritime Shipping

• 10 AM: House Ways and Means Committee
     Trade Subcommittee
  The World Trade Organization’s 14th Ministerial Conference

• 10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
     Water and Power Subcommittee
  U.S. Bureau of Reclamation and FERC Testimony on Water and Power Legislation
  David Palumbo, Deputy Commissioner of Operations, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, and Terry Turpin, Director, Office of Energy Projects, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, testify.

• 2 PM: House Foreign Affairs Committee
     Oversight and Intelligence Subcommittee
  Foreign Assistance Inspectors General
  The USAID Inspector General will argue to keep his office open.

Wednesday, March 18

• 10 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Federal Lands Subcommittee
  Testimony on Bills to Enlarge Mammoth Cave National Park, to Enlarge the Harpers Ferry CBP Training Facility, and other bills

• 10 AM: Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
     Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife Subcommittee
  Challenges and Opportunities with Implementing the Endangered Species Act
  Defenders of Wildlife vice president Jake Li testifies against corporate lobbyist Thomas E. Riley and the industry-backed climate-denial think tank Property and Environment Research Center’s Brian Yablonski.

Thursday, March 19

• 9:30 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  The Department of Energy’s Implementation of President Trump's May 2025 Nuclear Energy Executive Orders
  Theodore J. Garrish, Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, Dr. John C. Wagner, Director, Idaho National Laboratory, and Dr. Mike Laufer, Co-founder and CEO, Kairos Power, testify.

Write back and let us know if you prefer this shorter format for our weekly preview of climate hearings, or prefer our usual deeper dive.