The Week in Climate Hearings: Mundus Sine Caesaribus

COUP SHUTDOWN

Without action before Friday, the Trump regime goes into shutdown mode. With full control of the federal government, nearly all Congressional Republicans are planning to support the Trump-Musk demolition of constitutional democracy. Current federal government funding runs out on the Ides of March, and Republicans want to lock in the DOGE coup through September.

Most House Democrats agree with Indivisible’s demand that Democrats only support a completely different funding plan that restores Congress’s Constitutional authority over appropriations by voiding Trump’s illegal firings and impoundments and kicking Elon Musk out of the White House. In the words of Jay Graber, “Mundus sine Caesaribus.”

However, in the Senate, only Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), and Andy Kim (D-N.J.) have made clear their opposition to the current version of the GOP continuing resolution, which would give Trump and Musk free rein through September.

Seventeen Democratic senators joined most Republicans to vote in yet another Trump cabinet nominee on Monday—all the senators from Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Virginia, plus Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.), Adam Schiff (Calif.), and Amy Klobuchar (Minn.). Senate Republicans only need seven Democrats to cross the aisle to back their coup ratification.

CLIMATE OF THE COUP

Trump’s NASA is firing its chief scientist and closing its Office of Science, Policy, and Strategy.

In defiance of a restraining order, on March 7th, Trump’s Federal Emergency Management Agency announced all in-person trainings were canceled at the Center for Domestic Preparedness, National Disaster and Emergency Management University, and the National Fire Academy.

“The previous administration’s policy was focused myopically on climate change,” fracking executive and Trump Energy Secretary Chris Wright told fossil-fuel executives at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference, “with people as simply collateral damage.” Eight Democrats backed Wright’s confirmation.

Climate United and the Coalition for Green Capital are separately suing Citibank to release the funds the bank is holding on behalf of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund and obligated to these groups by federal contracts, but has frozen at the behest of Trump EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, as Trump DOJ thug Ed Martin demands the groups hand over documents to the FBI.

DOGE DEFIANCE

Someone in the federal government is actually fighting DOGE, and it’s a deeply Christian, lifelong Republican businessman.

Ward Brehm has been a member of the board of the US African Development Foundation (USADF) since 2004, when he was appointed by President George W. Bush. Now Brehm and the rest of the Senate-confirmed leadership of USADF, created by an act of Congess in 1980, is fighting DOGE to survive, after Trump announced he wanted the congressionally chartered corporation shut down.

DOGE hackers came to the independent agency and tried to take over the servers, but the staff challenged their authority and refused access. Then the Office of Personnel Management tried to fire the board and install January 6th insurrectionist Pete Marocco, which is how they illegally eliminated the Inter-American Foundation. 

But the USADF board held an emergency meeting last week, elected Brehm as USADF president and CEO, and told Congress they had done so.

President Brehm refused the DOGE crew and Marocco entry into the US ADF HQ on Wednesday; they then forced their way in on Thursday with the help of US Federal Marshals; Brehm immediately filed suit; and the judge—a W appointee—issued an emergency stay keeping Brehm on the job. 

The hearing is scheduled for 3 pm Tuesday at Courtroom 18 on the 6th floor of the Prettyman DC District Courthouse at 333 Constitution Ave NW.

THE WEEK IN RALLIES

Frightened by the success of grassroots Tesla Takedown protests, Musk has reverted to his playbook of using false accusations on X to incite attacks against one of its founders, climate activist and organizer Valerie Costa, the new co-director with Matt Leonard of the Oil & Gas Action Network. Fight back by starting your own Tesla Takedown protest today.

On Monday, local Indivisible groups gathered at the U.S. Capitol with Rep. Jamie Raskin rallying to Shut Down the Coup.

At 10 am on Tuesday, illegally laid-off federal workers meet at the Hart Senate building for Terminated Worker Tuesday, to share their stories with Senators and the media. As mentioned above, the Brehm v. Marocco hearing takes place in the afternoon.

A mass rally meets at noon on Wednesday in Columbus Circle before marching to the Capitol with the message Billionaires Are Killing Us: Mobilize To Save Healthcare.

And on Friday, people are coming to the National Mall in front of the Capitol for the 3.14 Capitol Protest Against Our Unconstitutional Government, led by a grassroots mobilization of military veterans and advocates of the third section of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

THE WEEK’S CLIMATE HEARINGS

Tuesday, March 11

• 10 AM: Senate Foreign Relations Committee
  United States Gold and Mining Partnership Act and other legislation

• 10 AM: House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
     Water Resources and Environment Subcommittee
  Water Infrastructure Financing: WIFIA and the Clean Water State Revolving Fund

• 10 AM: House Science, Space, and Technology Committee
  Member Day for Science, Space and Technology

• 10:15 AM: House Energy and Commerce Committee
  Redeveloping Brownfields Sites
  One of the witnesses is the notorious James Connaughton, who after blocking US climate policy for eight years under W has run an electric utility, a data center company, and an AI-for-government company, in an unparalleled commitment to the fracking-to-AI pipeline.

• 10:15 AM: House Natural Resources Committee
     Federal Lands Subcommittee
  Federal Lands Amplified Security for the Homeland Act
  H.R. 1820 from Rep. Juan Ciscomani (R-Ariz.) is an eco-fascist bill that seeks to tie immigrants, many of whom are climate refugees, to environmental degradation as an excuse for increasing environment-destroying border measure.

• 2 PM: House Foreign Affairs Committee
     East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee
  Reauthorizing the U.S. Development Finance Corporation

• 2:30 PM: Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee
  Risk management, credit, and rural business views on the agricultural economy

Wednesday, March 12

• 10 AM: Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee
  Mining Legislation

• 10 AM: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
  Votes on the National Mesonet Program, Sea Turtle Rescue, and Other Legislation

• 10:30 AM: Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
  Votes on Disaster Assistance, Homeland Security, and Other Legislation

TRUMP NOMINEES

Senate Republicans continue to move forward with Trump’s extremist nominees.

Wednesday, March 12

• 10 AM: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
  Votes on Nominations of Michael Kratsios to be OSTP Director and Mark Meador to be FTC Commissioner
  Kratsios is a Republican operative who worked for Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and Peter Thiel before becoming a Trump technology advisor. He is now managing director at Scale AI, Inc., which specializes in training data for AI. Meador’s confirmation would give the FTC a Republican majority.

• 10 AM: Senate Budget Committee
  Vote on the Nomination of Dan Bishop to be Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget
  Bishop is the North Carolina legislator who was the author of the notorious anti-transgender “bathroom bill.”

Thursday, March 13

• 9:15 AM: Senate Judiciary Committee
  Vote on Nominations of Dean Sauer to be Solicitor General of the United States, and Harmeet Dhillon and Aaron Reitz both to be an Assistant Attorney General
  Sauer, Dhillon and Reitz are Trump loyalists who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

• 9:30 AM: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
  Vote on Nominations of Jayanta Bhattacharya to be Director of the National Institutes of Health, and Martin Makary to be Commissioner of Food and Drugs
  Bhattacharya is notorious as one of the co-authors of the anti-pandemic response Great Barrington Declaration, which Makary strongly backed. An arch conservative, Makary is virulently anti-abortion and has ties to drug and medical device companies.

• 10 AM: Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
  Nomination of David Weldon to Serve as Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  A former Republican congressman, Weldon is a vaccine denier.

• 10:30 AM: Senate Foreign Relations Committee
  Nominations of Peter Hoekstra to be Ambassador to Canada, Ron D. Johnson to be Ambassador to Mexico, and George Glass to be Ambassador to Japan
  In Trump’s first term, Hoekstra was the scandal-ridden ambassador to the Netherlands, Johnson the militaristic ambassador to El Salvador, and Glass the scandal-ridden ambassador to Portugal.