The Week in Climate Hearings: Potentially Unimaginable Horrors Await

Last week, President and House Speaker Donald Trump “approved major disaster declarations for Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota and the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe in Missouri late Wednesday, while denying requests from Vermont, Illinois and Maryland” on explicitly partisan lines, choosing to grant only the declarations for states where he “won BIG.” Trump was unaware that the Maryland storms hit Appalachian counties that voted overwhelmingly for him. Trump’s illegal “efforts to dismantle federal weather and climate protections” meant that “a majority of western Alaska’s weather balloon network was not operating during the landfall of the storm last weekend.”

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) held the Senate floor for over 22 hours last week, in an epic speech to ring the alarm bells about Trump “shredding our Constitution”:

Everett Kelley, the head of the American Federation of Government Employees, has folded, calling for Congress to “pass a clean continuing resolution and end this shutdown today,” and then to “work together on a bipartisan basis to address important policy matters like addressing rising costs and fixing the broken appropriations process.”

This position—as Kelley explained in March—is structurally unsound, since has Trump broken the appropriations process by ignoring Congressional appropriations. Republicans are refusing to pass the Democratic continuing resolution, which would forbid Trump’s abuse of rescissions, mass firings, and other usurpation of Congress’s power of the purse. In other words, the “clean” GOP continuing resolution is dirty.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La., no relation) has effectively dissolved the House of Representatives. The Senate is still in operation, primarily working on confirming Trump’s nominees, including a quack for Surgeon General and two corruptly partisan picks for Inspectors General overseeing some of the nation’s largest public welfare programs—Health and Human Services (Medicare and Medicaid) and the Department of Agriculture (SNAP).

Wednesday, October 29

On Wednesday morning, the Energy and Natural Resources Committee holds a hearing on the Section 106 consultation process under the National Historic Preservation Act. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order purporting to declare an “energy emergency.” Following that order, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation issued guidance largely suspending section 106 rules for energy projects for an indefinite period.

Trump’s demolition of the White House’s east wing is expected to be a major topic of discussion, although under Section 107 of the NHPA, the White House is exempt from National Historic Preservation Act, including listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Clark Construction and ACECOM’s demolition during the government shutdown violates the Anti-Deficiency Act, the Constitution’s emoluments clause, and federal ethics rules on funding and gifts, which are coming from crypto and fossil-fuel billionaires and multinational corporations including Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, NextEra Energy, and tobacco companies Altria and Reynolds American.

At 10 am, the Finance Committee holds a nomination hearing for several “brazenly political” Trump partisans to hold key positions, most notably Thomas March Bell to be Inspector General for the Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for monitoring fraud and abuse of the $1 trillion Medicaid and Medicare programs. Bell is an anti-abortion extremist and long-time Republican operative who held leadership positions in Gary Bauer and Pat Robinson’s presidential campaigns. Arjun Mody, nominee to serve as Deputy Commissioner of Social Security Administration, is a top advisor to Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), and shepherded the confirmations of Pete Hegseth to run the Defense Department, Kash Patel for the FBI, and Frank Bisignano at the SSA. Dr. Julie Callahan, nominee to be Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the United States Trade Representative, is a marine chemist who also happens to be an “unusually partisan” supporter of Trump and strong ally of Big Ag. Jeff Goettman, nominated to be Deputy U.S. Trade Representative, was Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R-Va.) chief of staff after a long career in finance and service in Trump’s first administration on the Export-Import Bank and in Treasury.

At 3 pm, the Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee holds a nomination hearing for John Walk to be Inspector General, Department of Agriculture, Mindy Brashears to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Food Safety, and former Rep. Stella Herrell (R-N.M.) to be Assistant Secretary of Agriculture of Congressional Relations. Walk was a top lawyer in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security and White House during his first time, working closely with Stephen Miller to break up families and deport children. Walk is the son-in-law of Jeff Sessions, Trump’s former Attorney General. Brashears is a longtime shill for the meat industry.

Thursday, October 30

At 11 am, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee interviews Casey Means to be Surgeon General of the United States, who will be appearing by remote hookup from Hawaii. Means, an otolaryngologist turned lifestyle influencer, is an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist and proponent of holistic medicine, “functional medicine,” and other forms of quackery. While hawking products, she has also raised concerns about microplastics, industrial toxins, pesticides, and processed foods. Her last medical license, from the state of Oregon, expired in 2019, making her ineligible for the position.

Friday, October 31, Halloween

New horrors await.