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The Week in Climate Hearings: Timber!
If democracy falls and no-one reports on it, does it make a sound?
Brad Johnson
September 09, 2025
We Are All DC March, September 6, 2025
The Trump regime's ICE attack on the Hyundai electric battery plant in Georgia is a clear reminder that clean energy is verboten under fossil fascism, even at the cost of jobs in a state that voted for Trump.
“Climate change, for impacting the quality of your life, is not incredibly important,” Trump’s fracking-exec Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. “In fact, if it wasn’t in the news, in the media, you wouldn’t know.”
In another unsigned decision, the fascist majority of the U.S. Supreme Court greenlit racist abductions by Trump’s secret police, overruling a judge who stopped the practice of immigration checks based on skin color, language, and profession.
Democrats in Congress are thinking of following DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s lead by collaborating with the regime. September 30th is the deadline for another government funding bill; Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are “already groveling about bipartisanship and looking for ‘common ground,’” Mursheed Zaheed writes.
Congress is busy this week with appropriations markups and multiple hearings promoting timber-industry deforestation as a solution for the problem of greenhouse-pollution-driven wildfires.
Tuesday, September 9
It’s a very busy day for the House Natural Resources Committee, with three subcommittee hearings.
At 10:15 am, House Natural Resources federal lands subcomittee is meeting with U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz to discuss The State of Our Nation’s Federal Forests. Republicans, with many Democratic collaborators, are pushing an agenda of aggressive logging of the national forests in response to “unprecedented drought conditions” and “catastrophic wildfires,” while denying the reality of global warming driven in part by deforestation.
“These policies betray both ecological integrity and public interest,” the John Muir Project responds. “We can only hope Democrats stop endorsing the ‘all the tools in the toolbox’ rhetoric, which reinforces business-as-usual forest management during these political theater performances.” Instead of the Orwellian “Fix Our Forests” (by Cutting Them Down) Act, the Project calls for supporting the Community Protection and Wildfire Resilience Act (H.R. 582).
At 2 pm, the Natural Resources Indian affairs subcommittee holds a hearing on Indian land leases and exchanges, including for oil and gas drilling in the Chugach.
And at 2:15 pm, the Natural Resources energy and mineral resources subcommittee holds a hearing on fossil-fuel extraction and mining under Trump with a cavalcade of climate deniers, including Heritage Project 2025 author Diana Furchtgott-Roth, American Petroleum Institute’s Dustin Meyer, and Utah county commissioner Jerry Taylor.
At 11 am, House appropriators begin their markup of the Fiscal Year 2026 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies Bill. The bill zeroes out the HHS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity (illegally shuttered in February by Trump) and the CDC’s Climate and Health Program (illegally shuttered in April by Trump), and blocks Biden’s climate-related executive orders (in Sec. 532).
At 2 pm, the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s energy subcommittee is attacking appliance energy efficiency standards and building energy codes. The witnesses for pollution and inefficiency are National Association of Home Builders chair Buddy Hughes, Competitive Enterprise Institute climate denier Ben Lieberman, and Washington Gas chief lobbyist Jim Steffes. The one witness for energy efficiency is Building Performance Association’s Kara Saul Rinaldi. NAHB, along with the New York State Builders Association, is challenging the nation’s first statewide ban on natural gas in most new construction in court, arguing it is preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Lieberman’s testimony is cartoonish:
“Dishwashers, washing machines, and light bulbs are among the most overregulated appliances. . . All of the Biden administration appliance regulations – light bulbs, furnaces, water heaters, air conditioners, stoves, dishwashers, refrigerators, others – included calculations of the claimed climate benefits. These benefits are based on the highly flawed estimates of the social cost of carbon, which the Trump administration has sensibly ordered all regulatory agencies to stop relying upon.”
“Free DC: Manufactured Crisis to Distract From Epstein Files”
Wednesday, September 10
In the morning, all at 10 am:
House Appropriators are conducting the full committee markup of the FY2026 Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Bill. The bill kills NOAA’s billion-dollar-disaster project (Sec. 596), as well as “climate change fisheries research,” the National Institute of Standards and Technology Center of Excellence in Climate Change, the U.S. Global Change Research Program, and the National Science Foundation’s Clean Energy Technology program (Sec. 552).
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee holds a hearing on a discussion draft of the Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act; and S. 881, the Renewable Fuel for Ocean-Going Vessels Act. The “Wildfire Emissions Preventions” Act is another version of the legislative push to solve wildfires through deforestation.
The House Agriculture Committee’s forestry subcommittee holds a hearing on the timber industry and forest health, again promoting logging forests as good for forests.
The House Natural Resources Committee is promoting three GOP bills for speeding up environmental permitting with witnesses including climate denier Nick Loris, National Mining Association head Rich Nolan, and data-center lobbyist Josh Levi.
The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee is conducting a full committee markup of the Weather Act Reauthorization Act of 2025, which is bipartisan legislation.
At 2:30 pm, the Senate Indian Affairs Committee holds a vote on the nomination of Mr. William Kirkland to be Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, followed by a hearing on U.S. Department of Energy programs in Indian country.
“Proteja la Autonomia de DC”
Thursday, September 11
At 9:30 am, the Senate Appropriations Committee holds a full committee markup of the Homeland Security Appropriations Act, including support for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which the Trump regime is seeking to eliminate.
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