Toxic Revengers

PRESENTED BY PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Whoops, how is it the evening already? Quickly, because I want my beloved subscribers to be able to get that hot Democratic National Committee race content you all so desperately crave:

• At 6:30 pm Eastern (5:30 pm local), the leading DNC chair candidates—Ken Martin, Ben Wikler, and Martin O’Malley—are attending a forum in Austin, Texas hosted by the Way to Win and the Texas Democratic Party. You can tune in online.

• At 8:30 pm Eastern, about half of the DNC vice chair candidates are participating in an online forum with Young Democrats and Voters of Tomorrow (the first forum took place yesterday).

On the Hill, polluter lobbyists including American Chemistry Council president Chris Jahn complained about the Toxic Substances Control Act. Good news for them: Former American Chemistry Council employees Nancy Beck and Lynn Ann Dekleva will be working at Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency, as senior adviser to the ’s Office of Chemical Safety and deputy assistant administrator in charge of chemicals, respectively.

The nomination of Fox Business bigot and climate denier Sean Duffy, a former Wisconsin congressman, to be Secretary of Transportation was supported by the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee by a unanimous vote of 28 to nothing. Hashtag Resistance!

At the Senate Budget confirmation hearing for Project 2025 architect and climate denier Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Vought expressed his iron-clad belief in voodoo economics, that cutting federal taxes raises federal revenues, citing historical evidence that proved the opposite. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) pressed Vought on his disregard for the Congress’s appropriations authority and his record of politicizing disaster funding. Vought’s response: “The President [Trump] has always been a firm distributor of federal resources to areas that need federal disaster money.”

Meanwhile, the Hughes Fire erupted in Casaic, Calif., northeast of Santa Clarita. As of this writing it has exploded to more than 5,000 acres.

Oh, the reason this took so long is that I spent the morning watching the Brookings event today on climate migration with On The Move author Abrahm Lustgarten, resiliency expert Beth Gibbons, and Georgetown Law immigration expert Shana Tabak, moderated by Brookings senior fellow Vanessa Williamson. It was an illuminating conversation. Abrahm laid out the stakes well:

In the meantime, folks like Gibbons, the resiliency officer for Washtenaw County, are doing the day-to-day work of getting people as prepared for the future as she can, moving away from fossil-fuel dependence while also preparing for greater climate extremes and disasters, one electrified housing development and storm drain expansion at a time.

Hearings on the Hill:

• 10 AM: House Energy and Commerce Committee
     Environment Subcommittee
  Assessing the Legacy and Impact of the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act

• 10 AM: Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee
  Vote on nomination of Sean Duffy to be Secretary of Transportation

• 10 AM: Senate Budget Committee
  Nomination of Russell Vought to be Director of the Office of Management and Budget

• 2 PM: House Natural Resources Committee
  Organizational Meeting

Climate Action Today:

• 10 AM: Brookings Institution
  How to prepare for climate migration in the US

• 6:30 PM: Texas Democratic Party
  Texas DNC Chair Candidate Conversation

• 8:30 PM: Young Democrats of America
  DNC Vice Chairs Youth Forum: Western and Midwestern Candidates

Thanks for subscribing and spreading the word. If you’ve got job listings, event listings, or other hot news, I want to hear it. Connect with me—@[email protected] and @climatebrad.hillheat.com on BlueSky.