The Week in Climate Hearings: What Happened During the Break

Hill Heat is on a vacation schedule this July and August. Fortunately for the editors, there hasn’t been much major political or climate news in recent weeks. Okay, there are a few stories of note from the last two weeks…

Via Ajit Niranjan, “The world has baked for 12 consecutive months in temperatures 1.5C greater than their average before the fossil fuel era.” Blazing heat has seared the United States for weeks, with wildfires sprouting from California to New Jersey, though conditions are mild compared to the oven-like heat ravaging India and Pakistan.

The Supreme Court, shaped by felon Donald Trump’s appointments, has ruled that presidents such as Trump enjoy imperial immunity from the law.

Loper Bright v. Raimondo, which overturns the doctrine of judicial deference to regulatory agencies established 40 years ago in Chevron v. NRDC, was not the only key anti-climate action at the end of the Supreme Court’s term. The Supreme’s decision in Corner Post v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, in which a gas station sued, yes, the Federal Reserve, eliminates the six-year statute of limitation on challenges to administrative rules. And in Securities Exchange Commission v. Jarkesy, the Court’s extremist majority severely curtails the power of administrative courts. Loper Bright, Corner Post, and Jarkesy form an epochal troika of decisions to kneecap the administrative state and turn regulatory power over to the judiciary. Petrochemical baron Charles Koch and others set the plan in motion to destroy the New Deal administrative state over 40 years ago; this multi-generational effort has now come to fruition.

After a televised debate in which the felon Donald Trump delivered an incoherent stream of lies and racist invective, the New York Times responded with hundreds of articles and opinion pieces calling for President Joe Biden to remove himself from the race. Many Democratic insiders are deeply troubled by Biden’s feeble performance, although there is little evidence that his aging is news to the American public. The most notable progressive climate hawk on the Hill to call for Biden to withdraw is the 76-year-old Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the seniormost Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee.

In Europe, the French public came out to defend La République from the fascist right, backing the climate-leftist coalition New Popular Front. And the austerity-above-all Tories suffered a historic collapse in the United Kingdom, handing victory to Labour’s green goals.

Congress is back from its Independence Day break, with a full week of activity. House Republicans are marking up extreme anti-climate budget bills, attacking the Environmental Protection Agency and the Endangered Species Act, and pushing legislation to kill energy efficiency standards for fridges and dishwashers.

Monday, July 8

At 4 PM: House Rules sets the floor debate terms for the Refrigerator Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards Act, legislation to stymie energy-efficiency standards that has been stalled since April because of the House GOP’s inability to govern.

Tuesday, July 9

At 10 am, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) chairs a Budget hearing with Congressional Budget Office director Phil Swagel on the CBO’s ten-year budget and economic outlook. Whitehouse has used his chairmanship to hammer the rising budgetary and economic threat of climate change to the country, and this hearing is expected to be no exception. Reflecting a broader shift in the economic consensus in the past decade, the CBO has moved from absurd denial of climate change’s economic threat to increasing though still muted concern.

There is a packed agenda on the House side.

At 9 AM, the full House Appropriations Committee marks up the Fiscal Year 2025 Commerce, Justice, and Science, Interior and Environment, and Energy and Water Development bills. The GOP bills cut nearly a billion dollars from NOAA’s budget request, cut the EPA budget by 20 percent, slash the Department of Energy’s renewable energy programs by 43 percent, and include riders blocking Biden’s climate executive orders and initiatives.

At 10 am, Ways and Means marks up several pieces of legislation, including H.J.Res. 148, which if passed would overturn the Biden administration’s rules for the Inflation Reduction Act’s clean-vehicle tax credits that allow for foreign-made battery components.

At 2 pm, the Transportation railroads subcommittee examines the California Air Resources Board’s rules phasing out diesel locomotives, with Republican railroad lobbyist Roger Nober, now at the industry-funded George Washington University Regulatory Studies Center, railroad executive Dillon Olvera, railroad executive Ural Yal, and CARB official Heather Arias.

Natural Resources subcommittees are holding hearings on multiple bills as well. In the morning, the federal lands subcommittee reviews several bills to reduce regulations on electric lines and telecom corridors through federal lands. In the afternoon, the water and wildlife subcommittee looks at water and wildlife legislation, including a draft bill by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) to codify the Trump administration’s attempted rollbacks of the Endangered Species Act. Defenders of Wildlife attorney Ellen Richmond is the Democratic witness speaking against Westerman’s bill.

Wednesday, July 10

At 9 am, House appropriators are schedule to mark up three more FY2025 packages: the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education; the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development; and Agriculture, Rural Development, and Food and Drug Administration bills. The bills eliminate funding for the CDC’s climate programs, prohibit upgrading the energy efficiency of HUD-funded housing, gut rural energy programs, and again include riders blocking Biden’s climate initiatives.

At 10 am the House Oversight Committee will have EPA administrator Michael Regan testify in an oversight hearing for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and at 2 pm the Agriculture committee will hold a hearing on the EPA and agriculture, with witnesses to be named.

On the Senate side, there are several hearings of interest:

• At 10 am, Energy chair Joe Manchin (I-W. Va.) interviews Shannon A. Estenoz to be Deputy Secretary of the Interior; Estenoz is now serving as the Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks.

• Also at 10 am, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) hosts Eric Beightel, executive director of the Permitting Council, which expedites major infrastructure programs through environmental review under the FAST-41 initiative;

• At 2:15 pm, State official Brian Nichols offers the Foreign Relations committee a classified briefing on the Columbia River Treaty that governs the hydropower operations of the Columbia River across Canada and the United States; and

• At 2:30 pm, Sens. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) hold an Agriculture subcommittee hearing on the state of rural infrastructure, focusing on emergency response, recovery, and resilience, with witnesses from Vermont and Alabama.

Thursday, July 11

At 9:30 am, Senate Appropriations conducts its full committee markup of the MilCon-VA, Agriculture-FDA, and Legislative Branch Appropriations Acts.

The U.S. Climate Politics Almanac is offered as a free service to all readers, thanks to subscribers who can afford to chip in here: