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      Power companies quietly pushed $215m into US politics via dark money groups

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      US power companies have made political donations of at least $215m to dark money groups in recent years, according to a new analysis of 25 for-profit utilities, amid growing concerns around how they wield influence.Such secretive donations to barely regulated non-profit groups have helped utilities increase electricity prices, hinder solar schemes and helped elect sympathetic legislators in recent years.While dark money giving to tax-exempt groups is legal, a number of utilities have faced criticism for it. In Arizona and Alabama, power companies faced blowback after they used dark money to aid the election of friendly regulators. In Michigan, regulators barred another company from using dark money entirely after it spent $43m on politics in just three years.Sometimes, power company dark money giving hides illegality. In 2021 in Ohio, FirstEnergy Corporation pleaded guilty to using dark money groups to bribe politicians in exchange for bailouts.In another instance of ethically questionable actions, Florida Power and Light (FPL) used dark money to interfere with ballot initiatives, and the elections of five politicians who in part aimed to tackle the high prices of electric bills and environmental and climate goals.“We are captive payers. To be funding lobbying against clean energy and climate that customers actually want goes against the public interest,” said Jean Su, a senior attorney at environmental group Center for Biological Diversity.Customers can also lose out.This was a scenario in Arizona when, in 2014, power company Arizona Public Service gave $10.7m to dark money groups that donated to key regulatory commission races. The two Republican commissioners backed by the groups won. In 2017, they went on to support the power company’s request for a $95m-a-year increase in electric bills, which ultimately was passed down to customers.It took a subpoena from a regulator to finally prove in 2019 that the company had been behind the political spending.That’s because the groups which receive the donations can be mysterious. They often bear generic or patriotic-sounding names, rarely disclose their funding sources and transfer large amounts of money between themselves. Regulations mandating public disclosure of dark money utility political spending are rare at the state level. Federal regulators stopped requiring public, line-by-line accounting of power company political spending in 2002.Floodlight and the Guardian used public records and self-disclosure data from the Center for Political Accountability (CPA), a non-profit that tracks corporate dark-money, to piece together how much for-profit power companies might be spending. Dark money is difficult to unearth, and the total will be an undercount.There are 44 regulated for-profit utilities across the US, according to the Edison Electric Institute, their trade association. Twenty-three of them self-disclosed giving nearly $100m to so-called dark money 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) groups between 2014 and 2020.Some offered more detail than others. Many companies do not report the total amounts they donate, but rather just the amount that cannot be deducted from taxes. Others don’t disclose the dark money giving of their subsidiaries. FirstEnergy in Ohio did not self-disclose at all.Overall, the total amount of dark money uncovered by regulators and the Department of Justice – about $115m – was greater than the total amount the companies disclosed.The Edison Electric Institute defended the spending. “Electric companies are subject to the same strict laws and regulations that apply to all businesses,” said Brian Reil, spokesman for the industry group. State regulators add even more scrutiny, he said.Critics argue the dark money spending is kept private, in part to ensure the disruptive transition to green energy happens on the companies’ terms or not at all, and to hinder oversight.A rare instance where a utility was held to account for its dark money spending happened this past spring in Ohio.Back in 2016 two nuclear reactors operated by the FirstEnergy Corporation were hemorrhaging money. The company sought help from Larry Householder, a Republican state politician who had just been re-elected and was eyeing the speaker’s gavel.Over meetings and private jet flights in 2017, Householder and FirstEnergy made a deal: the company would financially support Householder and his political loyalists in statewide elections, and in return, FirstEnergy would get a bailout for its nuclear plants. The conspirators created dark money groups, among them Generation Now and Partners for Progress, and started flooding them with cash.But the FBI was listening.David Devillers, the former US attorney for the southern district of Ohio, said in an interview that dark money groups were “the perfect money laundering animal”. With tens of millions from FirstEnergy, Householder won the speakership in January 2019. He later passed a bill that provided $1.3bn in taxpayer-funded bailouts for FirstEnergy’s nuclear plants.The bill faced backlash and a ballot initiative to repeal it emerged. But Householder used $38m in dark money to fight it. Racist and misleading television ads warning of a “Chinese takeover of Ohio’s electric grid” saturated the airwaves, telling Ohioans not to sign the ballot petition against the bailout.In total, FirstEnergy contributed about $60m in dark money to Householder. FirstEnergy pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit honest services wire fraud and was forced to pay a $230m fine. Householder was found guilty this March, and could face up to 20 years in prison when sentenced in late June.“FirstEnergy has taken significant steps to put past issues behind us,” said Will Boye, a spokesman for the company.Several groups are calling on the federal government to look more deeply into how power companies wield dark money. The Center for Biological Diversity has petitioned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate how power companies pay for their political activity. Another group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed an FEC (Federal Election Commission) complaint last October against half a dozen dark money groups linked to FPL.During the 2018 and 2020 election cycles in Florida, FPL employed a consulting group that created at least a half-dozen dark money organizations that spent tens of millions of dollars on political attack ads, private investigators and spoiler candidates to challenge politicians in important races – according to leaked documents obtained by Floodlight, and reporting in the Orlando Sentinel and the Miami Herald.South Miami’s former mayor Philip Stoddard witnessed the power of the company’s dark money network first-hand. When in office he was critical of FPL’s handling of a nearby nuclear plant and was pushing for more rooftop solar.During his re-election in 2018, a dark money group called A Better Miami Dade published mailers, robocalls and ads to discredit him, according to public records and the group’s former president, Stephen Cody.The group spent over $200,000 trying to defeat Stoddard, public records show.Even after Stoddard won, another group called the South Florida Anti-Corruption Task Force filed a complaint against Stoddard at his university job, according to Rick Yabor, the groups president. A private investigator paid by the group also began digging into Stoddard’s personal life.Stoddard spent last year tracing a complex financial web that winds from the utility through dozens of dark money groups, many of which had direct financial ties to A Better Miami Dade.“I want to shut down this scam,” Stoddard said in an interview. “This is being used to corrupt the political system.”If the IRS accepts a whistleblower complaint Stoddard has made, FPL’s former political consultants could face up to $200m in liabilities and Stoddard could get a share of the recovered back taxes.While leaked records indicate FPL probably donated tens of millions of dollars to dark money groups between 2014 and 2020, its parent company has only self-disclosed about $1.4m in dark money giving. A spokesman for the company declined to confirm a total.Through a spokesman, FPL declined to comment for this story.But despite the recent exposure of dark money’s noxious effects in states like Ohio and Florida, experts caution that these networks are rarely brought to task.While the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is responsible for overseeing non-profit groups, experts uniformly describe dark money as the “wild west”. Between 2015 and 2019, the IRS didn’t revoke any tax-exempt group’s status for violating political spending rules. And the numbers of IRS agents whose job it is to police the groups has dwindled from nearly 1,000 to fewer than 600, according to congressional testimony.“There’s very little revenue for the IRS in regulating charities and there’s enormous political risk that seems to have been damaging to the IRS’s capacity to do other things,” Brian Galle, a law professor at Georgetown University who focuses on taxation and non-profits, said. He said it was largely a result of the current tax code, which is written to protect the privacy of individuals filing their taxes.“When we wrote [the code] it didn’t really occur to us that this was going to create problems for the political system,” Galle said. “It comes from an era where we emphasized individual privacy, maybe more, because we didn’t understand the stakes for politics.”
      This article was amended on 15 June 2023. An earlier version misattributed a fact about the dwindling number of IRS officials overseeing tax exempt groups to a law professor. The fact was presented by another law professor during congressional testimony. More

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      As the US becomes more divided, companies find they can’t appeal to everyone

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      Bud Light, Target – and now Cracker Barrel? “We take no pleasure in reporting that @CrackBarrel has fallen,” the conservative group Texas Family said in a tweet last Thursday, in response to the southern-food restaurant chain marking Pride month on social media. “A once family-friendly establishment has caved to the mob.”The conservative backlash against American brands appears to have reached new heights over the last few weeks as companies show their support for Pride month and other LGBTQ+ issues. It is part of a wider backlash against corporate involvement in social, environmental or political issues that appears to be gathering steam.Corporate celebration of Pride month over recent years has seemed less radical amid growing criticism that parades and other events celebrating LGBTQ+ rights have actually become too corporatized. Critics have also pointed out that those same businesses are more than happy to fund politicians that oppose LGBTQ+ rights when it suits them. But conservatives have put those sponsorships back in the spotlight and are now more emboldened than ever to turn their fury against them.At the political vanguard is Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, the presidential candidate who is in the middle of a legal battle with Disney after the company publicly criticized his “don’t say gay” bill to curb discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity in schools.But the attack on “woke” corporations from conservative consumers and the politicians who court their support goes far further than Pride.Multiple Republican states, including Texas, West Virginia and Florida, have divested from investment firm BlackRock for the company’s support of environmental, social and governance portfolios that focus on sustainability and environmental impact.It is a notable change for Republicans, who for decades have been the party of business and fought the idea of government interference. Their hero, Ronald Reagan, once said “man is not free unless government is limited”.But a shift has been happening. Since 2019, the percentage of Republicans who say large corporations have a positive impact has fallen by a quarter, according to a 2021 Pew poll. A Gallup poll showed a similar drop in Republicans who were happy with the “size and influence of major corporations”, dropping from 57% to 31% in a year.Much of this comes from conservative distaste of “woke capitalism”, with companies coming out in support of progressive issues, such as LGBTQ+ rights, racial equity and concern over the environment, over the last decade. The shift has a strong business case. Younger Americans, who are more diverse and also more liberal, have come of age as consumers and companies have been trying to cater to them by promoting issues they care about. That comes with a price.“Millennials and younger generations are pushing this, and they have the idea that companies have a social responsibility beyond their business,” said Amna Kirmani, a professor of marketing at the University of Maryland. “Conservatives think that companies should stay out of sociopolitical issues and instead focus on their business.”In other words, companies can’t appeal to everyone in such a divisive political landscape, as they are quickly finding out. Now that two major corporations have pulled back on marketing efforts that promote LGBTQ+ issues in the face of a rightwing backlash, some experts say conservative resolve against companies promoting the issues has been strengthened.Bud Light had been trying to revive its brand to appeal to younger Americans when it turned to TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender woman, for a sponsored post on social media.“Our number one job at Bud Light is to grow meaning and relevance with new drinkers – that is how we transform and really preserve this brand for the next 40 years,” Alissa Heinerscheid, the company’s vice-president of marketing, told Ad Age in September.The backlash to the brand’s partnership with Mulvaney was intense, eventually leading to sales in Bud Light dropping by at least 23% compared to last year.Anheuser-Busch, the maker of Bud Light, put Heinerscheid and another marketing executive on leave. Brendan Whitworth, chief executive of Anheuser-Busch inBev, said in a statement in April amid the boycott that the brand “never intended to be part of a discussion that divides people. We are in the business of bringing people together.”Just a few weeks later, Target announced it would remove some of its Pride month merchandise from some of its stores after a series of “volatile circumstances” in which a handful of customers confronted workers and damaged displays in stores.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It has really emboldened a lot of conservative activists to keep shouting because in these two cases, there were serious consequences,” Kirmani said. “Boycotts happen all the time, most of them are not successful.”The ire against Bud Light and Target quickly spread to Kohl’s, which received bomb threats for displaying Pride month merchandise, and Chick-fil-A, which had hired an executive to lead diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the company. The attack on Chick-fil-A surprised many given the company’s long history of supporting rightwing causes. Backlashes also pointed to Nike, North Face, the US navy and the LA Dodgers baseball team for social media posts and campaigns that celebrated Pride month.Eric Bloem, vice-president of programs and corporate advocacy at the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said that it stresses to companies that they need to be prepared to defend their values when faced with attacks. Nike and North Face, he pointed out, stood by their decision to work with transgender models (Nike had worked with Mulvaney) after they faced backlash. Meanwhile, Bud Light and Target backed off.“The message that it sends is that it fuels extremist behavior … and that they can make Pride toxic. Once they are able to make Pride toxic for one company, they’re going to move on to the next,” Bloem said.Both Kirmani and Bloem said the conservative backlash against companies comes from a minority of people with extreme views. A survey from the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Glaad showed that 75% of participants said they are comfortable seeing LGBTQ+ people in advertising.“Let’s be clear that this is a coordinated attack against the LGBTQ+ community by a small group of extremists,” Bloem said. “There’s over 525 pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ pieces of legislation that have been pushed at the state level. These pieces of legislation are banning books, access to gender-affirming care for youth, they’re preventing trans youth from participating in sports. All of this is part of the larger context.”The wider context also suggests this fight isn’t going to end soon. The attacks on Target and Bud Light had real impact and DeSantis is not the only 2024 Republican presidential runner taking on “woke” corporations.Outlier candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, a 37-year-old tech entrepreneur, has made his fight against corporate liberalism the centerpiece of his campaign. He is positioning his company, Strive Asset Management, as an alternative to investment firms like BlackRock.Ramaswamy may not be a frontrunner but he is gaining airtime and his message has the support of Republican House speaker Kevin McCarthy and others. His views may be out of touch with younger voters, and many other Americans, but it’s one that captures an angry base that has found a cause to fight for. “Courage Is Contagious” is Ramaswamy’s campaign slogan. As corporate America is finding out, it is also going to be contentious. More

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      Alarm at rightwing push to reverse clean-energy success in Texas and beyond

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      In the scramble before the end of Texas’s legislative session last week, a must-pass bill was amended to impose new costs upon renewable energy. This came amid a barrage of anti-solar and wind power measures pushed forward by Republicans to reshape a state that has become the US’s powerhouse of clean energy.But the conservative lawmakers had help.Sections of the bill that impose new burdens upon clean energy providers were directly crafted and edited by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (or TPPF), a conservative group that has led the backlash to renewables and to make what it calls “the moral case for fossil fuels”, according to a copy of the draft language seen by the Guardian.Several dozen edits were made to the bill’s amendments by Brent Bennett, a TPPF policy staffer, the document shows, and Texas lawmakers subsequently passed parts of this language along with the key TPPF desires – to impose new transmission costs on renewables and require them to source fossil fuel “backup” power when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing.The passage of the bill, which funds the ongoing operation of the Public Utility Commission of Texas, was the flagship victory for TPPF even as a raft of other Republican bills that would have “shut down the renewable energy industry in Texas”, as energy analyst Doug Lewin put it, faltered.The burgeoning influence of TPPF, an organization substantially funded by fossil fuel interests and publicly lauded by Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor, is the catalyst to a rightwing attempt to crimp the stunning progress of renewable energy in the state, which now produces more than a quarter of all wind-powered electricity in the US.The group’s agenda is now extending far beyond Texas, bankrolling efforts to halt offshore wind turbines in Massachusetts and to prop up coal power on native American land in Arizona while spearheading efforts to crack down on sustainable finance in energy-producing states like West Virginia.“We are very influential, we are meeting with policymakers to share recommendations and we’re having success around the country,” said Jason Isaac, a former state representative and now director of TPPF’s energy initiatives. Isaac said that TPFF regularly helped craft “certain aspects” of bills in Texas related to the state’s electricity grid or environmental, social, and corporate governance (or ESG) issues.“I think conservatives are slowly but surely moving away from variable generation and towards reliable generation,” he said of the group’s quest against renewables. Isaac claimed renewables have been unfairly propped up by a “cult-like fascination” among politicians who have pursued what he called a “dangerous and deadly” agenda to reduce planet-heating emissions.The aggressive push against renewables in Texas has alarmed environmentalists who fret it will undermine the state’s nation-leading wind industry and threaten the revenues solar and wind generates for local communities and farmers. More broadly, the template used by TPPF in Texas could hobble efforts by Joe Biden’s administration to tackle the climate crisis.“We are seeing a rush of these bills attempting to wind the clock back on renewables and TPPF really are at the point of the spear on this,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas. “They are transparent advocates for the fossil fuel industry and I think they pose an incredible threat to renewables. TPPF have gained incredible traction, they really are shifting the narrative in Texas.“They’ve won over the top politicians in the state, which is very dangerous. Texas is going to be critical if the US going to get to net zero emissions, so we should take this threat seriously.”TPPF’s impact can now be found thousands of miles from its base in Austin, Texas, with the group filing a lawsuit in 2021 on behalf of six east coast fishing businesses – collectively called Nantucket Residents Against Turbines – targeting a major windfarm currently under construction off the coast of Massachusetts. Slated to come online by the end of the year, Vineyard Wind will be the first major offshore wind project to be built off the US east coast.The lawsuit claimed federal agencies did not sufficiently analyze how the project, which is set to deliver enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, would affect wildlife – specifically the endangered North Atlantic right whale – and thereby violated the Endangered Species Act and slew of other environmental policies.Meghan Lapp, a seafood dealer and longtime offshore wind critic who was a plaintiff in the suit, told Reuters in 2021 that TPPF got involved in the suit at her request. As it announced its involvement in the case, the thinktank also took the unusual step of releasing a trailer called “A Heavy Wind”.The case was ultimately unsuccessful after a federal judge dismissed it last month, but the idea that wind turbines kill whales has been seized upon by conservatives, especially since December, when dozens of whales began washing up on the Atlantic coast in what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) calls an “unusual mortality event”.Noaa has said there is no evidence that offshore wind power is killing off whales, with fishing practices, boat strikes and the climate crisis among the primary dangers to marine mammals, but congressional Republicans have called on the White House to pause offshore wind development, while Tucker Carlson, then of Fox News, aired a critical series of segments called “The Biden Whale Extinction”.The assault on renewables by TPPF and its Republican allies has stunned conservatives who remain supportive of the longstanding bipartisan enthusiasm for clean energy.The reversal has been particularly stark for Texas which, blessed with the capacious, flat terrain and amenable climate for abundant wind and solar energy, was championed as a bastion for renewables by previous Republican governors George W Bush and Rick Perry, even as they embraced the ubiquitous oil industry.More than 40% of Texas’s electricity came from carbon-free sources last year, with the state now producing more wind and solar than the next three states – California, Iowa and Oklahoma – combined. This imperious status now seems uncertain.“I don’t recognize the state sometimes any more from our elected leaders. It’s like we are in a twilight zone where up is down and day is night,” said Matt Welch, state director of Conservative Texans for Energy Innovation.“I fear we’re losing our lead in the nation and the world as the source for clean energy advancement. It’s just amazing we’ve rolled up the welcome mat and told wind and solar operators they’re just not welcome here any more.”The Texas Public Policy Foundation was founded in 1989 by James R Leininger, a San Antonio-based physician who made his fortune selling hospital beds, and initially focused on the issue of charter schools before branching out into other topics such as energy. The thinktank is a member of the State Policy Network, a network of far-right non-profits across the country that fight climate-focused legislation.In 2021, the most recent year for which records are available, donations for the thinktank totaled $25.6m. Publicly available data shows that – like many State Policy Network affiliates – its largest known funder is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist who made his fortune from fossil fuels. Entities tied to Koch have contributed at least $8.8m to the group since 2012, according to an analysis by researcher Connor Gibson.Tax filings show that the group has received donations from fossil fuel companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron, but, as a non-profit, the full extent of TPPF’s fossil fuel funding is unknown.Issac said, however, it has been “many years” since large oil firms such as Exxon have donated to TPPF as these companies now ostensibly support decarbonization and environmentally responsible corporate governance, which conflicts with the foundation. He insisted that the foundation is committed to “free enterprise and individual liberty” and the eradication of “market distorting” subsidies, not just for renewables but also fossil fuels.But Welch said that Republican lawmakers, backed by TPPF, have ditched any ideological consistency by heaping onerous restrictions on renewable energy development on private property, in some cases attempting to impose requirements absent from oil and gas drilling, and trying to slash subsidies for the industry at the same time as offering state support for the buildout of new gas plants.One proposed bill that didn’t get sufficient backing in the latest Texas legislative session would have placed stringent new rules for wind and solar projects, including written permissions from neighboring property owners and setbacks of up to half a mile from the edge of a property for wind turbines. Another would have cut all subsidies for renewable energy.“On a Tuesday these lawmakers will be adamantly for private property rights, but on a Thursday they will want to stop the growth of renewable energy even though it’s on somebody’s private land,” Welch said, adding that TPPF was once full of “mini Milton Friedmans for years until recently, and now all of a sudden they throw that out the window.“It’s been a shocker. It’s so hypocritical,” he said. “I used to be an acolyte of TPPF but they are now driven by oil and gas billionaires who want to stop alternative forms of energy to benefit their own bottom line. They’ve sold their soul to the almighty dollar.”Renewable energy remains broadly popular with the Texas public for delivering cheap, clean power along with an injection of cash for entities such as school districts, but affection has somewhat curdled among some of the state’s Republican leadership. A devastating winter storm in 2021, which left millions of Texans without power and led to several hundred deaths, was a major accelerant of this trend.In the days following the crippling event, known as winter storm Uri, Abbott and other leading Republicans pushed the blame for the power blackouts upon renewable energy, with misleading pictures of frozen wind turbines from Europe quickly circulating social media as the supposed cause of the grid’s breakdown.Subsequent studies have made clear the primary cause of the blackouts were frozen gas pipelines and a lack of infrastructure resiliency to extreme weather, rather than renewables per se, but the perception of faulty wind and solar has stuck, eagerly fanned by TPPF.“I still believe [renewables] deserve a lot of the blame,” said Isaac. “The storm was helpful in educating people who just assumed when they flip a switch the lights come on that there are issues with grid reliability, that solar panels covered in snow don’t produce electricity.”Isaac said the foundation accepts that the climate is changing but disputes that this is harmful to people, claiming that the benefits of burning of fossil fuels “far outweighs” any negatives, including deadly air pollution, which he asserts isn’t an issue for the US and its “near natural” air quality. Scientists have, in fact, found that the climate crisis poses huge and growing risks to humanity, with airborne pollutants from burning coal, oil and gas linked to an array of different health problems.While the most severe of the anti-renewables bills pushed forward in Texas didn’t pass the legislature this year, Isaac said that TPPF remains undaunted and will continue to agitate against what he called “the false panacea of variable power”. Supporters of clean energy said they expect further battles ahead to prevent Texas’s progress in solar and wind from being unwound.“With the growth trajectory of renewable energy, TPPF can either get on the train or lay down in front of the tracks,” said Welch. “I suspect they won’t rest on their laurels. They’re going to come for renewables again and again and again.” More

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      ‘Stop the dirty deal’: activists decry Schumer and Manchin over pipeline plan

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      Climate activists have stepped up protests over the inclusion of a provision to speed up a controversial gas pipeline’s completion in the deal to raise the debt ceiling as Congress prepares to vote on Wednesday, aiming criticism at Democrats Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin.The pipeline project has long been championed by Manchin, the West Virginia senator who was the top recipient of fossil fuel industry contributions during the 2022 election cycle.Activists, led by the advocacy group Climate Defiance and supported by Food and Water Watch, Climate Families NYC, Center for Popular Democracy, Sunrise Movement NYC and others, rallied outside the Senate majority leader home in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood on Tuesday evening, chanting “Schumer, stop the dirty deal” and demanding the $6.6bn Mountain Valley Pipeline be stripped from the legislation.Schumer has also received donations from one of the companies behind the pipeline.The protests came hours after nearly 200 groups sent a letter to Schumer and members of Congress remove the pipeline from the deal.“The unscrupulous brinkmanship on display in Washington is endangering our very future,” Eric Weltman, senior New York organizer at the environmental advocacy group Food and Water Watch, said in a statement. “Our climate and communities are not for sale – any deal that holds the economy and climate hostage for the profit of dirty energy donors is a betrayal.”Last year, Manchin failed to make the approval of the pipeline part of the Inflation Reduction Act. But in exchange for his crucial vote for the legislation, he secured a commitment from Schumer to pass a separate bill to expedite the pipeline’s construction and help fast-track the construction of other energy infrastructure. The permitting legislation failed at the hands of Senate Republicans who were unhappy with the compromise.NextEra Energy, one company behind the Mountain Valley pipeline, is a major contributor to Manchin and Schumer. In the 2022 cycle, the company’s employees and political action committees gave $60,000 to Manchin and a stunning $302,000 to Schumer, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.Food and Water Watch is also doing daily phone banks and has set up a dedicated hotline to Schumer’s office. Meanwhile, Appalachian Voices is holding three rallies at Senator Mark Warner’s Virginia office pushing for a debt deal that does not include the pipeline.“President Biden made a colossal error in negotiating a deal that sacrifices the climate and working families,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the national environmental organization Center for Biological Diversity.House and Senate lawmakers from both parties have also filed amendments to strip the Mountain Valley pipeline from the debt ceiling deal. A group of House Democrats from Virginia have led the push to cut the provision.Democratic senator Tim Kaine plans to file a similar Senate amendment.“Senator Kaine is extremely disappointed by the provision of the bill to greenlight the controversial Mountain Valley pipeline in Virginia, bypassing the normal judicial and administrative review process every other energy project has to go through,” a Kaine spokesperson said in a statement. “This provision is completely unrelated to the debt ceiling matter.”Environmentalists have spent a decade fighting the construction of the $6.6bn Mountain Valley pipeline, which is intended to carry natural gas 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia to Virginia, crossing nearly 1,000 streams and wetlands. A report from Oil Change International last year found the project would result in the emission of 89m metric tons of planet-heating pollution annually, or the equivalent of building 26 new coal power plants.The pipeline has long faced scrutiny in courts. Since construction began in 2018, the Mountain Valley pipeline has been cited for hundreds of violations in West Virginia and Virginia. Last month, a US court of appeals struck down certain permits for the project on the grounds they would violate the Clean Water Act.The Biden administration has in recent months signed off on several necessary federal permits for the Mountain Valley pipeline. But the debt ceiling legislation would go even further by shielding the project from future litigation.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director with Appalachian Voices, an activist group which has fought the project for years.“By attempting to suspend the rules for a pipeline company that has repeatedly polluted communities’ water and flouted the conditions in its permits, the president and Congress would deny basic legal protections, procedural fairness and environmental justice to communities along the pipeline’s path.”Climate groups, led by the Virginia and West Virginia organization Protect Our Water, Heritage, Rights are also planning to rally in front of the White House next week. More

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      ‘An egregious act’: debt ceiling deal imperils the environment, critics say

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      The deal to raise the US debt ceiling will have significant ramifications for the climate and nature, by fast-tracking a controversial gas pipeline in West Virginia and limiting the scope of environmental reviews for future developments, environmentalists have warned.The agreement struck between Joe Biden and Republicans who control the House of Representatives states the Mountain Valley pipeline is “required in the national interest” and should be issued its necessary permits within 21 days and be shielded from legal challenge by those who object to it.Environmentalists reacted in outrage at the deal, arguing the 300-mile (480km) pipeline, which will bring fracked gas from West Virginia to southern Virginia, will endanger hundreds of waterways, threaten landscapes including the nearby Appalachian trail and worsen the climate crisis.“Singling out the Mountain Valley pipeline for approval in a vote about our nation’s credit limit is an egregious act,” said Peter Anderson, Virginia policy director at Appalachian Voices, a campaign group that has charted hundreds of environmental violations by the project across the two states.“By attempting to suspend the rules for a pipeline company that has repeatedly polluted communities’ water and flouted the conditions in its permits, the president and Congress would deny basic legal protections, procedural fairness and environmental justice to communities along the pipeline’s path.”The pipeline was recently provided a key approval by the federal government to go through a stretch of forest but is currently stymied by court action that has dogged it for years. Mountain Valley has just 20 miles (30km) left to complete but is several years behind schedule due to opposition from green groups and nearby residents who risk having their land taken for the project.However, Joe Manchin, the West Virginia senator, coal baron and the Senate’s leading beneficiary of campaign donations from gas pipeline interests, has vigorously lobbied for the pipeline’s construction and appears to have prevailed in his quest. Manchin, a centrist Democrat, is considered a valued swing vote in an evenly divided Senate.“I am pleased speaker [Kevin] McCarthy and his leadership team see the tremendous value in completing the [Mountain Valley pipeline] to increase domestic energy production and drive down costs across America and especially in West Virginia,” Manchin said in a statement that did not mention Biden. “I am proud to have fought for this critical project and to have secured the bipartisan support necessary to get it across the finish line.”The White House has framed the debt ceiling deal as one that has protected Biden’s key climate achievements, such as the numerous provisions for clean energy support in last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Republicans were keen to strip away in negotiations.But the agreement does not include any measures to accelerate the expansion of electricity transmission, a crucial factor in whether the shift to renewables will actually materialize, while acceding to Republican demands to curtail the environmental reviews of developments such as oil and gas pipelines.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUnder the deal, reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, the US’s first national environmental law, will be limited to just two years for federal projects.Environmental groups, already angered by Biden’s ongoing embrace of large fossil fuel projects, such as the recently approved Willow oil drilling operation in Alaska, said these provisions mean that Democrats should block the debt deal when it is voted upon in Congress this week.“President Biden made a colossal error in negotiating a deal that sacrifices the climate and working families,” said Jean Su, energy justice program director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Congress should reject these poison pills and pass a clean debt ceiling bill.” More

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      ‘Toxic trail of pollution’: states step up to curb the use of ‘forever chemicals’

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      Few chemicals have attracted as intense public and regulatory scrutiny as PFAS, but even as the highly toxic and ubiquitous compounds’ dangers come into sharper focus, industry influence has crippled congressional attempts to pass meaningful consumer protections.Federal bills designed to address some of the most significant sources of exposure – food packaging, cosmetics, personal care products, clothing, textiles, cookware and firefighting foam – have all failed in recent sessions.However, a patchwork of state laws enacted over the last three years is generating fresh hope by prohibiting the use of PFAS in those and other uses. These laws – mostly passed in Democratic-controlled states – are quietly forcing many companies to phase out the chemicals as they become illegal to use in consumer goods in some of the nation’s largest economies.“We’ve seen some corporate leadership on PFAS, but the actual state policies that say ‘No, you have to do this’ – those are great incentivizers,” said Sarah Doll, director of Safer States, which advocates for and tracks restrictions on toxic chemicals at the state level.PFAS are a class of about 15,000 chemicals often used to make thousands of consumer products across dozens of industries resist water, stains and heat. The chemicals are ubiquitous, and linked at low levels of exposure to cancer, thyroid disease, kidney dysfunction, birth defects, autoimmune disease and other serious health problems.Though the Biden administration is devoting significant resources to limiting and cleaning up environmental PFAS pollution, it has no coherent strategy to address the chemicals’ use in consumer goods, and states have filled that void. Among those are laws banning their use in:
      Clothing/textiles. California, New York and Washington banned PFAS in clothing, while multiple states are prohibiting the chemicals’ use in textiles, such as carpets or furniture upholstery, or in children’s products like car seats and strollers.
      Cosmetics/personal care. California, Colorado and Maryland banned PFAS in all cosmetics and personal care products.
      Food packaging/cookware. About 10 states have prohibited PFAS in some food packaging, and several also bar it in cookware.
      Firefighting foam. At least 15 states have banned or limited the use of firefighting foam with PFAS because it is a major source of water pollution.
      Maine has gone several steps further with a ban on all non-essential uses of PFAS, and the momentum continues this session in 33 states where legislation has been introduced. Vermont’s senate unanimously approved a ban on the chemicals in cosmetics, textiles and artificial turf.The state policies may make it financially and logistically impractical for many companies to continue using PFAS, and their effects could reverberate across the economy.“It would not make sense to not use the cancer-causing chemical in California and New York, but go ahead and use it in Texas,” said Liz Hitchcock, federal policy director at Toxic-Free Future, which advocates for stronger restrictions on chemicals.Among a cascade of companies moving away from the compounds in some or all products are Patagonia, Victoria’s Secret, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Ralph Lauren, Zara, H&M, Abercrombie & Fitch, Calvin Klein, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger, McDonald’s, Burger King, Rite Aid, Amazon, Starbucks, Whole Foods, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut.Sephora, Revolution Beauty and Target are among those in the cosmetic and personal care sector that have announced phase-outs of PFAS.In December, 3M, perhaps the world’s largest PFAS producer, announced it would discontinue making the chemicals, in part citing “accelerating regulatory trends focused on reducing or eliminating the presence of PFAS”.Companies widely use PFAS despite their myriad risks because they are so effective. The story of outdoor giant REI Co-op is emblematic of industry resistance to phase-outs.In March 2021, a public health campaign began calling out a glaring inconsistency between REI’s virtuous marketing and use of PFAS in waterproof textiles: the company boasted of “responsible production” and advised its customers to “leave no trace” in the wilderness, but sold clothing waterproofed with dangerous PFAS chemicals that the campaign noted left a “toxic trail of pollution”.But that changed in September 2022. California banned PFAS in apparel and textiles, and New York followed soon after. A February REI announcement that it would phase out the chemicals “in part to ensure wide industry alignment with new state laws regarding the use of PFAS” marked a major victory for public health advocates, and a similar story is playing out across the broader marketplace. REI did not respond to a request for comment.Public pressure is also fueling the development. REI faced “immense pressure” from a coalition of more than 100 NGOs and 150,000 co-op members who signed a petition demanding the company eliminate PFAS in the 18 months ahead of the California apparel ban, said Mike Schade, who spearheaded the effort with Toxic-Free Future’s Mind the Store program. Even as REI held out, other companies that Mind the Store approached, like Wendy’s and McDonald’s, committed to eliminating PFAS.The interplay among the campaigns, companies committing to eliminating the chemicals and state laws creates a potent “synergy” and sends pressure in both directions, Schade said.“If we get more companies to act, that builds more political support for action at the state level to regulate and restrict harmful chemicals like PFAS,” Schade added. “At the same time, more states acting will create more pressure on businesses to take action ahead of state policies.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCalifornia state assembly member Phil Ting’s bills to ban the chemicals’ use in food packaging and apparel drew surprisingly little resistance from industry, he said, which he ascribed to market momentum. Though most companies, like REI, were still using the chemicals, some major names like Levi’s, Whole Foods and McDonald’s had already announced phase-outs, the latter two amid pressure from Toxic-Free Future.“It didn’t seem like government was leading, it seemed like government was supporting what had already started happening in the private sector, and that made it much more palatable for my colleagues,” Ting said.Removing the chemicals and identifying, testing and developing safe alternatives for market production is a slow and difficult process that can take years. Before its March announcement, REI had said the “performance that customers expected” could not be matched by alternatives. Still, other companies managed to phase out the chemicals. Levi’s eliminated PFAS by 2018, but a spokesperson said the “challenge is significant considering that there are currently no equally effective alternatives to” PFAS.Moreover, the supply chain is riddled with PFAS entry points as the chemicals are sometimes intentionally or accidentally added to materials upstream. PFAS are also used as lubricants that prevent machines from sticking to materials during the manufacturing process, and previous testing by the Guardian of consumer products highlighted how that can leave low levels of the chemicals on consumer goods.That can mean that even manufacturers with good intentions may not know their products are contaminated with PFAS, said Christina Ross, a senior scientist with Credo Beauty, a “clean beauty” company. Credo has never intentionally added PFAS to its products and works with suppliers throughout the supply chain to try to avoid adding the chemicals unintentionally. It has found that while some suppliers care about the issue, others do not.“We try to honor those suppliers who do by giving them our money,” Ross said.But that is ultimately an inefficient and unreliable way for entire sectors to eliminate the chemicals, and Ross said it underscores the need for legislative bans. “In order to remove PFAS from any consumer products we have to stop the chemicals from being made in the first place,” she said.That’s unlikely anytime soon at the federal level, where only two out of 50 stand-alone PFAS bills were approved last session, and sources say hyper-partisanship makes passing laws unlikely. States and the US House are passing the measures with bipartisan support, though the laws are largely enacted in Democratic-controlled states.Observers offer two theories on why. The PFAS issue knows no socioeconomic or political boundaries – PFAS contamination is a problem for everyone, Doll noted, and it has hit constituents whom Republicans traditionally support, like farmers and firefighters.Others say Republicans in most Democratic-controlled states don’t have a shot at stopping the bills, so they vote for the measure instead of angering constituents for no political gain.Toxic-Free Future’s Hitchcock said she sells legislators on both sides of the aisle on PFAS legislation by pointing out that banning the chemicals makes sense financially. “We’re paying so much to clean up the mess, why not invest in not making the mess in the first place?” she said.That thinking is partly behind the momentum in the states, but she added: “We can’t depend on just that – we need the federal government and Congress to act.”
      This article was amended on 3 May 2023 to clarify that Credo has already removed unintentionally added chemicals from its products. More

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      Wildflowers, eagles and Native history: can this California ridge be protected?

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      Molok Luyuk, a 11-mile (18km) rocky ridge just north of San Francisco, is a rare, idiosyncratic landscape. Purple and yellow wildflowers bloom against green and brown hillsides. Dark rock formations extend against lush cypress groves.Located along California’s inner coast ridge, “it’s a beautiful area, secluded from development,” said James Kinter, tribal secretary of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation. “And for us, it’s more than just a natural environment.”Now, the Yocha Dehe and local environmentalists are asking Joe Biden to add 13,700-acres (5,500 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa Snow Mountain national monument. Legislation introduced in Congress is also proposing tribal co-management of an expanded monument.“It’s a great opportunity to work with the federal government, the state government and local governments to protect this habitat and history,” Kinter said.Molok Luyuk means “condor ridge” in Patwin, and tribes in this region have always referred to the area that way. Though development, hunting, lead poisoning and DDT contamination have decimated the California condor population over the decades, the ridge is still a home to bald eagles, golden eagles and peregrine falcons, as well as more than 30 species of rare plants.Kinter has driven his family across the ridge many times. “It’s kind of a long drive,” he said laughing. “But, you know, it’s important to explain to them what is out there.”For thousands of years, the ridge served as a key trade route for northern California Indigenous nations, and was a meeting place for the Yocha Dehe, as well as the Cachil Dehe and Kletsel Dehe, said Kinter. A number of village sites and gravesites, and petroglyphs remain on the landscapeFrom the summit, there’s a clear view of the state’s most iconic peaks and mountain ranges – there’s Mount Diablo to the south, the Sutter Buttes and Sierra Nevadas to the east, Mount Shasta to the north. “You can see so much of California from just one place, from this one point,” said Sandra Schubert, executive director of local conservation group TuleyomeIt’s a botanical wonderland, said Nick Jensen, conservation program director at the California Native Plant Society. “One of the things that makes this place special is the diversity of environmental conditions, the diversity of habitats,” he said. “You have oak woodland, right next to a patch of grassland underlaid with clay soils, right next to serpentine chaparral.”The patches of clay soil are fertile grounds for delicate pink adobe lilies. And the harsh, serpentine soils – low in calcium and other minerals most plants need, and high in heavy metals like chromium – spark deep burgundy blooms of Hoover’s lomatium.This spring, after an especially wet, rainy winter, Molok Luyuk’s foothills were alive with fields of sweet butter-coloured creamcups and California goldfields, bird’s-eye gilia, and blue dicks.The ridge is also the largest habitat for MacNab cypress in California. Its small, tightly closed cones only open when they’re exposed to the high heat of a wildfire. “When a fire sweeps through a grove, the mother plant is almost always killed,” said Jensen. “And then what happens afterwards is this grand process of rebirth where you have thousands upon thousands of seedlings sprouting from the burn.”In 2015, Barack Obama designated Berryessa Snow Mountain, but only included a small portion of Molok Luyuk within its borders. Adding the rest of the ridge, the tribe and local environmentalists say, will ensure a protected wildlife corridor between Berryessa and the Mendocino national forest to the north.The Yocha Dehe would like to work with the local and federal agencies to reintroduce indigenous land stewardship practices to the area, including the use of prescribed burns in a landscape that has evolved with fire. “Here, this is an awesome opportunity to show some of the Indigenous knowledge of how to take care of the land,” Kinter said.And eventually, Kinter said, the tribe would like to help reintroduce California condors, so they can once again soar over this stretch.Last year, senators Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, along with California representative John Garamendi, introduced legislation to add about 4,000 acres (1,600 hectares) of the ridge to the Berryessa monument, and officially change its name from “Walker Ridge” to Molok Luyuk.Lawmakers reintroduced the legislation this year, as well. But nearly 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) of the ridge, however, were excluded from that legislation, after Colusa county supervisors asked those areas be left out of the monument.A monument designation would increase the bureaucracy and consultation required for fire management, logging and other activity in the area, said Gary Evans, vice chair of the Colusa county board of supervisors. “I’m one with the whole nature thing but it’s gone off the deep end,” he said. “We’re going overboard with the touchy feely thing.”In a letter to Padilla sent in June, county officials also opposed the renaming of Walker Ridge, and said doing so would require changing maps, and would confuse law enforcement and fire response teams that work in the area. The name Walker Ridge is “just fine”, said Evans. “I just hate rewriting history.”The Bureau of Land Management supported the expansion in testimony to congress, though the office said it could not comment further on pending legislation. The expansion “aligns with the administration’s conservation goals,” Mark Lambrecht, assistant director of the National Conservation Lands and Community Partnership, testified.Regardless of whether the legislation passes, local environmental groups are also petitioning the Biden administration to designate the entirety of Molok Luyuk under the Antiquities Act. The administration has so far named three new national monuments, and restored three monuments that the Trump administration reduced.“We just want to make sure we’re protecting our cultural sites and also protecting the natural habitat,” Kinter said. “It’s not just for tribal folk. It’s American history, California history right there.”Periodic proposals to develop wind energy projects in the area have been denied, but a monument designation would ensure that key habitats and archaeological sites across the ridge are protected in perpetuity.A national monument designation would come with additional resources and funding to improve trails and access routes, and the ability to better preserve some areas, while also opening up others for recreation and tourism, said Schubert, whose group organises hikes and wildflower tours on the ridge. In consultation with tribes, the federal government could help create more opportunities for hiking, mountain biking, off-roading and camping, she said. “You could have art classes and science classes up here,” she said.“It’s a very auspicious area,” said Eddie “EJ” Crandell, a supervisor in Lake county, and former chairman of the Robinson Rancheria of Pomo Indians of California. “And if it’s marked as such, I think people will really take a liking to it.” More

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      Biden approves Alaska gas exports as critics condemn another ‘carbon bomb’

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      The Biden administration on Thursday approved exports of liquefied natural gas from the Alaska liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, a document showed, prompting criticism from environmental groups over the approval of another “carbon bomb”.The US energy department approved Alaska Gasline Development Corp’s (AGDC) project to export LNG to countries with which the United States does not have a free trade agreement, mainly in Asia. Backers of the roughly $39bn project expect it to be operational by 2030 if it receives the required permits.The project, for which exports were first approved by the administration of Donald Trump, has been strongly opposed by environmental groups.“Joe Biden’s climate presidency is flying off the rails,” said Lukas Ross of Friends of the Earth. Ross pointed out this was the second US approval of a “fossil-fuel mega-project” in as many months.The Biden administration last month approved the ConocoPhillips $7bn Willow oil and gas drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope, prompting criticism of Biden’s record on the climate crisis.Alaska LNG includes a liquefaction facility on the Kenai peninsula in southern Alaska and a proposed 807-mile (1,300-km) pipeline to move gas stranded in northern Alaska across the state.Frank Richards, the president of Alaska-owned AGDC, said the company will review the 51-page decision as it develops the project, which he said will “provide Alaskans and US allies with a significant source of low-emissions, responsibly produced energy consistent with international environmental priorities”.The Biden administration undertook an environmental review of Alaska LNG, concluding it has economic and international security benefits and that opponents had failed to show the exports were not in the “public interest”.The Biden administration modified the previous approval to prohibit venting of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide associated with the project into the atmosphere.Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, said the approval of the project cleared the way for additional lawsuits seeking to stop the project.The Biden administration is trying to approve more US LNG exports as it competes with Russia, traditionally one of the world’s largest energy exporters. Critics say the Ukraine conflict is a “false justification” for a rush to natural gas.An expansion of LNG terminals on the Gulf coast would double or even triple current capacity to deliver natural gas, which a report by Climate Action Tracker researchers said would keep carbon emissions above levels needed for net zero.Russia is under pressure from western sanctions for its invasion of Ukraine, and the US has boosted LNG exports to Europe after Moscow cut gas pipeline shipments to the continent.Reuters contributed to this report More