US justice system
Subterms
More stories
- in US Politics
Trump administration briefing: Mahmoud Khalil’s detention, ‘Trumpcession’ fears and gutting USAid
The Trump administration’s decision to have immigration authorities arrest pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil for alleged support of Hamas is an attack on free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union warned on Monday.“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the US and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the US. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”Outrage after Palestinian student activist detainedFree speech organizations and advocates are expressing outrage after a prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year, was arrested and detained over the weekend. Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card, was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities, who reportedly said that they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.Read the full storyArrest of Palestinian activist first of ‘many to come’, Trump saysDonald Trump said on Monday that the arrest of a prominent Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year, is the “first arrest of many to come”.Read the full storyUS stocks register heavy falls as White House tries to talk up Trump tariffsThe US stock market continued to drop on Monday as the White House denied that Donald Trump’s trade policies were causing lasting chaos within the economy.The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Dow Jones dropped 2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 4% as investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla. Tesla’s shares had their worst day since September 2020, falling 15%.Read the full storyRisk of ‘Trumpcession’ rising, economists say, as global markets fallThe risk that the US economy will enter recession this year is rising, according to economists, as Donald Trump’s chaotic approach to tariffs continued to hit markets.Read the full storyTrump tariffs policy ‘misguided’ and US economy ‘very wobbly’, ex-adviser saysDonald Trump’s focus on tariffs as an economic weapon is “misguided”, and the US economy is “very wobbly”, a former adviser and longtime supporter of the president said.Read the full storyOntario sets 25% surcharge on US energy exportsThe Canadian province of Ontario is imposing a 25% surcharge on electricity exports to the states of New York, Michigan and Minnesota in protest against Donald Trump’s tariffs, Premier Doug Ford said on Monday.Read the full storyCanada’s designated PM Mark Carney meets Trudeau as Trump threat loomsCanada’s incoming prime minister, Mark Carney, has met with Justin Trudeau as the pair discuss a transfer of power after the former central banker’s landslide victory at the Liberal party’s leadership race.The meeting on Monday sets the stage for an imminent federal election and gives Canada a fresh leader to square off against the US president, with the two countries locked in a bitter trade war provoked by Donald Trump.Read the full storyUS rebrands immigration app to CBP Home with ‘self-deport’ functionOn day one of his presidency, Donald Trump, issued a directive abruptly ending the government’s use of CBP One – an online application that had served as the primary means for people at the southern border to apply for asylum in the US. On Monday, the administration announced it has reimagined the app as a platform for “self-deportation”.Read the full story83% of USAid programs terminated after purgeThe Trump administration has finished a six-week purge of programs of the US Agency for International Development, cutting 83% of its programs, according to the secretary of state, Marco Rubio.Read the full storyTop Washington Post columnist quits after piece critical of Bezos is scrappedWashington Post associate editor and top political columnist Ruth Marcus is reportedly resigning after the decision by the CEO, Will Lewis, to kill her opinion column critical of the billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’s latest changes to the paper.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:
There is “no military solution” to the conflict in Ukraine, US secretary of state Marco Rubio has said ahead of high-stakes meetings on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia aimed at repairing a severely damaged relationship that has left embattled Kyiv without Washington’s support.
JD Vance’s first cousin has called the vice-president and Donald Trump “useful idiots” to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
A man pardoned by Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection who also was convicted of plotting to kill federal agents investigating him is still legally liable for the plot, a judge ruled on Monday.
The US secretary of health and human services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has directed the Food and Drug Administration to revise safety rules to help eliminate a provision that allows companies to self-affirm that food ingredients are safe. The move would increase transparency for consumers as well as the FDA’s oversight of food ingredients considered to be safe, Kennedy said on Monday.
Poland’s prime minister called on “friends” to respect their allies in a post on X that mentioned nobody by name but came a day after an extraordinary social media spat between top officials in the US and Poland over Starlink satellites.
A Virginia man who was detained by Ice agents despite being an American citizen says he is reconsidering his support for Trump.
Wall Street fell significantly as traders grew concerned over the possibility that Trump’s trade war will send the US economy into a recession.
A top state department official has a history of insulting his boss, Marco Rubio, in social media posts, among many other questionable statements. More
- in US Politics
Top US prosecutor quits over pressure to investigate Biden climate spending
A top federal prosecutor has quit after refusing to launch what she called a politically driven investigation into Biden-era climate spending, exposing deepening rifts in the US’s premier law enforcement agency.Denise Cheung, head of criminal prosecutions in Washington, resigned on Tuesday after Trump appointees demanded she open a grand jury investigation into Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants based largely on an undercover video, multiple people familiar with the matter told CNN.The directive came from the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove through Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee for Washington DC US attorney. Officials wanted Cheung to investigate EPA contracts awarded during Biden’s tenure and freeze related funding, CNN reported.In her resignation letter, Cheung wrote to Martin that she and other prosecutors had determined there was insufficient evidence to warrant grand jury subpoenas, even if senior officials cited the Project Veritas video as justification.“When I explained that the quantum of evidence did not support that action, you stated that you believed that there was sufficient evidence,” Cheung wrote to Martin. “You also accused me about wasting five hours of the day ‘doing nothing’ except trying to get what the FBI and I wanted, but not what you wanted.”The dispute stems from the EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin’s claim last week about $20bn in climate law funding being held in a Citibank account.The resignation adds to broader upheaval within the justice department, where prosecutors considered unaligned with current leadership have faced termination, particularly those involved in January 6 investigations. More
- in US Politics
The courts separate democracy from autocracy. Will Trump defy them?
Will the Trump administration defy the courts?JD Vance’s tweet last weekend that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” has sparked widespread concern that the Trump administration might become the first in US history to do so. At least at this stage, it is not clear that it will come to that, notwithstanding the president’s proclivity for asserting limitless executive power. But as other countries’ experiences show, if he were to adopt the position of the US vice-president, Trump would be crossing perhaps the most fundamental line demarcating constitutional democracy from autocracy.Consider just a few examples. In Venezuela, Hugo Chávez spent years undermining the country’s supreme court, declaring that it lacked “legitimate and moral authority”. The former president later refused to comply with a 2003 order to demilitarize the Caracas police force, instead tightening military control over law enforcement to entrench his power. In Hungary, after failing to enforce rulings of the constitutional court, Viktor Orbán’s government openly defied the European Union’s highest court’s ruling finding Hungary’s restrictive asylum scheme in violation of EU law. Likewise, in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan systematically ignored domestic and European court of human rights rulings that ordered the government to release journalists and other political activists critical of his government.Nothing is more challenging to an authoritarian than an independent judiciary ready to hold the leader accountable. When would-be authoritarians perceive judicial oversight as a threat, they respond by dismissing and defying court rulings or otherwise undermining judicial independence. By the time the authoritarian takeover is complete, the judiciary is rendered toothless. Courts are especially vulnerable to such moves because they do not have their own enforcement arms.To be sure, we are not there yet. But Vance seems to see these examples not as object lessons in what not to do, but as models for the US president to follow. In 2021, Vance said his “one piece of advice” to Trump for a second term would be to “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people … And when the courts – because you will get taken to court – and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’” (It is disputed whether Jackson even said this, but in any event he never defied the court.)In Trump’s last term, he had a worse won-lost record in the supreme court than any president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt – yet he abided by all court orders. And in the wake of concern about Vance’ s comments, Trump said he always obeys courts, but will pursue appeals. Thus far, that seems to be the case. But no responsible government official – much less the No 2 official in the executive branch – should even suggest that defying the courts is appropriate.View image in fullscreenTrump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk, is also fanning the flames. On 8 February, hours after a federal judge in New York temporarily blocked Musk’s team from accessing sensitive personal information held by the Department of the Treasury on millions of Americans, Musk shared a tweet from another user saying: “I don’t like the precedent it sets when you defy a judicial ruling, but I’m just wondering what other options are these judges leaving us.” The next day, Musk posted: “A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!”On 12 February, Musk tweeted: “Bravo!” in response to a claim by El Salvador’s autocratic president, Nayib Bukele, that he had impeached judges in 2021 “and then proceeded to fix the country”. Musk added: “We must impeach judges who are grossly undermining the will of the people and destroying America. It is the only way.” Bukele’s removal of five constitutional court judges in 2021 is widely regarded as a “technical coup” that paved the way for him to seek re-election in violation of constitutional term limits. Musk is no lawyer, but he should know that in the US, impeachment is reserved for “high crimes and misdemeanors”, not decisions Musk does not like.Government officials are of course free to criticize court decisions. But Vance’s and Musk’s comments echo those of authoritarian regimes around the world, which often seek to undermine the legitimacy of any institution that might constrain their actions – the courts, the press, the non-profit sector. The criticism is often the first step in a campaign to sweep away all constraints.The federal courts in the US system are given independence and final say on legal disputes so that they can act as a check on the political branches. In 1975, the supreme court explained that “all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly.” Indeed, the chief justice, John Roberts, in his annual end-of-year report on the federal judiciary in 2024, identified “threats to defy lawfully entered judgments” as one of the core issues that “threaten the independence of judges on which the rule of law depends”.The moment of truth may come soon. More than 60 lawsuits have been filed challenging Trump’s initial measures – from seeking to revoke birthright citizenship to freezing federal funding. Nearly every court to rule thus far has ruled against the administration.Were the Trump administration to follow Vance’s and Musk’s advice and defy the supreme court, the fallout would be swift, widespread – and justified. The supreme court has limited formal resources to compel the president to follow its dictates, because the president, not the courts, oversees federal law enforcement. Despite that formal reality, defiance would be an impeachable offense – and if the Republican party stood behind the president at that point, it would pay greatly at the polls. That’s because few principles are as fundamental to the American system as the notion that the supreme court has final say on constitutional and statutory issues and its orders must be obeyed. Trump would cross that line at his own, his party’s, and the country’s peril.
Amrit Singh is a law professor and executive director of the Rule of Law Impact Lab at Stanford Law School. David Cole is a professor at Georgetown Law and former legal director of the ACLU More
- in US Politics
Judge revokes decision to retire, foiling Trump’s replacement plans
A US appeals court judge has taken the rare step of revoking his decision to retire from active service on the bench, depriving Donald Trump of the ability to fill a judicial vacancy.US circuit judge James Wynn, an appointee of Barack Obama on the fourth US circuit court of appeals based in Richmond, Virginia, disclosed his decision in a letter to Joe Biden on Friday.It marked the first time since Trump won the 5 November presidential election that a Democrat-appointed appellate judge has rescinded plans to take senior status, a form of semi-retirement for judges that creates vacancies presidents can fill.Two trial court judges have similarly done so, prompting complaints by conservatives including Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, who railed about an “unprecedented” spate of judges un-retiring post-election.Thom Tillis, the Republican senator who had fought to prevent Biden’s pick to fill Wynn’s seat from winning Senate confirmation, said on X that Wynn had engaged in a “blatant attempt to turn the judicial retirement system into a partisan game”.Wynn sent his letter a day after Biden’s nominee to succeed him, the North Carolina solicitor general Ryan Park, formally withdrew from consideration after his path to win Senate confirmation vanished.Senate Democrats and Republicans post-election cut a deal that cleared the way for votes on about a dozen of Biden’s remaining trial court nominees in exchange for not pushing forward with four appellate court nominees, including Park.A spokesperson for Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate majority leader, has said all four lacked sufficient votes to be confirmed.That left four seats without confirmed nominees that Trump could try to fill upon taking office on 20 January. But two vacancies were contingent upon two Democrat-appointed judges following through on their plans to leave active service.Those judges included Wynn, 70, who in January announced plans to take senior status contingent upon a successor being confirmed. On Friday, he told Biden he had changed his mind.“I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused,” Wynn wrote.The Article III Project, a group run by Trump ally Mike Davis, late Friday announced it had meanwhile filed judicial misconduct complaints against the two trial court judges who likewise rescinded retirement plans post-election.Those judges are the US district judge Max Cogburn in North Carolina and the US district judge Algenon Marbley in Ohio. Neither responded to requests for comment. More
- in US Politics
‘This is not his first rodeo’: will federal courts be able to rein in Trump?
A week after Donald Trump entered the White House for the first time in January 2017, he signed executive order 13769, known as the Muslim travel ban, barring entry to the US for refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries.Mayhem ensued. Protests erupted in airports. Panic spread around the world.Within 24 hours it was blocked.“There is imminent danger that there will be substantial and irreparable injury to refugees and other individuals from nations subject to the order,” a federal district judge ruled.That was the start of an epic tug-of-war between Trump’s new presidency and the courts. Judges from Hawaii to Maryland stepped in to halt the ban, prompting its architect, the far-right immigration hardliner Stephen Miller to accuse them of “judicial usurpation of power”.The order had to be written three times before it could satisfy even the increasingly rightwing US supreme court, losing 18 months in the process.In nine weeks’ time Miller will be back in the White House as deputy chief of staff for policy, carrying with him an even more extreme plan for the largest domestic deportation effort in US history. The billion-dollar question is, will the courts let him this time?“The second Trump administration is going to pose the federal judiciary with huge challenges,” said Lia Epperson, a constitutional law professor at American University. “Trump is going for extreme measures, and that will test the balance of power between branches of government over issues like immigration, free speech, and many more.”View image in fullscreenTrump has already made clear, through his own policy agenda and in the gargantuan roadmap to a second term produced by his allies, Project 2025, that he intends to be more aggressive and radical this time. His flurry of cabinet and key federal agency appointments underline the point.Matt Gaetz, the president-elect’s choice for US attorney general, has provoked fears that the justice department will be weaponised to go after Trump’s political enemies. The choices of the hardline South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, for homeland security secretary and the Fox News host Pete Hegseth for defense secretary give heft to Trump’s intention to use emergency powers and the US military to implement the mass deportations.“He is creating a cabinet of loyalists who will be in lock step with his agenda,” Epperson said.Trump will arrive back in the Oval Office emboldened by the gift that the supreme court bestowed on him earlier this year: broad immunity from criminal prosecution for any of his official acts. The protection, awarded in a July ruling, could have some unexpected consequences.At its most dystopian, Trump might read the justices’ edict as giving him carte blanche to defy their very own orders.“One of the things we don’t know yet is what would happen if Trump defied judicial orders from the supreme court, claiming the immunity granted to him by the very same justices,” said Professor Rachel Moran of Texas A&M University school of law.Another major shift in Trump’s favour is that during his first term he managed to push the federal judiciary drastically to the right. The 6-to-3 supermajority of the supreme court was forged by Trump’s appointments of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.The lower courts were also transformed by the 242 judges who he assigned to district, appeals and other federal courts. If Trump keeps up that frenetic pace over the next four years he will succeed in appointing more than half of all federal judges.Among his first-term appointments were 54 appeals court judges – second only to supreme court justices in the power they wield. And of those, Trump placed no fewer than 10 judges on the 29-strong ninth circuit court of appeals in San Francisco, which is traditionally seen as a liberal bastion.That in itself could be significant over the next four years. During Trump’s first term, the ninth circuit was by far the most popular route through which to challenge the administration.Now, though, the court will be less attractive to those seeking to rein Trump in, given the stamp he has already put on its ideological balance.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMeanwhile, Biden is scrambling to complete as many judicial approvals as he can before he leaves office, and has already confirmed 215. That will restore some equilibrium, but it will not erase the fact that Trump will begin his second term facing a far more friendly judiciary than in his first.“The proportion of appointees who might be sympathetic to his administration has grown, and that means they are likely to be a less effective check on his power,” Moran said.‘He knows how to do it, and is better prepared’It wasn’t just the Muslim travel ban that got embroiled in the courts during Trump 1.0. Several of his signature policies, including family separation of undocumented migrants at the Mexican border and inserting a citizenship question in the US census, were stymied.A study by the non-partisan thinktank the Institute for Policy Integrity, comparing how successive administrations fared when they introduced major new rules, found that the Trump administration was challenged legally at a far higher rate than any previous administration going back to Bill Clinton in the 1990s. When cases got to court, Trump’s record was even more abysmal.He lost 57% of the time. That was dramatically worse than Barack Obama’s average across his two terms – 31%.“The process of getting new rules out was flawed in many cases, as was the supporting analysis – so when they showed up in court they were getting dinged a lot,” said Don Goodson, the institute’s deputy director.The travel ban got such a beating in federal courts in part because Trump’s White House showed a disdain for basic procedural guardrails designed to ensure that the government acts in rational and beneficial ways. Miller and Steve Bannon, Trump’s then chief strategist – “my two Steves” as he affectionately dubbed them – overruled experts in the Department of Homeland Security and ignored the oOffice of legal counsel, which is normally routinely consulted.A similar dismissive attitude was shown across the Trump administration towards basic requirements set out in the Administrative Procedure Act, such as the need to give the public a chance to comment on all policy proposals. Those guardrails are still in place, which carries a warning for Trump and team.Should they show as much disregard for the rules as they did last time, they are likely to suffer another bloody nose. On the other hand, Trump now has the benefit of experience.“This is not his first rodeo. He knows how to do it, and is better prepared,” Epperson said.Epperson sits on the national board of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which was at the forefront of the fight against the Muslim travel ban. The ACLU filed 434 actions against the first Trump administration, and is already gearing up to be similarly adversarial come January.“Litigation is going to be critical,” Epperson said. “Will there be 100% wins in cases protecting civil rights and liberties? No. But will there be a good chance that the courts serve as one of several lines of defense? Yes.” More
- in US Politics
Leonard Leo-linked group attacking efforts to educate judges on climate
A rightwing organization is attacking efforts to educate judges about the climate crisis. The group appears to be connected to Leonard Leo, the architect of the rightwing takeover of the American judiciary who helped select Trump’s supreme court nominees, the Guardian has learned.The Washington DC-based non-profit Environmental Law Institute (ELI)’s Climate Judiciary Project holds seminars for lawyers and judges about the climate crisis. It aims to “provide neutral, objective information to the judiciary about the science of climate change as it is understood by the expert scientific community and relevant to current and future litigation”, according to ELI’s website.The American Energy Institute (AEI), a rightwing, pro-fossil fuel thinktank, has been attacking ELI and their climate trainings in recent months. In August, the organization published a report saying ELI was “corruptly influencing the courts and destroying the rule of law to promote questionable climate science”.ELI’s Climate Judiciary Project is “falsely portraying itself as a neutral entity teaching judges about questionable climate science”, the report says. In reality, AEI claims, the project is a partner to the more than two dozen US cities and states who are suing big oil for allegedly sowing doubt about the climate crisis despite longstanding knowledge of the climate dangers of coal, oil and gas usage.In a PowerPoint presentation about the report found on AEI’s website, the group says the Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) is a “wholly aligned with the climate change plaintiffs and helps them corruptly influence judges behind closed doors”.“Their true purpose is to preview the plaintiffs’ arguments in the climate cases in an ex parte setting,” the presentation says.Both the report and the PowerPoint presentation link AEI to CRC Advisors, a public relations firm chaired by rightwing dark money impresario Leo. Given his outsize role in shaping the US judiciary – Leo helped select multiple judicial nominees for former president Donald Trump, including personally lobbying for Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment – his firm’s role in opposing climate litigation is notable.“He was greatly responsible for moving our federal court systems to the right,” said David Armiak, the research director for Center for Media and Democracy, a watchdog group tracking money in politics, of Leo. CRC Advisors’ work with AEI, Armiak said, seemed “to delegitimize a group that’s seeking to inform judges or the judicial system of climate science, something that [Leo] also opposed with some of his other efforts”.The AEI report’s document properties show that its author was Maggie Howell, director of branding and design at CRC Advisors. And the PowerPoint’s document properties lists CRC Advisors’s vice-president, Kevin Daley, as the author.Neither CRC Advisors nor Leo responded to requests for comment.In an email, the American Energy Institute CEO, Jason Isaac, said: “American Energy Institute employed CRC Advisors to edit and promote our groundbreaking report on the corrupt relationship between our federal court system and leftwing dark money groups.”But Kert Davies, the director of special investigations at the non-profit Center for Climate Integrity, who shared the report and PowerPoint with the Guardian, said ELI is “far from leftwing”.The institute’s staff include a wide variety of legal and climate experts. Its board includes executives from Shell Group and BP, oil companies who have been named as defendants in climate litigation, and a partner at a law firm which represents Chevron. Two partners with the law firm Baker Botts LLP, which represents Sunoco LP and its subsidiary, Aloha Petroleum Ltd, in a climate lawsuit filed by Honolulu, also sit on ELI’s leadership council, E&E News previously reported.“ELI’s seminars are giving judges the ABCs of climate change, which is a complicated subject that they ought to know about,” said Davies. “The idea that they’re corruptly influencing the court from the left … is complete disinformation.”Asked for comment about ELI’s connection to oil companies, the AEI CEO, Isaac, said that “all of those companies have embraced and/or are pushing political agendas” that are “contrary to the best interest of Americans, American energy producers, and human flourishing”, including environmental social and governance (ESG) investing and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).“They are the appeasers, the ones feeding the crocodiles,” he said. He did not respond to questions about the extent of the relationship between AEI and CRC Advisors.In a statement, Nick Collins, a spokesperson for ELI, called the AEI report “full of misinformation and created by an organization whose leadership regularly spreads false claims about climate science”, and described the CJP curriculum as “fact-based and science-first, developed with a robust peer review process that meets the highest scholarly standards”.Pending climate litigationAEI’s attack on the judicial climate education program comes as the supreme court considers litigation that could put big oil on the hook for billions of dollars.Honolulu is one of dozens of cities and states to sue oil majors for allegedly hiding the dangers of their products from the public. Hawaii’s supreme court ruled that the suit can go to trial, but the defendants petitioned the US supreme court to review that decision, arguing the cases should be thrown out because emissions are a federal issue that cannot be tried in state courts.This past spring, far-right fossil fuel allies launched an unprecedented campaign pressuring the supreme court to side with the defendants and shield fossil fuel companies from the litigation. Several of the groups behind the campaign have ties to Leo.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn June, the supreme court asked the Biden administration to weigh in on the defendants’ request. Biden officials could respond as soon as Monday.“It’s doubtful that AEI’s timing of their report release was a coincidence,” said Davies.The supreme court may weigh in on another case as early as Monday, too: in April, 20 Republican state attorneys general filed “friend of the court” briefs asking the supreme court to prevent states from being able to sue oil companies for climate damages. All of the signatories are members of the Republican Attorneys General Association, to which Leo’s Concord Fund is a major contributor.CRC AdvisorsIn the weeks since its publication, AEI’s report attacking ELI has received a surge of interest from rightwing media. Fox News featured the report, as did an array of conservative websites. On Thursday, the Hill published an op-ed by Ted Cruz attacking the ELI project. Other rightwing groups have previously questioned the motives of ELI.CRC Advisors has counted Chevron, one of the plaintiffs in Honolulu’s lawsuit, as a client. In 2018, the Leo-led PR firm also worked on a campaign aimed at exonerating the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh from accusations of sexual assault.Davies said it “would not be surprising” if CRC Advisors had a “large role” in the creation or promotion of the AEI report attacking ELI’s judiciary trainings. “They’re known for running campaigns for corporate interests and rightwing interests,” he said.American Energy InstituteIn addition to his work with AEI, Isaac also serves as a fellow at Texas Public Policy Foundation – a thinktank backed by oil and gas companies which has recently garnered scrutiny for its role in drafting the ultraconservative policy playbook Project 2025.A former Republican Texas state representative, Isaac has dedicated much of his career to disputing climate research and promoting misinformation to justify deregulation of the fossil fuel industry. Isaac recently responded to a Twitter post about Climate Week by the EPA, calling the conference on climate change “nothing more than a celebration of people suffering from mental illness, #EcoDysphoria, with those attending insisting the rest of us catch it.”On a 25 September episode of the rightwing Wisconsin talk radio show The Vicki McKenna Show, Isaac offered a defense of the fossil fuel industry, describing oil and gas as keys to prosperity. “I live a high-carbon lifestyle,” he said. “I wish the rest of the world could, too.”Formerly known as Texas Natural Gas Foundation, AEI on its face appears to contribute little more than public relations work in defense of the fossil fuels industry. The group publishes blogposts defending carbon emissions and denouncing the push for climate action. It has also produced a handful of longer reports promoting laws that restrict environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and opposing the widespread adoption of electric vehicles.Among AEI’s board members are Steve Milloy, who served on Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency transition team, once ran a tobacco industry front group, and is a well-known climate denier. Milloy did not respond to a request for comment.According to the group’s most recent tax filings, AEI, which lists four staffers and a CEO on its website, is not a lavish operation. The group brought in about $312,000 in revenue in 2022 and appears to fund its operations at least partly by selling merchandise – among other products, AEI offers T-shirts, tote bags and beer koozies emblazoned with the words “I Embrace The High Carbon Lifestyle”. More
