[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 80 (Tuesday, May 12, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2221-S2222]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Climate Change

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here now for the 307th time with 
my trusty and increasingly battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart to warn 
this Chamber about how America's worst polluters have occupied the 
Trump administration from within.
  These polluters are up to no good. They are desperate--desperate--to 
pollute for free. That is their business model, to pollute for free, 
even though polluting for free is wrong--wrong under the laws of 
economics, wrong under the laws of morality, wrong under the laws of 
nature. But they are desperate to pollute for free because the stakes 
are huge. And the stakes are really huge. The International Monetary 
Fund has calculated that the fossil fuel industry's subsidy from being 
allowed to pollute for free is over $700 billion every year.
  Mr. President, $700 billion every year is a lot of money, and it is a 
lot of motive to fund a lot of mischief.
  The polluters deny the science of what their emissions are doing to 
Earth's natural systems. Indeed, they have mounted a massive fraud 
operation to propagate their climate denial. As I have said in earlier 
speeches, that is actually phase 2. Phase 1 was when their own 
scientists warned them what their emissions would do to Earth's natural 
systems and they chose to hide that information and cover it up.
  But once it became more standard science to know that, then they went 
into the phase 2 part--a massive fraud operation to propagate their 
climate denial.
  Phase 3 was to spend massive amounts of dark money--massive amounts 
of dark money--to influence and control American politics, specifically 
to control the Republican Party. I was here when it was OK to be a 
Republican on a serious climate bill. That was true until January of 
2010, the day that Citizen United was decided. And at that point the 
amount of money that fossil fuel offered made it irresistible for the 
Republican Party to become the party of climate denial.
  And that fossil fuel industry doesn't operate in its own name. It 
operates through many, many front groups, front groups which they play 
like piano keys. It amounts to corruption at epic scale.
  Today, I highlight the polluters' latest corrupt trick, which is to 
use the powers of government, a Federal Government that is theirs now 
to corruptly command, to block low-cost clean energy from getting to 
the grid.
  What is happening is that the polluting industries' expensive 
polluting plants are being outcompeted--outcompeted by reliable 
renewable clean energy like wind and solar. The polluters know that 
their only chance of survival against less expensive, cleaner power is 
to interfere using government.
  So what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into 
the Trump campaign. We know it is hundreds of millions. It could have 
been the whole billion that Trump asked for; but given how complicated 
dark money is, it is hard to tell. We do know they put at least 
hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign.
  And the result is a Trump administration that is paying them back to 
the tune of billions of dollars. And here is the rub: They are using 
your money to pay them.
  From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of the 
Interior to the Department of Energy, polluters have infiltrated the 
government itself and are using its levers to shut down their clean 
energy competition.
  From EPA Administrator Zeldin to Interior Secretary Burgum to Energy 
Secretary Wright, the Trump administration first started by telling the 
big lie--the big lie that clean energy is more expensive than dirty, 
polluting fossil fuel energy. That is, in fact, a lie. But that was the 
opening premise, and then they went to work killing clean energy.
  At EPA, Administrator Zeldin went after congressionally appropriated 
and obligated funds that supported the rollout of affordable clean 
energy. He attacked the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, costing 
consumers potentially $52 billion in lost energy savings, money out of 
consumers' pockets.
  He went after Solar for All funding, costing Americans as much as 
$350 million per year in lost energy savings--billions lost to 
consumers over time.
  Zeldin canceled grants totaling over $1.7 billion, including 
congressionally

[[Page S2222]]

appropriated and obligated funding for clean energy projects. The 
result of all of that was clean, renewable energy kept off the grid, 
increasing the costs that American consumers have to pay.
  The trick is that the extra cost paid by consumers was more money in 
the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors. That is EPA.
  Over at Interior, Secretary Burgum went after the companies trying to 
build and operate affordable clean energy projects. Early in 2025, 
Burgum halted construction on two offshore wind projects off the coast 
of Rhode Island and New York. Later, he ordered a second halt to five 
offshore wind projects--the two he had already stopped that were back 
operational and three more projects in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New 
York.
  That stalled nearly 6 gigawatts of clean electricity. If those 
gigawatts were off the grid, that would mean polluting oil, gas, and 
coal plants would be picking up the slack. That extra 6 gigawatts of 
polluting oil, gas, and coal would, in turn, mean billions of dollars 
to the polluters.
  Thankfully, the courts stepped in again against the illegal Trump 
orders. And the projects continued, but they were stalled.
  Now Interior has a new plan: With taxpayer money, pay off companies 
to walk away from offshore wind leases and, instead, invest the payoff 
money on fossil fuel projects--again, clean renewable energy off the 
grid; increased costs for consumers but more profits for polluters--
Trump's big donors. Three different companies have made these dirty 
deals so far. That is Interior.

  Over at the Department of Energy, Secretary Wright made it his 
mission to ``revive''--their own word--beautiful, clean coal, even 
where no one seems to want it. Trump's Energy Department announced that 
it would provide 625 million taxpayer dollars for retrofits, 
recommissioning, and life-extension projects for coal plants, including 
at least one instance where neither the grid operator nor the local 
utility wanted this intervention.
  DOE then announced $175 million more from taxpayers to extend the 
life of six coal-fired power plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, and 
Ohio. The Department of Energy may have illegally repurposed funds 
Congress had appropriated for carbon capture programs to subsidize 
those coal plants.
  The net result of all of this--increased costs for ratepayers because 
of the expense of running these polluting plants but more profits in 
the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors.
  These attacks from polluters, who have infiltrated the government, 
drive up costs for consumers by billions. The excess costs consumers 
must pay flows to fossil fuel. You know how the grid works. They run 
the clean energy first because it is least expensive. If you can back 
off that low-cost clean energy, the grid has to climb up the generation 
stack to more and more expensive fossil fuel plants. And all that added 
money goes straight to fossil fuel industry pockets--from consumers to 
the fossil fuel industry, a crooked money pump driving up costs for 
consumers.
  You don't even have to kill the plant. Every day that low-cost clean 
energy is delayed is another day that money is steered from consumers' 
pockets into the pockets of the owners and fuel dealers of the 
expensive, polluting fossil fuel units. Those billions are the 
polluters' rewards from Trump.
  In an America deeply concerned about the cost of stuff, this corrupt 
extraction of money from consumers to pay off Trump's big donors won't 
go over well. Cost and corruption are what most concern voters, and 
this scheme is on the wrong side of both, which brings us to the coming 
election.
  Trump is in desperate political trouble. Costs are exploding, and 
corruption is epidemic. Voters are angry. So the big polluters need to 
corrupt the election. A corrupt attack on our elections is the last 
gasp of the big polluters' and creepy billionaires' grasp on power. 
They would rather rule corruptly in an oligarchy than live lawfully in 
a democracy.
  Their attack on democracy uses the corrupted Federal Government as 
its agent. It is an attack coming from inside our own house.
  Just recently, the captured Supreme Court delivered yet another vote-
suppressing service to billionaire-funded Republicans with its 
destruction of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais.
  The Callais case is the culmination of a yearslong ``judicial project 
to destroy the Voting Rights Act,'' quoting Justice Kagan.
  As we all know, in a normal world, judges are supposed to, as Roberts 
once said ``call balls and strikes,'' not have projects to destroy 
legislation crafted by Congress.
  So Justice Kagan using those words is powerful. Discarding decades of 
precedent and ignoring mountains of factual findings made by Congress, 
the Court supercharged Republican partisan gerrymandering across the 
south. And, boy, did it work.
  In just 2 weeks, we have already seen Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, 
Tennessee, and Mississippi begin redrawing voting maps to 
disenfranchise minority voters and benefit Republican candidates.
  This all comes on top of the Court's other persistent mischief--
defending, for instance, billionaires' dark money flooding our 
elections and defending Republican red map gerrymandering.
  Even here, Republicans desperately tried to pass the vote-suppressing 
so-called SAVE Act, supposedly based on the bogus claim that 
undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. That, as 
experienced in States that have looked at similar legislation shows, is 
unequivocally false.
  What would have happened is that the bill's excessive restrictions 
would have disenfranchised millions of legitimate voters, just not the 
kind that Republicans wanted voting.
  As we close in now on the November election, the Trump Federal 
Agencies are already seizing voter files. At least 48 States have 
received requests for their complete voter registration lists. The 
Department of Justice sued 30 of those States and Washington, DC, for 
their refusal to turn over the voter information.
  The administration even faked a criminal investigation to seize 
records in Fulton County, GA, after the DOJ had failed to obtain those 
records through civil proceedings. I won't explain that here because I 
have given a speech on that subject, laying out all of the mischief and 
shenanigans behind that search warrant.
  Even the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, seized 
voting machines in Puerto Rico.
  The plot here is simple. It is to make sure the corrupt billionaires 
keep their control of the government so that they can use their control 
of the government to prop up their pollute-for-free business model and 
keep gouging you on cost. Well, to keep gouging Americans on cost and 
to keep polluting for free and to maintain their corrupt influence over 
the Trump administration, they have got to mess with the election. So 
be alert.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.