This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The world’s biggest climate case begins at The Hague in the Netherlands today. Oral arguments will be heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which will consider what obligations United Nations member states have under international law to protect the planet from greenhouse gas emissions for future generations.

The case begins less than two weeks after negotiations collapsed at the UN’s annual international climate conference, COP29, in Azerbaijan, resulting in a climate finance agreement that’s been widely criticized as inadequate. It also marks the end of the hottest year on record, punctuated by numerous extreme weather events including deadly floods and hurricanes driven by climate change.

“The stakes are not high, they’re devastatingly high,” said Julian Aguon, an attorney representing Vanuatu, the Pacific country leading the case. “It’s an opportunity to finally bring the promise of climate justice closer within reach.” 

The ICJ was established after World War II as a judicial mechanism for mitigating conflicts between United Nations member states and continues to arbitrate disputes issuing advisory opinions interpreting and clarifying international law. Such opinions are non-binding, but are still meaningful because they clarify binding law, such as the meaning of international treaties including the 2015 Paris Agreement that sought to cap the severity of global warming. In 1994, a judgment from the court on war between Libya and Chad over disputed territory prompted Libya to withdraw from Chad, and helped lead to a peace agreement. 

“We have the opportunity to leave behind a more capable international legal regime than we inherited.” 

But the court’s rulings are not always effective. Earlier this year, the ICJ ruled that Israel should end its occupation of the Palestinian territories immediately and make reparations to affected peoples. The occupation has continued, illustrating the limits of the ICJ’s power. In addition, big polluters like China and the US have rejected the court’s compulsory jurisdiction, and so a ruling may apply to them more narrowly.

The court will now decide what if any legal consequences such countries should face for contributing to climate change, both from what they’ve done and what they haven’t done. That could include affirming that big polluters have a legal obligation to pay reparations.

The campaign to bring the case to the ICJ was initiated in 2019 by 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. It has now grown to be the largest case in the 77-year history of the ICJ and will consist of oral arguments from 98 countries and 12 international nongovernmental organizations.

In order to get on the ICJ’s docket, the students who began the case first had to convince Vanuatu’s government to back their campaign for an advisory opinion, then get other Pacific states on board by bringing the issue before the Pacific Forum, the premier diplomatic body in the Oceanic region. 

The pandemic in 2020 interrupted their campaign, preventing the youth from traveling to United Nations’ climate conferences to advocate for their agenda. But the group moved online and managed to drum up support from Pacific island states, Caribbean nations, countries in Africa and Latin America, and dozens more. Slowly the group built enough diplomatic support to get on the agenda at the UN General Assembly, and later, built such a widespread backing that the Assembly approved the resolution calling for an ICJ advisory opinion on climate change by consensus.

“How the law is shaped from here on depends on this moment, depends on the ICJ,” said Vidal Prashad, one of the student campaigners based in Fiji. “We have the opportunity to leave behind a more capable international legal regime than we inherited.” 

Ahead of this week’s oral arguments, young people have continued their campaigning, helping to collect witness testimonies from Indigenous Pacific peoples on how they’re currently being harmed by rising seas and climate change-fueled extreme weather events. They are also helping the governments who plan to present at the ICJ to craft their arguments and ensure they put forth the strongest, most progressive case. Prashad flew from Fiji to The Hague, where the youth’s five-year grassroots effort is finally reaching its conclusion. 

“It will have moral weight…We are doing this for the benefit of the global community.”

Joie Chowdhury, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, which has provided legal support for the case, said a favorable ruling from ICJ would help climate activists hold polluting countries accountable. Youth activists could cite the ruling in future climate litigation against their governments. Politicians could use the ICJ’s opinion to push for sanctions against countries who fail to comply, and diplomats could point to the document as a minimum standard in next year’s global climate change negotiations. “Failure to comply with legal consequences in the face of such devastating climate harm, that’s not just being in contravention of the law, it’s unconscionable,” Chowdhury said. 

She noted that a lot of countries talk big about climate action, but this week’s oral arguments could illuminate what big polluters really think about the idea of being legally liable for their greenhouse gas emissions, something that could provide more clarity on what the barriers to climate action are. And even if it’s not in large countries’ interest to put up money for climate reparations, it is in their interest to appear to respect the treaties that they’ve already agreed to, which the ICJ ruling could help clarify. 

“Climate justice is about accountability,” Chowdhury said. “Climate harm has been done, there was knowledge about this, and there must be redress for frontline communities. And for this court to really clarify that there is a right to remedy and reparation for climate harm, that is really important.”

“It will have moral weight,” said Arnold Kiel Loughman, the attorney general of Vanuatu, who plans to address the court. “We are doing this for the benefit of the global community.”

Climate change witness testimonials from across the Pacific underscore the cost of doing nothing. One village in Papua New Guinea has been forced to move four times due to sea level rise, and is in the midst of its fifth and final relocation. “I say final, because there are simply no more inland (places) to go,” Aguon said. 

Such climate impacts have been existential for Indigenous Pacific peoples whose cultures are intimately connected to the food they grow, the waters they fish, and the lands they call home.

“We have so much to lose,” said Prashad from the University of the South Pacific. “Whole countries are standing to lose their whole identities.”

On Sunday, with less than two months remaining in his presidency, President Biden issued a full and unconditional pardon to his son Hunter, convicted in June on three felony charges related to federal gun crimes and on three felony tax offenses in September. Reactions have been mixed: many have criticized Biden, who argues that his son’s convictions were politically motivated, for setting a poor precedent and breaking a promise not to intervene. Others—even some who are not fans of the president—have said that they sympathize with his decision to pardon his son. 

The controversial decision came after Biden repeatedly committed to not using his presidential powers to interfere in his son’s case—and after months in which Democrats on Capitol Hill, as well as advocates, urged Biden to use his clemency power more broadly to free those incarcerated by federal drug policies that unfairly target Black and brown people. Hunter Biden will not spend a day inside a prison cell for his offenses; the same can’t be said for tens of thousands of people serving federal prison time because of disproportionate conviction and sentencing in the starkly racist War on Drugs. Biden can still pardon many of them, or commute their sentences—and set another, more valuable precedent.

Advocacy groups have praised Biden for some drug-related clemencies, like his move in April to pardon 11 people and commute five sentences the ACLU called unjustly long. Biden also issued pardons in October 2022 for everyone convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law—but, as advocates pointed out, that pardon didn’t actually free anyone who was in prison. 

In October, Senator Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and seven Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee sent Biden a letter urging him to commute sentences that exceeded those set by 2018’s First Step Act, a Trump-era criminal justice reform bill that reduced minimum sentences. The Senate letter suggested that thousands would be freed by the action, and called on the Biden Administration to grant categorical relief to those who faced harsher sentencing for crack cocaine than they would have for its powder form. (The White House did not respond to questions about whether Biden would commute such sentences.)

In 1986, the Anti–Drug Abuse Act—drafted by then Sen. Joe Biden—set a hundred-to-one ratio between the amounts of powder and crack cocaine that triggered a mandatory five-year minimum sentence. A 2010 reform made it a still-disproportionate eighteen-to-one. The discrepancy has disproportionately affected the Black community: In fiscal 2021, almost four in five people convicted of trafficking crack cocaine were Black, compared to 25 percent for powder cocaine. Drug Policy Action, a nonpartisan advocacy group, recently called on Biden to commute sentences lengthened by the disparity.

In 2022, Biden’s Justice Department announced that it would no longer differentiate between powder and crack cocaine when seeking charges, a disparity it said had “no basis in science, furthers no law enforcement purposes, and drives unwarranted racial disparities in our criminal justice system.” Advocates praised the move but pointed out that it was temporary, and only applied to new cases. 

The Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit working for the release of all marijuana prisoners nationwide, joined members of Congress in November on the Capitol steps to call on Biden to “rectify unjust and unnecessary criminal laws passed by Congress and draconian sentences given by judges,” as it wrote in an accompanying letter advocating pardons for federal marijuana convictions.

As pointed out by Sarah Gersten, the group’s executive director, to Marijuana Moment, Biden’s justification for pardoning his son was that the justice system had reached an unjust outcome—which, she says, “is certainly the case for the nearly 3,000 cannabis prisoners who remain incarcerated federally for activity that has been widely legalized.”

Trump’s picks for taking over the federal government range from the conspiratorial to the absurdly underqualified.

But it’s former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, who may take the cake as the president-elect’s most controversial. (He had arguably been tied for that ignominious distinction with former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s brief pick for attorney general who dropped out over accusations of drug use and sexual misconduct.)

Since getting tapped for defense secretary, multiple disturbing accusations against Hegseth have emerged. The latest, revealed in a bombshell-packed New Yorker report late Sunday, centers on allegations of a drinking problem, sexual impropriety, and financial misconduct that reportedly forced Hegseth out of leadership positions from two different nonprofit advocacy groups catering to veterans. (Hegseth is a veteran who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer notes.)

Here are all the allegations Hegseth is currently facing that you should know about:

Mismanagement, a Drinking Problem, and Sexually Inappropriate Behavior

A lengthy report in the New Yorker, from veteran reporter Jane Mayer, alleges that Hegseth was forced to step down from leadership posts at two nonprofit advocacy groups—Veterans for Freedom (VFF) and Concerned Veterans for America (CVA)—before moving to Fox News. Among the alleged reasons for his departure from VFF: Hagseth reportedly racked up more than $400,000 in debt for the organization.

One of Mayer’s main sources is a seven-page whistleblower report focused on Hegseth’s time at CVA, where he was president from 2013 until 2016. The report, compiled by former CVA employees, reportedly describes Hegseth as repeatedly drunk at work events, including one incident that required Hegseth to be restrained from getting on stage at a Louisiana strip club where he had brought his team. The whistleblower report also reportedly alleges that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other managers at the organization sexually pursued some of their female colleagues. Mayer cites another letter from a former employee that details an incident in which Hegseth reportedly drunkenly chanted “Kill all Muslims!” while at a hotel bar during a work trip.

“I’ve seen him drunk so many times,” one of the authors of the whistleblower report told the magazine. “I’ve seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary.”

Hegseth’s lawyer, Tim Parlatore, sent the New Yorker a statement attributed to an adviser to Hegseth that stated: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism.”

Rape Allegation

A recently disclosed police report revealed that a woman accused Hegseth of raping her at a 2017 Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. While no charges were filed and Hegseth claimed the encounter was consensual, he wound up paying the woman as part of a nondisclosure agreement, the Washington Post first reported last month. Parlatore, Hegseth’s lawyer, told the Post that the woman who made the accusation was “the aggressor in initiating sexual activity” and that Hegseth made the payment “knowing that it was the height of the MeToo movement” and afraid he could potentially lose his Fox News position.

His Mother Called Him “an Abuser of Women”

As my colleague Pema Levy wrote this weekend, Hegseth’s mother, Penelope Hegseth, wrote her son an email in 2018 in which she called him “an abuser of women,” adding, “your abuse over the years to women (dishonesty, sleeping around, betrayal, debasing, belittling) needs to be called out.” The letter, first obtained by the New York Times, reportedly focused on how Hegseth treated his ex-wife, Samantha, during their divorce proceedings. Penelope Hegseth told the Times she recanted the accusations she made in the email, alleging she wrote them in anger and immediately followed up to him with an apology. She also called the newspaper’s decision to publish the contents of the email “disgusting.”

Hegseth’s lawyer and a spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones on Monday.

As Pema writes, though, don’t expect the allegations to tank Hegseth’s confirmation hearings:

Trump himself has been found liable for sexual assault, and faced numerous other allegations of assault and cheating. If the commander-in-chief can get away with it, maybe Hegseth can too.

Late last month, Donald Trump named Karoline Leavitt as his incoming press secretary, positioning her to become the youngest person ever to hold the job. That’s a big step up. Just two years ago—following a failed congressional campaign—Leavitt was putting her name on a series of op-eds in right-wing publications lauding a fugitive Chinese mogul who has since been convicted of stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from fans of his purportedly anti-communist movement.

Leavitt’s articles closely echoed topics, talking points, and even specific language that had been prepared for her by supporters of exiled Chinese businessman Guo Wengui, as journalist Walker Bragman and I reported last year. I’ve since confirmed that Guo allies paid Leavitt for these op-eds.

Leavitt’s articles did not include any disclosure to readers that loyalists of Guo—the main subject of these articles—had helped her write them. That omission appears to have led one outlet, Townhall, to take down two Leavitt op-eds from its website last year, shortly after I asked about them. “This column was removed for violating Townhall’s commentary submission guidelines,” the outlet said in editor’s notes where Leavitt’s pieces previously appeared.

Leavitt told me last year that she’d written the articles herself. She did not deny that Guo associates had paid her to publish the stories. “I’m not going to comment to you about my clients or business relationships,” she said at the time.

When I contacted Leavitt recently, she did not answer additional questions or dispute my reporting. In a text message, though, she said she did not read my article last year “because you work for Mother Jones and I, like the 70+ million Americans who just voted for President Trump, don’t pay attention to your left wing propaganda.”

Leavitt, an aide in the first Trump administration who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in New Hampshire in 2022, is stepping into a job previously held by officials with more substantial resumes, some with backgrounds in serious journalism. But Trump’s selection of Leavitt, who said recently that she is prepared to take on a “hostile media,” suggests his preference for messengers who engage in performative combat with journalists.

In the United States, Guo is perhaps best known for bankrolling Steve Bannon. Years earlier, he’d made a fortune as a real-estate developer in China. He fled that country in 2014 to avoid pending criminal charges there and settled in a Manhattan penthouse. Beginning in 2017, he fashioned himself as a prominent critic of the Chinese Communist Party. He posted videos full of mostly uncorroborated allegations of Chinese government corruption that won him a large following in the Chinese diaspora. After partnering with Bannon that year, Guo launched Chinese language news outlets, nonprofits, and other organizations. He used those groups to promote himself, spread disinformation about Covid and other topics, and, in 2020, to push false claims aimed at helping reelect Trump.

Guo has long been dogged by allegations that his anti-CCP rhetoric was a cover for ongoing work on behalf of Chinese intelligence, claims Guo denies. In 2020, Guo ran into bigger problems as federal agents began probing complaints that he had defrauded investors who put up funds for financial ventures he promoted as part of a supposed effort to combat CCP influence.

By early 2023, Guo’s legal troubles were mounting. He had been held in contempt of court by a New York state judge, filed for bankruptcy, and seen many of his assets frozen by federal authorities.

Guo supporters responded with a public relations push in right-wing media. They paid broadcasters for the chance to appear to promote Guo on their shows. Guo supporters also worked to plant stories bolstering Guo’s image and attacking his perceived enemies on conservative websites. In addition to Leavitt, Guo’s backers recruited Gavin Wax, who heads the New York Young Republicans Club; Matt Palumbo, a far right pundit; and Natalie Winters, then an employee of Bannon’s streaming show, War Room, to churn out articles on his behalf.

As Bragman, who writes for OptOut Media’s Important Context publication, first reported last year, “representatives working on behalf of Guo would recruit the writers to place their names on opinion pieces that spoke glowingly of him and his efforts.” These pundits “would to take prompts as well as pre-prepared drafts, which they could then edit,” Bragman reported. The articles, which were placed in various conservative outlets, echoed Guo’s routine allegations that all of his critics—including judges, journalists, lawyers, and former supporters accusing him of fraud—were working for China’s Communist Party.

Last year, I obtained a document prepared by Guo supporters containing a list of prompts and talking points for proposed articles. Four of Leavitt’s articles repeated arguments or wording that appeared in these prompts. (See chart below.)

One of the prompts suggested an article alleging that three men frequently criticized by Guo—who often uses the first name “Miles”—were Chinese agents. The article, the prompt instructed, should argue that “these three CCP billionaires, or white gloves, are the primary source of illegitimate funding for the CCP’s unrestricted warfare abroad, including the CCP’s #1 priority goal of removing Miles.”

In a March 2023 Townhall article, Leavitt asserted that those three men—who she, too, described as “white gloves”—“are the primary source of illegitimate funding for the CCP’s unrestricted warfare abroad, including the CCP’s number one priority goal of removing a key Chinese freedom fighter, Miles Guo.”

Leavitt’s pieces fawned over Guo. She called him “an incredibly influential Chinese dissident” and “a renowned critic of the Chinese Communist Party.” The articles also echoed highly specific complaints Guo often made. In a March 14 Headline USA piece, Leavitt wrote about a 2017 hack of computers at a law firm that had represented Guo in an asylum bid. The piece tracked claims in a lawsuit Guo filed against the firm, and called the little-know incident “a disturbing reminder of the lengths to which authoritarian regimes will go to silence dissent and suppress free speech.”

Claiming credit for writing that was partially produced by others is not that unusual in online commentary. Senators do it. But Leavitt used material provided by people who were working on behalf of the subject of her articles, and she concealed the arrangement.

Professor Debora Weber-Wulff, who studies media ethics at Berlin University, said in an email that “lack of disclosure is the most problematic part of this.”

“It does smell,” Weber-Wulff added.

Leavitt’s articles praising Guo appeared shortly before his March 15, 2023, arrest on fraud charges. Prosecutors said that Guo stole investments made by people who believed he would use the funds as part of an effort to oust the Chinese Communist Party. Instead he used them for items including a $25 million mansion, $1 million worth of chandeliers, $978,000 of rugs, a $3.5 million Ferrari, and two $36,000 mattresses.

A Manhattan jury convicted Guo in July 2024 on nine counts, including racketeering conspiracy and securities fraud. Guo’s claim to be “a key Chinese freedom fighter,” the verdict suggested, was part of a massive con.

Asked if she stood by her cheerleading for Guo, Leavitt did not respond.

KAROLINE LEAVITT’S GUO OP-EDS Leavitt’s articles echoed talking points and language suggested by Guo’s supporters. Some of the claims below are baseless. Mother Jones is highlighting them not to suggest they are accurate but rather to show the similarities between the prompts and the published op-eds. What Guo’s Supporters Proposed: Professional Communist Moneyman: How Chinese Billionaires Are Bankrolling the CCP’s Foreign Expansion This article should focus on three people: Bruno Wu, Shan Weijian, and Jho Low. These three CCP billionaires, or white gloves, are the primary source of illegitimate funding for the CCP’s unrestricted warfare abroad, including the CCP’s #1 priority goal of removing Miles. What Leavitt Wrote: The American Denominator in CCP’s Global Dominance: Communist Moneyman and American Traitors …There are many white gloves, but three individuals Bruno Wu, Shan Weijian, and Jho Low are the primary source of illegitimate funding for the CCP’s unrestricted warfare abroad, including the CCP’s number one priority goal of removing a key Chinese freedom fighter, Miles Guo… Townhall, 3/2/23 What Guo’s Supporters Proposed: What The Hack: How CCP Cyber Warfare Brought an American Law Firm to its Knee This Article should focus on Clark Hill, a law firm hired by Guo to file his political asylum case. Clark Hill got all of its computers hacked and held as hostage by the CCP, and caved into the CCP’s influence, sold information to the CCP and helped to persecute Miles. What Leavitt Wrote: How a CCP Cyber-Attack Brought an American Law Firm to its Knees …However, strong questions remain that Clark Hill may have caved to pressure from the CCP and betrayed their client’s trust… Headline USA, 3/14/23 What Guo’s Supporters Proposed: First Amendment: Our First Line of Defense Against the CCP Use this article to talk about how the first admentend, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, is the most critical right in our fight against the CCP. And our enemies, the CCP and its enablers, absolutely hate it. Talk about how U.S. media is afraid of criticizing the CCP, how Shan weijian’s lawyers sent a letter to The Washington Times after they published Walker’s article, and how Judge Manning – the Bankruptcy Judge over Miles’ case – issued a court injunction against peaceful NFSC protesters… What Leavitt Wrote: American Media Must Stand Firm Against CCP-Sponsored Lawfare …On Jan. 30 this year, an American law firm, representing the “Pacific Alliance Asia Opportunity Fund”, a group with extensive links to CCP-controlled China, sent a demand letter to the Washington Times… Townhall, 2/10/23 What Guo’s Supporters Proposed: Exposed: DOJ-Employed Attorney Secretly Met with Chinese Ambassador to sell out America This article should focus on George Higginbathom’s trip to the Chinese Embassy in DC to meet with Cui Tiankai, then sitting Chinese Ambassador. The article should be very figurative, giving readers the freedom of imagination. The emphasis should be to show, from this example, how deep and how easily the DOJ could be and has been infiltrated by the CCP. We really want to hit home with this Higginbotham story. Make it thrilling! More sources coming What Leavitt Wrote: The Risk of CCP Influence on the DOJ for National Security and Legal System …The DOJ was swept up in a shocking infiltration that showcases how truly weak and vulnerable America’s intelligence agencies are to CCP infiltration… Epoch Times, 2/17/23

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

President-elect Donald Trump’s vow to kill offshore wind energy development “on day one” of his second term is already triggering project slowdowns on the East Coast, but the biggest wind farm proposed in the Gulf of Mexico will likely stay on track. 

That’s because the project is on such a long development timeline that Trump’s four-year term will be over before permitting and construction begin, according to RWE, the German energy giant that plans to build a 2,000-megawatt wind farm about 40 miles south of Lake Charles, Louisiana. The project, which could power more than 350,000 homes, isn’t expected to be operational for about a decade. 

“The project has a long-lead development timeline that is longer than any one federal administration, and with a planned operational date in the mid-2030s,” RWE spokesman Ryan Ferguson said. 

RWE, the world’s second-largest offshore wind developer, and other key players in the renewable energy industry announced shifts in funding priorities and warned of project delays and possible derailments after Trump was elected president this month. 

“The change of administration in the US entails risks for the timely implementation of offshore wind projects,” RWE Chief Financial Officer Michael Muller said at a press conference earlier this month. “The new Republican administration could delay specific projects. The realization of our Community Offshore Wind project near New York, for example, depends on outstanding permits from US federal authorities.”

The “higher risks and delays” in the US offshore wind market prompted RWE to initiate a $1.6 billion share buyback, RWE CEO Markus Krebber said during a call with investors. The buyback signaled a significant shift in the company’s short-term spending priorities but not waning confidence in the durability of US demand for renewables, Muller said, noting that a growing number of states are setting goals for solar and wind energy. 

RWE’s recalibration makes sense, said Jenny Netherton, the Southeastern Wind Coalition’s Louisiana program manager. “That was not unexpected,” she said. “Companies are always trying to find the best way forward in an uncertain environment.”

“Nationally, there’s very little control over what happens, but in Louisiana, offshore wind has a very clear path forward.”

Trump’s opposition to offshore wind began in 2006, when he initiated a decade-long fight against the Scottish government over a proposed wind farm the future US president said would spoil the view from a golf course he hoped to build. Trump lost the battle and was ordered to pay Scotland nearly $300,000 in legal fees. In recent speeches, Trump has said wind farms harm property values and wildlife. More outlandishly, he has claimed wind energy causes cancer, increases food prices, and prevents people from watching TV when the wind isn’t blowing. 

During his first term, Trump was accused of “slow walking” the permits for some of the first offshore wind farms in federal waters. RWE and other companies say wind farms already under construction will likely move forward, but projects slated to break ground over the next couple years may face setbacks. 

Of the 30 states with offshore wind potential, nine have statewide wind energy mandates. Two states—Massachusetts and Rhode Island—have deadlines to reach wind energy targets in the 2020s and four states—New York, Connecticut, Maryland, and Virginia—have deadlines in the 2030s. 

These goals and the US’s ever-rising electricity needs are signs that Trump may slow but not kill wind energy development, Muller said. 

“We still believe US offshore wind [energy] is still needed,” he said, noting New York in particular. “If they are going to keep up with demand, they need offshore wind.”

Louisiana set a goal of developing the capacity for 5,000 megawatts of offshore wind energy by 2035, but the target wasn’t legally binding. Proposed in 2021 during the administration of Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, the goal appears to have been abandoned by Governor Jeff Landry, who took office in January. The Republican governor has said little publicly about offshore wind development and has not responded to requests seeking his position on the matter. 

Many other Louisiana Republicans strongly back offshore wind, seeing it as an economic boon for the state. Louisiana companies that long served the offshore oil and gas industry have seen business flag in recent years. Several of them, including shipbuilders, engineering firms, and metal fabricators, have easily transitioned to helping plan and build offshore projects on the East Coast, including the US’s first offshore wind farm.

Bipartisan legislation in Louisiana paved the way for a fast-tracked approval process for wind projects in state-managed waters, which extend 3 miles from the coast. Louisiana has approved agreements with two companies to build small-scale wind farms near Cameron Parish and Port Fourchon, the Gulf’s largest oil and gas port. The two projects will likely be built years before the RWE wind farm. 

The last federal lease auction in the Gulf was canceled in July due to weak interest from bidders, but two companies recently offered competing plans for a 142,000-acre area near Galveston, Texas. It’s unclear how Trump’s victory will affect those proposals. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management is waiting to see if there’s more developer interest in the area and will likely initiate a competitive lease sale in the coming months. 

While Trump may cause uncertainty at the federal level, Louisiana isn’t likely to waver in its support for offshore wind energy, Netherton said. 

“It still enjoys broad support here,” she said. “Nationally, there’s very little control over what happens, but in Louisiana, offshore wind has a very clear path forward.”

This coverage was made possible through a partnership between Grist and Deep South Today, a nonprofit network of local newsrooms providing essential journalism in underserved communities and ensuring its long-term growth and sustainability.

In 2016, when Tennessee OBGYN Susan Lacy learned she would be providing gender-affirming care to transgender patients in her new job at a reproductive health clinic in Memphis, she felt out of her depth. But it didn’t take long to realize that hormone treatments for trans folks weren’t so different from those she’d been providing for years to cisgender patients. She already knew how to use pills, patches, gels, and injections, with their different formulations and side effects, to reduce menopausal night sweats, hot flashes, and brain fog. Patients who took hormones for gender dysphoria told her they felt a similar sense of relief. “It didn’t matter about socioeconomics, age, race, feminizing or masculinizing hormone therapy,” Lacy says. Often the first reaction was, “I finally feel like I can think straight.”

Now a gynecologist in solo practice, Lacy has more than 300 adult trans patients. At one time, her patient list also included trans teenagers with the consent of their parents. But last year, Tennessee prohibited the prescription of certain medications to minors to treat the distress many trans people feel when their bodies do not align with their gender identity. Under the law, cisgender kids could keep receiving the meds: puberty blockers for those who start puberty too early, for instance, or testosterone or estrogen for teens who enter puberty late. But if the purpose was to treat gender dysphoria, those same medications were forbidden.

On Wednesday, the US Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a landmark lawsuit challenging the Tennessee ban, brought by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice, Lacy, and three trans minors and their families. United States v. Skrmetti is one of the biggest cases of the term and the first major trans-rights case to be heard by the court since far-right lawmakers and policy groups launched a coordinated campaign inundating statehouses with hundreds of anti-trans bills a few years ago. Legal experts say the Skrmetti case could shape the landscape for trans rights for years to come, while testing how far the Court’s conservative supermajority is willing to extend its 2022 decision allowing states to ban abortion: Will the justices give states free rein to outlaw yet another form of healthcare?

“Before treatment, I hid,” one plaintiff, 15-year-old Ryan Roe, wrote in a declaration asking a federal judge to put the ban on hold. But with hormone therapy, “I am raising my hand in class again and participating in all aspects of school. I feel stronger—physically, mentally and emotionally. I feel so happy with myself and that makes me feel like I can do and be more.” 

That changed, he added, when Tennessee lawmakers began debating the gender-affirming care ban. “Hopelessness creeped in again.”

The Skrmetti arguments are happening at a time of intense fear and vulnerability for the trans community. President-elect Donald Trump and his allies bet on transphobia to take back the White House and Congress, pouring millions into anti-trans campaign ads and vowing a broad crackdown on what Trump refers to as “left-wing gender insanity” (though the extent to which trans issues swayed the electorate remains unclear). Supported by groups like the Heritage Foundation, the think tank behind Project 2025, and Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious-right legal behemoth, states have made particular targets of trans young people, restricting their use of school bathrooms and locker rooms, their participation in sports, and discussion of LGBTQ-related topics in classrooms and libraries. 

They have also targeted medical care, with nearly half of states outlawing gender-affirming treatments for people under 18, cutting off access for an estimated 118,300 trans teens. The bans have been enacted over the objections of virtually all leading US medical associations, which consider such treatments clinically appropriate. One study of almost 12,000 trans teenagers found that those who received hormone therapy reported lower rates of depression and suicidality compared to those who wanted but didn’t receive the treatment. When Tennessee’s ban took effect, Lacy says, “the biggest sense from the patients was despair—anger and despair.” Parents, meanwhile, were frustrated: “Why can I not make this decision for my child?”

“It is painful to even think about having to go back to the place I was in before I was able to come out and access the care that my doctors have prescribed for me,” one of the plaintiffs, a 15-year-old trans girl known as L.W., wrote in a declaration. She struggled to focus and connect with friends, and got sick when she had to use the boy’s bathroom at school.

“It is painful to even think about having to go back to the place I was in before I was able to come out and access the care that my doctors have prescribed for me.”

L.W.’s mother, Samantha Williams, wrote in a declaration of her own that starting gender-affirming medical care had improved her daughter’s physical and mental health: “She has more confidence, she is fully present, and not only does she accept hugs, but she also gives hugs.” The Tennessee ban prompted Williams and her husband to consider moving their family away from relatives, work, and the community where their two children had grown up. “I do not want to see her go back to the dark place she was in prior to coming out and receiving the life-saving treatment she needs,” Williams wrote.

LGBTQ-rights organizations have filed lawsuits over almost every gender-affirming care ban, with Skrmetti the first case to reach the Supreme Court. Now, justices are being asked to set the standard under which lower-court judges must evaluate whether laws like Tennessee’s violate the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution. The justices’ eventual decision could have implications not just for gender-affirming care bans, but for future anti-trans laws in statehouses and Congress. “It will tell the next administration whether it’s open season to continue with these attacks on trans young folks and transgender people more broadly,” says Jenny Pizer, chief legal officer of the LGBTQ civil rights organization Lambda Legal, “or whether there’s going to be some limits.”

There’s a potential wild card in the mix: When Trump takes office, his Department of Justice is likely to try to reverse the Biden administration’s position and withdraw the case. Pizer says that if that happens, there’s no telling how the Supreme Court would respond. They could agree to kill the case, deny the request, or push a decision off till next term. Or, they could let the federal government withdraw but allow the case to proceed, with only the Tennessee families and Lacy as plaintiffs.

Legally speaking, the main issue in the case boils down to the question of whether bans on gender-affirming care are a form of sex-based discrimination. If they are, then states going forward will have to prove, when challenged, that the bans are “substantially related” to an “important state interest.” That’s a fairly high bar—one that would require judges to weigh the medical and scientific evidence around the prohibited treatments. When trial courts have looked at that evidence in the past, they’ve overturned the bans, siding with the trans youth and their families.

In fact, that’s what happened in the Middle District of Tennessee federal court, where the Skrmetti case started. “The Court acknowledges that the state feels strongly that the medical procedures banned by [the law] are harmful to minors,” District Judge Eli Richardson wrote last year in an order temporarily blocking the law. “The medical evidence on the record, however, indicates otherwise.”

Richardson’s decision wasn’t controversial at the time—every federal judge, including Trump appointees, who had looked at gender-affirming care bans up until that point had blocked them. But the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Tennessee, went the other way, ruling 2 to 1 that the law did not discriminate based on sex, and thus it didn’t have to meet the higher level of scrutiny. (The judges also shot down the plaintiffs’ two other arguments—that anti-trans discrimination is unique and merits a closer look by the courts, and that the ban violates parents’ right to direct their children’s medical care.) In the 14 months since that decision, more courts have upheld gender-affirming care bans for minors, including in Ohio, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

If the Supreme Court agrees with the Sixth Circuit’s approach, courts going forward will apply the lowest level of scrutiny to gender-affirming care bans. The result, says Jess Braverman, legal director at the advocacy group Gender Justice, would be “like a rubber stamp.”

Casual Supreme Court observers would be forgiven for thinking that the question of whether anti-trans discrimination counts as sex discrimination has already been settled. In his majority opinion in the court’s last major trans-rights case, Bostock v. Clayton County in 2020, Justice Neil Gorsuch stated, “It is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.” But since that ruling, which involved a funeral home employee who was fired after transitioning, conservative lawyers and public officials have been trying to limit Bostock from being applied to situations beyond employment. The result has been an escalation of the legal battles over federal protections for trans people: Do existing sex-discrimination laws shield them at school? What about at the doctor’s office?

In arguing that Tennessee’s ban discriminates based on sex, DOJ lawyers point to the text of the law, which explicitly says that the state wants to “encourage[e] minors to appreciate their sex” and forbid treatments that might “encourage minors to become disdainful of their sex.” The “purpose is to force boys and girls to look and live like boys and girls,” appellate judge Helene White summarized in a dissent from the Sixth Circuit ruling. Under the law, kids can receive puberty blockers and hormone therapy if the medications are provided to help them conform their bodies to their sex assigned at birth, but not if the treatments are provided to help them not conform. “There is no way to determine whether these treatments must be withheld from any particular minor without considering [the minor’s] sex,’” DOJ lawyers argue in their Supreme Court briefing.

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti contends that the ban does not discriminate based on sex. Instead, he says, the law is a health care regulation that applies to everyone. “The law draws a line between minors seeking drugs for gender transition and minors seeking drugs for other medical purposes,” he argues in his brief. “Boys and girls fall on both sides of that line.”

In making that argument, Skrmetti repeatedly cited Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the 2022 case that overturned the federal right to abortion. As Susan Rinkunas has noted over at The New Republic, the Tennessee AG is picking up on an aside by Justice Samuel Alito in the Dobbs ruling that Mississippi’s abortion ban didn’t violate the Equal Protection Clause because, according to the justice, the ban didn’t discriminate based on sex. To back up this assertion, Alito cited a Supreme Court ruling from 1974, Geduldig v. Aiello, which held that an insurance policy specifically excluding pregnancy-related coverage was not a form of sex discrimination, and applied to everyone. That ruling and a related decision were deemed so outrageous at the time that Congress swiftly enacted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to override them.

Now, there is a risk that when the Supreme Court decides Skrmetti, it will apply the same reasoning from Geduldig and Alito’s sidenote in Dobbs: Even when laws restrict medical treatments that only matter for certain groups—like pregnant women, or trans people—those laws aren’t inherently discriminatory, because not every member of that group requires that type of care. “It’s kind of like our Supreme Court is a bunch of freshman philosophy students,” Braverman says. “It’s like they’re all asking, ‘Do we see the same color when we see yellow?’ Except lives are at stake.”

“It’s kind of like our Supreme Court is a bunch of freshman philosophy students. It’s like they’re all asking, ‘Do we see the same color when we see yellow?’ Except lives are at stake.”

To Braverman, it’s no surprise that the arguments being used to defend bans on gender-affirming care are the same as those used to defend bans on abortion. “It’s the same people who are litigating it in court, and they’re making the same argument,” Braverman says. “If we treat what’s happening to transgender people as though it’s happening in a vacuum, everyone’s going to lose all their rights.” If the Supreme Court sides with Tennessee, for example, states might be emboldened to try banning other types of sex-specific healthcare, such as IVF or birth control, the ACLU warns.

“The real question in this case is, ‘Can powerful interest groups like the Heritage Foundation or Alliance Defending Freedom make up lies about your health care, and then use those lies to make your healthcare illegal?” Shawn Thomas Meerkamper, senior staff attorney at the Transgender Law Center, said in a briefing for journalists. “Because that’s what’s happening here.”

“One of the things that I think is so concerning about these laws is allowing legislators with no medical knowledge to restrict care for a specific diagnosis,” Lacy says from her office in Memphis. When the Tennessee ban came down, she tried to help her young patients find ways to keep up their existing prescriptions. Some families drove across the border to a clinic in Illinois or flew to other states where the medications were still legal. But for patients needing new prescriptions, her hands were tied.

She thinks about the families that never call her office in the first place—the “chilling effect” stopping parents from even considering medical care as an option after their children come out as trans. “I think when that law was passed, a lot of those parents just said, ‘Nope, can’t even deal with it,’” Lacy says. “Prior, they would say, ‘Well, let’s go in and let’s at least have the conversation.’”

Beyond the chilling effect, Lacy fears how laws like Tennessee’s worsen hostility toward transgender people. She worries about her own daughter, who came out as trans as a young adult, being judged based on how others perceive her gender identity. “There’s just a fear of the risk of existing in the world where the state is saying that you don’t have a right to exist,” Lacy says. “And that’s very, very frightening.”

What do anti-vaxxers and abortion opponents have in common? They both see an ally in David Weldon, who is now President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The physician and ex–Florida congressman’s track record includes introducing legislation that would have stripped the CDC of its authority to conduct research on vaccine safety and instead given it to an independent agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Weldon has also promoted the unfounded theory that vaccines lead to childhood autism—a false claim boosted infamously in the past by Trump’s pick for HHS Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And on abortion, Weldon is responsible for an eponymous federal law that prohibits HHS from funding any entities that “discriminate” against health care providers, hospitals, or insurance plans who opt out of providing abortion care—which the Trump administration “weaponized” to enact its anti-abortion agenda during his first term, according to the National Women’s Law Center. Weldon introduced the amendment in the House in 2004, and it has been passed as part of the HHS spending bill every year since 2005.

While in Congress, Weldon also co-sponsored legislation that sought to bar HHS from providing any Title X family planning funding to entities that provide abortions. (Then-Rep. Mike Pence sponsored that bill, and Trump enacted that policy in office, when Pence was vice president.) Weldon also supported a bill that proposed studying unsubstantiated links between abortion and depression.

Neither Weldon nor Trump have been shy about acknowledging these positions. On Weldon’s campaign site for his unsuccessful run for the Florida statehouse earlier this year, he promotes his record on so-called “vaccine safety,” as well as his “100% pro-life voting record” and the anti-abortion amendments he passed in Congress. When Trump announced Weldon as his choice to run the CDC on Nov. 22, he noted Weldon’s history “addressing issues within HHS and CDC,” including that he “worked with the CDC to enact a ban on patents for human embryos.”

“Dave will proudly restore the CDC to its true purpose, and will work to end the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and Make America Healthy Again!” Trump wrote.

Anti-vaxxers and abortion opponents are now celebrating the fact that Weldon could potentially control the CDC’s more than $9 billion budget.

“He is one of us!! Since before our movement had momentum,” the co-director of the anti-vaxx group Mississippi Parents for Vaccine Rights wrote on social media.

“This is YUGE!” a similar group in Oklahoma claimed, praising Weldon’s efforts to stop the CDC from conducting vaccine research.

And both the anti-abortion site Live Action and the right-wing Daily Signal ran pieces highlighting Weldon’s anti-abortion record, following Trump’s announcement. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, told the Daily Signal that Weldon “is a proven leader for life, and we look forward to working with him.”

Now in the national spotlight, Weldon appeared to walk back his most ardent anti-vaccine beliefs of the past: He told the New York Times this week, “I give shots, I believe in vaccination.” On abortion, though, Weldon seems to be more status quo: His campaign website from this year says, “I will always vote to protect the unborn and support a culture that celebrates the value of life.”

In the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners. (The still ongoing January 6 case, including scores of prosecutions for assaults on police, is one of the FBI’s largest and most successful criminal investigations ever.) Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump.

Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.

The QAnon theory, which arose in 2017, holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump. This evil band supposedly includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business tycoons, and other notables. Those who believe this bunk see Trump as a hero who is secretly battling this conspiracy in a titanic, behind-the-scenes struggle. It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence.

Yet Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging. As Media Matters reported: “Patel’s catering to the QAnon community has also gone beyond the @Q account. In July, he posted an image featuring a flaming Q on Truth Social and starting in at least April, he went on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Truth Social—urging viewers to join the platform, praising hosts for being on the platform, and promising to promote the hosts there.” On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”

“There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” Patel said of QAnon, which he called a “movement.”

On another show, Patel acknowledged he was courting the QAnon crowd for Truth Social: “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breath of the MAGA and the America First movement. And so what I try to do is—what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can’t ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following.” He praised QAnon, saying, “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” and he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel praised Q for starting a “movement.”

Appearing on Grace Time TV in Septmeber 2022, Patel said of the QAnon community, “We’re just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have.” He added, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.”

When Patel was promoting a children’s book he wrote—about a King Donald who is persecuted by his political enemies—he offered ten copies in which he signed the books and added a special message: “WWG1WGA!”” That’s the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” He hyped this special offer on Truth Social using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA.”

“Let’s have fun with the truth,” Patel said.

Appearing on the MatrixxxGrove Show, Patel defended his use of the QAnon motto: “People keep asking me about all this Q stuff. I’m like, what does it matter? What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way?” He added, “Let’s have fun with the truth.” He also characterized the QAnon movement as being a vital part of the national debate: “Basically, the bottom line is—and I get attacked for calling out some of the stuff that quote-unquote Q says and whatnot. I’m like, what’s the problem with that? It’s social discourse.”

Patel is a purveyor of far-right conspiracism in other ways that overlap with QAnon. He claims a nefarious Deep State controls the US government and is arrayed against Trump and conservatives. He encourages paranoia and calls for revenge. Talking to MAGA strategist Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast last year, Patel proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whither its criminally or civilly.”

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.”“We will go out and find the conspirators… Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media."

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T01:02:24.157Z

Seeking retribution, spreading conspiracy theories, backing an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, supporting J6 rioters, echoing Moscow talking points—none of this is what one would see in a responsible choice for FBI director. But Patel’s cozying up to QAnon is especially troubling. Among many vital duties, the FBI director oversees the federal government’s efforts to combat violent crime—an area where QAnon remains a concern. Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit. Neither is an approach suitable for the most powerful and important law enforcement agency in the land.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As President-elect Donald Trump puts together a team that will ramp up fossil fuel production in a country that is already pumping out more crude oil than any nation in history, critics are beginning to use a term once reserved for reviled foes.

Specifically, they are asking: Is the United States on its way to becoming a petrostate?

Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program, raised the question after Trump tapped Chris Wright, CEO of the Denver fracking company Liberty Energy, to lead the Department of Energy. Wright accepts that carbon emissions make the planet warmer, but contrary to the scientific consensus, he argues that the financial and quality-of-life benefits of increased fossil fuel production outweigh the risks. 

“Picking someone like Chris Wright is a clear sign that Trump wants to turn the US into a pariah petrostate,” Su said in an emailed statement. “He’s damning frontline communities and our planet to climate hell just to pad the already bloated pockets of fossil fuel tycoons.”

Climate scientist Michael Mann offered the same view in an essay soon after the election. “The United States is now poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests,” he wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “It is now, in short, a petrostate.”

Economists and political scientists point out that the United States does not fit the classical definition of a petrostate. Its economy is far more diverse than those of nations that are hamstrung by dependence on oil and natural gas. Moreover, the vast majority of the wealth generated by fossil fuel production here goes to private parties—not into government coffers.

And yet, experts concede that the United States behaves like a petrostate at times: for example, in its long-time inaction on climate change and, more recently, in the way it conducts foreign policy as the world’s leading oil and gas exporter. The fossil fuel industry’s influence is bound to be amplified under Trump, who does not view climate change as a serious problem and who describes “energy dominance” as a policy imperative. 

“The United States is acting a bit like, I wouldn’t necessarily say a petrostate, but like a state in which the hydrocarbon industry is a huge domestic constituency and source of employment and private sector revenues and now exports,” said Cullen Hendrix, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The oil and gas industry—even by its own reckoning—currently accounts for just 8 percent of the US economy. Trump’s presidency will test whether competing interests—including businesses, states, and citizens that favor a clean energy transition—can exert enough influence to prevent the United States from going down the path that has hobbled the governance and economies of nations that are reliant on a single commodity.

Trump was not successful in permanently quashing the drive for clean energy in his first term. President Joe Biden was able to restore the US’s place in the Paris Agreement negotiations, reverse most of Trump’s deregulatory decisions and pass the nation’s first comprehensive climate legislation.

But Mann, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, argues that the risks are greater in Trump’s second term that wealthy fossil fuel interests will gain a durable advantage in the US political system.

“This time polluters and plutocrats have made sure they’re ready to hit the ground running,” Mann wrote in an email, pointing to the conservative policy roadmap, Project 2025, written by former Trump administration officials and supporters to guide his agenda. “They won’t waste any time at all eliminating the obstacles to a fossil fuel industry-driven agenda.”

True petrostates typically have state-owned oil companies and seek to maximize revenue as a matter of policy. In Azerbaijan, for example—the country where this year’s international climate talks took place—oil and gas output accounts for more than 90 percent of export revenue and over half of its national budget.

“I think it’s worth remembering that this is not that abnormal for the United States.”

In the United States, private and publicly traded oil and gas companies seek to influence the political process through lobbying and campaign contributions. In 2024, oil and gas industry political giving reached a record $219 million, overwhelmingly favoring Republicans and conservative groups, according to the watchdog group Open Secrets.

But the fossil fuel industry is also woven into the U.S. political fabric in ways that resemble the structure of petrostates. More than 60 percent of the $138 billion in taxes that the fossil fuel industry pays annually goes to state, local and tribal governments, according to a study by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future, or RFF.

Wyoming gets 59 percent of its state budget from fossil fuel revenue; North Dakota, 29 percent; and Alaska, 21 percent. Other states, though less reliant, take in staggering sums, led by Texas, at $14.6 billion annually; California, $7.8 billion; and Pennsylvania, $4.4 billion. And the money going into state coffers reflects the far larger impact the industry is having on state economies and jobs.

Because institutions like the Electoral College and the US Senate give states outsized power compared to their populations, fossil fuel-reliant regions can hold considerable sway over national politics and policy. For example, political observers say that part of the reason Vice President Kamala Harris talked little about the climate accomplishments of her administration during her presidential campaign, and instead repeated her pledge not to ban fracking, was a vain effort to win the swing state of Pennsylvania, the nation’s No. 2 natural gas producer.

The shape of current US climate policy was dictated by the political realities of the Senate, where it would be impossible to get the 66 votes needed to ratify a conventional climate treaty or 60 votes to pass substantive climate legislation. The Obama administration helped design a Paris agreement that contained no binding legal obligations, and therefore would not require Senate ratification. And the Biden administration’s climate legislation was an incentives package wrapped in a spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which required only a bare majority for passage (and got one only with Harris’ tie-breaking vote). 

“The US has always had a hard time enacting climate policy,” said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at RFF who led its fossil fuel revenue study. “The Inflation Reduction Act was the exception rather than the rule, and it’s also a very unusual kind of climate policy. Most of the rest of the world use carbon pricing or regulatory tools. We couldn’t do any of that because of the political dynamics, so we went for the subsidy-based approach.”

But now, the Trump administration is intent on unraveling those policies. Trump’s job is made easier because the policies weren’t the product of a bipartisan consensus for climate action.

“I think it’s worth remembering that this is not that abnormal for the United States,” Raimi said. “Unfortunately, this is kind of where we have been for most of the last few decades.”

Fracking, which unleashed a flood of oil and gas on the US market beginning in 2010, laid the groundwork for Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.

Trump liked to say that the United States became energy independent on his watch, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production in 2018 and the following year, becoming a net exporter of energy for the first time in more than 60 years. But those trends began under Obama and have accelerated under Biden, with the United States producing 12.9 million barrels per day of crude oil in 2023, more than any other nation in history.

Mammoth facilities have been built in recent years to export liquefied natural gas, or LNG. And in 2015, Congress lifted a four-decade-old ban on US exports of crude oil, responding to the oil industry’s plea that it needed to be able to compete with petrostates for the nation’s own welfare. “Today’s vote starts us down the path to a new era of energy security,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerrard said at the time. American producers, he said, “would be able to compete on a level playing field with countries like Iran and Russia, providing security to our allies.”

Biden put that concept into action after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, increasing LNG shipments to the European Union to undercut Russia’s role as a crucial energy supplier to the continent. For the past three years, the United States has provided half of the EU’s LNG supplies, a cushion that has helped allies cope with a precipitous fall in the energy supply from Russia.

Early this year, Biden paused approval of new LNG ports pending a study of their greenhouse gas impact—but a federal judge lifted that moratorium and Trump plans to end it altogether, potentially clearing the way for 20 proposed new LNG terminals. LNG could play a bigger foreign policy role, even if Trump should succeed in ending the Ukraine war “in 24 hours,” as he has promised.

“It seems clear that the second Trump administration is going to want to use this energy leverage to exact concessions from Europe on a variety of fronts,” Hendrix said. “It might be increasing military spending, or more military spending earmarked for U.S. arms exports, or more guarantees to purchase more U.S. exports generally.”

The EU may be ready to deal. The day after the election, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed that the EU might be able to head off Trump tariffs by agreeing to buy more LNG from the United States. 

A number of forces may work against the oil and gas industry’s interests during the new Trump administration.

Other industries may succeed in holding off some of the planned regulatory rollbacks, like auto manufacturers, who have invested billions of dollars in electric vehicle and battery plants in anticipation of the clean energy transition they see taking place globally.

States that have new clean energy projects or a long-term commitment to fighting climate change will make their voices heard. “We are going to move forward in the United States, state by state, county by county, city by city, in continuing our tremendous dynamic growth of our clean energy economy,” said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington in a news conference after the election.

Environmentalists, landowners and fishing operations already are in court fighting the construction of new LNG terminals. Judges have ruled against three LNG projects so far this year, indicating Trump will not be able to make new ports appear on the Gulf Coast overnight.

And finally, some experts rightly acknowledge that Trump’s own energy policy vision may be at odds with itself. Trump frequently said he wanted to return to the “beautiful number” of $1.87 per gallon gasoline—where prices bottomed out during his final year in office.

Gasoline prices were so low in 2020, however, because the global economy had ground to a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Crude oil prices, now more than $74 per barrel, would have to plummet to $20 per barrel—as they did in 2020—to bring pump prices so low, experts say. That could stop “drill, baby, drill” in its tracks. Exxon Mobil has said its break-even point—the oil price at which it can cover its costs of production—is $35 per barrel; and Wells Fargo estimated last year that break-even for companies that frack in US shale basins is $54 per barrel.

The realities of the free market, as well as democratic institutions, may yet prevent the United States from slipping into the realm of petrostates. Nevertheless, the 2024 election has driven home to many how fossil fuel abundance has made the road to climate action harder in the United States.

“Imagine a United States that was as oil-starved as China,” Hendrix said. “You’d see a lot more sustained emphasis on renewables, going back to the 1990s, if not the 1980s.

“Instead, what we have is this kind of domestic political competition between a coalition that supports renewable energy and a coalition that supports fossil fuels,” he said. “And Trump’s election suggests to me that fossil fuels are the winners in the short term.”

Pete Hegseth, the Fox News anchor whom Donald Trump has tapped to be his defense secretary, has come under intense scrutiny for his mistreatment of women, including an allegation of rape. One of his critics was, at one time, his own mother.

“That is the ugly truth.”

In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote her son an email in which she laid into him for poor behavior and disrespect toward women. “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the letter, obtained by the New York Times. 

Hegseth chastised her son for how he treated his wife, Samantha, in the divorce proceedings that prompted her to send her April 2018 email. She concluded it by writing, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…”

Reached by the Times yesterday, Hegseth defended her son and recanted the accusations in the email. She said it was written in anger, and that immediately afterward, she had followed up with a second email apologizing for the first.

Penelope Hegseth isn’t the only woman to raise question about her son’s treatment of women. Most seriously, Pete Hegseth was accused of rape while attending a 2017 Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth denies the allegation, saying the encounter was consensual, but paid the woman a settlement in 2020. His lawyer said the payment was to ensure the allegation didn’t cost him his Fox News job.

Hegseth also has a history of cheating on his spouses. His first marriage ended due to infidelity, according to the divorce judgement. So did his second; that divorce prompted the email lashing from his mother. He is now married to the woman with whom he fathered a child while married to his second wife, Samantha.

Samantha “did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email. “Neither did Meredith,” she added, referring to his first wife.

Hegseth’s treatment of women is set to be a major issue during his prospective confirmation hearings in 2025—though not necessarily a dealbreaker. In the past, Republicans have rallied around nominees accused of sexual assault, such as when they circled the wagons to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump himself has been found liable for sexual assault, and faced numerous other allegations of assault and cheating. If the commander-in-chief can get away with it, maybe Hegseth can too.

Democrats will have the unenviable task of pushing back against a second Trump administration as the minority party across Washington. And in the House of Representatives, some Democrats are openly wondering whether the septuagenarian leader of their caucus on the Judiciary Committee is up to the task.

According to the New York Times, a movement is afoot to force 77-year old Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a member from New York since 1992, to step aside and let a younger, more energetic opponent of Donald Trump take charge. If the motif sounds familiar, it may be because the Democrats are generally led by aging long-timers, from President Joe Biden in the White House to committee chairs like Nadler. Now, they must reckon with whether loyalty to these elder statesmen is a winning strategy.

The battle raises the question of how far Democrats will go to shake up their own ranks.

Two years ago, Nancy Pelosi, then 82, stepped down as leader of the House Democrats. Today, she is reportedly one voice urging a changing of the guard on the Judiciary Committee. According to the Times, Pelosi has encouraged Rep. Jamie Raskin, who first won his Maryland seat in 2o16, to challenge Nadler for the job of ranking member on the committee.

Raskin, a constitutional lawyer, gained a nationwide profile for leading the second impeachment trial against Trump in 2021. Current House leadership, according to the Times, are staying neutral in the race. But for Democrats, who generally don’t abide challengers to incumbent leaders, public neutrality is a marked shift. Still, Raskin has taken his time weighing any challenge to Nadler, with no decision announced.

The debate over who will lead the committee’s Democrats is part of a prospective much larger remaking of the Democratic Party in the weeks, months, and years to come. After losing the 2024 elections, the party already has multiple candidates seeking to lead the Democratic National Committee, the central organ of the party, offering competing visions for how to win back a majority of Americans. Within the halls of Congress, Democrats similarly must grapple with the most effective way to hold a Trump administration accountable while in the minority.

In the context of that struggle, the choice of a Democratic leader at the Judiciary Committee is unusually consequential. Trump is widely expected to try to use the Justice Department, which the panel oversees, to exact political revenge. From immigration to abortion and beyond, he promises to push the bounds of presidential power. The committee will be at the center of those fights, and its leader charged with playing a central roles in illuminating and fighting any abuses.

Nadler isn’t the only ranking Democrat facing resistance. The Democrat currently leading the caucus on the Agriculture Committee, Rep. David Scott of Georgia, is 79. Two Democrats are challenging him for the spot. And Rep. Jared Huffman of California, 60, is challenging Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, 76, for the top spot on the Committee on Natural Resources.

“Now, with the shockwave of Trump’s ‘First 100 Days’ agenda about to slam into our committees, effective committee work led by our Ranking Members will be critical to limiting the damage from Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” Huffman said in a statement outlining his pitch. (Grijalva has said he will only serve two more years in Congress as he battles lung cancer.)

These fights raise the question of how far Democrats will go to shake up their own ranks in the wake of a demoralizing loss—or if they will stay the course under leaders who just weeks ago oversaw that defeat.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

On Monday, Senator Debbie Stabenow, a longtime champion of programs that support farmers and increase access to nutritious foods, introduced a new version of the farm bill, a key piece of legislation typically renewed every five years that governs much of how the agricultural industry in the US operates. 

Stabenow, who is retiring next month after representing Michigan in the Senate for 24 years, has staked her career on her vision for a robust, progressive farm bill, one that, among other things, paves the way for farmers to endure the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

The text of her bill comes almost two months after the 2018 farm bill, which initially expired last year and was revived thanks to a one-year extension, expired for a second time on September 30. And it comes mere weeks before the end of the year, when funding for several programs included in the farm bill will run out. 

But more importantly, the bill comes after many months of infighting between Democratic and Republican lawmakers over what matters most in the next farm bill—and just weeks before the current congressional term ends. In order to pass the bill, Stabenow would need to gain the support of Republicans in the Senate agriculture committee and the House of Representatives, where Democrats lack the votes necessary to pass their own version of the legislation. 

It’s likely, even expected, that that won’t happen. Sen. John Boozman, a Republican from Arkansas who is likely to chair the Senate agriculture committee after Stabenow’s retirement, criticized her bill on X, calling it an “insulting 11th hour partisan proposal.” Meanwhile, in the House, Republicans are reportedly hoping instead to pass another one-year extension of the farm bill, pushing negotiations over the new bill into next year, according to Politico.

There’s virtually no reason for Republicans not to prolong the process of hammering out the next farm bill, as starting in January they will have majority control over the legislative, judicial, and executive branches of the federal government.

By proposing legislation that’s all but doomed, Stabenow may be vying to secure her legacy as an environmental steward who understands how climate change is already impacting agricultural production, and why there should be more investment in climate initiatives that safeguard farmers now. 

In a speech presenting the details of her bill to the Senate on Monday, Stabenow said, “For more than two years I’ve been working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to pass my sixth Farm Bill, the third one that I’ve either been chair or ranking member of…the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.” 

She emphasized that farming is a risky business given its dependence on the weather. “But it’s getting even riskier now, because [of] what’s happening with the climate crisis, and we know that,” she said. “How many once-in-a-generation storms or droughts need to hit our farmers over the head before we take this crisis seriously?”

Certain advocacy groups have praised Stabenow’s farm bill. Rebecca Riley, the managing director for food and agriculture at the National Resources Defense Council, an environmental group, said the bill reflects Stabenow’s “decades of leadership and dedication to strengthening America’s farmers and rural communities.” But other groups were slower to respond. In a statement, the American Farm Bureau Federation, an agricultural industry group, said simply: “We’re reviewing Chairwoman Stabenow’s newly released 1,300 pages of farm bill text,” adding that it’s “unfortunate that only a few legislative working days remain for Congress to act.” (Stabenow’s office did not reply to Grist’s requests for comment.)

One of the key features of Stabenow’s farm bill is funding for so-called “climate-smart” agriculture practices, an umbrella term that broadly refers to techniques that help farmers sequester carbon in the soil rather than emit more of it into the atmosphere, where it contributes to global warming. The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act allocated nearly $20 billion in funding for these practices, such as crop rotation and no-till farming. And in the spring, Stabenow introduced a framework that rolled over the leftover money from the IRA for “climate-smart” practices into a new farm bill. (Shortly afterwards, Senate Republicans put forward another draft of the farm bill without this provision.)

Climate is hardly the only focus of the text Stabenow introduced earlier this week, which, like all farm bills, seeks to address a dizzying array of agricultural and nutritional priorities. Chief among the provisions in her bill, titled the Rural Prosperity and Food Security Act, are policies that aim to increase access to crop insurance and make coverage more affordable by boosting premium subsidies. The bill also seeks to invest $4.3 billion in rural communities, seeking to improve their access to health care, childcare, education, and broadband internet. 

But other provisions indicate that Stabenow has long been thinking of how to further protect farmers from climate impacts such as extreme weather—and also make the US food system more diversified and resilient. She proposes creating a permanent disaster program that would establish a consistent process for providing farmers with assistance after floods, wildfires, and other calamities. Stabenow also seeks to strengthen support for specialty crops—better known as fruits, nuts, vegetables, and herbs—and reminds the Senate during her press briefing that these crops “are almost half of what we grow.” 

hese details represent some of the divisions that run deep through congressional negotiations. Senator John Hoeven, the Republican congressman from North Dakota, was quick to dismiss Stabenow’s vision, writing on X, “Unfortunately, the Senate bill released today does not meet the needs of farm country and fails to keep farm in the Farm Bill.” Boozman has signaled he fully intends to ignore Stabenow’s last-minute bill, telling reporters that Congress must push for another extension of the 2018 farm bill and meeting with agriculture industry groups to discuss their priorities.

Boozman’s and other Republicans’ concerns with the new farm bill text likely stem, at least in part, from lobbying groups representing large-scale, industrial farmers who wish to see fewer restrictions placed on how they do business. The National Pork Producers Council, or NPPC, for example, issued an instant rejection of Stabenow’s farm bill text, calling it “simply not a viable bill” for “fail[ing] to provide a solution to California Prop. 12.”

That proposition prohibits the sale of veal, pork, and egg products by farm owners and operators who knowingly house animals “in a cruel manner.” The NPPC has followed this issue closely, arguing that forcing pork producers to comply with “arbitrary” animal housing specifications would wildly increase their costs (and prices for consumers). The group successfully lobbied for a provision in the House farm bill that essentially takes away California’s power to enforce such a law—by blocking state and local government from imposing conditions on the production of livestock sold in their jurisdiction (unless the livestock is actually produced within the state or local community).  

Stabenow seems highly aware of the zero-sum framework with which many different actors view the farm bill. When addressing the Senate, she mentioned that the version of the Farm Bill released by the House in May would have put “immense” resources into a small number of commodity farmers in the South. “I’m not saying that these farmers don’t need support. They do,” she said. “But it can’t be at the expense of millions of other farmers and ranchers in this country,” including those who run smaller, diversified operations or who grow fruits and vegetables. 

In her speech, Stabenow repeatedly framed the text of her bill as a bipartisan project, and projected an urgency to secure wider resources for more farmers now. Her vision, she says, “can pass and should pass.” But whether that’s true or not will depend an awful lot on her colleagues, who currently have no incentive to negotiate with her and other Democrats and could simply wait to push forward their own agenda. How long they wait remains to be seen. 

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

When Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva took office in January 2023, he inherited environmental protection agencies in shambles and deforestation at a 15-year high. His predecessor, Jair Bolsonaro, had dismantled regulations and gutted institutions tasked with enforcing environmental laws. Lula set out to reverse these policies and to put Brazil on a path to end deforestation by 2030. 

Environmental protection agencies have been allowed to resume their work. Between January and November of 2023, the government issued 40 percent more infractions against illegal deforestation in the Amazon when compared to the same period in 2022, when Bolsonaro was still in office. Lula’s government has confiscated and destroyed heavy equipment used by illegal loggers and miners, and placed embargoes on production on illegally cleared land. Lula also reestablished the Amazon Fund, an international pool of money used to support conservation efforts in the rainforest. Just this week, at the G20 Summit, outgoing US President Joe Biden pledged $50 million to the fund.  

Indeed, almost two years into Lula’s administration, the upward trend in deforestation has been reversed. In 2023, deforestation rates fell by 62 percent in the Amazon and 12 percent in Brazil overall (though deforestation in the Cerrado, Brazil’s tropical savannas, increased). So far in 2024, deforestation in the Amazon has fallen by another 32 percent.      

Throughout this year, Brazilians also bore witness to the effects of climate change in a new way. In May, unprecedented floods in the south of the country impacted over 2 million people, displacing hundreds of thousands and leaving at least 183 dead. Other regions are now into their second year of extreme drought, which led to yet another intense wildfire season. In September, São Paulo and Brasília were shrouded in smoke coming from fires in the Amazon and the Cerrado.  

And yet, despite the government’s actions, environmental protections and Indigenous rights are still under threat. Lula is governing alongside the most pro-agribusiness congress in Brazilian history, which renders his ability to protect Brazil’s forests and Indigenous peoples in the long term severely constrained. 

“I do believe that the Lula administration really cares about climate change,” said Belen Fernandez Milmanda, Assistant Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Trinity College and author of Agrarian Elites and Democracy in Latin America. “But on the other side, part of their governing coalition is also the agribusiness, and so far I feel like the agribusiness is winning.”

Brazilian politics has always been fragmented, with weak parties. The current Chamber of Deputies, Brazil’s equivalent to the House of Representatives, is made up of politicians from 19 different parties. “It makes it really difficult to govern without some kind of coordination device,” said Fernandez Milmanda. Weak party cohesion makes it easier for interest groups to step into the vacuum and act as this coordination device. 

Agribusiness has long been one of the most powerful interest groups in Brazilian politics, but its influence has grown steadily over the past decade as the electorate shifted to the right and the sector developed more sophisticated strategies to affect politics. In Congress, agribusiness is represented by the bancada ruralista, or agrarian caucus, a well-organized, multi-party coalition of landowning and agribusiness-linked legislators that controls a majority in both houses of congress. Of the 513 representatives in the Chamber of Deputies, 290 are members of the agrarian caucus. In the senate, they make up 50 of 81 legislators. 

Proposed changes to the Brazil Forest Code “would make control much more difficult because illegal forms of deforestation would become legal.”

Today, the agrarian caucus is larger than any single party in the Brazilian legislature. “Members of the agrarian caucus vote together. They have high discipline and most Brazilian parties don’t,” said Fernandez Milmanda. “This gives them immense leverage towards any president.” 

Much of the coordination around the legislative agenda takes place away from congress, at the headquarters of Instituto Pensar Agropecuária, a think tank founded in 2011 and financed largely by major agribusiness corporations, including some in the US and the European Union. Among IPA’s main backers are Brazilian beef giant JBS, German pesticide producer BASF, and the US-based corporation Cargill, the world’s largest agribusiness. Core members of the agrarian caucus reportedly meet weekly at IPA headquarters in Brasilia’s embassy row to discuss the week’s legislative agenda. 

“IPA is really important because they are the ones doing all the work, all the technical work,” says Milmanda. “They are drafting the bills that they then give to the legislators, and the legislators will present it as their own.” 

The agrarian caucus has tallied several long-awaited victories in the current congress, which took office alongside Lula in January 2023. Late last year, they overhauled Brazil’s main law governing the use of pesticides. The new legislation, which Human Rights Watch called a “serious threat to the environment and the right to health,” removes barriers for previously banned substances and reduces the regulatory oversight of the health and environment agencies.

Instead, the Ministry of Agriculture, which has traditionally been led by a member of the agrarian caucus, now has the final say in determining which pesticides are cleared for use. Lula attempted to veto parts of the bill, but was overruled by congress. In the Brazilian system, an absolute majority in each chamber is enough to overrule a presidential veto.

Another recent victory for the agrarian caucus came as a major blow to Indigenous rights. Agribusiness has long been fighting in the courts for a legal theory called marco temporal (“time frame,” in English), which posits that Indigenous groups can only claim their traditional lands if they were occupying it in 1988, the year the current Brazilian constitution was drafted.

Opponents of the theory argue it disregards the fact that many Indigenous groups were expelled from their native lands long before that date. It has dire implications for the hundreds of Indigenous territories in Brazil currently awaiting demarcation, and could even impact territories that have already been recognized by law. 

The theory had been making its way through the Brazilian justice system for 16 years, until it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last year. Blatantly flouting the court’s ruling, congress passed a bill codifying marco temporal into law. Lula tried to veto the bill, but he was overruled by the agrarian caucus again. The bill is currently being discussed in conciliation hearings overseen by the Supreme Court, which is tasked with figuring out how the new law will work in light of the court’s 2023 decision. The legal gray area in which many Indigenous groups occupying disputed lands now find themselves has contributed to a wave of attacks by land-grabbers and farmers in recent months. 

These are only two examples of legislation that are part of what environmentalists have come to call the “destruction package,” a group of at least 20 bills and three constitutional amendments currently proposed in congress that take aim at Indigenous rights and environmental protections. 

“The executive has to put a stop to this, because otherwise the tendency will be towards very serious setbacks,” said Suely Araújo, Public Policy Coordinator at Observatório do Clima, a coalition of climate-focused civil society organizations. 

But the government has limited tools at its disposal to block anti-environmental legislation. In the past, the executive branch had greater control over discretionary spending and was able to use this to its advantage while negotiating with congress. The past decade has seen a major power shift in Brazilian politics. Congress has managed through a series of legislative maneuvers to capture a significant portion of the federal budget, weakening the hand of the executive. 

Among projects which have a high likelihood of passing, according to analysis by Observatório do Clima, are bills that weaken Brazil’s Forest Code, the key piece of legislation governing the use and management of forests. “It would make control much more difficult because illegal forms of deforestation would become legal,” said Araújo. 

One such bill reduces the amount of land farmers in the Amazon must preserve within their property from 80 to 50 percent. The move could open almost 18 million hectares of forest to agricultural development, according to a recent analysis that the deforestation mapping organization MapBiomas conducted for the Brazilian magazine Piauí. That is an area roughly the size of New York state, New Jersey, and Massachusetts combined.

In a similar vein, another bill in the package removes protections for native grasslands, including large parts of the Cerrado and the Pantanal (the world’s largest tropical wetland). In theory this would affect 48 millions hectares of native vegetation. Yet another bill, which has already been approved in the Chamber of Deputies, overhauls the process of environmental licensing, essentially reducing it to a rubber stamp. “It does away with 40 years of environmental licensing in Brazil,” said Araújo. “You might as well not have licensing legislation.” 

Part of the reason many of these bills have a chance of passing is the Lula government’s limited leverage. With little support in congress and less control over the budget, bargaining with the agricultural caucus becomes a necessary tool to pass even legislation unrelated to the environment, such as economic reforms. During these negotiations, some environmentalists believe concerns over Brazil’s forests fall by the wayside. 

“Perhaps there is a lack of leadership from the president himself, with a stronger stance in response to the demands of the ruralistas,” said Araújo. “There are political agreements and negotiations that must be made. The bargaining chip cannot be environmental legislation.”

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For decades they have been working underground, establishing mycorrhizal-like networks of commerce and influence, taking root in academia and institutions, and even extending their tendrils into supranational governance.

Their goal is to transform the diets of people across the world, to spark a revolution in food production and consumption. They call themselves the leguminati.

“When you rediscover beans, it’s something we’ve all taken for granted, and then you realize—oh my God—these are really great; it’s like a secret,” says Steve Sando, the founder of the California-based bean company, Rancho Gordo, who is, for many, the godfather of this cult. “The secret’s been revealed to them and they tend not to be able to shut up about it, because they feel they’ve discovered the world.”

Beans are enjoying a culinary renaissance and, say their advocates, it is not a moment too soon. Long thought of as bland, fiddly to cook, or poverty food, in recent years there has been growing recognition that beans are not only delicious, but that eating more of them could help solve a host of planetary and human health problems.

Food production is a big cause of climate breakdown, amounting to about a quarter of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Three-fifths of those emissions come from meat production, leading many to argue for a shift towards a plant-based diet.

But that does not take plants off the hook entirely. The “green revolution” of the 20th century led to an exponential increase in agricultural output, but it was via the widespread use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, a byproduct of the petrochemical industry that emit nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas with a heating effect 300 times that of carbon dioxide.

Added to that, poorly applied fertiliser runs off into rivers and waterways leading to pollution and algal blooms that kill fish and other wildlife.

It was issues such as these that Josiah Meldrum, the cofounder with Nick Saltmarsh of the UK bean company Hodmedod’s, had in mind in the early 2000s when he was asked by climate campaigners in Norwich how a city such as theirs, with a population of about 122,000 then (144,000 now), could feed itself without exceeding planetary boundaries.

“It was that climate project that led us to realize quite how fantastic pulses are,” he says. “The impact of synthetic nitrogen fertilizers on global climate is massive, because they’re about 2.5-4.5 percent of global manmade emissions.

“Beans are not just nutritious, affordable and delicious, they are a force for good, a symbol of hope, a catalyst for change.”

“So if we could move away from some of those inputs and produce those field-scale crops in a low-input way, we could really make a difference, we could really start to transform things. That’s really when we began getting interested broadly in leguminous plants.”

Pulses, which include beans and also lentils and chickpeas, are the dried seeds of the legume family of plants, which also counts among its members oil-seeds, such as peanuts and soya beans, and varieties more commonly eaten fresh, such as broad beans, green peas and snap peas.

From a food production perspective, legumes have some remarkable properties. Perhaps most crucially, they can produce their own nitrogen.

“Because of a symbiotic relationship that bacteria in the root nodules have with the plants, they are able to take atmospheric nitrogen and convert it into plant-usable form,” says Chelsea Didinger, a beans researcher.

That nitrogen is not just taken up and exploited by the plants themselves, they also leave a significant amount behind, meaning that including legumes in a rotation significantly reduces the amount of fertilizer needed for subsequent crops.

“That crop rotation is really important because by not growing the same crop on the same ground every year, you’re also breaking any cycles for pests or disease,” says Didinger.

Importantly, in a world adapting to changing climate conditions that are leading to droughts in many areas, they also have a low water footprint compared with many other crops, and certainly compared with meat. On average it takes 15,400 liters of water to make 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) of beef, but about 5,000 liters for the same amount of beans.

But are they really comparable? No, and yes. “When we’re talking about nutrition they are really unique, because they are high in protein [and] people love protein, protein is very hot these days,” says Didinger.

“If you’re looking for a source of protein coming from plants, they are one of the best, they’re packed with protein. But it doesn’t stop there. They are also super rich in fiber, they are basically the richest natural source of dietary fiber that there is.”

But all these beany benefits are for nought if no one can be persuaded to eat the things, and consumption of this miracle crop has been in long-term decline, particularly in the global north, but increasingly in developing countries where, as people become more affluent, they want to imitate western diets.

The UN reports declines in bean consumption in countries that traditionally have pulse-rich diets, such as India and Mexico.

“We hardly eat any in the UK,” says Meldrum. “We’re really low global per capita consumers of pulses, and yet we have a really good climate for growing particularly peas, which historically would have been a subsistence food. They would have been really core to our diet.”

Things are slowly changing. Over the past two decades, Sando has almost singlehandedly repopularized beans in the US, building Rancho Gordo from a small farmer’s market stall to a multimillion-dollar business.

His beans are not like the pale, soggy things you tip out of a tin and rinse off in a colander. They are heirloom beans, native to the Americas, the kind the Mayans and Aztecs would have built their empires on, but which had all but fallen off the food map.

Now top chefs are queueing up to include them in their recipes, and Sando’s own recipe book has been on the New York Times bestseller list. “They’ve been bred for flavor, and often for the way they look, whereas modern beans are bred for convenience for industrial farming,” he says.

Meldrum is trying to do a similar job in the UK, but with beans generally needing a warmer climate than soggy Norfolk, he has had to be experimental. “We knew that the pulse crops—the beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils that people wanted to eat—were all imported and they were varieties that don’t grow well here,” he says.

“So the first thing we realized is that we needed to encourage people to eat what could be grown here, which is peas and fava beans, which are small, dried broad beans.”

They have some heavy-hitters on their side. Paul Newnham, the executive director of the UN Sustainability Goal 2 advocacy hub for ending hunger, writes in a recent report: “Beans are not just nutritious, affordable and delicious, they are a force for good, a symbol of hope, a catalyst for change.”

Yes, like all good global food conspiracies, the leguminati is backed by the UN. But unlike intermittent calls over the years to include more insects in our diets, this one is rather more appetizing.

This story was originally published by Wired and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

At an upscale sushi bar in New York last week, a smattering of media and policy types chowed down on a menu of sushi rolls, Peking duck tapas, and mushroom salad. But what made this menu unusual was the one ingredient that ran through the dishes—foie gras made from quail cells brewed in a bioreactor. The event, catered by the sushi chef Masa Takayama, was a launch party for Australian cultivated meat firm Vow, which will sell its foie gras at a handful of restaurants in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The meal was decadent—one course featured a mountain of black truffle—but that was mostly the point. Vow and its CEO, George Peppou, are angling cultivated meat as a luxury product—an unusual positioning for an industry where many founders are motivated by animal welfare and going toe-to-toe with mass-produced meat. But while growing meat in the lab still remains eye-wateringly expensive, Peppou is trying to turn the technology’s Achilles’ heel into his advantage.

“I feel like the obituary has already been written for our industry,” he says. “But just because Californians can’t do something doesn’t mean something can’t be done.”

It’s for venues that want “to use ingredients to distinguish themselves,” or “that have removed foie gras from their menus due to cruelty.”

That something is making cultivated meat while turning a profit. The big challenge facing the industry—along with the bans and the lack of venture capital cash—is that it costs a lot to grow animal cells in bioreactors. Reliable figures are hard to come by, but one research paper with data provided by companies in 2021 put the cost of cultivated meat between $68 and $10,000 per pound, depending on production methods. A lot of startups say they have drastically cut production costs since their early experiments, but prices are still way higher than factory farmed chicken at around $2.67 per pound.

The two best-funded startups in the space—Eat Just and Upside Foods—have both brought out cultivated chicken products. But Peppou, who leans into his reputation in the industry as something of a provocateur, says that approach doesn’t make sense. “Making chicken was always a terrible idea,” he says.

The fundamentals of cultivated meat are pricey. The business of growing animal cells outside of their bodies is usually the domain of medical researchers and pharmaceutical companies. Animal cells grown in culture are used to make vaccines and medicines, which are sold in tiny volumes for sky-high prices. The cultivated meat industry needs some of the same ingredients to grow the cells it wants to sell as meat, but unlike the pharma industry, it needs to grow huge volumes of cells and sell them at grocery store prices.

The major cost right now is what’s called cell media—the broth of liquid, nutrients, amino acids, and growth factors fed to cells while they’re growing. The off-the-shelf standard cell media for growing stem cells is called Essential 8, and it costs upwards of $400 per liter. That’s fine if you’re a scientist growing a few cells in a petri dish, but growing a single kilogram of cultivated meat might require 10 of liters of media, quickly sending costs sky-rocketing. Cultivated meat companies need to find cheaper sources for their ingredients and buy them in bulk in order to drive their costs down.

“Ultimately the industry needs to prove that it can scale,” says Elliot Swartz, principal scientist for cultivated meat at the Good Food Institute, a nonprofit focused on advancing alternative proteins. Just a few crucial ingredients in cell media are a major factor pushing up costs for cultivated meat companies, most of which are still operating at a tiny scale, producing kilograms of meat per production cycle rather than the tons they are aiming for.

“My biggest concern is always the scalability and the ability to industrialize something,” says Ido Savir, CEO of Israeli cultivated meat company SuperMeat. His company has just released a report estimating that—if produced at scale—it could grow chicken meat at $11.80 per pound, close to the price for pasture-raised chicken in the US. But this assumes production in bioreactors up to 25,000 liters—several orders of magnitude higher than the 10-liter scale the company is currently working at. “We’re improving every month,” he says.

Savir is aiming at a much lower price point than Peppou, and hopes to partner with food manufacturers who might license his technology to add cultivated meat into their mix of options. “We’re more interested in the mass market,” he says. Dutch company Meatable has indicated it wants to follow a similar approach—licensing its technology to the handful of firms that already produce much of the US’s meat. Other cultivated meat companies want to sell to consumers under their own brands, but are still targeting the mass meat industry.

Peppou is skewing decidedly in the opposite direction. He declines to name a price, but says his foie gras is at the “higher end” of the market—somewhere in the region of hundreds of dollars per pound. The foie gras is 51 percent Japanese quail cells—which also make up the parfait that Vow has sold in Singapore since April—plus a plant-based fat mix and corn husk flavorings. “It’s either for a venue that wants to use ingredients to distinguish themselves,” says Peppou, or it’s for “large hotels or caterers that have removed foie gras from their menus due to cruelty.”

Conventional foie gras is made by force-feeding ducks or geese until their livers swell with fatty deposits. Production is banned in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and California among other places. Another cultivated meat company, France-based Gourmey, also makes foie gras, although its product is not currently on sale anywhere.

“If you look at a lot of deep technology companies, it’s kind of a game of just not dying.”

Vow’s quail parfait is on the menu at around six restaurants in Singapore, including being sold as a $15 (USD) bar snack and as part of a $185 tasting menu. In Peppou’s telling, going high-end is a way to spin cultivated meat’s high costs and low production volumes as a luxury proposition. “I believe the biggest challenge we have is how to shape consumer sentiment around this category. And the most efficient way to do that in my mind is to be in the most influential places with the relatively limited volume we have available.”

SuperMeat’s Savir says that luxury cultivated meat products “have a place,” but that he is more interested in the mass market where he can complement the current production of meat. That will mean continuing to drive production costs down. One option is to mix cultivated meat with much cheaper plant-based ingredients. Savir says that they’re aiming at products that are around 30 percent cultivated meat cells and 70 percent plant-based ingredients. Several other firms are taking a similar strategy. In Singapore, Eat Just sells cultivated chicken strips that are only 3 percent chicken cells.

The industry is also hoping that customers will pay premium prices because of the potential environmental benefits of making meat outside of animal bodies. Savir says he has spoken with a “very big” pizza company that says replacing just 5 to 10 percent of its chicken toppings with cultivated chicken would make a substantial dent in its carbon footprint.

Even replacing a fraction of a percent of the $50 billion broiler chicken industry in the US would require a monumental scaling-up of cultivated meat production. “If you’re competing against chicken, which is the lowest-cost meat product, then you either have to go to very large scales or create hybrid products that have lower inclusion rates,” says Swartz of the Good Food Institute. But with investor dollars in short supply, companies are having to get creative about how they plan to get products into the world and achieve many founders’ ultimate goal of displacing at least some conventional meat production.

Even though he’s targeting the luxury market, Peppou says he still isn’t turning a profit on his cultured quail parfait or foie gras, although his margin is much better than it would be if he were competing with factory-farmed chicken. “If you look at a lot of deep technology companies, it’s kind of a game of just not dying,” he says. “And it’s figuring out ways to not die long enough to get good enough to win in a market which probably doesn’t exist yet.”

That means the route ahead for Vow might not look totally different from other cultivated meat companies. “The volumes are going to be low, it’s mostly going to be in restaurants. They’re going to be iterating on these products over time before they get any sort of mass market entry point,” says Swartz. “In the short term, what I’m looking forward to is getting more people that are trying this for the first time, not trying it because they’re excited about cultivated meat, but generally because they’re interested.”

In the middle of the Thanksgiving holiday stretch, Donald Trump announced what might be his most extreme and controversial appointment yet: Kash Patel for FBI director. There are many reasons why this decision is outrageous. Patel is a MAGA combatant who has fiercely advocated Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and who has championed January 6 rioters as patriots and unfairly persecuted political prisoners. (The still ongoing January 6 case, including scores of prosecutions for assaults on police, is one of the FBI’s largest and most successful criminal investigations ever.) Patel is also a fervent promoter of conspiracy theories. At the end of Trump’s first presidency, when he was a Pentagon official, he spread the bonkers idea that Italian military satellites had been employed to turn Trump votes to Joe Biden votes in the 2020 election. And he has falsely claimed that the Trump-Russia scandal was a hoax cooked up by the FBI and so-called Deep State to sabotage Trump.

Moreover, Patel has been supportive of the most loony conspiracy theory in MAGA land: QAnon.

The QAnon theory, which arose in 2017, holds that an intelligence operative known only as Q has revealed through cryptic messages that a cabal of global, Satanic, cannibalistic elitists and pedophiles is operating a child sex trafficking operation as it vies for world domination and conspires against Trump. This evil band supposedly includes Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, business tycoons, and other notables. Those who believe this bunk see Trump as a hero who is secretly battling this conspiracy in a titanic, behind-the-scenes struggle. It is pure nuttery. Worse than that, QAnon has sparked multiple acts of violence.

Yet Patel repeatedly has hailed QAnoners and promoted this conspiracy theory. In early 2022, when he sat on the board of Trump’s social media company, Truth Social, Patel amplified an account called @Q that pushed out QAnon messaging. As Media Matters reported: “Patel’s catering to the QAnon community has also gone beyond the @Q account. In July, he posted an image featuring a flaming Q on Truth Social and starting in at least April, he went on numerous QAnon-supporting shows to promote Truth Social—urging viewers to join the platform, praising hosts for being on the platform, and promising to promote the hosts there.” On one show, Patel declared, “Whether it’s the Qs of the world, who I agree with some of what he does and I disagree with some of what he does, if it allows people to gather and focus on the truth and the facts, I’m all for it.”

“There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” Patel said of QAnon, which he called a “movement.”

On another show, Patel acknowledged he was courting the QAnon crowd for Truth Social: “We try to incorporate it into our overall messaging scheme to capture audiences because whoever that person is has certainly captured a widespread breath of the MAGA and the America First movement. And so what I try to do is—what I try to do with anything, Q or otherwise, is you can’t ignore that group of people that has such a strong dominant following.” He praised QAnon, saying, “There’s a lot of good to a lot of it,” and he agreed with a host who said Q had “been so right on so many things.” Patel praised Q for starting a “movement.”

Appearing on Grace Time TV in Septmeber 2022, Patel said of the QAnon community, “We’re just blown away at the amount of acumen some of these people have.” He added, “If it’s Q or whatever movement that’s getting that information out, I am all for it, every day of the week.”

When Patel was promoting a children’s book he wrote—about a King Donald who is persecuted by his political enemies—he offered ten copies in which he signed the books and added a special message: “WWG1WGA!”” That’s the QAnon motto: “Where we go one, we go all.” He hyped this special offer on Truth Social using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA.”

“Let’s have fun with the truth,” Patel said.

Appearing on the MatrixxxGrove Show, Patel defended his use of the QAnon motto: “People keep asking me about all this Q stuff. I’m like, what does it matter? What I’m telling you is there is truth in a lot of things that many people say, and what I’m putting out there is the truth. And how about we have some fun along the way?” He added, “Let’s have fun with the truth.” He also characterized the QAnon movement as being a vital part of the national debate: “Basically, the bottom line is—and I get attacked for calling out some of the stuff that quote-unquote Q says and whatnot. I’m like, what’s the problem with that? It’s social discourse.”

Patel is a purveyor of far-right conspiracism in other ways that overlap with QAnon. He claims a nefarious Deep State controls the US government and is arrayed against Trump and conservatives. He encourages paranoia and calls for revenge. Talking to MAGA strategist Steve Bannon on Bannon’s podcast last year, Patel proclaimed, “We will go and find the conspirators—not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens to help Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you, whither its criminally or civilly.”

Here is Trump’s nominee for FBI Director Kash Patel calling for “offensive operations” to jail Americans who they consider “the enemy.”“We will go out and find the conspirators… Yes, we are going to come after the people in the media."

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen.bsky.social) 2024-12-01T01:02:24.157Z

Seeking retribution, spreading conspiracy theories, backing an attempt to overthrow a presidential election, supporting J6 rioters, echoing Moscow talking points—none of this is what one would see in a responsible choice for FBI director. But Patel’s cozying up to QAnon is especially troubling. Among many vital duties, the FBI director oversees the federal government’s efforts to combat violent crime—an area where QAnon remains a concern. Patel’s relationship with QAnon shows either that he has a severely distorted view of reality or that he will recklessly exploit dangerous, misguided, and false ideas for political benefit. Neither is an approach suitable for the most powerful and important law enforcement agency in the land.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As President-elect Donald Trump puts together a team that will ramp up fossil fuel production in a country that is already pumping out more crude oil than any nation in history, critics are beginning to use a term once reserved for reviled foes.

Specifically, they are asking: Is the United States on its way to becoming a petrostate?

Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program, raised the question after Trump tapped Chris Wright, CEO of the Denver fracking company Liberty Energy, to lead the Department of Energy. Wright accepts that carbon emissions make the planet warmer, but contrary to the scientific consensus, he argues that the financial and quality-of-life benefits of increased fossil fuel production outweigh the risks. 

“Picking someone like Chris Wright is a clear sign that Trump wants to turn the US into a pariah petrostate,” Su said in an emailed statement. “He’s damning frontline communities and our planet to climate hell just to pad the already bloated pockets of fossil fuel tycoons.”

Climate scientist Michael Mann offered the same view in an essay soon after the election. “The United States is now poised to become an authoritarian state ruled by plutocrats and fossil fuel interests,” he wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. “It is now, in short, a petrostate.”

Economists and political scientists point out that the United States does not fit the classical definition of a petrostate. Its economy is far more diverse than those of nations that are hamstrung by dependence on oil and natural gas. Moreover, the vast majority of the wealth generated by fossil fuel production here goes to private parties—not into government coffers.

And yet, experts concede that the United States behaves like a petrostate at times: for example, in its long-time inaction on climate change and, more recently, in the way it conducts foreign policy as the world’s leading oil and gas exporter. The fossil fuel industry’s influence is bound to be amplified under Trump, who does not view climate change as a serious problem and who describes “energy dominance” as a policy imperative. 

“The United States is acting a bit like, I wouldn’t necessarily say a petrostate, but like a state in which the hydrocarbon industry is a huge domestic constituency and source of employment and private sector revenues and now exports,” said Cullen Hendrix, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The oil and gas industry—even by its own reckoning—currently accounts for just 8 percent of the US economy. Trump’s presidency will test whether competing interests—including businesses, states, and citizens that favor a clean energy transition—can exert enough influence to prevent the United States from going down the path that has hobbled the governance and economies of nations that are reliant on a single commodity.

Trump was not successful in permanently quashing the drive for clean energy in his first term. President Joe Biden was able to restore the US’s place in the Paris Agreement negotiations, reverse most of Trump’s deregulatory decisions and pass the nation’s first comprehensive climate legislation.

But Mann, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, argues that the risks are greater in Trump’s second term that wealthy fossil fuel interests will gain a durable advantage in the US political system.

“This time polluters and plutocrats have made sure they’re ready to hit the ground running,” Mann wrote in an email, pointing to the conservative policy roadmap, Project 2025, written by former Trump administration officials and supporters to guide his agenda. “They won’t waste any time at all eliminating the obstacles to a fossil fuel industry-driven agenda.”

True petrostates typically have state-owned oil companies and seek to maximize revenue as a matter of policy. In Azerbaijan, for example—the country where this year’s international climate talks took place—oil and gas output accounts for more than 90 percent of export revenue and over half of its national budget.

“I think it’s worth remembering that this is not that abnormal for the United States.”

In the United States, private and publicly traded oil and gas companies seek to influence the political process through lobbying and campaign contributions. In 2024, oil and gas industry political giving reached a record $219 million, overwhelmingly favoring Republicans and conservative groups, according to the watchdog group Open Secrets.

But the fossil fuel industry is also woven into the U.S. political fabric in ways that resemble the structure of petrostates. More than 60 percent of the $138 billion in taxes that the fossil fuel industry pays annually goes to state, local and tribal governments, according to a study by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Resources for the Future, or RFF.

Wyoming gets 59 percent of its state budget from fossil fuel revenue; North Dakota, 29 percent; and Alaska, 21 percent. Other states, though less reliant, take in staggering sums, led by Texas, at $14.6 billion annually; California, $7.8 billion; and Pennsylvania, $4.4 billion. And the money going into state coffers reflects the far larger impact the industry is having on state economies and jobs.

Because institutions like the Electoral College and the US Senate give states outsized power compared to their populations, fossil fuel-reliant regions can hold considerable sway over national politics and policy. For example, political observers say that part of the reason Vice President Kamala Harris talked little about the climate accomplishments of her administration during her presidential campaign, and instead repeated her pledge not to ban fracking, was a vain effort to win the swing state of Pennsylvania, the nation’s No. 2 natural gas producer.

The shape of current US climate policy was dictated by the political realities of the Senate, where it would be impossible to get the 66 votes needed to ratify a conventional climate treaty or 60 votes to pass substantive climate legislation. The Obama administration helped design a Paris agreement that contained no binding legal obligations, and therefore would not require Senate ratification. And the Biden administration’s climate legislation was an incentives package wrapped in a spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, which required only a bare majority for passage (and got one only with Harris’ tie-breaking vote). 

“The US has always had a hard time enacting climate policy,” said Daniel Raimi, a fellow at RFF who led its fossil fuel revenue study. “The Inflation Reduction Act was the exception rather than the rule, and it’s also a very unusual kind of climate policy. Most of the rest of the world use carbon pricing or regulatory tools. We couldn’t do any of that because of the political dynamics, so we went for the subsidy-based approach.”

But now, the Trump administration is intent on unraveling those policies. Trump’s job is made easier because the policies weren’t the product of a bipartisan consensus for climate action.

“I think it’s worth remembering that this is not that abnormal for the United States,” Raimi said. “Unfortunately, this is kind of where we have been for most of the last few decades.”

Fracking, which unleashed a flood of oil and gas on the US market beginning in 2010, laid the groundwork for Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.

Trump liked to say that the United States became energy independent on his watch, surpassing Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production in 2018 and the following year, becoming a net exporter of energy for the first time in more than 60 years. But those trends began under Obama and have accelerated under Biden, with the United States producing 12.9 million barrels per day of crude oil in 2023, more than any other nation in history.

Mammoth facilities have been built in recent years to export liquefied natural gas, or LNG. And in 2015, Congress lifted a four-decade-old ban on US exports of crude oil, responding to the oil industry’s plea that it needed to be able to compete with petrostates for the nation’s own welfare. “Today’s vote starts us down the path to a new era of energy security,” American Petroleum Institute CEO Jack Gerrard said at the time. American producers, he said, “would be able to compete on a level playing field with countries like Iran and Russia, providing security to our allies.”

Biden put that concept into action after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, increasing LNG shipments to the European Union to undercut Russia’s role as a crucial energy supplier to the continent. For the past three years, the United States has provided half of the EU’s LNG supplies, a cushion that has helped allies cope with a precipitous fall in the energy supply from Russia.

Early this year, Biden paused approval of new LNG ports pending a study of their greenhouse gas impact—but a federal judge lifted that moratorium and Trump plans to end it altogether, potentially clearing the way for 20 proposed new LNG terminals. LNG could play a bigger foreign policy role, even if Trump should succeed in ending the Ukraine war “in 24 hours,” as he has promised.

“It seems clear that the second Trump administration is going to want to use this energy leverage to exact concessions from Europe on a variety of fronts,” Hendrix said. “It might be increasing military spending, or more military spending earmarked for U.S. arms exports, or more guarantees to purchase more U.S. exports generally.”

The EU may be ready to deal. The day after the election, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed that the EU might be able to head off Trump tariffs by agreeing to buy more LNG from the United States. 

A number of forces may work against the oil and gas industry’s interests during the new Trump administration.

Other industries may succeed in holding off some of the planned regulatory rollbacks, like auto manufacturers, who have invested billions of dollars in electric vehicle and battery plants in anticipation of the clean energy transition they see taking place globally.

States that have new clean energy projects or a long-term commitment to fighting climate change will make their voices heard. “We are going to move forward in the United States, state by state, county by county, city by city, in continuing our tremendous dynamic growth of our clean energy economy,” said Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington in a news conference after the election.

Environmentalists, landowners and fishing operations already are in court fighting the construction of new LNG terminals. Judges have ruled against three LNG projects so far this year, indicating Trump will not be able to make new ports appear on the Gulf Coast overnight.

And finally, some experts rightly acknowledge that Trump’s own energy policy vision may be at odds with itself. Trump frequently said he wanted to return to the “beautiful number” of $1.87 per gallon gasoline—where prices bottomed out during his final year in office.

Gasoline prices were so low in 2020, however, because the global economy had ground to a standstill due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Crude oil prices, now more than $74 per barrel, would have to plummet to $20 per barrel—as they did in 2020—to bring pump prices so low, experts say. That could stop “drill, baby, drill” in its tracks. Exxon Mobil has said its break-even point—the oil price at which it can cover its costs of production—is $35 per barrel; and Wells Fargo estimated last year that break-even for companies that frack in US shale basins is $54 per barrel.

The realities of the free market, as well as democratic institutions, may yet prevent the United States from slipping into the realm of petrostates. Nevertheless, the 2024 election has driven home to many how fossil fuel abundance has made the road to climate action harder in the United States.

“Imagine a United States that was as oil-starved as China,” Hendrix said. “You’d see a lot more sustained emphasis on renewables, going back to the 1990s, if not the 1980s.

“Instead, what we have is this kind of domestic political competition between a coalition that supports renewable energy and a coalition that supports fossil fuels,” he said. “And Trump’s election suggests to me that fossil fuels are the winners in the short term.”

Pete Hegseth, the Fox News anchor whom Donald Trump has tapped to be his defense secretary, has come under intense scrutiny for his mistreatment of women, including an allegation of rape. One of his critics was, at one time, his own mother.

“That is the ugly truth.”

In 2018, Penelope Hegseth wrote her son an email in which she laid into him for poor behavior and disrespect toward women. “You are an abuser of women—that is the ugly truth and I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego,” she wrote in the letter, obtained by the New York Times. 

Hegseth chastised her son for how he treated his wife, Samantha, in the divorce proceedings that prompted her to send her April 2018 email. She concluded it by writing, “On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say… get some help and take an honest look at yourself…”

Reached by the Times yesterday, Hegseth defended her son and recanted the accusations in the email. She said it was written in anger, and that immediately afterward, she had followed up with a second email apologizing for the first.

Penelope Hegseth isn’t the only woman to raise question about her son’s treatment of women. Most seriously, Pete Hegseth was accused of rape while attending a 2017 Republican women’s conference in Monterey, California. Hegseth denies the allegation, saying the encounter was consensual, but paid the woman a settlement in 2020. His lawyer said the payment was to ensure the allegation didn’t cost him his Fox News job.

Hegseth also has a history of cheating on his spouses. His first marriage ended due to infidelity, according to the divorce judgement. So did his second; that divorce prompted the email lashing from his mother. He is now married to the woman with whom he fathered a child while married to his second wife, Samantha.

Samantha “did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand,” Penelope Hegseth wrote in the email. “Neither did Meredith,” she added, referring to his first wife.

Hegseth’s treatment of women is set to be a major issue during his prospective confirmation hearings in 2025—though not necessarily a dealbreaker. In the past, Republicans have rallied around nominees accused of sexual assault, such as when they circled the wagons to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Trump himself has been found liable for sexual assault, and faced numerous other allegations of assault and cheating. If the commander-in-chief can get away with it, maybe Hegseth can too.

Democrats will have the unenviable task of pushing back against a second Trump administration as the minority party across Washington. And in the House of Representatives, some Democrats are openly wondering whether the septuagenarian leader of their caucus on the Judiciary Committee is up to the task.

According to the New York Times, a movement is afoot to force 77-year old Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a member from New York since 1992, to step aside and let a younger, more energetic opponent of Donald Trump take charge. If the motif sounds familiar, it may be because the Democrats are generally led by aging long-timers, from President Joe Biden in the White House to committee chairs like Nadler. Now, they must reckon with whether loyalty to these elder statesmen is a winning strategy.

The battle raises the question of how far Democrats will go to shake up their own ranks.

Two years ago, Nancy Pelosi, then 82, stepped down as leader of the House Democrats. Today, she is reportedly one voice urging a changing of the guard on the Judiciary Committee. According to the Times, Pelosi has encouraged Rep. Jamie Raskin, who first won his Maryland seat in 2o16, to challenge Nadler for the job of ranking member on the committee.

Raskin, a constitutional lawyer, gained a nationwide profile for leading the second impeachment trial against Trump in 2021. Current House leadership, according to the Times, are staying neutral in the race. But for Democrats, who generally don’t abide challengers to incumbent leaders, public neutrality is a marked shift. Still, Raskin has taken his time weighing any challenge to Nadler, with no decision announced.

The debate over who will lead the committee’s Democrats is part of a prospective much larger remaking of the Democratic Party in the weeks, months, and years to come. After losing the 2024 elections, the party already has multiple candidates seeking to lead the Democratic National Committee, the central organ of the party, offering competing visions for how to win back a majority of Americans. Within the halls of Congress, Democrats similarly must grapple with the most effective way to hold a Trump administration accountable while in the minority.

In the context of that struggle, the choice of a Democratic leader at the Judiciary Committee is unusually consequential. Trump is widely expected to try to use the Justice Department, which the panel oversees, to exact political revenge. From immigration to abortion and beyond, he promises to push the bounds of presidential power. The committee will be at the center of those fights, and its leader charged with playing a central roles in illuminating and fighting any abuses.

Nadler isn’t the only ranking Democrat facing resistance. The Democrat currently leading the caucus on the Agriculture Committee, Rep. David Scott of Georgia, is 79. Two Democrats are challenging him for the spot. And Rep. Jared Huffman of California, 60, is challenging Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, 76, for the top spot on the Committee on Natural Resources.

“Now, with the shockwave of Trump’s ‘First 100 Days’ agenda about to slam into our committees, effective committee work led by our Ranking Members will be critical to limiting the damage from Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” Huffman said in a statement outlining his pitch. (Grijalva has said he will only serve two more years in Congress as he battles lung cancer.)

These fights raise the question of how far Democrats will go to shake up their own ranks in the wake of a demoralizing loss—or if they will stay the course under leaders who just weeks ago oversaw that defeat.