Heitkamp, H Sen
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Here’s how much Democrats get paid to shill for fossil fuels
Two former Democratic lawmakers made six-figure salaries for falsely promoting methane gas as a climate solution, tax documents seen by HEATED show.
ARIELLE SAMUELSON
JAN 18
In January 2022, only a few years after leaving the elected seat she held for six years, former Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota got a new job: convincing climate-concerned liberals to love the fossil fuel industry.
“It’s clear we have an existential threat to the planet,” said Heitkamp, in a December 2022 commercial for the methane gas lobbying group Natural Allies For a Clean Energy Future. “We should be doing everything that we can to help other countries do what we did, which is dramatically reduce our CO2 emissions by using natural gas.”
The ad—titled “Real Talk with Heidi Heitkamp”—was one of a handful of public relations jobs Heitkamp did that year for Natural Allies, some of which she did alongside former Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana. Together, the notoriously moderate Democrats wrote a sponsored article in Politico claiming that “natural gas is accelerating our clean-energy future,” and an op-ed in Newsweek declaring that methane gas can “actually achieve our shared global climate goals faster.” Landrieu also did her own “Real Talk” commercial in March 2022.
For these ads and op-eds, Heitkamp was paid $185,266 and Landrieu was paid $210,690 in 2022, according to IRS 990 tax documents obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute and seen by HEATED. The documents show payments made to Heidi Heitkamp Inc. and to Landrieu’s consulting firm VNF Solutions.
A screenshot of Natural Allies’ 990 tax form from FY2022, showing payments to Landrieu’s consulting firm and Heitkamp. They also show $1 million in payments to Mad Global, a public relations firm that specializes in politics and government, and more than $3.5 million to Omnicom Public Relations Group, a global public relations company.
It’s unclear if these positions represented full-time jobs; both Heitkamp and Landrieu were hired as members of Natural Allies’ “Leadership Council” in early 2022. According to a press release about the hires, the Leadership Council seeks “to bring greater awareness to the foundational role natural gas must play in transitioning to a clean energy future.” Neither Heitkamp nor Landrieu responded to HEATED’s request for comment.
Whatever the case, the numbers are a rare glimpse into the lucrative business of greenwashing the fossil fuel industry. Natural Allies is run and funded entirely by fossil fuel companies, including Williams, TC Energy, Kinder Morgan, National Fuel Gas, Southern Company Gas, and Cheniere Energy.
“It's not every day we get to see the price tag of a former U.S. senator’s advocacy,” said Charlie Spatz, a senior researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute.
Spatz said the numbers also highlight one of the reasons it may be so hard to pass truly effective climate policy in Congress.
“It's sending a message to current Senators that maybe you shouldn't be so harsh on the fossil fuel industry, if they're going to take care of you after you finish,” he said.
A six-figure salary to spread climate misinformation
With each passing year, the science on methane gas pollution and climate change becomes more damning. A recently revised analysis from Robert Warren Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell, found that greenhouse gas emissions from liquified methane gas “are larger than those from domestically produced coal, ranging from 18% to 185% greater for the average cruise distance of an [liquified methane gas] tanker.”
At the same time, with each passing year, more and more former Democratic lawmakers are lining up to tout methane gas as “climate-friendly” in exchange for a paycheck from Natural Allies, which is currently running a seven-figure campaign to target young, liberal, and Black and Latino voters “as effectively as we have messaged to the right.”
In addition to Heitkamp and Landrieu, former Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, former Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan, and former Florida Congressman Kendrick Meek all accepted positions with Natural Allies in 2023.
Those former lawmakers’ salaries were not disclosed on Natural Allies’s 2022 tax forms, as they were not yet hired by the organization. And it’s unclear if they will be disclosed on future forms, as the IRS only requires that non-profits disclose the five contractors with the highest salaries over $100,000.
However much they are making, they are spreading messages about methane gas that climate scientists have roundly decried as misleading.
“Their claims are all either extremely vague or disproved with middle-school-level science,” said Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at Project Drawdown, who previously worked at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
“Using natural gas warms the climate. Period, full stop,” said Andrew Dessler, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. “There is no world in which natural gas is a long-term ‘solution’ to the climate problem.”
Natural Allies cites multiple “independent studies” to support its claim that methane gas is the best way to solve the climate crisis. But, as we reported last year, all of those studies were funded at least in part by fossil fuel interests, and none were published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Actual peer-reviewed science with no industry backing has shown the opposite of what Natural Allies claims. According to a 2021 systematic review of the scientific literature on methane gas, increasing investments in the fossil fuel carries a long-term risk of delaying the clean energy transition and worsening the climate crisis. That’s because investing in further natural gas development “could lock-out emerging renewable technologies for extended periods.”
Building new gas pipelines, LNG terminals, and gas-fired power plants “pose a particularly great risk for carbon lock-ins,” scientists wrote this year in the journal Nature Energy.
What Natural Allies is doing is called “solutions denial,” a common form of climate misinformation, as we previously reported:
“It's an absolute tried-and-tested argument within the disinformation playbook to constantly create more interim milestones before we achieve what a real necessary transition looks like,” said [Jennie] King, who works at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “So taxpayer money [goes] into creating new dependencies on [fossil fuels], which ultimately in the long term, make it much harder for us to achieve an actual clean energy transition.”
But former Democratic lawmakers and mainstream media are still more than willing to spread the misinformation coming from Natural Allies, so long as Natural Allies is willing to pay for it. Since 2020, Natural Allies has spent $10 million on a national PR campaign targeting Democratic voters, including more than $4 million to place ads in E&E News and Politico newsletters, Axios, Newsweek, Vox, the Wall Street Journal, and across cable news stations, according to reporting from the Guardian and Floodlight.
These campaigns are effective, in part, because it is very difficult to tell who is behind them. Readers of these news outlets may not recognize, as we uncovered last year, that Natural Allies’ ads are a form of fossil fuel industry climate disinformation. And that is the real price of Heitkamp and Landrieu’s sell out: a deception not measured in dollars, but in the degrees threatening our livable climate.
Further reading
Politico and Axios defend running misleading natural gas ads. HEATED, February 2023.
Key quote: “It is not up to us to decide what is factually accurate or what is not factually accurate,” Politico executive vice president Cally Stolbach Baute told HEATED. “We frankly respect our readers enough to be fully transparent with them on our advertising and encourage them to evaluate our journalism on its merit and its accuracy.”
How the gas industry aims to rebrand as ‘clean’ energy to appeal to Black and Latino voters. Floodlight and The Guardian, June 2022.
Key quote: “Success for the natural gas industry will be rooted in whether we can message to the left and the Democratic base of Black and Latino and age 18-34 voters as effectively as we have messaged to the right,” read one early strategy document.
The methane gas industry is trying to codify misinformation into law. HEATED, May 2023.
Key quote: “The phenomenon started in Europe [in 2022], when the European Parliament voted to label certain uses of natural gas as “green.” That meant billions of dollars that were intended to fund climate-friendly projects could legally be used for methane power plants and terminals. Now, industry climate misinformation has also started making its way into U.S. state law—albeit in slightly different ways.”
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In order to fund his "human infrastructure" proposals, President Joe Biden has recommended increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans — including inheritance taxes. Republicans and corporate lobbyists are claiming that doing so would punish blue-collar businesses.But liberal Washington Post opinion writer Greg Sargent, this week in his column, notes that this claim is also being promoted by a centrist Democrat: former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, now a lobbyist.
"Of all the insulting lies we've heard about Democratic proposals to tax the rich," Sargent writes, "perhaps the worst is the idea that they would devastate owners and operators of family farms…. As president, Donald Trump embellished this further, adding the idea that estate taxes threaten salt-of-the-earth family-owned trucking businesses. Now, a new version of this line is back — only this time, it's being pushed by a Democrat who's advocating against a key tax provision in President Biden's $3.5 trillion 'human infrastructure' plan."
Sargent continues, "A swarm of lobbyists is gearing up against Democratic efforts to tax corporations and the wealthy to fund major investments in our people and in preserving the future home of human civilization. One thing the lobbyists want to protect is a loophole allowing untold inherited wealth to escape taxation."
The New York Times recently reported that Democratic proponents of Biden's inheritance tax proposals are saying that rural swing voters would not be affected by them. But Heitkamp, according to Sargent, is "pushing the argument that taxation at death is bad politics."
Sargent argues that the lobbying against Biden's tax proposals isn't motivated by a desire to protect family farms and blue-collar businesses, but to shield the ultra-wealthy from the taxes they are dodging.
"As it is, wealth and investment income are not taxed as labor income is," Sargent explains. "So, those amassing large fortunes often already receive privileged tax treatment. But in addition, when estates are passed down to heirs, for tax purposes, assets are assigned the value they have at that point of transfer. If assets are then sold later, they're taxed based on their appreciation in value from that point, effectively allowing all the appreciation before then to permanently escape taxation. This is one way billionaires can get away with paying so little in income taxes relative to their wealth, whereas most Americans have income taxes taken from each paycheck."
Sargent adds, "Biden's plan would combat this. It would tax those assets based on their appreciation from the original point of acquisition, thus taxing all that unrealized value. That's what lobbyists want to prevent. One of them is Heidi Heitkamp, the former Democratic senator from North Dakota."
https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/conservative-democrats-dark-money-funded-rural-voter-project-has-everything-to-do-with-sinking-medicare-for-all/
Two conservative former Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, have launched the One Country Project, a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization that aims to attract rural voters to the Democratic Party. However, according to Maplight’s Andrew Perez, working in partnership with The Intercept, the organization is also a “dark money” group, using the two former lawmakers to push an anti-Medicare-for-all agenda.
Perez found that “the One Country Project’s website is registered to an executive at Forbes Tate Partners, a lobbying and public relations firm founded by former Clinton administration officials.” Forbes Tate Partners is leading lobbying efforts for Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), which, according to Maplight, is a “health industry-backed nonprofit created to crush momentum for a comprehensive universal health care system.”
Heitkamp had previous ties to Forbes Tate Partners, hiring a subsidiary called Columbia Campaign Group for polling and media campaign consulting for her 2018 Senate bid. Her former chief of staff, Tessa Gould, is now a partner there. The Heitkamp campaign, Perez reports, paid Gould $35,000 for consulting in March, part of the over $6 million the campaign had left over from a last-minute infusion of donations after Heitkamp declined to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Heitkamp railed against Medicare-for-all in a May op-ed for The Washington Post, writing that “polling indicates that most Americans are satisfied with the health care they receive and do not want their coverage options taken away and replaced with a one-size-fits-all government program.” Both Heitkamp and Donnelly campaigned against such a proposal in their reelection bids, and both lost to Republicans.
Two conservative former Democratic senators, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Donnelly of Indiana, have launched the One Country Project, a 501(c)(4) not-for-profit organization that aims to attract rural voters to the Democratic Party.However, according to Maplight’s Andrew Perez, working in partnership with The Intercept, the organization is also a “dark money” group, using the two former lawmakers to push an anti-Medicare-for-all agenda.
Perez found that “the One Country Project’s website is registered to an executive at Forbes Tate Partners, a lobbying and public relations firm founded by former Clinton administration officials.” Forbes Tate Partners is leading lobbying efforts for Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), which, according to Maplight, is a “health industry-backed nonprofit created to crush momentum for a comprehensive universal health care system."
Heitkamp had previous ties to Forbes Tate Partners, hiring a subsidiary called Columbia Campaign Group for polling and media campaign consulting for her 2018 Senate bid. Her former chief of staff, Tessa Gould, is now a partner there. The Heitkamp campaign, Perez reports, paid Gould $35,000 for consulting in March, part of the over $6 million the campaign had left over from a last-minute infusion of donations after Heitkamp declined to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Heitkamp railed against Medicare-for-all in a May op-ed for The Washington Post, writing that “polling indicates that most Americans are satisfied with the health care they receive and do not want their coverage options taken away and replaced with a one-size-fits-all government program.” Both Heitkamp and Donnelly campaigned against such a proposal in their reelection bids, and both lost to Republicans.
Before Donnelly left the Senate, he told CNN’s Dana Bash that “when you talk Medicare-for-all … you start losing the people in my state.” He added, “When we start talking about, ‘Hey, we’re going to work together with the insurance companies to lower premiums,’ that’s what connects.”
In addition to his work with the One Country Project, Donnelly joined lobbying Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, which also has ties to anti-Medicare-for-All efforts through its lobbying for health care industry clients, who have also donated to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).
According to reporting by Alex Kotch in Sludge, “Vic Fazio, a senior advisor at lobbying firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and former California Democratic congressman, has raised nearly $130,000 for the DCCC this year. He has lobbied for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a PAHCF member and the nation’s largest pharmaceutical trade association.”
Support for broader health coverage is growing among Americans, though they remain divided on terminology, and on whether to abolish private insurance. According to an April 2019 poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56% of Americans support a national health plan or Medicare-for-all.
“Yet,” the KFF report continues, “how politicians discuss these different proposals does affect public support.” The poll found 63% of respondents said they support Medicare-for-All or universal coverage, while 59% say they support a national health plan, and 46% support socialized medicine. The most common theme, researchers report, “is a desire for universal coverage.”
A February poll from The Hill-HarrisX found that just 13% of respondents favored a health care system controlled entirely by the government with no private insurance and 32% of respondents favored universal coverage, operated by the government, that still included room for supplemental private insurance. Another 26% want a public option that doesn’t compete with private insurance.
Mostly, there’s a lot of confusion. As Mohamed Younis, editor-in-chief of Gallup, told The Hill TV’s Krystal Ball, “Folks are clearly saying the system is still sort of broken to some degree, but there isn’t a lot of consensus around how to fix it in one way or another.”
Neither Heitkamp nor Donnelly responded to Maplight’s requests for comment.
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https://freedomroad.us/who-we-are/ruth-anna-buffalo/
North Dakota Republican Who Sponsored Law Disenfranchising Native Americans Loses Election — to a Native American
Tuesday night in North Dakota, Democrats faced a stinging blow with the loss of Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.
A bipartisan problem-solver, Heitkamp did a lot in her time in the Senate — she expanded the Violence Against Women Act to cover Native American tribes, sponsored a bill to help farmers hurt by tariffs, and heroically stood up for women by voting against Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. She was unseated by GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer, a hard-right ideologue who has suggested attempted rape isn't a crime. The loss was broadly expected, as she was badly trailing in polls for weeks.
But further down the ballot, North Dakota Republicans paid a steep price for the lengths they went to to defeat her.
Shortly after Heitkamp first won her seat in 2012, carried to a narrow victory by Native American voters, GOP lawmakers in North Dakota retaliated by passing a voter ID bill making it almost impossible for Native Americans on tribal lands to vote. The law required them to use an ID card bearing a residential street address — even though most people in tribal communities do not have a street address. The law was initially blocked by a federal judge, but allowed to take effect on appeal.
But North Dakota Republicans didn't anticipate what a massive backlash there would be to their skullduggery. Immediately after the Supreme Court let the law take effect, furious Democratic activists all over the country crowdfunded a massive effort to get street addresses and updated ID cards for Native Americans in the state.
The effort was so successful that on Election Day, Native turnout was actually *higher* than 2012 in several places. The high turnout was not enough to save Heitkamp, as the state's electorate has shifted significantly right of where it was six years ago — but at the legislative level, angry Native voters flipped at least three red seats blue, including state House Majority Leader Al Carlson.
In the most poetic justice of the night, Randy Boehning, a GOP state representative in Fargo who sponsored the Native American disenfranchisement law in the first place, was unseated by Democrat Ruth Anna Buffalo — a Native American.
It is hard to call the midterm results in North Dakota a positive thing for Democrats. But even though they lost the Senate race, they can take satisfaction in knowing that the Republican law passed to deny Native Americans the vote was an utter failure that woke a sleeping giant — and may have done the GOP more harm than good.
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https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/supreme-court-heidi-heitkamp-voter-id-tribal-reservations
on Tuesday, the Supreme Court denied an emergency request to reverse an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that reinstated a set of draconian North Dakota voter ID restrictions — restrictions which disproportionately impact Native Americans living on tribal lands, and which could threaten the re-election of Democratic incument Sen. Heidi Heitkamp.
The denial, issued by Neil Gorsuch, was 6-2, with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan dissenting, and Brett Kavanaugh — who was only just sworn into office after a bitter confirmation fight — not taking part.
North Dakota is unique among states in not having voter registration at all, meaning that voters are confirmed solely by presenting identification that proves their residency. But the new law, enacted by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2017, places new restrictions on the type of state-issued ID that is acceptable: specifically, North Dakota voters must now present a photo ID card that bears a residential street address.
That could be a serious problem for thousands of Native American voters who live on tribal lands, because many of them do not actually have residential street addresses. The Postal Service does not deliver directly to many tribal reservations, so many state-issued tribal ID cards simply bear a P.O. box, which will not be sufficient under the new law.
A federal district court previously blocked the law from taking effect after Native American groups sued, and North Dakota conducted its primaries without it. But the Eighth Circuit reversed the lower court in September — and with the Supreme Court refusing to intervene, the law will now take effect for the general election.
Native American voters whose tribal ID cards do not show a residential street address will not be completely without options. They may be able to call their local 911 coordinator, register the location of their address, and have a document mailed to them bearing that address, which can then be used to supplement their ID. But early and absentee voting has already started, and the new rules are bound to create mass confusion, potentially causing thousands of people to stay home or bring the wrong identification.
This, indeed, was Ginsburg's main complaint in her dissent. "The risk of voter confusion appears severe here because the injunction against requiring residential-address identification was in force during the primary election and because the Secretary of State’s website announced for months the ID requirements as they existed under that injunction," she wrote. "Reasonable voters may well assume that the IDs allowing them to vote in the primary election would remain valid in the general election. If the Eighth Circuit’s stay is not vacated, the risk of disfranchisement is large."
Heitkamp is already facing a tough election fight against GOP Rep. Kevin Cramer, who currently leads her in all polls. She won in 2012 by a margin of fewer than 3,000 votes, and Native Americans make up a huge portion of her voter base. Absent a broad awareness and organizing campaign to help people obtain the required documents, the court decision could be a disaster for voter turnout.
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brett k, in trouble 2018 election?
https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/heidi-heitkamp-kevin-cramer-me-too-victimization
the North Dakota Senate race, Republican challenger Rep. Kevin Cramer has staked out a clear position against the women challenging rape culture.
A few weeks ago, he claimed that the claims of sexual assault by Brett Kavanaugh would not disqualify him from the Supreme Court even if true because the alleged assault against Dr. Christine Blasey Ford "never went anywhere" — only relenting after a TV interviewer explained to him why it would be bad if it was true. More recently, Cramer blasted the whole Me Too movement for saying "you're just supposed to believe somebody because they said it happened," and remarked that his female relatives "cannot understand this movement toward victimization" because "they are pioneers of the prairie."
According to the New York Times, When asked about these comments at a Scandinavian festival in Rutland, incumbent Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp had some choice words for Cramer for dismissing survivors of sexual assault as weak.
SPONSORED
"The better part of my career in public life has been working with victims. Did you ask him how many victims during this process he actually sat down with, and survivors he sat down with, and visited with personally?"
Heitkamp, who served as North Dakota's attorney general in the 90s, voted against confirming Kavanaugh — and hails from one of the reddest states of any senator to do so.
"I think it's wonderful that his wife has never had an experience, and good for her, and it’s wonderful his mom hasn't," Heitkamp continued, growing visibly emotional. "My mom did. And I think it affected my mom her whole life. And it didn't make her less strong. And I want you to put this in there, it did not make my mom less strong that she was a victim. She got stronger and she made us strong. And to suggest that this movement doesn't make women strong and stronger is really unfortunate."
Should Cramer be elected to the Senate, the implications for North Dakota women could be dark. Already, the Republican-controlled Congress is dangerously close to letting the Violence Against Women Act lapse, and when the last big reauthorization came up in 2013, several Republicans voted against it. Cramer, who was in the House at the time, did vote for it, but simultaneously complained that the provisions for Native American tribes — provisions Heitkamp fought for, and which are essential to Native women in the state — were unconstitutional. He felt strongly enough about it that he violently insulted the Tribal Council during a meeting in 2013.
Recent polls show Cramer with a fairly large lead. So it will be down to Democrats who support her stand against the Supreme Court takeover to help her turn things around if she is to win a second term.
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Former Coal Lobbyist Confirmed as No. 2 at EPA
The Senate voted on Thursday to confirm former Inhofe staffer and coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler to the position of deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to serve as Scott Pruitt's second in command.
Democrats Heitkamp, Manchin and Donnelly joined with Republicans to give approval for Wheeler to move into a position regulating the industry on whose behalf he was just lobbying (for Murray Energy.)
And because Wheeler would become acting administrator in the event that Pruitt resigns or is fired, Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) likened it to "a shadow confirmation vote for the next administrator of the EPA."
"Andrew Wheeler's coal credentials are without equal. He is, without question, a member of the coal industry's Hall of Fame," said Markey, the AP reported.
"Sadly, I am concerned that Andrew Wheeler's background means that he will never understand that saving coal is not the job of the EPA," Markey added. "It is the EPA's job to regulate coal to protect public health and the environment."
According to the AP, environmental groups said that Pruitt and Wheeler could be a devastating combination.
"Before the Trump administration, it would have been inconceivable that a coal and chemical industry lobbyist with a long history of hostility toward environmental policy would be the No. 2 at EPA," said Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group.
As reported by the Washington Post, "Wheeler has changed his tune" about Trump after vehemently opposing his candidacy:
"Wheeler wrote a post on his personal Facebook account the day before Super Tuesday pleading with those considering voting for Trump to reconsider. In his six-point critique, Wheeler questioned Trump's character, business acumen and viability as a general-election candidate. Trump was a 'bully,' Wheeler wrote in the since-deleted Facebook post obtained by The Post. He said that Trump 'hasn't been that successful' in business and 'has more baggage then all of the other Republican candidates combined.' Wheeler added that Trump 'has demonstrated through the debates and interviews that he doesn't understand how the government works.'"
For a deeper dive:
News: AP, New York Times, Mother Jones, CNN, Washington Post, WSJ, HuffPost, Inside Climate News, The Hill, Think Progress
The memo notes that they believe Justice Anthony Kennedy will soon retire, and the effort to replace him will be “far more contentious” than the effort to confirm Justice Neil Gorsuch.
“If President Trump nominates a principled, constructionist nominee for Justice Kennedy’s seat or any other vacant seat, we anticipate engaging with both grassroots and under-the-dome tactics, bringing paid and earned media and events to support the confirmation.” The memo notes that the network sponsored pressure effort on Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; and Joe Donnelly, D-Ind., all of whom eventually voted to confirm Gorsuch.
In Indian Wells, California, last month, the network held a retreat with 700 donors. Several journalists were invited to attend as long as they promised not to name the donors present.
Operatives from the network also led sessions to explain how to move forward into the midterm elections. The Koch brothers intend to spend $400 million to preserve the Republican majority in Congress and maintain GOP power at the state level.
In recent days, Koch network groups have purchased ads targeting Democratic lawmakers in key elections across the country. This week, a new ad began airing in Missouri criticizing DemocraticSen. Claire McCaskill,who is up for re-election this year.
“We’ve made more progress in the last five years than I had in the last 50,” Charles Koch reportedly said. “The capabilities we have now can take us to a whole new level.”
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/12/trump-usda-klippenstein-heitkamp/
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Choosing a centrist Democrat like Heitkamp would be quite a departure from earlier versions of Trump’s USDA short list,which included wild cards like Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who unapologetically shares fake news stories on his office’s Facebook page and once tried to bill taxpayers for a trip to take a medical procedure called a Jesus shot. Charles Herbster has also appeared as a prime candidate for USDA chief—he’s a man who currently runs a a multilevel marketing operation(a highly controversial business model that relies on a network of individual “distributors” to sell products) and who financesand helps lead a Big Ag federal super-PAC also funded by Monsanto, DuPont, Archer Daniels Midland, and other agribusiness giants.
Indeed, a day before the Politico piece hailing Heitkamp as the likely pick, Trump veered in a quite different direction, announcing a new member of the team overseeing the transition of the USDA: Brian Klippenstein, executive director of a group called Protect the Harvest. The brainchild of Forrest Lucas—a right-wing oil magnate and cattle rancher who has himself emerged as a contender to serve as Trump’s secretary of the interior—Protect the Harvest seems to exist mainly to troll the Humane Society of the United States.
On its website, Protect the Harvest warns that HSUS seeks to “put an end to animal ownership.” This is nonsense—the Humane Society is by no means coming for your furry friend. Its website features “tools you need to help the pets in your home and beyond.” I asked Paul Shapiro, vice president of policy at HSUS, whether his group opposes the keeping of pets. “That would certainly be news to the vast numbers of our staff who bring their dogs to work here,” he replied.
Protect the Harvest’s real beef with HSUS appears to be that the group promotes legislation that curtails some of the harsher aspects of factory-scale animal farming. The two groups recently clashed over a Massachusetts ballot measure this fall to ban tight cages in egg and pork production. Lucas personally donated nearly $200,0000 to defeat the measure, and Klippenstein actively campaigned against it. The measure passed with overwhelming support on November 8.
Protect the Harvest’s zeal to fight regulation of animal farming extends even to “puppy mills“—large facilities that churn out dogs like factory farms churn out pigs. Back in 2010, the year before Protect the Harvest was founded, Lucas vigorously opposed a Missouri ballot measure to “require large-scale dog breeding operations to provide each dog under their care with sufficient food, clean water, housing and space; necessary veterinary care; regular exercise and adequate rest between breeding cycles,” and to “prohibit any breeder from having more than 50 breeding dogs for the purpose of selling their puppies as pets.” In 2014, Protect the Harvest opposed an Illinois bill banning the retail sale of puppy-mill dogs.
Klippenstein isn’t the only member of Trump’s USDA transition team. Recall that back in November, Trump picked a lobbyist whose clients include Little Ceasar’s Pizza, the soda and snack industries, and the Illinois Soybean Association to lead the agency’s transition. He soon abruptly quitafter Trump announced a ban on registered lobbyists serving in the transition.
But then, a few days later, Trump tapped Joel Leftwich, Republican staff director for the Senate Agriculture Committee, to help lead the USDA transition. Leftwich took the Senate job in 2015—after having spent the previous three years as the director of government affairs for Pepsi. In 2010—just before another stint on the Senate ag committee staff—Leftwich had worked as a lobbyist for seed and chemical giant DuPont. In other words, Team Trump pushed out a current lobbyist for Big Soda and Big Ag—only to replace him with a guy who basically lives in the revolving door between government and agribusiness, and whose latest turn as a lobbyist ended way back in 2015.
So basically, we’ve got a two-time industry lobbyist and an anti-animal-welfare zealot teaming up to choose the next USDA chief.
What that means for the prospect of Heitkamp taking the USDA reins is unclear. She narrowly won her North Dakota Senate seat in 2012, and Trump won the state in 2016 with 63 percent of the vote. As a Democrat, she faces a hard fight for reelection in 2018, which may be why she agreed to meet with Trump on December 2, in what was widely read as a job interview. If she exits the Senate now, North Dakota would have to hold a special election to replace her, and the winner would almost certainly be a Republican. On Monday, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev,), the soon-to-retire former Democratic leader of the Senate, sought to throw water on the Heitkamp-to-USDA rumor, telling CNN that “I would doubt very seriously” that she’d agree to join the Trump administration. Whether he has knowledge of Heitkamp’s intentions, or is just hoping to keep a Senate seat in the party fold, is unclear.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2017/05/10/senates-poised-to-repeal-a-final-obama-era-rule-as-soon-as-wednesday/
no link many
Senate unexpectedly rejects bid to repeal a key Obama-era environmental regulation
By Chelsea Harvey and Juliet Eilperin May 10 at 12:10 PM
Oil pumps and natural gas burn off in Watford City, N.D. Methane emissions will likely be the next big environmental issue to face North Dakota’s booming oil industry according to a top official at the state’s Department of Health. (AP/Charles Rex Arbogast)
This story has been updated.
The U.S. Senate narrowly voted down a resolution on Wednesday to repeal an Obama-era rule restricting methane emissions from drilling on public lands — with three Republicans joining every Democrat to preserve the rule.
The 51 to 49 vote marked the first time since Trump’s election that Republicans have failed in their attempt to use the Congressional Review Act to overturn Obama-era rules.
Thirteen earlier resolutions, based on the 1996 law that allows Congress to overturn rules within 60 days of their adoption, all succeeded. But the deadline for repealing such regulations through the Congressional Review Act is on Thursday.
The methane emissions rule, issued by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management in November, addresses a potent greenhouse gas that is accelerating climate change.
[Earth could break through a major climate threshold in the next 15 years, scientists warn]
The rule would force oil and gas companies to capture methane that had been previously burned off or “flared” at drilling sites.
The previous administration estimated the rule would prevent roughly 180,000 tons a year of methane from escaping into the atmosphere and would boost federal revenue because firms pay only royalties on the federal resources they capture and contain.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) unexpectedly voted no against a motion to proceed with consideration of the resolution, along with GOP Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and Lindsey Graham (S.C.). Two Democrats who had considered backing the rule’s elimination —Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — voted against the motion as well.
In a floor speech after the vote, Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), said “the very first victory” lawmakers have had in beating back a Congressional Review Act bill this year came from a combination of Democratic unity and a few Republicans’ willingness to buck their leadership. “Thank you so much for coming forward and seeing the common sense nature of this issue,” Udall said, referring to Collins, Graham and McCain.
Jamie Williams, president of The Wilderness Society, praised the lawmakers who supported the rule. “In recent months, thousands of Americans asked the Senate to stand up for clean air and against the oil lobby, and their efforts were successful today,” he said.
Republicans and industry officials said they would now switch their focus to getting the Interior Department to rewrite the rule.
Barry Russell, president of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, said his group “looks forward to working with the Interior Department on a targeted, meaningful solution that will achieve the common goal of ensuring the American taxpayers receive a fair and equitable return in the form of royalties while developing a workable regulation, instead of this one-size-fits-all approach.”
[EPA dismisses half of key board’s scientific advisers; Interior suspends more than 200 advisory panels]
And Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said in a statement that Interior should withdraw the regulation outright. “If left in place, this regulation will only discourage energy production, job creation, and economic opportunity across the West.”
Before this year, Congress had only nullified one rule, a regulation on ergonomics Bill Clinton enacted during his final year in office. In less than four months Republicans have wiped away rules covering everything from limits on the dumping of waste from surface mining operations to enlarging states’ power to offer retirement accounts to private-sector workers.
But the move to strike a rule requiring companies to limit the practice of flaring, or leaking, methane from oil and gas operations on federal and tribal land had given some Republicans–who control 52 seats in the Senate–pause.
Senate Press Gallery ? @SenatePress
#senate vote on HJ Res 36, the CRA on the methane rule was NOT agreed to 49-51. Collins, Graham and McCain joined all Dems/IND against.
7:27 AM - 10 May 2017
236 236 Retweets 516 516 likes
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Many Republicans and fossil fuel producers criticized the regulation after it was finalized last year, and a resolution to repeal it passed quickly in the House of Representatives at the end of January. But despite Trump’s support, the repeal measure had been sitting in the Senate for months. It had to pass by Thursday to be eligibleto be signed into law.
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Democrats, as well as environmental and public health groups, ran a months-long campaign to persuade Heitkamp and Manchin not to disclose their position publicly while arguing to centrist Republicans that abolishing the rule would cost taxpayers money as well as harm the environment.
[Trump undertakes the most ambitious regulatory rollback since Reagan]
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Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) also remained on the fence until Monday, when he announced in a statement that he would vote to overturn the BLM regulation. Two other wavering Republicans, Cory Gardner (Colo.) and Dean Heller (Nev.), ultimately joined Portman in voting to proceed with the bill’s consideration.
“Unfortunately, the previous administration’s methane rule was not a balanced approach,” Portman said. “As written, it would have hurt our economy and cost jobs in Ohio by forcing small independent operators to close existing wells and slowing responsible energy production on federal lands. There’s a better way.”
He added that he believes the Interior Department should still work to reduce venting and flaring on public lands. Last week, Portman wrote to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, calling for a commitment that the department would continue to work to reduce methane waste if the Obama rule were reversed. On May 4, Zinke responded, affirming that “the Department is committed to reducing methane waste, and under my leadership, we will take important steps to accomplish this goal.”
Environmentalists urged Portman to reconsider. In a statement on Tuesday, Environmental Defense Action Fund Executive Director Fred Krupp said Zinke’s assurances were “unfounded” and argued that the strategies for reducing methane waste outlined in his letter would have little impact.
A coalition of industry groups have argued they are taking steps to reduce fugitive methane emissions, because they recognize capturing them can yield additional profits. The American Petroleum Institute noted that the Environmental Protection Agency data, released in March, shows about an 8 percent drop in methane emissions from petroleum production since 2014, largely because of improved gas venting and flaring techniques.
The legislative window for Congressional Review Act resolutions to be considered ends on Thursday, though a handful of conservative analysts believe that agencies’ failure to submit a 2-page report on previous rules to Congress could open the door to reconsideration of dozens of much older rules.
Curtis Copeland, a regulatory expert who specialized in American government at the Congressional Research Service, said in an email that regardless of how many rules this Congress ultimately overturns, “The CRA can no longer be described as ‘obscure’ or ‘little known.’ It now has to be viewed as a substantive tool of congressional oversight regarding an outgoing President’s rules, and it is likely be used again in the future.”
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sellout, w/ manchin
THE SENATE VOTED to confirm Donald Trump’s pick for administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency today over the objections of Democratic senators, hundreds of former EPA officials, and hundreds of current EPA employees. Although an Oklahoma judge had ruled on Thursday that Pruitt’s office had to release more than 2,500 emails he had exchanged with energy and gas companies and industry groups, Republicans crammed through his confirmation in a 52-46 vote (with Democrats Joe Manchin andHeidi Heitkamp voting with the Republican majority) before anyone had a chance to review the emails exchanged with the companies he’s now in charge of regulating.
http://dailycaller.com/2017/02/02/trump-to-sign-repeal-of-obama-era-coal-mining-regulation/
Donald Trump is expected to sign legislation repealing a regulation finalized in the final weeks of the Obama administration that would have severely restricted coal mining in Appalachia.
Both chambers of Congress passed resolutions under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) repealing an Interior Department rule on coal mine discharge into nearby streams.
On the campaign trail, Trump promised to rollback federal regulations targeting coal mining. Trump said he’d sign the repeal bill because he’s “committed to reviving America’s coal mining communities, which have been hurting for too long.”
Trump said in a statement that the $1.2 billion Stream Protection Rule “duplicates existing protections in the Clean Water Act and is unnecessary given the other Federal and State regulations already in place.”
The Senate passed the CRA repealing the Stream Protection Rule Thursday afternoon. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota joined Republicans in supporting the rule’s repeal. The House passed a CRA on the rule Wednesday.
Environmentalists –obviously– oppose repealing the Stream Protection Rule, saying the rule protects streams from coal mine pollution.
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2015 Ads Opposing Senate Democrats
In 2015 Concerned Veterans for America began an ad series with a six-figure budget that aimed at hindering the re-election campaigns of Democratic Senators.[10] The first installment in a series of online and mail ads aired in October 2015, "targeting Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, the most vulnerable Senate Democrat up for reelection next year, as well as three Democrats up for reelection in 2018: Sens. Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania andHeidi Heitkamp of North Dakota", according to Politico.[10] The ad was available on YouTube at the time of Politico's initial report, but has since been removed.
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export ban lifted by lobbying:
e oil industry‘s victory in the battle to lift the crude export ban didn’t come out of thin air. Opponents of the prohibition — long some of the biggest forces in the Washington influence game — began lobbying on the issue in earnest in early 2013, with the effort building until they accomplished their long-sought goal when language was inserted into a must-pass spending bill that funds the government until October 2016.
The language lifting the ban found its way into the $1.1 trillion omnibus package this week through some congressional horse-trading: Environmentalist Democrats got half-a-decade of tax credits for solar and wind projects, while their industry-friendly counterparts like Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) and most Republicans got an end to the prohibition on overseas crude sales.
“It’s incredible what the Democrats in Congress were willing to give up for just five years of renewable energy tax credits,” Marcie Keever, a Berkeley, Calif.-based expert on oil exports and a program director at Friends of the Earth.
Lobbying firms began to report activity on issues like “oil export” and “crude export” for the first time in 2013 — a few years after the country’s fracking boom, concentrated in regions like the Bakken Shale formation in Heitkamp’s home state, began to strain the capacities of coastal refineries and the oil transport infrastructure that led to them. Crude oil couldn’t be exported (except in special cases) due to long-standing federal law; it could, however, be refined and sold overseas as a different product, like gasoline.
But two years, hundreds of lobbying reports and millions of dollars later, that will change. By one estimate, crude oil exports in the United States could rise to 1.8 million barrels per day by 2017.
In 2013, only a handful of companies reported lobbying activity on oil exports, according to an OpenSecrets Blog analysis of federal lobbying data: ConocoPhillips, Shell Oil, the National Association of Manufacturersand PBF Energy. At one point that year, just 16 registered lobbyists in Washington reported working to influence policy on “oil exports,” “crude exports” or an issue with similar phrasing.
That could have put the oil giants on relatively even footing with the environmental group Friends of the Earth, which starting lobbying on the oil export ban in the first quarter of 2014. But as the first environmentalist organization joined the scrum, so too did 53 other lobbyists from companies like BP,Valero,Anadarko Petroleum and HollyFrontier Corp, to name a few. The American Petroleum Institute joined the fray in the second quarter of 2014. The number of lobbyists on the case only kept rising, as did the number of times firms mentioned “oil exports” or “crude exports” in their reports and the number of clients paying to influence the policy.
By the third quarter of this year, the number of lobbyists on the issue had grown to 300. All told, organizations and companies that lobbied on the measure spent $38 million weighing in on that and other issues in the third quarter of 2015. Oil interests outspent environmentalists by a wide margin.
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While the lobbying ramped up on K Street, the message found its champions on Capitol HIll in Heitkamp and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska).
“This policy didn’t happen overnight,” Heitkamp said in a press release after the deal was announced this week. “Senator Murkowski and I have been meeting with and educating other senators about the need to lift the ban on exporting oil for about a year and a half.”
A timeline Heitkamp’s office published with the press release shows the senator first called for lifting the ban in August 2014, or the third quarter of that year. In September 2014, she invited the CEO of Hess Corporation to appear on a CNBC show she guest-hosted; months later, Hess Corporation reported lobbying on oil exports, along with 30 other clients.
Heitkamp cites studies that show lifting the ban may lead to a slight decrease in gas prices, and the bill will help exporters in her state looking to sell the oil they’ve extracted. Her office did not immediately comment on the lobbying surge.
Keever, though, doesn’t see an upside to lifting the ban.
“We’re going to see more exploding trains. We’re going to see more oil spills, more vessel incidents where oil is spilled in our marine waters,” she said.
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en Democratic senators have voted with Republicans to allow the progress of a bill to extend the Keystone oil pipeline, placing more political pressure on the White House to reconsider its proposed veto of the legislation.
The procedural motion was passed by 63 votes to 32, comfortably clearing the three-fifths majority needed to avoid a filibuster and falling just short of the two-thirds majority that would be needed to overcome a presidential veto when it comes to a final vote.
But some of the Democrats, who were also joined by Maine independent Angus King, may switch votes in future to avoid embarrassing Barack Obama who has said he is opposed to Congress interfering in a long-running administration review of the pipeline extension.
Keystone has become a symbolic battlefield for the administration’s climate change policy, with critics insisting that it will encourage the exploitation ofheavily-polluting Canadian tar sands and supporters claiming it will createthousands of jobs.
The bill will now see various amendments added over the coming weeks, a process which could ultimately decide on its level of support among Democrats.
It was approved by the House of Representatives last week by 266-152 votes, a margin also short of the two-thirds majority in both chambers needed to overcome White House opposition.
The Obama administration has stood by its decision to reject the bill, even though a Nebraska court decision in favour of the Keystone route removed one of its remaining objections.
The Democrats who joined senator King in voting for cloture on the motion to proceed included: Michael Bennet of Colorado, Tom Carper of Delaware, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jon Tester of Montana, Tom Udall of New Mexico and Mark Warner of Virginia. King has said he would vote against final passage, and five senators have not voted at all yet.
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The bipartisan measure, which had appeared to have a strong chance of passage, received 55 votes before Mr. Reid changed his vote to “no” to preserve the parliamentary right to bring the measure up again. Four Republicans voted “yes”: Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a co-author of the legislation; John McCain of Arizona; Mark Steven Kirk of Illinois; and Susan Collins of Maine. An equal number of Democrats voted “no”: Mark Begich of Alaska, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Max Baucus of Montana and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota. All are from states that Mr. Obama lost by wide margins last fall, and all but Ms. Heitkamp face difficult re-election campaigns in 2014.
Influencing 2012 Congressional Elections
Much of Crossroads GPS's spending in 2012 focused on attacking Democrats in close Senate races. In 2012, they began an active "New Majority Agenda" campaign to create a Republican-Controlled senate [20] Crossroads GPS ads generally instruct the viewer to tell their Senator to support this "New Majority Agenda", and attack the target for supporting the Affordable Care act or the 2009 stimulus. Their favorite targets were Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, Montana Senator Jim Testor, and North Dakota Democratic Nominee for Senate Heidi Heitkamp. Following the 2012 senate primary in Wisconsin, Crossroads GPS began running ads against Democratic Senate Nominee Tammy Baldwin. Because Crossroads GPS does not have to report how it spends its money, and its press releases often discuss several ads buys at once, it is difficult to know how much Crossroads GPS has spend influencing each election. At the beginning of 2012, Crossroads GPS and American Crossroads announced that they planned to spend $70 million influencing 2012 senate races. [21]
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Heidi Heitkamp is running for the open U.S. Senate seat in North Dakota against U.S. Rep. Rick Berg, R-North Dakota.[12] American Commitment is running ads against her in North Dakota.[13]