team red bak

see AG, RAGA,team blue, RICO GW

13 tag is AG GOP?

~ aca

coal, CPP

bak 9 22 html endit1

mo fo's

i need a spreadsheet /table for RAGA fuckery

-=-=

To boost Trump, GOP attorneys general charge into battle over state election rules

Zachary Roth

March 18, 2024

A loose coalition of Republican-led states, often led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, shown above, has advanced a string of arguments that appear designed to lay the groundwork for GOP legal victories in the event of a contested presidential vote. (Stew Milne for Alabama Reflector)

With less than six months before voting begins, the legal jousting over the rules for the 2024 election is already underway. And former President Donald Trump’s campaign is getting support from allies who have stayed mostly under the national radar: red-state attorneys general.

In court filings made in recent months, these chief state legal officers have advanced a string of arguments — some strikingly far-reaching — that appear designed to lay the groundwork for Republican legal victories in the event of a contested presidential vote, or to otherwise boost Trump and the GOP.

Often led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, a loose coalition of Republican-led states has submitted briefs urging judges to:

Throw out certain mail ballots,

Weaken long-standing protections against racial discrimination in voting,

Green-light gerrymandered district maps,

And empower partisan state legislatures, rather than courts, to set election rules.

“These are all setting up an argument, potentially, to say that the 2024 election was flawed because of all these state practices that are questionable,” said Paul Nolette, a political science professor at Marquette University in Milwaukee who has written in depth on the role of state AGs. “The AGs just have been critical in pushing these arguments.”

Marshall’s office did not respond to a request to comment for this story. But last month Marshall also led a coalition of red states in submitting an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to pause Trump’s election subversion trial tied to the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — a stance that aligned the group perfectly with the interests of the Trump campaign.

And in 2020, many of these same state AGs, including Marshall, sought to have the courts overturn Trump’s election loss.

An election decided in the courts?

The danger of outright election subversion this year appears to have receded somewhat, election law experts have said, thanks to important federal legislation and the results of the last midterms. But the chances that the election will be contested, and ultimately settled in the courts, remain very high.

In that scenario, advocates and experts say, these Republican AGs look well-placed to provide the kinds of conservative legal arguments that could prove pivotal, both by directly influencing court decisions and by infiltrating the broader public debate.

But many of these claims, democracy advocates warn — especially those that support new voting restrictions, reduce the power of minority voters, or undermine courts’ authority to set election rules — could threaten fair elections.

“A huge part of the overall anti-democracy movement is really based on continuing to find ways to use legal tactics as a jumping-off point to spread the election denier message,” said Lizzie Ulmer, senior vice president of strategy and communications for States United Democracy Center, a pro-democracy group.

“There are good and pro-democracy state AGs on both sides of the aisle. But the truth is there are AGs in office right now that have the potential to do real harm. And we’ve seen that in the past and we’re seeing it today.”

Growing politicization

The involvement of the Republican AGs in elections cases with national stakes marks the latest step in a decades-long trend toward AGs taking on more politicized roles.

In less polarized times, experts say, state AGs mostly presented as apolitical prosecutors, and frequently teamed up across party lines to tackle issues of public concern.

That began to shift in earnest during the George W. Bush administration, when Democratic AGs used a series of splashy lawsuits against Wall Street firms and corporate polluters, among others, to advance national policy and political goals — and to boost their own national profiles.

But in the Trump era, the shift has intensified. Several close observers said a key moment came in 2017, when Republicans sought to oust then-Virginia AG Mark Herring, a Democrat — ending a long-standing custom in which neither party spent money targeting incumbent AGs of the other party. Herring ultimately won re-election, but that cycle saw record campaign spending on AG races.

In Republican-led states, the politicization of AG offices reached its height around the 2020 election, centered around the Republican Attorneys General Association, an advocacy group for Republican AGs. In the leadup to the events of Jan. 6, 2021, the group’s fundraising arm, the Rule of Law Defense Fund, sent robocalls urging people to gather for a march to the U.S. Capitol to “stop the steal” and “protect the integrity of our elections.”

Marshall, the Alabama AG, served as chair of RLDF at the time, and has said he was unaware of the robocalls. He has declined to say whether RAGA or RLDF staff were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, and his office has denied public records requests by the Alabama Political Reporter for his calendars covering the period.

Along with other Republican AGs, Marshall sought to cast doubt on the 2020 election results, telling Newsmax not long after the vote: “We obviously have concerns about some of the issues, specifically of irregularities and fraud in other places.”

On Dec. 10, 2020, Marshall and other Republican AGs joined Trump for a meeting at the White House. A day earlier, Marshall had announced that Alabama would join a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton seeking to overturn the results in Pennsylvania and three other states narrowly won by Joe Biden. Seventeen Republican-led states ultimately signed on to the Texas case.

Idaho AG disagreed

One state that didn’t join the suit was Idaho, whose AG at the time, Republican Lawrence Wasden, saw the Texas lawsuit as an improper attempt to use the AG’s office to make policy — and to interfere in other states’ business.

“The policy-making function under both the state and federal constitutions is clearly put in the hands of the legislative branch of government,” Wasden told States Newsroom. “The AG is an executive officer, and does not have those powers. That’s not how we should make public policy.”

After 20 years in office, Wasden lost his 2022 re-election bid in the Republican primary to former U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador — a defeat Wasden attributes to GOP voter anger at his decision not to join the Texas case. But he hasn’t wavered in his view that it was the right call.

“If Texas can control or influence the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania, then California can influence the election in Idaho,” Wasden said. “And that is not how federalism works.”

Labrador was elected attorney general later that year, and has signed Idaho on to several of the elections cases brought by Republican AGs.

As for Marshall, in 2021, he withdrew Alabama from the bipartisan National Association of Attorneys General, saying the group had “moved too far to the left.” The next year, Texas, Missouri, and Montana followed suit.

In 2022, Marshall declined to say, when asked under oath while testifying before Congress, that Biden was “duly elected,” answering only that “he is the president of this country.”

Months later, Marshall was elected chair of RAGA. Now, he’s leading the charge among Republican AGs on election cases with an eye on 2024.

Weakening voting protections

Marshall has battled on behalf of strict voting laws in his own state.

His office energetically, and successfully, fought off a 2020 court challenge to an Alabama law that bars people with past convictions from casting a ballot. In that year’s election, he also succeeded in getting the Supreme Court to block an effort to allow curbside voting, which voting advocates said could offer easier access for elderly and disabled voters .

But it’s Marshall’s work on behalf of Republicans looking to influence election rules far beyond the Yellowhammer State that could have an even greater impact.

In January, Marshall led a coalition of 17 red states that submitted an amicus brief supporting a bid by national Republicans to require Pennsylvania to reject mail ballots with incorrect or missing dates.

In Pennsylvania’s 2020 election, there were over 10,000 such ballots, and how the case is resolved could help determine the winner of this pivotal swing state, if the result is very close. Democrats have voted by mail at significantly higher rates than Republicans in recent elections.

But the impact could be broader still. A district court found last year that the missing or incorrect dates are irrelevant to establishing a vote’s legitimacy.

That means, the court ruled, that under the materiality provision of civil rights law — first included in the 1964 Civil Rights Act, then extended to cover non-federal elections in the Voting Rights Act the following year — a missing or incorrect date can’t be used as a reason to reject a vote.

In their brief, Alabama and the other states called the district court’s ruling “seriously misguided.”

They argued that the materiality provision should be read more narrowly, and doesn’t bar states from imposing reasonable ballot integrity measures. And, they claimed, the provision contains no “private right of action,” meaning it can be enforced only by the U.S. Justice Department, not by the civil rights groups involved in the Pennsylvania case.

By itself, making the materiality provision harder to use would likely have only a limited impact, since it hasn’t been among the tools most commonly used to protect voting rights, noted Cameron Kistler, counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan democracy advocacy group.

But, he said, it comes in the context of other ongoing conservative legal attacks on voting protections — including attempts to weaken the Voting Rights Act, and suggestions by the Supreme Court that it may lower the level of scrutiny it applies to voting laws that are accused of harming voters.

“The tools that you’d use to ensure free and fair elections are slowly being pulled away,” said Kistler. “When you take them all together, that’s when it starts to get really problematic.”

Voting Rights Act

As if to prove the point, a separate amicus brief submitted in December by Marshall’s office argued that Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the law’s most important plank, since the Supreme Court neutered Section 5 a decade ago — also contains no private right of action.

Marshall and his allies were urging a federal appeals court to reverse a ruling striking down Louisiana’s congressional map as a racial gerrymander under Section 2.

The notion that Section 2 contains no private right of action had until recently been seen by many advocates as outlandish. But a federal judge endorsed it in a separate 2022 case involving an Arkansas redistricting plan, brought by Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, who has signed his state on to several of Marshall’s amicus briefs. That decision was upheld on appeal in December.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin. (John Sykes/Arkansas Advocate)

The issue is likely to come before the Supreme Court. A ruling for Arkansas could dramatically limit the power of the VRA to stop racial discrimination in voting.

Separately, Marshall has sought to defend Alabama’s own redistricting plan. In arguing that the state should not have to draw a new map with an additional majority-Black district, his office adopted an interpretation of the VRA that, experts said, would have made it all but impossible to use for stopping racial gerrymanders.

Nicholas Stephanopoulos, a prominent election law scholar at Harvard Law School, has called Alabama’s approach to the question “directly contrary to 40 years of precedent.”

The claim was too extreme even for the conservative-dominated Supreme Court, which ultimately ordered Alabama to create a new map.

In response, Marshall signaled an agenda that went well beyond Alabama.

“There should be nothing more offensive to the people of our great state than to be sidelined in 2023 by a view of Alabama that is stuck in 1963,” he said in a statement. “This racial agenda is pressed by left-wing activists, not just in Alabama, but in any Republican state where it might advantage Democrats.”

And he compared the ruling, which aimed to empower Black voters, with Jim Crow.

“If this brazen and divisive commandeering is permitted without even a whisper of concern from other quarters, America’s congressional elections as we know them will never be the same,” Marshall continued. “We will be grouped together by race alone, with counties and cities split down the middle—the same way that we were so wrongfully segregated once before.”

Marshall also led a coalition of 18 GOP-led states that filed a 2021 amicus brief supporting Arizona’s defense of a law requiring voters who don’t sign their mail ballots to do so by 7 p.m. on election night.

The issue may seem minor, but Marshall’s brief invoked a far more fundamental question, arguing that state legislatures, not the courts, are in charge of setting election rules.

“The U.S. Constitution is unambiguous about the right of state legislatures to determine the manner of holding elections within their respective states,” wrote Marshall. “Accordingly, state legislatures, not federal courts, are vested with the legal authority to determine state election laws. Court attempts to micromanage election laws duly passed by state legislatures conflict with our constitutional structure and legal precedent.”

When North Carolina brought a version of this claim — known as the Independent State Legislature Theory — to the Supreme Court last year, experts warned that it could radically reshape election law, giving partisan state lawmakers almost unfettered power to make the rules. The Justices ultimately rejected the argument.

Why AGs enjoy influence

Advocates say it’s difficult to assess whether, and to what extent, courts are swayed by amicus briefs. But, they add, the role of state AGs as their state’s chief legal officer gives their claims an invaluable sheen of authority.

“State AGs are taken seriously because of the governmental role they play, in a way that parties, who do not have a governmental role, typically are not,” said Dax Goldstein, a senior counsel at States United Democracy Center. “So there’s a real difference between a sitting AG filing a brief and (Donald Trump lawyer) John Eastman filing a brief.”

In addition, since a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in a case where a group of states led by Massachusetts sued the George W. Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, states have enjoyed more power than individual plaintiffs to bring lawsuits on public policy issues.

“States have a greater ability to bring legal challenges than private citizens do,” said Kistler. “So when you have these super active state officials with a greater ability to bring cases than private parties and a judiciary that’s willing to entertain the cases, it makes a difference.”

Nolette, the Marquette political scientist, noted that if the AGs’ series of briefs in election cases appear coordinated, it’s no accident.

“There’s a lot of strategy that goes into planning these far-reaching arguments,” Nolette said, adding that AGs of both parties use their partisan organizations — the Republican Attorney Generals Association, and the Democratic Attorney Generals Association — to align their efforts and figure out the venues where they might have the most chance of success.

“It’s almost like buying a lottery ticket, trying to boost the chances of those arguments taking hold somewhere,” Nolette continued. “And once they get one district court judge to agree with it, then it moves them to a different state of respectability. It’s like, well, a federal judge has agreed with us, so this is a legitimate argument, even if it was considered totally out there in previous years.”

Ralph Chapoco contributed to this report.

-=-=

---

1 26 GMAIL

Big Oil’s coordinated lobbying efforts to secure legal immunity from climate accountability lawsuits are ramping up. State-level bills aiming to block communities from taking the fossil fuel industry to court have been introduced in Oklahoma and Utah while lobbyists continue to push Congress for a liability shield that could force the rising bill for climate change onto taxpayers and set a harmful legal precedent that protects corporations instead of communities.

Communities across the country are coming together for a national Week of Action to Make Polluters Pay. During the week of January 26, communities will gather in the streets, coordinate letter writing campaigns, and raise attention to Big Oil’s push for legal immunity. See what events are happening near you. If you live in Minnesota or Washington State, you can also sign your state’s petition demanding No Immunity for Big Oil.

Upcoming bills in New York and Hawaiʻi would empower the states to sue Big Oil for fueling the insurance crisis. As climate-related extreme weather triggers higher insurance premiums across the country, states are looking to make the fossil fuel industry — not everyday Americans — pay for the climate damage they knowingly fueled for decades.

“Shouldn’t the entities that caused climate change contribute? Why do residents have to foot the whole bill for the situation we’re now in when they did not profit off it the way the polluters did?”

Hawaiʻi state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole

Climate change has reduced U.S. incomes by 12% since 2000, a new study finds. Climate chaos — fueled by decades of Big Oil deception — has caused nationwide delays and disruptions to production and trade, leading to significant income loss.

CCI January 15, 2026

Confirmed: Big Oil lobbyists want to kill climate accountability lawsuits | Center for Climate Integrity

Big Oil and its allies have spent the past year quietly building a campaign urging Congress to give fossil fuel companies total legal immunity from the growing wave of climate deception lawsuits filed by communities demanding accountability for their climate lies. As of this week, they’re saying the quiet part out loud.

The American Petroleum Institute (API), the nation’s largest oil and gas trade association, said this week that one of its top 2026 priorities is to stop “state climate lawsuits.”

In his speech at its annual State of American Energy event, API President and CEO Mike Sommers claimed that the U.S. has reached “public consensus” on the need for increased oil production that is currently being “blocked by red tape, delay and endless lawsuits.”

The declaration comes after numerous news outlets have reported that the fossil fuel industry has been lobbying Congress for immunity from climate accountability lawsuits filed by 11 attorneys general and dozens of municipal and tribal governments across the U.S. While Big Oil defendants have been fighting to block and delay the cases at every turn, lawsuits from communities across the country continue to move through the courts and closer to discovery and trial.

“Big Oil is openly asking Congress for a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card because fossil fuel companies are desperate to avoid facing the evidence of their climate lies in court,” CCI President Richard Wiles said in response to API’s priorities. “Congress must make clear that any proposal to strip Americans of their right to hold corporations accountable for the damage they cause when they lie to the public about the harms of their products will be dead on arrival.”

Big Oil’s push to put itself above the law is already in the works. Last year, 16 Republican attorneys general proposed creating a “liability shield” for fossil fuel companies modeled on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits, and state-level immunity bills for the fossil fuel industry have already been introduced this year in Utah and Oklahoma.

These efforts are not without pushback. A Congressional appropriations bill introduced last year originally included language that would prohibit the District of Columbia from using any funds to enforce its consumer protection laws “against oil and gas companies for environmental claims,” clearly targeting D.C.’s ongoing climate accountability lawsuit against ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, and other oil majors. However, the latest version of the bill no longer includes the restrictive language that aimed to bar D.C. communities from accessing the courts.

“I think anyone in America who breathes the air around them and also believes in corporate accountability ought to be very concerned about these types of end-runs against accountability,” Jay Inslee, the former governor of Washington state, told *The Guardian.

---

guk ref 404 ag

Wayback Machine

5 pp ltr to bondi

2025.06.12%20--%20Letter%20to%20Dep%27t%20of%20Justice%20on%20Energy%20Actions

Dear Attorney General Bondi:

We, the undersigned Attorneys General, write to applaud the Department of Justice’s recent

actions to curtail the climate lawfare that has intensified our Nation’s energy crisis.

The energy industry is foundational to American flourishing. President Trump rightly

observed that our Nation “is blessed with an abundance of energy and natural resources that

historically powered our Nation’s economic prosperity.”1 The industry has created millions of

American jobs and annually generates billions of dollars in tax revenue. This money supports

schools, hospitals, and public infrastructure; it also helps ensure that everything from electricity to

transportation to consumer goods remains both available and affordable for all Americans.

Altogether, “[t]he development of domestic energy resources is of paramount public interest.”2

And traditional energy resources like “oil, natural gas, and coal provide 80% of American

energy.”3

President Trump’s recent Executive Orders recognize just how important the energy

industry is to American success. The President noted that the “burdensome and ideologically

motivated ‘climate change’ [and] energy policies” enacted by some States “weaken our national

security and devastate Americans by driving up energy costs for families coast-to-coast, despite

1 Unleashing American Energy, Exec. Order No. 14154, 90 Fed. Reg. 8353, 8353 (Jan. 29, 2025).

2 U.S. Dep’t of Energy, The Economic Benefits of Oil & Gas (2025), https://perma.cc/7R3GTZCP.

3 Nat. Res. Def. Council v. Kempthorne, 525 F. Supp. 2d 115, 127 (D.D.C. 2007).

...3

Unfortunately, the United States Supreme Court has declined up to this point to tackle these

modern-day climate lawsuits and anti-energy state laws head on. For instance, the Court has

recently denied petitions asking the Court to consider whether these state-law-based claims against

energy companies belong in federal court (as they undoubtedly do). Our own efforts before that

Court to protect the interests of our citizens in a strong American energy industry have largely been

rebuffed.14 Thus, we expect that only legislative and executive actions can provide real answers to

these continuing problems.

We therefore write to suggest additional steps the Department could take to effectuate the

President’s Executive Orders and assist our States in continuing the fight against anti-energy

interests. In particular, the Department could recommend legislation that would:

11 E.g., Patrick Brown, How Much Did Increasing “Climate Whiplash” Impact the Los Angeles

Fires?, Breakthrough Inst. (Jan. 29, 2025), https://perma.cc/UEH2-LYF9.

12 Climate Change Superfund Act, N.Y. S.2129-B, 2023–24 Session; Climate Superfund Act, Vt.

S.259, 2023–24 Session.

13 City of San Francisco v. Exxon Mobil Corp., No. 02-18-00106-CV, 2020 WL 3969558, at *20

(Tex. App. June 18, 2020).

14 E.g., Alabama v. California, 145 S. Ct. 757 (Mar. 10, 2025).

p2 notes

4 Protecting American Energy From State Overreach, Exec. Order 14260, 90 Fed. Reg. 15513,

15513 (Apr. 8, 2025).

5 Id. at 15513–14.

6 Ibid.

7 Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Just., Justice Department Files Complaints Against Hawaii,

Michigan, New York and Vermont Over Unconstitutional State Climate Actions (May 1, 2025),

https://perma.cc/HSZ7-GK4H.

8 Press Release, U.S. Dep’t of Just., Justice Department Launches Anticompetitive Regulations

Task Force (Mar. 27, 2025), https://perma.cc/XGR5-EJYH.

9 E.g., S. Comm. On Com., Sci., & Transp. And H.R. Comm. on Oversight & Accountability,

Republican Staff, Report, Investigation into Sher Edling, LLP (Oct. 7, 2024),

https://perma.cc/4YNQ-GQXE.

10 Am. Energy Inst., The Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) Is

Corruptly Influencing the Courts and Destroying the Rule of Law to Promote Questionable

Climate Science (2024), https://perma.cc/8TJT-JNZD.

These protective measures could complement other initiatives that could affirmatively

strengthen our American energy industry. Among other things, Congress and the Administration

could streamline required permitting for energy-related facilities (including related environmental

assessment requirements), extend current grant and tax-incentive programs limited to so-called

“green” energy to domestic energy producers, and continue peeling back anti-energy regulations

:{from past administrations.

Measures like these could be expected to re-empower American}:

industry, better enabling it to fend off unjustified attacks like that seen in recent years.

We unhesitatingly support President Trump’s goals to “restore American prosperity” and

“rebuild our Nation’s economic and military security” by unleashing American energy, and his

commitment to protecting American energy from state overreach. Ending the unlawful assault on

American energy is critical to achieving those objectives. We commend the Department for already

taking action to stop climate lawfare and hope that you will consider our suggestions to further

bolster your efforts.

Sincerely,

Mike Hilgers John B. McCuskey

Nebraska Attorney General West Virginia Attorney General

Steve Marshall Tim Griffin

Alabama Attorney General Arkansas Attorney General

James Uthmeier Chris Carr

Florida Attorney General Georgia Attorney General

Brenna Bird Kris Kobach

Iowa Attorney General Kansas Attorney General

Russell Coleman

Austin Knudsen

Kentucky Attorney General Montana Attorney General

Drew Wrigley Dave Yost

North Dakota Attorney General Ohio Attorney General

Ken Paxton Alan Wilson

Texas Attorney General South Carolina A

marty Jackley

South Dakota Attorney General

Ryan Schelhaas

Interim Wyoming Attorney General

---

gmail cci 1225

connecticut-is-closer-than-ever-to-putting-exxon-on-tria

December 1, 2025

Connecticut’s climate accountability lawsuit is one step closer to trial after a state judge last week rejected ExxonMobil’s attempts to strike the case, delivering a major win for the state’s effort to hold the oil giant accountable for its decades of climate deception.

“ExxonMobil is throwing the kitchen sink at us, trying every angle to invalidate our case,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. “Once again, they have failed on every count.”

The lawsuit, filed in 2020, argues that Exxon’s historic and ongoing “campaign of deception” about the climate harms of fossil fuels violated the state’s consumer protection law and has inflicted “decades of avoidable harm” and “catastrophic consequences” on Connecticut’s people, infrastructure, and ecosystems. The storms hitting Connecticut’s coastline and flooding communities’ homes have been supercharged by climate change that Exxon knew it was fueling decades ago. By one estimate, sea-level rise caused by climate change created an additional $8.1 billion in damages during Hurricane Sandy, which hit Connecticut in 2012.

In a ruling Wednesday, Connecticut Superior Court Judge John B. Farley rejected all of Exxon’s claims that the state’s case was preempted by federal law, barred by the First Amendment, and other unfounded legal arguments.

“[T]he fundamental objective of the lawsuit,” Judge Farley wrote, is “to remedy the defendant’s alleged unfair and deceptive marketing practices.”

Connecticut’s case — which aims to make Exxon stop deceiving the public, disclose internal climate change research, disgorge profits made while engaging in illegal activity, and fund a “corrective education campaign” about climate change — now enters the discovery phase of litigation.

“Our case is simple and strong — ExxonMobil amassed billions of dollars in profits off a decades-long campaign of lies, and they must be held accountable,” Attorney General Tong said. “We are in the midst of discovery and are aggressively prosecuting this case in Connecticut to uncover and expose ExxonMobil’s lies and to hold the company accountable for the harm their deception has caused.”

As climate accountability cases like Connecticut’s move closer to trial, the oil and gas industry is trying to find ways to block accountability outside the courthouse. Fossil fuel companies are lobbying Congress for a legal shield that would block communities from being able to access the courts and limit the ability of state lawmakers to demand accountability for the industry’s illegal actions. In June, more than a dozen Republican attorneys general proposed creating a “liability shield” for fossil fuel companies modeled on a 2005 law protecting gun manufacturers from lawsuits, and the New York Times later confirmed that securing similar legal protections is a priority for the fossil fuel industry this Congress.

“Exxon and other Big Oil companies are desperate to avoid facing the evidence of their climate lies, but as this ruling makes clear, the people of Connecticut deserve their day in court,” CCI President Richard Wiles said about the ruling. “As the fossil fuel industry lobbies Congress for a ‘get-out-jail-free’ card in cases like Connecticut’s, it’s critical for elected officials to stand up and protect communities’ access to the courts.”

ref 1

September 9, 2025

Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that lobbyists for the oil and gas industry were “urging members of Congress to consider granting legal protection for oil companies against lawsuits over their contributions to climate change.”

Now the New York Times confirms that this lobbying campaign to secure legal immunity is a “priority” for the fossil fuel industry in the current Congress.

In a story about the Trump administration’s efforts to help Big Oil companies avoid paying for climate damages, Karen Zraick reports that:

There is also a brewing effort to get Congress to pass a federal shield law protecting fossil fuel companies from litigation, similar to the measure that immunizes gun manufacturers. In a letter to the Justice Department in June, 16 Republican state attorneys general asked the administration for such protections for the fossil fuel industry. [...] The liability shield they have proposed for fossil fuel companies is modeled on a 2005 law that protects gun manufacturers from litigation when their guns are used in crimes.

Communities across the country are paying nearly $1 trillion per year for damages from extreme heat, floods, wildfires, and rising seas and other extreme weather events that fossil-fuel driven climate change is making more intense, deadly, and destructive. Major oil and gas companies knew decades ago that their products would fuel these climate damages, but they orchestrated a Big Tobacco-style campaign of deception to mislead the public and protect their profits. More than 1 in 4 Americans now live in a state or community taking Big Oil companies to court to hold them accountable for this deception and make polluters pay for the harm they have caused.

A legal shield for Big Oil could forever shut the courthouse doors for all Americans, forcing the rising bill for climate change onto taxpayers, and setting a harmful legal precedent that protects corporations instead of communities.

“It’s a nonstop effort by the oil and gas industry to somehow get a get-out-of-jail-free card in regard to these cases,” CCI President Richard Wiles told The Times.

But as the paper noted, a growing number of voices are calling on Congress to make clear that Big Oil should not be above the law:

This year, nearly 200 nonprofit groups signed a letter to Democratic leaders asking them to oppose a liability shield.

And, over the summer, the National Association of Counties, which includes more than 3,000 counties, passed a resolution opposing “any legislation that would limit or pre-empt counties’ access to courts or give companies immunity from lawsuits over damages and costs.” The resolution noted that extreme weather events were straining municipal budgets and resources.

No industry should be above the law — especially one with a documented history of deceiving the public. Congress must oppose the fossil fuel industry’s lobbying efforts and keep the courthouse doors open for communities seeking accountability.

ref 2

...

• Reinforce and further confirm existing federal preemption 15 of state laws or causes of action that seek to impose liability on, or require payment from, energy companies for climate change or out-of-state greenhouse-gas emissions;

• Restrict federal funding for States that seek to impose liability on, or require payment from, energy companies for climate change or out-of-state greenhouse-gas emissions;

• Create a right of removal to federal district court for any suit involving claims that implicate climate or ambient greenhouse-gas-related harms;

• Stop activist-funded climate lawsuits with a liability shield protecting necessary and federally permitted and compliant activity, similar to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005;

• Clarify that the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction is mandatory, so that the Court cannot willfully ignore claims brought by one State against another State, including claims related to state climate laws and litigation; and

:{:{These protective measures could complement other initiatives that could affirmatively strengthen our American energy industry. Among other things, Congress and the Administration could streamline required permitting for energy-related facilities (including related environmental assessment requirements), extend current grant and tax-incentive programs limited to so-called “green” energy to domestic energy producers, and continue peeling back anti-energy regulations from past administrations. Measures like these could be expected to re-empower American industry, better enabling it to fend off unjustified attacks like that seen in recent years.}:

We unhesitatingly support President Trump’s goals to “restore American prosperity” and “rebuild our Nation’s economic and military security” by unleashing American energy, and his commitment to protecting American energy from state overreach. Ending the unlawful assault on American energy is critical to achieving those objectives. We commend the Department for already taking action to stop climate lawfare and hope that you will consider our suggestions to further bolster your efforts.}:

Sincerely, Mike Hilgers John B. McCuskey Nebraska Attorney General West Virginia Attorney General

:{:{Steve Marshall Tim Griffin Alabama Attorney General Arkansas Attorney General}:

James Uthmeier Chris Carr Florida Attorney General Georgia Attorney General

Brenna Bird Kris Kobach Iowa Attorney General Kansas Attorney General

Russell Coleman Austin Knudsen Kentucky Attorney General Montana Attorney General

Drew Wrigley Dave Yost North Dakota Attorney General Ohio Attorney General

Ken Paxton Alan Wilson Texas Attorney General South Carolina Attorney General

Marty Jackley South Dakota Attorney General Ryan Schelhaas Interim Wyoming Attorney General}:

---

===}:

alternet-lNO LNX

MAGA pastor who wants to end female voting rights compares women to 'pigs with gold nose rings'

Thom Hartmann October 26, 2024

The Hartmann Report, this little newsletter that Louise and I started in our living room and our old friend and business partner Nigel helps us administer, hits 100,000 daily readers this weekend. Over 90% of our growth has come about as the result of word-of-mouth; people sharing this newsletter with their friends, relatives, and coworkers. We are so honored to have your trust in our research and hard work, and really appreciate your sharing my articles with others. Thank you!

— The Massive Scale of Trump’s Deportation Plans. Trump and Vance are promising to deport 15 million people from America, a massive undertaking that will require a major departure from our traditions and laws providing for due process. “You go to the red state governors and you say, ‘Give us your National Guard.’ We will deputize them as immigration enforcement officers,” notorious racist and Trump ally Stephen Miller said recently. Those soldiers — not police officers — would then “go around the country arresting illegal immigrants in large-scale raids.”

Melissa Gira Grant wrote a brilliant piece about this obscenity for The New Republic that’s well worth a read, and it’s vital to remember that Trump is setting up something that appears inspired by Hitler’s early pogroms of the Jews. What will you do and say when they knock on your door — particularly if you have a last name that sounds Hispanic — and demand to see your citizenship papers? This is the world these bizarre men want to plunge us into, and, tragically, half the country appears to be just fine with it. What the hell has happened to our nation? I lay most of the blame at the feet of the billionaires like Murdoch, etc., who’ve been funding rightwing hate media for decades.

— One of the reasons our media so rarely reports on the obscene things that Trump says at his rallies is that they are terrified of his followers. A woman reporter showed up at a Trump rally and was assaulted by the fascists in attendance, as reported by the International Women’s Media Foundation. The Trump-cult followers surrounding her screamed, “I hope you’re murdered,” “I hope you’re dismembered,” and “I hope someone rapes you before they murder you,” along with other hateful epithets. This is typical of fascist movements: violence is always just a thin-scratch layer under the surface.

Now it appears that billionaires including Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong have been intimidated by Trump (or are desperately sucking up to him) and so are preventing their newspapers from making an endorsement in this year’s presidential race. (I just canceled my Washington Post subscription.)

It took Adolf Hitler less than three months to cow and then largely shut down the media in Germany after he acquired power in January, 1933, although most newspapers had surrendered to him before then and voluntarily stopped reporting negative stories.

Reporters were interred in Dachau as early as March of that same year, along with progressive politicians and editorial writers who’d dared criticize him in the past.

Trump and his people trying to revisit this history is not the sign of a healthy republic; this is a bright red flashing warning about a country sliding into autocracy, as I described in detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy. Now that the MAGA movement has become a full-blown fascist movement, the question is: What will the GOP do with it after the election? Particularly if Trump loses? You can leave your comments here.

— Rightwing billionaire Elon Musk and his colleagues apparently believe they now have the Supreme Court votes necessary to overturn the 1935 Wagner Act that legalized labor unions. When Musk “interviewed” Trump on Xitter, the two joked about how impressed Trump was with Musk’s unwillingness to allow unions in any of his companies. “I love it,” Trump told his fellow oligarch. “You’re the greatest ... I mean, I look at what you do. You just walk in and you just say, ‘You wanna quit?’ They go on strike, I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, ‘That’s OK, you’re all gone ... Every one of you is gone.’” Musk chuckled at that one, so Trump followed up by discussing putting Musk in charge of a government “efficiency” body that could lead the charge to bust the last of America’s unions among government workers:

“You are the greatest! You would be very good [on the proposed commission]. Oh, you would love it.” Musk has filed a lawsuit against the National Labor Relations Board (which enforces unions’ right to exist) claiming the entire agency is unconstitutional; a Trumpy federal judge has already agreed, temporarily blocking the agency’s ability to enforce the law, as the case now heads toward the six corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court. Republicans and the billionaires who own them have been on a jeremiad against the ability of unions to exist ever since American workers first earned the right to organize in 1935. Will Musk and his Republican buddies succeed in finally gutting the last income protection the middle class has against greedy billionaires? Stay tuned.

— Republican attorneys general go to court to demand more pregnant 15-year-olds. This story sounds too bizarre to be true, but Missouri Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, Kansas Republican Attorney General Kris Kobach, and Idaho Republican Attorney General Raúl Labrador have filed a lawsuit in federal court — presumably aiming for an eventual hearing before the Supreme Court — claiming that their states are being harmed, population-wise, by the availability of abortion drugs that can be shipped into their states by mail.

They want shipping Mifepristone outlawed nationwide. The proof of the harm, they say, is that they are not seeing enough pregnant teenagers. The lawsuit is explicit (page 190): “Defendants’ efforts enabling the remote dispensing of abortion drugs has caused abortions for women in Plaintiff States and decreased births in Plaintiff States. This is a sovereign injury to the State in itself. … When data is examined in a way that reflects sensitivity to expected birth rates, these estimates strikingly ‘do not show evidence of an increase in births to teenagers aged 15-19,’ even in states with long driving distances despite the fact that ‘women aged 15-19 … are more responsive to driving distances to abortion facilities than older women.’”

They then claim that this “proof” that availability of mailed abortion pills are causing the drop in pregnancies among girls 15-19 years old is an “injury” to their states because it lowers their potential population. This is getting wild, but wait until the Supreme Court authorizes Red states to begin monitoring the menstrual periods of fertile girls and women; Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt has already introduced federal legislation requiring companies selling devices that track ovulation to report their results to state agencies or a federal database, including police agencies nationwide, so pregnancies can be caught and tracked. Republicans won’t be happy until every girl in America grows up the way Amy Coney Barrett did in her People of Praise Catholic cult where she was referred to as a “Handmaiden.”

— And now, to the delight of Republican lawmakers and police the US government has bought a tool that can track you by your cellphone to abortion clinics anywhere in the country. Locate X is a product from Babel Street which our government has been using since the Trump administration; it’s capable of tracking every cellphone in the country with remarkable location accuracy. The folks at 404 Media did a trial run of it focused on tracking people to and from abortion clinics, and the process was startlingly easy. When Ted Cruz, JD Vance, and the rest of the GOP forced-birth crowd again gain control of the federal government, get ready. They’re chomping at the bit…

— Crazy Alert! Can anything get weirder than this? Tucker Carlson’s creepy “daddy speech” is stunning. Goddess only knows what happened to frozen-fish-stick heir Tucker Swanson Carlson in his childhood, but whatever it was, it’s showing. Earlier this week he introduced Trump at a rally with a sweet little speech about the former president’s future role overseeing our country and “spanking” all those uppity girls and women who’ve dared defy the Republican Party’s demand for more pregnancies and less talkback:

“There has to be a point at which dad comes home. Yeah, that’s right, dad comes home and he’s pissed. Dad is pissed! He’s not vengeful, he loves his children, disobedient as they may be. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you, not it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me.’” Honest, that’s what he said. And the crowd’s response wasn’t the shocked silence a rational person would expect; instead, when Trump appeared after this introduction, they started chanting, “Daddy’s here! Daddy’s here!” Where do they find these people? And how can anybody vote to put them in charge of our country?

— Even Crazier Alert! Famous MAGA pastor says American women are “pigs with gold nose rings,” wants to overturn the 19th Amendment right of women to vote, and says women who accuse men of rape but can’t absolutely prove it should be put to death. Say what?! Christian nationalist pastor Joel Webbon is a rising star in the GOP, and recently had some interesting things to say about American women. First, he claimed they’re far too pampered: “Pigs with gold nose rings.” Then he claimed it’s time to overturn the 19th Amendment and revoke women’s right to vote because that’s “the Christian thing to do.” Finally, to top it all off, the GOP’s top Christian guru argued women who claim rape but can’t prove it should be publicly executed to put an end to the Me Too movement.

“If you perjure yourself by bearing false witness accusing somebody else,” the minister told his followers, “whatever the penalty would have been for that person had they been found guilty, then that penalty should fall on your head for falsely accusing them. … If that were to occur and the just penalties were to be enforced, you, the false accuser, is now put to death. And that’s a public death. It’s a public sentence, publicly carried out, then the citizens of these United States of America, you know what they would do? #MeToo would end real fast. False accusing, playing the victim when you’re actually not; you know how to end that real fast? All you have to do is publicly execute a few women who have lied.” This guy isn’t an outlier; this is the direction the entire GOP has been going for years, and now, with Trump and Vance within a hair’s breadth of seizing the federal government, they feel empowered to be open and public about their positions. What would Jesus say? Nothing like Joel Webbon’s spouting off, I can guarantee you that…

---

:===

an 7 24

Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird filed an amicus brief Wednesday calling for the U.S. Supreme Court to take up Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s challenge of former President Donald Trump’s prosecution in the New York hush-money trial.

Bailey, a Missouri Republican, filed a lawsuit earlier in July against the state of New York, seeking to lift the gag order imposed on Trump during the trial where he was found guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign season.

The lawsuit seeks to delay sentencing for Trump’s conviction in the case until after the November election, where the former president faces a rematch with President Joe Biden.

While Trump was found guilty in the New York criminal trial, the Supreme Court ruled in July that U.S. presidents have full immunity from criminal charges for official “core constitutional” acts while in office, but not for unofficial acts. The decision sent Trump’s election interference case, where he stands accused of scheming to overturn the 2020 presidential results, back to the lower courts.

The Missouri lawsuit, filed one day after the ruling on presidential immunity, claims the state of New York violated Missourians’ First Amendment rights by issuing a gag order in Trump’s criminal case and preventing voters from hearing the views of a presidential candidate in the 2024 election.

“This lawfare is poisonous to American democracy,” Bailey wrote in the lawsuit. “The American people ought to be able to participate in a presidential election free from New York’s interference. Any gag order and sentence should be stayed until after the election.”

Bird and Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody filed a brief supporting the Missouri lawsuit on Wednesday. Joined by Alaska and Montana, the state attorneys general argued that Trump is the “target of a prosecution by a New York County district attorney” in the hush-money case.

In a news release, Bird claimed New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, has used the trial for political gain, citing a New York Times article on his statements about Trump.

“As a prosecutor, I know that politics has no place in criminal prosecutions,” Bird said. “I am calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case against New York’s political prosecution, gag order, and sentencing of President Trump that interfere with the presidential election. We must protect free and fair elections and the rule of law.”

The sentencing in the New York case has been delayed until Sept. 18 by New York Justice Juan Merchan, who oversaw the case, so the court has time to hear arguments about how the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision impacts state-level convictions.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and X.

---

===

3/24

wASHINGTON (AP) — A new Biden administration rule that sets tougher standards for deadly soot pollution faced a barrage of legal challenges Wednesday, as 25 Republican-led states and a host of business groups filed lawsuits seeking to block the rule in court.

Twenty-four states, led by attorneys general from Kentucky and West Virginia, filed a joint challenge stating that new Environmental Protection Agency rule would raise costs for manufacturers, utilities and families and could block new manufacturing plants and infrastructure such as roads and bridges. Texas filed a separate suit, as did business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Manufacturers.

“The EPA’s new rule has more to do with advancing President (Joe) Biden’s radical green agenda than protecting Kentuckians’ health or the environment, said Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, who is leading the joint lawsuit along with West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

The EPA rule “will drive jobs and investment out of Kentucky and overseas, leaving employers and hardworking families to pay the price,” Coleman said.

Watchdog: EPA’s lead pipe fix sent about $3 billion to states based on unverified data

Racial bias did not shape Mississippi’s water funding decisions for capital city, EPA says

US’s largest public utility ignores warnings in moving forward with new natural gas plant

The soot rule is one of several EPA dictates under attack from industry groups and Republican-led states. The Supreme Court heard arguments last month on a GOP challenge to the agency’s “good neighbor rule,” which restricts smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas.

Three energy-producing states — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — challenged the rule, along with the steel industry and other groups, calling it costly and ineffective. The rule is on hold in a dozen states because of the court challenges.

In opposing the soot rule, Republicans and industry groups say the United States already has some of the strictest air quality standards in the world — tougher than the European Union or major polluters such as China and India.

Tightening U.S. standards “wouldn’t improve public health, but it would put as many as 30% of all U.S. counties out of compliance under federal law, leading to aggressive new permitting requirements that could effectively block new economic activity,’' Coleman said.

The EPA rule sets maximum levels of fine particle pollution — more commonly known as soot — at 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air, down from 12 micrograms established a decade ago under the Obama administration.

Environmental and public health groups hailed the rule as a major step to improve the health of Americans, including future generations. EPA scientists have estimated exposure at previous limits contributed to thousands of early deaths from heart disease and lung cancer, along with other health problems.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan said the new soot rule, finalized last month, would create $46 billion in net health benefits by 2032, including prevention of up to 800,000 asthma attacks and 4,500 premature deaths. The rule will especially benefit children, older adults and those with heart and lung conditions, Regan said, as well as people in low-income and minority communities adversely affected by decades of industrial pollution.

“We do not have to sacrifice people to have a prosperous and booming economy,″ Regan said.

Biden is seeking reelection, and some fellow Democrats have warned that a tough new soot standard could harm his chances in key industrial states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

The EPA and White House officials brushed aside those concerns, saying the industry has developed technical improvements to meet previous soot standards and can adapt to meet the new ones. Soot pollution has declined by 42% since 2000, even as the U.S. gross domestic product has increased by 52%, Regan said.

The new rule does not impose pollution controls on specific industries. Instead, it lowers the annual standard for fine particulate matter for overall air quality. The EPA will use air sampling to identify counties and other areas that do not meet the new standard. States would then have 18 months to develop compliance plans for those areas. States that do not meet the new standard by 2032 could face penalties, although EPA said it expects that 99% of U.S. counties will be able to meet the revised annual standard by 2032.

Industry groups and Republican officials dispute that and say a lower soot limit could put hundreds of U.S. counties out of compliance.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned the White House in January that 43% of total particulate emissions come from wildfires, and called the pollution standard “the wrong tool to address this problem.’'

The EPA said it will work with states, counties and tribes to account for and respond to wildfires, an increasing source of soot pollution, especially in the West, where climate change has led to longer wildfire seasons, with more frequent and intense fires. The agency allows states and air agencies to request exemptions from air-quality standards due to “exceptional events,” including wildfires and prescribed fires.

Besides Kentucky, West Virginia and Texas, other states challenging the EPA rule include: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming.

All three cases were filed before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

===

ymail 4 24

our best attempt at visually depicting a shadowy pollution-laden effort to influence U.S. courts. Look, we’re not illustrators, OK?

At the Society of Environmental Journalists conference this year, we heard about a promising legal case that experts believe actually has a real shot at holding the fossil fuel industry accountable for climate change.

City & County of Honolulu v. Sunoco LPis the first climate liability lawsuit against fossil fuel companies to be greenlit for trial, expected later this year. In it, Honolulu accuses several oil and gas giants of misleading its citizens about the environmental consequences of fossil fuels for decades, and seeks financial compensation for past, present, and future damages to the region.

As a trial comes closer, however, we learned that the lawsuit is facing more and more serious obstacles. Most notably, last week, a plethora of fossil fuel-funded groups–including the American Petroleum Institute–filed petitions asking the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and stop the trial from moving forward.

In addition, a whopping 20 Republican state attorneys generalalso filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to do the same. So it’s not just industry groups: nearly half of the country’s chief legal officers are asking the nation’s top court to intervene in a local government’s climate lawsuit.

How did this happen? If you only read Fox, or other conservative news, you’d likely believe that these state attorneys general were acting on behalf of their citizens, out of deep legal concern they all just so happened to share.

But this is not the whole story. In reality, the state AG petition is part of the organized effort by the fossil fuel industry to kill all formal efforts to hold corporations accountable for the climate crisis—both in the litigation space, and beyond.

RAGA: A legal group fueled by oil and gas

To understand how these 20 state attorneys general are connected to the fossil fuel industry, you first must understand The Republican Attorneys General Association, known as RAGA.

“RAGA is a pay to play group,” says Lisa Graves, the executive director of the watchdog group True North Research. “It was created to allow industries to wash money into RAGA, which RAGA then uses to fuel the election campaigns and ambitions of AGs.”

RAGA’s name is not on the Hawaii brief, and beyond its official X account posting a news story about it, it has not publicly admitted its involvement. But the self-described group of “conservative fighters,” which includes 28 Republican attorneys general among its members, has endorsed every single attorney general involved.

A screenshot of RAGA’s post about the Hawaii case brief. Source: X

According to research by HEATED and the Center for Media and Democracy, all 20 state attorneys general that signed the amicus brief are not only featured on RAGA’s website, but many were elected with RAGA’s help.

The lead counsel for the amicus brief, Alabama attorney general Steve Marshall, was the organization’s chair in 2023. Three attorneys general have served on RAGA’s executive committee (Indiana, Mississippi, and Utah), and five have been chairs or vice chairs (Alabama, Georgia, Montana, South Carolina, and Utah).

At least six AGs won their elections with the support and funding of RAGA, including the attorneys general from Oklahoma, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Iowa, and Idaho. In a statement last year, RAGA celebrated “a 100 percent success rate for RAGA in the 2023 election cycle.” This included the election of Louisiana AG Liz Murrill, which the organization supported with “a substantial, statewide paid advertising campaign.”

“These AGs, their political futures are underwritten by RAGA,” Graves said. “And who underwrites RAGA? The fossil fuel industry, along with Leonard Leo.”

RAGA did not respond to our requests for comment; when HEATED called executive director Pete Bisbee, he said he doesn’t speak to journalists, referred us to a spokesperson, and hung up. (Bisbee has previously been under fire leading the organization that paid for robocalls encouraging former President Trump supporters to protest the election results at the Capitol on Jan 6.)

But public statements, donations, and recordings of private meetings reveal RAGA’s deep ties to the fossil fuel industry. In 2023 alone, RAGA received more than $15 million in donations, and more than $1 million of those contributions came from the fossil fuel industry, according to HEATED’s analysis of IRS tax forms. Over the last decade, RAGA has accepted more than $10 million from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and industry trade groups.

Among RAGA’s donors are Koch Industries, Exxon, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, the American Petroleum Institute, and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM)—and these donors have pushed AGs to adopt an aggressive anti-climate strategy.

How RAGA connects fossil fuel companies to AGs

To connect AGs with the priorities of donors, RAGA offers different tiers of access for different amounts of donations. “It’s not technically money laundering, but it has that appearance,” Graves said.

RAGA members who pay annual fees of $25,000 can help shape the organization’s legal strategy via “online RAGA briefing rooms,” for example. And members who pay more than $125,000 are given access to private meetings with attorney generals and invitations to in-person events with them, according to documents obtained by*The New York Times* in 2014.

In 2016, the Center for Media and Democracy obtained audio from one of those events. Titled “Climate Change Debate: How Speech is Being Stifled,” the session included former Alabama attorney general Luther Strange; AFPM president Chet Thompson;and noted fossil-funded climate denier Myron Ebell.

Together, they talked about the importance of protecting ExxonMobil from lawsuits like Honolulu’s. “We’re facing a coordinated campaign to demonize, weaken and try to destroy the industry,” Thompson said.

But Thompson also said stopping climate liability lawsuits would not be enough to protect the fossil fuel industry. What the industry really needed, he said, was protection from nearly all federal environmental regulation.

What followed was years of litigation led by Republican attorneys general against every environmental regulation worrying Thompson, and more.

RAGA’s goal: industry capture of the U.S. legal system

In 2021, 20 AGs sued the EPA to block its power plant emissions rules, which Thompson specifically called out in the panel. West Virginia v. EPAultimately went to the Supreme Court, whose ruling significantly decreased the EPA’s authority to regulate emissions.

In 2023, 25 Republican AGs sued the Department of Labor over retirement funds that considered ESG factors, including fossil fuel divestment. Thompson had called out divestment in the panel, too.

In 2024, 10 Republican attorneys general, all members of RAGA, sued the SEC over its climate disclosure rules, which Thompson also called out in the session.

RAGA members have also brought lawsuits fighting the Clean Water Act, limits on vehicle emissions, and the LNG exports pause—all while being paid by the industries that profit from pollution.

But the suits brought by RAGA members aren’t limited to the federal government. They’re also trying to stop localities like Honolulu from trying climate liability cases in state courts. RAGA, and the corporations it defends, want these cases tried in federal courts, where Republican-appointed federal judges are more likely to rule in the fossil fuel industry’s favor.

In fact, the same funders who helped appoint ultra-conservative judges to federal courts also donate to RAGA. Among RAGA’s top donors is the dark money group The Concord Fund, which is affiliated with the Federalist Society’s co-chairman Leonard Leo. Leo is credited with playing moving the federal court system to the right, and was instrumental in appointing multiple conservative justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, including Justices Alito, Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett.

That network of industry influence has purchased the current anti-regulatory legal environment—and RAGA plays an essential role. "These AGs are willing to let the planet burn as they continue to take funding through RAGA from this industry," Graves said.

Former Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Michael Wilson went one step further in describing the effect of RAGA in fighting climate change.

“The AGs are violating their public duty to protect the future of their citizenry,” he said. “This partisan political use of the rule of law is what has caused the judicial branch of government to descend to its lowest level of public approval in recorded history.”

ABORTION

For more than 20 years, the FDA limited dispensing of the drug to a subset of specialty offices and clinics because of safety concerns. But since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the agency eased restrictions,eliminating the in-person requirement for the pill and allowing brick-and-mortar pharmacies to dispense it. At least one lawsuit filed by abortion opponents argues that the FDA has overstepped its authority in approving the abortion drugs.

A spokesman for Walgreens said the company is not currently dispensing mifepristone, although they are working to become eligible through an FDA-mandated certification process, requiring pharmacies to meet specific standards in shipping, tracking and confidentially storing drug prescribing records.

“We fully understand that we may not be able to dispense Mifepristone in all locations if we are certified under the program,” a statement from spokesman Fraser Engerman read.

Messages left with CVS were not immediately returned.

On Jan. 3, the FDA finalized a rule change that broadens availability of abortion pills to many more pharmacies, including large chains and mail-order companies.

The letter to the pharmacy giants said President Joe Biden’s administration’s endorsement of abortion pills by mail is “an attempt to circumvent the right of states to protect women and children.” It was co-signed by attorneys general in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.

The Missouri law was written in 2019 to go into effect if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned. It was implemented almost immediately after the Supreme Court decision was announced in June. The law makes it a felony punishable by five to 15 years in prison to perform or induce an abortion. Medical professionals who do so also could lose their licenses. The law says that women undergoing abortions cannot be prosecuted.

Six red states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina — are suing the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden over Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for individuals making less than $125,000 a year.

Six red states —

Arkansas,

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022 HTTPS://ARKANSASAG.GOV/

Says, ‘Biden’s unlawful political play puts the self-wrought college-loan debt on the backs of millions of hardworking Americans’

LITTLE ROCK— Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge today announced a lawsuit against President Joe Biden, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and the U.S. Department of Education for:{violating federal law when the Biden Administration attempted to categorically cancel student loan debt in August. The suit alleges that Biden violated federal law, the constitutional principle of separation of powers and the Administrative Procedure Actwhen he skirted congressional authority to implement this policy.}:

“President Biden’s unlawful political play puts the self-wrought college-loan debt on the backs of millions of hardworking Americans who are struggling to pay their utility bills and home loans in the midst of Biden’s inflation,” said Attorney General Leslie Rutledge. “President Biden does not have the power to arbitrarily erase the college debt of adults who chose to take out those loans.”

The lawsuit highlights that President Biden knew he did not have the proper authority to authorize this type of executive action, which is why he attempted to work with Congress to find a legitimate and legal solution to the student loan crisis. After Congress routinely failed to pass legislation addressing the issue, Biden attempted to unilaterally act far beyond the authority granted to him by the Constitution. This action will result in approximately half a trillion dollars in losses to the federal treasury and contribute to the already rampant inflation the nation is experiencing.

The Democrat Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, summarized it best when she said, “people think the President of the United States has the power for debt forgiveness. He does not.”

Joining Arkansas in the suit are the states of: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina.

Iowa,:{https://www.iowaattorneygeneral.gov:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}::{ › about-us › about-attorney-general-tom-miller:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

:{About Attorney General Tom Miller | Iowa Attorney General:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:top;display:inline-block;max-width:100%;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap"):}:

Attorney General Tom Miller is serving in his 10th four-year term as Attorney General of Iowa. He is the longest currently serving attorney general in the nation. He was born in Dubuque on August 11, 1944, the son of the late Elmer and Betty Miller.

Kansas, dacaDerek Schmidt of Kansas,

Missouri,:{https://ago.mo.gov:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}::{ › about-us › about-ag-schmitt:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

:{Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:top;display:inline-block;max-width:100%;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap"):}:

Eric Schmitt was sworn in as the 43rd Attorney General for the State of Missouri on January 3, 2019. As Attorney General, Eric is focused on keeping Missouri families safe and upholding the rule of law. As the lawyer for all six million Missourians, Eric is fighting each and every day to protect opportunities for the next generation.

Nebraska,

:{https://ago.nebraska.gov:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}::{ › ag-peterson:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

:{AG Peterson | Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:top;display:inline-block;max-width:100%;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap"):}:

Attorney General Doug Peterson - To serve the citizens of Nebraska and Nebraska's elected officials with fidelity to our U.S. Constitution, State Constitution, and Nebraska law.and

South Carolina

:{https://ag.jasonfoundation.com:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}::{ › sc:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:baseline"):}:

:{South Carolina Attorney General - Alan Wilson - AG:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;vertical-align:top;display:inline-block;max-width:100%;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;white-space:nowrap"):}:

South Carolina Attorney General - Alan Wilson. Youth suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for our young people ages 10-24 in our nation and 3rd in South Carolina today. In South Carolina, the 2013 CDC's Youth Risk Behavioral Survey reported over ONE out of every EIGHT of our youth "seriously considered" suicide and that over ONE out ...

— are suing the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden over Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for individuals making less than $125,000 a year.

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/**2022/09/**06/esg-companies-bankroll-gop-ags-the-very-officials-retaliating-against-their-climate-goals/

alex k

the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) investigation has identified more than two dozen major U.S. companies that are publicly committed to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles yet have recently donated large amounts of campaign cash to a group of Republican state attorneys general that is hyper-focused on eroding air and water regulations, promoting fossil fuel companies, and using state governments to punish companies that try to limit their climate-related risks by divesting from oil, gas, and coal.

Republican attorneys general, along with fellow GOP governors and state financial officers, are weaponizing their public offices to prevent action on climate change. Their latest efforts seek to bar companies that divest from fossil fuels or employ other ESG principles from receiving government contracts.

And yet large U.S. companies such as AT&T, Cigna, Citigroup, Lowe’s, Pfizer, T-Mobile, and UPS—all of which publicly promote their commitment to ESG—have recently funded the political prosperity of these Republican AGs.

Contradictory Takes on Climate Change

“Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges,” the multinational brewing company Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) acknowledges in its 2021 ESG report for investors. “Our evolved understanding of potential climate-related risks and opportunities across our value chain continues to inform our long-term strategy.”

AB InBev has set an ambitious climate goal for 2025, aiming to reduce its carbon emissions by 25% and purchase 100% of its electricity from renewable sources by then. In joining the international RE100 initiative to switch to 100% renewables, the company intends to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040.

But the beer giant is one of the largest corporate funders of the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a group of powerful state officials that has long attacked environmental regulations in the U.S. Members of RAGA—which receives substantial funding from fossil fuel companies to support the reelection campaigns of these AGs—have filed legal challenges against Obama-era air and water pollution regulations. Former Oklahoma AG Scott Pruitt is among those who have worked directly with fossil fuel lobbyists to challenge these laws.

Numerous other corporations have given large sums to RAGA for this year’s elections while publicly committing to ESG principles and, in many cases, to direct climate action.

RAGA recently scored a big win in :{West Virginia v. EPA:(style="box-sizing:inherit"):}: when the right-wing justices who now dominate the Supreme Court ruled against the agency, preventing the Biden administration from regulating greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act without going back to Congress for explicit authorization.

Retaliating Against “Energy Discrimination”

As the Right gets more extreme in the U.S., climate-denying Republicans have added a new weapon to their arsenal: attacking financial firms that decrease their investments in fossil fuels.

GOP attorneys general and financial officers are joining state lawmakers in penalizing investment firms that divest from fossil fuel companies. Although they are members of a political party ostensibly committed to a free market, these GOP officials are meddling in corporate decision-making by trying to prevent executives from limiting the enormous financial risk posed by the effects of climate change—likely the biggest economic challenge of the century.

As with their outcry about critical race theory supposedly being taught in American schools, GOP politicians are attempting to cast climate action as a culture war issue, branding routine practices such as ESG disclosures to investors and divesting from a waning fossil fuel industry as “woke.”

In 2021, Texas enacted a law to root out alleged “energy discrimination,” seeking to prevent investment firms that decrease their stakes in oil, gas, and coal from managing the state’s pension and other funds. After the law passed, the energy task force of the ultra-conservative, corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) approved a model bill with similar language, directing state treasurers or comptrollers to maintain a list of firms that have divested from fossil fuels and to only issue government contracts to businesses with more than 10 employees that verify their allegiance to fossil fuels.

In the past year or so, similar legislation has been introduced in at least 15 states and has already passed in four. On Aug. 24, Texas released its first list of firms that allegedly “boycott energy companies,” including BlackRock, Credit Suisse, and UBS.

Dubious Claims

On Aug. 4, 19 GOP attorneys general sent a letterto BlackRock CEO Larry Finkaccusing his firm of making ESG investments that “force the phase-out of fossil fuels, increase energy prices, drive inflation, and weaken the national security of the United States.”

Claims like this are histrionic and often baseless. For example, BlackRock has invested more than $108 billion in Texas-based energy companies, and this year it plans to support proportionally fewer ESG shareholder resolutions than it did last year. And while Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and his allies from other states claim that ESG investing hurts their pension funds, academic studies like a recent one undertaken by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago refute this. In fact, since Texas passed its anti-ESG law last year, the UPenn/Fed study indicates that it has already cost the state between $303 and $532 million, as Kate Aronoff points out in The New Republic.

Other evaluations of ESG investing are mixed, but when researchers from the New York University Stern Center for Sustainable Business and Rockefeller Asset Management analyzed over 1,000 relevant research papers from 2015–20, they found that a majority of the studies indicated ESG investing leads to either neutral or improved financial performance. The meta-analysis points out that “improved financial performance due to ESG becomes more marked over longer time horizons.”

Despite these findings, Republican state AGs and other officials have accelerated their attacks on climate action—a central tenet of ESG investing—in the past few years.

In August, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and the trustees of the State Board of Administration voted to ban its investment managersfrom using ESG considerations in managing its portfolio of roughly $245 billion, primarily from the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan. Florida’s AG Ashley Moody (R) joined the governor in supporting the move.

In May, Kentucky’s AG Daniel Cameron(R) issued an opinion barring investment managers doing government business from employing ESG principles. On Sept. 1, Indiana’s AG Todd Rokita (R) did the same.

Meanwhile, right-wing entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is cashing in on the GOP’s anti-ESG and anti-woke craze, as CMD recently reported. His firm Strive Asset Management (DRLL) is trying to pull business away from the Big Three asset managers in red states. It recently announced that it hasraised $250 million thanks to large investments from far-right tech mogul Peter Thiel and his affiliated groups.

Not only are GOP AGs targeting asset managers that reduce fossil fuel investments, but they’re going after regulators and ratings agencies as well.

In June, Paxton spearheaded a letterfrom a group of 12 Republican AGs to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)opposing its proposed corporate disclosure requirements around sustainability. The rule would require firms to back up their claims of purportedly green or socially aware investments. Twenty-one GOP AGs sent another letter of opposition to the SEC on Aug. 16.

“The woke left is going full throttle in their mission to change every facet of American life… and erode our democratic institutions to suit their liberal agenda,” said West Virginia’s AG Patrick Morrisey (R).

In late July, Missouri’s AG Eric Schmitt (R) launched an investigation into whether Morningstar, a financial research and rating company, violated a state consumer-protection law by evaluating ESG issues. A few weeks later, 18 other AGs joined the probe. Schmitt and 16 other attorneys general are also trying to block California from setting its own vehicle emissions standards.

At the same time, the nonprofit State Financial Officers Foundation (SFOF) and its members are doing all they can to prop up fossil fuel companies and punish firms that divest from oil, gas, and coal. In West Virginia, state Treasurer Riley Mooretold five financial companies—the banks Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Wells Fargo, as well as BlackRock—that they would no longer be eligible for state contracts because they have reduced financing for coal projects.

Corporate Code of Silence

an 9 22 raga?

no lnx twt doc

'Just kidding': Biden Administration yanks student debt relief for millions as GOP states sue

Brett Wilkins and Common Dreams September 29, 2022

"The Biden administration told several million people they'd see their debt reduced by $10-20K, and a month later quietly wrote 'just kidding' on a website," said one affected borrower.

Progressives on Thursday decried the Biden administration's decision to exclude millions of people from its student loan relief plan, a move meant to thwart legal challenges like the lawsuit filed on the same day by six Republican-led states seeking to block President Joe Biden's proposal to cancel up to $20,000 of federal educational debt per borrower.

Politico reports worries over legal challenges from the student lending industry prompted the U.S. Department of Education to reverse course and no longer allow borrowers with Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFEL) and Perkins loans—which are guaranteed by the federal government but held by private lenders—to participate in the debt cancellation plan.

Biden announced last month that his administration will forgive $10,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers who attended college without Pell Grants and who earn less than $125,000 individually, or $250,000 as a household. Borrowers who received Pell Grants will have $20,000 in federal debt erased.

The president's approval rating bounced by double-digits among young voters in the weeks after his announcement, which fulfilled a campaign promise and came just over two months ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

However, student loan debtors expressed deep disappointment over Thursday's move, with one borrower and activist calling the administration's about-face a "gut punch."

Another, journalist Dell Cameron, tweeted: "The Biden administration told several million people they'd see their debt reduced by $10-20K, and a month later quietly wrote 'just kidding' on a website. Where's the legal threat over that?"

The administration's reversal came as six Republican-led states filed a lawsuit in a Missouri federal court Thursday arguing that the president's debt relief plan is "not remotely tailored to address the effects of the pandemic on federal student loan borrowers," a legal requirement under the administration's justification

According to The Washington Post:

The suit emphasizes that Missouri's student loan servicer, which is part of its state government, could see a drop in revenue because borrowers are likely to consolidate their loans under the Federal Family Education Loan program.

On Thursday, however, the administration said it would exclude FFEL from the loan forgiveness program... That change could help head off legal claims against the policy, although it will mean that roughly two million of the 44 million otherwise eligible borrowers will not qualify for relief.

Politico cites June federal data showing there were more than four million borrowers with $108.8 billion in privately held student loans.

"Republicans want to keep you in debt for the rest of your life and take away student debt cancellation," the Debt Collective, the nation's first debtors' union, tweeted in response to the suit. "It is an interesting strategy to adopt before the midterms."

2012?

But it was over climate change that Cuccinelliwould make his greatest mark.

He put Virginia out in front—along with Texas and Alabama—as one of the first states to sue the Obama administration over the Environmental Protection Agency's endangermentfinding on greenhouse gases. --> MORRISSEY

. Morrisey spearheaded the 27 State litigation against the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, one of the most illegal and unprecedented regulations in our country's history. In February 2016, the Morrisey-led coalition won a historic and unprecedented stay of the Power Plan at the U.S. Supreme Court. Most recently, he led a 13-state effort challenging a provision in law preventing states from lowering taxes. He has been out in front defending the Second Amendment and human life.

west va morrissey v epa

Nineteen other states, led by West Virginia, and power companies challenged the D.C. Circuit's ruling, asserting that the decision gives the EPA too much power in regulating emissions. The states that joined West Virginia were Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.^[22]

On June 8, 2021, attorneys General in 17 states filed a motion to intervene to insert themselves as adversaries to the Juliana lawsuit and object to any potential settlement between the Biden Administration and the youth plaintiffs. Because they have indicated they won’t participate in the settlement process in good faith, the youth plaintiffs and their attorneys will object to these state governments intervening at this late stage in their case.

[ALABAMA, ALASKA, ARKANSAS, GEORGIA, INDIANA, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, MONTANA [knudsen] , NEBRASKA, NORTH DAKOTA, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH, AND WEST VIRGINIA.]

http://climatecasechart.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/case-documents/2021/20210720_docket-615-cv-01517_reply-1.pdf

5/17

in Young People’s Climate Lawsuit Against U.S., Federal Magistrate Recommended Denial of Motions to Certify Case for Appeal. A magistrate judge in the federal district court for the District of Oregon recommended denial of motions by federal defendants and by intervenor oil and gas trade groups to certify the district court’s denial of motions to dismiss the lawsuit brought by young people alleging that the defendants violated rights protected by the Constitution by allowing greenhouse gas emissions to accumulate. The magistrate rejected the intervenors’ contention that the issue of whether the political question doctrine barred the plaintiffs’ claims should be certified. The magistrate judge said that the court would be capable of granting equitable relief that would not “micro manage” federal agencies or make policy judgments in the event the plaintiffs prevailed. The magistrate “emphatically rejected” any contention that the topic of “climate change” was “formed and determined by political values and is thus a non-justiciable political question” and said that climate change was “quintessentially a subject of scientific study and methodology, not solely political debate” and that courts were “particularly well-suited for the resolution of factual and expert scientific disputes.” The magistrate further indicated that the issues in the case “and the fundamental constitutional rights presented” would not be “well served by certifying a hypothetical question to the Court of Appeals bereft of any factual record or any record at all beyond the pleadings.”

The magistrate judge indicated that the federal defendants’ significant admissions regarding the threats posed by human-induced climate change had, “if anything, … enhanced” the plaintiffs’ due process claim and that any appeal would be premature because the taking of evidence was necessary to “flesh out… critical issues.” The magistrate judge also was not persuaded that certification should be granted for the public trust claim, indicating that the federal defendants were relying on an overly expansive reading of Supreme Court precedent to narrow the scope of the federal public trust obligations. In recommending denial of certification on the issue of the plaintiffs’ standing, the magistrate said that the alleged harms to the plaintiffs from climate change should not be “minimalized by the fact that vast numbers of the populace are exposed to the same injuries.” The magistrate noted that numerous factual questions would be addressed at trial (e.g. “Is climate change occurring?” “If so, to what extent is it being caused by fossil fuel production?), and said the defendants and the intervenors “would put the cart before the horse” by certifying hypothetical questions before the relevant factual issues were addressed. The parties were given 14 days to file written objections to the magistrate judge’s recommendation, followed by 14 days to file a response to the objections.

22 PP

STEVE MARSHALL Attorney General of AlabamaEdmund G. LaCour Jr. (AL Bar No. 9182-U81L) Solicitor General Thomas A. Wilson (AL Bar No. 1494-D25C) Deputy Solicitor General STATE OF ALABAMA OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL 501 Washington Ave. Montgomery, AL 36130 Telephone: (334) 242-7300 Fax: (334) 353-8400 Edmund.LaCour@AlabamaAG.gov Thomas.Wilson@AlabamaAG.gov Counsel for Proposed Defendant-Intervenor State of Alabama [additional counsel listed on signature page] UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT DISTRICT OF OREGON EUGENE DIVISION KELSEY CASCADIA ROSE JULIANA, et al., Plaintiffs, v. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, et al., Defendants. Case No. 6:15-cv-01517-AA

PROPOSED DEFENDANT-INTERVENORS: STATES OF ALABAMA, ALASKA, ARKANSAS, GEORGIA, INDIANA, KANSAS, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI, MISSOURI, MONTANA, NEBRASKA, NORTH DAKOTA, OHIO, OKLAHOMA, SOUTH CAROLINA, TEXAS, UTAH, AND WEST VIRGINIA’S REPLY

[:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}:**:{RAGA leaders were also involved in :(style="background-color:#ffff66;"):}::{Texas AG Ken Paxton's [lawsuit filed last month in the U.S. Supreme Court challenging the presidential election results in the battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, claiming changes made to accommodate voters in the COVID-19 pandemic were unlawful. Among those signing on to the suit wereRAGA's Hunter [okla, quit 2021] , Landry, Marshall [alabama], Moody, Reyes, Schmitt and Wilson,as well as the Republican AGs ofArkansas,Indiana, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and West Virginia.]]

{{In July 2017, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton led a group of Republican Attorneys General from nine other states, includingMarshall, plus Idaho Governor Butch Otter, in threatening the Donald J. Trump administration that they would litigate if the president did not terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy that had been put into place by president Barack Obama. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery, III subsequently reversed his position and withdrew his participation from the proposed suit on August 31st. Slatery went further to urge passage of the DREAM Act.^[5][6] The other Attorneys General who joined in making the threats against Trump included Lawrence Wasden of Idaho, Leslie Rutledge of Arkansas, Derek Schmidt of Kansas, Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Doug Peterson of Nebraska, Alan Wilson of South Carolina, and Patrick Morrisey of West Virginia.}}

MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF MOTION FOR LIMITED INTERVENTION. (ECF Nos. 475, 508, 509)

7/21

Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sought to file an amicus brief that argued that the court should deny the intervention motion without prejudice. NRDC reasoned that the states would not be prejudiced if intervention were deferred until the time of any proposed consent decree that might affect the states’ interests.

natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sought to file an amicus brief that argued that the court should deny the intervention motion without prejudice. NRDC reasoned that the states would not be prejudiced if intervention were deferred until the time of any proposed consent decree that might affect the states’ interests.

07/06/2021 Amicus Motion Download Motion filed by New York and other states for leave to file brief as amici curiae. Six states, led by New York, filed a motion for leave to file a brief as amici in support of the plaintiffs; they asserted an “interest in correcting proposed intervenors’ erroneous assertions about purported collusion between the parties” in two lawsuits referenced in the motion to intervene, as well as an interest in correcting the proposed intervenor states’ “incomplete picture of the effects that federal action to address climate change will have on States and state residents.”

feb 2018

https://blog.ucsusa.org/elliott-negin/exxonmobils-climate-disinformation-campaign-is-still-alive-and-well/

In a recent blog post, ExxonMobil executive Suzanne McCarronreiterated her company’s claim that it fully accepts the reality of climate change and that it wants to do something about it....“I want to use this opportunity to be 100 percent clear about where we stand on climate change,” she wrote. “We believe the risk of climate change is real and we are committed to being part of the solution. So why is the company still a part of—in fact, a major part of—the problem?An exchange between Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt during a recent is a case in point, providing a window into how ExxonMobil’s undue influence continues to block climate action.

During the January 30 hearing, which was held by the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee, Sen. Cory Booker inadvertently provoked Inhofe by raising the issue of environmental justice.The New Jersey Democrat cited the threat climate change-induced flooding poses to three dozen Superfund sites in his state and asked Pruitt if he was “taking into account the environmental burdens disproportionately impacting communities of color, indigenous communities and low-income communities.”

Inhofe seized the opportunity to contradict Booker, claiming that minority and low-income communities are disproportionately harmed by environmental protections, specifically citing the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have dramatically reduced carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants if Pruitt hadn’t repealed it.

Booker, Inhofe said, was implying that Pruitt was trying to “punish” vulnerable Americans. “I wanted to just remind you,” Inhofe told the committee, “that we had a guy I remember so well, Harry Alford. He was the president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. He provided some of the most powerful testimony that I have ever heard when it comes to the effects of the Clean Power Plan and some of the other regulations … on black and Hispanic poverty, including job losses and increased energy costs.

“[Alford] was very emphatic as to who was paying the price on these,” the Oklahoma Republican continued, “and I think sometimes that the previous administration forgot that there are already people out there who are paying all they can pay just to try to eat and keep their house warm.”

ExxonMobil’s Echo Chamber

Inhofe’s source for his assertion? A discredited, ExxonMobil-funded study by an Exxon-funded advocacy group that was based on discredited studies by other ExxonMobil-funded organizations.

Inhofe rested his argument on previous congressional testimony by Harry Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce (NBCC), a shoestring, mom-and-pop operation that is unapologetic about taking fossil fuel industry money. “Of course we do and it is only natural,” Alford wrote on NBCC’s website. “The legacy of Blacks in this nation has been tied to the miraculous history of fossil fuel…. [F]ossil fuels have been our economic friend.”

One of NBCC’s closest economic friends is ExxonMobil, which has donated more than $1.14 million to the group since 2001.

What did the company get for that money?

In 2015, NBCC commissioned a report that claimed the Clean Power Plan would “inflict severe and disproportionate economic burdens on poor families, especially minorities.”

In fact, unchecked climate change would more than likely hurt those communities most, and investments in energy efficiency under the plan would ultimately lower electricity bills across the country.

How did NBCC arrive at its upside-down assessment? The Union of Concerned Scientists took a close look at the report and found it was based on several flawed fossil fuel industry-friendly studies. Two of those bogus studies were produced by ExxonMobil grantees: the Heritage Foundation, which received $340,000 from ExxonMobil between 2007 and 2013, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which received $3 million between 2014 and 2016.

The Chamber study, which came out just days before the EPA released a draft of the Clean Power Plan, was debunked not only by the EPA, but also by *PolitiFact.com* and *The Washington Post*. Among its many faults, the Chamber study—which was co-sponsored by the American Petroleum Institute—wildly inflated the cost of the plan and failed to consider the benefits of cutting carbon emissions.

ExxonMobil Spreads its Money Around

But there’s more than just the fact that ExxonMobil financed deliberately flawed studies to try to derail the Clean Power Plan. The company also is a major supporter of a number of Senate EPW Committee members, including Inhofe, who are adamant climate science deniers.

Inhofe has deep ties to the oil and gas industry, which has donated $1.85 million to his campaign war chest over his long career in Congress, more than twice than any other industry.Three oil and gas companies are among the senator’s top 10 corporate contributors: Koch Industries, Devon Energy and …ExxonMobil.

Six of the other 10 Republicans on the EPW Committee also are on ExxonMobil’s donation list, including Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the current committee chairman. Roughly half of the $119,500 ExxonMobil contributed to the seven senators over the last decade went to Barrasso and Inhofe, the committee’s previous chairman.

Then there’s ExxonMobil’s link to Pruitt, Oklahoma’s attorney general before President Trump tapped him to run the EPA. From 2012 through 2013, he chaired the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA)and afterward served on the organization’s executive committee. From 2014 through 2016, ExxonMobil gave RAGA $160,000 in three annual installments.

Just a few weeks after the company made its 2016 donation of $50,000,Pruitt and then-RAGA Chairman Luther Strange, at the time Alabama’s attorney general, co-authored a National Review column attacking a coalition of state attorneys general investigating ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies for misleading investorsand the general public about climate change. Parroting ExxonMobil’s argument, Pruitt and Strange charged that the coalition was violating the company’s first amendment right to free speech.

“The debate” over climate change, they wrote “is far from settled. Scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind. That debate should be encouraged — in classrooms, public forums, and the halls of Congress. It should not be silenced with threats of prosecution. Dissent is not a crime.”

Inhofe Upstaged

In this case, Inhofe’s counterfactual comment didn’t make it into the ensuing media coverage. Along with nearly everything else that was said during the two-and-a-half hour marathon, it was eclipsed by a bombshell dropped by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse. The Rhode Island Democrat revealed that during a February 2016 radio interview, Pruitt said Trump would be “more abusive to the Constitution than Barack Obama, and that’s saying a lot.” Whitehouse read Pruitt’s remark aloud and asked him if he recalled making it.

“I don’t,” Pruitt responded, “and I don’t echo that today at all.”

“I guess not,” Whitehouse replied.

Not surprisingly, that embarrassing nugget was the story. There was no way that Inhofe’s rambling, ExxonMobil-sponsored falsehood could compete in the media with red meat like that. But overshadowed or not, Inhofe provided yet another incontrovertible piece of evidence that—despite ExxonMobil’s statements to the contrary—the company is still very much engaged behind the scenes in trying to stymie any government attempt to seriously address climate change.

Posted in: Climate Change, Energy, Science and Democracy, Scientific Integrity

Tags: disinformation

July 7, 2021

Attorneys General inNew York & Five Other States File Brief in Support of Julianav. United States While Plaintiffs Oppose Attempt By Republican Coalition to Intervene

no lnx

For immediate release July 7, 2021

Contacts:

Julia Olson, 415-786-4825, julia@ourchildrenstrust.org

Andrea Rodgers, 206-696-2851, andrea@ourchildrenstrust.org

Philip Gregory, 650-278-2957, pgregory@gregorylawgroup.com

For interviews with youth plaintiffs, email beth@ourchildrenstrust.org

Attorneys General in New York & Five Other States File Brief in Support of

Juliana v. United States While Plaintiffs Oppose Attempt By Republican

Coalition to Intervene

EUGENE, Ore. – Attorney General Letitia James of New York on Tuesday filed a “friend

of the court” brief in support of the landmark constitutional climate case Juliana v. United

States, spearheading a wave of support from states that also include Delaware, Hawai‘i,

Minnesota, Oregon, and Vermont.

In their amici curiae motion, the six Democrat-led states noted that the

wide-ranging effects of climate change -- “including the costs of combating rising

sea levels, health risks posed by rising temperatures, and threats to States’ food

and water supplies, among others -- implicate far broader quasi-sovereign

interests in the health and well-being of state residents than those noted by

proposed intervenors.”

Also on Tuesday, attorneys from Our Children’s Trust, which represents the 21 Juliana

youth plaintiffs, filed a brief opposing an earlier attempt by[19 states] Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas,

Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North

Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia to join the

Biden administration in defending the case.

In June, the coalition of Republican

attorneys general said it wants to “participate in settlement negotiations” to “object to

any proposed settlement” and threatened to go all the way to the Supreme Court to

keep the youths’ case from going to trial.

In their filing opposing the attempt by some Republican-led states to intervene, the

plaintiffs’ attorneys point out that those 18 states are suffering billions of dollars in

losses related to climate impacts from extreme heat, sea level rise, and extreme storm

events, and any economic losses to the fossil fuel sector are far outweighed by severe

economic harm from the climate crisis.

“What the 18 Republican attorneys general seek is unprecedented,” said Julia

Olson, chief legal counsel of Our Children’s Trust. “They want to be allowed to

come into the case to fight the youth and prevent their claims from going to trial or

be resolved through settlement, but they refuse to waive their sovereign immunity

under the U.S. Constitution, which means they would not be subject to any orders

of the federal courts. They essentially want status as interlopers, with all the

privileges to participate as a party-defendant and fight these kids, but with no

responsibility or accountability. What they seek only hurts children in their own

states too.”

The Juliana constitutional rights lawsuit, filed in 2015, argues that affirmative actions by

the federal government under both political parties directly contributed to the climate

crisis – including creating a national fossil fuel-based energy system that is a substantial

factor in causing the plaintiffs’ injuries. By doing so, the plaintiffs argue, the government

has knowingly violated their constitutional rights to life, liberty and property, the public

trust, and equal protection of the law.

The Juliana plaintiffs’ amended complaint -- which the coalition of Republican attorneys

general is attempting to block -- is focused on winning a declaratory judgment that the

nation’s fossil fuel-based energy system is unconstitutional, much like the plaintiffs in

Brown v. Board of Education argued the public school system of segregation was

unconstitutional.

In June U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ordered attorneys for plaintiffs and for the

Department of Justice to meet for a settlement conference with Magistrate Judge

Thomas Coffin, calling it “a tremendous opportunity” to address the climate “crisis” and

not just a “ministerial step.” Those talks are underway.

If Judge Aiken grants the motion to amend, and the settlement process is unsuccessful,

the case would be able to move forward in the trial court on the question of whether the

federal government’s fossil fuel-based energy system, and resulting climate

destabilization, is unconstitutional.

omfg, HOW MUCH OF THIS WAS TEED UP BY CPP BS? ANTI-GUBMINT

no lnx an 11 21

'Pro-death cult strikes back': Right-wing judges block Biden’s vaccine rule for big companies

Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams November 08, 2021

Progressives concerned about workplace safety and public health responded with dismay after a federal appeals court on Saturday temporarily blocked the Biden administration's attempt to require workers at companies with 100 or more employees to be vaccinated against Covid-19 or tested weekly.

Citing "grave statutory and constitutional" problems with the rule, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued the stay in response to a joint petition filed Friday by a coalition of businesses, conservative advocacy groups, and the states of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Utah.

That legal challenge, and separate lawsuits from Republican-led states, came just one day after President Joe Biden announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) would begin enforcing its newly unveiled Emergency Temporary Standard (ETS) in the coming weeks. Companies with at least 100 employees have until December 5 to require unvaccinated workers to wear masks indoors, and by January 4, they must require vaccinations or administer weekly tests.

Decrying the decision of the "right-wing Fifth Circuit," labor journalist Steven Greenhouse said on social media that "it's terrible for worker safety and public health that three conservative activist judges have suspended Biden's... new rule requiring workers at companies with more than 100 workers to get vaccinated or tested."

"OSHA's mission is to protect workers' health," Greenhouse continued, "but the appellate judges seem to forget that Covid has killed thousands of meatpacking, retail, and other workers."

More than 750,000 people in the U.S. have died from Covid-19 since the pandemic started last March, and the disease continues to kill nearly 1,100 people per day, most of them unvaccinated, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Recent studies confirm that vaccines save lives.Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services analyzed the relationship between county-level inoculation rates and Covid-19 outcomes among U.S. seniors and found that vaccines helped ward off 265,000 infections, 107,000 hospitalizations, and 39,000 deaths during the first five months of 2021.

And in September, CDC researchers found that individuals in the U.S. who were not fully vaccinated last spring and summer were 11 times more likely to die after being infected with the coronavirus—and over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized—than those who were fully inoculated.

Greenhouse said that "the judges evidently sympathize with [Texas Republican Gov.] Greg Abbott's let-people-die stance—that it'soverreachfor OSHA to act strongly to protect workers from Covid."

David Michaels, a leader of OSHA during the Obama administration, also rebuked the federal appeals court, describing its decision as legally dubious and politically motivated.

"The same activist court that refused to stay Texas' law that permits bounty hunters to sue anyone who aids an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy has stayed an OSHA rule that is clearly within OSHA's authority, will save lives, and make workplaces safe," he told the New York Times.

According to the Times, "At the core of the legal challenge is the question of whether OSHA exceeded its authority in issuing the rule and whether such a mandate would need to be passed by Congress."

The newspaper reported:

The suit against the mandate stated that President Biden "set the legislative policy" of substantially increasing the number of Americans covered by vaccination requirements, and "then set binding rules enforced with the threat of large fines."

"That is a quintessential legislative act—and one wholly unrelated to the purpose of OSHA itself, which is protecting workplace safety," the suit said. "Nowhere in OSHA's enabling legislation does Congress confer upon it the power to end pandemics."

Corporate executives asked, and the Biden administration agreed, to delay implementation of OSHA's new ETS "until after the New Year, citing concerns about worker shortages during the important holiday season," Reuters noted.

Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda, meanwhile, said in a statement that the Labor Department, home to OSHA, is "confident in its legal authority" to issue vaccine requirements.

The vaccine rule for companies with 100 or more employees "applies to 84.2 million workers at 1.9 million private-sector employers," Reuters reported. "OSHA estimates that 31.7 million of [those] workers are unvaccinated and 60% of employers will require vaccinations, up from 25% today, resulting in another 22.7 million employees getting vaccinated."

Several million additional workers are covered by the Biden administration's vaccine mandate for employees of the executive branch, federal contractors, and staff at healthcare facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding. OSHA officials say they are considering expanding the jab-or-test rule to include companies with fewer than 100 workers.

"The Occupational Safety and Health Act explicitly gives OSHA the authority to act quickly in an emergency where the agency finds that workers are subjected to a grave danger and a new standard is necessary to protect them," Nanda said. "We are fully prepared to defend this standard in court."

The Fifth Circuit panel's two-page order directs the Biden administration to respond to the request for a permanent injunction against the rule by 5 p.m. ET Monday.

As the Times noted, it remains unclear whether the court's stay "would be a procedural blip for the Biden administration or the first step in the unwinding of the mandate."

The newspaper explained that "after both sides have filed briefs, the court will decide whether to lift the temporary injunction, allowing the rule to proceed as planned, or whether to grant a permanent injunction. OSHA could then take the case to the Supreme Court."

While some legal experts argue that the Labor Department has the regulatory authority to compel private employers to protect the health of workers and the broader public through mandatory vaccination amid a deadly global pandemic,Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, told Reuters that "there will be so much litigation it will never see the light of day."

Twenty-four attorneys general threatened to sue the Biden administration over the rule back in September, and several followed through immediately after it was published in the federal register on Friday.

In addition to the petition filed with the Fifth Circuit, attorneys general in 11 states—Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming—filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

And in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, the states of Alabama, Florida, and Georgia sued, with Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis saying at a press conference that "the federal government can't just unilaterally impose medical policy under the guise of workplace regulation."

Roughly 70% of U.S. adults are fully inoculated against Covid-19, and about 80% have received at least one shot, according to the CDC. Recent polling shows that a majority of U.S. adults favor Covid-19 vaccination requirements, with only about one-fifth to one-quarter of respondents opposed.

OSHA, Reuters pointed out, is "fighting history. The agency has issued 10 ETS over its 50 years. Of the six that were challenged in court, only one survived entirely intact."

Donald Verrilli, U.S. solicitor general during former President Barack Obama's administration, however, told the news outlet that the Biden administration "wouldn't move forward unless they thought that they could defend it legally... I think the constitutional challenges are all going to fail."

BS ACE trump plan

RAGA: Morrisey has been one of the most active Attorneys General in the countryfighting federal overreach by filing lawsuits and submitting amicus briefs before the U.S. Supreme Court and other courts on a number of issues, ranging from protecting the Second Amendment to defending state jobs and our valuable energy resources. Morrisey spearheaded the 27 State litigation against the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, one of the most illegal and unprecedented regulations in our country's history. In February 2016, the Morrisey-led coalition won a historic and unprecedented stay of the Power Plan at the U.S. Supreme Court. Most recently, he led a 13-state effort challenging a provision in law preventing states from lowering taxes. He has been out in front defending the Second Amendment and human life.

officially racists:

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/experts-lawsuit-heading-to-supreme-court-would-lead-to-massive-transfer-of-wealth-from-middle-class-to-richest-americans/

Republican lawsuit that seeks to strike down the Affordable Care Act would save the richest one-tenth of 1 percent of Americans an average of $198,000 per year, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The case, which was initiated by 18 state attorneys general and backed by the Trump administration, is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court a week after the November election. A Texas judge ruled in 2018 that the entire Obamacare law was unconstitutional, after the Republican-led Congress eliminated the individual mandate penalty in its 2017 tax bill and an appeals court then sent the case back for the judge to decide whether the entire law needed to be struck down.

Legal experts have called the idea that the individual mandate rendered the entire law unconstitutional “ridiculous” and a “mockery of the rule of law.” But conservatives currently hold a 5-3 majority on the Supreme Court, which could soon swell to a 6-3 majority if President Trump successfully replaces the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, putting the fate of the law and health coverage and protections for tens of millions of Americans in doubt.

Repealing Obamacare would be a boon for the richest Americans, however, because of the taxes imposed by the law. Obamacare imposed a 0.9% tax on earnings over $200,000 for individualsand $250,000 for couples, along with an additional 3.8% tax on unearned income like capital gains and royalties. The analysis also includes other Obamacare revenue streams, like a$2.8 billion annual fee on pharmaceutical companiesand the law’s employer mandate. These taxes were used to cover the cost of the Medicaid expansion and subsidies for those buying health care on the exchanges created by the law.

The top 0.1% of earners, who make more than $3 million per year, would see a tax savings of about $198,000 per year, according to the CBPP analysis. Households earning more than $1 million per year would get tax cuts of about $42,000 per year.

Households in the bottom 80% would see average tax cuts of less than $80 a year. The top 0.1% would receive 42% of the tax benefits from the law’s repeal.

Tax cuts for households with incomes above $200,000 per year would cost the government about $30 billion per year, enough to cover the cost of the Medicaid expansion for more than 4 million people, according to the analysis.

“In effect, the Administration and the state attorneys general are seeking a massive transfer of resources from low- and moderate-income people to those at the top of the income scale,” the CBPP researchers wrote. “The lawsuit would also widen racial gaps, with Black and Hispanic people disproportionately likely to lose health coverage and the overwhelming share of the tax cuts flowing to white people.”

Based on estimates from the Urban Institute, the analysis found that nearly 10% of non-elderly Black people and 10% of Hispanic people would lose health coverage if the law were repealed. About one of every 16 white people would also lose coverage.

“Meanwhile, the tax cuts that would result from striking down the law would flow disproportionately to white households, which are three times likelier than Black or Hispanic households to be in the top 1 percent of the income scale,” the researchers wrote.

2 americas?

The states that do the most to discourage climate action and encourage dirty energy are the states whose residents are suffering the most from climate impacts, a Mother Jones and Center for Public Integrity investigation has found.

A CPI analysis found that nine of the 10 states that did the most to block the Clean Power Plan also emit the most carbon dioxide per person, while four of those nine were among the states that saw the most natural disasters over the past 10 years. The investigation focuses on Kentucky, where flash floods, that in some cases were worsened by improper mine cleanup, have devastated local communities.

As reported by Mother Jones:

The choices that state leaders make now will have life-changing consequences for generations, experts warn. Michael Hendryx, a public health professor at Indiana University Bloomington who studies environmental justice, said he wonders whether officials promoting inaction truly think global warming is not an emergency or are simply making a cynical bet that they won't be harmed.

"They'll be the people who have the money and power to defend themselves as climate change gets worse," he said. "If we don't do something really powerful and really meaningful soon, then the people who live in vulnerable areas … will suffer the most."

For a deeper dive:

Mother Jones

For more climate change and clean energy news, you can follow Climate Nexus on Twitter and Facebook, and sign up for daily Hot News.

2012?

But it was over climate change that Cuccinelliwould make his greatest mark.

did not do great 2018?

The 7 States that Flipped from GOP Governors to Democrats

Four of the seven states that switched to Democratic governors are in the Midwest, partially reversing the region's swing toward Republicans in 2014.

In Michigan, Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, a former state legislator, defeated Republican Bill Schuette, the state attorney general. Whitmer had support from environmental advocates because of her criticism of Enbridge's Line 5 fossil fuel pipeline and her support for moving to 100 percent renewable energy. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder had reached the state's term limit.

...Nevada could become a leader on renewable energy with the election of Democrat Steve Sisolak, who made support for solar power part of his campaign. Sisolak, chair of the county commission in the county that includes Las Vegas, defeated Adam Laxalt, the state attorney general, who had sued the Obama administration over environmental issues and had criticized Sisolak's positions on renewable energy. Sisolak will replace term-limited Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval, whose tenure included a drastic reduction in support for rooftop solar that was so unpopular the policy was reversed

https://www.exposedbycmd.org/2018/09/24/attorney-general-schimel-withholds-documents-related-his-legal-war-against-affordable-care-act

Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) filed suit today against Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel and the Department of Justice (DOJ) for refusing to disclose public records related to his high-profile legal war against the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

In February of this year, Schimel and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit,joined by 18 other Republican AGs designed to do what Congress couldn’t — kill the Affordable Care Act. The suit seeks to strike down the law’s individual mandate and would eliminate coverage for preexisting conditions, the ACA’s most popular provision.

CMD submitted an open records request on August 3, 2018 for internal records and communications from the offices of Attorney General Schimel and the Solicitor General regarding the ACA. CMD limited the request to records between January 1, 2018 and August 3, 2018.

On August 20, 2018, the DOJ identified 1,940 relevant emails, but denied CMD’s request outright by claiming it would be “excessively burdensome” to review and redact them.

“Schimel’s case against the Affordable Care Act is of significant public interest. Why he would deny the public information about this controversial suit, which may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, is unknown. But the citizens of the state deserve answers,” said CMD Executive Director Arn Pearson.

“Wisconsin’s Open Records Law has a strong presumption of public access,” said Pines Bach attorney Christa Westerberg, who is representing CMD. “The Department’s denial is a burden on the public’s right to know on a matter of obvious public concern.”

If successful, Schimel’s ACA suit could result in 17 million people losing their health insurance. Insurance companies could be allowed to reject those with pre-existing conditions or jack up their rates.

Congress attempted to repeal and replace the ACA in 2017, but ultimately could not muster the votes in the Senate. Now Republican attorneys general are using their 527 political organization, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), to coordinate attacks on the ACA to weaken it and, with the latest suit, upend it.

Two of RAGA’s top donors, the billionaire Koch brothers, have spent hundreds of millions on the ACA repeal effort since the law was enacted. Koch Industries has contributed close to half a million to RAGA over the last year and a half and $10,000 directly to Schimel’s reelection campaign.

RAGA, in turn, has pumped $44,000 into Schimel’s campaign and has a $2.5 million ad buy praising the Attorney General running statewide.

“It is puzzling that Attorney General Brad Schimel, the man who created Wisconsin’s Office of Open Government, would deny a reasonable records request that clearly meets the criteria of Wisconsin’s Open Records law,” said David Armiak, a researcher with CMD.

The Center for Media and Democracy is a non-profit investigative watchdog group. Our reporting and analyses focuses on corporate influence and money in politics. We publish ExposedbyCMD.org, PRWatch.org, SourceWatch.org, and ALECExposed.org.

The complaint can be accessed on our website here.

https://www.ecowatch.com/climate-litigation-california-big-oil-2571971191.html

Climate Litigation Against Big Oil Heats Up

By Jason Mark

Can any one group of actors be held responsible for the damages caused by global climate change?

That was the central question argued in federal court on Thursday as attorneys representing San Francisco and Oakland tried to beat back efforts by ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Royal Dutch Shell to have a judge throw out a potentially groundbreaking climate change related lawsuit.

The nearly three-hour hearing was the latest round in a burgeoning effort by cities and counties nationwide to hold major fossil fuel producers accountable for climate change-related damages. Last year, seven California cities and counties sued the oil majors, claiming that their production and sale of fossil fuels—even as they were aware of the risks of CO2 emissions—constitute a public nuisance. Since then, similar suits have been filed by New York City; Boulder and two Colorado counties; and King County, Washington, home to the city of Seattle. (For more, see SIERRA's May/June cover story, "The Case for Climate Reparations.")

Thursday's hearing represented the first major test of such lawsuits as Judge William Alsup considered whether the Oakland and San Francisco complaint should move forward. The defendants challenged the lawsuit on a broad range of grounds, forcing Judge Alsup, a Clinton-appointee known for being an idiosyncratic jurist, to say at one point, "There are a lot of arguments here. As soon as I focus on one, you run off to another one."

The defendants' arguments for dismissing the suit centered on two main questions: whether the Federal District Court for Northern California is an appropriate jurisdiction to decide the case, and, of larger concern, whether the lawsuits might be displaced by existing federal laws and policies.

Arguments hinged on a welter of legal terms such as "general jurisdiction" versus "personal jurisdiction" versus "specific jurisdiction," while also touching on the distinctions between a holding company and an operating company. (Lawyers for Royal Dutch Shell maintained that the Netherlands-based multinational corporation is a holding company, and therefore has no agents in California.) In the course of the arguments it became clear that the very scale of the contested issue—global climate change—further complicates the questions of jurisdiction. The defendants argued that it's hard, if not impossible, to establish direct causation for a specific harm when the source of that harm is billions of people burning fossil fuels worldwide.

"[The plaintiffs] have decided that they do not want to and cannot disaggregate the conduct that leads to their harm," Jaren Janghorbani, an attorney representing ExxonMobil, said. "They cannot attribute any of the harm they are alleging to the company's activities in California."

Jonathan Hughes, a lawyer representing BP, echoed that point. "The amount [of CO2 emissions from its California operations] that could be attributed to BP would be a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent. And under the but-for argument, if BP hadn't produced any fossil fuels, would they have still suffered an injury? The answer is yes. We are talking about a speck in the ocean."

In response, Benjamin Krass, a lawyer representing San Francisco and Oakland, said the oil company attorneys were "muddying up" the but-for argument—the principle of tort law that establishes liability. "The end result of the defendants' argument is that a company that does business everywhere should be held accountable nowhere."

In the end, Judge Alsup said he didn't have enough information to make a decision on the jurisdiction question. He gave both sides at least 60 days for a discovery process and depositions to establish whether each of the defendants has sufficient business operations in California for the two California cities to claim injury.

That left Chevron, the only defendant headquartered in California, to argue for dismissal based on the merits of the case. Chevron attorney Theodore Boutrous, Jr. began by saying that the cities' claims stretch federal common law and that "the plaintiffs are asking this court to throw caution to the wind." Boutrous went on to argue that a complex issue like climate change "should be committed to those who write the laws rather than those who interpret them." And Congress, Boutrous argued, has again and again passed laws in favor of fossil fuel production. "Congress has made clear that energy production is not a public nuisance; it is a public necessity."

As a rebuttal, Steve Berman, the lead counsel for the two cities, argued that the cities' complaints are not nearly as novel as the defendants make it seem—but instead merely the application of ancient laws to contemporary circumstances. "The law of nuisance has been around forever, and it has responded to changes in mankind. What we are doing is applying hundreds of years of law to a new situation." Berman later said, "We allege that this was a deliberate nuisance, based on phony science."

The San Francisco and Oakland case has generated a great deal of attention among legal scholars and climate change activists. In March, Judge Alsup held an unusual "climate science tutorial" as a preliminary step in the case—an event that attracted so big a crowd, the court had to reserve an overflow room. The case has also become a proxy battle of sorts. Fifteen states with Republican attorneys general—including Indiana, Colorado, Kansas and Louisiana—filed an amicus brief in support of the oil corporations' position. Meanwhile, California, New Jersey and Washington filed their own brief backing the cities' arguments.

The federal government has also weighed in. Two weeks ago the U.S. Department of Justice filed a brief supporting the five oil companies, and on Thursday, Eric Grant, a deputy assistant attorney general, was given time to express the federal government's opposition to the San Francisco and Oakland suits."It is upon Congress, not the courts, to prescribe policy in areas of special interest," Grant said. "As this court knows, in respect to domestic emissions, the kind of national policy-making sought by plaintiffs is inappropriate … [Climate change] is a complex issue involving trade-offs affecting a nation of more than 300 million people. Individual federal district courts lack the competence to undertake that task."

The federal government's arguments appeared to give Judge Alsup pause, even as he continued to express exasperation with the legal maneuverings of some of the defendants. "There is no court in the history of the universe that has extended this [federal common law] to global warming," the judge said. "The United States is pointing to Supreme Court language that judges like me have to move slowly … There's no doubt there will be some sea rise. But will it be in 75 years or 25 years? We don't know."

To which Berman, the plaintiff's attorney, responded, "That's what the trial is for. Today we're talking about a motion to dismiss."

Whether the case will ever make it to a trial is, of course, now in the hands of Judge Alsup....

http://time.com/money/4927838/trump-daca-attorney-generals/

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2017/08/how_republicans_are_extorting_trump_into_killing_daca.html

...Republicans criticized DACA as executive overreach and successfully sued to block Obama from expanding the program to the undocumented parents of lawful residents. The 2016 Republican Party platform slammed DACA as “unlawful amnest[y],” and Trump promised to end it. But his Department of Homeland Security has continued to issue and renew DACA permits even as its law enforcement wing occasionally targets DACA recipients for deportation. In June, DHS announced that DACA would remain in effect for the time being.

Shortly thereafter, a coalition of Republicans sent Attorney General Jeff Sessions an ultimatum: Kill DACA by Sept. 5 or we’ll take you to court. The letter argued that DACA is illegal and that the signatories were prepared to sue the Trump administration for allowing its continuation. Idaho Republican Gov. Butch Otter signed the letter, as did the GOP attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Idaho, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and West Virginia. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spearheaded the effort.

GOP threatens to sue Calif. over climate rule for insurers

Benjamin Hulac, E&E News reporter

Published: Wednesday, June 21, 2017

Twelve Republican attorneys general and Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) demanded Monday that the California insurance commissioner halt a program requiring companies to disclose their investments in fossil fuels.

They called the program misguided and inflammatory, and they threatened to file a lawsuit if it continues to be used. The Republican officials made their demands related to the Climate Risk Carbon Initiative in a letter yesterday to California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones.

Jones announced the climate disclosure effort in January 2016. He said falling coal prices present financial hazards, and he asked insurance companies to "voluntarily" sell their stakes in thermal coal. He also required insurers to turn over data about their fossil fuel investments.

That has chafed Republicans, who claim that California's requirements are heavy-handed and ideological. They say the program is not about the financial stability of insurers — the traditional jurisdiction of insurance regulators.

"Rather, your call for divestment and attempt to publicly shame those who invest in American energy appears to be driven by politics unrelated to insurance regulation, animus towards the fossil fuel industry and those who depend on it, and a desire to discriminate against those who transact in commerce that mostly takes place outside your state (e.g. coal mining and coal power generation)," the letter reads.

If Jones does not end the program, Bevin and the attorneys general said, "we will be forced to consider the legal avenues of relief available to protect our insurance carriers, energy producers, and consumers."

Jones said threats of lawsuits would not get him to shut down the program.

"For those climate-denying politicians of red states who threaten to sue me, I will happily defend my obligation as California's insurance commissioner to make sure insurers are addressing climate change related risks and to protect California consumers," he said in a statement.

The interstate spat highlights the massive financial clout California wields in American insurance markets. To do business nationwide, insurers often need to comply with regulations set down by the California Department of Insurance.

The attorneys general of Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Montana, Missouri, North Dakota, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Wyoming signed the letter.

Representatives for Bevin and Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

About 650 insurance firms have responded to the disclosure program. More than 300 said they have analyzed their "carbon risk," while 272 declined to do so, according to figures from the California insurance commission.

The data show that insurers surveyed have invested about $240 billion in the oil and gas industry and roughly $10.5 billion in thermal coal.

"This misguided policy is negligent, politically driven, unrelated to insurance regulation and is risking a certain lawsuit," Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter (R), the letter's author, said in a statement.

Alex Gerszewski, a spokesman for Hunter, said the attorney general has not spoken to Jones about the issue but was motivated by his experience in the energy industry and by his conversations with the Oklahoma insurance commissioner.

Hunter succeeded Scott Pruitt, who now serves as U.S. EPA administrator, as Oklahoma's attorney general earlier this year.

AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and 21 other Republicans on Thursday urged President Donald Trump to follow through on his campaign pledge to pull out of the Paris climate accord.

The GOP senators sent a two-page letter to the White House saying that remaining in the international agreement signed by Trump’s predecessor pledging to reduce carbon emissions could fuel legal challenges to the administration’s push to roll back environmental regulations.

Most of the senators who signed are from states that depend on the continued burning of coal, oil and gas. That includes Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Inhofe and others who, like Trump, have suggested the scientific data showing the Earth is warming due to man-made carbon emissions is a hoax.

The letter signers account for fewer than half of Senate Republicans. A similar letter was also sent to Trump this week by attorneys general from 10 Republican-led states, including oil-rich Texas and coal-dependent West Virginia.

Trump pledged during the presidential campaign to “renegotiate” the accord, but he has wavered on the issue since winning the presidency. His top officials have appeared divided about what to do about the 2015 deal, which was signed by nearly 200 countries.

There are also influential voices urging Trump not to ditch the Paris accord. Forty Democratic Senators sent Trump a letter earlier this week urging him to stay in, saying a withdrawal would hurt America’s credibility and influence on the world stage.

Hundreds of high-profile businesses have spoken out in favor of the deal, including Apple, Google and Walmart. Even fossil fuel companies such as Exxon Mobil, BP and Shell say the United States should abide by the deal.

During Trump’s visit to Rome this week, Pope Francis also urged Trump to take climate change seriously.

RAGA

Attorney General of Alabama: Luther Strange

Attorney General of Arizona; Tom Horne

Attorney General of Colorado: John W. Suthers

Attorney General of Florida Pam Bondi

Attorney General of Georgia Sam Olens

Attorney General of Idaho Lawrence Wasden

Attorney General of Indiana Greg Zoeller

Attorney General of Kansas: Derek Schmidt

Attorney General of Louisiana: Buddy Caldwell

Attorney General of Michigan: Bill Schuette

Attorney General of Montana: Tim Fox

Attorney General of Nebraska: Jon Bruning

Attorney General of North Dakota: Wayne Stenehjem

Attorney General of Ohio: Mike DeWine

Attorney General of Oklahoma: Scott Pruitt

Attorney General of South Carolina: Alan Wilson

Attorney General of South Dakota: Marty J. Jackley

Attorney General of Texas: Greg Abbott

Attorney General of Utah: Sean Reyes

Attorney General of West Virginia: Patrick Morrisey

Attorney General of Wisconsin: J.B. Van Hollen

6/16 Fuel fix bs

A campaign by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to end the investigation into ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies over false statements on climate change is gaining support among other state law enforcement officials.

Attorneys general from 13 states signed an open letter Wednesday, arguing that climate change is a public policy debate, not a criminal matter, and urging law enforcement officials in other states to “stop policing viewpoints.”

“We all understand the need for a healthy environment, but we represent a wide range of viewpoints regarding the extent to which man contributes to climate change and the costs and benefits of any proposed fix,” the letter reads. “Nevertheless, we agree on at least one thing—this is not a question for the courts.”

Attorneys general from Alabama, Michigan, Texas, Alaska, Nebraska, Utah, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina signed the letter.

Paxton made headlines last month when he and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange filed a motion seeking to block a subpoena by the U.S. Virgin Islands for ExxonMobil’s internal documents related to climate change. Paxton called the the probe a “a fishing expedition of the worst kind.”

AG Coalition Resp Letter 2016-06-15

Indeed, Berman claims his ability to hide the funding sources for such campaigns as a particular expertise.

“People always ask me one question all the time: ‘How do I know that I won’t be found out as a supporter of what you’re doing?’” Berman told a conference of energy executives last year. The talk was secretly recorded [8] and leaked to the New York Times.

“We run all of this stuff through non-profit organisations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity. People don’t know who supports us,” Berman told the energy executives.

He claimed at the time to have already collected six-figure sums from some of the companies in the room – and solicited $3m more to defeat opponents of fracking.

On such a scale, the funding for an economic study taking down the EPA rules appears relatively economical. Beacon Hill received $41,500 from the Employment Policies Institute for a study of the EPA rules, according to the grants list maintained by Suffolk University.

The funds were allocated to produce reports on the impact of the EPA rules in 16 states including: Iowa, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Rhode Island, Washington Ohio, Alaska and Utah, a spokesman for Suffolk University said.

The university spokesman said in an email that the grants followed university protocol. “Suffolk does not accept research funds from unknown sources,” the spokesman said in an email.

AG INDIVIDUAL SUM: $2,871,208

An examination of industry donations to the Republican Attorneys General who have joined the lawsuit

against the Clean Power Plan. Republican Attorneys General who were appointed or do not have

campaign contribution records are excluded.

1. Alabama – Luther Strange 13

$314,788

Arizona - Mark Brnovich

$11,000

Arkansas – Leslie Rutledge

$32,875

Colorado – Cynthia Coffman

$22,828

Florida – Pam Bondi

$26,350

Georgia – Sam Olens

$43,925

Indiana – Greg Zoeller

$28,200

8. Kansas – Derek Schmidt

$129,737

9. Louisiana – Buddy Caldwell 13

$98,642

10. Michigan – Bill Schuette 13

$172,241

Montana – Tim Fox

$35,241

Nebraska – Doug Peterson

$4,053

13. North Dakota - Wayne Stenehjem

$87,801

Nevada – Adam Paul Laxalt

$27,300

15. Ohio – Mike DeWine

$335,763

16. Oklahoma - Scott Pruitt

$305,996

South Carolina – Alan Wilson 13

$39,050

South Dakota – Marty Jackley

$10,826

19. Texas – Ken Paxton 13

$1,067,817

Utah – Sean Reyes

$2,800

21. West Virginia – Patrick Morrissey

$53,500

Wisconsin – Brad Schimel 13

$20,475

The key findings of the report include:

Republican Attorneys General and their national organizing arm, the Republican Attorneys General Association, have received a sum total of more than $4.7 Million from polluters and energy interests.

The Republican Attorneys General Association has taken $1.9 Million from polluter and energy interests.

Individual Republican Attorneys General have received a total of $2.8 Million from polluter and energy interests.

Louisiana Attorney General’s office close ties behind the scenes with Koch lobbyists Hunton & Williams.

Wisconsin Attorney General’s office coordinating with the Koch-funded Heartland Institute to publish an anti-Clean Power Plan oped.

North Dakota Attorney General’s office holding “confidential” conference calls with coal the North American Coal Corporation as well as coal industry interests to discuss the Clean Power Plan.

ColoradoAttorney General’s office seeking out anti-Clean Power Plan interests from lobbyists.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWinespeaking about the Clean Power Plan at an Ohio Coal Association “closed press event” to allow him to “speak freely” as well as receiving anti-Clean Power Plan emails at a personal email address, which he forwarded to senior members of his staff at their government email address.

Twenty four states and a coal company filed lawsuits yesterday over President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, which was formally published Friday. “The Clean Power Plan, which requires states to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030, is intended to help slow climate change resulting from the burning of fossil fuels,” explains InsideClimate News. “The plan has been the target of legal challenges and legislative campaigns since it was proposed in 2014 and finalized in August.”

What is the #CleanPowerPlan & why is it such an important step on climate change? Find out: https://t.co/Q8dlUvvDQz https://t.co/Gv5lYFsZXi

— Facts On Climate (@FactsOnClimate) October 23, 2015

The two dozen states and Murray Energy have accused the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of “going far beyond the authority Congress granted to it,” according to The Hill. They are calling on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overturn the rule, and they are asking the court to “immediately stop its implementation” while the lawsuit plays out.”

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who is leading the charge, called it “the single most onerous and illegal regulations that we’ve seen coming out of DC in a long time.” He added, “the EPA cannot do what it intends to do legally.”

Morrisey is joined by attorneys general from Texas, Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Arizona and North Carolina.

Utility Dive: Final Clean Power Plan rule published; 24 states sue EPA; Indiana… https://t.co/6W7nGd7nqU pic.twitter.com/7yttWza32D

— Laura Ann Arnold (@IndianaRenew) October 23, 2015

The EPA maintains that its rule is legal. “The Clean Power Plan has strong scientific and legal foundations, provides states with broad flexibilities to design and implement plans, and is clearly within EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act,” U.S. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a statement.

Fifteen other states, including Washington, DC, say they plan to intervene on behalf of the EPA, arguing that the rules are not only legal, they are necessary. “Significant reductions in these emissions must occur to prevent increases in the frequency, magnitude and scale of the adverse impacts of climate change,” wrote New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman in a letter to the EPA in August.

Though the rule’s opponents cry foul, “officials in practically every state have been doing some amount of work [to comply with the standards],” Kyle Danish, a partner at Van Ness Feldman law firm, told InsideClimate News. Danish is helping the industry comply with the regulations and says, “many states have been taking a number of steps to start putting together compliance plans.”

Think Progress writes:

The arguments will likely come down to debates over whether the EPA has overstepped its jurisdiction by allowing flexible state plans to include “outside the fence” measures such as efficiency and renewable energy, and whether another section of the Clean Air Act, which governs mercury emissions from power plants, renders the EPA unable to also regulate carbon.

Michael Myers, assistant attorney general of New York, disputed both those claims. The mercury or carbon argument “doesn’t make any sense,” Myers told ThinkProgress. “The contention that Congress intended the EPA to pick one of those, not both of them, is not an argument that is going to prevail in court.”

Environmental groups, including Earthjustice, Natural Resource Defense Council, Sierra Club and Environmental Defense Fund have also vowed to intervene on behalf of the EPA.

“Its opponents are on the wrong side of the law and the wrong side of history,” Howard Fox, an attorney with Earthjustice, told Think Progress.

We need people like you to stand up for the #CleanPowerPlan. Download our free activist kit: https://t.co/j8NL70zpRb pic.twitter.com/mtwNI7xMa4

— Climate Reality (@ClimateReality) October 22, 2015

Mary Anne Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said in a statement:

Time and again, we’ve seen Big Polluters and their allies attack the lifesaving protections that let our loved ones breathe easier and keep our clean energy economy thriving, and this challenge to the Clean Power Plan is no different. The Clean Power Plan will help us move toward a new era of clean, affordable energy that protects the health of our communities, grows our economy and signals to the rest of the world that the U.S. is serious about combating the climate crisis ahead of international negotiations in Paris later this year. It’s a huge step in taking action against climate disruption by pulling together state-level carbon pollution reduction plans and holding polluters accountable for doing their fair share.

They can throw everything and the kitchen sink at this standard, but the Clean Power Plan’s push to cut dangerous carbon pollution from power plants for the first time ever is based on a law passed by Congress and upheld by the Supreme Court, and it has the overwhelming support of the American people.

Many have noted that it’s no surprise that most of the opponents come from coal-heavy states and that all but three of those states (Kentucky, Missouri and North Carolina) have Republican attorneys general.

:{:(style="max-width:750px;max-height:574px"):}:Almost all of the states suing the U.S. EPA rely heavily on coal and have Republican attorneys general. Photo credit: Tim McDonnell

Rhea Suh at the Natural Resources Defense Council says, “Big Coal and its political allies” are “not going to get away with it — the stakes are too high for that.”

She writes:

We just finished the hottest summer since global record-keeping began in 1880, with world land and sea temperatures 1.53 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average. Last year was the hottest year ever recorded. And 19 of the hottest years on record have all occurred in the past two decades.

Small wonder that seven in 10 Americans understand the planet is warming. No surprise, either, that the pool of doubters who dismiss the definitive science on the issue has reached a shallow 16 percent of the population— the lowest in modern time. Those are the findings of a poll taken in September by the University of Michigan and Muhlenberg College, another sign the tide is turning toward real action on climate change.

Joanne Spalding, chief climate counsel for Sierra Club, told Think Progress: “We are confident that the Clean Power Plan is on legally sound footing. EPA does have the authority. The law says so and the Supreme Court has said so, twice. The matter, I believe, should be put to rest.”

http://www.republicanags.com/meet_the_ags

RAGA

ey General of Alabama

Luther Strange

Attorney General of Arizona

Mark Brnovich

Attorney General of Arkansas

Leslie Rutledge

Attorney General of Colorado

Cynthia Coffman

Attorney General of Florida

Pam Bondi

Attorney General of Georgia

Sam Olens

Attorney General of Idaho

Lawrence Wasden

Attorney General of Indiana

Greg Zoeller

Attorney General of Kansas

Derek Schmidt

Attorney General of Louisiana

Jeff Landry

Attorney General of Michigan

Bill Schuette

Attorney General of Montana

Tim Fox

Attorney General of Nebraska

Doug Peterson

Attorney General of Nevada

Adam Laxalt

Attorney General of North Dakota

Wayne Stenehjem

Attorney General of Ohio

Mike DeWine

Attorney General of Oklahoma

Scott Pruitt

Attorney General of South Carolina

Alan Wilson

Attorney General of South Dakota

Marty J. Jackley

Attorney General of Texas

Ken Paxton

Attorney General of Tennessee

Herbert Slatery

Attorney General of Utah

Sean Reyes

Attorney General of West Virginia

Patrick Morrisey

Attorney General of Wisconsin

Brad Schimel

srcwtch

The following attorneys general are known to be part of (past and present) RAGA:

Alabama Attorney General Bill Pryor, founder of RAGAand pending President Bush federal appellate court nominee.
Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), State Attorney General of Texas before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2002.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Earley.
Delaware Attorney General Jane Brady.
South Carolina Attorney General Charlie Condon, RAGA's first chairmen.
Ohio Attorney General Betty Montgomery.
Nebraska Attorney General Don Stenberg.

endit1