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For Immediate Release
September, 06 2016, 01:00pm EDT
Contact:
Seth Gladstone - sgladstone@fwwatch.org
Proposed Enbridge-Spectra Energy Merger is Bad News for Consumers and a Clean Energy Future
Statement of Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director, Food & Water Watch and Author of Frackopoly
WASHINGTON
"The proposed merger of Enbridge and Spectra Energy, two fossil fuel pipeline giants that already control much of the oil and gas flow throughout the country, would be bad news for energy consumers and terrible news for the clean energy revolution on which the future of our planet depends. The consolidation of these companies would only enhance the power of the oil and gas industry to manipulate the energy marketplace and encourage the continued use of fracking, the widely used fossil fuel extraction method that is inherently hazardous to human health and our environment.
"For more than 100 years, political influence peddling has facilitated the consolidation and control of our energy system by a handful of corporations and financial institutions. The proposed Enbridge-Spectra Energy merger is just the latest example of an evolving corporate energy monopoly - call it the Frackopoly - that is working to bind our society to a long future of dirty, dangerous fossil fuel extraction and consumption by aggressively developing an extensive network of pipelines and infrastructure projects that the oil and gas industry requires to survive and profit."
Wenonah Hauter is the author of Frackopoly: The Battle for the Future of Energy and the Environment. A history of the fracking industry, Frackopoly provides the public policy backstory and the history of deregulation that has turned our communities into fossil fuel sacrifice zones. The book also examines the powerful interests that have supported fracking, including leading environmental groups, and looks at the growing movement to ban fracking and keep fossil fuels in the ground.
Food & Water Watch mobilizes regular people to build political power to move bold and uncompromised solutions to the most pressing food, water, and climate problems of our time. We work to protect people's health, communities, and democracy from the growing destructive power of the most powerful economic interests.
(202) 683-2500LATEST NEWS
‘One More Billionaire Front Group’: Centrist Dems Mocked Over New Initiative Led by Corporate Lobbyist
Next American Era will be headed by Cheri Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who has lobbied for powerful corporations.
Feb 09, 2026
Centrist Democrats led by Cheri Bustos, a corporate lobbyist who previously headed her party's campaign arm in the US House, are launching a policy and advocacy organization aimed at pressuring Democrats to embrace the kind of "pro-growth" deregulatory agenda associated with the so-called "abundance" movement.
The new organization, named Next American Era, was formed "with an eye toward 2028" as Democrats work to recover from their crushing defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, Axios reported Sunday, noting that the group describes itself as a "hub for center-left policy and advocacy."
Bustos, whose lobbying client list in 2025 included OpenAI and Larry Ellison's Oracle, said Next American Era plans to "air issue-focused ads during the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, but it won't endorse candidates," Axios reported.
Bustos said the founders of Next American Era share "many of the same principles as the Abundance movement," a loose assortment of organizations and individuals—including large corporations and prominent billionaires—broadly supporting views expressed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their 2025 book Abundance.
"She said cutting red tape, streamlining regulations, and supporting workforce training are among the top policy goals of her group, which is structured as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit," Axios reported.
Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, called those proposed objectives "some of the weakest economic policies we've polled in the last 18 months."
"Not sure why you’d want to put ads out on these for candidates unless it’s an opp," Owens added.
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— Alex Jacquez (@AlexSJacquez) February 9, 2026
Abundance takes aim at what Klein and Thompson characterize as an overly burdensome regulatory approach that is purportedly hindering progress toward more affordable housing, public transportation systems, and a renewable energy revolution. Critics, such as antitrust advocate Zephyr Teachout, have criticized the so-called abundance agenda as far too ambiguous.
"I still can’t tell after reading Abundance whether Klein and Thompson are seeking something fairly small-bore and correct (we need zoning reform) or nontrivial and deeply regressive (we need deregulation) or whether there is room within abundance for anti-monopoly politics and a more full-throated unleashing of American potential," Teachout wrote in her review of the book for Washington Monthly.
Critics have also noted the enthusiasm with which corporations and billionaires have glommed onto the abundance narrative.
"The ambiguity of the abundance agenda’s policy proposals, strategic or otherwise, allows private interests to leverage 'abundance' as a Trojan Horse for their preferences," the Revolving Door Project observed last year. "The growing abundance movement has institutional support from fossil fuel and Big Tech affiliates, including the sprawling Koch network and crypto and AI industry players."
Axios observed that Next American Era is one of "several center-left groups" that "have popped up or expanded in the past 18 months, including the think tank Searchlight Institute, Majority Democrats, and WelcomePAC."
"Just one more billionaire front group. Just one more neoliberal policy shop," reporter and political analyst Austin Ahlman wrote mockingly on social media in response to the launch of Next American Era. "Just one more polling outfit cooking the numbers on behalf of corporate interests and we’ll win bro, I promise."
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Faith Groups Sue Over Trump's Christian Nationalist 'Religious Liberty Commission'
"The Religious Liberty Commission isn't about protecting religious liberty for all; it's about rejecting our nation's religious diversity and prioritizing one narrow set of conservative 'Judeo-Christian' beliefs," said one critic.
Feb 09, 2026
"Religious freedom for some is religious freedom for none."
That's what Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, said in a Monday statement as faith groups filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York over President Donald Trump's so-called Religious Liberty Commission.
Since Trump launched the commission last year, critics have warned that its true intent is to advance a Christian nationalist agenda. Brandeis Raushenbush, his alliance, Hindus for Human Rights, Muslims for Progressive Values, and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund renewed that argument in the complaint, which names Trump, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, the commission, and its leader, Mary Margaret Bush, as defendants.
"The government has no right to pick and choose which religious beliefs to promote, and which to marginalize," said Brandeis Raushenbush. "The Trump administration has failed to uphold our country's proud religious freedom tradition, and we will hold them accountable. Today's lawsuit is our recommitment to fight for religious liberty for all with every tool available to us."
The complaint argues that "the composition and operations of the commission violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA)," which Congress enacted in 1972 "to curb the executive branch's reliance on superfluous, secretive, and biased 'advisory committees.'" Under the law, "every advisory committee must meet public transparency requirements, be in the public interest, be fairly balanced among competing points of view, and be structured to avoid inappropriate influence by special interests."
"While this body is ostensibly designed to defend 'religious liberty for all Americans' and celebrate 'religious pluralism' it actually represents only a single 'Judeo-Christian' viewpoint," the complaint states. "It held its first three meetings at the Museum of the Bible and has closed its meetings with a Christian prayer 'in Jesus' name.'"
"Only one of its members is not Christian, and the Christian members do not represent the full diversity of the Christian faith," the filing continues. "The commission's meetings have repeatedly referenced the belief that the United States was founded as a 'Judeo-Christian nation' and the membership reflects that viewpoint. All members of the commission advocate for increased religiosity, and specifically their brand of 'Judeo-Christian' religiosity, in public life."
"The commission's members have promoted the primacy of a Judeo-Christian worldview in the public sphere, advocated for discrimination against minority groups under the guise of 'religious liberty,' and otherwise supported policies that threaten religious freedom for all those who do not conform to their particular worldview," the document details.
Ria Chakrabarty, senior policy director of Hindus for Human Rights, said Monday that "by stacking this Religious Liberty Commission with a narrow set of voices and hiding the commission's work from the public eye, the Trump administration is evading the transparency and balance that federal law requires."
"Hindus for Human Rights is proud to stand with our multifaith partners to defend a pluralistic democracy where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and nonreligious people all belong as equals," she added.
A commission that claims “religious liberty” while excluding Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs—and nonreligious Americans—isn’t protecting freedom. It’s narrowing it.We’re challenging this commission in court. democracyforward.org/news/press-r...
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— Hindus For Human Rights (@hfhr.bsky.social) February 9, 2026 at 10:21 AM
Ani Zonneveld, president and founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, noted that "as a Muslim American organization, we have seen firsthand how elevating a singular religion above others, especially in a country as religiously diverse as the United States, leads to the oppression and possible persecution of minority faiths."
The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, which has filed over 150 lawsuits against the Trump administration since the president returned to power last year, and the decades-old Americans United for Separation of Church and State—whose president and CEO, Rachel Laser, stressed that "the Religious Liberty Commission isn't about protecting religious liberty for all; it's about rejecting our nation's religious diversity and prioritizing one narrow set of conservative 'Judeo-Christian' beliefs."
Blasting the commission's public meetings as "a vivid example of this favoritism," Laser added that its "true purpose and operations can't be squared with America's constitutional promise of church-state separation."
Specifically, Laser's group and other advocates of church-state separation have long pointed to the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which bars government from making any "law respecting an establishment of religion."
"Since the nation's founding, the values of religious liberty and pluralism have been central to the American identity. These values are now under accelerated attack," declared Perryman, who's also on the Interfaith Alliance board. "The fatally flawed way this commission was assembled makes clear that the outcome isn't just un-American, it's against the law."
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53 Migrants Dead or Missing After Boat Capsizes Off Coast of Libya: UN Agency
The UN’s International Organization for Migration warned that it “does not consider Libya to be a safe port for migrants.”
Feb 09, 2026
A United Nations agency said on Monday that 53 migrants are dead or missing after their boat capsized off the coast of Libya.
According to the UN's International Organization for Migration (IOM), the boat carrying the migrants capsized in "perishingly cold waters of the central Mediterranean Sea, north of the coastal town of Zuwara" on Friday.
At least two women, originally from Nigeria, survived the shipwreck and were rescued by Libyan authorities.
However, the rescued women offered little hope for finding other survivors, as one said her husband drowned, while the other said she lost both of her children who were aboard the vessel.
IOM noted that at least 375 migrants were reported dead or missing while journeying in the central Mediterranean Sea last month alone, and the agency said there are likely "many more tragedies" that have gone unrecorded.
In 2025, IOM reported 1,342 migrants dead or missing while traveling through the central Mediterranean.
IOM also warned migrants about trying to reach their destinations by traveling through Libya.
"IOM does not consider Libya to be a safe port for migrants," the agency said. "Investigations indicate that the victims had been held in captivity and subjected to torture to coerce ransom payments from their families."
The agency pointed to a recent raid of an underground facility in the region of Kufra, where authorities freed more than 200 migrants who had been detained by traffickers.
"Initial information suggests that the migrants had been held for a prolonged period in grossly inhumane conditions," IOM said of the facility.
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