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Peter Hart, phart@fwwatch.org
WASHINGTON - As Donald Trump visits a Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County to promote his support for the fracking and plastics industries, a coalition of groups working to stop the environmentally dangerous fossil fuel buildout in the region are highlighting a dubious plan to use a clean energy program to offer a massive loan guarantee to a gas storage ‘hub.’
The groups released a letter today urging the Senate to support an amendment similar to one passed in the House (HR 2740) that clarified the purpose of the program in question, and to oppose any plans to use a Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee program to support fossil fuel projects.
On June 19, the House of Representatives passed an amendment filed by Reps Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) clarifying that funds used in the Title XVII clean energy program cannot be used to support projects that do not decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
That program is intended to provide loan guarantees for projects that “avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic [human-caused] emissions of greenhouse gases.” The advocates point out that a fossil fuel storage facility built to support the petrochemical industry is clearly outside the scope of the project.
The DOE is currently considering a $1.9 billion loan guarantee for the Appalachian Storage Hub, a key part of a massive petrochemical buildout in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. The multi-billion dollar facility would provide a steady supply of natural gas liquids like ethane, a key feedstock for plastic and petrochemical production, to surrounding facilities.
“This storage hub would help create a cluster of fracked gas, petrochemical and plastics infrastructure that would transform the region into a new Cancer Alley - and it would absurdly be enabled by a federal clean energy program,” said Wenonah Hauter, executive director at Food & Water Watch. “This Trump-friendly scheme would expose Appalachian residents to increased harm from fracking and industrial toxic emissions, while creating more plastic trash that is filling our oceans. The Senate must follow the lead of the House by voting to ensure that our clean energy programs actually promote clean energy, not filthy fracking and plastics.”
“The scheme for a petrochemical hub in the Ohio Valley is yesterday’s answer to today’s problems, and it ignores tomorrow’s crises. It ignores climate change, which would be worsened by every element of the plan. It ignores the rapidly increasing problem of plastic waste choking our oceans and infiltrating our bodies--and the rapidly increasing movement away from plastic. And it ignores the steady movement toward cleaner, sustainable energy sources like wind and solar. This is not a plan for sustainable economics for the people of our region--it’s a plan to keep the fracking industry going a little longer,” said Mary Wildfire, a West Virginia resident and volunteer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
“Our communities have been disappointed by boom-and-bust economies for too long for our representatives to continue to invest public dollars in them. We need and deserve investments in good, clean jobs, creating an economy that thrives and a healthy environment,” said Sarah Martik from the Center for Coalfield Justice.
“It is of utmost importance that the Senate votes in favor of this amendment. The Appalachian region has been a sacrifice zone for the fossil fuel industry long enough. These hills and valleys of Appalachia are beautiful. We should start healing and replenishing this region, not pillaging and polluting it even more. The U.S. government should not fund these toxic, awful projects,” said Bev Reed, a resident of Belmont County, Ohio and an intern with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign.
“Trump and his administration’s actions, from the secretive $83.7 billion-dollar memorandum of understanding with China to trying to tap taxpayer dollars to promote this massive petrochemical complex in the Appalachian region, is a blatant railroading of our democracy in favor of corporate interests,” said Dustin White, project coordinator with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “If allowed to be built, this petrochem hub would severely impact human health and perpetuate the already severe economic and environmental injustice in the region while exacerbating climate change and extreme plastic pollution globally. A truly great President would prioritize the health and safety of people over corporate profits and pollution.”
The Shell plant Trump is visiting has been backed by over $1 billion in state tax cuts and other subsidies; other petrochemical ‘cracker’ plants are planned for the Appalachian region. The storage hub is the centerpiece of a multi-billion network of pipelines and infrastructure that would transform the area into a chemical manufacturing cluster to take advantage of the nearby fracked hydrocarbons.
“These plastic pellets are a poison,” said Deanna Rushing of Extinction Rebellion Kentucky. “We can see for ourselves the unwillingness to clean up the pellet spills in Texas on the part of those responsible. Why should we believe Shell will be responsible? We know the cost of clean-up litigation is literally nothing to a company this size. Pennies on the dollar they spend before they start producing. The pellets are just visible evidence of the toxins that go in the water table. Since 2005, the fracking companies have not been mandated to disclose what goes into fracking solvents so we really don’t know what is actually leaking from all these wells. The pipelines are poisonous to the environment just getting built, and the tree canopies that have come down are devastating for migrant birds and insect populations. This has to stop.”
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) 683-2500Democratic lawmakers are vowing to investigate the Trump administration’s pressure campaign that may have led to ABC deciding to indefinitely suspend late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced on Thursday that he filed a motion to subpoena Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr one day after he publicly warned ABC of negative consequences if the network kept Kimmel on the air.
"Enough of Congress sleepwalking while [President Donald] Trump and [Vice President JD] Vance shred the First Amendment and Constitution," Khanna declared. "It is time for Congress to stand up for Article I."
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, also said on Thursday that he was opening an investigation into the potential financial aspects of Carr's pressure campaign on ABC, including the involvement of Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate and is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"The Oversight Committee is launching an investigation into ABC, Sinclair, and the FCC," he said. "We will not be intimidated and we will defend the First Amendment."
Progressive politicians weren't the only ones launching an investigation into the Kimmel controversy, as legal organization Democracy Forward announced that it's filed a a Freedom of Information Act request for records after January 20, 2025 related to any FCC efforts “to use the agency’s licensing and enforcement powers to police and limit speech and influence what the public can watch and hear.”
Democratic lawmakers on Thursday vowed to fight back against US President Donald Trump’s efforts to attack and dismantle liberal and progressive organizations.
Led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), the Democrats introduced the No Political Enemies Act aimed at protecting organizations’ free speech rights from retaliation from the federal government.
During his speech touting the new legislation, Murphy recounted recent actions by Trump and his administration, including the president's threats to "arrest members of the Soros family simply for funding groups that oppose his agenda," as well as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr's pressure campaign to get ABC to fire late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel.
Murphy then said that the No Political Enemies Act was necessary because "Donald Trump is right now instructing his Department of Justice to go on the hunt for his political enemies" for challenging him.
"Trump is making it 100% clear that he is going to ramp up his efforts to use the power of the federal government to punish his critics," he said. "This is legislation that makes sure that the law is on the side of free speech and the right to dissent."
The proposed law would give political organizations and individuals new tools to combat political harassment from the federal government, and would allow them to both recover attorney fees and more easily file lawsuits against federal officials who abuse their authority for political purposes.
Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), who also expressed support for the legislation, put the stakes facing Americans in stark terms.
"We are in the biggest free speech crisis this country has faced since the McCarthy era," he said. "The murder of Charlie Kirk was a horrific crime, and it's clear that Trump wants to hijack that horrific crime to silence anyone who disagrees with the president about any issue."
Casar, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, also took a shot at major corporations who have been caving to the president's demands in recent months.
"As we saw last night, far too many billionaires and corporate-owned media companies are bending the knee: Disney and ABC, Paramount and CBS, the Washington Post editorial board, Facebook," he said. "Let's be clear, the ultrawealthy men who own these companies are making a choice. David Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bob Iger—these men are enriching themselves, auctioning off the United State's First Amendment to a wannabe dictator and tyrant."
Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) pointed out that the FCC's pressure campaign on ABC to fire Kimmel is particularly nefarious given that Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is the network's largest affiliate, is currently involved in merger talks that will need FCC approval.
"All of this ties back to money and people enriching themselves, and bending the knee to Donald Trump to make it happen," he said.
The Democrats' proposed legislation comes after Trump announced late Wednesday night that he planned to designate “antifa,” a movement of autonomous individuals and loosely affiliated groups who oppose fascism, as a “major terrorist organization."
It also comes comes days after Trump adviser Stephen Miller began pushing a plan to "dismantle" the organized left using the power of the federal government.
During a recent appearance on Fox News, Miller described the entire left as a "domestic terrorism movement in this country," and vowed "to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence."
President Donald Trump’s Department of Education has announced that it will partner with right-wing think tanks and organizations to develop a new curriculum for “patriotic education” in American classrooms.
Earlier this week, the Trump administration redirected $137 million initially meant for programs aimed at minority students toward what it described as “American history and civics education.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced Wednesday that the money will be directed toward discretionary grants aimed at K-12 schools that adopt a new curriculum being drawn up by the 250 Civics Education Coalition—a consortium of more than 40 right-wing groups that launched on same day. The goal, McMahon said, was to advance education that "emphasizes a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation's founding ideals" in advance of the nation's 250th anniversary in 2026.
It is not Trump's first crack at instilling the nation's youth with a "patriotic education." In the waning days of his first term in office, Trump unveiled the 1776 Report, which, education columnist Jennifer Berkshire recently noted in The Baffler, "was widely panned by actual historians for its worshipful treatment of the Founding Fathers, its downplaying of slavery, and its portrayal of a century-old 'administrative state' controlled by leftist radicals."
While little has been publicized yet about what McMahon's new endeavor will look like, it is known who will be crafting it. The initiative is being led by the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA-aligned think tank that has been responsible for staffing Trump's second administration and has received over $1 million from his political action committee, the Save America PAC. Until 2023, McMahon herself served on the board of AFPI.
In 2022, the group presented a piece of model legislation for a "Civics Course Act" to be introduced in states. It included requirements for students to spend ample time studying the nation's founding documents and figures while banning the teaching of what it called the "defamatory history of America’s founding," which suggests that slavery or inequality are in any way inherent to the nation's institutions.
It also banned the concepts of "systemic racism" and "gender fluidity" and forbade teachers from giving students course credit for engaging with "social or public policy advocacy."
Also included in the coalition is Hillsdale College, a private Christian liberal arts school in Michigan that has proposed its own K-12 curriculum, which Vanity Fair notes "has been criticized for revisionist history, including whitewashed accounts of US slavery and depictions of Jamestown as a failed communist colony."
Another participant is PragerU, the overtly partisan and often factually loose YouTube channel that has been tasked with creating children's educational content in nearly a dozen red states.
The group has produced content venerating figures notorious for practicing slavery, like colonist Christopher Columbus and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Its videos have argued, among other things, that climate change is a myth, that European fascism was a "far-left" ideology, and that Israel has "the world's most moral army."
The pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA will also be involved in crafting the curriculum. Its longtime leader, Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated in Utah last week, went on a crusade last year to, in his words, "tell the truth" about Martin Luther King Jr., whom he described as "an awful person," while claiming his signature achievement, the 1964 Civil Rights Act, was a "huge mistake."
An offshoot of Kirk's group, Turning Point Education, said Kirk's assassination has increased its resolve to promote a "God-centered, virtuous education" in US public schools.
The 250 Civics Education Coalition has not yet published a curriculum. But according to the Department of Education, it will be rolling out "a robust programming agenda" over the next 12 months.
During Trump's second term, he has undertaken an effort to purge federal museums and national parks of what one executive order called "improper ideology," which has resulted in the erasure of exhibits and monuments to Black and Native American history. Last month, he lamented that the Smithsonian Museum focuses too much on "how bad slavery was" and ordered a review of the museum's content.
Federal websites, meanwhile, have systematically eliminated many pages that acknowledged the accomplishments of nonwhite historical figures or important events in women's and LGBTQ+ history.
Critics in the education world view Trump's effort to use grants to induce them to adopt his preferred curriculum as an illegal effort to propagandize children.
"The law is clear," said education historian Diane Ravitch in a blog post. "Federal officials are prohibited from seeking to influence or direct curriculum in any way."
Since 1970, the federal government has been barred by law from "any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum" of public schools.
"Civic education is and must be non-partisan," said Ted McConnell, the executive director of the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools. "While the funding is long sought, this is the wrong approach and smacks of authoritarianism."