March, 13 2020, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Ryan Schleeter, Senior Communications Specialist, Greenpeace USA:
ryan.schleeter@greenpeace.org
Trump Takes First Step Toward Ill-fated Oil Industry Bailout in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic
Today, Donald Trump announced he would direct the Department of Energy (DOE) to purchase millions of barrels of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). This effectively means the DOE will take roughly 80 million barrels of oil off the market. At current prices, the total cost could exceed $2.6 billion in public funds [1]. By comparison, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act introduced in the House of Representatives today details at least $1.68 billion in support for public health provisions and working families [2].
WASHINGTON
Today, Donald Trump announced he would direct the Department of Energy (DOE) to purchase millions of barrels of oil for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). This effectively means the DOE will take roughly 80 million barrels of oil off the market. At current prices, the total cost could exceed $2.6 billion in public funds [1]. By comparison, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act introduced in the House of Representatives today details at least $1.68 billion in support for public health provisions and working families [2].
In response, Greenpeace USA Senior Climate Campaigner John Noel said:
"Trump's response to a global pandemic is to put billionaires and corporate polluters ahead of American families. There's no evidence that this handout would protect jobs, pensions, benefits, or ease the hardships facing fossil fuel workers or communities confronting the COVID-19 outbreak right now. It's nothing more than a gift to the industry that created the climate crisis.
"This is the time to invest in a Green New Deal and chart a new course for a world beyond fossil fuels. That's how we can truly protect workers from the kind of economic uncertainty we've already seen this week, ensure long-term prosperity for communities, and give ourselves a chance at navigating out of two crises at once."
The decision comes days after Trump officials floated a broader federal bailout for fossil fuel companies hit by tanking oil prices [3]. Today's handout likely does not need Congressional approval, but Congress could intervene to stop this and further measures -- such as lowering royalty rates for oil and gas production on federal lands or giving out low-interest loans to oil and gas companies. Senators Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Edward Markey (D-MA), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) proposed legislation [4] today that would bar the Trump administration from using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to give handouts to the oil industry.
Greenpeace is a global, independent campaigning organization that uses peaceful protest and creative communication to expose global environmental problems and promote solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future.
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To End 'New Gilded Age,' House Progressives Unveil Bill to Raise Federal Minimum Wage to $25 Per Hour
"We need an economy that reflects the realities of 2026, not one stuck over a decade ago," said the newly sworn-in Rep. Analilia Mejía, who helped lead the campaign to raise wages in her home state of New Jersey.
Apr 28, 2026
A pair of progressive Democrats unveiled a bill on Tuesday that would raise the federal minimum wage to $25 per hour, considered the bare minimum a single adult needs to meet the cost of living in much of the US.
The Living Wage For All Act is the first bill to be introduced by the newly sworn-in Rep. Analilia Mejía (D-NJ), who won a special election earlier this month after helping to lead the fight for a $15 minimum wage in her home state of New Jersey.
Citing data from MIT's Living Wage Calculator, the Living Wage For All campaign backing the legislation argues that $25/hour is needed for a single adult in most parts of the country to afford basic necessities like housing, food, and healthcare.
As the cost of living has skyrocketed over the past decade and a half, the federal minimum wage has remained frozen at $7.25 and hour since 2009.
"This is unacceptable," Mejía said. "We need an economy that reflects the realities of 2026, not one stuck over a decade ago."
The bill is cosponsored by Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants who, she said, worked multiple minimum-wage jobs just to get by.
“I remember being in the fourth grade, and my mom talked about her job, and she was getting paid $4.75 an hour,” the 42-year-old congresswoman said during a press conference on Capitol Hill Tuesday. “Yet the federal minimum wage is barely $7.25, many years later.”
"Today, as we think about companies reporting record high earnings, working people are still struggling to survive," she said. "People are working full-time jobs and still cannot afford to live."
A USA TODAY survey from January found that around 40% of workers say their paychecks have not grown enough to meet the rising cost of living, which has been further exacerbated by spiking inflation caused by President Donald Trump's erratic tariff regime and war in Iran. Another survey conducted by Resume Now in April found that about half of workers fear their wages will never catch up to the cost of living.
While some states and cities have gradually raised their minimum wages above the federal level and have seen modest declines in poverty as a result, none have been raised to the point of being considered a living wage.
The bill introduced by Mejía and Ramirez would similarly phase in its increase to the federal minimum wage over more than a decade, with larger employers leading the transition.
Companies with more than $1 billion gross revenue or more than 500 employees would be scheduled to increase their minimum pay to $25/hour by 2031, while smaller employers would be on a longer timeline to reach $25/hour by 2038.
To ensure wages don’t lag again in the following years, the bill also requires the minimum wage to automatically grow each year to reach the equivalent of two-thirds the national median hourly wage. It also eliminates the subminimum wage, which is paid to tipped workers, youth workers, and workers with disabilities.
The bill is almost certainly dead on arrival in a Republican-controlled Congress. Even if Democrats retake both chambers come November, it would likely face an uphill battle to pass.
In 2021, the last time Democrats had a governing trifecta, eight centrist members of the Democratic caucus killed an amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to include a $15/hour minimum wage in then-President Joe Biden's post-Covid budget reconciliation package, the American Rescue Plan.
But as Democrats seek to address rising fears about America's "affordability" crisis, Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage, said politics are starting "to catch up to reality."
"Across the country—from California to the Midwest to the East Coast—workers are organizing for $25 and $30 because that is what it takes to live," she said. "The polling shows this is not just popular, it is necessary."
“We cannot talk about affordability without talking about what people are paid,” added Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union.
More than 20 Democrats have signed onto the bill as cosponsors, including Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.).
The effort is being spearheaded by the Living Wage For All Coalition, a national collective of labor unions, civil rights groups, and other economic justice organizations that are simultaneously pushing legislation to adopt a living wage in states like New York, Illinois, and Maryland, and municipalities such as Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
April Verrett, the international president of the Service Employees International Union, which has more than 2 million members across North America, said that “the introduction of the Living Wage for All Act is a powerful testament to the worker-led movement that is forcing a new baseline for livable wages.”
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Under Trump, Record Number of Americans Say Personal Finances Getting Worse
Americans' pessimistic economic outlook comes at a time when Republicans are pushing for US taxpayers to fund President Donald Trump's proposed $400 million luxury ballroom.
Apr 28, 2026
Just over a year after President Donald Trump promised the US was entering a "golden age," Americans are expressing unprecedented pessimism about the state of the economy.
Gallup on Tuesday released a poll showing that 55% of Americans say their personal finances are getting worse, which is a record high over the last 25 years of data.
For comparison, 49% of Americans said their finances were getting worse at the outset of the Great Recession in 2008, while 50% reported their finances were getting worse at both the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and at the height of the post-pandemic inflation crisis in 2023.
"Affordability continues to be the main financial challenge for US households, with concerns about various costs far outpacing all other financial worries," Gallup wrote. "Combined with the lingering effects of sustained inflation during and after the pandemic, Americans' financial perceptions and outlook remain cautious."
The poll was conducted between April 1 and April 15, and the financial pressures facing Americans have only grown in the two weeks since.
The price of Brent crude oil futures, which stood at $95 per barrel on April 15, has since spiked upward to more than $111 per barrel. Likewise, the average price of gas in the last week has grown from $4.02 per gallon to $4.17 per gallon, according to data collected by AAA.
The cost of oil surged starting in March after President Donald Trump launched an illegal war of choice with Iran, which responded by shutting down the Strait of Hormuz to most commercial shipping.
The war has also led to shortages of fertilizer during planting season, which has led some experts to warn of a global food crisis unless the strait opens in the very near future. The prospective food crisis could be further exacerbated by what scientists are projecting will be a “super El Niño,” a global climate phenomenon that would result in lower than average rainfall.
At the same time, a group of Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on Tuesday pushed for US taxpayers to foot the bill for Trump's planned $400 million luxury ballroom.
Hours after Graham unveiled his plan to fund the ballroom with taxpayer money, Rep. Riley Moore (R-W.Va.) appeared on Fox Business to bang the drum on building the ballroom.
"You would think this town would be tired of Donald Trump being right all the time," Moore said in response to critics of the project. "This president has always had the ability to see around corners and make decisions that are best for the country or his business. We need to have that ballroom built. God bless the president for doing it."
Rep. Riley Moore: "You would think this town would be tired of Donald Trump being right all the time. This president has always had the ability to see around corners and make decisions that are best for the country or his business. We need to have that ballroom built. God bless… pic.twitter.com/nosaVo0qJu
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 28, 2026
Sarah Longwell, a former Republican pollster who left the party over her disgust with Trump, pointed to polling averages aggregated by data analyst Nate Silver showing that nearly 69% of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the cost of living, and suggested the push for the ballroom was wildly out of touch with Americans' concerns.
"You know what’ll turn these numbers around? A taxpayer-funded ballroom," she wrote sarcastically.
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‘We Are All With You’: Outpouring of Support as Platner Family Shares Fertility Heartbreak
"Just as the difficulty in accessing fertility treatment is overlooked, so too is the heartbreak of loss," said US Senate candidate Graham Platner and his wife, Amy Gertner.
Apr 28, 2026
An outpouring of support met US Senate candidate Graham Platner's announcement on social media Monday evening that his wife Amy Gertner suffered a miscarriage following the couple's decision to pursue in vitro fertilization treatment in Norway earlier this year.
In announcing this past January that they were traveling to Norway in an effort to have a child, Platner and Gertner said Monday that the couple had aimed "to shine a light on a hardship that millions of people face but is too often disregarded in our society and our politics." IVF treatment in Norway, the couple had shared as they embarked on their trip, would cost less than a quarter of what it would have cost in the US.
"Just as the difficulty in accessing fertility treatment is overlooked, so too is the heartbreak of loss," said the couple on Monday. "We suffered that heartbreak recently, when we experienced a miscarriage."
They emphasized that they "felt it was important to be open, because so many families have experienced the same. One in five known pregnancies end in miscarriage."
"To anyone who has experienced a loss like this: You are not alone," said Platner and Gertner. "We're with you—just as so many of you have been there for us."
US Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who endorsed Platner's Democratic Senate primary run weeks after the combat veteran and oyster farmer launched his campaign last summer, said the couple's decision to share their experience would "light the way for countless others."
Karthik Soora, a former Democratic Texas state Senate candidate and clean energy advocate, also expressed sympathy.
"Sending his family positive energy as someone who lost a child-to-be at 22 weeks," said Soora. "We are all with you and you are not alone."
Platner and Gertner concluded their statement by asking for "grace as we grieve, and space as we figure out what comes next."
Platner is facing Maine Gov. Janet Mills in the US Senate primary, scheduled for June 9. Platner is running on a platform focused on passing Medicare for All and a billionaires' minimum tax, and has spoken out forcefully against President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda and the US-Israeli war on Iran. In recent surveys he has polled ahead of Mills by up to 38 points.
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