November, 24 2020, 11:00pm EDT
Opposition to Ernie Moniz and Fossil Fuel Appointments Intensifies
Moniz’s extensive fossil fuel ties have made him a top target for climate activists
WASHINGTON
A broad coalition of climate, progressive, and environmental justice groups are engaged in an all-out push to keep former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz out of the Biden Administration, because of Moniz's extensive ties to the fossil fuel and nuclear industries, retrograde views on climate policy, and outright hostility towards climate advocates.
On Wednesday, groups including the Climate Justice Alliance, Oil Change U.S., Greenpeace USA, Sunrise Movement, Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth U.S., and more launched a new website, NoMoniz.org, to rally opposition against Moniz. This followed an action on Tuesday evening in Washington, DC, in which messages urging Biden to reject Moniz and choose a fossil-free cabinet were projected onto the main Department of Energy building. Photos and videos are available here.
"With his deep ties to the fossil fuel industry and promotion of false solutions like carbon capture and sequestration, Ernest Moniz is not a forward-thinking choice for the Cabinet. As we face interlinked challenges like never before, we need people in the President-elect's Cabinet willing to listen to and collaborate with the most innovative sectors while centering the frontline, environmental justice communities most harmed by extractive energy practices," said Anthony Rogers-Wright of the Climate Justice Alliance. "The Department of Energy must be led by someone open to concrete ideas for a fossil-free future, not continued dominance by a corrupt, heavily-subsidized industry whose existence hinges on maintaining an antiquated all-of-the-above strategy. Moniz's track record and standing associations are proof he is not that person. If President-elect Biden's proclamation to 'build back better' is genuine, he must look forward, not backward."
"Ernest Moniz's 'all of the above' energy policies might be good for his friends in the coal, oil, and gas industries, but they're a death sentence for us and our planet," the website reads. "It's unacceptable that Moniz is being considered for a role in the Biden administration -- his policies, financial ties to fossil fuel companies, contempt for youth climate activists, and overall unwillingness to do what it takes to protect our future should disqualify him immediately."
The site features a letter from over 75 organizations to President-elect Joe Biden urging him not to appoint Moniz to any position within his administration. It also references a letter signed by over 150 organizations urging Biden not to appoint people with ties to the fossil fuel industry. Moniz -- who served on the board of a major fossil fuel utility and regularly collaborates with industry front groups -- clearly fails that test.
"Ernest Moniz's ties to the fossil fuel industry spell danger for the nation's efforts to mitigate the climate crisis," said Janet Redman, Climate Campaign Director at Greenpeace USA. "Moniz's ability to represent our communities' best interests is compromised by his deep ties to the fossil fuel industry -- including his current board position at Southern Company, one of the most polluting oil and gas utilities in the U.S. We need a true climate leader who understands that we must phase out fossil fuels, not a corporate shill with 'all of the above energy' policies who wants to prop up fracked gas and pipelines. The American people have given Joe Biden a mandate to take bold action in service of climate justice, public health, economic prosperity, and racial equity. Moniz would only be holding him back."
Moniz's ties to the fossil fuel industry and his continued support for oil and gas are well documented. Moniz serves on the board of Southern Company, one of the U.S.'s most fossil fuel-heavy power companies, and his consultancy is a partner in an LNG export facility in Louisiana. He's worked closely with fossil fuel industry front groups like SoCalGas to advocate for an ongoing role for climate-polluting methane gas. He's touted boondoggles like 'clean coal.'
The Energy Initiative Moniz founded at MIT took millions of dollars from oil companies to "support sponsored research projects aligned with their strategic interests." He's also been a leading critic of the Green New Deal, going so far as to introduce his own so-called "Green Real Deal," and has disparaged youth climate activists around the world as the "climate elite."
"President-elect Joe Biden has a mandate to govern as a climate president, and that means keeping fossil fuel representatives like Ernest Moniz far from the White House," said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "To protect people and wildlife from irreversible climate chaos, Biden must use every tool at his disposal to phase out fossil fuel production and advance environmental justice. That means saying no to advice from Moniz and his friends in the oil and gas industry."
Groups are also concerned about Moniz's extensive ties to the nuclear industry. As energy secretary, Moniz ensured $8 billion in U.S. taxpayer-backed loans went to two new nuclear reactors at Southern Company's Plant Vogtle in Georgia.
"Moniz has undermined climate progress to curry favor with the nuclear industry. He even authorized a process that shifted the financial risk for these dangerous, money-sucking projects onto the public. Taxpayers could very well be saddled with a massive bill for this nuclear debacle," said Karen Orenstein, Climate and Energy Director at Friends of the Earth U.S. "As Moniz collects donations to his own organizations from Southern Company's foundation, the Vogtle project drags on, ensuring continued greenhouse emissions and diverting billions of dollars from real climate solutions. If President-elect Biden is to truly prioritize the public interest over polluters and profiteers, he must not give Moniz any role whatsoever in his Administration."
Campaign Website: NoMoniz.org
Action Photos + Video:https://media.greenpeace.org/shoot/27MDHUSNP1M
Oil Change U.S. is dedicated to supporting real climate leadership, exposing the true costs of fossil fuels, and building a just, equitable, and renewable energy future in the United States.
LATEST NEWS
Key Republican's $500 Billion 'Red Line' for Medicaid Cuts Slammed as Cruel Farce
"If your 'red line' is taking away healthcare from millions of people, then you don't have a red line."
Apr 30, 2025
A key House Republican said Tuesday that he would be unwilling to accept more than $500 billion in Medicaid cuts in the GOP's emerging reconciliation package, a "red line" that drew swift mockery and condemnation from healthcare campaigners.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is seen as a critical swing vote in the narrowly controlled Republican House, toldPolitico that his ceiling for Medicaid cuts over the next decade is a half-trillion dollars—a message he has privately delivered to President Donald Trump's White House.
Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA, said in a statement Tuesday that a $500 billion cut to Medicaid "is not at all moderate, but massive—the biggest cut in the history of Medicaid, one that would force millions of Americans to lose coverage."
"Slashing Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars would force states like Nebraska to make the unholy choice to drop people from coverage, cut benefits, and/or cut payments to the providers we all rely on, or otherwise raise taxes," said Wright. "Medicaid cuts would be another wrecking ball to the health system and to the economy."
The Century Foundation has estimated that cutting federal Medicaid funding by $500 billion over a 10-year period would strip health coverage from more than 18 million children and more than 2 million adults with disabilities.
"If your 'red line' is taking away healthcare from millions of people, then you don't have a red line," said Kobie Christian, a spokesperson for the advocacy coalition Unrig Our Economy.
"Not one dollar should be cut from Medicaid to pay for one dollar of tax breaks for the rich."
Bacon also made clear Tuesday that he would support draconian changes to Medicaid that have been tried with disastrous results at the state level.
"They should be seeking the skill sets for better jobs," Bacon said in support of adding work requirements to Medicaid, despite an abundance of evidence showing that such mandates succeed only at booting people from the program, not increasing employment. (Most Medicaid recipients who are able to work already do.)
Brad Woodhouse, president of Protect Our Care, said in a statement that "as the GOP drafts their devastating budget, one thing remains true: Republicans in Congress want to make the largest Medicaid cuts in history to fund tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans."
"Whether it's a trillion dollars, half a trillion, or hundreds of billions in Medicaid cuts, no member of Congress can justify ripping healthcare away from some of the most vulnerable Americans to give tax breaks to the wealthy," said Woodhouse. "Not one dollar should be cut from Medicaid to pay for one dollar of tax breaks for the rich."
The "moderate" $500 billion Medicaid cut being pitched here would finance a $500 billion tax cut for millionaire business owners and the heirs of estates worth over $28 million per couple. There is nothing moderate about cutting low-income Americans' health care to pay for tax cuts for the rich.
[image or embed]
— Brendan Duke (@brendanvduke.bsky.social) April 29, 2025 at 4:14 PM
Congressional Republicans have previously backed budget plans that would allow $880 billion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade, as well as massive reductions in spending on federal nutrition assistance.
But the GOP push for Medicaid cuts to pay for another round of tax breaks that would largely benefit the wealthy has sparked outrage nationwide, and it appears some Republicans are feeling the pressure from constituents.
Rep. David Valadao (R-Calif.), whose district has the highest percentage of Medicaid recipients in the House GOP conference, raised concerns about deep Medicaid cuts in an interview with Politico on Tuesday.
But like Bacon, Valadao said he was open to proposals that experts say would bring disastrous consequences for Medicaid recipients. Politico noted that the California Republican "is leaving the door open to capping the overall funding for certain beneficiaries in the 41 states that have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act."
Edwin Park, a research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy's Center for Children and Families, warned earlier this week that the per-capita funding cap Republicans are considering should "be viewed as just another proposal to sharply shift expansion costs to states by lowering the effective expansion matching rates, with the intent of undermining and eventually repealing the Medicaid expansion."
"That, in turn, would take away coverage from nearly 21 million low-income parents, people with disabilities, near-elderly adults, and others," Park wrote. "It would also have significant adverse effects on the children of expansion adults: Research shows that the Medicaid expansion increases enrollment among eligible children and therefore reduces the number of uninsured children."
"And, of course, it would also deter the 10 remaining non-expansion states from taking up the expansion in the future," he added.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Amazon Won't Display Tariff Costs After Trump Whines to Bezos
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said all companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
Apr 29, 2025
Amazon said Tuesday that it would not display tariff costs next to products on its website after U.S. President Donald Trump called the e-commerce giant's billionaire founder, Jeff Bezos, to complain about the reported plan.
Citing an unnamed person familiar with Amazon's supposed plan, Punchbowl Newsreported that "the shopping site will display how much of an item's cost is derived from tariffs—right next to the product's total listed price."
Many Amazon products come from China. While U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed Sunday that "there is a path" to a tariff deal with the Chinese government, Trump has recently caused global economic alarm by hitting the country with a 145% tax and imposing a 10% minimum for other nations.
According toCNN, which spoke with two senior White House officials on Tuesday, Trump's call to Bezos "came shortly after one of the senior officials phoned the president to inform him of the story" from Punchbowl.
"Of course he was pissed," one official said of Trump. "Why should a multibillion-dollar company pass off costs to consumers?"
Asked about how the call with Bezos went, Trump told reporters: "Great. Jeff Bezos was very nice. He was terrific. He solved the problem very quickly, and he did the right thing, and he's a good guy."
Earlier Tuesday, during a briefing, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called Amazon's reported plan "a hostile and political act," and said that "this is another reason why Americans should buy American."
Leavitt also asked why Amazon didn't have such displays during the Biden administration and held up a printed version of a 2021 Reutersreport about the company's "compliance with the Chinese government edict" to stop allowing customer ratings and reviews in China, allegedly prompted by negative feedback left on a collection President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings.
Asked whether Bezos is "still a Trump supporter," Leavitt said that she "will not speak to" the president's relationship with him.
As CNBCdetailed Tuesday:
Less than two hours after the press briefing, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company was only ever considering listing tariff charges on some products for Amazon Haul, its budget-focused shopping section.
"The team that runs our ultra low cost Amazon Haul store has considered listing import charges on certain products," the spokesperson said. "This was never a consideration for the main Amazon site and nothing has been implemented on any Amazon properties."
But in a follow-up statement an hour after that one, the spokesperson clarified that the plan to show tariff surcharges was "never approved" and is "not going to happen."
In response to Bloomberg also reporting on Amazon's claim that tariff displays were never under consideration for the company's main site, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick wrote on social media Tuesday, "Good move."
Before Amazon publicly killed any plans for showing consumers the costs from Trump's import taxes, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on the chamber's floor Tuesday that companies should be "displaying how much tariffs contribute to the total price of products."
"I urge more companies, particularly national retailers that compete with Amazon, to adopt this practice. If Amazon has the courage to display why prices are going up because of tariffs, so should all of our other national retailers who compete with them. And I am calling on them to do it now," he said.
Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar (D-Texas) on Tuesday framed the whole incident as an example of how "Trump has created a government by and for the billionaires," declaring: "If anyone ever doubted that Trump, and [Elon] Musk, and Bezos, and the billionaires are all [on] one team, just look at what happened at Amazon today. Bezos immediately caved and walked back a plan to tell Americans how much Trump's tariffs are costing them."
Casar also claimed Bezos wants "big tax cuts and sweetheart deals," and pointed to Amazon's Prime Video paying $40 million to license a documentary about the life of First Lady Melania Trump. In addition to the film agreement, Bezos has come under fire for Amazon's $1 million donation to the president's inauguration fund.
As the owner of
The Washington Post, Bezos—the world's second-richest person, after Trump adviser Musk—also faced intense criticism for blocking the newspaper's planned endorsement of the president's 2024 Democratic challenger, Kamala Harris, and demanding its opinion page advocate for "personal liberties and free markets."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Medicare for All, Says Sanders, Would Show American People 'Government Is Listening to Them'
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts," said one nurse and union leader. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Apr 29, 2025
On Tuesday, Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Democratic Reps. Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Debbie Dingell of Michigan reintroduced the Medicare for All Act, re-upping the legislative quest to enact a single-payer healthcare system even as the bill faces little chance of advancing in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives or Senate.
Hundreds of nurses, healthcare providers, and workers from across the country joined the lawmakers for a press conference focused on the bill's reintroduction in front of the Capitol on Tuesday.
"We have the radical idea of putting healthcare dollars into healthcare, not into profiteering or bureaucracy," said Sanders during the press conference. "A simple healthcare system, which is what we are talking about, substantially reduces administrative costs, but it would also make life a lot easier, not just for patients, but for nurses" and other healthcare providers, he continued.
"So let us stand together," Sanders told the crowd. "Let us do what the American people want and let us transform this country. And when we pass Medicare for All, it's not only about improving healthcare for all our people—it's doing something else. It's telling the American people that, finally, the American government is listening to them."
Under Medicare for All, the government would pay for all healthcare services, including dental, vision, prescription drugs, and other care.
"It is a travesty when 85 million people are uninsured or underinsured and millions more are drowning in medical debt in the richest nation on Earth," said Jayapal in a statement on Tuesday.
In 2020, a study in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found that a single-payer program like Medicare for All would save Americans more than $450 billion and would likely prevent 68,000 deaths every year. That same year, the Congressional Budget Office found that a single-payer system that resembles Medicare for All would yield some $650 billion in savings in 2030.
Members of National Nurses United (NNU), the nation's largest union of registered nurses, were also at the press conference on Tuesday.
In a statement, the group highlighted that the bill comes at a critical time, given GOP-led threats to programs like Medicaid.
"The goal of the current administration and their billionaire buddies is to pile on endless cuts and attacks so that we become too demoralized and overwhelmed to move forward," said Bonnie Castillo, registered nurse and executive director of NNU. "Even on our hardest days, we won't stop fighting for Medicare for All."
Per Sanders' office, the legislation has 104 co-sponsors in the House and 16 in the Senate, which is an increase from the previous Congress.
A poll from Gallup released in 2023 found that 7 in 10 Democrats support a government-run healthcare system. The poll also found that across the political spectrum, 57% of respondents believe the government should ensure all people have healthcare coverage.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular