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As Energy Committee Votes on Haaland Nomination, Opposition Is Coming From Members Who Have Taken More Than $8 Million From Big Oil
Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee have been staunch opponents of the confirmation of Congresswoman Deb Haaland to lead the Department of the Interior.The same members opposed to Haaland have collectively taken millions from the oil and gas industry, including over $1.4 million from the 2020 cycle alone.These senators have oversight of the very same industries that have bankrolled their campaigns with millions of dollars, including the fossil fuel industry that they have so adamantly defended throughout the hearings.
WASHINGTON
Today, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee will vote on the confirmation of Congresswoman Deb Haaland for secretary of the Department of the Interior. After a long battle including days of hostile hearings and smear campaigns in the media, Accountable Senate War Room is calling on Senate Republicans to support Haaland's nomination once and for all, and to stop obstructing her confirmation to appease their Big Oil donors.
"In her confirmation hearings, Congresswoman Haaland showed the country who she is: an environmentalist, a fierce advocate for her community, and a proven bipartisan leader who has earned the support of some of her most conservative colleagues, including Rep. Don Young from Alaska, and will bring that same willingness to work with others as Interior secretary," said Mairead Lynn, spokesperson for Accountable Senate War Room. "Combined with the enormous sums of money Senate Republicans have taken from the oil and gas industry, it's easy to see why the outrageous attacks launched against her fell flat. Haaland has already earned bipartisan support and those who continue to oppose her nomination in the name of their Big Oil donors shouldn't be taken seriously."
Below are the contributions that top Republican members of the ENR Committee have accepted from the oil and gas industry:
Those same Senate Republicans have been publicly against Haaland's confirmation:
Ranking Member John Barrasso (R-WY):
- Said he was "troubled by many of Representative Haaland's views," which he characterized as "radical" [The Guardian, 2/26/2021]
- "[Haaland's] radical views are squarely at odds with the responsible management of our nation's energy resources." [WaPo, 2/9/2021]
- Got hostile with Haaland during her confirmation hearing and "shouted over" her, then accused the congresswoman of "wanting to legalize drugs to replace tax revenue from oil and gas" [WaPo, 2/25/2021]
Senator Steve Daines (R-MT):
- Daines claimed he was "deeply concerned with the Congresswoman's support on several radical issues that will hurt Montana, our way of life, our jobs and rural America."
- The Billings Gazette Editorial Board deemed Daines' attacks as a racist, sexist "dogwhistle" [2/21/2021]
- Even before the hearing, Daines threatened to block her nomination, citing her support for the Green New Deal and a pause on new oil and gas leases on federal land, as well as her opposition to Keystone XL. [The Guardian, 2/26/2021]
- Called on Haaland to "respect the science," after previously denouncing the role humans have in climate change [WaPo, 2/25/2021]
Senator James Risch (R-ID):
- Risch repeatedly badgered Haaland on her stance on the Keystone XL pipeline after she had answered the questions several times over. [WICZ, 2/24/2021]
Senator Mike Lee (R-UT):
- Lee's questioning of Haaland, what was referred to as a "lecture" by the Salt Lake Tribune, revolved around her thoughts on the designation of Bears Ears as a national monument, and aggressively cut the Congresswoman off while she was giving the state of Utah a compliment.
Senator John Hoeven (R-ND):
- Criticized Haaland for her past environmental advocacy relating to the Dakota Access Pipeline, which risks leaking dirty oil into the water supply and sacred lands of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. [The Guardian, 2/26/2021]
- Hoeven said he was concerned for his state's economy but failed to disclose his own substantial investments in the oil and gas industry, including in North Dakota. [The Guardian, 2/26/2021]
Senator James Lankford (R-OK):
- Lankford went after Haaland for her previous comments about fracking and the construction of pipelines, and justifying his decision to vote against Haaland because of her "commitment to an unrealistic energy reality." [James Lankford, 2/24/2021]
- In 2010, Lankford called global warming a "myth" and said it will eventually be "exposed" as "a way of control more than anything else." [Business Insider, 2/24/2021]
Senator John Cassidy (R-LA):
- The Senator took every opportunity to throw Haaland's previous comments about Republicans not believing in science back in her face, asking her "will your department be guided by a prejudice against fossil fuel or will it be guided by science?" [HuffPost, 2/24/2021]
- He went on to accuse the Biden administration of rejecting science, claiming "clearly the Biden administration is not guided by science, and Republicans are guided by science."
- Cassidy is on the record rejecting the idea that human activity is "a significant contributor" to climate change even though this is well-established by the scientific community [HuffPost, 2/24/2021]
- Cassidy is also on the record defending Trump's erroneous claim suggesting that you can treat COVID-19 by ingesting disinfectants, obfuscating Trump of any responsibility claiming that "The president speaks in such a way, people are not going to inject themselves [with Lysol]." [HuffPost, 2/24/2021]
Accountable Senate War Room released an analysis that reveals that Republican senators targeted nominees of color with harsher language, often referring to them as "radical" compared to their white counterparts, and another report revealing that Biden's Cabinet nominees of color face tougher scrutiny throughout the confirmation process than their white colleagues.
Senate Republicans' attacks of Haaland have largely fallen flat:
- E&E News: 'Work my heart out': Deb Haaland makes her case
- Billings Gazette: Gazette opinion: Give Haaland a fair hearing
- Accountable Senate War Room: New Research Highlights the Nearly $8.8M in Oil Contributions Fueling GOP Smears of Climate Champion Haaland
- E&E News: Haaland's allies gird for tense confirmation hearing
- HuffPost: Rep. Deb Haaland Fends Off Republican Attacks At Contentious Confirmation Hearing
- Las Vegas Sun: GOP smears of Interior nominee are of no service to American people
- POLITICO: Tribes see familiar pattern in Haaland opposition
- E&E News: 5 things to watch at Deb Haaland's confirmation hearing
- HuffPost: GOP Senators Attack Biden's Interior Secretary Pick For Wanting To Protect Land, Air
- The Guardian: Republicans criticizing Haaland's nomination have ties to fossil fuels
- Roll Call: Haaland faces GOP opposition that other Biden nominees did not
- Accountable Senate War Room: Daines Favors Special Interests Over Montanans By Opposing Haaland for Interior Secretary
- Accountable Senate War Room: Top Environmental Voices, Members of Congress Call Out GOP Senators For Putting Special Interests Over Public Lands by Opposing Haaland for Interior
- Accountable Senate War Room: ROUND-UP: GOP Senators Attack Becerra, Haaland to Prove Loyalty to Special Interests
- Accountable Senate War Room: New Research Highlights the Nearly $8.8M in Oil Contributions Fueling GOP Smears of Climate Champion Haaland
- HuffPost: Montana Senator Backed An Extremist At Interior But Rejects A Native American Woman
Nonpartisan watchdog group Accountable.US recently launched the Accountable Senate War Room to fight back against those lawmakers who seek to overturn the will of the people by standing in the way of the smooth transition of power and the swift approval of nominees to ensure that the government can function and advance the interests of all American people, not just the rich and powerful.
LATEST NEWS
BBC Rebuked for Censoring Historian Who Called Trump ‘Most Openly Corrupt President in American History’
The Dutch historian said the BBC's edit of his lecture shows what happens "when institutions start censoring themselves out of fear of those in power."
Nov 25, 2025
The BBC is being accused of bending to pressure from the White House once again after it removed a historian's claim that President Donald Trump was “the most openly corrupt president in American history” from one of its broadcasts.
Rutger Bregman, a Dutch author and historian, said Tuesday that Britain's flagship news broadcaster cut the "key line" out of a speech he gave as part of its prestigious Reith Lecture series.
The broadcast had included Bregman's descriptions of Trump as "a convicted reality star" and a "modern-day Caligula." It also included his criticism of the "establishment propping up" former President Joe Biden, whom he called "an elderly man in obvious mental decline."
But the BBC admits it cut out the line referring to Trump's corruption.
“The BBC has decided to censor my first Reith lecture,” Bregman said. “This sentence was taken out of a lecture they commissioned, reviewed through the full editorial process, and recorded four weeks ago in front of 500 people in the BBC Radio Theatre."
In a subsequent BBC radio broadcast discussing the controversy, the host said Bregman's assessment of Trump's corruption was removed "on legal advice."
"That same BBC legal advice means I can't tell you what was removed," he continued.
Bregman said he "was told the decision came from the highest levels within the BBC.”
The decision to pull Bregman's quote came as the network faces threats of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Trump over its edit of one of his speeches leading up to the January 6, 2021 US Capitol riot, which was fueled by the president's false assertions that his defeat in the 2020 election was the result of widespread voter fraud.
A documentary for the network's Panorama series, released days before the 2024 US election, had spliced together three clips of the president's speech to those assembled at the Capitol, which had occurred about 50 minutes apart. The statements made it appear as if Trump had urged supporters to march with him and called for violence.
Trump has since pardoned everyone who committed acts of violence on January 6, referring to them as “patriots,” and has purged investigators within the Justice Department who pursued cases against them.
The BBC issued an apology for its edit of Trump's comments, and its director general, Tim Davie, and the BBC News chief, Deborah Turness, have both resigned. However, it has insisted it did not defame Trump and that it would not settle any lawsuit with him.
In comments to the Guardian, a BBC spokesperson said it removed Bregman's comments because "all of our programs are required to comply with the BBC’s editorial guidelines, and we made the decision to remove one sentence from the lecture on legal advice.”
On social media, Bregman said the network's explanation did not make sense.
"The edit was made at the last minute, after editorial approval and four weeks after the live recording," he said. "A standard editorial edit doesn’t require days of high-level legal review or the involvement of many people at the top level."
He said the real reason was the network's fear of drawing Trump's ire.
"The truth is that the sentence wasn’t inaccurate—it was removed because of legal fears," he said. "And that’s exactly the concern my lecture raises: when institutions start censoring themselves out of fear of those in power."
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Defiant Democrats Slam Trump 'Intimidation' After FBI Seeks Interviews Over 'Illegal Orders' Video
"We will not be bullied."
Nov 25, 2025
Democratic lawmakers who participated in a video warning US military personnel against following unlawful orders issued by President Donald Trump remained defiant after being contacted by the FBI.
As reported by Reuters on Tuesday, the FBI has requested interviews with Sens. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), as well as Reps. Chris Deluzio (D-Penn.), Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Md.), and Jason Crow (D-Colo.), just days after Trump demanded their imprisonment or even death for supposed "sedition."
One US Department of Justice official told Reuters that the FBI interviews are to determine if the Democratic lawmakers engaged in "any wrongdoing" when they spoke out against the president potentially giving unlawful orders that pit the US military against American civilians.
The Democrats, however, vowed that they would not be intimidated by any FBI investigation.
In a social media post, Slotkin said that Trump's push to jail the Democrats for exercising their First Amendment rights demonstrated the reason why they decided to participate in the video in the first place. Slotkin accused Trump of "weaponizing the federal government against his perceived enemies," while adding that he "does not believe laws apply to him or his Cabinet."
"This is not the America I know," added Slotkin, a former CIA analyst. "I'm not going to let this next step from the FBI stop me from speaking up for my country and our Constitution."
Houlahan, Crow, Goodlander, and Deluzio issued a joint statement accusing Trump of "using the FBI as a tool to intimidate and harass members of Congress," and vowed that "no amount of intimidation or harassment will ever stop us from doing our jobs and honoring our Constitution."
"We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States," they emphasized. "That oath lasts a lifetime, and we intend to keep it. We will not be bullied. We will never give up the ship."
The FBI interview requests came just a day after the US Department of Defense (DOD) said it had "received serious allegations of misconduct" against Kelly, who is a retired US Navy captain, and was launching an investigation that could result in him being recalled to active duty to face court-martial hearings for violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
In a separate social media post, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attacked all the Democrats who participated in the video as the "seditious six" and said that Kelly had been singled out for DOD investigation because he was the only member who was still subject to UCMJ given his status as a retired naval officer.
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Bari Weiss: Bounds of ‘Acceptable Debate’ at CBS News Will Range From Alan Dershowitz to Dana Loesch
"After years of complaining that there wasn't enough viewpoint diversity in acceptable media discourse, Bari Weiss now appears to suggest that there's too much," said one critic.
Nov 25, 2025
Since Paramount's new Trump-aligned billionaire owner, David Ellison, installed the right-wing pundit Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, fear has abounded about how she might attempt to reshape the network to fit her worldview.
Weiss once fashioned herself as a champion of "ideological diversity," in contrast to what she deemed a takeover of academia and media by intolerant "woke" types who'd fostered an "illiberal" atmosphere of political conformity.
But now that she's at the helm of one of America's most storied news organizations, she seems to view her role much differently.
During a panel at the Jewish Leadership Conference, a gathering of conservative and pro-Israel Jewish figures, this week Weiss laid out her goals for how she plans to use her powerful position.
"I think it's about who's in the room," Weiss said. "I think it's about redrawing the lines of what falls in the 40-yard lines of acceptable debate and acceptable American politics and culture."
She said her goal for the network is to create a new form of "centrist" news, not by adopting a dispassionate "voice from nowhere," but by amplifying people who are "clearly and identifiably on the center-left and the center-right in conversation with one another."
"This is an opportunity to speak for the 75%, for the people that are on the center-left and the center-right," Weiss said.
Weiss gave an example of two figures she thought would represent this paradigm: "I was in... Chicago last week... where Dana Loesch, former spokeswoman for the [National Rifle Association], was debating Alan Dershowitz on guns. Now, these are people who have wildly different opinions on the Second Amendment, and yet showing they can have good faith, very passionate, very charismatic disagreement, and still like each other at the end of the day is very important."
Weiss contrasted these preferred figures with those "rising in the podcast charts," whom she said "don't represent the values and the worldview of the vast majority of Americans." These included pundits on the extreme right like Nick Fuentes and Andrew Tate, who have expressed overt Nazi sympathies, as well as former Fox News host-turned independent podcaster Tucker Carlson, who has given each of these men friendly interviews.
But she also mentioned Hasan Piker, a popular left-wing Twitch streamer who has faced accusations of antisemitism, including from members of Congress, for his denunciation of Israel's "genocide" in Gaza, which has resulted in the death or injury of more than 10% people living in the strip over the past two years. Piker has called antisemitism "completely unacceptable," adding that he finds "the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism to be very dangerous."
what makes this funnier is that her outlet cbs news is currently trying to set up a debate with me ?! https://t.co/FuGjZnK0CH
— hasanabi (@hasanthehun) November 25, 2025
One critic on social media wrote that "after years of complaining that there wasn't enough viewpoint diversity in acceptable media discourse, Bari Weiss now appears to suggest that there's too much."
While Weiss said she does not mean for her narrowing of the discourse to be done in a "censorious, gatekeeping way," Weiss has long been criticized for her attempts to silence critics of Israel.
As David Klion wrote in the Guardian in September, Weiss' publication, the Free Press, which Ellison purchased in September for an eye-popping $150 million, has championed the second Trump administration's efforts to force institutions of higher learning to crack down on anti-Israel speech on college campuses, which it has portrayed as part of a crusade against "antisemitism."
"The pattern is clear: If you work at a liberal institution and you want the Trump-controlled federal government to step in and discipline it, Bari Weiss is there to help," Klion wrote.
Prior to Weiss' ascendance, CBS News and other major networks had already faced scrutiny for their near-total lack of Palestinian perspectives in their coverage of the Israel-Gaza war. In December 2024, Adam Johnson reported in the Nation that across the major Sunday shows on NBC, ABC, CNN, and CBS, there had been 2,557 mentions of Gaza since October 7, 2023, but only one Palestinian guest had appeared across all four of them, while Israeli guests had been featured 20 times.
Staffers at CBS have raised concerns about Weiss having an even more aggressive "hall monitor" approach to policing coverage in her new position. Critics say that her singling out of Dershowitz and Loesch as representatives for the bounds of acceptable opinion suggests that she will pursue rigid ideological conformity at the network.
"Everyone Bari Weiss thinks is too extreme to be included always has one thing in common: opposition to Israel," noted independent journalist Glenn Greenwald.
"Hey, I know what the kids want more of right now: Alan Dershowitz!"
— John Ganz (@lionel_trolling) November 25, 2025
As other critics noted, Dershowitz and Loesch are not figures that many would associate with the "center-left" and the "center-right" as Weiss claims.
While the clear majority of Democratic voters now believe Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, Dershowitz—who left the party to become an independent last year—has referred to such accusations as antisemitic "blood libel," and denounced protesters against Israel's military campaign as the equivalent of "Hitler Youth."
The lawyer has also defended many of the most egregious actions by Israel, including its attacks on hospitals, which have killed over 1,400 people according to UN figures from August: "Sometimes attacking a hospital saves lives," was the title of one video he published on November 16, 2023.
"If you’re going to redraw the lines to square up more with what 75% of Americans believe, how are you going to cover aid to Israel, which is wildly unpopular among that 75%?" one social media user wrote in response to Weiss, referencing recent polls showing that the vast majority of Americans now disapprove of Israel's military actions in Gaza.
Loesch, meanwhile, is far from a moderate or a cordial participant in polite disagreement. She is widely credited with helping to morph the NRA from purely a gun advocacy group into a vehicle for a broader right-wing culture war.
She has personally described gun safety advocates as “tragedy dry-humping whores,” and the political left as "godless." Meanwhile, she's appeared to threaten journalists explicitly, saying they "need to be curb-stomped," after previously calling them "the rat bastards of the Earth" and "the boil on the backside of American politics."
The example Bari Weiss gave of the "charismatic" mainstream debates she believes will revitalize CBS -- namely, the gun control debate she arranged between Alan Dershowitz and Dana Loesch -- has so far been watched by a grand total of 860 people in the 5 hours since posting: https://t.co/hZp1bBbfe9 pic.twitter.com/osN4CwD9nY
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 25, 2025
Rather than reflecting the consensus of American opinion, Greenwald noted, the "charismatic" conversation between Dershowitz and Loesch on gun control had garnered a grand total of 860 views on YouTube within five hours of being posted.
"I’ve been writing about elite vs. popular politics for a long time," said Zachary D. Carter, a senior reporter at HuffPost. "[I] don’t think I’ve ever seen elite consensus more disconnected from public reality."
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