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Hearing Watch: Senators Consider Trump’s Latest Big Oil Shilling Choice to Oversee America’s Public Lands, Katharine MacGregor
Today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources will hold its confirmation hearing for President Trump’s nominee for Deputy Secretary of the Interior Department, Katharine MacGregor. A review from government watchdog Accountable.US spotlights MacGregor’s record as a passionate ally for big oil and gas interests who served as the industry’s point person at Interior during the first Trump administration. MacGregor’s nomination follows the confirmation of fellow Trump administration parrots of the oil lobby, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
“With Katharine MacGregor’s nomination to Interior, President Trump continues to build a dream team of big oil and gas shills to ravage America’s public lands, while taxpayers and our environment deal with all the fallout,” said Accountable.US Executive Director Tony Carrk. “It’s all part of the Trump plan to let oil lobbyists write their own rules and seize whatever land they please in the name of maximum profits after they made record high donations to his campaign.”
BACKGROUND: During her previous tenure as Deputy Secretary of the Interior, oil industry leaders considered MacGregor such a reliable friend that in a released audio recording, Independent Petroleum Association of America leader Dan Naatz nonchalantly stated “we’ll call Kate” as a solution to a litany of policy goals of the industry. In one glaring case, emails obtained through FOIA show that MacGregor helped expedite a “deficient” application to drill for a specific oil company. Prior to joining the first Trump administration, MacGregor worked to help advance the legislative priorities of the oil industry in the House Natural Resources Committee. At one point, she even said she was “excited” about a bill that would have allowed natural gas pipelines to be built through national parks. Since leaving the Trump administration, MacGregor has worked for NextEra, a diversified energy company with a substantial fossil fuel portfolio.
Accountable.US is a nonpartisan watchdog that exposes corruption in public life and holds government officials and corporate special interests accountable by bringing their influence and misconduct to light. In doing so, we make way for policies that advance the interests of all Americans, not just the rich and powerful.
LATEST NEWS
Summer Lee Introduces Impeachment Articles Accusing Bondi of 'Breaking the Law' to Protect Trump, Target Opponents
"We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected," Lee said. "And that cannot continue to be our reality."
Mar 17, 2026
Democratic Rep. Summer Lee introduced articles of impeachment against US Attorney General Pam Bondi on Tuesday and accused the nation's top prosecutor of “breaking the law to protect pedophiles” and prosecute President Donald Trump’s “political opponents.”
"We live in a country where we have one reality for everyday people and another for the rich, the well-connected, and the well-protected. And that cannot continue to be our reality," Lee (D-Pa.) said in a video posted to her social media on Tuesday announcing the articles.
Two of the five articles pertain to Bondi's conduct surrounding the Department of Justice's (DOJ) release of files related to the late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which the DOJ has been accused of covering up to protect Trump.
One article accuses Bondi of obstruction of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena in July 2025, which required the DOJ to release the full, unredacted files to the House Oversight Committee in August as part of a congressional inquiry.
"The Department of Justice refused to adhere to the subpoena and withheld substantial evidence; evidence logs indicate that amongst the withheld evidence are FBI interviews with a survivor who accused Trump of sexual abuse," the article reads.
In February, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee announced that they were investigating the DOJ's handling of an accusation made against Trump to the FBI in 2019. A woman accused the president of having sexually assaulted her at the age of 13 in the 1980s.
Another impeachment article accuses Bondi of violating the Epstein Files Transparency Act (EFTA), signed into law in November, which required the DOJ to release "all unclassified records, documents, communications, and investigative materials" pertaining to the Epstein case without redacting information to protect powerful figures from embarrassment.
The DOJ missed the December 19 deadline to release the files and has since released only about 3 million pages of documents as part of its "final" trove, while millions more remain unavailable.
The pages that have been released, the article says, "were heavily redacted" to scrub the names of Trump and other powerful figures, but sensitive information about many of Epstein's victims—including identifying details and nude photographs—was released, even though the law said redacting this information was permitted.
Meanwhile, it says the DOJ "continues to withhold documents," including FBI interviews with the Trump accuser.
Three of four memos detailing the interviews with the accuser were posted to the DOJ website in March. They include the victim's graphic claims that Trump hit her after she bit his penis when he attempted to force her to perform oral sex.
Trump has denied the allegations, and White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has called the alleged victim "disturbed."
Approximately 37 pages of FBI records related to the accusation, including the fourth memo and pages of agent notes, remain unreleased to the public, according to Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).
"Pam Bondi is complicit in the most egregious cover-up in American history, hiding documents that reveal a young woman reported being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump when she was just a minor," said Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), a cosponsor of Lee's impeachment articles. "Bondi’s actions are not only disgusting and wrong. They are also illegal."
Another article accuses Bondi of having "abused" the DOJ and FBI's powers in a partisan fashion—to target Trump's enemies and shield his friends from accountability. It also cites Bondi's attempts to criminalize protesters who express anti-Trump viewpoints by designating them as "domestic terrorism threats" and creating secretive lists of organizations and individuals to be targeted.
Bondi is also accused of misleading courts on several occasions—including in the cases against former FBI Director James Comey and the Salvadoran national Kilmar Ábrego García and says she presented "demonstrably false allegations in court to support baseless prosecutions against protesters."
She is also accused of perjury before Congress during her confirmation hearing, where she pledged not to politicize her office or target journalists. It also accused her of lying during last month's contentious hearing in which she claimed that there was "no evidence" in the Epstein files "that Donald Trump has committed a crime."
No US attorney general has ever been impeached by the US House, which requires a simple majority. Trump was impeached twice by a Democratic-controlled House during his first term of office, though neither resulted in a conviction in the Senate, which requires a two-thirds majority.
Outgoing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had articles of impeachment filed against her in January by more than 80 cosponsors following the shooting of two US citizens by immigration agents.
Earlier this month, Noem became the highest-ranking Trump official to be fired in his second term, and earlier this week, Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees referred her to the DOJ for prosecution, also for perjury.
In addition to Ansari, Lee's impeachment articles against Bondi are cosponsored by Reps. Valerie Foushee (D-NC), Dave Min (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Maxine Dexter (D-Ore.). Previous articles of impeachment against Bondi have been introduced by Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) earlier this month.
Lee emphasized that while Bondi "deserves to be held accountable," this "is also about what we want our government to be, and who we want it to work for."
"This is our chance to get justice," Lee said, "to hold people accountable who, time and again, have gotten away with screwing us over."
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'Facts Don't Matter to Greenblatt': Khanna Hits Back After Attack by ADL CEO
The California Democratic lawmaker slammed Jonathan Greenblatt as "a Trump apologist who attacked Obama's nuclear deal, defends Elon, and is basically a shill for the Trump administration and Netanyahu. Sad to see."
Mar 17, 2026
US Rep. Ro Khanna on Tuesday hit back at Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt after he accused the California Democrat of enabling antisemitism.
As reported by Jewish Insider, Greenblatt accused Khanna (D-Calif.) of using an antisemitic dog whistle when he blamed "neoconservatives" for President Donald Trump's decision to launch an unprovoked military strike against Iran.
Greenblatt also slammed Khanna for appearing on the podcast of Hasan Piker, a critic of Israel whom the ADL chief described as "one of the most virulent, outspoken antisemitic influencers in the world."
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt tells 2026 Never is Now conference that it's "anti-Semitic" to blame Israel for the war on Iran that Israel started.
He accuses Sen. Chris Van Hollen of anti-Semitism for blaming "AIPAC" and slams Rep. Ro Khanna for blaming "neocons" and saying he's… pic.twitter.com/3MpTxFiSwE
— Chris Menahan 🇺🇸 (@infolibnews) March 17, 2026
In addition to going after Khanna, Greenblatt attacked Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) for accusing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) of being "un-American" during an address at a conference hosted by J Street, a liberal Zionist organization that in the past has clashed with AIPAC.
In a social media post, Khanna accused Greenblatt of being a partisan shill with a history of overlooking antisemitism from his political allies in the Republican Party.
"Facts don't matter to Greenblatt," Khanna wrote. "He is a Trump apologist who attacked [former President Barack] Obama's nuclear deal, defends Elon [Musk], and is basically a shill for the Trump administration and [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. Sad to see. He has zero respect among any House Democrats anymore."
Shortly after this, Khanna responded to a social media post from AIPAC and suggested that the group merge with Greenblatt's ADL.
"Greenblatt you've sucked up enough to Trump you can probably get the merger approved in this administration," Khanna wrote.
Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and former foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), took note of Khanna's defiant reaction to Greenblatt's attacks and argued it showed how much clout the ADL had lost in recent years under his leadership.
"There was a time when the head of the ADL saying this about two prominent Democrats would’ve mattered," he observed, "but Greenblatt has effectively marginalized himself with exactly this kind of reckless slander."
Drop Site News reporter Ryan Grim also argued that Greenblatt had made himself irrelevant by so aggressively hitting critics of Israel with charges of antisemitism.
"Has anyone been worse at his actual job than Jonathan Greenblatt?" he wrote. "If he wants to be an advocate for Likud in DC, he should just do that. Be direct. This thing where he weaponizes concerns about antisemitism to boost Likud is outrageous and also not working."
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Trump 'Too Busy Siding With Wall Street,' Says Warren as US Credit Card Debt Crisis Explodes
A new analysis shows that over 40% of all US adults are unable to fully pay off their credit cards each month, leaving them trapped in "cycles of persistent debt."
Mar 17, 2026
US President Donald Trump promised repeatedly during his 2024 campaign to temporarily cap credit card interest rates at 10%, but—in the face of Wall Street opposition—he has done nothing concrete to fulfill that pledge since returning to the White House.
That failure, according to an analysis released Tuesday, has so far cost Americans $134.5 billion in interest payments. Every day, The Century Foundation (TCF) and Protect Borrowers estimate, US credit card holders are accruing $368 million more in interest than they would have if rates were capped at 10%. The average interest rate for credit cards in the US is currently around 25%, according to a Forbes measure.
In January, Trump called on Congress to approve a 10% cap on credit card interest rates for one year, and bipartisan legislation has been introduced in both the House and the Senate. But the president has not pressured bank-friendly Republicans to back the measure, and he vowed earlier this month to refuse to sign any legislation that reaches his desk unless lawmakers approve a massive voter suppression bill that is likely dead in the Senate.
“Trump could work with Congress to deliver on his promise to cap credit card interest rates at 10%—saving the average American with credit card debt about $900 a year," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday. "But he is too busy siding with Wall Street.”
The new analysis by TCF and Protect Borrowers shows that over 40% of adults in the US are "unable to pay off their credit card bills each month, trapping them in cycles of persistent debt that balloons ever-higher due to record-high, industry-inflated interest rates and predatory fees."
Collectively, around 111 million Americans carry more than $1 trillion in credit card debt month to month, according to the analysis, and more than 27 million Americans can't afford more than the minimum monthly payment on their cards.
"Americans’ monthly credit card payments have grown by nearly 40% since 2018, a trend that is continuing unabated under President Trump," TCF and Protect Borrowers found. "From 2018 to 2025, the average monthly credit card payment rose by $553, or 38% (from $1,441 to $1,994). This growth far outstrips inflation."
"Since Trump’s inauguration alone, the average annual amount that Americans pay in credit card bills grew by an additional $1,177 (from $22,756 to $23,933)," the groups added. "The pace of this growth suggests that, in large part due to soaring interest rates, families today devote more income to credit card payments than at any point in history."
The nation's worsening credit card debt crisis comes amid a broader affordability crisis in an economy that Trump has hailed as the "greatest" in history, despite all the glaring evidence to the contrary.
A West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America survey published last week found that roughly a third of respondents—equivalent to more than 80 million Americans—said they have had to skip a meal, borrow money, cut back on utilities, or make other painful trade-offs to afford healthcare expenses over the last 12 months as prices continue to rise across the economy.
“Grocery, utility, and healthcare bills are piling up, and Americans are increasingly turning to credit cards—some carrying interest rates exceeding 22%—just to make ends meet,” Jennifer Zhang, policy, research, and data Analyst at Protect Borrowers and co-author of the new analysis, said Tuesday.
“President Trump promised to tackle crushing credit card interest rates by January 20 of this year," Zhang added, "but that deadline has come and gone."
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