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For Immediate Release
August, 06 2024, 10:32am EDT
Contact:
Valentina Stackl, valentina@priceofoil.org
OCUS reaction to Kamala Harris Selecting Tim Walz as VP
In response to reports of Kamala Harris’s selecting Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate, Collin Rees, Political Director of Oil Change U.S., said:
“Kamala Harris picking Tim Walz as her running mate is an encouraging sign that she’s willing to listen to the Democratic base. Walz’s collaboration with a progressive legislature in Minnesota has led to significant wins for working people, including important climate victories with a 100% carbon-free by 2040 law and a $2 billion climate spending program. At the same time, his lack of action to stop the Line 3 pipeline shows a troubling deference to fossil fuel interests. This campaign is an opportunity for Walz to put people before fossil fuel profits.
“The Harris-Walz campaign must continue to be bold and put forward a visionary agenda to address the climate crisis and end fossil fuels with a just transition. Our future hinges on leaders who will prioritize transitioning away from fossil fuels and tackling the climate crisis with urgency.”
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
'Filled With Lies': Trump White House Releases False History of Jan. 6
"It is past time for 25th Amendment remedies," said one critic.
Jan 06, 2026
To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the deadly riots incited by President Donald Trump at the US Capitol Building, the Trump White House on Tuesday unveiled a website loaded with false claims about the events that took place on January 6, 2021.
The official White House January 6 website features multiple falsehoods and distortions about the Trump-incited Capitol riots, including brazenly false claims about the Capitol Police "escalating" tensions with rioters by firing "tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters."
In reality, Trump supporters stormed past police barricades that had been set up at the Capitol and then smashed windows to enter the building and illegally disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump falsely claimed to have won.
The website also blames former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to go along with Trump's unconstitutional scheme to unilaterally discard certified election results from key swing states, which would have put the election results in the hands of Republican-controlled state legislatures to falsely certify Trump as the winner.
The Trump White House's revisionist history of the riots falsely claims that rioter Ashli Babbitt was "murdered in cold blood" by Capitol Police, when in reality she was shot while trying to break into into the Speaker's Lobby after being warned multiple times by officers to stand back.
The Capitol rioters garner significant praise from the White House website, which falsely portrays them as peaceful demonstrators who fell victim to the actions of Capitol Police and overly zealous Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors.
"On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol—many mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ," the website says.
The blatantly false claims on the website drew a horrified reaction from many critics, including some journalists who were at the Capitol on that day and witnesses the riots firsthand.
"Never forget that Trump attempted a coup to stay in power after losing reelection, ending with the violent insurrection he incited that left 140 cops injured, five dead," wrote HuffPost White House correspondent SV Dáte on X.
"The White House's new January 6 page is filled with lies, misrepresentation, and reality denial," wrote Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins on Bluesky. "It's a clear attempt to rewrite history and frame Trump in heroic terms."
Author Mike Rothschild accused the White House of engaging in historical revisionism on par with the government depicted in George Orwell's classic novel 1984, arguing that Trump and his underlings of embracing "an alternate reality so hackneyed and obviously fake that it would make Orwell stick his head in a wood chipper."
Victor Ray, a sociologist at the University of Iowa, raised alarms about what the January 6 White House website says about Trump's mental health.
"This is batshit," he wrote. "The White House is doing alternate reality history. It is past time for 25th Amendment remedies."
Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, reacted to the section of the website blaming Pence by describing it as an ominous sign that a future coup attempt by Trump to illegally remain in power might actually succeed.
"Trump replaced Pence on the ticket with someone he fully expects would carry out this deranged scheme if he has the opportunity, instead betraying the Constitution," he wrote, referring to Vice President JD Vance, who criticized Pence for fulfilling his constitutional duty and certifying the 2020 election results.
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Green Group Warns Trump's Offshore Drilling Plan Risks 4,000+ Additional Oil Spills
The Center for Biological Diversity estimates that Trump's new five-year offshore drilling plan could release over 12 million gallons of oil into ocean waters around the US.
Jan 06, 2026
President Donald Trump's plan to dramatically expand offshore drilling could result in thousands of additional oil spills and put dozens of endangered species at increased risk, according to a new analysis by a leading conservation group.
In November, the US Department of the Interior published a draft plan to expand drilling over the next five years, replacing a more restrictive one drawn up by the Biden administration.
The proposal includes as many as 34 potential offshore lease sales across American coasts, covering approximately 1.27 billion acres, far more than previous administrations have offered.
The new plan opens up drilling in 21 areas off the coast of Alaska, seven in the Gulf of Mexico, and six along the Pacific Coast. These are in addition to 36 new offshore oil lease sales mandated in last year's Republican budget reconciliation package.
An analysis published Tuesday by the Center for Biological Diversity found that the increase in drilling could lead to an additional 4,232 oil spills and dump an extra 12.1 million gallons of oil into ocean waters.
The calculation is based on average spill rates from pipelines and platforms from 1974 to 2015. However, it does not even include catastrophic events like the 2010 BP oil spill, which resulted in more than 210 million gallons of oil being released into the Gulf of Mexico.
"Trump’s ridiculously reckless drilling plan could cause thousands of new oil spills, threatening almost every US coast,” said Kristen Monsell, the oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The group estimates, based on prior figures, that 2,627 of those spills—more than half—will occur in the Gulf of Mexico, releasing about 7.5 million gallons of oil into the ecosystem.
The Gulf is home to several endangered species likely to be affected by the new drilling. The black-capped petrel's population is in rapid decline as pollution has destroyed its food source. Rice's whale has only about 50 individuals remaining and lost 20% of its population in the BP spill. Kemp's ridley sea turtle, which has experienced a population rebound after dropping to near extinction, would be imperiled by another spill.
In the Pacific, sea otters are uniquely vulnerable to oil spills because they coat their fur, which acts as insulation against the cold. Killer and blue whales, whose populations have been nearly wiped out, would also be in danger.
Meanwhile, Arctic animals already affected by climate change—like bowhead whales, Pacific walruses, and beluga whales—all face potential further damage to their habitats due to drilling off the coast of Alaska.
“Nobody wants beaches and marine life coated in crude, but that’ll be our future if Trump’s scheme goes forward," Monsell said. "Every new drilling project signs us up for decades of problems, and our wildlife and coastal economies will suffer the most.”
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‘Breathtaking Cruelty’: Trump Cuts Billions in Federal Childcare Funds for Democrat-Led States
"Rather than an isolated decision, this is part of a clear and dangerous pattern" in which the Trump administration has attacked working families, said one advocate.
Jan 06, 2026
The Trump administration is portraying its decision to slash $10 billion in funding to five Democrat-led states as a response to a scandal in Minnesota, where dozens of people have been convicted of stealing public money through the state's social services system—but advocates and Democratic lawmakers on Tuesday condemned what they called an act of "political retribution" that will punish working families who have nothing to do with the recent fraud cases.
"Rather than an isolated decision, this is part of a clear and dangerous pattern," said Kristen Crowell, executive director of the advocacy group Fair Share America.
Crowell pointed to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that was passed by Republicans last year, and said that along with the cuts announced Monday, "these policies amount to a coordinated attack on working families."
The US Health and Human Services Department (HHS) said the cuts would impact New York, California, Colorado, Minnesota, and Illinois.
About $7 billion in funding for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program will be impacted, reducing cash assistance that is provided to low-income families with children. The five states will also collectively lose nearly $2.4 billion in assistance for working parents through the Child Care and Development Fund and $870 million for social services grants.
The funding freeze follows the administration's suspension of $185 million in annual aid to childcare centers in Minnesota and a pause it announced on childcare funding for all states until officials could prove verification data about how the money was being spent—a response to what Deputy HHS Secretary Jim O'Neill called "blatant fraud that appears to be rampant in Minnesota and across the country."
A spokesperson for HHS, Andrew Nixon, told CNN Tuesday that the new funding cuts for the five states were moving forward because "for too long, Democrat-led states and governors have been complicit in allowing massive amounts of fraud to occur under their watch. Under the Trump administration, we are ensuring that federal taxpayer dollars are being used for legitimate purposes. We will ensure these states are following the law and protecting hard-earned taxpayer money.”
The administration did not point to any evidence that the five states have used taxpayer money fraudulently in their social services programs.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) accused President Donald Trump of "playing politics with our children's lives," while Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) posited that Colorado was being targeted once again in retaliation for the state's prosecution of a former county clerk over her involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
In addition to responding to Minnesota's fraud scandal by cutting funding for millions of families in four other states, Trump has cited the controversy as a reason to further ramp up immigration enforcement as he's placed blame on Minnesota's entire Somali community of about 80,000 people for the fraud. Members of the Somali diaspora have been charged with defrauding the state government.
Trump said Sunday that "every one of them should be forced to leave this country," referring to all Somalis, and is deploying thousands of federal agents to Minnesota to intensify anti-immigration operations there.
In the case of the childcare funding cuts, the administration's decision will mean "higher costs, fewer slots, and more families forced into impossible choices between caring for their children and keeping a job," said Crowell.
"Beyond the immediate human harm, this agenda undermines foundational elements of our economy: the care infrastructure that makes work possible and the purchasing power of the working class," she added. "When parents can’t afford childcare, when families lose health coverage, when hunger rises, our workforce shrinks, productivity falls, families are forced to go without. This is not fiscal responsibility—it’s economic sabotage, paid for by America’s kids.”
On social media, one commentator pointed to the right-wing policy blueprint Project 2025 as evidence that the administration ultimately aims to gut the childcare industry altogether—ending federal funding for large-scale childcare programs and supporting parents "directly" instead so they can stay home with their children.
"It’s not about fraud. It’s about defunding childcare," they wrote. "While not offering a real financial alternative. While cutting programs like Head Start. While rolling back access to birth control and abortion. That’s not support. That’s coercion."
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