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harriet hageman
As We Choke and Sweat, Big Oil Is Trying to Buy Its Way Out of Accountability
Fossil fuel-funded lawmakers have introduced legislation that would dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield the industry from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.
Jul 25, 2026
The 2026 heatwave is a global phenomenon, inflicting extreme temperatures on billions of people from the United States to Europe and South Asia.
Extreme heat is deadly. In Europe, an estimated 10,000 people have died from heat this summer, and the official count of a few dozen deaths in India and Pakistan is likely to be too low by several orders of magnitude, according to a recent scientific study.
Dozens of Americans died from heat over the Fourth of July weekend alone—a toll that’s still unacceptably high.
Meanwhile, much of the country has been blanketed in smoke from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota, triggered by the hot and dry conditions arising from the heatwaves. Like heat, wildfire smoke is also deadly. A similar wildfire smoke event in 2023 led to an estimated 33,000 premature deaths in the US alone.
Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.
Scientists have found that all of these regional heatwaves were made likelier and more severe because of human-caused climate change, mainly attributable to burning fossil fuels.
Major oil and gas corporations have known for decades that their business model would cause disasters like these. Their response was to minimize or even hide their findings to keep the public in the dark about the risks—and pay front groups to deceive them.
This drive to preserve profits at the expense of humanity has understandably caused outrage. Eleven US states, two tribes, and dozens of local governments are suing fossil fuel corporations for damages for the harm they’ve suffered from climate disasters.
State legislators have also joined the fray. New York and Vermont have passed “Climate Superfund” bills that require fossil fuel corporations to pay for economic losses arising from extreme heat, wildfires, droughts, hurricanes, and flooding. Similar laws are being considered in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Rhode Island.
The US has experienced more than $200 billion in climate damages every year since 2016, and it’s only fair that fossil fuel corporations pay for some of the damage caused by their reckless greed.
But instead of trying to make Big Oil pay up, some lawmakers in Congress are trying to do the opposite. Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) have introduced House and Senate bills, respectively, that seek to dismiss ongoing climate damages lawsuits, shield Big Oil from similar future cases, pre-empt state Climate Superfund laws, and—most outrageously—block any state level regulation of greenhouse gases.
This is legislation expressly designed to protect a powerful, wealthy industry from having to face any accountability for harming the public. And when you follow the money, you can see why.
Rep. Hageman has received more than $23,000 in campaign money from the petroleum refining and marketing industry in this cycle, making it the second biggest industry (after sugar) backing her candidacy. She’s also received thousands more from other fossil fuel interests.
Also in this cycle alone, Sen. Cruz has gotten more than $129,000 in contributions from different segments of the oil and gas industry.
Effectively, these legislators—like too many others—were bought by a powerful industry to put their corporate interests over the health, and the very lives, of the broader public. This is naked corruption.
And if we want the kind of democracy we need and deserve, the rest of us shouldn’t tolerate it anymore.
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Climate Defenders Warn GOP Immunity Bill Puts 'Big Oil Above the Law'
“Such corporate impunity would twist the knife of the climate crisis that is already directly harming people across the country," said one campaigner.
Apr 17, 2026
Green groups warned Friday that Big Oil-backed Republican legislation would give fossil fuel companies immunity from laws or lawsuits aimed at holding them accountable for their role in causing the climate emergency.
On Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced a bill co-sponsored by Sens. Ted Budd (R-NC), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), and Mike Lee (R-Utah) that, if passed, would "prohibit liability against those engaged in the mining, extraction, production, refinement, transportation, distribution, marketing, manufacture, or sale of energy for damages or injunctive or other relief from the use of their products, and for other purposes."
Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.) on Friday introduced the House version of the legislation, dubbed the Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026, "to protect American energy from leftist legal crusades punishing lawful activity," as her office put it.
🚨After months of fossil fuel industry lobbying, Republican lawmakers have introduced federal legislation that would give oil and gas companies immunity from any laws or lawsuits that aim to hold them accountable for their role in the climate crisis. Time to get loud: 📣 NO IMMUNITY FOR BIG OIL 📣
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— Center for Climate Integrity (@climateintegrity.org) April 17, 2026 at 12:30 PM
If passed, the legislation would ban retroactive climate liability lawsuits, dismiss any such litigation pending upon the law's enactment, void all state energy penalty laws, and affirm that the federal government maintains exclusive authority and jurisdiction over the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and other interstate environmental standards.
Other Republican-controlled states including Tennesseee and Utah have recently passed such legislation, and others—including Iowa, Louisiana, and Oklahoma—have introduced similar bills.
“This blatant championing of some of the world’s largest polluters shows how far certain elected officials will go to undermine democratic policymaking and deny people and communities access to justice," Kathy Mulvey, climate accountability campaign director at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Friday.
"No company should be above the law, especially those that planned, funded, and continue to engage in a coordinated decadeslong campaign to protect their profits by deceiving the public and blocking climate action," Mulvey continued.
"Such corporate impunity would twist the knife of the climate crisis that is already directly harming people across the country," she added. "Congress must not capitulate to wealthy special interests. Communities deserve the right to hold polluters accountable for the deadly and costly harms they are causing.”
Former Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement that “every elected official who cares about the interests of their constituents more than those of corporate polluters should oppose this disgraceful proposal."
"Juries are a fundamental bastion of democracy, and it’s beyond dangerous to allow powerful and wealthy corporations to shield themselves from ever having to face jurors’ judgment," he added.
The Center for Climate Integrity said the bill "would put Big Oil above the law."
“Big Oil companies have raked in massive profits at the pump while lying to the American people about the catastrophic harm of their products, and now they want to deny Americans their rightful day in court and stick taxpayers with the bill for the mess they made," Center for Climate Integrity president Richard Wiles said Friday. "If fossil fuel companies have done nothing wrong, why do they need immunity?”
While these and other climate advocates denounced the bill, their congressional sponsors—and those lawmakers' fossil fuel industry campaign donors—applauded its introduction.
“Energy security is national security, and we will not self-sabotage our critical industries with a cascade of costly lawsuits and extreme penalties that jeopardize American drilling,” Hageman said in a statement. “America’s energy producers should be protected from the dangerous legal precedent that would be set by the retroactive punishment of lawful activity.”
American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers president and CEO Chet Thompson and American Petroleum Institute president and CEO Mike Sommers said in a joint statement, "We thank Sen. Cruz and Rep. Hageman for introducing legislation to stop a growing patchwork of state laws and lawsuits that threaten American energy and risk raising costs for consumers.”
“These efforts to retroactively penalize companies for lawfully meeting consumer demand are misguided and counterproductive," the lobbyists added. "Congress should act decisively to reaffirm federal authority over national energy policy and end this activist-driven state overreach.”
Eleven states—California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont—along with the District of Columbia and dozens of city, county, and tribal governments have ongoing lawsuits seeking to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for lying to the public about their products’ role in causing and worsening climate change.
On Friday, the right-wing US Supreme Court unanimously issued an important procedural ruling that certain environmental damage lawsuits—in this case, one challenging Chevron's destruction of coastal wetlands in Louisiana—can be moved from state to generally friendlier federal courts. This, after a jury in Plaquemines Parish ordered Chevron and two other companies to pay $744 million in damages for harming coastal wetlands, a verdict that was appealed.
The US Supreme Court's decision came as its justices prepare to hear Suncor Energy Inc. v. County Commissioners of Boulder County, a case in which the plaintiffs—three Suncor entities and ExxonMobil—are seeking to relocate a climate damages lawsuit from Colorado to federal court.
Big Oil-backed efforts to relocate cases to friendlier forums come amid wins for climate defenders, most notably Held v. Montana, a historic 2024 state court ruling in favor of youth-led plaintiffs based on the Montana Constitution's right to "a clean and healthful environment."
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