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josh shapiro
Climate Week Is Here; Our Governors Are Still Siding with Polluters
Frontline communities are exposing blue state governors that sell themselves as climate leaders while favoring polluters.
Sep 23, 2025
I grew up in New Mexico, where oil rigs appear in every direction and wildfire smoke fills the summer air. For years, I’ve sat through state climate hearings and planning sessions, believing our leaders might finally act with courage. Instead, what I’ve seen is a machine built to protect industry and silence communities.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham sells New Mexico as a climate leader, but her record tells another story. This year alone, her administration advanced industry schemes like the Strategic Water Supply Act, moving forward with rules to recycle toxic fracking waste.
This comes in addition to leaving basic protections like a drilling setback law off the table and welcoming Wall Street giant Blackstone to place a bid to take over PNM, our largest utility in New Mexico—handing over our energy future to corporate profiteers.
This isn’t climate leadership. It’s industry power dressed up as progress—at the expense of our health, water, and future.
So here is our challenge to Governors Lujan Grisham, Shapiro, and Newsom: If you truly oppose Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, prove it.
Pennsylvania and California tell a similar story.
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro brands himself as a pragmatic moderate. In reality, he green-lit new gas plants, advanced fossil fuel-powered data centers, and supported liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals—projects that lock in fossil fuel expansion while exposing Pennsylvanians to deadly risks.
Worse, his administration is backing legislation like HB 502 and SB 939 that strip municipalities of the power to reject harmful facilities, in direct violation of Pennsylvania’s constitutional right to clean air and water. Families already sick from fracking are being sacrificed so Shapiro can keep industry happy and court national credibility. That isn’t pragmatism. It’s siding with polluters over people.
Gov. Gavin Newsom positions himself as a global climate champion. But in California, frontline communities experience a different reality. Basic health protections like the oil drilling setback law remain under attack, while projects like the Sable Pipeline continue to threaten communities and ecosystems.
Newsom touts his “climate leadership” on the world stage, yet at home he delays, waters down, or sidesteps measures that would phase out fossil fuels. Recently, Democratic lawmakers—backed by Newsom—passed a “climate” package that extends California’s cap-and-trade system for another 15 years while also permitting new drilling. It’s yet another regulatory giveaway to Big Oil. California is sold as a model of climate action, but the truth is clear: Fossil fuel power still dictates the terms.
The pattern is undeniable: governors who pose as climate leaders while protecting fossil fuel interests. Their playbook is the same—adopt the language; sign onto climate alliances; and then push carbon capture, cap-and-trade systems, produced water, hydrogen, and LNG as “solutions.” These are not solutions. They are lifelines for oil and gas, designed to extend extraction.
This is not accidental. It is a deliberate political strategy—a blue-state echo of US President Donald Trump’s fossil fuel agenda. Yet the result is the same: communities poisoned, democracy sidelined, industry shielded. The message to frontline communities is clear: Our lives are expendable if they threaten the profits of fossil fuel companies.
That’s why this Climate Week in New York City, frontline communities from New Mexico, California, and Pennsylvania are coming together to expose the truth. Behind the speeches and pledges, our governors are siding with polluters. They cannot continue to market themselves as climate champions while advancing the fossil fuel agenda at home.
We know what real climate leadership looks like. A just transition—led by communities and workers, not corporations—can phase out fossil fuels, create union jobs, and protect public health. It means rejecting false solutions. It means putting water, air, and people before industry. It means confronting the political power of fossil fuels head-on.
As the 2026 gubernatorial races approach, young people like me are paying attention. We don’t just want new leaders. We demand leadership that stands up to polluters and delivers a future worth living in.
So here is our challenge to Governors Lujan Grisham, Shapiro, and Newsom: If you truly oppose Trump’s fossil fuel agenda, prove it. Stop greenwashing. Stop silencing frontline communities. Stop pushing industry scams dressed up as climate policy.
Because climate action without justice isn’t action—it is betrayal. And frontline communities are not backing down until we win the future we deserve.
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Gov. Shapiro and Family Evacuated From Governor's Mansion After Arson Attack
"Thank God no one was injured and the fire was extinguished," Shapiro said.
Apr 13, 2025
Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were evacuated early Sunday morning after an apparent arson attack on the official governor's residence.
"Last night at about 2:00 am, my family and I woke up to bangs on the door from the Pennsylvania State Police after an arsonist set fire to the Governor’s Residence in Harrisburg," Shapiro said in a statement posted on social media.
The Harrisburg Bureau of Fire responded to the fire, which "caused a significant amount of damage to a portion of the residence" before it was "successfully extinguished," the Pennsylvania State Police said in a statement. The fire was in a different part of the house from where the governor and his family were staying.
"While the investigation is ongoing, the State Police is prepared to say at this time that this was an act of arson," their statement read.
Shapiro was considered a leading contender to serve as former Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate in the 2024 election. He has been floated as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in the 2028 election.
Shapiro and his family celebrated Passover the night before the fire.
In his message, Shapiro expressed gratitude for the first responders.
"Thank God no one was injured and the fire was extinguished," he said.
Police offered up to $10,000 for any information that leads to an arrest and conviction.
"No additional information will be released at this time. However, this is a fast-moving investigation, and details will be provided as appropriate," the police concluded.
The attack comes as there is growing concern over political violence in the U.S., as The New York Times explained:
Recent high-profile incidents of violence directed at political figures have helped feed fear and unease among Americans, polls have shown. Before the presidential election last year, for instance, about 4 in 10 voters said they were extremely or very concerned about violent attempts to challenge the outcome. The assassination attempt against President Trump last summer took place in Butler, Pennsylvania, a little over 200 miles west of Harrisburg.
Pennsylvania's Lieutenant Governor Austin Davis, a Democrat, was one of several state leaders who spoke out against politically motivated violence in their response to the fire.
"I won't speculate on motivations," he wrote on social media, "but I will say that targeting elected officials and their family members with violence is never acceptable. These sorts of acts deter good people from pursuing public service at a time when we desperately need more Americans to participate in our democracy."
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'Hellscape': Microsoft Deal Would Reopen Three Mile Island Nuclear Plant to Power AI
"This is another chapter in a nightmare that won't end," a campaigner said.
Sep 20, 2024
The corporation that owns the shuttered nuclear plant on Three Mile Island on Friday announced a deal with Microsoft to reopen the facility to provide power to the tech company for data centers using artificial intelligence.
Three Mile Island is well-known as the site of largest nuclear disaster in U.S. history—a reactor there, Unit 2, partially melted down in 1979. However, the site's other reactor, Unit 1, continued to operate safely until 2019, when it was closed for economic reasons.
With the help of tax breaks from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), plant owner Constellation Energy plans to spend $1.6 billion to restart Unit 1, with all of the power going to Microsoft for the first 20 years. Microsoft and other tech firms use inordinate amounts of energy to power data centers used for AI and have advocated for nuclear as a zero-emissions power source.
Though it doesn't emit carbon, nuclear power's downsides make it the subject of fierce opposition from many environmental and public safety groups.
Friday's deal, combining nuclear power and AI, which also poses great safety risks, was too much for The Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch, who quipped that "the hellscape of modern life" had been captured in one headline.
Local campaigners vowed to push against the reopening and keep the area free of nuclear activity.
"We will challenge this proposal at every venue that is available for us," Eric Epstein, a former chairman of Three Mile Island Alert, a campaign group, told the Inquirer.
"This is another chapter in a nightmare that won't end," he added.
Siri, define the hellscape of modern life in one headline https://t.co/miQMSWROmp
— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) September 20, 2024
Three Mile Island would be the first decommissioned U.S. nuclear plant to reopen, and the first to provide all of its power to one corporation, according to The New York Times. Microsoft and Constellation didn't disclose the financial details of the deal.
About 19% of electricity in the U.S. comes from nuclear power, and a drive for "clean energy," as well as the IRA credits, have spurred growth in the sector. Microsoft co-founder and former CEO Bill Gates is a vocal proponent and has started his own nuclear company, TerraPower, which is building a plant in Wyoming.
The Three Mile Island project, expected to get the plant back online in 2028, still needs regulatory approval at multiple levels. Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, has already come out in support of the plan.
A study commissioned by the Pennsylvania Building & Construction Trades Council, which represents more than 115 local unions, found that reopening the plant would create 3,400 direct and indirect jobs, including 600 at the plant itself, which is in the middle of the Susquehanna River, just south of Harrisburg, the state capital. The plant's reopening is seen by some community leaders as the revival of an "economic anchor in a region beset with financial hardship," according to The Washington Post.
Pennsylvania has five active nuclear plants, including two owned by Constellation, whose stock price shot up on Friday morning after the Three Mile Island announcement was made. The company and other industry backers celebrated the symbolic victory of restarting the plant.
"If anything says nuclear power is here to stay and expand, it's Three Mile Island reopening!" Amir Adnani, CEO of Uranium Energy Corp, wrote on social media.
Epstein, the campaigner, said the focus should be finishing the cleanup from the 1979 disaster. About 99% of the Unit 2's fuel has been removed to Idaho, but the last 1% has proven difficult to deal with.
"First things first, remove the waste from the island, and clean up [Unit 2]," Epstein said.
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