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martin heinrich
Western Groups Warn Democrats: 'No Deal With Devil on Permit Reform'
The coalition organizer called on party leaders "to withdraw from negotiations and stand with us and the public lands, waters, and wildlife of the West to build momentum for a progressive permit reform effort."
Apr 16, 2026
Amid permitting reform negotiations and votes in the Republican-led Congress this week, dozens of organizations from the US West on Thursday urged Democratic leaders to reject "a reactive capitulation to energy and technology industry demands and the Trump administration's deliberately engineered regulatory chaos."
"There is simply no precedent for what this administration has wrought, and permitting reform proposals under consideration—which scapegoat environmental laws—will only deepen the harm," warned 73 community, conservation, faith, and Indigenous groups in a letter to the top Democrats in each chamber, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), as well as those on two relevant Senate panels.
In December, 11 Democrats came under fire for voting with nearly all Republicans in the US House of Representatives to advance the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act. Led by retiring Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), it would amend the crucial National Environmental Policy Act, a frequent target of climate polluters and their allies in Congress.
With the SPEED Act pending in the Senate—where the GOP generally needs some Democratic support to advance legislation, due to its narrow majority and the filibuster rule—House Committee on Energy and Commerce Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) took to the chamber's floor on Wednesday to promote three other bills. The FENCES Act, FIRE Act, and RED Tape Act, he said, "are an essential part of the committee's broader efforts on permitting reform and align with White House permitting priorities."
The House passed the FENCES and RED Tape bills on Thursday. Golden and Democratic Reps. Jim Costa (Calif.), Henry Cuellar (Texas), Don Davis (NC), Adam Gray (Calif.), and Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.) joined Republicans in backing the former. Those Democrats, plus Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (Texas), also voted with the GOP for the latter.
Meanwhile, in the upper chamber, Republicans on Thursday passed a House-approved resolution to reverse a 20-year moratorium on mining in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Still, Senate Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) told Politico's E&E News earlier this week that "we're making steady progress" on permitting reform talks, "and it would not be unreasonable to have something to show our caucuses by the August recess."
The coalition of Western groups argued Thursday that "given Congress' ideological composition and alignment with the Trump administration's agenda, any permitting legislation that could conceivably emerge from this Congress and be signed into law by the president would unacceptably erode bedrock community and environmental safeguards, exclude the public from federal decision-making, and diminish the transparency and accountability now demanded of government agencies by federal law."
The groups pointed to various examples, including what critics called President Donald Trump's recent $1 billion "taxpayer-funded bribe" to get TotalEnergies to cancel its planned wind farms in favor of oil and gas projects, as well as his so-called God Squad's unprecedented exemption allowing fossil fuel operations in the Gulf of Mexico to ignore policies intended to protect endangered species. The letter also stresses that "Congress has not checked this abuse—it has enabled it."
"Rather than press forward with ill-fated legislation in this fraught moment, we therefore ask that you stand with us in defense of climate action and the public lands, waters, and wildlife, and communities of the West," the coalition wrote to Whitehouse, Schumer, Jeffries, and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Martin Heinrich (D-NM).
"It is this fight—in this moment—that can build shared trust and set the conditions for constructive legislation that strengthens and revitalizes the federal government's capacity to serve the public interest," the coalition continued. "This means, to us, the build-out, protection, and restoration of green infrastructure (built or natural) and the full integration of ecological and community considerations into climate and energy policy as a precondition of our ability to thrive in kinship with an abundant world."
The letter urging "no deal with [the] devil on permit reform" was authored by Western Environmental Law Center executive director Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, who stressed in a statement that "the first rule of negotiation is that it's impossible to reach workable solutions with bad-faith actors."
"Today's Republican Congress has shown unprecedented hostility to climate, environmental, and community protections," he said. "It is glaringly obvious that any changes to our bedrock environmental laws signed by President Trump would sacrifice far too much and compromise the imperative to foster a just and equitable transition to an economy powered by renewable energy."
Schlenker-Goodrich called on Heinrich and Whitehouse "to withdraw from negotiations and stand with us and the public lands, waters, and wildlife of the West to build momentum for a progressive permit reform effort with stronger bargaining power after the midterm elections" in November.
Other signatories include leaders at the Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Justice Alliance, Friends of the Shasta River, GreenLatinos of New Mexico, Orange County Coastkeeper, Oregon Wild, Sierra Club Montana Chapter, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, Umpqua Watersheds, Western Watersheds Project, WildEarth Guardians, Wyoming Wilderness Association, and more.
"Deregulatory permitting reform right now only means the fossil fuel industry will be forever dominant in this nation, which is why they are the biggest cheerleader for making a deal now," said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "Democrats must focus on fighting the lawless Trump administration and the fossil fuel industry, not cut deals with people that only seek to destroy clean energy and a livable future."
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US Families Set to Pay Combined $330 Billion in Tariff Costs This Year—Over $2,500 Per Household
Sen. Maggie Hassan said that while paying back businesses hit by Trump’s illegal tariffs, the administration “refuses to provide relief for families.”
Mar 13, 2026
American families could pay a combined $330 billion this year as a result of President Donald Trump's aggressive tariff policy, according to a report released Friday by the Democratic minority on the Joint Economic Committee in Congress.
Although the Supreme Court ruled Trump's use of emergency powers to pass sweeping tariffs illegal last month, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has said the government is expected to bring in "virtually unchanged tariff revenue in 2026" compared with the previous year, as Trump has continued to enact new tariffs using different legal authorities in hopes of getting around the high court's ruling.
If Bessent's projection holds true, the committee's Democrats estimated that the average US household would pay more than $2,500 in tariff costs this year, a considerable increase from the more than $1,700 the committee found Americans paid in 2025.
The minority said it reached its findings based on official data on the amount of tariff revenue collected by the Treasury since 2025 combined with independent research from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which found last month that only about 5% of tariff costs are borne by foreign entities. About 30% is taken on by domestic companies, and the remaining 65% is passed on to consumers.
There is already somewhat of an answer in the works for businesses to recoup the illegal duties they've had to pay. Earlier this month, the US Court of International Trade (CIT) ruled that the Treasury Department and Customs and Border Protection must return $166 billion to around 330,000 importers hit by tariffs, including thousands of companies that have filed lawsuits seeking to recover their money.
However, the Trump administration has said it could take more than 4.4 million hours to process all refund requests for more than 53 million entries subject to the now-illegal tariffs.
On Thursday, Brandon Lord, an official with US Customs and Border Protection responsible for tariff collections, informed the court that CBP is about 40-80% done creating a system that will allow importers and brokers to submit refund requests. He said in a filing last week that it could be operational as soon as mid-April.
But Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), the ranking member of the joint committee, lamented on Friday that while businesses are going to be reimbursed with interest, "the Trump administration refuses to provide relief for families" and is instead "choosing to institute new tariffs that will push prices even higher.”
On Thursday, Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), another committee member, introduced a bill to create a new tax rebate for individuals and families hit by tariffs.
The so-called "Working Families Refund" would provide a $600 rebate to individuals earning $90,000 or less annually and to head-of-household filers earning $120,000 or less. Joint filers earning $180,000 or less per year would receive a $1,200 rebate. Each family would also receive an additional $600 for each dependent child.
"This is money that belongs to working families—not the CEOs of Walmart or Amazon or any other big corporation,” Heinrich said.
Trump has pressed ahead with his tariffs despite their rising unpopularity. In an NBC News poll last week, 55% of voters said the tariffs have hurt the economy, while just 33% said they have helped. And as his newly launched war with Iran has heightened economic instability, 62% of voters said they disapproved of his handling of inflation and the cost of living.
Seeking to stop Trump from squeezing a political win out of his policy's failure, Heinrich's bill also forbids the president from putting his own name on the tariff rebate checks, as he famously did with Covid-19 stimulus checks sent months before the 2020 election.
“The president may call the affordability crisis a ‘hoax,’ but working people feel it every time they pay for groceries or everyday essentials," Heinrich said. "This bill will return the money lost to Trump’s tariffs back to the people who paid the price.”
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Another Senator Backs Platner, Saying 'Democratic Party Needs to Win Back Working People'
New Mexico Sen. Martin Heinrich said the Mainer is "building a movement around folks who work hard for their family and community."
Mar 10, 2026
US Senate hopeful Graham Platner's momentum continues to grow, with yet another senator bucking the Democratic Party establishment to endorse him in Maine's June primary.
"Graham Platner is focused on delivering for Mainers, not billionaire donors,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) on Tuesday in comments reported by Politico. “And he’s exactly the person the Democratic Party needs to win back working people.”
Polls show Platner, the progressive 41-year-old Marine-turned-oyster farmer, comfortably ahead of Maine's centrist Democratic Gov. Janet Mills for the right to challenge the state's five-term Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in November.
The seat will be an essential pickup if Democrats hope to retake the chamber in 2026.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has pushed for Mills to get the nomination over Platner. This is despite polling last week from Quantus Insights, which showed Mills trailing Collins by over 1%, and Platne leading the Republican by more than 5% among likely voters.
Platner—a backer of Medicare for All and a billionaire wealth tax who has fiercely opposed aggressive US military interventions—first received the backing of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Earlier this month, Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) became the first Democratic senator to endorse Platner, in defiance of party leadership, calling him "the candidate that can win."
Heinrich, who has emphasized the necessity of making the Democratic Party a "bigger tent" and bringing in “new" and "younger" leadership, has admired Platner's candidacy from afar for months.
Responding to Platner's campaign launch video, in which he declared that "the enemy is the oligarchy," Heinrich wrote on social media in October, "We need more candidates like this."
New Mexico's three-term senator is now the third member of the chamber to endorse Platner, who said he was "honored" to have him as a "future colleague."
"He's building a movement around folks who work hard for their family and community—folks who deserve a Senator fighting in their corner," Heinrich said. "I’m proud to endorse and help send him to the Senate in November."
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