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In the wake of new federal data showing that U.S. inflation rose again in May after decelerating slightly the previous month, progressive lawmakers, economists, and union leaders on Friday tried to hammer home their argument that corporate profiteering is a major driver of the price hikes that are eroding workers' modest wage gains and heightening economic pain nationwide.
"While families are feeling the sting of soaring energy costs, oil and gas companies are cheering the nearly $100 billion in profits they've already made this year off families' pain at the pump," said Dr. Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative.
"The same corporations that are making record profits while busting workers' unions are raising prices on working families."
"It's past time for Congress to pass an excess profits tax to stop the outrageous war profiteering by Big Oil," Mabud added, referring to the benefits the U.S. fossil fuel industry has reaped from Russia's assault on Ukraine.
The narrative that corporate greed is one of the key culprits behind inflation, which is now at a 40-year high, resonates greatly with the U.S. public, according to recent survey data. A poll conducted last month by Data for Progress showed that 71% of all U.S. voters blame corporate profit-seeking for rising inflation.
But despite the argument's popularity--and alignment with data showing that record-high corporate profits are a disproportionate contributor to inflation--the Biden administration has been increasingly hesitant to deploy it in recent months even as inflationary pressures persist and businesses' net incomes grow exponentially in some sectors.
During an event hosted by The New York Times on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outright rejected the notion that corporate greed is to blame for inflation, saying, "Demand and supply is largely driving inflation."
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, meanwhile, has openly suggested that wage increases are part of the problem, telling reporters during a press conference last month that the country needs to "get wages down" in order to tackle inflation.
While progressive economists have acknowledged that a number of factors, from supply chain issues caused by the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, are pushing inflation to levels not seen in decades, they have nevertheless maintained that corporate profiteering is a significant culprit.
"Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits," Robert Reich, the former secretary of the U.S. Labor Department, wrote last month. "Prices are surging--but let's be clear: corporations are not raising prices simply because of the increasing costs of supplies and labor. They could easily absorb these higher costs, but instead they are passing them on to consumers and even raising prices higher than those cost increases."
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, echoed Reich on Friday.
"Make no mistake: the same corporations that are making record profits while busting workers' unions are raising prices on working families," Henry wrote on Twitter. "If our nation's leaders are serious about addressing inflation, they'll hold these big corporations accountable for their price gouging."
In recent weeks, as inflation numbers have remained stubbornly high and corporate executives have continued boasting about their profits, congressional Democrats have put forth several proposals aimed at combating price gouging and reining in excess profits via taxation.
Led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in the House and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a group of Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation in March that would hit large and highly profitable oil companies with "a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the pre-pandemic average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019."
While the White House has signaled it would be willing to support a windfall profits tax on Big Oil, Democrats' bill has not received a vote in the House or Senate.
Last month, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) along with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) unveiled a measure that would empower federal regulators to crack down on corporate price gouging. Warren has specifically called out the meat industry for its pricing practices throughout the pandemic.
"Giant corporations are using inflation as a cover story to jack up prices and pad profits," Warren tweeted Friday. "Let's pass my bill to crack down on corporate price gouging. And let's pass our windfall profits tax on Big Oil, which includes rebate checks for Americans struggling with gas prices."
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In the wake of new federal data showing that U.S. inflation rose again in May after decelerating slightly the previous month, progressive lawmakers, economists, and union leaders on Friday tried to hammer home their argument that corporate profiteering is a major driver of the price hikes that are eroding workers' modest wage gains and heightening economic pain nationwide.
"While families are feeling the sting of soaring energy costs, oil and gas companies are cheering the nearly $100 billion in profits they've already made this year off families' pain at the pump," said Dr. Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative.
"The same corporations that are making record profits while busting workers' unions are raising prices on working families."
"It's past time for Congress to pass an excess profits tax to stop the outrageous war profiteering by Big Oil," Mabud added, referring to the benefits the U.S. fossil fuel industry has reaped from Russia's assault on Ukraine.
The narrative that corporate greed is one of the key culprits behind inflation, which is now at a 40-year high, resonates greatly with the U.S. public, according to recent survey data. A poll conducted last month by Data for Progress showed that 71% of all U.S. voters blame corporate profit-seeking for rising inflation.
But despite the argument's popularity--and alignment with data showing that record-high corporate profits are a disproportionate contributor to inflation--the Biden administration has been increasingly hesitant to deploy it in recent months even as inflationary pressures persist and businesses' net incomes grow exponentially in some sectors.
During an event hosted by The New York Times on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outright rejected the notion that corporate greed is to blame for inflation, saying, "Demand and supply is largely driving inflation."
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, meanwhile, has openly suggested that wage increases are part of the problem, telling reporters during a press conference last month that the country needs to "get wages down" in order to tackle inflation.
While progressive economists have acknowledged that a number of factors, from supply chain issues caused by the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, are pushing inflation to levels not seen in decades, they have nevertheless maintained that corporate profiteering is a significant culprit.
"Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits," Robert Reich, the former secretary of the U.S. Labor Department, wrote last month. "Prices are surging--but let's be clear: corporations are not raising prices simply because of the increasing costs of supplies and labor. They could easily absorb these higher costs, but instead they are passing them on to consumers and even raising prices higher than those cost increases."
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, echoed Reich on Friday.
"Make no mistake: the same corporations that are making record profits while busting workers' unions are raising prices on working families," Henry wrote on Twitter. "If our nation's leaders are serious about addressing inflation, they'll hold these big corporations accountable for their price gouging."
In recent weeks, as inflation numbers have remained stubbornly high and corporate executives have continued boasting about their profits, congressional Democrats have put forth several proposals aimed at combating price gouging and reining in excess profits via taxation.
Led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in the House and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a group of Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation in March that would hit large and highly profitable oil companies with "a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the pre-pandemic average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019."
While the White House has signaled it would be willing to support a windfall profits tax on Big Oil, Democrats' bill has not received a vote in the House or Senate.
Last month, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) along with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) unveiled a measure that would empower federal regulators to crack down on corporate price gouging. Warren has specifically called out the meat industry for its pricing practices throughout the pandemic.
"Giant corporations are using inflation as a cover story to jack up prices and pad profits," Warren tweeted Friday. "Let's pass my bill to crack down on corporate price gouging. And let's pass our windfall profits tax on Big Oil, which includes rebate checks for Americans struggling with gas prices."
In the wake of new federal data showing that U.S. inflation rose again in May after decelerating slightly the previous month, progressive lawmakers, economists, and union leaders on Friday tried to hammer home their argument that corporate profiteering is a major driver of the price hikes that are eroding workers' modest wage gains and heightening economic pain nationwide.
"While families are feeling the sting of soaring energy costs, oil and gas companies are cheering the nearly $100 billion in profits they've already made this year off families' pain at the pump," said Dr. Rakeen Mabud, chief economist at the Groundwork Collaborative.
"The same corporations that are making record profits while busting workers' unions are raising prices on working families."
"It's past time for Congress to pass an excess profits tax to stop the outrageous war profiteering by Big Oil," Mabud added, referring to the benefits the U.S. fossil fuel industry has reaped from Russia's assault on Ukraine.
The narrative that corporate greed is one of the key culprits behind inflation, which is now at a 40-year high, resonates greatly with the U.S. public, according to recent survey data. A poll conducted last month by Data for Progress showed that 71% of all U.S. voters blame corporate profit-seeking for rising inflation.
But despite the argument's popularity--and alignment with data showing that record-high corporate profits are a disproportionate contributor to inflation--the Biden administration has been increasingly hesitant to deploy it in recent months even as inflationary pressures persist and businesses' net incomes grow exponentially in some sectors.
During an event hosted by The New York Times on Thursday, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outright rejected the notion that corporate greed is to blame for inflation, saying, "Demand and supply is largely driving inflation."
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, meanwhile, has openly suggested that wage increases are part of the problem, telling reporters during a press conference last month that the country needs to "get wages down" in order to tackle inflation.
While progressive economists have acknowledged that a number of factors, from supply chain issues caused by the pandemic to the war in Ukraine, are pushing inflation to levels not seen in decades, they have nevertheless maintained that corporate profiteering is a significant culprit.
"Corporations are using inflation as an excuse to raise their prices, hurting workers and consumers while they enjoy record profits," Robert Reich, the former secretary of the U.S. Labor Department, wrote last month. "Prices are surging--but let's be clear: corporations are not raising prices simply because of the increasing costs of supplies and labor. They could easily absorb these higher costs, but instead they are passing them on to consumers and even raising prices higher than those cost increases."
Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service Employees International Union, echoed Reich on Friday.
"Make no mistake: the same corporations that are making record profits while busting workers' unions are raising prices on working families," Henry wrote on Twitter. "If our nation's leaders are serious about addressing inflation, they'll hold these big corporations accountable for their price gouging."
In recent weeks, as inflation numbers have remained stubbornly high and corporate executives have continued boasting about their profits, congressional Democrats have put forth several proposals aimed at combating price gouging and reining in excess profits via taxation.
Led by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) in the House and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a group of Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation in March that would hit large and highly profitable oil companies with "a per-barrel tax equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the pre-pandemic average price per barrel between 2015 and 2019."
While the White House has signaled it would be willing to support a windfall profits tax on Big Oil, Democrats' bill has not received a vote in the House or Senate.
Last month, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) along with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) unveiled a measure that would empower federal regulators to crack down on corporate price gouging. Warren has specifically called out the meat industry for its pricing practices throughout the pandemic.
"Giant corporations are using inflation as a cover story to jack up prices and pad profits," Warren tweeted Friday. "Let's pass my bill to crack down on corporate price gouging. And let's pass our windfall profits tax on Big Oil, which includes rebate checks for Americans struggling with gas prices."
"It's a performance with serious costs for immigrant communities," said one critic. "And it's a performance to help sell their greater authoritarian agenda."
Citing four unnamed sources, The Wall Street Journal reported late Friday that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's administration intends to start delivering on his long-promised mass deportations with "a large-scale immigration raid" in Chicago, Illinois that "is expected to begin on Tuesday morning, a day after Trump is inaugurated, and will last all week."
"The Trump team intends to target immigrants in the country illegally with criminal backgrounds—many of whose offenses, like driving violations, made them too minor for the Biden administration to pursue," according to the newspaper. "But, the people cautioned, if anyone else in the country illegally is present during an arrest, they will be taken, too."
After considering which "sanctuary cities" to target, "they settled on Chicago both because of the large number of immigrants who could be possible targets and because of the Trump team's high-profile feud with the city's Democratic Mayor Brandon Johnson," the Journal detailed. "Large immigrant centers, such as New York, Los Angeles, Denver, and Miami, are also in the incoming administration's sights, and more targeted raids could come."
The Trump transition team, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and representatives for Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker did not respond to the paper's request for comment, but the Democratic governor on Saturday circulated "know your rights" resources from the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights on his social media accounts and pledged to "protect those rights and ensure our state laws are followed."
Every family and child deserves to feel safe and secure in the place they call home. Every resident of Illinois should know their rights. I intend to protect those rights and ensure our state laws are followed.
[image or embed]
— Governor JB Pritzker ( @govpritzker.illinois.gov) January 18, 2025 at 12:36 PM
As that resource sheet notes, people questioned by ICE officers have the right to remain silent, and the federal agency's officers must have a warrant signed by a judge to enter a private residence without consent.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported that "Beatriz Ponce de Leon, deputy mayor for immigrant, migrant, and refugee rights, warned City Council members of the impending street sweeps during a series of virtual briefings Friday" and advocates are "organizing 'know your rights' workshops and distributing cards in Latino neighborhoods with bilingual information on residents' legal rights."
Under the Welcoming City Ordinance, the Chicago Police Department does not document immigration status or share information with federal immigration authorities. WGN9 pointed out that "Chicago Public Schools, the Chicago Transit Authority, the Chicago Park District, and Community Colleges of Chicago have all been directed not to allow ICE access into any of its buildings."
According to The New York Times, which spoke with two unnamed sources and obtained related correspondence, "hundreds of agents were asked to volunteer" for ICE's "Operation Safeguard," and the agency plans to send roughly 150 agents to Chicago.
Tom Homan, Trump's incoming "border czar" and former acting director of ICE, previewed the administration's targeting of the Illinois city while attending a Northwest Side GOP holiday party last month, telling other attendees that "Chicago's in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks," and if Johnson "doesn't want to help, get the hell out of the way."
The reports about the massive raids in Chicago confirmes much about the mass deportation regime. 1 Homan is in charge 2 raids are weapon to be selectively wheeled at political opponents - yes it’s about targeting the undoc but also the Dem mayor 3 the staged performance is their key objective
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— Zachary A Mueller ( @zacharyamueller.bsky.social) January 18, 2025 at 10:16 AM
In a social media thread about the reported plans for Chicago, Zachary Mueller, senior research director at the advocacy group America's Voice, said that Trump's administration "will parade out some number of immigrants who have committed serious crimes, to sell the lie that this is about protecting the American people. It's not."
"Don't fall for their trap," Mueller continued. "There will be arrests in other cities to say that this is not weaponized raids as [a] political attack on political opponents. But the [performance] to instill widespread fear is the point. Fear to immigrant communities. Fear to any elected official not in a major city of the cost of speaking out."
"Homan wants a confrontation. They want to perform the narrative for their audience they are taking it to the 'enemy within," Mueller added. "It's a performance with serious costs for immigrant communities. And it's a performance to help sell their greater authoritarian agenda."
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, responded similarly, saying Friday: "The actual operation described in the piece (100-200 agents) seems not that unusual for ICE (Google Operation Cross-Check). Expect a PR blitz, though."
"Not to diminish... the impact, but from [the Journal's] reporting it seems that the scale of this is entirely precedented. ICE has done similar operations in the past. This seems mostly about generating media," Reichlin-Melnick explained.
"As many people have said, it is going to take time for the Trump administration to ramp up immigration enforcement," he added. "In the meantime, however, they are going to basically slap a 'mass deportation' logo on the side of every regular ICE operation."
In addition to sounding the alarm over how Trump's mass deportations are expected to impact the estimated 11.7 million undocumented immigrants in the United States and their families, migrant rights advocates and experts have warned that the plan, if fully implemented, "would deliver a catastrophic blow to the U.S. economy."
Although Trump won't be president again until his Monday inauguration, Republicans on Capitol Hill are already pushing forward the GOP's anti-migrant agenda, with help from some Democrats in Congress. On Friday, 10 Democratic senators voted with Republicans to advance the Laken Riley Act, setting it up for a final vote next week.
Those 10 Democrats are Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Ruben Gallego (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Jon Ossoff (Ga.), Gary Peters (Mich.), Jacky Rosen (Nev.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Elissa Slotkin (Mich.), and Mark Warner (Va.). Gallego and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), who did not vote on Friday, also co-sponsored the bill.
"The process displayed by Democrats during the Laken Riley Act legislative debate is an alarming first sign of acquiescence to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller," said America's Voice executive director Vanessa Cárdenas, referring to the family separation architect set to serve as the president-elect's homeland security adviser and deputy chief of staff for policy.
"Greenlighting a massive increase in unnecessary detention and empowering the radical anti-immigrant state attorneys general is deeply harmful and undermines the solutions we need," she stressed. "Despite Donald Trump's victory and the prominence of his vicious anti-immigrant pledges, a strong majority of the American public prefers a balanced approach to immigration, involving both border security and legalization for undocumented immigrants, instead of mass deportation."
According to Cárdenas' group, a coalition of nearly two dozen organizations including Families for Freedom, United We Dream, and multiple state arms of Make the Road are launching a nationwide week of action scheduled to begin Monday in California, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.
"While this temporary cessation of fighting and bombing must be both respected and long-term, this is only the beginning of addressing the immense humanitarian, psychological, and medical needs in Gaza."
As Israel's military continued its 15-month assault that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and decimated the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office confirmed that early Saturday the full Cabinet approved a recently announced cease-fire and hostage-release deal that is set to take effect at 8:30 am local time Sunday.
The 24-8 vote on the three-phase deal negotiated by Egypt, Qatar, and the outgoing Biden and incoming Trump administrations came after the Security Cabinet endorsed it on Friday.
Later Saturday, Netanyahu said that "we will be unable to move forward with the framework until we receive the list of the hostages who will be released, as was agreed. Israel will not tolerate violations of the agreement. Hamas is solely responsible."
Since negotiators announced the agreement on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have killed over 100 more Palestinians, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health's figures.
Gaza health officials said Saturday that the Israeli assault has killed at least 46,899, with another 110,725 wounded since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. More than 10,000 people remain missing in the Palestinian region reduced to rubble, and experts warn the official death toll is likely a significant undercount.
"The temporary cease-fire agreement in Gaza is a relief, but it arrives more than 465 days and 46,000 lives too late," Doctors Without Borders said in a Saturday statement. "While this temporary cessation of fighting and bombing must be both respected and long-term, this is only the beginning of addressing the immense humanitarian, psychological, and medical needs in Gaza."
"Israel must immediately end its blockade of Gaza and ensure a massive scale-up of humanitarian aid into and across Gaza so that the hundreds of thousands of people in desperate conditions can begin their long road to recovery," added the group, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières. "The toll of this hideous war includes the obliteration of homes, hospitals, and infrastructure; the displacement of millions of people that are now in desperate need of water, food, and shelter in the cold winter."
After reaching a cease-fire deal to stop Israel's assault on Lebanon late last year, the IDF was accused of violating it with continued strikes allegedly targeting the political and militant group Hezbollah.
According to Drop Site News: "Egyptian media reported the formation of a joint operations room in Cairo, with representatives from Egypt, Palestine, Qatar, the United States, and Israel, to oversee the Gaza cease-fire and 'ensure effective coordination and follow up on compliance with the terms of the agreement.'"
Israel—whose troops have been armed by the United States—faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over its war on Gaza and the International Criminal Court in November issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
After the Israeli Security Cabinet's Friday decision, Kenneth Roth, the former director of Human Rights Watch, said: "Keep in mind that a cease-fire is NOT an amnesty. Senior Israeli officials must still be prosecuted for genocide and war crimes. Otherwise, governments could commit atrocities with impunity by simply agreeing to a cease-fire at the end."
This post has been updated with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's later Saturday statement.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions."
As Republican President-elect Donald Trump prepares to further accelerate already near-record liquefied natural gas exports after taking office next week, a report published Friday details how soaring U.S. foreign LNG sales are "causing price volatility and environmental and safety risks for American families in addition to granting geopolitical advantages to the Chinese government."
The report, Strategic Implications of U.S. LNG Exports, was published by the American Security Project, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, and offers a "comprehensive analysis of the impact of the natural gas export boom from the advent of fracking through the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and provides insight into how the tidal wave of U.S. exports in the global market is altering regional and domestic security environments."
According to a summary of the publication:
The United States is the world's leading producer of natural gas and largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Over the past decade, affordable U.S. LNG exports have facilitated a global shift from coal and mitigated the geopolitical risks of fossil fuel imports from Russia and the Middle East. Today, U.S. LNG plays a critical role in diversifying global energy supplies and reducing reliance on adversarial energy suppliers. However, rising global dependence on natural gas is creating new vulnerabilities, including pricing fluctuations, shipping route bottlenecks, and inherent health, safety, and environmental hazards. The U.S. also faces geopolitical challenges related to the LNG trade, including China's stockpiling and resale of cheap U.S. LNG exports to advance its renewable energy industry and expand its global influence.
"When comparing natural gas and renewables for energy security, renewables generally offer greater long-term energy security due to their local availability, reduced dependence on imports, and lower vulnerability to geopolitical disruptions," the report states.
American Security Project CEO Matthew Wallin said in a statement that "action needs to be taken to ensure Americans are insulated from global price shocks, the impacts of climate change, and new health and safety risks."
"Our country must also do more to protect its interests from geopolitical rivals like China that subsidize their growth and influence by reselling cheap U.S. LNG at higher spot prices," Wallin asserted. "U.S. LNG has often been depicted as a transition fuel, and our country must ensure that it continues working towards that transition to clean sources instead of becoming dependent on yet another vulnerable fuel source."
Critics have
warned that LNG actually hampers the transition to a green economy. LNG is mostly composed of methane, which has more than 80 times the planetary heating power of carbon dioxide during its first two decades in the atmosphere.
Despite President Joe Biden's 2024 pause on LNG export permit applications, his administration has presided over what climate campaigners have called a "staggering" LNG expansion, including Venture Global's Calcasieu Pass 2 export terminal in Cameron Parish, Louisiana and more than a dozen other projects. Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy acknowledged that approving more LNG exports would raise domestic energy prices, increase pollution, and exacerbate the climate crisis.
In addition to promising to roll back Biden's recent ban on offshore oil and gas drilling across more than 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory, Trump—who has nominated a bevy of fossil fuel proponents for his Cabinet—is expected to further increase LNG production and exports.
A separate report published Friday by Friends of the Earth and Public Citizen examined 14 proposed LNG export terminals that the Trump administration is expected to fast-track, creating 510 million metric tons of climate pollution–"equivalent to the annual emissions of 135 new coal plants."
While campaigning for president, Trump vowed to "frack, frack, frack; and drill, baby, drill." This, as fossil fuel interests poured $75 million into his campaign coffers, according to The New York Times.
"This research reveals the disturbing reality of an LNG export boom under a second Trump term," Friends of the Earth senior energy campaigner Raena Garcia said in a statement referring to her group's new report. "This reality will cement higher energy prices for Americans and push the world into even more devastating climate disasters. The incoming administration is poised to haphazardly greenlight LNG exports that are clearly intended to put profit over people."