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WASHINGTON - On June 1st, CREW joined with 9 open government organizations in
urging the ranking members of a House-Senate Conference on
Appropriations to retain the Leahy-Cornyn OPEN FOIA Act, a
provision contained in the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2009 that
would strengthen the existing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The
OPEN FOIA Act would ensure greater transparency by requiring Congress
to explicitly state its intentions when creating a statutory exemption
to the FOIA in new legislation.
Read the letter in the Related Documents section below:
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting ethics and accountability in government and public life by targeting government officials -- regardless of party affiliation -- who sacrifice the common good to special interests. CREW advances its mission using a combination of research, litigation and media outreach.
"Big Oil executives and fossil fuel lobbyists shouldn't be able to turn public agencies into private profit machines for fossil fuel shareholders," argued Sen. Ed Markey.
Faced with the imminent White House return of Republican President-elect Donald Trump and an administration stacked with fossil fuel industry veterans, a pair of progressive U.S. Senate Democrats on Thursday introduced legislation that would ban former oil, gas, and coal executives or lobbyists from leading numerous energy-related federal agencies for 10 years after leaving their private sector jobs.
The Banning In Government Oil Industry Lobbyists (BIG OIL) from the Cabinet Act—put forth by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—would apply to prospective secretaries of agriculture, defense, energy, the interior, state, and transportation; as well as key posts including administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; White House chief of staff; and directors of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Office of Management and Budget.
"Let's pass this bill and get fossil fuel executives and their ill-gotten bucks out of our government."
"Donald Trump isn't building a Cabinet, he's installing a cartel. Big Oil executives and fossil fuel lobbyists shouldn't be able to turn public agencies into private profit machines for fossil fuel shareholders," said Markey. "This is a clear ethical line—their work polluting our environment, destroying our climate, and prioritizing corporate profits over democracy must not be rewarded with even more power over the very safeguards set to protect American households from their influence."
"Especially in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires and more frequent and dangerous disasters fueled by climate change, we can't afford to have a fossil fuel CEO like Chris Wright help the industry capture our federal agencies further for oil profits," Markey added, referring to the fracking services company chief executive nominated by Trump to head the Department of Energy. "We must have government agencies helmed by responsible, qualified executives without blatant conflicts of interest."
Merkley said: "Climate chaos fueled by dirty energy is humanity's greatest challenge, and Trump wants to make sure we fail that challenge by handing our government over to Big Oil. Let's pass this bill and get fossil fuel executives and their ill-gotten bucks out of our government."
Scores of climate, environmental justice, government transparency, and other groups have endorsed the bill.
"The fossil fuel revolving door has dominated American energy policy for decades and could poison our environment for centuries to come," Food & Water Watch policy adviser Drew Guillory said in a statement Thursday. "Oil and gas companies cannot be allowed to regulate themselves and use the government to guarantee their profits. The BIG OIL from the Cabinet Act is a crucial step in returning control of our climate to the American people."
Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks, said: "The fossil fuel industry is notorious for spending millions of dollars to delay climate action and undermine progress on environmental justice. This bill ensures big polluters are not granted positions of power where it is guaranteed they would degrade environmental protections and block investments in a clean energy future."
Sunrise Movement executive director Aru Shiney-Ajay noted that "Los Angeles is on fire. Asheville is just starting to rebuild."
"The climate crisis is here and it's happening because oil and gas CEOs disregarded science and chose to keep burning fossil fuels," Shiney-Ajay added. "They chose to sacrifice millions of homes and lives so they could keep profiting. Those same people should not be in charge of creating energy policy."
Scott Bessent's "3-3-3" agenda "requires brutal cuts to health and nutrition and higher costs for families at the grocery store," said analysts at the Center for American Progress.
At his confirmation hearing on Thursday, hedge fund manager and U.S. treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent told the Senate Finance Committee that at the helm of the Treasury Department he would usher in an "economic golden age."
But a report by two policy analysts details how Bessent's signature "3-3-3" plan would only be achievable by gutting programs for some of the nation's most vulnerable households—extending the "golden age" only to wealthy people and corporations for whom the Trump administration plans to slash taxes.
At the Center for American Progress, senior director of economic policy Brendan Duke and senior director of federal budget policy Bobby Kogan completed "the accounting to determine what it would take to achieve" Bessent's 3-3-3 agenda, particularly his plan to cut the federal budget deficit down to 3% of the gross domestic product (GDP). The plan also calls for real GDP growth to reach 3% and the production of 3 million barrels of oil by 2028.
While reducing the budget deficit and simultaneously protecting programs American families rely on is a "laudable goal," wrote Duke and Kogan, Bessent has "explicitly stated that extending the expiring 2017 tax cuts is a priority, and he would likely rule out tax increases on the wealthy to pay for them"—suggesting that the Treasury nominee's 3-3-3 agenda would require new taxes on imported goods and "massive cuts to anti-poverty programs."
The Congressional Budget Office has projected that the budget deficit will represent 5.8% of the nation's GDP in 2028.
"The president-elect is stacking his cabinet with one goal in mind: more tax breaks for his billionaire boys club and major corporations."
With Bessent proposing an extension of the 2017 tax cuts—which are projected to grow the budget deficit by about $4 trillion over a decade—the elimination of Inflation Reduction Act energy investments, and a pause on nondefense discretionary spending increases, said Duke and Kogan, Bessent's plan would "actually increase the projected 2028 budget deficit from 5.8 to 6.0% of GDP, or $1 trillion above the 3% target.
Without any cuts to Medicare and Social Security—which Trump has said he would exempt from cuts—or defense spending, says the analysis, Bessent's deficit target would require both:
"The combination of policies that would deliver the deficit reduction proposed in Bessent's 3-3-3 economic plan would raise taxes on low- and middle-income families and gut healthcare, nutrition assistance, and veterans' programs while still cutting taxes for the wealthy," wrote Duke and Kogan. "Such a plan would hike families' costs both because broad-based tariffs would increase prices and because Americans would have to pay more for healthcare and food due to cuts to federal programs that help lower the cost of living."
With families across the U.S. facing "brutal cuts to health and nutrition" and higher prices at the grocery store under Bessent's plan, said Duke, the wealthiest households would still get "a net tax cut."
At The Washington Post, columnist Catherine Rampell wrote that "the magnitude of cuts required to make Bessent's arithmetic work is breathtaking."
"If you add up all the tax-cut promises Trump made during his campaign, the budget hole swells to almost $10 trillion," wrote Rampell. "To compensate, government programs would have to shrink by two-thirds. Alternatively, Trump could raise taxes on the middle class. Pick your poison."
On social media, government watchdog Accountable.US denounced Bessent's defense of Trump's tax cuts—under which "the top 1% saw benefits nearly three times larger than families in the bottom 60%"—and of the president-elect's proposed tariffs, which leading economists say would "reignite" inflation.
"Scott Bessent's nomination isn't about helping American families," said the group. "It's about lining the pockets of the ultra-wealthy and doubling down on policies that hurt the middle class."
Meanwhile, critics of Bessent on Thursday pointed to new reporting from Politico that Senate Democrats have accused the Treasury nominee of dodging $910,182 in Medicare taxesfor income he made through his hedge fund from 2021-23. A memo circulated by Democrats stated that Bessent argued that as a "limited partner" in his fund, he was not liable for taxes on certain income.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) addressed the memo at Bessent's hearing, saying: "Like a number of Wall Street fund managers, Mr. Bessent makes use of a tricky legal maneuver to opt out of paying into Medicare."
"The billionaire hedge fund manager Trump handpicked to oversee a massive tax giveaway for the ultra-wealthy doesn't pay his own taxes," said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative. "It's almost too on the nose. The president-elect is stacking his cabinet with one goal in mind: more tax breaks for his billionaire boys club and major corporations."
"Too much of the coverage has simply ignored the climate crisis altogether, an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such megafires and a hotter, dryer planet is unequivocal," wrote the founders of Covering Climate Now.
Covering the who, what, when, where, and why is journalism 101. So why are too few media outlets explaining the role that the climate crisis plays in the "why" behind the fires ravaging the Los Angeles region?
That's the central question posed in an opinion piece published in The Guardian and elsewhere on Thursday authored by Mark Hertsgaard and Kyle Pope, the founders of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of over 500 news outlets aimed at improving climate coverage, of which Common Dreams is a part.
Hertsgaard and Pope wrote that "too much of the coverage has simply ignored the climate crisis altogether, an inexcusable failure when the scientific link between such megafires and a hotter, dryer planet is unequivocal."
They added: "Too many stories have framed the fires as a political spat between U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and California elected officials instead of a horrifying preview of what lies ahead if humans don't rapidly phase out fossil fuels. Too often, bad-faith disinformation has been repeated instead of debunked."
Misinformation, in many instances stemming from right-leaning sources, have proliferated since the blazes broke out last week. Trump in a social media post appeared to point the finger at California's statewide water management plans for fire hydrants running dry as firefighters fought the blazes last week. Southern California does have plenty water stored, but the city's infrastructure was not designed to respond to a fire as the large as the ones that broke out, experts toldPBS. Another user on the platform X falsely claimed that California turned away fire trucks from Oregon because of their emission levels, according to KQED.
Hertsgaard and Pope also called for outlets to name names. "Rarely have stories named the ultimate authors of this disaster: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and other fossil fuel companies that have made gargantuan amounts of money even as they knowingly lied about their products dangerously overheating the planet," they wrote.
While the fires are still burning, researchers are already drawing the links between climate change and the blazes. In a thread on Bluesky, the climate scientist Daniel Swain explained the concept of climate "hydroclimate whiplash"—which southern California experienced in 2024—and how this can create ideal conditions for fires to spread.
The authors of the opinion piece noted that there have been bright spots when it comes to covering the fires with an eye toward the climate emergency and debunking false and misleading claims about the fires. The duo highlight a Timestory that is titled "The LA fires show the reality of living in a world with 1.5C of warming" and a column written by the Los Angeles Times' Sammy Roth, which began: "Los Angeles is burning. Fossil fuel companies laid the kindling."
Hertsgaard and Pope wrote, "When a house is on fire, by all means let journalism show us the flames."
"But tell us why the house is burning, too," they added.