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For Immediate Release
February, 07 2025, 03:40pm EDT
Contact:
Mike Meno,,mike@climateintegrity.org
ExxonKnews: State judges side with Big Oil, teeing up appeals fights
“These judges have drunk the Kool Aid that the oil companies are selling,” one law professor said.
A New Jersey judge this week dismissed the state’s climate deception lawsuit against oil and gas companies, becoming the fourth judge in six months to side with Big Oil in such cases. As similar lawsuits creep closer toward trial, state and local governments are vowing to fight these latest rulings, which grapple with a central question still being deliberated among judges: what are these lawsuits about, and what are they trying to achieve?
The state and local officials filing lawsuits against oil and gas majors argue that they are seeking to hold the companies accountable under state laws for misleading the public about the dangers of fossil fuels — and in some cases, make them help pay for the resulting damage that alleged deception caused to communities, including from worsening climate disasters like wildfires, hurricanes, heatwaves, and floods.
The Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) helps cities and states across the country hold corporate polluters accountable for the massive impacts of climate change.
(919) 307-6637LATEST NEWS
Federal Judge Orders 'Very Limited' Pause on Trump-Musk USAID Purge
"Frankly, there is zero harm to the government," in a pause, said the Trump-appointed federal judge, who pressed administration lawyers to prove their claims of USAID fraud and corruption.
Feb 07, 2025
A federal judge said Friday that he would issue a "very limited" pause on the Trump administration's midnight deadline for the U.S. Agency for International Development to place thousands of agency staff on leave.
Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia—an appointee of President Donald Trump—said he would approve a limited temporary restraining order preventing 2,200 USAID employees from being put on administrative leave at midnight. Nichols also said he would decide whether the 500 workers who have already been placed on leave will be reinstated.
"They should not put those 2,200 people on administrative leave tonight," Nichols said, according toThe Hill.
BREAKING: Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from placing 2,000+ USAID workers on leave as litigation continues.
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— Democracy Docket ( @democracydocket.com) February 7, 2025 at 1:58 PM
Nichols' move came in response to claims by two unions—the American Foreign Service Association (AFSA) and American Federation of Government Employees—that their members would suffer "irreparable harm" as a result of Trump's order. The unions said that the effort led by the Trump administration and unelected Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk constitutes an "ongoing, illegal scheme to gut" USAID.
"This is not something the president can unilaterally do," Karla Gilbride, an attorney representing the unions, told Nichols during a Friday hearing.
Nichols said that "frankly, there is zero harm to the government" from a temporary pause. The judge pressed Trump administration attorneys to show proof of their claims of widespread fraud and corruption within USAID, which provides foreign aid and development assistance but also has a dubious history of funding subversion, drug trafficking, forced sterilization, Central American death squads, and torture during its 64-year existence.
Musk—whose DOGE has locked USAID employees out of internal systems and recalled thousands of personnel to the U.S. in recent days—has promoted conspiracy theories about the agency. Earlier this week, he posted on his X social media platform that it's "time for it to die."
Trump posted Friday on his Truth Social online platform: "USAID IS DRIVING THE RADICAL LEFT CRAZY, AND THERE IS NOTHING THEY CAN DO ABOUT IT BECAUSE THE WAY IN WHICH THE MONEY HAS BEEN SPENT, SO MUCH OF IT FRAUDULENTLY, IS TOTALLY UNEXPLAINABLE. THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!"
Responding to Nichols' reprieve, AFSA president Tom Yazdgerdi said in a statement that "this ruling is a crucial first step in halting a reckless assault on USAID and in supporting the dedicated professionals who serve our country."
"We will continue to fight to protect the professionals who advance America's values and leadership abroad," Yazdgerdi added.
Lauren Bateman, an attorney with Public Citizen Litigation Group, said that "tonight's ruling proves temporary relief for the over 2,000 workers set to be put on leave by the Trump administration. It is a step forward in our fight against the unconstitutional and illegal attempt to break the back of USAID."
"Trump and Musk's attempt to disrupt aid around the world is unfathomably cruel, and the ruling tonight pumps the brakes on the destruction of a vital tool of humanitarian relief and American diplomacy," Bateman added. "The Trump administration must abide by the ruling, or it risks catapulting the entire U.S. government into chaos."
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Consumer Advocates Decry Musk 'Minions' as DOGE Targets CFPB
"It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
Feb 07, 2025
Consumer advocates on Friday called on allies to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency after reports indicated DOGE personnel had entered the agency's office and possibly obtained access to its online databases.
Members of the CFPB Union NTEU 335, part of the National Treasury Employees Union, published a press release, later deleted from their website, noting that the names of three staffers of DOGE appeared in the consumer protection agency's internal staff directory Thursday evening—signaling that the CFPB is the latest target of Musk's illegal plunder of numerous federal offices.
Numerous outlets—includingWired and Punchbowl News—confirmed that the DOGE personnel had been granted access to CFPB offices and databases. Politico, citing people familiar with the developments, also reported the three individuals had been added as "senior advisers" to the agency.
The CFPB Union, in the now-deleted statement, identified the DOGE staffers as former Big Pharma lobbyist Chris Young; former Tesla and X employee Nikhil Rajpal; and Gavin Kliger, an "Elon fanboy" who graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 2020.
"When he's not stealing Americans' private information with DOGE, Kliger enjoys writing lengthy essays defending rapists and retweeting white supremacists," said the union's statement, citing the staffer's Substack where he has written positively about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), both accused of sexual abuse. "Kliger's lawyer daddy works at Experian, which is the same company CFPB sued in January for covering up errors on credit reports with sham investigations."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators."
The union further mocked Kliger's "alleged" coding career and said that in contrast to the "zero to three git commits" he made in the last year, "workers at the CFPB returned $1.3 billion to scammed Americans in that time."
"CFPB Union members welcome our newest colleagues and look forward to the smell of Axe Body Spray in our elevators," said the workers.
"While acting Director [Scott] Bessent allows Musk's operatives to bypass cybersecurity policies and wreak havoc with their amateur code skills inside CFPB's once-secure systems, CFPB Union members fight to protect our jobs so we can continue protecting Americans from scammers with conflicts of interest like Musk," they said.
According to Wired's reporting:
In an email early Friday morning, CFPB staff were told that several people from DOGE—including [Rajpal, Kliger, and Young]—entered the agency building Thursday evening. The email stated that they would require access to CFPB data, systems, and equipment, following a message sent Thursday by CFPB chief operating officer Adam Martinez confirming that the DOGE employees were to receive "read-only access."
"DOGE arrived tonight and will be back tomorrow. They are going to need read-only access to our HR (HR Connect/NFC), procurement (PRISM), and finance (Discoverer) system," said Martinez. "I let them know that we utilize BFS/ARC so if they already have access, then they should be able to pull our data. Otherwise, if they do not have access to BFS/ARC, then we will need to work with them to fill out the necessary forms to gain access." BFS/ARC is the Bureau of the Fiscal Service's Administrative Resource Center, which provides administrative services, like timekeeping travel days or benefits, for a number of government agencies.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich noted that DOGE's targeting of the CFPB comes days after Trump dismissed former Director Rohit Chopra.
"American's financial privacy and safety [is] at risk as DOGE arrives at CFPB," said the Center for Digital Democracy, in response to various reporting. "The CFPB has saved American taxpapers and consumers billions... Undermining American financial security must be stopped."
In recent days, DOGE employees have arrived at the Departments of Labor, Education, and the Treasury, among other federal agencies, seizing access to data about millions of Americans, setting up illegal servers, and placing employees on administrative leave.
The White House and Musk have claimed the effort is aimed at reducing "waste" and improving "efficiency" within government, but comments from U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) this week signaled the administration is searching for ways to slash spending for numerous public services in the interest of extending the 2017 tax cuts for the wealthiest earners.
The union suggested Musk wants to take over the CFPB, which he called to "delete" late last year, to clear the way for a partnership between his social media platform, X, and Visa. The credit card company wants to offer payments on the platform, and "notably, the CFPB recently obtained the authority to supervise major payment apps," said the NTEU.
Earlier this week, DOGE staffers arrived at the Department of Labor, which has filed multiple complaints against Musk's companies.
"The world's richest man just dispatched his minions to root around the systems of a government watchdog responsible for policing payment schemes like the one just announced for his own company," Emily Peterson-Cassin, corporate power director of the Demand Progress Education Fund, said in response to the union's account. "It sounds like the plot of a bad Bond movie but it's real and the American people are the real victims."
"Musk’s dreams of an 'everything app' that reaches into people's bank accounts paired with his sweeping, unchecked access to the levers of government opens up the potential for breathtaking corruption," said Peterson-Cassin. "His intrusion into CFPB systems also sends a clear message that he has no interest whatsoever in policing his own conflicts of interest. Musk must be stopped from dismantling the very mechanisms of the federal government that can prevent him from looting the American people."
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Medicaid Work Requirements Could Boot 36 Million People Off Their Health Coverage: Report
"Work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," wrote the authors of an analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Feb 07, 2025
As right-wing lawmakers pursue imposing conditions on Americans' ability to access Medicaid and other social services, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities this week published analysis warning that work requirements for Medicaid recipients could put 36 million Americans, or 44% of all Medicaid enrollees, at risk of losing their health insurance.
"Research shows that work requirements do not increase employment," according to the authors of the CBPP report, which was published on Wednesday. The authors argue that these types of requirements are based on the premise that Medicaid enrollees do not work, when data shows that they do.
"Nearly 2 in 3 adult Medicaid enrollees aged 19-64 already work, and most of the rest would likely not be explicitly subject to the requirement based on having a disability, caring for family members, or attending school," the report states.
The group estimates that of those 36 million people who could be impacted, 20 million are enrolled through the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion.
While almost all Medicaid enrollees either work or would qualify for an exemption under most Medicaid work requirement proposals, according to CBPP, the report points to multiple past examples that indicate many enrollees still lose coverage with the imposition of work requirements due to "administrative burden and red tape."
For example, when Arkansas in 2018 temporarily implemented a policy that placed work requirements on Medicaid recipients, about 25% of enrollees subject to the requirements, some 18,000 people, lost coverage before a federal court paused the program seven months later.
As another example, New Hampshire implemented a short-lived Medicaid work requirement program in 2019 with more flexibility in reporting requirements and "more robust outreach efforts" in order to avoid Arkansas' mistakes, according to CBPP, but 2 in 3 enrollees who had to comply with the requirements "were likely to be disenrolled after just two months, amid reports of widespread confusion among enrollees about how to comply with the requirements."
The analysis—which the authors say is not an estimate of the number of people who will be impacted by a specific policy proposal—defines the population at risk of losing their coverage as adults between ages 19 and 64 who are not enrolled in Medicaid through disability pathways, i.e. a wider net of people than are specifically targeted in some recent GOP proposals.
The 36 million number is a larger group of enrollees compared to a previous CBPP estimate that was in response to a specific proposal whose work requirements would have targeted fewer people.
Multiple recent GOP proposals regarding Medicaid work requirements target "able-bodied" workers, though they vary in other specifics.
The far-right policy blueprint "Project 2025" calls for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to "clarify that states have the ability to adopt work incentives for able-bodied individuals" on Medicaid. And in late January congressional Republicans passed around a list of ideas for how to fund a bill full of GOP priorities that included imposing Medicaid work requirements for "able-bodied" adults without dependents, modeled after the Limit, Save, Grow Act, a bill passed by the House in 2023.
On Thursday, Sens. John Kennedy (R-La.) and Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) reintroduced the Jobs and Opportunities for Medicaid Act, a bill that would require "able-bodied adults without dependents who receive Medicaid benefits to work or volunteer for at least 20 hours per week."
Because the Kennedy and Schmitt bill includes an exemption for adults with dependents, it would impact a smaller number of people than the CBPP's Thursday analysis. But still, as a general matter, "work requirements are simply another way to cut Medicaid," according to the authors of the analysis. Republicans' January list of cost cut options estimated that adding Medicaid work requirements along the lines of what was specified in the Limit, Save, Grow Act would yield $100 billion in 10-year savings.
In a Friday letter to Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), all 47 members of the Senate Democratic Caucus wrote: "We urge you to reject proposals that use Medicaid as a piggy bank for partisan priorities and continue to defend the importance of this vital program."Keep ReadingShow Less
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