Over the past decade, the climate change movement has morphed into a social and political juggernaut that has weakened and exploited America’s institutions. Its success stemmed from two strengths: it fused science with ideology, creating a quasi-religious fervor — think Just Stop Oil or Extinction Rebellion.
The climate movement also won over the legacy media, which thrives on fear, sensationalism, and a bias toward statism. This alliance resonated with those favoring bigger government and tapped into a primal fear of looming catastrophe — a narrative amplified by widespread ignorance of energy and climate systems. For power-hungry politicians, climate catastrophism became their golden ticket to more influence and control.
Backed by legacy media cheerleaders and an academia dominated by Left-leaning statists, the movement snowballed, especially among the young.  Recent debates and polling shifts suggest some improvement in public understanding, but the damage has been substantial. 
The climate change story, however, rests on shaky scientific and moral ground. The climate has always fluctuated — warming and cooling in cycles — and always will. CO₂, while a greenhouse gas, is a minor player compared to water vapor and solar activity — not the villain it’s painted to be. History shows species thrive in warmer periods and struggle in colder ones.
As Bjorn Lomborg points out, over the past century, climate-related deaths have <a href="https://x.com/BjornLomborg/status/1885310861264199688" target="_blank" rel="noopener">plummeted by 99%,</a> with cold still claiming more lives than heat. The science simply doesn’t support the panic.
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Your risk of dying from climate-related disasters dropped 99% since 1920. 
This is because richer societies are much more resilient to disasters 
Read more in my peer-reviewed article: <a href="https://t.co/CC0h7JKIKv">https://t.co/CC0h7JKIKv</a> <a href="https://t.co/hQPpXF2AS2">pic.twitter.com/hQPpXF2AS2</a>
&mdash; Bjorn Lomborg (@BjornLomborg) <a href="https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/1885310861264199688?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 31, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Morally, it’s worse. Billions of people <a href="https://www.who.int/news/item/12-06-2024-progress-on-basic-energy-access-reverses-for-first-time-in-a-decade?utm_source=chatgpt.com" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lack access to affordable, reliable energy</a> — a right most Americans enjoy as part of the fortunate one billion. Denying them the cheapest energy sources available, all in pursuit of carbon cuts, is the real injustice. The post-election pivot to prioritize energy access and human well-being over obsessive emissions reductions is a welcome return to reason.
This moral blindness is often cloaked in self-righteous virtue. The climate movement preaches sacrifice while demanding subsidies, mandates, and central planning. It calls for collective responsibility while punishing prosperity. It seeks compliance, not progress; narrative control, not truth. In true Orwellian fashion, freedom becomes pollution, and servitude is sold as sustainability.
The damage wrought by this movement was magnified by the erosion of institutional integrity. In the corporate world, where I operate, our duty is clear: maximize value for investors, as Milton Friedman argued. Property rights demand it. Yet leaders have grown lax, allowing political Trojan horses like ESG and DEI to infiltrate and hijack companies — and their shareholder’s property — for ideological ends. Banks and firms fell in line, abandoning their core mission. The pursuit of shareholder value was replaced with pandering to fashionable causes, often disconnected from performance or accountability.
Academia has suffered similar rot, even my alma mater, the University of Texas. Take the lazy use of terms like “green,” “clean,” and “sustainable” to describe solar and wind energy. Dig into the facts: mining rare earths and manufacturing these technologies are dirty processes, often tied to child labor in Africa, and far from sustainable without heavy subsidies. Describing them as ‘green’ or ‘clean’ is more than misleading, it’s a lie. Our institutions should have been bulwarks against this coercion, but they buckled. The guardians of inquiry and meritocracy became mouthpieces for activist orthodoxy.
The 2024 election and its aftermath signal that we’ve weathered the climate movement’s storm. Now what? At Atlas Energy Solutions, our chairman’s “<a href="https://www.atlas.energy/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Chairmans-Letter-on-ESG.pdf">Who We Are</a>” letter laid it out: we stick to the Friedman Doctrine, building a fortress against political fads and focusing solely on value creation. We’ve aimed to lead by example, and it’s heartening to see others doing the same.
Business and politics don’t mix — nor should academia and politics. Universities owe students free inquiry and critical thinking, not indoctrination. It’s time to purge ideological agendas and revive institutional excellence.
Capitalism — real capitalism — requires moral clarity. It is not a tool of oppression, but a system that rewards value creation and voluntary exchange. The climate agenda, as it stands, undermines both. To restore institutional discipline, we must reaffirm what made this country exceptional: a commitment to liberty, property rights, free markets, and the truth. That’s the only path forward. That’s how we liberate American energy — and the human potential it powers.
* * *
Bud Brigham is an energy entrepreneur from Austin, Texas, and chairman of Brigham Exploration, Brigham Royalties, Langford Energy Partners, and Atlas Energy Solutions (NYSE: AEISI). He is also a founding board member of the American Energy Association, a trade organization representing companies that unabashedly support free markets to liberate American energy.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

High voltage towers at sunset background. Power lines against the sky

It’s Time To Liberate American Energy From Climate Dogma

Academia

Bjorn Lomborg

Climate Change

Democrats

Energy

Legacy Media

Minerals

Oil and Gas

Solar Power

President Donald Trump took action on Tuesday to slash regulations and expedite leases for American coal mining, lending a hand to an industry that has been rocked by the push for so-called clean energy.
Appearing at the White House in front of a group of American coal miners, Trump signed the Defense Production Act, vowing to &#8220;end the government bias against coal&#8221; and &#8220;turbo charge coal mining in America.&#8221; Trump&#8217;s order comes as he seeks to boost American energy production and use tariffs as leverage to bring manufacturing and jobs to the United States.
&#8220;We&#8217;re slashing unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful clean coal,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;We will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining in federal lands &#8230; and we&#8217;ll streamline permitting. We will end the government bias against coal, and we&#8217;re going to unlock the sweeping authorities of the Defense Production Act.&#8221;
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &quot;We&#39;re slashing unnecessary regulations that targeted the beautiful clean coal. We will rapidly expedite leases for coal mining in federal lands&#8230; We&#39;ll streamline permitting, we will end the government bias against coal, and we&#39;re going to unlock the sweeping… <a href="https://t.co/aQHiBZDYVX">pic.twitter.com/aQHiBZDYVX</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1909702969387610154?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Trump blasted leftist environmental policies accepted by the Biden administration that &#8220;killed jobs&#8221; and sent prices &#8220;soaring.&#8221; Last year, former President Joe Biden ended new leases for coal mining companies, arguing that coal leasing has major effects on human health and the climate, NPR <a href="https://www.npr.org/2024/05/16/1251856806/biden-ending-new-leases-in-americas-top-coal-region" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
&#8220;The Biden energy policy was to put America last &#8230; not a good policy. Under my administration, we&#8217;re putting America first,&#8221; Trump said. &#8220;On my first day in office, I terminated the Green New Scam, I declared the National Energy Emergency and withdrew from the unfair, one-sided, and extremely costly to the United States only Paris Climate Accord.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: The Biden energy policy was to put America last&#8230; Under my administration, we&#39;re putting America FIRST. On my first day in office, I terminated the Green New Scam, I declared the National Energy Emergency and withdrew from the unfair, one-sided Paris Climate Accord. <a href="https://t.co/CLSz9aChU8">pic.twitter.com/CLSz9aChU8</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1909702546920554930?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Trump&#8217;s move was praised by the National Mining Association, which called it &#8220;a stark shift from the prior administration’s punitive regulatory agenda, hostile energy policies and unlawful land grabs.”
The Trump administration has already been setting the stage for a renewed coal mining push as the Environmental Protection Agency began removing emissions and pollution restrictions on coal plant last month. The Trump administration also approved an expansion of a coal mine in Montana, and the Bureau of Land Management is looking into an emergency lease for coal mining in North Dakota, The Washington Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/04/08/coal-executive-orders-trump/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>.
A core principle of Trump&#8217;s second-term agenda is expanding American energy production, a vision he regularly discussed on the campaign trail.
&#8220;We&#8217;re going to put the miners back to work,&#8221; Trump added on Tuesday. &#8220;I&#8217;ve said I was going to do this, and I&#8217;ve said it loud and clear, and it&#8217;s time to do it.&#8221;
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.<a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a>: &quot;Today, we&#39;re taking historic action to help American workers, miners, families and consumers. We&#39;re ending Joe Biden&#39;s war on beautiful, clean coal once and for all&#8230; we&#39;re going to put the miners back to work.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/XSpoHkT11X">pic.twitter.com/XSpoHkT11X</a>
&mdash; Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) <a href="https://twitter.com/RapidResponse47/status/1909698786009432158?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
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According to the Energy Information Administration, U.S. coal output dropped 32% between 2017 and 2024, and only around 175 coal plants still generate a significant amount of electricity in the United States. Wyoming is by far the <a href="https://profession.americangeosciences.org/society/intersections/faq/which-states-are-largest-producers-and-consumers-coal/#:~:text=Coal%20in%20the%20U.S.%20is,(Alaska%2C%20Arizona%2C%20Colorado%2C" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leading</a> producer of coal in the United States, followed by West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Kentucky. The coal industry has also suffered as America has moved to more natural gas production.

Donald Trump

‘End The Government Bias Against Coal’: Trump Signs Order To Bolster Floundering American Industry

Coal

Politics

Trump Administration

The Biden administration buried a final draft of a study that undermined the reasoning behind its 2024 pause on approvals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects, a new report has found.
Four sources within President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy (DOE) <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2025/03/18/exclusive-biden-admin-buried-study-lng-crackdown-sources-say/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> the Daily Caller News Foundation that the Biden administration’s DOE finalized the draft of a study in September 2023 that found global emissions would see a reduction if the U.S. increased its LNG exports. But that information contradicted what the Biden administration wanted to do to appease environmentalists who argued against LNG, so the administration buried the study.
“The Energy Department has learned that former Secretary [Jennifer] Granholm and the Biden White House intentionally buried a lot of data and released a skewed study to discredit the benefits of American LNG,” one source told the Caller. “They were prioritizing their own political ambitions over the interests of the American people, and the administration intentionally deceived the American public to advance an agenda that harmed American energy security, the environment and American lives.”
In Granholm’s analysis of the final study, released in December 2024 – nearly a year after the Biden administration paused LNG exports – she claimed the study found that increasing LNG exports would result in higher greenhouse gas emissions around the world.
At the end of September 2023, when the original final draft version was evaluated, a Biden administration official left a comment instructing staffers to stop working on the study until further notice, a source in the Trump DOE told the Caller. That version of the study was never released to the public and was categorized as part of the internal deliberative process.
As the Caller found after speaking to sources within the DOE, numerous pages from the September 2023 draft were deleted.
“While the September 2023 and December 2024 versions of the paper bear the same name, the final version released to the public did not include a specific type of analysis of LNG exports known as the consideration of market effects, Trump DOE sources told the DCNF,” the Caller reported. “That particular analysis — included in the buried September 2023 version of the study, but not the final product — found that U.S. LNG exports would bring down global emissions by displacing more polluting sources of energy abroad, and its absence from the December 2024 version allowed the Biden DOE to skew the final report’s findings against increasing LNG exports.”
The Caller’s DOE sources said the evidence showing the Biden administration’s burying of the report was being sent to Congress and would be released to the public.
In January 2024, when President Joe Biden issued the pause on LNG exports, he and Granholm both implied they were looking for more evidence about the effects of LNG.
“During this period, we will take a hard look at the impacts of LNG exports on energy costs, America’s energy security, and our environment. This pause on new LNG approvals sees the climate crisis for what it is: the existential threat of our time,” Biden said in a <a href="https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/01/26/statement-from-president-joe-biden-on-decision-to-pause-pending-approvals-of-liquefied-natural-gas-exports/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a> after announcing the pause. “While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent. We will not cede to special interests.”
But the Biden administration already knew what effects LNG exports would have.
In January 2025, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) <a href="https://x.com/TheFP/status/1880413292251984065" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> The Free Press that he spoke to Biden about the pause, but the president, who had dropped his re-election bid because of obvious cognitive decline, didn’t seem to remember signing the pause at all.

Joe BIden and Jennifer Granholm

Biden Admin Buried Study That Undermined Liquefied Natural Gas Pause: Report

Biden Administration Buried Study That Undermined Liquefied Natural Gas Pause: Report

Jennifer Granholm

Joe Biden

Natural gas

In the debate over energy policy, the term &#8220;all of the above&#8221; has been heralded as a balanced, pragmatic strategy. But in reality, this approach is little more than a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) framework for energy — one that prioritizes political considerations over performance and efficiency. Just as DEI hiring initiatives emphasize inclusivity over merit-based selection, the &#8220;all of the above&#8221; energy policy forces taxpayers and ratepayers to subsidize inefficient energy sources under the guise of fairness and diversity in energy production.
This misguided philosophy has led to the proliferation of heavily subsidized and unreliable power generation, such as wind and solar, which fail to deliver power when it is needed most. These sources are not chosen based on their ability to provide cheap, reliable energy but rather on their alignment with politically driven mandates and green ideology. Despite the rhetoric of energy independence, the reality is that the expansion of these energy sources has increased our dependence on China for critical materials while simultaneously driving up electricity prices for American consumers. Ironically, while the U.S. is shackling its energy sector with expensive and inefficient mandates, China continues to dominate global energy markets by producing affordable power — largely fueled by coal.
The issue is not just limited to electricity generation. Biofuels, another beneficiary of the &#8220;all of the above&#8221; approach, serve as a prime example of government inefficiency. These fuels make gasoline and diesel more expensive, harm engine performance, and require massive amounts of water to produce. Rather than being an environmentally friendly alternative, biofuels epitomize waste — consuming resources and taxpayer dollars for minimal benefit.
Proponents of tax credits and subsidies argue that they create &#8220;good-paying jobs,&#8221; but this justification rings hollow. The same could be said of nearly any government-funded initiative, including federal bureaucracies that are now being exposed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) for being inefficient and wasteful. Of course, by this logic, one could also argue that funding for male circumcision programs in Mozambique created &#8220;good-paying jobs&#8221; as well — just not ones that benefit the American workforce. President Trump highlighted this as an example of what he considers &#8220;appalling waste&#8221; in government spending, and yet the same defenders of bloated federal budgets will insist that all taxpayer-funded jobs are inherently valuable. Just because an industry is artificially propped up by government incentives does not mean it is economically viable. True job creation comes from industries that thrive on their own merits — not those that rely on perpetual government handouts.
A recent letter from members of Congress underscores this flawed thinking. It claims that tax credits are essential for energy affordability and national security, yet it ignores the fact that these subsidies distort markets and drive up costs. The argument that these tax incentives were promised for a ten-year period, and therefore should remain untouched, is nothing more than an attempt to lock in bad policy. If a program is wasteful and inefficient, it should be ended — regardless of previous commitments to corporate beneficiaries. The idea that repealing subsidies would cause an energy crisis is a scare tactic used to protect special interests rather than consumers.
True energy dominance does not come from a politically constructed mix of energy sources dictated by government planners. It comes from an energy sector that is free to compete based on cost, efficiency, and reliability. The &#8220;all of the above&#8221; approach is not a strategy — it is a crutch for failing energy policies that depend on taxpayer support to survive. If we are serious about unleashing American energy, we must reject this DEI-style approach and allow the best energy sources to rise based on merit — not mandates.
* * *
The Honorable Jason Isaac is the Founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute, a trade organization that unapologetically champions free markets and American energy. Previously, he served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.
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Oil Set For Biggest Weekly Gain Since Early 2023 On Mideast Risk

Why ‘All Of The Above’ Energy Policies Fail

Why 'All Of The Above' Energy Policies Fail

China

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Electricity

Opinion

Governor Doug Burgum Visits FOX Business Network’s “The Big Money Show”

Make America Beautiful Again: An Interview With Doug Burgum, Secretary Of The Interior

Cabinet

Department of Interior

Doug Burgum

Elon Musk

interview

Nuclear

President Trump

Technology

On Wednesday, Senate Republicans defeated an attempt by their Democrat colleagues to undo President Donald Trump&#8217;s day-one national emergency declaration.
Members voted <a href="https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1191/vote_119_1_00095.htm#position" target="_blank" rel="noopener">52-47</a> along party lines. Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), who is <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/republican-senator-suffers-brain-bleed-after-falling-on-ice-during-seizure" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recovering</a> after falling and suffering a brain bleed after hitting the back of his head, missed the vote.
&#8220;For the last four years, American energy production was crippled by a woke, green agenda,&#8221; Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID) <a href="https://x.com/SenatorRisch/status/1894885644398149762" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a post to X on Wednesday as the effort met defeat.
He added: &#8220;President Trump’s energy emergency declaration takes the necessary steps to reverse Democrats’ Green New Deal and prioritize our domestic energy and natural resources.&#8221;
On the first day of his second term in the White House, Trump <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/declaring-a-national-energy-emergency/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">signed</a> the national emergency declaration, which ordered agencies to boost energy domestic production and infrastructure.
&#8220;That&#8217;s a big one,&#8221; Trump <a href="https://x.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1881512224000463246" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;You know what that allows you to do? It means you can do whatever you have to do to get out of that problem. And we do have that kind of an emergency.&#8221;
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-NM) led the effort to <a href="https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/kaine-and-heinrich-unveil-legislation-to-terminate-president-trumps-sham-energy-emergency" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;terminate&#8221;</a> the order via a joint resolution.
While claiming the order would kill jobs, raise costs on families, and weaken economic competitiveness, the Democrats made their resolution &#8220;privileged,&#8221; which forced a vote on it.
&#8220;Today&#8217;s vote goes to show, once again, that Senate Republicans refuse to do their jobs and put the American people above the wish lists of Trump&#8217;s donors and billionaire energy tycoons,&#8221; they <a href="https://x.com/SenTimKaine/status/1894892222421537180" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>.
Kaine and Heinrich added: &#8220;To our colleagues: don&#8217;t say we didn&#8217;t warn you when your constituents&#8217; energy bills go through the roof. To the American people: we&#8217;re going to keep fighting for you.&#8221;
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee (R-UT) worked to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-gop-fights-dems-to-preserve-trumps-day-one-energy-emergency-declaration" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rally</a> his fellow Republicans, who have a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber, in opposition to the resolution.
He said: &#8220;Senate Republicans won&#8217;t let Democrats delay and obstruct any longer and will ensure the President has the tools necessary to deliver the results the American people expect.&#8221;

President Donald Trump

Senate Rejects Dem Bid To Kill Trump’s Day-One Energy Emergency Declaration

Congress

Mike Lee

U.S.

U.S. Senate

Secretary of Energy Chris Wright will travel to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, on Friday to tour nuclear facilities and take part in a summit on the future of artificial intelligence development in the United States.
Wright’s visit to Oak Ridge, one of the original sites of the Manhattan Project, comes after he spent Monday at New Mexico’s Los Alamos National Lab touring its highly secure supercomputing and plutonium facilities. At Oak Ridge, Wright will tour the site’s supercomputer and Y-12, a facility that produces and stores enriched uranium.
GOP Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee, the chairman of the Energy and Water Appropriations subcommittee, will be one of several lawmakers hosting Wright.
“Oak Ridge and East Tennessee are at the forefront of developing groundbreaking new technologies such as AI, revitalizing our defense industrial base, and working to deliver on President Trump’s and Secretary Wright’s agenda to unleash American-made energy by expanding new nuclear power and technologies,” Fleischmann told The Daily Wire, adding that such advancements “are essential to our national security, economic prosperity, and powering our nation through the 21st Century.”
Wright’s visit to the Tennessee nuclear site comes as the administration prioritizes AI research and development to outperform U.S. adversaries like China. Wright will meet with OpenAI’s president and co-founder, Greg Brockman, on Friday and take part in a virtual summit described as a “1,000 Scientist AI Jam Session,” according to an Oak Ridge spokesman.
The summit is a “first-of-its-kind event being co-hosted by OpenAI and nine of the U.S. Department of Energy’s national labs to explore how AI can accelerate scientific discovery,” the spokesman told The Daily Wire. “Participants will have access to leading frontier AI models to test research applications, evaluate model responses, and help improve future AI systems. Secretary Wright and Mr. Brockman will give remarks and visit with participating Oak Ridge scientists.”
The participating national labs are Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven, Idaho, Livermore, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Princeton Plasma Physics.
Wright’s visits to Oak Ridge and Los Alamos emphasize the administration’s view of the importance of nuclear power. In an order signed on his first day as Energy Secretary, Wright said that the Trump administration aims to spark an “American nuclear renaissance” and that the United States should lead the “commercialization of affordable and abundant nuclear energy.”
That energy will be needed to power the U.S. development of energy-intensive AI models. In a video of his tour of Los Alamos, the secretary described the AI race as the “next Manhattan Project,” a reference to the U.S. research program that developed the atomic bomb during the Second World War.
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More than 70 years ago, the Manhattan Project brought together the world’s greatest scientists and engineers here in Los Alamos for a patriotic effort that changed the world.
The next Manhattan Project has arrived and with <a href="https://twitter.com/POTUS?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@POTUS</a> leadership, we will win this critical race. <a href="https://t.co/E40rNzKgJJ">pic.twitter.com/E40rNzKgJJ</a>
&mdash; Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) <a href="https://twitter.com/SecretaryWright/status/1894545339899641936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Chris Wright

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Energy Sec To Visit Tennessee Nuclear Facility, Take Part In AI Summit

EXCLUSIVE: Trump Energy Sec To Visit TN Nuclear Facility, Take Part In AI Summit

Artificial Intelligence

Department of Energy

Tennessee

Senate Republicans are rallying against a Democrat effort to undo the national emergency designed to unlock American energy that President Donald Trump declared on the first day of his second term.
Earlier this month, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-NM) introduced a &#8220;privileged&#8221; joint resolution that seeks to <a href="https://www.kaine.senate.gov/press-releases/kaine-and-heinrich-unveil-legislation-to-terminate-president-trumps-sham-energy-emergency" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;terminate&#8221;</a> Trump&#8217;s national emergency declaration that ordered agencies to boost energy domestic production and infrastructure, claiming it would &#8220;benefit big Oil&#8221; while killing jobs, raising costs on families, and weaken economic competitiveness.
The measure is expected to get a vote this week. Republicans, who have a 53-47 majority in the upper chamber, can defeat it with a simple majority — if they stay largely united. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chairman Mike Lee (R-UT) has been working to make that happen.
&#8220;Senate Democrats are yet again attempting to block President Trump&#8217;s efforts to secure cheaper, more reliable energy — just when America needs it most. Their message to families is clear: pay more, expect less,&#8221; Lee said in a statement. &#8220;Luckily, President Trump is committed to unleashing American energy and rescuing the country from the energy crisis that they have perpetuated. Senate Republicans won&#8217;t let Democrats delay and obstruct any longer and will ensure the President has the tools necessary to deliver the results the American people expect.&#8221;
The vote comes on the heels of the Senate <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/senate-passes-late-night-budget-bill-focused-on-border-defense-spending" target="_blank" rel="noopener">passing</a> a $340 billion budget resolution last week that, according to Chairman Lindsey Graham&#8217;s (R-SC) office, aims to <a href="https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/chairman-graham-statement-after-senate-agrees-to-budget-resolution-to-secure-the-border-revitalize-our-military-and-unleash-american-energy" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;unleash&#8221;</a> American energy by facilitating production through on- and offshore lease sales and stopping the national gas tax implemented during former President Joe Biden&#8217;s administration. All Democrats and one Republican — Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) — opposed the measure.
Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) delivered <a href="https://www.thune.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=16CE64C2-25A8-410C-9190-D124E6E5BADD#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThanks%20in%20substantial%20part%20to,face%20huge%20new%20power%20demands." target="_blank" rel="noopener">remarks</a> on the Senate floor on Tuesday in which he cited news articles that discussed how the United States is careening toward a situation in which it cannot meet growing power needs. He questioned why his Democrat colleagues do not see an emergency when the electric grid is on the edge.
&#8220;Thanks in substantial part to a movement to shut down fossil-fuel-fired power plants before reliable sources of clean energy are available to replace them, America is running out of power even as we face huge new power demands,&#8221; Thune said.
He added: &#8220;I realize this is an inconvenient truth to my Democrat colleagues. Why? Because it interferes with their plans to force the United States off conventional energy. If Democrats acknowledge that we are rapidly approaching an energy crisis, they might have to actually consider the consequences of their energy plans. &#8230; If we don’t take action, we are going to be facing some very serious problems in the very near future.&#8221;

U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)

Senate GOP Fights Dems To Preserve Trump’s Day-One Energy Emergency Declaration

John Thune

Tim Kaine

The following is an edited transcript of an interview between Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley and U.S. Senator Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) on a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/analyzing-trump-s-cabinet-with-senator-mullin-2-23-25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday edition of Morning Wire</a>.
So far, President Trump is batting a thousand on confirmations for his cabinet secretary nominees. Just this week Kash Patel was confirmed as Director of the FBI while Labor Secretary Linda Chavez-DeRemer seems to have secured the support of the Senate. This is the fastest pace since 2001. Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin joined Morning Wire to discuss Trump&#8217;s cabinet nominees, the Senate’s strategic approach to the confirmation process, and the significance of the GOP’s &#8220;Big Tent&#8221; strategy in uniting diverse political factions within the Republican Party.
* * *
JOHN: Joining us to discuss the rapid fire series of confirmations and where the Trump cabinet and agenda stands now is Oklahoma’s Senator Markwayne Mullin. Senator, first of all thank you for joining us.
MULLIN: It&#8217;s my honor. Thanks for having me on.
JOHN: Let’s start with Kash Patel. You’ve been a strong advocate for Patel – why do you believe we need a “disruptor” like him to lead the FBI?
MULLIN: I wouldn&#8217;t describe him as a &#8220;disruptor.&#8221; I would say he&#8217;s someone who chases the facts. He exposed the wrongs, or the hypocrisy, or the cover-ups within FBI. He did this way before he was even being considered to be the director of the FBI. He was a whistleblower before people were even looking into it. You take somebody like him who understands the intel system, understands the mission of the FBI and has been concerned enough back years ago that he was willing to expose it. Why wouldn&#8217;t you want somebody like that? Because he&#8217;s not there to destroy the FBI. He&#8217;s there to get them back on mission focus. He&#8217;s there to support the field agents, to put them back on the mission focus of protecting the American people, not taking directive orders from a Democrat Party that&#8217;s wanting to investigate students for showing up to school board meetings, or classifying Catholics – and I&#8217;m not joking when I say this – as possible terrorists because they disagreed with the Democrat agenda, especially when it came to abortions. That was what that was all about. It&#8217;s concerning that the Democrat Party had weaponized the FBI for political gain and political purposes. What Kash is going to do is put them back on mission focus. That means he&#8217;s going to reform the 7th floor of the Hoover Building and take the politics out of it – and put the American people back in focus.
<div id="attachment_868749" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-868749" class="size-large wp-image-868749" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-2196133096-864x576.jpg" alt="WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 30: Kash Patel, nominee to be Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, testifies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, DC on January 30, 2025. (Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-2196133096-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-2196133096-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-2196133096-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/01/GettyImages-2196133096.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images</div>
JOHN: Thus far all of President Trump’s nominees have gotten through the confirmation process relatively smoothly. Is this simply due to GOP majorities – or do you believe that Democrat opposition has been weakened by Trump’s mandate?
MULLIN: I think you’ve got a little bit of both. I think the American people spoke very loud and on November 5th, when he won the popular vote and obviously electoral vote. I think the Democrat Party is trying to reorganize and find themselves, and they can&#8217;t. They keep reverting back to 2017 rhetoric and I hope they stay there — because if they stay there, we&#8217;re going to continue to win elections. But at the same time, what you&#8217;ve seen is a new leader in the Senate with Leader Thune. He is 100% grinding the Democrats down from the get go. He said, “We can do this the hard way or we can do this the easy way. It&#8217;s up to you.” And so once the president got confirmed and sworn into office on the 20th, what we did is we immediately started the clock on these agents and on these nominees, and these nominees haven&#8217;t stopped. What I mean by the clock, just to explain to your listeners, after they get out of committee, which we already had people preset. So, first of all, Leader Thune directed the chairs of the committees to get started on the hearings early, even before Trump was sworn into office. That normally doesn&#8217;t take place. So he preset it. We came in on January 3rd. The president wasn&#8217;t going to get sworn in until January 20th, but we already started hearing so we could get them reported out of committee and onto the floor for the hearing. So starting on January 20th, he started the clock on these nominees. Once they get reported out of committee, it&#8217;s called a 24-hour soak. Then, if they&#8217;re a cabinet position, meaning a secretary, it is a 30-hour debate. So that&#8217;s when we say we&#8217;re invoking cloture. It&#8217;s a 20 or 30 hour debate. So it&#8217;s 54 hours on secretary levels. On directors, like Kash Patel, when you invoke culture on them, you have a two hour debate. So while you still have a 24-hour soak, you only have two hours of debate on that person. So you can move those faster. He has literally kept that clock running 24/7, 7 days a week even when we&#8217;re not here. The Democrats will negotiate and say, “Okay, what we will do is we&#8217;ll continue the clock if you don&#8217;t make us vote on Saturday and Sunday – well, not Sunday.” Like we did with Pete Hegseth on Saturday. They said, ”If you don&#8217;t make us stay over on the weekend, we will allow the clocks to run consecutively, even though we&#8217;re not here.” So, we&#8217;ll go ahead and invoke culture on the next person. When the 30 hours run out, say, it&#8217;s 6:00 in the morning on Saturday, the next 30 hours will start. So when we get back here on Monday, we can confirm two people at once. That&#8217;s why we&#8217;re so far ahead, because Leader Thune has not let up the pressure at all, not one bit, on the Democrats.
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JOHN: Really not wasting a second there. Wednesday was the hearing for Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. She was somewhat controversial on the Right because of her past support of pro-union policies and her past work for Planned Parenthood. You were one of her key proponents, even suggesting her nomination to President Trump. How do you envision her impacting labor relations in the current political climate?
MULLIN: Well, you have to go back to the coalition that President Trump has built. So, President Trump has brought a unique coalition together, right? Let&#8217;s just look at Tulsi. That conversation started over two years ago between President Trump and I, when he asked how do I get Libertarian and Independents to vote for us? We don&#8217;t have to win their vote, but we need to increase their percentages. I said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s bring Tulsi in.&#8221; Immediately that relationship started. Tulsi&#8217;s relationship with Bobby is what brought Bobby onto the campaign and the President quickly embraced him when he asked us to go to for me to be a surrogate to Indian country for him — even though a Republican hadn&#8217;t won Indian country since Nixon — President Trump wanted to put a special interest towards them. And so he ended up winning 63% of the Native American vote. When he asked, “Do you think we can win it?” I said, “Sir, you won all 77 counties in Oklahoma. There&#8217;s no greater population of Native American tribes in one area other than Oklahoma.&#8221; And I said, “So if you can win it in Oklahoma, you can win it nationally.” When you start looking at the unions, he asked right after Sean O&#8217;Brien, who had him and I had obviously public, very public disagreements. He asked us just a couple of months later. “Hey, I need you guys to work together.” His phone call to me was his [saying?], “Listen, we need the union votes. I want you to make friends with Sean. I believe you guys will get along. I talked to him. You guys actually have a lot in common.” He asked Sean to do the same thing. We got in a room together, and we&#8217;ve been friends ever since that day. And so the coalition that the president&#8217;s brought together is unique. At the same time, we have to understand that we can&#8217;t always use this conservative purity test when the president has got a mandate from the American people that he&#8217;s working for everybody. And that means this new coalition, we have to stay true to our values, but understand we&#8217;re accepting individuals that we may not 100% agree to, but we’ve got to show them some love. And Lori represents that. We have our differences, obviously. We&#8217;re a Right-to-Work state, a very proud Right-to-Work state. That&#8217;s what started the whole confrontation, honestly, between Sean and I. But at the same time, the unions have a place in this country, and I recognize that. There&#8217;s not a successful business that doesn&#8217;t have successful business employees. And there&#8217;s not an employee that has a good job that doesn&#8217;t have a business to work for. So they take both of us. Lori was a great compromise. It was one of those areas that, yeah, we&#8217;re going to give the unions a nod. We won 59% of the union vote, which he&#8217;s the first Republican president to do that in decades. We&#8217;re going, we&#8217;re going to give you a little nod, agree that we disagree on some issues, but we&#8217;re going to find common ground to work for because they&#8217;re looking for a party right now. The Democrat woke agenda doesn&#8217;t fit the workforce that we have in America right now. And so Sean and I spoke, Sean actually brought Lori to me and said, &#8220;What do you think about Lori? I think this is someone that the unions can support.&#8221; And I said, &#8220;I think that&#8217;s a great idea. Let&#8217;s talk to the president about it.&#8221; So we both visit with the president at different times about it. The president loved the idea, and that&#8217;s how it happened. So, I get that some of my conservative friends out there had reservations about it, but if we want to continue to win elections for the Republican Party and not go down this socialist woke agenda road that the Biden administration was trying to move us towards, then we got to understand we&#8217;re gonna have to allow some people in our party that we can welcome in and start working on things we have in common, not just focused on the differences.
JOHN: Well, that Big Tent approach clearly paid dividends in this last election for Trump, winning percentages of demographics we haven’t seen Republicans win in decades, as you said.
MULLIN: That&#8217;s right.
JOHN: Now you&#8217;re a member of the Senate GOP Deputy Whip team, which allows you to influence the legislative agenda significantly. What are your top legislative priorities for the 119th Congress?
MULLIN: Well deregulation is my biggest focus, the deregulation of the business sector. You’ve got to start with certain focuses and my focus is on energy. By the way, President Trump is all on board on this too, not just because it&#8217;s my agenda. He sees it the same way, because we both come from a business perspective. I tell everybody, when you make decisions, it will be based on two things: the way you were raised and your life experience. My life experience is business.  And you understand when you&#8217;re in business that everything that you factor as a cost starts and begins with energy. You can&#8217;t build a product and you can&#8217;t deliver a product with that without factoring in the energy cost because it takes energy to build it and it takes energy to deliver it. So, it&#8217;s always a baseline add-on when you&#8217;re talking about cost. So if you&#8217;re going to bring down inflation, you’ve got to bring down energy. The only way we bring down energy prices is you’ve got to make it conducive that people can trust their long term investment and not just four years at a time. But most energy companies are investing 15 to 20 years at a time when they look at returns. So you’ve got to have stability in the energy market. And that means you’ve got to have deregulation that&#8217;s not just an executive order, but it&#8217;s legislation and made into law. So it can&#8217;t be overturned on day one, like Joe Biden did to the Trump administration. So, stability in the regulatory market is my number one goal.
<div id="attachment_880601" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-880601" class="size-large wp-image-880601" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GettyImages-2200061297-863x576.jpg" alt="Elon Musk (L) holds a chainsaw with Argentine President Javier Milei during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Gaylord National Resort &amp; Convention Center at National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, on February 20, 2025." width="863" height="576" />SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images</div>
JOHN: Final question. Now the big bugaboo for Democrats is DOGE and its leader Elon Musk. How do you and your Republican colleagues in the Senate feel about how DOGE is going about its business?
MULLIN: I can&#8217;t speak for everybody in the Senate, especially my colleagues, but I&#8217;ll take it back to what I said earlier. We all make decisions based on how we were raised and our life experiences. So when you look from a business perspective, not a political perspective, you understand that every successful business out there, large or small, has hired a consultant at some point to come in and overlook their business operations. Not that they don&#8217;t know what they&#8217;re doing, it&#8217;s just that a consultant comes in from an unbiased perspective and just simply looks at numbers. And as a business owner, sometimes you can have pet projects that you just continue to dump money into that doesn&#8217;t make any sense. And there&#8217;s no way for it to be successful, but you&#8217;re so invested in it, you just can&#8217;t find a way out. And when a consultant looks at it and goes, “Hey, this makes no sense,” it opens your eyes up. Well, take politics, for example, you&#8217;ve got someone that&#8217;s been in there for 40 years. They’ve got a project in their state that doesn&#8217;t make any sense to continue because it&#8217;s outdated, but they&#8217;re personally connected to it and they&#8217;re not going to let it pass. Well, you take Elon Musk, who&#8217;s the most successful entrepreneur we&#8217;ve had in our lifetime and he&#8217;s working for the federal government as a free consultant. Consultants are typically expensive — and he&#8217;s doing it for free and giving his resources for free, and he&#8217;s looking at these programs from an unbiased perspective. Just the numbers. Does it work for the taxpayers? Does it make sense? How much waste, fraud and abuse is in the taxpayer dollar right now? And he&#8217;s exposing it at alarming rates. The reason I say alarming is because you think, ”Why haven&#8217;t we seen this?” Just take Social Security alone.You see the amount of people who are over 150 that are still on Social Security. I&#8217;m thinking, “I don&#8217;t remember seeing that report.” We celebrate people when they turn 100, and you typically see those in the paper. 150? I think that&#8217;d be pretty much news. I haven&#8217;t seen any of these individuals, but they&#8217;re still on the books for Social Security. Just simply cleaning up things like that makes a huge difference. That&#8217;s what a consultant can do, and that&#8217;s the role that DOGE is playing with Elon Musk, and I look at it from that perspective. Like I said, I can talk to my other colleagues and see how they look at it. But that&#8217;s what I&#8217;ve been on all these media outlets saying — the same thing that I am saying to you: try and argue with that perspective. You can&#8217;t. Because it does make sense. That&#8217;s why, that&#8217;s why private companies do it.
JOHN: Yeah, it doesn&#8217;t. I think it&#8217;s making sense to a lot of Americans as they watch this, polling shows that Trump&#8217;s approval is higher than it&#8217;s ever been than at any point in his first term. So things are going pretty well. He&#8217;s got a lot of momentum right now.
MULLIN: He has highly favorable numbers in Oklahoma. Literally, the numbers just came out the other day. It just blows my mind that his numbers are that good, and I&#8217;m just speaking for Oklahoma. His numbers obviously are good across the country.
JOHN: Well, senator, thank you so much for taking the time.
MULLIN: Thank you. Appreciate it.
JOHN: That was Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma – and this has been a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/podcasts/morning-wire/analyzing-trump-s-cabinet-with-senator-mullin-2-23-25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Sunday edition of Morning Wire</a>.
***

Senate HELP Committee Holds Confirmation Hearing For Lori Chavez-DeRemer

‘Grinding The Democrats Down’: Sen. Markwayne Mullin On Trump’s Cabinet And The GOP Game Plan

'Grinding The Democrats Down': Sen. Markwayne Mullin On Trump’s Cabinet And The GOP Game Plan

Federal Government

kash patel

Morning Wire

Oklahoma

Social Security

Climate is “nowhere near the world’s biggest problem,” and has some benefits worth considering when evaluating its cost, according to Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Wright appeared on Fox Business on Wednesday and said that the narrative pushed by leftist environmentalists has significant flaws. Wright, who is a longtime critic of radical environmentalism, said that the backlash against fossil fuels inspired by overwrought claims about climate change is unwarranted.
“Everything in life has tradeoffs, but a warmer planet with CO2 is better for growing plants. The world has been getting greener for decades – 14% more greenery around the planet today than there was 40 years ago,” Wright said, before pointing out that “far more people die of the cold than die of the heat.”
“Everything has a tradeoff, but, yeah, there’s pluses to global warming as well as negatives. But the bottom line is it&#8217;s nowhere near the world’s biggest problem today, not even close,” he added.
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President Donald Trump nominated Wright to serve as Secretary of Energy with a background working in the oil and gas and nuclear industries. Wright is in charge of implementing a key plank of Trump’s agenda, a return to American energy dominance through oil and gas production and other energy sources that “can lower the cost of energy, expand job opportunities, and have more stuff made in America,” as Wright said in the interview.
Wright has spoken much more harshly about certain policies crafted on the assumption that climate change is an existential threat. On Monday, the energy secretary spoke via videolink to a conference in London and called the push to get to net zero carbon emissions within the next few decades a “sinister goal.”
&#8220;Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It&#8217;s a terrible goal,&#8221; Wright <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us-energy-secretary-attacks-sinister-net-zero-goals-singling-out-britain-2025-02-17/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;The aggressive pursuit of it – and you&#8217;re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it&#8217;s delivered tremendous costs.”

Trump Energy Chief: Climate Change ‘Nowhere Near The World’s Biggest Problem’

President Donald Trump expressed confidence on Tuesday when questioned about the quick purge and reinstatement of largely probationary employees at the agency that oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Employees were laid off from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) last week before being reinstated over the weekend. Most of those involved were probationary employees, which typically means they were hired or promoted within the last year.
The employees let go from the NNSA were mostly involved in clerical or administrative roles, according to the Department of Energy. Many of those laid off worked on climate and energy efficiency-related projects that do not align with Trump’s agenda for American energy dominance. None of the employees worked directly on weapons-related programs, according to <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/17/trump-musk-nuclear-weapons-workers-nnsa/78968238007/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">USA Today</a>.
When asked if he was worried about what turbulence over the layoffs would do to the agency, the president said he was “not at all” concerned and that he was delivering on his agenda to voters.
“I think we have to just do what we have to do,” Trump said. “It&#8217;s amazing what&#8217;s been found right now. It&#8217;s amazing. Some, if we feel that, in some cases, they’ll fire people and then they’ll put some people back, not all of them, because a lot of people were let go.”
“Don’t forget, I got elected on the basis of making our government stronger and smaller because we have millions of people that, obviously, they’re paying millions of people that shouldn’t be paid,” he added.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Reporter: There was a big wave of probationary federal workers who were fired over the weekend. Some of these workers focused on nuclear weapons security were immediately rehired. Do you have any concerns? 
Trump: No, not at all. I think we have to just do what we have to do.… <a href="https://t.co/enXcCxKVlZ">pic.twitter.com/enXcCxKVlZ</a>
&mdash; Acyn (@Acyn) <a href="https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1891967707534553233?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The agency, which is semi-autonomous under the Department of Energy, sent out termination emails late last week before <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-wants-un-fire-nuclear-safety-workers-cant-figure-rcna192345?taid=67b0cdf1e6d2760001470968&amp;utm_campaign=trueanthem&amp;utm_medium=social" target="_blank" rel="noopener">retracting</a> some over the weekend. Managers had difficulty contacting some of the reinstated employees after cutting off their work email accounts.
The number of employees let go from the agency is unclear. The Department of Energy said the layoffs affected less than 50 people. According to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-energy-department-says-less-than-50-purged-nuclear-security-office-2025-02-16/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reuters</a>, 325 employees received termination emails.
The confusion over the agency’s employees took place amid widespread cuts to federal agencies being led by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, an Elon Musk-led group within the White House that is overseeing an audit of federal employment and spending priorities.

Trump ‘Not At All’ Worried About DOGE Cuts After Reinstatement Of Nuclear Safety Workers

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Executive

Washington D.C.

A Biden administration official who approved a $1.6 billion loan to a company he invested in recently said he does not regret his decision.
Jigar Shah, former President Joe Biden’s head of the Department of Energy&#8217;s Loan Programs Office, recently <a href="https://www.semafor.com/article/02/11/2025/jigar-shah-has-some-concerns-about-energy-investment-under-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Semafor that he wouldn’t change “a single thing” about his actions in office. A reporter for the outlet asked Shah if he would have done anything differently at the Loan Programs Office (LPO) at the Department of Education, and Shah said no.
“Not a single thing,” Shah said. “To take an office that was shut down by the Obama administration after Solyndra and give it hope again, that just takes the amount of time that it takes.”
Just days before President Donald Trump retook office, Shah finalized a $1.6 billion federal loan to a green energy company in which he was invested, The Washington Free Beacon <a href="https://freebeacon.com/biden-administration/bidens-lame-duck-loan-czar-finalizes-1-6-billion-award-to-green-power-company-he-invested-in/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a>. Shah made the $100 million investment in Plug Power, a hydrogen fuel developer, through his green financial firm Generate Capital – just before he joined the Biden administration in 2021. Just one month after Shah joined the administration, Plug Power applied for a federal loan from his office.
Republicans had raised concerns about Shah’s ties to the company, but those concerns went nowhere and Shah joined the Biden administration. Shah’s finalization of a loan to Plug Power came just weeks after the Department of Energy’s own inspector general <a href="https://freebeacon.com/biden-harris-administration/significant-risk-of-fraud-federal-watchdog-calls-for-emergency-halt-to-bidens-400-billion-energy-loan-fund/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">asked</a> him to halt all loans from his office due to a “significant risk of fraud&#8221; and conflict-of-interest concerns within the program. Shah ignored the warning and provided billions to green energy companies in the final weeks of the Biden administration, the Free Beacon reported.
During the four years of the Biden administration, the LPO pumped out $400 billion to green energy companies, according to the Free Beacon.
Shah was directly involved in the Plug Power loan process, the Free Beacon found during a public records request, even holding a meeting with the company’s CEO in May 2021. Three days after that meeting, staff in Shah’s office held another meeting focused on Plug Power.
In 2023, Plug Power <a href="https://finance.yahoo.com/news/plug-power-stock-tanks-40-as-company-warns-it-could-run-out-of-money-in-a-year-155101635.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">warned</a> investors it may run out of money within a year, and Morgan Stanley <a href="https://www.barrons.com/articles/plug-power-stock-price-downgrade-b7f666f2" target="_blank" rel="noopener">downgraded</a> the company’s stock due to “significant risk around PLUG&#8217;s business model.&#8221;
This didn’t stop Shah from handing the company another $1.6 billion in the closing days of the Biden administration.

Jigar Shah

Biden Energy Official Who Gave $1.6 Billion To Company He Invested In Says He Has No Regrets

Biden Administration

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