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Congressional Daily Record
This section covers nominations, confirmations, or other executive branch business. It mentions members such as Sheldon Whitehouse.
Official title: Climate Change (Executive Calendar)
Issued
May 12, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I am here now for the 307th time with my trusty and increasingly battered “Time to Wake Up” chart to warn this Chamber about how America's worst polluters have occupied the Trump administration from within.
These polluters are up to no good. They are desperate—desperate—to pollute for free. That is their business model, to pollute for free, even though polluting for free is wrong—wrong under the laws of economics, wrong under the laws of morality, wrong under the laws of nature. But they are desperate to pollute for free because the stakes are huge. And the stakes are really huge. The International Monetary Fund has calculated that the fossil fuel industry's subsidy from being allowed to pollute for free is over $700 billion every year.
Mr. President, $700 billion every year is a lot of money, and it is a lot of motive to fund a lot of mischief.
Earth's natural systems. Indeed, they have mounted a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial. As I have said in earlier speeches, that is actually phase 2. Phase 1 was when their own scientists warned them what their emissions would do to Earth's natural systems and they chose to hide that information and cover it up.
into the phase 2 part—a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial.
of dark money—to influence and control American politics, specifically to control the Republican Party. I was here when it was OK to be a Republican on a serious climate bill. That was true until January of 2010, the day that Citizen United was decided. And at that point the amount of money that fossil fuel offered made it irresistible for the Republican Party to become the party of climate denial.
And that fossil fuel industry doesn't operate in its own name. It operates through many, many front groups, front groups which they play like piano keys. It amounts to corruption at epic scale.
use the powers of government, a Federal Government that is theirs now to corruptly command, to block low-cost clean energy from getting to the grid.
polluting plants are being outcompeted—outcompeted by reliable renewable clean energy like wind and solar. The polluters know that their only chance of survival against less expensive, cleaner power is to interfere using government.
So what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. We know it is hundreds of millions. It could have been the whole billion that Trump asked for; but given how complicated dark money is, it is hard to tell. We do know they put at least hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign.
the tune of billions of dollars. And here is the rub: They are using your money to pay them.
Interior to the Department of Energy, polluters have infiltrated the government itself and are using its levers to shut down their clean energy competition.
Secretary Wright, the Trump administration first started by telling the big lie—the big lie that clean energy is more expensive than dirty, polluting fossil fuel energy. That is, in fact, a lie. But that was the opening premise, and then they went to work killing clean energy.
and obligated funds that supported the rollout of affordable clean energy. He attacked the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, costing consumers potentially $52 billion in lost energy savings, money out of consumers' pockets.
$350 million per year in lost energy savings—billions lost to consumers over time.
Zeldin canceled grants totaling over $1.7 billion, including congressionally
appropriated and obligated funding for clean energy projects. The result of all of that was clean, renewable energy kept off the grid, increasing the costs that American consumers have to pay.
build and operate affordable clean energy projects. Early in 2025, Burgum halted construction on two offshore wind projects off the coast of Rhode Island and New York. Later, he ordered a second halt to five offshore wind projects—the two he had already stopped that were back operational and three more projects in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York.
That stalled nearly 6 gigawatts of clean electricity. If those gigawatts were off the grid, that would mean polluting oil, gas, and coal plants would be picking up the slack. That extra 6 gigawatts of polluting oil, gas, and coal would, in turn, mean billions of dollars to the polluters.
Now Interior has a new plan: With taxpayer money, pay off companies to walk away from offshore wind leases and, instead, invest the payoff money on fossil fuel projects—again, clean renewable energy off the grid; increased costs for consumers but more profits for polluters— Trump's big donors. Three different companies have made these dirty deals so far. That is Interior.
mission to “revive”—their own word—beautiful, clean coal, even where no one seems to want it. Trump's Energy Department announced that it would provide 625 million taxpayer dollars for retrofits, recommissioning, and life-extension projects for coal plants, including at least one instance where neither the grid operator nor the local utility wanted this intervention.
DOE then announced $175 million more from taxpayers to extend the life of six coal-fired power plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Ohio. The Department of Energy may have illegally repurposed funds Congress had appropriated for carbon capture programs to subsidize those coal plants.
of the expense of running these polluting plants but more profits in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters—Trump's big donors.
drive up costs for consumers by billions. The excess costs consumers must pay flows to fossil fuel. You know how the grid works. They run the clean energy first because it is least expensive. If you can back off that low-cost clean energy, the grid has to climb up the generation stack to more and more expensive fossil fuel plants. And all that added money goes straight to fossil fuel industry pockets—from consumers to the fossil fuel industry, a crooked money pump driving up costs for consumers.
You don't even have to kill the plant. Every day that low-cost clean energy is delayed is another day that money is steered from consumers' pockets into the pockets of the owners and fuel dealers of the expensive, polluting fossil fuel units. Those billions are the polluters' rewards from Trump.
extraction of money from consumers to pay off Trump's big donors won't go over well. Cost and corruption are what most concern voters, and this scheme is on the wrong side of both, which brings us to the coming election.
Trump is in desperate political trouble. Costs are exploding, and corruption is epidemic. Voters are angry. So the big polluters need to corrupt the election. A corrupt attack on our elections is the last gasp of the big polluters' and creepy billionaires' grasp on power. They would rather rule corruptly in an oligarchy than live lawfully in a democracy.
suppressing service to billionaire-funded Republicans with its destruction of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais.
The Callais case is the culmination of a yearslong “judicial project to destroy the Voting Rights Act,” quoting Justice Kagan.
once said “call balls and strikes,” not have projects to destroy legislation crafted by Congress.
So Justice Kagan using those words is powerful. Discarding decades of precedent and ignoring mountains of factual findings made by Congress, the Court supercharged Republican partisan gerrymandering across the south. And, boy, did it work.
Tennessee, and Mississippi begin redrawing voting maps to disenfranchise minority voters and benefit Republican candidates.
defending, for instance, billionaires' dark money flooding our elections and defending Republican red map gerrymandering.
so-called SAVE Act, supposedly based on the bogus claim that undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. That, as experienced in States that have looked at similar legislation shows, is unequivocally false.
would have disenfranchised millions of legitimate voters, just not the kind that Republicans wanted voting.
Agencies are already seizing voter files. At least 48 States have received requests for their complete voter registration lists. The Department of Justice sued 30 of those States and Washington, DC, for their refusal to turn over the voter information.
records in Fulton County, GA, after the DOJ had failed to obtain those records through civil proceedings. I won't explain that here because I have given a speech on that subject, laying out all of the mischief and shenanigans behind that search warrant.
The plot here is simple. It is to make sure the corrupt billionaires keep their control of the government so that they can use their control of the government to prop up their pollute-for-free business model and keep gouging you on cost. Well, to keep gouging Americans on cost and to keep polluting for free and to maintain their corrupt influence over the Trump administration, they have got to mess with the election. So be alert.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.