Conservative activist Leonard Leo is the driving force behind a push for Republican-led states to shield fossil fuel companies from climate accountability lawsuits: www.propublica.org/article/clim... via @abrahm.bsky.social
Enough climate hushing. Democrats need to fight.
NEW: Fifteen laws in 11 states that could immunize the fossil fuel industry from climate-related legal claims have either been passed or are being debated.
Many bills are part of a coordinated effort by groups linked to right-wing activist Leonard Leo.
annnnd here's the follow up / companion piece on Gas Outlook. We have more video and photos showing what methane looks like at the "certified" gas sites
gasoutlook.com/long-read/ce...
NEW: Aaron Szabo, the Trump EPA official leading an effort to loosen rules on methane pollution, was an unnamed author of key oil industry arguments against those same rules just four years ago when he was an oil and gas lobbyist, metadata shows.
A screenshot of a paragraph from the ProPublica story that says: The Trump administration official leading an effort to loosen rules on methane pollution was an unnamed author of key industry arguments against those same rules just four years ago when he was an oil and gas lobbyist.
Aaron Szabo, the official leading EPA efforts to weaken methane rules, once helped write the oil industry's arguments against said rules. Emails show he's now working closely with industry groups to gut federal climate policy. That's textbook regulatory capture. @propublica.org: bit.ly/4m1DxkG
1/ My first story as a @propublica.org climate reporter:
I discovered that the Trump appointee in charge of rewriting methane rules at the EPA was – just four years ago – an unnamed author of an oil industry response to those same rules.
His name isn't in the document itself, but…
A cardboard sign reading “FUCK ICE” with people marching and a colorful mural in the background
No Kings today in Oakland, CA
Gas lobbyists are using energy shortages from the war on Iran as leverage to attack the EU's methane law.
If they succeed in blocking the law, it could unleash a massive expansion of U.S. LNG infrastructure at the cost of residents' health, pocketbooks across continents, and the global climate
Congrats, Chad! Important work.
Big Soda and Big Oil want us hooked on plastic.
Together, they're working in lockstep to stop "any cap on plastics production," and make sure that efforts to meaningfully address the plastic pollution crisis fail.
@joshvoorhees.bsky.social of @fieldnotes.co and
@davisallen.bsky.social explain.
Border Patrol agents have been roving from city to city over the last 15 months, far from their home bases in California and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, engaged in an unprecedented mass deportation campaign.
A collaboration w/ @calmatters.org @evidentmedia.org and @bellingcat.com
New joint investigation between @bellingcat.com @calmatters.org @evidentmedia.org where we identified agents causing chaos and violence across the country. These guys were some of the worst repeat offenders we saw.
www.bellingcat.com/news/2026/03...
This is 🤯: Oklahoma took on an ambitious project to catalog all of the state’s injection wells, which shoot toxic waste generated by oil drilling back into the ground. Despite records showing risk of drinking water pollution, the state chose not to act.
@nickbowlin.bsky.social
What last three @fieldnotes.co investigations tell us about: who, exactly, killed the endangerment finding?
fieldnotes.substack.com/p/an-endange...
Now feels like a good time to remember that Big Oil is the reason why we're still hooked on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels.
The industry's lies have essentially stolen a generation’s worth of time that we could have used to transition to cleaner, safer energy sources.
It’s time for accountability.
For decades, massive methane plumes from oil and gas operations went largely undetected. Now, new satellite technology is revealing “super-emitters,” tracing methane leaks down to specific facilities and equipment.
Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case related to the Air Force's practice of blowing up toxic military waste right on a beach in Guam—without environmental review.
In 2022, I wrote a piece for @grist.org on this environmental injustice and the Indigenous group fighting to end it.
Behind the Organized Assault on Climate Regulation, a Rented Mailbox in a Suburban Texas Strip Mall
a new @fieldnotes.co investigation: fieldnotes.co/reporting/ce...
Our full brief on that shady legal group w/ties to far-right billionaires, key fossil-fuel influencers, Christian nationalists, libertarian think tanks, major industry lobbies, & fancy law firms that rep corps spanning the length of the oil, gas & petchem supply chain.
fieldnotes.co/reporting/ce...
Our database paints a detailed financial picture for President Donald Trump and hundreds of his political appointees, some of whom have ties to the industries they regulate.
The disclosures include their recent employers, assets and debts.
Infographic showing seven CEA-affiliated lawyers working for fossil-fuel interests in between their first and second stints in the Trump administration.
CEA is also pulling double duty—scratch that, *triple duty*—as a revolving door with the Trump admin. fieldnotes.co/reporting/ce...
A flow chart showing how money moves from ultra-conservative groups to oil & gas lawyers via the Center for Environmental Accountability.
And for you visual learners, here's how the group acts as both a mouthpiece for and middleman between ultra-conservative groups and oil & gas lawyers. fieldnotes.co/reporting/ce...
Great thread by my colleague Josh on the behind-the-scenes story of "Who, Exactly, Killed the Endangerment Finding?" ⬇️
Here's a link to the database. Remember, democracy is a participation sport. Don't sit on the sidelines. projects.propublica.org/trump-team-f...
Great thread by my colleague Josh on the behind-the-scenes story of "Who, Exactly, Killed the Endangerment Finding?" ⬇️
Another 🚨 @fieldnotes.co investigation is out in the wild.
This one reveals how an obscure nonprofit founded by oil & gas lawyers and funded by right-wing ideologues—and registered at a suburban Texas strip mall—has played an outsized role in Donald Trump’s assault on climate /enviro policy. 🧵
Text: American Petroleum Institute SVP of Policy, Economics and Regulatory Affairs Dustin Meyer: “Today’s action appropriately ends the previous administration’s EV mandates, which effectively banned new gas-powered vehicles and represented a clear case of regulatory overreach at the expense of American consumers. We continue to support smart, effective federal regulation of emissions - including methane from oil and gas operations. Our focus now is working on durable policies that reduce emissions while meeting growing energy demand.”
In EPA’s press release on the endangerment finding, API praises the agency’s tailpipe rule repeal, but notably doesn’t mention that EPA just killed the finding that underpins nearly all U.S. climate regs.
Weird, right? Unless API is scared the extreme rollback might backfire...
@fieldnotes.co's thread on how the oil & gas industry pushed EPA to rescind the endangerment finding, but is now scared the extreme rollback could leave it vulnerable to "polluter-pays" laws and lawsuits. ⬇️
