The U.S. Department of Justice led by Attorney General Pam Bondi filed four court actions this week, opening a new battle front in support of the Trump American Energy Dominance Agenda.
The actions come as a response to a little-noticed April 8 executive order signed by President Donald Trump directing Bondi and her team to “take action to stop the enforcement of state laws that unreasonably burden domestic energy development so that energy will once again be reliable and affordable for all Americans.”
Noting that, “[m]any States have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, burdensome and ideologically motivated ‘climate change’ or energy policies that threaten American energy dominance and our economic and national security,” Executive Order 14260 further states, “[t]hese state laws and policies weaken our national security and devastate Americans by driving up energy costs for families coast-to-coast, despite some of these families not living or voting in States with these crippling policies.”
In seeking to fulfill the directives in this order, DOJ lawyers filed separate actions targeting lawfare-related actions by the states of Michigan and Hawaii, along with so-called “climate superfund laws” enacted by Vermont and New York.
The DOJ actions targeting Michigan and Hawaii seek to prevent the Democrat governors and attorneys general in those states from joining a long standing anti-oil and gas lawfare campaign funded by billionaire NGOs and coordinated by the San Francisco-based Sher Edling firm. Both filings argue that such lawsuits conflict with the federal government’s longstanding preeminence to regulate air emissions under the Clean Air Act, do harm to federal efforts to regulate interstate commerce, and reduce federal revenues by impeding energy development.
“At a time when States should be contributing to a national effort to secure reliable sources of domestic energy,” Hawaii and Michigan are “choosing to stand in the way,” the DOJ complaints said.
Similarly, the “climate superfund” laws in New York and Vermont seek enormous damages (New York wants $75 billion) based on specious claims that oil and gas company contributions to ill-defined “climate change” have damaged the states. DOJ argues that even if specific dollar damages emanating from worldwide emissions could be reliable calculated, the state laws again impinge on the federal government’s longstanding preeminence in the realm of regulation of air emissions.
“These “climate superfund” laws would impose strict liability on energy companies for their worldwide activities extracting or refining fossil fuels,” the DOJ says in a release. “The laws assess penalties for those businesses’ purported contributions to harms that those states allegedly are experiencing from climate change. The New York law seeks $75 billion from energy companies, while the Vermont law seeks an unspecified amount.”
The reality, of course, is that the lawsuit filings and laws passed by these four states is little more than a huge money grab motivated by crass partisan politics. It is not an accident that every state, city, and county recruited by Sher Edling and the other firms coordinating the lawfare campaign is led by Democrats. Nor is it a mere happenstance that both New York and Vermont have long been firmly “blue” states.
If left in place and not aggressively opposed by the DOJ, these state laws and lawfare campaign taken together could have the impact of bankrupting many oil and gas companies and destabilizing America’s energy security.
“These burdensome and ideologically motivated laws and lawsuits threaten American energy independence and our country’s economic and national security,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “The Department of Justice is working to ‘Unleash American Energy’ by stopping these illegitimate impediments to the production of affordable, reliable energy that Americans deserve.”
By taking these aggressive actions, Bondi and her DOJ team signal a willingness to do their part to support the Trump goal of restoring the U.S. to a position of not just strong energy security, but energy dominance. Some critics this week complain that Bondi’s actions were “highly unusual” and unprecedented. If true, this administration considers it to be a virtue.
Things have changed.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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