Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman joined the Daily Caller News Foundation to discuss how her Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026 may shut down climate activists’ legal crusade against energy companies.
Hageman arrived at Congress after defeating Liz Cheney in a contentious 2022 primary election. Her new legislation would clamp down on climate lawfare bilking companies for billions.
The Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026 would dismiss all active climate litigation, overrule state-level laws penalizing energy production, prohibit retroactive lawsuits over carbon emissions and reaffirm the federal government’s sole authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
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Climate Litigation
“Numerous states and municipalities have been unable to get [climate bills] passed. Things like a cap and trade or a carbon tax. And so this is just another effort to tax industry,” Hageman said.
States like New York and Vermont instituted climate superfund statutes to collect money from fossil fuels companies based on alleged harms from their carbon emissions.
“They’ve come up with a very unique theory that because of climate change or global warming being caused, allegedly by our fossil fuel companies. They believe that they can sue them under some kind of a nuisance theory,” Hageman continued, referencing the public nuisance justification many activist lawsuits depend on. “But the bill would prevent them from being able to pursue these lawsuits.”
Public nuisance law has been used to sue energy companies on the basis that carbon emissions constitute a grave interference with public rights.
“I’m going to use the city of Boulder, Colorado, as an example. This is a town of about 100,000 people. And this is the lawsuit that’s before the United States Supreme Court right now,” Hageman said, noting the Suncor Energy v. County Commissioners of Boulder County case. “But they filed the claim against oil and gas companies, arguing that they should have to pay massive amounts of damages for the damage that they have caused by producing a product that we all use and need, and that have made, you know, our entire lives better.”
Boulder County’s original case against Suncor sought damages over the company’s supposed contributions to climate change harms.
When asked how restrictive climate policy and frequent litigation affected Wyoming, Hageman noted former Democratic administrations’ efforts to phase out fossil fuels.
“We are looking at running out of coal for purposes of electrical generation and energy production by 2030. It’s not that we don’t have the reserves, but we don’t have the permits in place,” Hageman told the DCNF.
The Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era Environmental Protection Agency endangerment finding allowing federal carbon emission regulations, but Congress has yet to codify executive deregulatory actions.
“There has not been a new coal lease issued in Wyoming since 2014, and that is because under both Barack Obama and Joe Biden, there has been such a war against our energy companies and our energy producers.”
Though the House of Representatives passed the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act in December 2025 to reform the National Environmental Policy Act and reduce permitting timelines, the Senate has yet to pass its own bill.
“In order to bid for federal coal leases, you have to invest tens of millions of dollars,” Hageman noted. “Well, obviously those companies were not interested or were not inclined to invest tens of millions of dollars in trying to get a lease.
“Number one, under the Obama administration and Biden Biden administration, it probably wasn’t going to happen,” the Wyoming representative continued. “But then we saw what happened to the Keystone pipeline, where even after investing $1 billion in the infrastructure for the Keystone XL pipeline, when Biden came in, the first thing he did was cancel it.”
“And the project proponents lost all that money.”
Iran And Europe
Hageman noted Operation Epic Fury’s impact on oil prices, but was optimistic regarding the war’s timeline. The national average gasoline price as of May 12 is $4.50, according to the American Automobile Association.
“Well, it does. It affects everybody,” Hageman began when asked how elevated gas prices were affecting Wyomingites. “I drove over 700 miles. So I spent a lot of time driving in Wyoming. I’m very much affected by the gas prices and have a firsthand experience filling up my car and gas prices are high, but I believe that this is a temporary situation. Number one, I do think that the situation in Iran is going to be resolved fairly quickly.”
“But the other aspect of this is this is exactly why we need to be producing energy domestically. That’s why President Trump has been absolutely correct, both in his first term and now talking about energy independence. America First, we need to be producing here,” Hageman said.
“We don’t want to be dependent like so many other countries are. Let’s just look at England.”
“They made the decision that they are not willing to go up and produce in the North Sea and yet they’re buying oil and gas from Norway who is producing in essentially the exact same location in the North Sea,” Hageman said. “And they’re spending and paying massive amounts of money for that, because they refuse themselves to produce the energy that they need.”
“So that’s why every single day that we can be moving forward with additional gas leases, oil leases and coal mining leases, the more that we can do that uranium, the better off we’re going to be, because we do not want to be dependent on the Middle East for our energy.”
Allies And ActivistsÂ
Hageman said that climate activism is a greater long-term threat to U.S. energy than the Iranian conflict.
“We have seen that over the last 25 years. You know, I have fought a lot of battles as a private attorney prior to coming to Congress, pushing back against the radical environmentalists and the activist judges who want to turn this into what we’re seeing in Europe.”
“Germany right now, in November, one of the largest cities in Germany, actually having a referendum to essentially deindustrialize. And I want you to think about that,” the representative said. “They had a referendum where they voted to kill jobs. Make energy unaffordable to reduce their standard of living. I mean, everything across the board is a bad idea.”
“I often say you can either be a champion of abundance or you can be a word of scarcity,” she continued. “They are lords of scarcity. I want to be a champion of abundance. And that starts with affordable and reliable energy.”
Asked if European energy policy made them less reliable allies, Hageman clarified her position.
“Absolutely. There’s no question about it. I mean, England tried to send one ship to Iran, to the war in Iran. And they were not even able to do it.”
“And that is why what they have done in terms in their efforts to decarbonize, the net zero nonsense, all of that, they have not only increased the price for food, for housing, for energy, for construction, for everything out there, but they also have put themselves at great, great risk of being dependent on very unstable societies and governments.”
The Last Word
Hageman gave her final thoughts on what Americans may miss when it comes to the energy industry.
“So many people think that it is a dirty industry, and it really isn’t. I invite people to come see a coal mine. I would invite people to come and see a uranium operation, a uranium mining operation.”
“I think that they believe that people who are in the energy industry don’t care about the environment,” Hageman concluded. “There’s nothing further from the truth. You’ll never find better environmentalists than people who are producing energy, because their livelihood depends on it.”
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