Institute Training US Judges On Climate May Be CCP-Linked, Group Tells Congress

A national security group launched a six-figure advertising campaign Tuesday pressing Congress to investigate a nonprofit that trains American judges on climate science in part over alleged China ties.

State Armor renewed its request to five Republican committee chairmen Tuesday morning — two in the Senate and three in the House — in a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The letter, which follows a previous State Armor letter sent in June, adds a claim that the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) is working against the American data center buildout.

The ELI “has positioned itself as a leading voice against the rapid development of data centers and the energy infrastructure necessary to power them,” State Armor Chief Executive Officer Michael Lucci wrote in the Tuesday letter.

The institute has a long history of engagement with Chinese institutions and “is working to impede American development in a strategically critical industry while China races ahead,” Lucci added.

The Environmental Law Institute did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

The letter supports that claim with two links to the institute’s own website. One points to a July 2025 public webinar on data center water use that the institute co-hosted with the Network for the Digital Economy and Environment, with panelists from Virginia Tech, the consulting firm WestWater Research and the nonprofit Protect Our Aquifer. The other points to a comment published this month in the Environmental Law Reporter, the institute’s journal, titled “A Call for a National Data Center Moratorium and Policy Framework.”

Bob Sussman, who served as deputy administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Bill Clinton, wrote that comment. The journal says on its articles page that it welcomes outside submissions and that its goal is to educate the profession and foster debate.

“ELI has allowed itself to be a middleman for Chinese influence here in America, and has carried out work that effectively advances the CCP’s [Chinese Communist Party] geopolitical goals,” Lucci said in a statement provided to the DCNF. “Congress needs to take a serious look at ELI’s actions and relationships with Communist China to determine if legal action should be taken.”

Suggestions that the Climate Judiciary Project’s activities are improper are “without merit,” the institute states on its website. The project provides education and does not advise judges on how to rule in any case, the institute says on the same page. Its curriculum draws on the National Climate Assessment, the National Academies and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and each module undergoes peer review before release, according to the institute.