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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Natasha Lyonne left red-faced after lobbying attempt with Trump
Anti-Trump actress and AI film studio boss Natasha Lyonne (pictured) is taking on what might be her most challenging role yet - lobbying the Trump administration. The Hollywood darling is passionate about outlawing sinister uses of artificial intelligence in the glamorous industry. And she's willing to put aside her open hatred of the administration to accomplish her goals. 'My primary interest is that people get paid for their life's work,' Lyonne, 46, recently told the Wall Street Journal. The 'Poker Face' and 'Russian Doll' actress worked earlier this year to secure signatures for a letter to the White House advocating against policies allowing AI to take over the media. Securing over 400 signatures from icons like Paul McCartney, Ben Stiller and Ron Howard, the memo called on the White House to protect Hollywood's intellectual property from being gobbled up by AI companies without proper compensation. 'We firmly believe that America's global AI leadership must not come at the expense of our essential creative industries,' the March letter stated. But Lyonne is facing a problem she couldn't have anticipated. No one knows who she is on Capitol Hill, or in the White House, for that matter. Multiple top aides on Capitol Hill working on AI issues with the White House told the Daily Mail they had not heard of Lyonne - or her lobbying efforts. She 'seems like an insane person,' one Republican staffer joked after learning of her advocacy. A Democratic aide similarly shared they were unaware of the A-lister's AI push, but added 'omg I love her.' Lyonne is an unusual choice to lead Hollywood's AI lobbying push given her history of anti-Trump rhetoric. 'When I think of the kids, like the 12 year old girl that can't get an what really rips me apart,' Lyonne told the Hollywood Reporter of the Trump administration in February. She later clarified she was referring to abortions for those who were [sexual assault] victims. 'It's very weird to have, like, a showbiz guy in charge is surreal. I mean, because, well, I'm actually pretty horrified by how strategic and effective this whole thing has been,' she continued. 'It's nothing we didn't know but always a horror to see upfront.' In a post from 2020 she fundraised for Democrats, posting on X: 'There's no debate: If we #TurnTexasBlue, Trump is through.' 'What's timeline on trump's exit,' she wrote on X in October 2017. The actress even publicly endorsed Kamala Harris for president last year ahead of the election. A representative for the actress did not return the Daily Mail's request for comment. Lyonne is also a partner in a new AI film and TV venture called Asteria, an application that trains exclusively on content with permission from creators - a practice she is trying to make the industry standard. Her history of attacking the 79-year-old president is resurfacing as she tries to sway a forthcoming AI policy plan being crafted by the White House's office of Technology. The WSJ reported the plan 'could influence how U.S. copyright rules are applied to training large language models,' and a lobbying effort on both sides of the issue has begun. Large firms like OpenAI and Google have argued that if the copyright restrictions Lyonne is pushing for are adopted, American companies could lose the AI race to China. Currently, multiple lawsuits have resulted in rulings favorable to both sides of the debate. Disney and Comcast's Universal both sued the firm Midjourney for allegedly using their copyrighted works to train its AI image generator.
CNN
4 hours ago
- Business
- CNN
How the renewable energy industry lost a massive lobbying fight over Trump's agenda bill
In May, over a dozen solar CEOs gathered at the Capitol Hill Club, the watering hole of choice for Republican lawmakers and lobbyists just steps from the Hill. Gulping coffee to fuel up for another long day of meetings, they sported pins that said 'support energy dominance' in front of a gleaming solar panel – borrowing the macho phrasing President Donald Trump uses to talk about oil and gas. They were there to cajole Republicans to protect clean energy tax credits from Trump, who had spent his 2024 campaign vowing to kill them. The first draft of the president's sweeping tax and spending bill had just been released, and it made steep cuts to the subsidies. Nevertheless, the renewables industry was bullish. They believed they had an ironclad argument to present to pro-business Republicans: Wind and solar had beaten the competition from a pure cost perspective. Utilities couldn't build it fast enough to keep up with surging demand from Big Tech needing to power AI and data centers. And best of all, new factories building renewables, batteries and electric vehicles were supporting tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs in red Congressional districts – so killing them could be a political third rail. 'This industry supports the president's full agenda,' Costa Nicolaou, CEO of solar roof mounting company PanelClaw, told CNN. 'We are part of their American energy dominance solution. We're a part of their steel, aluminum and manufacturing job solution.' But on Capitol Hill, their argument ultimately fell on deaf ears, a sign of the steep obstacles the industry faced in a Washington run by Trump's Republican Party. 'They all cried chicken little,' GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, who helped craft the agenda bill's language around the energy tax credit phaseout, told CNN. 'Everybody who has any government handout comes here and says the apocalypse will occur if we don't get this money. And the reality is, none of that's true.' Often referring to the subsidies as a 'Green New Scam,' Republicans could not get past the notion that the tax credits were created under former President Joe Biden and did not want to admit that there were parts of the Democratic-led legislation that they could also champion. With Trump adamantly against the continuation of these credits, most Republicans saw it as inevitable that the over two-dozen members who voiced support for the tax credits would ultimately have no choice but to fall in line – even if that meant killing energy jobs and factories in their districts and raising energy costs around the country. As CNN has reported, the law is expected to raise energy prices in every state in the continental US over the next decade, in large part because there will be less wind and solar on the electric grid, which will be replaced by more expensive gas and coal. Retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted against the tax bill, told CNN he is 'absolutely' worried about the job losses that could come. 'It's not a very business-like in its approach,' he said. In the end, the biggest obstacle for the clean energy tax credits proved to be Trump himself, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and business leaders. Asked whether the clean energy industry underestimated Trump's opposition to the tax credits, GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington told CNN, 'They shouldn't have.' 'He was signaling pretty strongly, but maybe it was too late for them to do anything about it,' he added. Wind and solar have enjoyed decades of bipartisan support for their tax credits; Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is the self-proclaimed 'father' of the wind tax credit, having written it in 1993. Recently, the clean energy industry has argued its tax credits should continue because US energy demand suddenly skyrocketed, owing to data centers and new manufacturing. The subsidies, they said, kept the overall cost of US energy lower, while quickly getting new clean energy on the grid. They also pointed to long-standing tax breaks for oil and gas, some of which have been around since the 1910s. Solar and wind got their biggest break in 2022, when Biden and Democrats extended them for a decade, among a suite of other generous subsidies for clean energy. Axing the tax credits during Trump's term became the rallying cry among the party's right wing, amplified by the House Freedom Caucus, Trump administration officials and pro-fossil fuel activist and author Alex Epstein. Epstein has written books arguing that 'human flourishing' depends on the continued use of fossil fuels, and that outweighs any negative climate impacts from burning them. He spoke at a Senate Republican luncheon in June, urging the conference to zero out clean energy tax credits. In an email to CNN, Epstein said he was 'in the fortunate position of being a trusted independent advisor who was consulted by many members of the House, Senate, and the Administration.' He added he 'made a lot of effort to educate anyone who would listen' to his argument about phasing out tax credits for 'for all subsidies but above all for grid-destroying solar and wind subsidies.' When the dust settled, Trump's tax bill had shrunk a decade's worth of technology-neutral clean energy tax credits for utility-scale wind and solar to just one more year before a sharp phaseout. Other more nascent clean energy like geothermal and advanced nuclear got a reprieve, with longer timelines to claim subsidies. At nearly every iteration of the Republican bill, the clean energy industry got more to worry about. Just days before the bill's passage, the Senate released a new bill text that contained a surprise excise tax for wind and solar projects. One source familiar with the discussions said the excise tax came from the Trump administration and was 'part of its hatred on all things Biden.' The excise tax set off yet another industry-wide panic attack. 'When the House mark came out, it was worse than I thought it would be. When the Senate mark came out, it was worse than I thought it would be,' said Sam Ricketts, co-founder of clean energy consulting firm S2 Strategies. 'At every turn, I was surprised – perhaps I should not have been – that Republicans in Congress were electing to commit economic self-sabotage.' Last-minute language, lobbied for by Republican senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Joni Ernst of Iowa, removed the excise tax and allowed companies one year to claim the full tax credit without having to almost immediately get their projects up and running – a narrow window that would have been near impossible for developers to meet. 'All they did was continue the actual law as it's existed for the last decade, one more year before they made all the changes,' said Jason Grumet, CEO of trade group the American Clean Power Association. But adversaries of the tax credits were also not happy. 'It did not come close to the President's stated objective — which I agree with — to 'terminate the Green New Scam,'' said Epstein, the pro-fossil fuel activist. While a sizable contingent of conservative lawmakers were in favor of ending wind and solar tax credits altogether, some, like Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, wanted to strike a balance. 'Republicans are the business party. We are about creating jobs. If somebody has made significant investment because of a certain received business environment, you don't pull the rug beneath them,' Cassidy told CNN. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson's South Carolina district is home to electric vehicle company Scout Motors' first US factory, which the company says will support thousands of jobs. Now, EV factories like Scout could be more vulnerable to job losses, with consumer EV tax credits going away in September. With the credits going away, Wilson counts himself as a future EV customer. 'I've signed up to buy one,' Wilson told CNN. 'I want them to succeed.' Some in the clean energy industry are pointing fingers back at themselves, saying the industry and trade groups that lobby for them needed to be more aggressive. 'We're zero for every policy fight we have attempted to contest since Trump was elected,' said Steve McBee, CEO of clean energy investment platform Huck Capital. 'We were begging for table scraps from a really weak and defensive position, instead of shifting the battle space by redefining what this vote was actually about – the price of energy and the reliability of it.' McBee and others said they believed the industry didn't have a unified message or do enough to define the fight in the public domain – especially around the issue of rising energy costs. 'We are not organized for power, and we need to be as an industry,' McBee said. 'The American Petroleum Institute, they're just stealing our lunch money every morning before our head is even off the pillow.' The oil and gas industry 'actively engaged for more than a year' with Congress on the GOP tax bill, said API's senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, Dustin Meyer, who added the industry applauded Congress for a final bill that 'encouraged' fossil fuel investment and development. Big tech companies who are looking for electricity supply wherever they can get it to power AI and data centers, were not closely involved in the tax credit negotiations until the very end, according to three people familiar with the discussions – in part because they had other priorities and in part because they didn't want to cross Trump and risk retribution. Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, didn't dispute that the clean energy industry wasn't always speaking with one voice. 'The industry is a broad expression of big utilities and oil and gas companies and renewable developers and banks and manufacturers,' Grumet said. 'So many industries were so threatened on so many fronts, that you did have a dilution of advocacy.' Some felt the final bill text could have been worse. Rich Powell, CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, a trade group representing large companies that buy vast amounts of energy, said the final bill gave enough business certainty to projects over the next few years. 'It's a pretty damn good outcome given the pressure from the White House and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to zero the whole thing out,' another energy lobbyist said, adding the final bill gave wind and solar projects a 'four-to-five-year runway.' But many in the industry said there is no denying the move is a huge blow that will raise electricity prices and kill energy jobs around the country. And interviews with some business leaders revealed existential fears about whether the US will have enough electricity to meet the rising demand from AI and data centers. Powell said the bill's passage could force AI and manufacturing companies to move their operations abroad, if they can't get cheap enough electricity in the United States. Companies 'are going to have to look at the jurisdictions, both within the US and around the world, that can supply them energy very quickly,' he said. 'They would prefer to build in the US. But if that's not possible, they will have to look to other places.' In the meantime, Democrats say they will try to use Republicans' votes against them in the midterms. 'As far as accountability goes, you better believe that any time a facility closes in one of these members' districts, there's going to be accountability on that member for taking the vote on this bill,' said Adrian Deveny, founder of consulting firm Climate Vision and a former top Senate Democratic staffer who led the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy negotiations. 'Any time there's a blackout in a member's district, they're going to own that they voted to kill cheap energy investments in this country. They're going to own the rate increases on their constituents.'
CNN
4 hours ago
- Business
- CNN
How the renewable energy industry lost a massive lobbying fight over Trump's agenda bill
In May, over a dozen solar CEOs gathered at the Capitol Hill Club, the watering hole of choice for Republican lawmakers and lobbyists just steps from the Hill. Gulping coffee to fuel up for another long day of meetings, they sported pins that said 'support energy dominance' in front of a gleaming solar panel – borrowing the macho phrasing President Donald Trump uses to talk about oil and gas. They were there to cajole Republicans to protect clean energy tax credits from Trump, who had spent his 2024 campaign vowing to kill them. The first draft of the president's sweeping tax and spending bill had just been released, and it made steep cuts to the subsidies. Nevertheless, the renewables industry was bullish. They believed they had an ironclad argument to present to pro-business Republicans: Wind and solar had beaten the competition from a pure cost perspective. Utilities couldn't build it fast enough to keep up with surging demand from Big Tech needing to power AI and data centers. And best of all, new factories building renewables, batteries and electric vehicles were supporting tens of thousands of new manufacturing jobs in red Congressional districts – so killing them could be a political third rail. 'This industry supports the president's full agenda,' Costa Nicolaou, CEO of solar roof mounting company PanelClaw, told CNN. 'We are part of their American energy dominance solution. We're a part of their steel, aluminum and manufacturing job solution.' But on Capitol Hill, their argument ultimately fell on deaf ears, a sign of the steep obstacles the industry faced in a Washington run by Trump's Republican Party. 'They all cried chicken little,' GOP Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, who helped craft the agenda bill's language around the energy tax credit phaseout, told CNN. 'Everybody who has any government handout comes here and says the apocalypse will occur if we don't get this money. And the reality is, none of that's true.' Often referring to the subsidies as a 'Green New Scam,' Republicans could not get past the notion that the tax credits were created under former President Joe Biden and did not want to admit that there were parts of the Democratic-led legislation that they could also champion. With Trump adamantly against the continuation of these credits, most Republicans saw it as inevitable that the over two-dozen members who voiced support for the tax credits would ultimately have no choice but to fall in line – even if that meant killing energy jobs and factories in their districts and raising energy costs around the country. As CNN has reported, the law is expected to raise energy prices in every state in the continental US over the next decade, in large part because there will be less wind and solar on the electric grid, which will be replaced by more expensive gas and coal. Retiring GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who voted against the tax bill, told CNN he is 'absolutely' worried about the job losses that could come. 'It's not a very business-like in its approach,' he said. In the end, the biggest obstacle for the clean energy tax credits proved to be Trump himself, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawmakers, lobbyists and business leaders. Asked whether the clean energy industry underestimated Trump's opposition to the tax credits, GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington told CNN, 'They shouldn't have.' 'He was signaling pretty strongly, but maybe it was too late for them to do anything about it,' he added. Wind and solar have enjoyed decades of bipartisan support for their tax credits; Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is the self-proclaimed 'father' of the wind tax credit, having written it in 1993. Recently, the clean energy industry has argued its tax credits should continue because US energy demand suddenly skyrocketed, owing to data centers and new manufacturing. The subsidies, they said, kept the overall cost of US energy lower, while quickly getting new clean energy on the grid. They also pointed to long-standing tax breaks for oil and gas, some of which have been around since the 1910s. Solar and wind got their biggest break in 2022, when Biden and Democrats extended them for a decade, among a suite of other generous subsidies for clean energy. Axing the tax credits during Trump's term became the rallying cry among the party's right wing, amplified by the House Freedom Caucus, Trump administration officials and pro-fossil fuel activist and author Alex Epstein. Epstein has written books arguing that 'human flourishing' depends on the continued use of fossil fuels, and that outweighs any negative climate impacts from burning them. He spoke at a Senate Republican luncheon in June, urging the conference to zero out clean energy tax credits. In an email to CNN, Epstein said he was 'in the fortunate position of being a trusted independent advisor who was consulted by many members of the House, Senate, and the Administration.' He added he 'made a lot of effort to educate anyone who would listen' to his argument about phasing out tax credits for 'for all subsidies but above all for grid-destroying solar and wind subsidies.' When the dust settled, Trump's tax bill had shrunk a decade's worth of technology-neutral clean energy tax credits for utility-scale wind and solar to just one more year before a sharp phaseout. Other more nascent clean energy like geothermal and advanced nuclear got a reprieve, with longer timelines to claim subsidies. At nearly every iteration of the Republican bill, the clean energy industry got more to worry about. Just days before the bill's passage, the Senate released a new bill text that contained a surprise excise tax for wind and solar projects. One source familiar with the discussions said the excise tax came from the Trump administration and was 'part of its hatred on all things Biden.' The excise tax set off yet another industry-wide panic attack. 'When the House mark came out, it was worse than I thought it would be. When the Senate mark came out, it was worse than I thought it would be,' said Sam Ricketts, co-founder of clean energy consulting firm S2 Strategies. 'At every turn, I was surprised – perhaps I should not have been – that Republicans in Congress were electing to commit economic self-sabotage.' Last-minute language, lobbied for by Republican senators including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Joni Ernst of Iowa, removed the excise tax and allowed companies one year to claim the full tax credit without having to almost immediately get their projects up and running – a narrow window that would have been near impossible for developers to meet. 'All they did was continue the actual law as it's existed for the last decade, one more year before they made all the changes,' said Jason Grumet, CEO of trade group the American Clean Power Association. But adversaries of the tax credits were also not happy. 'It did not come close to the President's stated objective — which I agree with — to 'terminate the Green New Scam,'' said Epstein, the pro-fossil fuel activist. While a sizable contingent of conservative lawmakers were in favor of ending wind and solar tax credits altogether, some, like Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, wanted to strike a balance. 'Republicans are the business party. We are about creating jobs. If somebody has made significant investment because of a certain received business environment, you don't pull the rug beneath them,' Cassidy told CNN. GOP Rep. Joe Wilson's South Carolina district is home to electric vehicle company Scout Motors' first US factory, which the company says will support thousands of jobs. Now, EV factories like Scout could be more vulnerable to job losses, with consumer EV tax credits going away in September. With the credits going away, Wilson counts himself as a future EV customer. 'I've signed up to buy one,' Wilson told CNN. 'I want them to succeed.' Some in the clean energy industry are pointing fingers back at themselves, saying the industry and trade groups that lobby for them needed to be more aggressive. 'We're zero for every policy fight we have attempted to contest since Trump was elected,' said Steve McBee, CEO of clean energy investment platform Huck Capital. 'We were begging for table scraps from a really weak and defensive position, instead of shifting the battle space by redefining what this vote was actually about – the price of energy and the reliability of it.' McBee and others said they believed the industry didn't have a unified message or do enough to define the fight in the public domain – especially around the issue of rising energy costs. 'We are not organized for power, and we need to be as an industry,' McBee said. 'The American Petroleum Institute, they're just stealing our lunch money every morning before our head is even off the pillow.' The oil and gas industry 'actively engaged for more than a year' with Congress on the GOP tax bill, said API's senior vice president of policy, economics and regulatory affairs, Dustin Meyer, who added the industry applauded Congress for a final bill that 'encouraged' fossil fuel investment and development. Big tech companies who are looking for electricity supply wherever they can get it to power AI and data centers, were not closely involved in the tax credit negotiations until the very end, according to three people familiar with the discussions – in part because they had other priorities and in part because they didn't want to cross Trump and risk retribution. Grumet, the CEO of the American Clean Power Association, didn't dispute that the clean energy industry wasn't always speaking with one voice. 'The industry is a broad expression of big utilities and oil and gas companies and renewable developers and banks and manufacturers,' Grumet said. 'So many industries were so threatened on so many fronts, that you did have a dilution of advocacy.' Some felt the final bill text could have been worse. Rich Powell, CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, a trade group representing large companies that buy vast amounts of energy, said the final bill gave enough business certainty to projects over the next few years. 'It's a pretty damn good outcome given the pressure from the White House and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee to zero the whole thing out,' another energy lobbyist said, adding the final bill gave wind and solar projects a 'four-to-five-year runway.' But many in the industry said there is no denying the move is a huge blow that will raise electricity prices and kill energy jobs around the country. And interviews with some business leaders revealed existential fears about whether the US will have enough electricity to meet the rising demand from AI and data centers. Powell said the bill's passage could force AI and manufacturing companies to move their operations abroad, if they can't get cheap enough electricity in the United States. Companies 'are going to have to look at the jurisdictions, both within the US and around the world, that can supply them energy very quickly,' he said. 'They would prefer to build in the US. But if that's not possible, they will have to look to other places.' In the meantime, Democrats say they will try to use Republicans' votes against them in the midterms. 'As far as accountability goes, you better believe that any time a facility closes in one of these members' districts, there's going to be accountability on that member for taking the vote on this bill,' said Adrian Deveny, founder of consulting firm Climate Vision and a former top Senate Democratic staffer who led the Inflation Reduction Act clean energy negotiations. 'Any time there's a blackout in a member's district, they're going to own that they voted to kill cheap energy investments in this country. They're going to own the rate increases on their constituents.'
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Democrats and climate groups ‘too polite' in fight against ‘malevolent' fossil fuel giants, says key senator
The Democratic party and the climate movement have been 'too cautious and polite' and should instead be denouncing the fossil fuel industry's 'huge denial operation', the US senator Sheldon Whitehouse said. 'The fossil fuel industry has run the biggest and most malevolent propaganda operation the country has ever seen,' the Rhode Island Democrat said in an interview on Tuesday with the global media collaboration Covering Climate Now. 'It is defending a $700-plus billion [annual] subsidy' of not being charged for the health and environmental damages caused by the burning of fossil fuels. 'I think the more people understand that, the more they'll be irate [that] they've been lied to.' But, he added, 'Democrats have not done a good job of calling that out.' Whitehouse is among the most outspoken climate champions on Capitol Hill, and on Wednesday evening he delivered his 300th Time to Wake Up climate speech on the floor of the Senate. He began giving these speeches in 2012, when Barack Obama was in his first term, and has consistently criticized both political parties for their lackluster response to the climate emergency. The Obama White House, he complained, for years would not even 'use the word 'climate' and 'change' in the same paragraph'. While Whitehouse slams his fellow Democrats for timidity, he blasts Republicans for being in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry, an entity whose behavior 'has been downright evil', he said. 'To deliberately ignore [the laws of physics] for short-term profits that set up people for huge, really bad impacts – if that's not a good definition of evil, I don't know what is.' The American Petroleum Institute, the industry's trade association, says on its website that 'API and its members commit to delivering solutions that reduce the risks of climate change while meeting society's growing energy needs'. Long before Donald Trump reportedly told oil company CEOs he would repeal Joe Biden's climate policies if they contributed $1bn to his 2024 presidential campaign, Republicans went silent on climate change in return for oil industry money, Whitehouse asserted. The key shift came after the supreme court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, which struck down limits on campaign spending. Before that, some GOP senators had sponsored climate bills, and John McCain urged climate action during his 2008 presidential campaign. But Citizens United, Whitehouse said, 'told the fossil fuel industry: 'The door's wide open – spend any money you want in our elections''. The industry, he said, promised the Republican party 'unlimited amounts of money' in return for stepping away from bipartisan climate action: 'And since 2010, there has not been a single serious bipartisan measure in the Senate.' Whitehouse said that after delivering 300 climate speeches on the Senate floor, he has learned to shift from talking about the 'facts of climate science and the effects on human beings to calling out the fossil fuels' massive climate-denial operation'. He said: 'Turns out, none of [the science] really matters while the operation is controlling things in Congress. I could take facts from colleagues' home states right to them, and it would make no difference because of this enormous, multibillion-dollar political club that can [punish] anyone who crosses them.' Most Republicans even stay silent despite climate change's threat to property values and other traditional GOP priorities, Whitehouse said. He noted that even the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – who is not known for his climate bona fides, he said – testified before the Senate in February that in 10-15 years there will be whole regions of the country where nobody can get a mortgage because extreme weather will make it impossible to afford or even obtain insurance. Democrats can turn all this to their advantage if they get 'more vocal and aggressive', Whitehouse argued. 'The good news is that the American people hate dark money with a passion, and they hate it just as much, if not more, in districts that went for Trump as in districts that went for Biden.' Democrats also need to recognize 'how much [public] support there is for climate action', he said. 'How do you have an issue that you win 74 [percent] to 12 [percent] and you don't ride that horse as hard as you can?' Whitehouse said he was only estimating that 74% figure, but that's exactly the percentage of Americans who want their government to take stronger climate action, according to the studies informing the 89 Percent Project, the Guardian and other Covering Climate Now partner news outlets began reporting in April. Globally, the percentage ranges from 80% to 89%. Yet this overwhelming climate majority does not realize it is the majority, partly because that fact has been absent from most news coverage, social media and politicians' statements. Related: 'Spiral of silence': climate action is very popular, so why don't people realise it? Democrats keep 'getting caught in this stupid doom loop in which our pollsters say: 'Well, climate's not one of the top issues that voters care about, so then we don't talk about it'', said Whitehouse. 'So it never becomes one of the top issues that voters care about. [But] if you actually go ask [voters] and engage on the issue, it explodes in enthusiasm. It has huge numbers when you bother to engage, and we just haven't.' Nevertheless, Whitehouse is optimistic that climate denial won't prevail forever. 'Once this comes home to roost in people's homes, in their family finances, in really harmful ways, that [will be] motivating in a way that we haven't seen before around this issue,' he said. 'And if we're effective at communicating what a massive fraud has been pulled on the American public by the fossil fuel industry denial groups, then I think that's a powerful combination.' This story is part of the 89 Percent Project, an initiative of the global journalism collaboration Covering Climate Now. • This article was amended on 11 July 2025. An earlier version said Sheldon Whitehouse spoke with Covering Climate Now on Monday. The interview actually took place on Tuesday.
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump news at a glance: Mike Johnson wades into Epstein files row in rare split with the president
US House speaker Mike Johnson has waded into the Epstein files saga that is roiling Donald Trump's conservative base – by calling on the justice department to release the Epstein files. Johnson, a key ally of the US president, was asked about the controversy during an interview for a rightwing podcast. 'It's a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it,' Johnson told Benny Johnson, in comments released on Tuesday. 'I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there.' Referring to a comment attorney general Pam Bondi made to Fox News this year that Epstein's client list was 'sitting on my desk right now to review', Johnson said: 'She needs to come forward and explain that to everybody. 'We need the DoJ focusing on the major priorities. So let's get this thing resolved,' the speaker added. The comments put Johnson at odds with Trump, who has defended Bondi's handling of the case. Here is more on this and other key Trump stories of the day: House speaker calls for Epstein files' release Mike Johnson's call for the justice department to make public documents related to Jeffrey Epstein was a rare moment of friction between Trump and the speaker, a top ally on Capitol Hill, and came as the president faces growing backlash from conservatives who had expected him to make public everything known about Epstein, who killed himself in 2019 while in federal custody as he faced sex-trafficking charges. Last week, the justice department announced that his death was a suicide and that, despite conspiracy theories to the contrary, there was no list of his clients to be made public nor would there be further disclosures about the case. Conservative allies of the president have since criticized him and Bondi for what they see as opaque handling of a case that Trump campaigned on getting to the bottom of. Read the full story Ukraine awaits details of Trump's promised weapons Ukraine is waiting for further details of the 'billions of dollars' worth of US military equipment promised by Donald Trump on Monday, amid confusion as to how many Patriot air defence systems will be sent to Kyiv. Read the full story Republicans race to slash $9bn for public broadcasting and foreign aid Senate Republicans may move to pass legislation slashing up to $9bn in funds Congress had earlier approved for foreign aid programs and public broadcasting, as part of Donald Trump's campaign of dramatic government spending cuts. Read the full story JP Morgan chief defends independence of Fed chair The boss of JP Morgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, has defended the 'absolutely critical' independence of the Federal Reserve chair, as Donald Trump continues to demand immediate cuts in interest rates. Read the full story Trump unveils $70bn AI and energy plan at oil and tech summit Donald Trump joined big oil and technology bosses on Tuesday at a major artificial intelligence and energy summit in Pittsburgh, outraging environmentalists and community organizations. The event came weeks after the passage of a mega-bill that experts say could stymy AI growth with its attacks on renewable energy. Read the full story Millions of immigrants could lose right to bond hearings The Trump administration is reportedly seeking to bar millions of immigrants who allegedly arrived in the US without legal status from receiving a bond hearing as they try to fight their deportations in court. Read the full story What else happened today: Ukrainians are celebrating Melania Trump on social media after Donald Trump suggested the first lady played a part in his apparent change of heart over Russia. Analysis: to push their ideas about a 'deep state' cover-up of a network of global pedophiles into the broader tent of the Maga movement. in the occupied West Bank, are calling for the Trump administration to arrest and prosecute those responsible for his killing. The US justice department unit charged with defending against legal challenges to signature policies – such as restricting birthright citizenship and slashing funding to Harvard University – has lost nearly two-thirds of its staff, according to a list seen by Reuters. on Tuesday during a confirmation hearing to be US ambassador to the UN, telling them that he planned to make the world body 'great again'. Catching up? Here's what happened on .
