SUPERBAD, SUPERFUN

States want to force fossil fuel companies to pay for climate damage. Can MAGA stand in their way? Crooked’s climate correspondent Anya Zoledziowski digs in. 

• You break it, you buy it. That’s the principle states around the country have begun applying to climate damage, with new laws that effectively charges fossil fuel companies to help pay for the cleanup caused by dirty emissions. That is, unless President Donald Trump and the GOP can stop them.

• These states are setting up so-called climate superfunds. The idea: Calculate the damage caused by burning fossil fuels — coal, oil and gas — and then slap the responsible companies with a fee. Vermont pioneered the first such law in May 2024. New York followed in December with its own legislation, and the Empire State now foresees charging companies $75 billion over 25 years. California and other states are working on their own measures.

• “There’s a real fairness in having these companies that created this crisis pay their fair share rather than attempting to have Vermont taxpayers shoulder the full burden,” Ben Edgerly Walsh, Climate and Energy Program Director with Vermont-based advocacy group VPIRG, told What A Day.

• Naturally, conservatives and fossil fuel companies are pushing back hard. A coalition of 22 red states launched a lawsuit against New York, challenging its law. Big Oil and allies have sued Vermont.

• Legal action takes time, but Trump has signaled he backs the companies — and he’s not about to let this one go quietly. Last month, he signed an executive order targeting state-led climate action — including climate superfund laws —  and accused them of getting in the way of America’s energy interests. The order asks the attorney general to identify such state laws, and to “take all appropriate action” to stop their enforcement.

• “While the executive order doesn’t necessarily overturn laws, this marks a very clear demonstration,” Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, told What A Day. “We think it’s really serious,” she said. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice filed lawsuits targeting the superfund laws in Vermont and New York.

Legal experts say Trump faces an uphill battle against the state legislation.

• Trump’s show of support for fossil fuel companies, which famously spent $219 million to elect the current government, drew ire from state leaders. “California’s efforts to cut harmful pollution won’t be derailed by a glorified press release masquerading as an executive order,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a statement. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham also issued a joint statement, saying they “won’t be deterred” from forging ahead with climate action.

• Now, for the good news: It’s possible that a new study published in Nature has made it much easier to hold big emitters liable for climate damage: “Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate? Twenty years after this question was first posed, we argue that the scientific case for climate liability is closed,” the study says. According to its findings, the world’s biggest companies have caused $28 trillion in climate damage, and more than half of that figure is thanks to just ten fossil fuel giants, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell.

That means, as many states continue to pursue climate action, science is saying, “Go ahead, make ‘em pay!”

This story is supported by our nonprofit partner, Crooked Ideas.

DEPT. OF HUNGER GAMES

The administration of America’s first reality TV star president is mulling some downright dystopian programming.

The Department of Homeland Security is considering a reality television show in which immigrants compete for potential U.S. citizenship. This feels eerily similar to “Squid Game” or “The Hunger Games,” right?

Well, the producer who pitched the show to the agency, Rob Worsoff, insists that he envisions a hopeful program. “This isn’t ‘The Hunger Games’ for immigrants,” Worsoff, a writer credited on “Duck Dynasty,” told the Wall Street Journal.

It’s meant to be a celebration of what it means to be American, he said, and the show would include contests involving U.S. history and science. (Worsoff pitched the show as far back as the Obama administration.)

“This is not, ‘Hey, if you lose, we are shipping you out on a boat out of the country,’” he said. Sure… Instead, the losing contestants could receive “iconically American” prizes such as 1 million American Airlines points, a $10,000 Starbucks gift card, or a lifetime supply of gasoline, the Daily Mail reports.

The show is in the early stages of a “vetting process” and is not approved yet, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. But it speaks volumes that this wasn’t denied immediately…

NEWS NEWS NEWS

An Israeli airstrike killed at least 93 people in Gaza today, according to local health officials. The attack came as Donald Trump wrapped up his trip to the Middle East, where he addressed the crisis: “A lot of people are starving. A lot of people are — there’s a lot of bad things going on.” His administration, however, has continued to send Israel billions of dollars worth of weapons to use in what many scholars describe as genocide.

The Department of Justice said it’s investigating former FBI director James Comey after he posted a picture on Instagram of seashells on the beach — arranged as “86 47.” Trump is the 47th president, and 86 means to get rid of something… so Trumpworld is accusing Comey of calling for Trump’s assassination. “Cool shell formation on my beach walk,” Comey wrote in the post, before deleting it. You’d think he would have more common sense than to post that???

Train operators for the third-largest commuter railroad in the U.S. went on strike today for the first time since 1983. The NJ Transit strike, which came after the union and Gov. Phil Murphy’s (D-NJ) administration couldn’t agree on wages, affects some 350,000 commuters.

A Newark air traffic controller spoke out about the difficulties of the job after he helped prevent a near-collision between two planes earlier this month. He’s now on stress-related trauma leave: “I don’t want to be responsible for killing 400 people,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

FEMA still doesn’t have a fully-formed disaster plan for hurricane season, which is two weeks away, Acting Administrator David Richardson told employees in a recent meeting. (Surprise, surprise, this guy has no experience in emergency management!) But he recognizes the challenges he’s facing: “I feel a little bit like Bubba from ‘Forrest Gump,’” Richardson said. “We’ve got hurricanes, we’ve got fires, we’ve got mudslides, we’ve got flash floods, we’ve got tornadoes, we’ve got droughts, we’ve got heat waves and now we’ve got volcanoes to worry about.” And we’ve got no plan!

Enough food to feed 3.5 million people for an entire month is rotting in warehouses after Trump’s cuts to foreign aid, Reuters reports. Some of the stocks are likely to be destroyed, possibly by incineration or feeding it to livestock.

Russian and Ukrainian officials met today for the first time in three years to discuss a potential ceasefire… but it didn’t seem to go well: “Russian demands are detached from reality and go far beyond anything that was previously discussed,” a Ukrainian source told Axios. The meeting lasted less than two hours. Meanwhile, Pope Leo offered up the Vatican as a venue for peace talks.

Trump went on bizarre social media rants against two music stars today: “Has anyone noticed that, since I said ‘I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT,’ she’s no longer ‘HOT?’” he wrote in one post. Then, he took aim at Bruce Springsteen, a prominent Trump critic: “This dried out ‘prune”’of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country.” I mean, seriously, what the fuck. Maybe this is a call for help?

Slovenian police are investigating the disappearance of a bronze statue of First Lady Melania Trump, which was sawed off at the ankles. The original wooden statue of Melania in her home country was torched in 2020. Third time’s the charm, I guess?

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