How Biden's climate pivot pissed off the left - POLITICO

How Biden’s climate pivot pissed off the left - POLITICO

How Biden’s climate pivot pissed off the left

UNDER THE BUS — In a press call with reporters on Sunday night, a White House official told a tale of Biden climate heroism.

In negotiating with Republicans on a deal to raise the debt ceiling, the story went, the president’s emissaries girded against GOP efforts to repeal huge swaths of Democrats’ 2022 climate law and defang environmental statutes in place to protect vulnerable communities from pollution.

“This agreement,” the official said, “[is] a direct result of President Biden’s leadership and commitment to environmental protection, to bold climate action.”

The call ended at 7:21 p.m.

One minute later, an email hit reporters’ inboxes from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who was taking a victory lap of her own. She had, with help from the state’s other senator, Democrat Joe Manchin, helped secure a provision in the debt limit bill to complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a contentious natural gas project through Appalachia that’s been tied up in environmental litigation for years.

Greenlighting the pipeline — a nonstarter for climate activists and their progressive allies — blindsided environmental groups and Democrats in Congress and undercut the administration’s talking points.

That’s why, despite the Biden administration’s best efforts to spin the deal as a win, environmentalists aren’t buying it.

Democrats had to give something to secure GOP support for legislation to prevent economic disaster — and those concessions were costly.

It wasn’t just the glidepath to completion for the fossil fuel pipeline. Another big piece of it came in the form of industry-friendly permitting changes designed to speed up the process for energy projects. While the administration billed those changes as a boon for building renewable energy, many environmental advocates immediately saw it as a blunt-force climate attack mirroring Trump-era directives.

All of it left climate advocates, who helped put Biden in office and will be critical to his 2024 reelection bid, feeling like they were thrown under the bus.

The whiplash has been playing out all week in Washington, where members of the Biden team have been browbeaten by lawmakers or protested by activists.

Biden energy and climate adviser John Podesta took heat from his own party on Capitol Hill when he went to pitch members on the agreement before the big House vote. Democrats openly vented to reporters in basement hallways about their frustrations with the climate provisions and attempts to cast them as a victory.

Even mild-mannered Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, a Biden ally, openly raged that the White House didn’t even give him a heads up before agreeing to advance the pipeline through his state.

Environmental bigwigs blasted out angry tweets and press releases. “The debt ceiling deal is a bad one for our clean air and water, our communities, and for workers and families already struggling,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous wrote on Twitter.

And climate activists stormed into a conference in downtown DC where a White House economist was speaking. “Dirty Deal, MVP, Biden you are killing me,” they chanted before they were whisked out by security.

Making matters worse, it comes on the heels of the administration’s approval in March of a massive oil-and-gas drilling project in Alaska that critics called a “carbon bomb” and decried as the single biggest “betrayal” on climate of the Biden presidency.

As a result, the White House has been doing damage control — and doubling down.

Their counterpoint to critics is that the climate and clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act went unscathed in the negotiations. That fact has not been lost on Democrats or environmentalists.

The deal “preserves the largest investment in climate protection that we have seen in history,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this week, pivoting after she was asked about widespread opposition to the pipeline inside the Democratic base. “Not everyone gets what they want,” she said of the deal.

Still, Rep. Jared Huffman, a California Democrat, said this week he was left feeling raw.

“It’s pretty cold comfort to tell progressives and environmentalists and [environmental justice] advocates, and millions of young people that care about the climate crisis, that it could have been worse,” he said.

Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at @Emma_Dumain and @rbravender.

What'd I Miss?

— Warren, Vance team up on bank CEO crackdown: Sen. Elizabeth Warren today unveiled Congress’s most politically viable response yet to the economy-shaking collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, with a bill backed by 12 other senators that would require the government to claw back executive compensation at large failed banks in a bid to deter excessive risk-taking. Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, and Sen. J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican, worked hand-in-hand to craft the latest iteration of the bill and assemble key co-sponsors — among them nearly half the lawmakers on the Senate panel responsible for potentially voting on the legislation.

— Senate leaders sprint toward debt limit finish line: Senate leaders are scrambling to cut a deal to vote quickly on the debt bill, hoping to finish work before the weekend and well before the June 5 default deadline. There’s a growing feeling that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell can work something out among all 100 senators, a prerequisite to speed up a vote. Without that agreement, the Senate’s consideration of the budget and debt ceiling deal would push well into next week.

— Senate repeals Biden’s student debt relief, teeing up White House veto: The Senate passed Republican-led legislation today seeking to overturn President Joe Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 of student debt relief for tens of millions of borrowers, setting up a promised veto from the White House. On a 52-46 vote, the Senate gave Congress’ final approval to the measure to nullify the debt cancellation program and repeal the freeze on student loan repayment and interest. Moderate Democrats teamed up with Republicans to pass the legislation. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) and Independent Sen. Krysten Sinema (Ariz.) voted in favor of the measure.

Nightly Road to 2024

NEW HAMPSHIRE NICE — New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu threw a compliment Ron DeSantis’ way after the Florida governor made his first campaign stop in Sununu’s home state today— while still not ruling out a presidential bid of his own, writes POLITICO’s Kierra Frazier. “I actually thought it was a pretty darn good speech,” Sununu said of DeSantis, who is making a handful of campaign stops in New Hampshire today after coming off a two-day tour of Iowa.

The sentiment sure is a rare one in a Republican presidential campaign that has seen more barbs exchanged than compliments. In the same interview, Sununu continued to not rule out the possibility of becoming DeSantis’ rival by launching his own bid for the GOP presidential nomination. “I guess we’ll figure out where our conversation ends up, and that will dictate whether I get in the race or not,” Sununu said. “I will probably make a more public announcement in the next week.”

GOP HOPEFULS TALK RACE — Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina opened his presidential candidacy with a story of the nation’s bitter, racist past. A rival for the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley, speaks of the loneliness and isolation of growing up in small-town South Carolina as the child of immigrants and part of the only Indian family around. Larry Elder, a conservative commentator and long-shot presidential candidate, talks to all-white audiences about his father, a Pullman porter in the segregated South, who carried tinned fish and crackers in his pockets “because he never knew whether he’d be able to get a meal.”

Such biographical details are useful reminders of how far the G.O.P.’s candidates of color have come to reach the pinnacle of national politics, a run for the presidency. But in bolstering their own bootstrap biographies with stories of discrimination, write Jonathan Weisman and Trip Gabriel of the New York Times, they have put forth views about race that at times appear at odds with their view of the country— often denying the existence of a system of racism in America while describing situations that sound just like it.

AROUND THE WORLD

SPEAKING OUT OF TURN — The Biden administration is furious with its ambassador to South Africa and scrambling to salvage relations with the country after the envoy alleged that Pretoria sent a ship filled with weapons to Russia as it wages war on Ukraine, writes Nahal Toosi.

The ambassador, Reuben Brigety, made the claim three weeks ago in a press briefing, saying he’d “bet my life” on it. He added that South Africa was engaging in “outrageous” anti-Americanism and questioned its claim to be neutral among the world powers.

It was a shocking assertion by an American official against a country that the United States has been trying to court in the global effort to isolate Russia.

Publicly, the administration has tried to walk a fine line in its response between calming the South Africans and not appearing to abandon its ambassador. State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel has said in daily press briefings that the United States had expressed concerns about the ship to the South Africans but valued its relationship with the country and declined to directly discuss the ambassador’s comments.

Still, U.S. officials made clear in conversations with POLITICO that they were uncomfortable with Brigety’s actions and the nature of his assertions.

Brigety did not have permission from higher-ups to say what he said, two former U.S. officials and a current U.S. official familiar with the discussions said. He also overstated what the U.S. definitively knows, according to the current official and a fourth person — a senior Biden administration official.

“The things we have said publicly we are ready to put the credibility of the U.S. government behind. What he said was far beyond that,” the senior Biden administration official said when pressed on the intelligence.

South Africa is a key player among countries being wooed because it is “definitely the de facto leader of sub-Saharan Africa,” a fifth person, a Biden administration official familiar with the issue said. “I don’t think we ’need’ them. But it’s also not smart to make them an enemy.”

Nightly Number

RADAR SWEEP

ROCKIN’ IN THE NOT SO FREE WORLD — Meg White, the erstwhile drummer of the indie rock band The White Stripes, never loved the fame that came with being a member of one of the most well-known indie rock groups of the early 2000s. And for two decades, she’s been known mostly as a more shy counterpart to The White Stripes’ frontman — and her former husband — Jack White. In a deep dive from Melissa Giannini for ELLE, though, she explains that there’s a whole lot more to the story, and it goes way beyond just the world of The White Stripes. Giannini dives into toxic fandom, the music scene of the early aughts and much more in her contemplation on White’s legacy.

Parting Image

Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here.

Follow Us