Heritage Action President Exposes Democrat Senator’s Attempt to ‘Silence’ Those Who Challenge ‘Radical Climate Agenda’

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Heritage Action President Kevin Roberts has exposed Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s attempt to “silence” those who challenge his “radical climate agenda.”

Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, sent a Sept. 16 letter to Roberts in his capacity as president of The Heritage Foundation, demanding documents related to Heritage’s role in shaping the Trump administration’s recission of a key climate alarmist position.

“I am concerned about the role that fossil fuel companies, certain manufacturers, trade associations, polluter-backed groups, and others with much to benefit from the repeal of the endangerment finding—including your organization—played in drafting, preparing, promoting, and lobbying on the proposal,” Whitehouse’s letter states. It requested Heritage turn over documents related to the policy change, giving a Sept. 30 deadline.

Roberts responded Monday with a letter of his own, and he gave The Daily Signal an exclusive statement condemning Whitehouse’s letter.

“Sen. Whitehouse’s letter reflects both a misunderstanding of his authority and an embarrassing attempt to silence those who challenge the radical climate agenda,” Roberts told The Daily Signal.

“Heritage welcomes policy debate and legitimate oversight,” he explained. “But we will not stop calling out the Left’s obsession with debunked environmental hysteria or yield our internal work product—especially for a senator benefitting from his family’s fortune in railroads and gas.”

“Our research stands on its merits, is published openly, defended proudly, and protected by the First Amendment,” Roberts added. “We will continue to support the Trump administration’s mission to rollback job-killing, self-destructive climate regulations.”

The Policy

Earlier this year, Environmental Protection Agency moved to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding—a bureaucratic ruling that six greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare, providing a justification to regulate vehicle carbon emissions under the Clean Air Act of 1970.

“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in July. “In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year.”

“We heard loud and clear the concern that EPA’s [greenhouse gas] emissions standards themselves, not carbon dioxide which the finding never assessed independently, was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods,” Zeldin explained. He estimated that rescinding the finding and resulting regulations would “end $1 trillion or more in hidden taxes on American businesses and families.”

The Whitehouse Letter

Whitehouse’s letter framed the rescission as a rejection of science and public health, and suggested it came about as the result of corruption.

“As you well know, rescinding the endangerment finding would cripple the federal government’s ability to combat climate pollution and mark an alarming retreat from decades of legal precedent, peer-reviewed science, and public health protections,” the senator wrote. “If the proposal is finalized, it would hand massive benefits to polluting industry actors and their enablers, allowing them to reap billions in profit while shifting the burdens of climate disasters onto the American families, businesses, and taxpayers.”

Whitehouse noted that many industry groups praised the EPA’s move—which he characterized as a “partisan retreat from science”—and concluded, “Given the billions at stake for polluting industry interests and significant potential conflicts of interest, the public deserves a full accounting of any efforts to influence this decision behind closed doors.”

The letter accuses The Heritage Foundation and others of engaging in a corrupt and partisan rejection of science and public health in pursuit of corporate interests and demands documents by a specific deadline as if it were a subpoena.

Heritage’s Response

Roberts, in his capacity as head of The Heritage Foundation, responded to Whitehouse with a letter of his own, noting specifically that “my response is voluntary.”

“Heritage, of course, will gladly cooperate with any valid and legally authorized oversight from the Committee on Environment and Public Works, or any other relevant committee of the United States Senate,” he wrote. “But your letter lacks any legal authority to compel the internal work product demanded, which would squarely violate Heritage’s rights under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Roberts notes the “basic premise” of the letter: “that any challenge to the endangerment finding, and anti-fossil fuel policies more broadly, is obviously unscientific and immoral, and corrupt; therefore, Heritage or anyone else challenging anti-fossil-fuel policies is corrupt and in need of investigation.”

Yet Roberts insisted that Heritage’s position “is in fact the scientific and moral one.”

“As Heritage and others have argued, anti-fossil-fuel ‘climate policy,’ including but not limited to the endangerment finding, has been poisoned by the practice of only looking for negative climate effects of fossil fuel use, while deliberately ignoring the enormous positive climate effects as well as other contributions to human health and welfare,” Roberts noted, citing a recent post from Alex Epstein.

“Our view has been and remains that if you consider the full effects of fossil fuel use on climate livability, human health, and human welfare, fossil fuel use is enormously beneficial, having driven a 98% decline in climate-related disaster deaths over the past century—and broad, unprecedented improvements in human health and welfare,” he concluded.

Whitehouse’s office did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.

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