Trump’s Energy Reset: Dismantling Biden’s Climate Lawfare Legacy

President Trump’s push to boost energy affordability by slashing green regulations and climate lawfare has been a powerful yet undercovered plank of his second term. Drastically changing course from the energy-restrictive policies of “Bidenomics” is a key factor that propelled Trump back to the White House. To keep pace with MAGA on energy independence, Congress is launching a fresh probe into the complex network and funding of lawsuits aimed at undermining affordable energy projects.

It’s a move that could finally reset climate and energy policies to benefit the American consumer above lawyers.

For the last decade, state attorneys general’s offices across the country have waged lawfare against energy producers and suppliers, using state statutes to issue lawsuits seeking maximum financial penalties for climate liability, including high-profile cases in Hawaii and Minnesota against oil and gas giants.

Many lawyers and staff in these offices have been trained by ideological climate change university programs like the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center at NYU, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the giving arm of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s financial empire.

In the probe announced in July, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer is putting the congressional microscope on these shady programs, revealing how harmful they have been to keeping energy costs low. They’ve already demonstrated the significant influence these programs had within President Biden’s administration.

“The Bloomberg-NYU partisan agenda will likely hurt working-class Americans in the name of the partisan globalist climate-agenda,” said Comer, adding that the partisan climate law agenda “undermines faith” in the impartial justice system.

It’s no coincidence that David Hayes, the former executive director of NYU’s climate litigation program, was a top climate advisor to Biden in his single term.

It’s the right moment to seek accountability for the failed energy policies of the Biden Administration and the well-funded law school networks that sustain and push petty climate litigation, and both the legislative and executive branches are right to do so.

Our judicial system has been captured by ideological interests that seek to force consumers to live with fewer and costlier options when it comes to powering their homes and businesses.

The climate lawfare brigade purports to care about climate change and the environment, but their only goal so far has been to try to extract high-dollar settlements from energy suppliers. These symbolic wins for climate activists serve to drive up energy and electricity prices for consumers, as energy companies divert more resources to legal fees than to innovation and investment in new solutions.

Who is the winner in this scenario? Not everyday Americans.

Although consumers read headlines about “climate culpability” and settlements with energy companies brokered by blue-state AGs, these are cases about money and ideological points more than proving wrongdoing.

There is no attention paid to actual climate solutions that would benefit society at large. As we’ve seen from climate lawsuits filed against nuclear energy providers, a power source that is close to the most renewable and sustainable energy source on the planet, it’s really not about finding cleaner power sources either.

This is the same movement that notched a big win last week with the International Court of Justice issuing a ruling to mandate all countries curb their emissions or be held economically and legally liable in international law, a laughable case that the US will rightly ignore.

Ultimately, radical activists must reconcile with the fact that no one entity or person will ever be found to be the singular cause of climate change, because we’ve all been clients and willing customers. That’s why the Environmental Protection Agency is now moving to scrap the 2009 “endangerment finding” for greenhouse gas emissions. A lawless administrative state has created a set of policies that incentivize the petty lawsuits being funded by fringe climate activists.

This makes the Comer investigation even more critical to all Americans concerned about the cost of living, and further underscores why we should consider federal lawfare liability reforms that would put most of these frivolous cases to rest. Some states, such as Florida and Georgia, have already done this.

The Trump Administration and Congress have to stay laser-focused on this issue, as well as other kitchen-table concerns that drove Americans to the polls last November. Affordability, particularly when it comes to keeping consumers’ lights on, should always be top of mind.

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Yaël Ossowski writes about energy policy and is deputy director of the Consumer Choice Center in Washington, D.C.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.