Last May, The Washington Post published an exclusive story on a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in which Donald Trump promised to reverse then-President Joe Biden's actions on climate change as he asked Big Oil executives to fundraise $1 billion for his presidential campaign, assuring that they would be getting a “deal” due to the “taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him.” Reportedly, oil and gas executives did make “significant contributions to the Trump campaign.”
Over a four-day period, MSNBC was the only major TV network to cover the story, which All In host Chris Hayes described as “a political quid pro quo.”
Now, two new stories emerged this week that give more context to the promised “deal” the oil and gas industry is getting under Trump’s second term. National TV networks should inform their audience about how Big Oil is benefitting under Trump.
Bloomberg reported on June 17 that the Senate version of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” now includes a tax break for the oil and gas industry “estimated to be worth more than $1 billion.”
The provision would allow energy companies subject to a 15% corporate alternative minimum tax to deduct certain drilling costs when calculating their taxable income. Companies including ConocoPhillips, Ovintiv Inc. and Civitas Resources, Inc. lobbied in favor of it.
The change was included in the legislation released Monday by Republicans on the Senate tax writing committee, which would slash tax credits for wind, solar, electric vehicles and hydrogen.
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Other supporters of the measure, which wasn’t included in the House version of the bill, include the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, founded by oil billionaire and Trump donor Harold Hamm.
The same legislation would repeal tax credits for the clean power industry, which would threaten more than 800,000 jobs and raise energy prices for consumers.
In fact, clean energy technologies constituted 93% of new power generation capacity added to the grid last year alone, and the climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act which Trump wants repealed, “have spurred the highest levels of factory construction in American history, with more than 400,000 new jobs announced across the country.”
Meanwhile, CNN reported on June 16 that “the Environmental Protection Agency has told staff overseeing the country’s industrialized Midwest — a region plagued by a legacy of pollution — to stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies.”
Four sources with knowledge of the situation at the EPA’s Region 5 office, which oversees six Midwestern states, told CNN that enforcement officials were informed that “there is a pause on oil and gas enforcement” at staff meetings.
“That is how our regional management is interpreting signals from the president,” the EPA enforcement staffer said.
Officers stopped being able to issue notices of violation or send information requests to fossil fuel companies suspected of polluting, the sources told CNN. A violation notice is a prerequisite for taking a company to court for alleged violations of environmental laws.
These instructions are on top of other administration efforts to radically reduce safeguards that protect Americans from fossil fuel-related pollution and open up more land for oil and gas drilling.
Earlier this month, for example, the EPA announced plans to eliminate Biden-era regulations limiting the amount of carbon emissions and other pollution released into the atmosphere by fossil fuel-fired power plants. CBS reported the rule the EPA seeks to revoke “is projected to reduce 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere by 2047, as well as eliminate tens of thousands of tons of other harmful air pollutants that are dangerous to public health” — an amount of pollution “equivalent to driving more than 320 million gas-powered cars for a year, according to an EPA estimate.”
The new CNN report also notes:
Taken together, these reductions in taxes, regulations, and enforcement for the fossil fuel industry are essentially what Trump promised to deliver for Big Oil in exchange for backing his 2024 campaign.
At the time, The Atlantic’s David A. Graham described the proposition as “undeniably scandalous.” Now that these gifts to Big Oil are being delivered, TV networks should inform their audience about the dirty “deal” between Trump and Big Oil playing out at the expense of the booming clean energy industry, our health, and our climate.
