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By Friday, Congress needs to vote on a proposed “minibus”—a package of six out of the 12 necessary government spending bills for fiscal year 2024—to avoid a partial government shutdown. We’ve got a handy explainer of all the federal budget terms you wish you didn’t need to know, from “minibus” to “poison pill” to the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, which is the reason why our country’s grotesque military budget is getting a $26 billion boost up to $886 billion, while non-defense spending is getting a $4 billion cut, down to $773 billion.

While there are plenty of damning narratives to derive from the latest in government appropriations dysfunction, there is one story in particular that we’re anxious to see told by the White House and Congressional Democrats, and it’s this…

You know you’re doing something right when Fox News is mad about it. So I guess we can count Fox’s vexed coverage of the coalition letter that we and 146 other organizations sent the Environmental Protection Agency last week as a sign that we’re ruffling the right feathers. 

On January 16, Bloomberg covered a letter from 147 groups that the Revolving Door Project co-organized with the Center for Biological Diversity and Columbia Riverkeeper, calling on the Environmental Protection Agency to utilize its Clean Air Act Section 309 powers to refer the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s approval of the GTN Xpress pipeline expansion to the White House Council on Environmental Quality for review. FERC’s approval of the pipeline disregarded both the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and legally-binding state-level decarbonization commitments in Washington and Oregon.

The pressure on the Biden administration to stop the rapid ongoing expansion of liquified natural gas (LNG) export infrastructure in the United States is intensifying. Over 300 organizations released a letter at COP28 demanding that the administration halt the planned build-out of LNG facilities. 60 Democrats in Congress wrote a letter demanding that the Energy Department reassess whether new LNG terminals were in the national interest. The Hill reported that the Biden administration’s continued support for LNG exports was causing a “revolt” within the Democratic party. 

How does one right-wing activist get his worst ideas to appear in the legal decisions of the most powerful judges in America? A bombshell Politico investigation this week has the answers on how rightwing activist and “billionaire matchmaker” Leonard Leo managed to influence the outcome of several of the Supreme Court’s highest-profile and most damaging decisions over the past two years.

Our recent inquiry into whether utilities around the country are paying premiums for purchasing “certified,” “differentiated,” or “responsibly sourced” natural gas—and if so, whether they are passing on those higher prices to customers—has uncovered a significant uptick in utilities seeking these gas options and passing on the costs to ratepayers. You can find our research document here.

It’s been an eventful week, to say the least. We have a smattering of political updates to share, many of them rooted in the ongoing saga of MAGA-led obstruction of government function. But first, we want to address an instance of overt violence spurred by Trump’s hate-filled rhetoric.