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With the Senate’s rejection of Senator Joe Manchin’s permitting reform legislation as a notable exception, last week was a bad one for fossil fuel disasters and corporate accountability. In Kansas, a Keystone pipeline leak caused the largest US crude oil spill in a decade. Meanwhile, in Pennsylvania, investigators found ongoing gas leaks in Equitrans’ pipeline storage facilities that released massive amounts of methane in November — enough to erase 50% of emission gains from US electric vehicles sales this year. 

Sam Bankman-Fried may have been arrested, but his influence campaign in DC is continuing unabated, with Members of the House and Senate looking to use FTX’s collapse to push for SBF’s hand-picked regulatory framework and undermine the work of SEC Chair Gary Gensler. 

Simply put, we would ask for more rigor from the wonks who would like a say in how we redesign America’s energy systems. The challenge is massive, yes: to better serve more people with more efficient, less wasteful, less toxic energy infrastructure, while restraining the human footprint on the planet, so that other forms of life can also thrive. But it is also an energizing challenge, and eminently worthy of human effort. Any theory of climate change mitigation that is inflexible and unimaginative enough to involve bulldozing those who stand in its way is just another partial paradise, a green veil thrown over the same extractive relationships that got us here. 

What parts of the rail strike story don’t get told by mainstream outlets says more than what they do write.

If rail workers are so important to our economy that a single week of striking could cost the economy $1 billion, and if their demands are so modest that any decent employer would easily exceed them, then meeting their demands seems like the obvious solution. But the American balance of power is such that railroad bosses have the allegedly most pro-labor president in history doing their dirty work for them.

Hello everyone, and welcome to a special holiday edition of the RDP Newsletter. Since we’re off for Thanksgiving tomorrow and Friday, this week’s edition will be a bit more off the cuff and includes some material that would normally be in our Hack Watch newsletter. So sit back, relax, and enjoy.

The political world is looking altogether different today than it did last week. With the midterm vote counts and global climate conference wrapping up, while one billionaire throws lighter fluid on the long-smoldering fire that is Twitter1 and another billionaire-no-longer’s crypto exchange goes up in smoke, attention is spread thinner than Lauren Boebert’s apparent margin of victory. (The race is headed to a recount.) 

How The Former Treasury Secretary Boosted Crypto Bros

If the Trumpiest predictions for the midterms come true next week, and Republicans sweep Congress, opportunities for implementing progressive policy priorities – and Biden’s campaign promises – will disproportionately fall to the strategic maneuvering of the executive branch. From climate action to stopping runaway corporate profiteering to defending the working class from exploitation, the executive branch holds immense power with which it can tangibly better the lives of everyday Americans even amidst a sure-to-be-hostile potential Republican-controlled Congress.