With help from Eric Wolff and Alex Guillén
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— President Donald Trump’s shunning of climate science has found its way to the Agriculture Department, where a POLITICO investigation found dozens of government-funded studies that carry warnings about the effects of climate change have not been publicized.
— The House is expected to wrap things up today on its five-bill minibus that includes the Interior-Environment title.
— We’ll see how prominent an issue climate change is for Democrats when the presidential hopefuls gather for two days of debates later this week.
GOOD MONDAY MORNING! I’m your host, Kelsey Tamborrino. Duke Energy’s Vicky Sullivan is the trivia winner for correctly naming President Theodore Roosevelt as the first president to dive in a submarine. For today: What was the final score of the first ever Congressional Baseball Game? Send your tips, energy gossip and comments to ktamborrino@politico.com.
POLITICO’s 2020: The Issues is the most comprehensive guide anywhere to the issues shaping the Democratic presidential primary, driven by dozens of expert journalists in the nation’s most robust newsroom covering policy and politics.
TRUMP USDA SUPPRESSING CLIMATE STUDIES: Agriculture Department studies ranging from a discovery that rice loses vitamins in a carbon-rich environment to a finding that climate change could exacerbate allergy seasons have been suppressed under the Trump administration, POLITICO’s Helena Bottemiller Evich reports.
A POLITICO investigation found the Trump administration has refused to draw attention to dozens of studies that show the potential dangers and consequences of climate change, defying a longstanding practice of touting such findings by the Agriculture Department’s acclaimed in-house scientists.
A USDA spokesperson said there have been no directives within the department that discouraged the dissemination of climate-related science. “Research continues on these subjects and we promote the research once researchers are ready to announce the findings, after going through the appropriate reviews and clearances,” the spokesperson said in an email.
But POLITICO’s review found at least 45 Agricultural Research Service studies related to climate change since the beginning of the Trump administration that did not receive any promotion. The total number of studies that have been published on climate-related issues is likely to be larger, Helena reports, because ARS studies appear across a broad range of narrowly focused journals and can be difficult to locate.
“The intent is to try to suppress a message — in this case, the increasing danger of human-caused climate change,” said Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. “Who loses out? The people, who are already suffering the impacts of sea level rise and unprecedented superstorms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves.”
MINIBUS PULLING AWAY: The House is back this afternoon to finish up debate on the second minibus, H.R. 3055 (116), which includes Interior-Environment spending. Just over 60 potential tweaks are left to debate to the Transportation-HUD portion of the five-bill package, meaning final passage is expected soon.
What’s inside? Lawmakers last week added bipartisan language to the minibus restricting offshore drilling, preventing EPA from finalizing its revisions to an Obama-era mercury rule, and barring the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management from issuing permits for oil and gas exploration, including seismic airgun blasting, in the Atlantic.
ON TAP THIS WEEK: Senators on the Energy Committee will examine a closely watched issue this week: the Land and Water Conservation Fund. The panel will hold a hearing Tuesday with officials from both the Interior and Agriculture departments to review the implementation of the LWCF program.
Chairman Lisa Murkowski has not committed to making LWCF funding permanent and has expressed wariness over the prospect of taking away oversight over how the money is spent, as Pro’s Anthony Adragna reported. Murkowski has called the idea of guaranteeing mandatory annual funding “challenging” amid “a pretty big split” within the Republican conference.
SPOTTED: Sen. Tom Carper at a Norah Jones concert in Wilmington, Del., on Saturday night.
EPA IG TO RELEASE SUPERFUND REPORT: EPA’s inspector general is expected to issue its report today on the agency’s Superfund Task Force, which was set up by former Administrator Scott Pruitt to prioritize cleanups. The IG’s office first announced in September last year that it would audit the creation and operation of the task force. “Our objective is to determine whether the EPA followed applicable criteria, such as laws and rules, in creating the Superfund Task Force, and the development of the Task Force’s July 2017 report and recommendations,” the Office of Inspector General said at the time in a memo.
MAIL CALL: BIODIESEL TO WHEELER, E15 NOT ENOUGH: The National Biodiesel Board wants EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to know that allowing year-round sales of 15 percent ethanol will not make up for the gallons lost to small refiner exemptions from the Renewable Fuel Standard. In a letter sent Friday, the group homed in on a quote from the June 11 Des Moines Register in which Wheeler said, “that by increasing … E15 to year-round, it will help make up the difference for any small refinery exemptions going forward.”
The biodiesel trade group begs to differ. “I must remind you that the E15 waiver will not provide market growth for biodiesel and renewable diesel,” Kurt Kovarik, the group’s head of federal affairs wrote. “EPA is required to repair the demand destruction for biodiesel and renewable diesel resulting from your agency’s flood of unwarranted, retroactive small refinery exemptions.”
UP FOR DEBATE: Democratic candidates will appear in Miami on Wednesday and Thursday for the first two Democratic debates in the 2020 cycle. After a failed push from candidates like Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to hold a primary debate focused solely on climate change, environmental advocates will be watching to see just how deeply Democrats dive into the issue — if at all.
Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez has said that instead of a climate-focused debate, he’s personally told the moderators “how important it is for climate change to be debated during each and every debate” but said there would be no single-issue events.
POLITICO’s Michael Calderone reports the debate hosts have their work cut out for them: They’ll have to balance keeping tabs on 10 candidates each night, while also addressing the complex issues at the top of Democratic voters’ minds, like climate change. But even if candidates are addressing climate change, “the moderators are not going to want to go around the horn to have the same question answered 10 times,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, who worked on 10 primary debates as an NBC News executive and now serves as dean of the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication at Hofstra University.
— In anticipation of the event, EDF Action is putting nearly $90,000 into an ad campaign, highlighting climate change as a key issue for the debates and calling for a 100 percent clean energy economy. As part of the campaign, EDF Action will run digital ads, English and Spanish ads on taxi cabs, and a Spanish billboard and two English billboards on the route to the debate.
TRUMP ISSUES IRAN WARNING: Trump warned the U.S. may launch a devastating military attack on Iran unless it comes to the negotiating table and drops its bid to develop nuclear weapons, POLITICO’s Martin Matishak reports. “I’m not looking for war, and if there is, it’ll be obliteration like you’ve never seen before. But I’m not looking to do that. But you can’t have a nuclear weapon. You want to talk? Good. Otherwise you can have a bad economy for the next three years,” Trump said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press.”
The comments follow a series of elevating tensions that have stoked concern among the oil industry. But POLITICO’s Eli Okun reports, Iran experts and market analysts say that any major attempt to disrupt the flow of oil would likely last just days or weeks before incurring massive retaliation.
JUDGE STRIKES DOWN CADIZ APPROVAL: A federal judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration’s approval of a right-of-way for a controversial Mojave Desert water-pumping project violated federal law, sending the Cadiz project back to the Bureau of Land Management, Pro California’s Debra Kahn reports.
The court decision follows a determination by BLM in 2017 that the project didn’t require the agency’s approval because the right-of-way was within an existing railroad route. In the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Judge George Wu ruled that BLM violated the Administrative Procedure Act in failing to explain why its reasoning differed from an Obama administration determination in 2015.
— Kyle Groetzinger is now communications manager at the National Parks Conservation Association. Groetzinger most recently handled communications at M+R Strategic Services.
— “Who gets to own the West?” via The New York Times.
— “Wild weather is endangering world’s oldest form of clean power,” via Bloomberg.
— “Trump administration pushes to deregulate with less enforcement” via The Wall Street Journal.
— “General Electric to scrap California power plant 20 years early,” via Reuters.
— “Oregon cancels Saturday legislative session for safety threats amid GOP walkout,” via CNN.
— “Arizona fire highlights challenges for energy storage,” via Associated Press.
THAT’S ALL FOR ME!
