08.01.24

New Analysis: Project 2025 Already Alive and Well in Natural Resources Committee

WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Democratic staff, in collaboration with the Stop Project 2025 Task Force, released a new analysis highlighting Natural Resources Republicans’ actions in the 118th Congress that mirror specific provisions of Trump’s Project 2025, the extreme right-wing agenda authored by the former president’s associates.

As the analysis shows, the Republican majority has pushed legislation, held hearings, and invited witnesses on 14 separate occasions that directly align with Project 2025’s anti-environment, pro-polluter goals to repeal climate action, prioritize polluter profits, attack endangered species and biodiversity, mismanage Western water for industry’s benefit, and exploit Indian Country.

The Committee’s Ranking Members issued the following statements in response:

“Trump’s Project 2025 is a blueprint for an extreme MAGA takeover of our federal government, courtesy of the former president’s favorite billionaire allies, including Big Oil and international mining conglomerates,” said Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.). “Not surprisingly, we see the worst of the worst polluter demands — gutting public input and ignoring climate change in decision making, shortcutting environmental protections, and opening up special areas like the Boundary Waters and the Arctic to drilling and mining, among many others. To be clear, Project 2025 isn’t a long-shot industry fantasy that could never be; my GOP colleagues have been laying the groundwork for Trump’s right-wing agenda since the beginning of the 118th Congress, starting with their H.R. 1, the Polluters Over People Act. The goal is simple: fast-tracking polluter profits, no matter the human or environmental cost.”

“Extreme MAGA Republicans are not waiting for a second Trump presidency to act on Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” said Founder of the Stop Project 2025 Task Force and Water, Wildlife and Fisheries Subcommittee Ranking Member Jared Huffman (D-Calif.).  “On the House Natural Resources Committee, they’ve been using their majority to jam through dozens of bills that come straight out of the pages of Project 2025 – including huge handouts to Big Oil and mining interests, gutting regulations that protect our environment and public health, and de-funding and undermining climate science. We’ve read their book, all 920 pages of it.  We won’t let them get away with it.”  

"If you want to see Trump's Project 2025 in action, then look to the House Natural Resources Committee, where in this Congress alone we have held at least ten hearings on offshore gas and oil production," said Vice Ranking Member Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.). "At a time when we should be building on the Biden-Harris Administration's historic progress on climate action, House Republicans are using Project 2025 as a playbook to advance their pro-polluter and anti-environment agenda. HNRC Democrats will continue putting people over polluters by fighting back against this hostile MAGA takeover of our federal government."

“Extreme Republicans in the House are giving Americans a preview of Trump’s Project 2025. Every week we see bills that question science and benefit wealthy corporations pulled directly from the dangerous Project 2025 playbook—we should all be alarmed,” said Indian and Insular Affairs Subcommittee Ranking Member Teresa Leger Fernández (D-N.M.). “The extreme bills we’re seeing in the Natural Resources Committee attack our environment, prioritize polluter profits, and fail to invest in Indian Country. Bills like H.R. 2925 make it easier for the biggest mining corporations to take our public lands and mineral resources without giving the American people a dime. We cannot let this extreme Republican agenda determine the future of this country. As Ranking Member of the Indian and Insular Affairs Subcommittee, I will fight these extreme bills at every turn.”

“It’s no secret that Trump and the GOP’s Project 2025 will be disastrous for the country, our people and the environment. In its 922 pages—it is clear that our climate, clean air and water, public lands, and tribal sacred places are on the chopping block,” said Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Ranking Member Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.). “Trump and MAGA extremists are planning to roll back protections for national parks and monuments, open up special and sacred lands to mining and oil and gas drilling, and strip endangered species protections, and gut the Environmental Protection Agency and Interior conservation and climate programs. We cannot let this happen. Our young people and the planet are depending on us to stop the climate crisis and protect their future.”

"From eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to stripping away protections for our treasured federal lands, Project 2025 is a destructive agenda that will undo decades of environmental protections,” said Federal Lands Subcommittee Ranking Member Joe Neguse (D-Colo.). “We must continue to protect our federal lands, endangered species, ecosystems, the air we share, and our shrinking water resources from harm."

READ the full analysis of Project 2025 in the House Natural Resources Committee here.

READ Project 2025’s Dirtiest Top Ten here

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