At the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Wednesday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) railed against what he claims is an "alliance between leftist billionaires, radical environmental organizations, and the Chinese Communist Party."
00:00I call to order this hearing, enter the dragon, China and the left's lawfare against American
00:07energy dominance. We're witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy.
00:18There is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist
00:25Party to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against US energy producers, all
00:35in order to undermine American energy dominance. At stake is a lot more than an industry. Our
00:45energy sector is the engine of American prosperity, the lifeblood of our industrial power, our national
00:54security, and our geopolitical leverage. If American energy is under attack, so is American
01:02security and American independence. The campaign against American energy is a three-pronged
01:10assault. First, foreign money, from entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party, flows into
01:18the United States to bankroll climate advocacy groups who litigate against American energy.
01:26Second, activist lawyers flood our courts with lawsuits designed not to win policy debates,
01:35but to bankrupt energy producers and to dismantle energy infrastructure through sheer attrition.
01:43Third, the judiciary itself is being quietly captured and brainwashed, as left-wing nonprofits host closed-door
01:54trainings that indoctrinate judges to adopt the ideological goals of the climate lawfare machine.
02:05The first prong of this coordinated campaign is a strategic alliance, a cozy financial partnership
02:12between leftist billionaires, radical environmental organizations, and the Chinese Communist Party.
02:24One of the primary vehicles for this alliance is Energy Foundation China, which has funneled upwards
02:32of $12 million to U.S.-based climate advocacy groups since 2020. And this money isn't going to tree-planting campaigns
02:44or to science fairs. It's flowing directly to aggressive litigation outfits like the Natural Resources Defense Council,
02:53the Rocky Mountain Institute, and the World Resources Institute, organizations that routinely file lawsuits trying to block
03:02out pipelines, trying to ban gas-powered vehicles, and trying to bankrupt oil and gas companies.
03:10On paper, Energy Foundation China's goals may sound benign. Support for clean coal, electric vehicle, and global decarbonization.
03:21But that raises the obvious question. If this is truly about reducing emissions, why isn't China investing that money in reducing its own pollution?
03:35China is the number one polluter on planet Earth. Communist China emits more carbon than the United States and Europe combined.
03:47The answer is simple. Because this is not about climate. It is about global energy dominance and control. And it gets worse.
04:00The man at the helm of Energy Foundation China, Xi Zhao, is not a neutral administrator. He is a former senior official in China's National Development and Reform Commission.
04:15The agency responsible for writing the CCP's five-year plans, coordinating industrial expansion, and steering national energy policy.
04:27Between 2000 and 2009, and again from 2012 to 2015, Professor Zhu served as a key member of China's official climate negotiation team, including during the run-up to the Paris Agreement.
04:42A deal that gave China a free pass to increase emissions until 2030, while demanding immediate costly reductions from the United States.
04:54That was not an accident. That was not a bug. That was the purpose. And he's not the only one.
05:02Energy Foundation China's senior leadership includes other alumni of the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment and affiliated state-run institutions.
05:14This is not remotely a grassroots nonprofit. It is a foreign policy weapon, disguised as philanthropy, run by Chinese Communist Party operatives.
05:30Flush with funding, the second prong of this campaign is a legal barrage aimed at bankrupting the American energy sector through a coordinated onslaught of lawsuits.
05:42And if this feels familiar, it should.
05:46It's the same playbook the left used to try to destroy President Trump.
05:51They couldn't beat him at the ballot box, so they turned to the courts.
05:56Four indictments, dozens of civil suits, fringe legal theories given legitimacy by rogue activist judges.
06:05That wasn't about justice. It was about power.
06:09Now they're applying that same strategy to an entire sector of the American economy.
06:18Over 30 lawsuits have been filed in at least 15 Democrat-run jurisdictions, including by 12 states, targeting oil producers and gas producers and coal producers.
06:31Climate lawfare activists have infiltrated American cities and states, convincing them to sue American energy companies.
06:42Over 24 pending suits brought by our own state and local governments, manipulated by the Chinese Communist government and funded by left-wing groups.
06:56And all of them together are crippling American energy.
06:59These lawsuits use creative theories like public nuisance, climate super fund, consumer protection.
07:05But their objective is clear.
07:07Cripple the fossil fuel industry through legal attrition.
07:12And the damages are staggering.
07:15One suit seeks $1.15 billion.
07:20Another demands $3.5 billion.
07:24The days of Dr. Evil demanding $1 million are long behind us.
07:33These are not good faith disputes.
07:37These are weapons.
07:39Just in fiscal year 2023, the leading climate lawfare groups, not even all of them, just the leading groups, raked in close to $500 million from U.S. energy companies.
07:58That's $500 million stripped from our energy independence.
08:03Driving these lawsuits is Scheer Edling LLP, a private plaintiff's firm that has filed more than two dozen suits.
08:12They're not paid by their clients.
08:15They're bankrolled by dark money empires like the New Venture Fund and the Tides Foundation.
08:21Groups that launder anonymous donations into political litigation.
08:27This matters because our domestic energy industry supports over 8.5 million jobs.
08:34Jobs that these zealots want to destroy.
08:38Our fossil fuels power 84% of our national energy.
08:43If these suits succeed, here's what the American public will face.
08:48Skyrocketing energy costs, a weakened and unreliable power grid, and an historic collapse in American energy production.
08:58And the biggest winner in all of this?
09:00China, who's paying the bills.
09:03This is not litigation.
09:04It is strategic sabotage disguised in legalese, executed with precision, and aimed squarely at the foundation of American strength.
09:15The third prong of this strategy is perhaps the most insidious, because it strikes at the very heart of the rule of law, judicial capture.
09:24It is being carried out by one organization with near total control over climate-related judicial training,
09:32the Environmental Law Institute and its Climate Judiciary Project.
09:37If a federal judge or a state judge is receiving, quote, climate science education today, chances are overwhelming that it is coming from ELI.
09:50The group has established a de facto monopoly on climate-related instruction for the judiciary.
09:57They've quote, unquote, trained over 2,000 judges.
10:02They claim to be neutral.
10:04They claim to be science-driven.
10:06But what they are doing is ex parte indoctrination, pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative.
10:18Left-wing bankrollers, like the Hewlett Foundation and the Freedom Together Foundation Fund, CJP, they fund CJP to train judges, so quote, unquote, train, in climate science and make them agreeable to creative climate litigation tactics.
10:37Then these left-wing bankrollers turn around and fund the climate litigators who will bring these bogus cases before those same judges that they've just indoctrinated.
10:47This is like paying the players to play and paying the umpire to call the shots the way you want them.
10:56On April 1st of this year, in my capacity as chairman of the Commerce Committee, I sent a letter to the Environmental Law Institute raising deep concerns about this program.
11:09We have also initiated oversight requests with federal agencies like NOAA, whose internal documents show a cozy relationship with ELI and its activist curricula.
11:20And here's what we've learned. The Climate Judiciary Project tells judges that, quote, the consequences of a business as usual scenario would be catastrophic.
11:32That's called propaganda. And yet, it goes on, it encourages the judiciary to view climate litigation as a, quote, unique opportunity for, quote, accountability.
11:47It even recommends embracing novel tort theories like public nuisance to assign liability for greenhouse gas emissions.
11:56Let me ask, is this neutral? Or is that lobbying behind closed doors?
12:02The materials even applaud pending lawsuits praising the Rhode Island AG's case as, quote, well-crafted,
12:09while failing to mention that similar claims have been dismissed by federal courts as legally baseless.
12:15And who funds these baseless CJP trainings?
12:19The same dark money donors who bankroll the lawsuits themselves.
12:23The same networks that support sheer edling LLP.
12:27This is not how a constitutional republic functions.
12:31Courts are not supposed to be laboratories for political activism,
12:35and judges are not supposed to be trained by the plaintiff's bar that is receiving their funding from the Chinese Communist Party.
12:42What we are witnessing is judicial capture, driven by ideology, powered by money, and tolerated by far too many.
12:51This three-pronged strategy, foreign funding, mass litigation, and judicial indoctrination,
12:57is a full-spectrum assault on American energy independence.
13:02And while China drills and digs, we sue and shut down.
13:08While China dominates supply chains, we dismantle our own in court.
13:13And while China prepares for energy dominance, the American left prepares to attack our own domestic capability.
13:22Congress has a responsibility to expose the funding networks, to break the dark money pipelines,
13:29to defund the judicial indoctrination programs, and to restore legal neutrality to the courts.
13:35We must protect American energy, not just on the battlefield, but in the courtroom where this war is being quietly waged.
