He sold us out
That’s according to “The Billion Dollar Deal: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Bought
the Trump Administration, Cashed In, and Left Americans to Pay the Price,”
a report released Thursday by US Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer
(D-NY) and Committee on Environment and Public Works Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse
(D-RI).
“The fossil fuel
industry and their allies bought their way into the Trump White House with
hundreds of millions of dollars in political donations, after Trump promised
fossil fuel bigwigs at a Mar-a-Lago fundraiser that he’d do anything and
everything they wanted, for the right price,” Whitehouse said in a statement.
“Now, their minions run the government from the inside,
driving up energy bills to deliver payouts to the donors that put Trump back in
office,” he continued. “Our new report exposes this old-fashioned corruption, by a
thuggish government and a desperate industry, that is squeezing every last
dollar out of Americans’ pocketbooks while they still can.”
The report is based on 19 investigations into Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) regulatory rollbacks, 13 probes of nine other
agencies, and 13 investigations into 88 separate polluters. Investigators from
Schumer’s Anti-Corruption Working Group examined campaign finance
filings, corporate earnings, and investor communications.
The document details how, in the aftermath of Trump’s quid
pro quo offer at the Mar-a-Lago fundraiser in 2024, fossil fuel executives,
along with their corporate political action committees (PACs) and dark money groups,
contributed an estimated $201 million to support Trump and allied Republican
lawmakers—plus $19 million toward the inaugural fund.
“These figures capture only traceable donations,” the report
emphasizes. “Other substantial sums flowed to candidate Trump through 501(c)(4)
organizations that are not legally required to disclose their contributors.
Dark money groups—nonprofits and shell companies that do not
reveal their donors—contributed over $1.9 billion into the 2024 elections, up
from $1 billion in 2020.”
The report names key figures from “the fossil fuel donor
class” and includes their estimated contribution to Trump’s latest election:
- Oil
and banking heir Timothy Mellon: $151.5 million
- Energy
Transfer executive chair Kelcy Warren: $11 million
- Elliott
Management co-CEO Paul Singer: $8 million
- CrownQuest
Operating CEO Tim Dunn: $5 million
- Continental
Resources executive chair Harold Hamm: $4 million
- Midland
Energy founder and CEO Syed Javaid Anwar: $2 million
- GeoSouthern
Energy CEO George Bishop: $2 million
- Alliance
Resource Partners CEO Joseph Craft III: $2 million
- Hilcorp
Energy executive chair and founder Jeffery Hildebrand: $1.7 million
- Sunoco
board chari Ray Washburne: $611,000
There’s also former Liberty Energy CEO Chris Wright, who is
now Trump’s energy secretary and gave an estimated $795,000. According to the
report, “Lobbyists say that many CEOs now keep Secretary Wright’s personal
phone number on speed dial.”
Wright is among at least a dozen former oil executives and
lobbyists Trump installed at the EPA and departments of Energy, the Interior,
and Justice to systematically dismantle “the regulatory architecture built over
decades to protect American families from pollution and climate change,” the
publication points out. “Those captured agencies delivered for the fossil fuel
industry.”
The report calls out not only Wright but also Trump’s other “polluter worker bees,” including EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and various other officials at their agencies who have ties to polluting industries.
It also calls out the GOP-controlled Congress, which last
year sent to Trump’s desk the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a law that includes
“tens of billions in new and expanded direct subsidies to fossil fuel companies
through tax breaks, royalty cuts, a suspension of the charge on methane pollution, and
other giveaways. Combined with the subsidies already on the books, independent
analysts estimate the industry will collect some $190 billion in tax breaks and
subsidies over the next 10 years.”
“The costs of these gifts to the fossil fuel industry fall
on everyone else,” the report stresses. “Climate-related disasters cost the United States at
least $115 billion in direct damages in 2025 alone. Each year, the damages to public health from
fossil fuel air pollution run at about $820 billion, or $2,500 per American,
and contribute to approximately 91,000 premature deaths and 216,000 new cases
of childhood asthma. Homeowners’ insurance has become unaffordable or
unavailable across many parts of the country. These are just some of the
existing costs associated with fossil fuel production and combustion.”
“The Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks will drive
them higher, as air and water
pollution as well as climate change will all get worse,” the document warns, as
the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency
worsens, with deadly
consequences worldwide.
The report notes that “canceled and delayed wind and solar
projects are also raising electricity prices for consumers in multiple states,
sending billions to fossil fuel plants. And the EPA itself has estimated that
the elimination of tailpipe emission standards will cost Americans a minimum of
$580 billion in added fuel costs alone over the next three decades. Hundreds of
thousands of jobs are being lost as the United States cedes its industrial
competitiveness in clean energy technologies to China and Europe.”
Trump also partnered with Israel to launch an illegal war on
Iran—which has responded by restricting ship traffic through the the Strait of
Hormuz, sending global fuel prices soaring. The publication highlights that
“the 100 biggest oil and gas companies collectively earned an extra $30 million
per hour in the first month of the Iran conflict alone—amounting to $23 billion
in windfall profits—with $234 billion projected by year’s end if oil prices
remain near $100 a barrel.”
“As the Trump administration’s war in Iran drives up gas
prices—with analysts warning crude prices could reach $200—American
consumers pay directly for the chaos that Big Oil’s political investments
helped purchase,” the report warns. Brown University’s Costs of War Project estimates the
higher diesel and gasoline prices have so far cost Americans $115.7 billion, or
$883 per household.
Trump’s war is also filling his own pockets. CNBC estimated
earlier this month that the president has made up to $4.4 million from his
investments in fossil fuel companies—and as Common Dreams reported earlier this week, he continues to make related
trades.
“Donald Trump will always choose self-enrichment over
helping American families, and as this report reveals, his fossil fuel
corruption is costing Americans billions,” said Schumer. “Instead of using the
presidency to address the affordability crisis, lower costs, and protect
Americans’ health and safety, Trump has used his power to deliver for his
billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry. The message from this
administration is clear: Big
Oil gets the profits, and American families get the bill.”
Released less than six weeks away from the midterm elections,
Senate Democrats’ report not only lays out a range of issues, but offers some
fixes, including demands to tax the windfall profits of Big Oil, as well as
legislation that would “shine a light behind the dark money front groups and
shell organizations that fossil fuel interests use to hide their spending.”
The report also calls for making polluters pay for
planet-heating emissions and empowering lawsuits to hold them accountable. It
further advocates for ending fossil fuel subsidies and directing that money to
clean energy, consumer relief, and infrastructure
resilience.
“The Trump
administration is pumping public money into the fossil fuel industry and
stripping public protections to pad the profits of some of the wealthiest
corporations in the nation,” David Arkush, director of Public Citizen’s Climate
Program, said in response to the report. “The campaign contributions
to Donald Trump by
Big Oil have paid dividends and have allowed the fossil fuel industry to
continue to pollute our communities.”
“This administration has ceded our nation’s clean energy
future to dirty energy and is doing its best to sacrifice the economy, public
health, and the environment to Big Oil’s profits,” he added. “Every American
family struggling with high costs is suffering because of the corrupt
relationship between Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry.”