Climate science, policy, politics, and action
Subcommittee hearing entitled “Fix Our Forests: How Improved Land Management Can Protect Communities in the Wildland-Urban Interface.”
Witnesses:
Subcommittee hearing.
Witness:
| Department of Transportation | ||
|---|---|---|
| Program Name | $ Change from 2025 Enacted (in millions) | Brief Description of Program and Recommended Reduction or Increase |
| Increases | ||
| Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Operations | +359 | The Budget requests an increased amount of $13.8 billion. This funding level would support air traffic controller hiring and salary increases, as well as FAA’s ongoing updates to its outdated telecommunications systems. |
| FAA Facility and Radar Upgrades | +824 | The Budget delivers an $5 billion investment in the modernization of the systems and facilities that comprise U.S. National Airspace System (NAS). In addition to a previously-provided $1 billion advance appropriation, the Budget requests an additional $4 billion for NAS upgrades including a $450 million down-payment on a multiyear, multi-billion-dollar radar replacement program. A substantial amount will also be requested as mandatory funding through reconciliation. |
| Infrastructure for Rebuilding America Program (INFRA) | +770 | The Budget provides $770 million, on top of the $1.5 billion in provided by IIJA, for the INFRA grants program, which assists highway, port, and freight rail projects. |
| Rail Safety and Infrastructure Grants | +400 | The Budget provides $500 million for Rail Safety and Infrastructure grants, a 400-percent increase over 2025 levels. |
| Shipbuilding and Port Infrastructure | +596 | The Budget provides $105 million for the Assistance to Small Shipyards program. The Budget delivers $550 million for the Port Infrastructure Development Program. |
| Cuts, Reductions, and Consolidations | ||
| Essential Air Service (EAS) Discretionary Funding | -308 | The Budget proposes a reduction of eligibility and subsidy rates. |
| Electric Vehicle Charger Grants | -5700 | The Budget cancels an additional $5.7 billion in IIJA funding provided to the Department of Transportation for electric vehicle charger grant programs. |
Over the next few weeks, we’re watching the House closely as Republicans kick off voting on their budget reconciliation bill, which is chock-full of handouts to polluters and billionaires and is on track to be one of the most harmful, costly, and sweeping pieces of legislation in recent history.
On Wednesdays, May 7, 14, and 21st starting around 4pm we’re rallying at the U.S. Capitol steps to fight back against Republicans’ attempts to pass massive cuts to essential programs to provide handouts to billionaires and polluters. RSVP now.
Full committee hearing.
Witnesses:
Full committee hearing.
Witnesses:
Full committee hearing.
Nominees:
McMaster served with the professional staff for the House of Representatives Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure from 2011 to 2017, for Rep. John Mica (R-Fla.). McMaster served as deputy chief of staff and deputy assistant secretary for congressional affairs at DOT during the first Trump administration. Since then, McMaster has worked in the private sector for engineering firm HNTB and, most recently, for Boeing Co.
Busterud, a former corporate energy attorney from California, served in Trump’s first administration as the EPA Region 9 administrator. He was Senior Director and Managing Counsel, Environment and Real Estate, Law Department, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E). Busterud also served as a board member for the centrist California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance.
Telle has served as Sen. Bill Hagerty’s (R-Tenn.) Chief of Staff over the last four years and will continue to serve Hagerty while his nomination is pending before the Senate. Telle served during the first Trump Administration as the White House’s Senate lead in its Office of Legislative Affairs. Prior to that role, Telle served as the top staff member on the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security and as the top policy advisor to the late Senator Thad Cochran.
Subcommittee hearing.
Witness:
| Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Program Name | $ Change Enacted from 2025 (in millions) | Brief Description of Program and Recommended Reduction or Increase |
| Increases | ||
| Drinking Water Programs | +9 | The Budget provides $124 million in funding for the drinking water mission at EPA. The $9 million increase from the 2025 enacted level is to equip EPA with funds to respond to drinking water disasters. |
| Indian Reservation Drinking Water Program | +27 | The Budget increases funding for Tribes to retain access to funding for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure on their lands, with a total level of $31 million for the grant program. |
| Cuts, Reductions, and Consolidations | ||
| Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds | -2,460 | The Budget provides the decreased funding level of $305 million total. |
| Categorical Grants | -1,006 | The Budget includes the elimination of 16 categorical grants, and maintains funding at 2025 enacted levels for Tribes. |
| Hazardous Substance Superfund | -254 | The IIJA and the Inflation Reduction Act helped finance the Superfund program. |
| Office of Research and Development | -235 | The Budget puts an end to research grants, environmental justice work, climate research, and modeling that influences regulations. The Budget provides $281 million. |
| Environmental Justice | -100 | EPA’s environmental justice program is eliminated in line with the vision the President set forth in Executive Order 14151, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” and Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” |
| Diesel Emissions Reduction Act (DERA) Grants | -90 | This program is eliminated. |
| Atmospheric Protection Program | -100 | The Atmospheric Protection Program imposes climate change regulations. This program is eliminated in the 2026 Budget. |
In an exchange with Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), Zeldin asserted that his administration is not bound by laws passed under previous Congresses.
ROUNDS: There's a lot of us here that really do think there's an importance to the clean water and drinking water state revolving loan funds. There's a $2.47 billion decrease in the skinny budget proposal that's been laid out.Let me just ask this question on it. Congress appropriates, and we direct, we authorize, and so forth. My suspicion is that Congress will seriously consider reappropriating those funds again. Would it be fair to say, although there have been some suggestions that you’re not following the law and so forth, that if we appropriate it, and direct that it be put back into those revolving loan funds, that you’ll follow the law and you’ll see that it’s done.
ZELDIN: Of course, yes, senator.
ROUNDS: I appreciate that because the misunderstanding is that somehow you’re not going to follow the law on this. When Congress puts it in and we say, “No, we want it back in, and it should go back out to the states,” at that stage of the game, we can count on you working with us to get it done appropriately.
ZELDIN: Senator, I appreciate you raising this point and raising this example. Congress appropriates funding, and then the agency distributes that funding as it’s required to under the law. That doesn’t mean from one administration to the next, that the Trump administration is going to come in agreeing with the policy priorities of the prior administration that just left office. There might be a disagreement of opinion between administrations. And we come in towards the beginning of a fiscal year. The way that funding will go out the course of a fiscal year might be applying the new administration’s priorities, as the American public voted for last November.
ROUNDS: Based upon where there is broad latitude provided to the executive branch in the expenditure of those authorities. But where the Congress is more specific in their appropriations, it makes it cleaner and more directed in terms of your ability to decide up front whether it is truly the will of Congress to do it in one particular program such as these revolving loan funds.
ZELDIN: Senator, I love your question. This applies to so much from appropriation to policy. If Congress wants an agency to take a specific action, Congress can give an obligation to an agency. I’m here, as I was in my confirmation process, and I will continue to come before Congress, committing to fulfilling all statutory obligations. And if there’s some new statutory obligation because of some law that’s passed say a month from now, our agency will fulfull those statutory obligations. It’s a really important point.
On Wednesday, May 14, 2025, at 10:15 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources will hold a Member Day hearing. Members are invited to testify on issues within the Committee’s jurisdiction, including specific legislation or topics of importance to them and their constituents.
Full committee hearing.
Witnesses:
Full committee hearing.
Nominees:
Brightbill was Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney and briefly Acting Assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division at the United States Department of Justice under Trump. He is a trial and appellate lawyer in Winston & Strawn LLP’s Washington, D.C. office, Chair of their Environmental Litigation and Enforcement Practice. He is a member of the Federalist Society. He opposed the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. In 2024, he led the incoming Trump DOJ review team.
Pierce is the Deputy Chief Financial Officer (DCFO) for the Department of Defense. An Idaho native, Ms. Pierce was commissioned as a Marine Corps officer, serving in operational and staff financial management assignments from 1991 to 2006. Prior to reentering federal service in 2018 as a staff accountant with the Defense Health Agency, she held finance and accounting roles in the public and private sectors in the United States and Europe, with experience in information technology, energy, education and consulting industries. Ms. Pierce was appointed to the Senior Executive Service in August 2020.
Prochaska is Chief of Strategic Partnerships, Bohr Quantum Technology, which is headed by Paul Dabbar, Trump’s nominee for Deputy Secretary of Commerce for global trade and technology. Under Trump, Prochaska was the Department of Energy’s first Chief Commercialization Officer, serving as the Director of the Office of Technology Transitions. Prochaska also served as Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff for DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. Prochaska previously served as an Intelligence Officer in the United States Navy and as Senior Vice President at the investment firm FCIM.
Mamula is a petroleum geologist. Currently chief geologist at the mining company GreenMet, he previously worked for Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, Frontera Resources, and First Seismic Corporation. He is a former adjunct scholar at Cato Institute.