In a sweeping fulfillment of what a new analysis calls a “fossil fuel fanatic’s wishlist,” the Trump administration has spent the past nine months systematically dismantling U.S. clean energy policy, handing a cascade of victories to oil and gas allies while ensuring American consumers and the global climate will bear the long-term costs.
The report from Public Citizen and the Revolving Door Project, titled “Trump’s Polluter Playground,” details how the administration has moved beyond mere deregulation to actively resurrect and subsidize the most polluting sectors of the energy industry.
Trump asked oil and gas executives to raise $1 billion for his 2024 campaign and told them he’d grant their policy wish list if he won, but he is going ahead with his disastrous policy agenda even though the fossil fuel industry contributed a tenth of that amount.
The agenda, meticulously crafted by industry-linked think tanks, has shifted from political promise to federal policy with startling speed, rewarding the fossil fuel donors who provided $96 million to support Trump’s campaign.
According to an analysis by Climate Power, Big Oil spent $450 million to influence Donald Trump and Republicans throughout the 2024 election cycle and the 118th Congress. This funding includes direct donations, lobbying, and advertising to support Republicans and their policies.
Oil and gas interests have continued to pour money into his political operation even after Trump’s victory in 2024.
The centerpiece of this effort is a concerted attack on the scientific and legal foundations of climate policy.
The Environmental Protection Agency, under Administrator Lee Zeldin, is now moving to rescind its landmark 2009 “Endangerment Finding,” the legal bedrock that empowers the government to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
To justify this, the administration enlisted scientists whose views are far outside the mainstream, including Stephen Koonin, a former chief scientist at BP who has called climate science “not settled.”
“The science was clear in 2009 and has become much stronger and clearer since,” said Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell, in the report. He called the endangerment finding rescission a move that “borders on criminal negligence.”
Simultaneously, the Department of Energy, led by former fracking executive Chris Wright, has taken extraordinary steps to extend the life of aging coal and gas plants, issuing “emergency” orders to keep them online based on a deeply flawed study predicting widespread blackouts.
This comes as the administration funnels about $90 billion in new tax subsidies to the fossil fuel industry over the next decade, dwarfing the support it has stripped from the renewable sector.
“Republicans in Congress are raising our energy prices, slashing hundreds of thousands of jobs in their states, and taking a sledgehammer to the clean energy industry — all to give huge tax cuts to billionaires and Big Oil,” said anti-establishment progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick, an outspoken environmentalist in New Jersey.
The political return on this investment for industry donors has been swift.
Shortly after pipeline magnate Kelcy Warren and his company donated a combined $25 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in February, the president rescinded the order blocking the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.
“We want the Keystone XL Pipeline built!” Trump posted on social media days after the donations were reported.
For the American public, the consequences are twofold. By crippling the growth of cheaper wind and solar power and locking the nation into a fossil-dependent grid, the administration ensures households will remain vulnerable to the volatile prices of global oil and gas markets.
For the planet, the deliberate sidelining of climate science and the active promotion of coal and gas amount to a dangerous acceleration of the very emissions fueling climate chaos.
The report concludes that the administration is not simply pausing the nation’s energy transition but is actively forging a path backward, a costly reversal engineered by and for the energy barons who now hold the keys to the federal government.
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