You have to hand it to Congressman Frank Pallone. The man knows how to read a room. Or at least, he knows how to read a headline.
Back in 2021, when investigative journalists had the temerity to point out that the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee personally held stock in Chevron, Dominion Energy, and General Electric while writing the nation’s climate laws, it looked bad. Really bad.
Here was the Democrat in charge of saving the planet, pocketing capital gains from the very companies trying to burn it down.
So sometime between that embarrassing revelation and the filing of his 2024 financial disclosure, Pallone did what any savvy politician would do. He sold the evidence.
That is correct. The direct holdings in Chevron. The Dominion Energy shares. The General Electric stock had been in the family portfolio since at least 2007. All of it is gone. Poof. Vanished like a campaign promise after Election Day.
But do not be fooled. The congressman from New Jersey’s 6th District did not suddenly discover a conscience. He discovered plausible deniability. And what he replaced those dirty old stocks with is actually worse, because it is not smarter, just more devious. It is the kind of financial legerdemain that allows a man to have his fossil fuel and burn it too.
According to Pallone’s annual financial disclosure filed May 14, 2025, covering the 2024 calendar year, the Pallone household has significantly deepened its investment in the energy sector through a dizzying complex of exchange-traded funds and mutual funds managed by Wells Fargo Advisors.
In 2025, about 48% of members of Congress owned stock, and more than 100 of them made approximately 14,451 trades, totaling $720 million in shares and assets that year.
In Pallone’s case, the individual stocks are gone, but the exposure remains, and the hypocrisy and corruption are more systemic than ever.
Consider the trust labeled innocuously as “GST TRUST 2,” owned by the congressman’s spouse, Sarah Hospodor. Nestled among the dozens of holdings is a very specific purchase made on June 17, 2024.
On that day, the trust bought shares of the SPDR Select Sector Fund – Energy Select Sector, ticker symbol XLE, valued between one thousand and fifteen thousand dollars.
For those who do not spend their weekends reading prospectuses, the XLE is not some gentle, diversified green fund. It is a scalpel designed to carve out the purest slice of the American fossil fuel industry.
Its top holdings include ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Schlumberger. It is, for all practical purposes, a bet that oil and gas will remain profitable for the foreseeable future.
So let us be clear about what happened here. Pallone sold his direct shares in Chevron, which is consistently ranked among the top corporate polluters globally. Then he bought shares in a fund that holds Chevron as its second-largest position.
Another top corporate polluter, ExxonMobil reported paying nearly five times as much tax to the United Arab Emirates as to the US federal government in recent years.
Schlumberger is the world’s largest offshore drilling company and a global technology firm providing oilfield services, digital solutions, and extraction technologies to the energy industry.
That is not divestment. That is a disguise.
And it is not the only one. The same trust holds the iShares Core S&P Total U.S. Stock Market ETF, the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF, and a suite of other broad-market funds whose fortunes remain inextricably tied to the health of the fossil fuel economy. When energy stocks rise, so do the Pallone family’s assets.
The congressman’s office did not respond to questions about whether he sees any conflict in holding a direct stake in the energy sector while serving as the gatekeeper for climate legislation.
But then, he did not respond to such questions back in 2021 either.
Pallone declined to comment on what happened during the closed-door 2018 meeting, after Politico reported that fight broke out in a closed-door meeting of House Democrats over climate change between the powerful veteran lawmaker and progressive star Rep.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who sponsored the “Green New Deal” legislation. Pallone opposes the Green New Deal.
Some things, it seems, do not change.
What has changed is the scale. The 2024 disclosure reveals a sophisticated financial machine. The spouse’s “GST TRUST 3” alone holds multiple funds valued between one hundred thousand and two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Her individual retirement account holds a variable annuity worth between two hundred fifty thousand and half a million dollars. Spread across the various trusts and accounts, the Pallone household is sitting on a portfolio valued easily in the seven figures.
This is not the financial profile of a revolutionary. It is the profile of a man deeply comfortable with the status quo, because the status quo has been very, very good to him.
And that is the real story here. It is not that Frank Pallone is a hypocrite, though he is.
It is not that he takes campaign money from the very industries his committee oversees, though he does.
The real story is that the system has become so sophisticated at laundering conflicts of interest that a man can sell the smoking gun, buy a portfolio of mutual funds, and call himself clean.
When activists from the Sunrise Movement stood outside his district offices and begged him to sign the No Fossil Fuel Money pledge, Pallone looked them in the eye and said no.
Repeatedly. Now we know why. It was not because he disagreed with their goal. It was because he could not afford to say yes. Not when his retirement account is tied to the price of a barrel of oil.
The June 2 Democratic primary offers voters a choice. They can send Pallone back to Washington for another two years of carefully managed decline, another two years of writing climate bills that count natural gas as “clean energy,” another two years of telling progressives what they cannot do because the votes are not there and the donors are watching.
Or they can send John Hsu, a 2020 Bernie Sanders delegate who has never taken a dime of fossil fuel money and who actually believes that a congressman should fear his constituents more than he loves his stock portfolio.
Hsu led the Middlesex County Our Revolution chapter for five years and he served four years as an elected member of the Middlesex County Democratic Organization.
Hsu worked to stop the 700-megawatt gas-fired Woodbridge/Keasbey power plant, defended public spaces like Thomas Edison County Park, and advocated to end the genocide in Gaza.
Pallone has attended energy construction project ground-breaking ceremonies in Woodbridge, and the congressman said he “was glad to help provide federal funds to” cut down 11 acres of woodlands to build a 14 synthetic (plastic) field for another for-profit sports complex.
Pallone is a vocal supporter of Israel who has received significant campaign contributions from pro-Israel lobbying groups, including AIPAC, totaling over $240,000, according to data from TrackAIPAC.
The New Jersey incumbent consistently votes for military aid to Israel, including a 2024 vote for $26 billion. Pallone is a cosponsor of Republican Joe Wilson’s United States-Israel Defense Partnership Act of 2025, which aims to strengthen defense technology cooperation, particularly in AI and robotic defense systems.
He also voted for 2026 legislation directing over $4 billion more for Israeli security and missile defense systems like Iron Dome and David’s Sling.
The choice is not complicated. It is just uncomfortable because it requires admitting that the nice man from Long Branch who has been there forever is not really on your side.
He is on the side of the XLE. And the XLE is doing just fine. The question is whether the rest of us can say the same.
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