This top Trump donor wants more than rule rollbacks

Your guide to the political forces shaping the energy transformation

Jul 09, 2024 View in browser   By Mike Soraghan and Francisco "A.J." Camacho Illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/POLITICO (source images via Brett Buchanan for The Texas Tribune and iStock) Donald Trump is friends with a lot of oil barons. But Texas billionaire Tim Dunn is different. The CEO of a not terribly well-known oil producer called CrownRock, he doesn’t seem primarily interested in the environmental rollbacks his peers are seeking. He’s just as dismissive of man-made climate change as any wildcatter at the Petroleum Club. But, as I wrote this week, Dunn is an evangelical Christian from Midland who preaches at his church and has deployed his fortune to remake Texas politics in the image of the religious right. Now, he’s going national, as exemplified by the $5 million check he wrote late last year to Team Trump. Dunn reshaped Texas politics not by fighting Democrats, but by financing primary challenges to Republicans who don’t support the far-right policies he prefers. Since 2010, he’s spent at least $30 million, with a return on investment that put Texas in the national headlines for restricting abortion and sending taxpayer money to private schools. In Texas, “every single far-right policy can be tied back” to Dunn and fellow billionaire oilman Ferris Wilks, said state Rep. James Talarico. Dunn’s goal, the Democrat said, is to transform society into an “authoritarian theocracy.” Dunn has said little publicly about his aims. He rarely gives interviews and did not respond to requests for comment. But his $5 million investment put him in the top 10 of Trump campaign donors, according to the watchdog group OpenSecrets. And he’s been gravitating into the MAGA orbit for years. Dunn joined the board of the America First Policy Institute, a policy and personnel incubator for a potential second Trump administration. He went into business with Trump pollster Brad Parscale. And he’s the longtime vice chair of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which supplied some of Trump’s most controversial first-term nominees and is now contributing to a proposed policy road map for Trump called Project 2025. The foundation’s former leader, Kevin Roberts, is also president of the Heritage Foundation, which is hosting the Project 2025 initiative. Trump is now trying to distance himself from Project 2025, which is written by his former appointees and advocates cutting regulations across the board and boosting fossil fuel production on federal lands. Those positions are in line with the views of Dunn, who once told Forbes that extremists “want to deindustrialize America” and “live in huts around a campfire.”   It's Tuesday — thank you for tuning in to POLITICO's Power Switch. We're your hosts, Mike Soraghan and Francisco “A.J.” Camacho. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. Send your tips, comments, questions to jkirkland@eenews.net. Listen to today’s POLITICO Energy podcast Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Wes Venteicher breaks down the political and legal fallout over a decision by California's oil and gas regulator to issue new permits for oil wells just before and right after a controversial state law took effect.   Understand 2024’s big impacts with Pro’s extensive Campaign Races Dashboard, exclusive insights, and key coverage of federal- and state-level debates. Focus on policy. Learn more.     Power Centers Then-Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) holding a snowball during a session of the Senate in 2015. To his right is aide Mandy Gunasekara, who went on to be EPA chief of staff. | C-SPAN R.I.P. Jim Inhofe Former Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, who persistently denied the reality of climate change and helped broker bipartisan infrastructure and chemical legislation, passed away Tuesday at age 89, writes Timothy Cama. Inhofe delivered the famous “snowball speech” in February 2015, bringing a snowball to the Senate floor and claiming it disproved global warming. “You know what this is?” Inhofe rhetorically asked. "It’s a snowball. It’s just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out, very unseasonable.” Inhofe, who led the Environment and Public Works Committee twice, antagonized environmentalists and was often at odds with Democrats on environmental policy. But he also had a well-known bipartisan relationship with former Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a progressive who was the top Democrat on EPW. The two once teamed up to help override then-President George W. Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act. Power hungry Data centers are popping up everywhere and jolting electricity demand, but Big Tech and utilities are brainstorming creative solutions, writes Jason Plautz. Companies like Google are exploring demand response programs, for example, where data centers schedule their computers to run slower — or even turn off — during times of high demand. A report out of Google's parent company Alphabet said data centers could help shave peak load, soak up excess wind and solar power and use existing transmission capacity that might otherwise be stranded. Red + blue = green? A coalition of 20 representatives unveiled a rare bipartisan carbon bill in the House, writes Emma Dumain. The bill calls for the Department of Energy to study the carbon intensity of numerous domestic industrial imports. Some conservative critics attack the bill as a slippery slope to a carbon tax.   SUBSCRIBE TO GLOBAL PLAYBOOK: Don’t miss out on POLITICO’s Global Playbook, our newsletter taking you inside pivotal discussions at the most influential gatherings in the world. Suzanne Lynch delivers the world's elite and influential moments directly to you. Stay in the global loop. SUBSCRIBE NOW.     In Other News Riding the rails…: Planning on taking the train this summer? Expect delays. On excessively hot days, Amtrak has to slow many trains to avoid warping the rail. (We found out the hard way this morning.) …Down to Florida: If you're traveling through central Florida, watch for pongamia trees. Their fruit is unpalatable compared with the orange trees they’re replacing, but these Indian plants can be used to make biofuels. Subscriber Zone A showcase of some of our best subscriber content. Emissions rise from smokestacks at the Jeffrey Energy Center coal power plant, near Emmett, Kansas, on Sept. 18, 2021. | Charlie Riedel/AP Ten Eastern states from Maryland to Maine are facing pressure from environmental groups to keep to their shared climate initiative, which is running 18 months behind schedule. Vice President Kamala Harris is emerging as a prominent name in discussions about replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee. If Harris is tapped as the presidential nominee, her climate record could boost her. A renewable energy trade group report says that a Biden administration target for offshore wind development will likely be completed three years late. That's it for today, folks! Thanks for reading.   Follow us on Twitter Arianna Skibell @ariannaskibell   Follow us

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