Today, the House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency will hold a hearing to highlight how taxpayer dollars are funneled through NGOs to advance wealthy donors’ agendas.
As the subcommittee shows interest in investigating these suspicious activities, the climate litigation ecosystem is a prime place to look. Here are the key points witnesses and committee members should consider:
One of today’s hearing witnesses, Scott Walker, president of the Capital Research Center, called out the Environmental Law Institute’s Climate Judiciary Project (CJP) in his written testimony as an egregious example of a taxpayer-funded NGO pursuing a radical agenda. As Walker details in his written testimony:
“…the controversial Climate Judiciary Project, which seeks to ‘educate’—from a left-wing perspective—federal and state judges about climate change and related litigation designed to extract billions of dollars from oil and gas companies for alleged climate harms. These trainings attempt to influence the very judges who hearing these cases, using a curriculum developed in part by individuals assisting with that litigation.”
CJP started in 2018, and has briefed more than 2,000 judges on climate litigation. A 2021 Princeton Alumni Weekly profile of the group’s founder, Paul Hanle, explained the motivation behind the group’s efforts, stating “Now [Hanle is] explaining the science of climate change to a group of people with real power to act on it: judges.”
Notably, tomorrow’s hearing is not the first time CJP has faced congressional scrutiny. In February of 2024, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) sent a letter to the Environmental Law Institute, requesting information on CJP’s efforts to “influence the federal judiciary in its adjudication of climate litigation.”
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a Congressionally-chartered NGO funded primarily by federal grants and contracts.
In January of 2025, NAS set up a new committee to assess climate attribution science, a body of research that is used to draw causality between specific companies’ emissions and extreme weather events. Activist groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) play a large role in developing climate attribution research specifically for application in climate lawsuits.
The NAS committee was launched with a UCS representative, Delta Merner, on the working group – and commentators quickly pointed out the absurdity of having a pro-litigation activist on what is ostensibly a scientific committee. Curiously, Merner has since left the committee without explanation.
Notably, NAS’s attribution science committee is partly funded by the Bezos Earth Foundation and a wealthy donor affiliated with Climate Central, in addition to its federal funding. This begs the question: why is federal funding needed to supplement a Bezos-funded project?
There is more to the story with climate attribution science. The latest climate attribution study from Dartmouth researchers, published in Nature in April of this year, is specifically designed for use in anti-energy lawsuits.
Worse, the study “was paid for by U.S. taxpayers” – as the authors admit in comments to the New York Times – in addition to its backing from a Rockefeller-funded center at Dartmouth. Lee Wasserman, director of the Rockefeller Family Fund has also emphasized that the study supports climate lawsuits and state superfund laws to “make climate polluters pay a fair share.”
What would that “fair share” be? The study makes the absurd claim that oil and natural gas companies are somehow responsible for $28 trillion in climate damages, a figure equivalent to the United States’ entire GDP.
If the goal of the study was not already clear enough, the study acknowledges support from Michael Burger, a Columbia academic who doubles as Of Counsel at Sher Edling, the lead plaintiffs’ firm supporting climate cases.
Already, the federally funded study is being used to support climate lawfare and anti-energy legislation in states across the country. The study’s lead author, Justin Mankin, has testified in favor of both Vermont’s and Maine’s climate superfund bills. Mankin also presented his research at a webinar hosted by none other than the Environmental Law Institute, raising concerns that judges are already being briefed on research developed for use by climate plaintiffs.
Bottom Line: The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has a straight shot today to shed light on the shady network of activists, wealthy donors, law firms, and academics who have created a web of suspicious activity in their climate litigation campaign and attacks on American energy, all while simultaneously taking advantage of American taxpayers.
