The Pressure Campaign Against Environmental and Climate Groups Heats Up
September 18, 2026
Trump, the Data Center industry, right wing House members, and the fossil fuel industry are all trying to put as much pressure as they can on climate and environmental advocacy organizations before Congressional power potentially shifts on November 3rd.
Whatever the ultimate outcome, the pressure will likely inflict reputational harm, donor withdrawal, and legal costs for the targeted groups, and it will have a chilling effect on the larger advocacy network as a whole.
And, of course, like the “viral waste” DOGE pushed to justify its gutting of USAID, the allegations this pressure campaign is based on are essentially all made up by the nephew network of right wing think tank operatives.
Jump to Section:
What?
Over the past six weeks, three House committees have launched separate but curiously overlapping investigations into the funding, litigation tactics, and support networks of dozens of climate and environmental organizations.
On September 4, the House Natural Resources Committee sent an official committee letter accusing 19 environmental organizations of using climate litigation as a way to swindle the government.
Their theory is that groups like Earthjustice and Center for Biological Diversity are abusing federal “fee-shifting” provisions which allow litigants to recover attorneys’ fees if and when they prevail.
“Fee shifting” is standard practice for parties across the political spectrum, including for people who, say, sue the government so they don’t have to make wedding websites for same-sex couples. In other words, the right wing shifts fees all the time. But, as we will see, good faith and consistency are not the hallmarks of these investigations.
To wit! On September 10, the House Science Committee sent letters to the Sierra Club, 350.org, Oil Change International, and Indivisible Project, as well as the National Science Foundation, asking whether foreign funding or coordination just might be influencing these groups’ opposition to AI and energy infrastructure.
And if so, would these groups perhaps have something they'd like to report vis a vis the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
In other words, the committee was just asking if these groups could, pretty please, show documented proof that their international funding isn’t, in fact, a way to operate as unregistered foreign agents, particularly in their work opposing AI data center development.
Because that is the right wing narrative. That climate groups and the grassroots opposition to data centers are part of a Chinese plot to end American Energy Dominance.
Next up in the pressure campaign, the House Oversight Committee announced an investigation into Bloomberg Philanthropies, alleging the foundation is ALSO funding networks that advance China's national interests by opposing fossil fuels and data centers, as well as advocating for clean energy.
It’s important to note that all of these communications from the House are “requests,” not subpoenas. The named organizations face no legal compulsion to comply, though refusing to comply would carry its own risks. The House could escalate the pressure and issue actual subpoenas, for example, and they will no doubt weaponize any non-compliance to further smear their targets (see: Fauci). But as of right now, this is just rhetorical saber-rattling.
At the same time as the House is sending its letters, the Trump administration is using the subtext of the letters (green groups = Chinese dupes) as justification to put into practice further federal restrictions on the ability of environmental organizations’ to operate.
This is happening specifically through the admin’s National Security “S&T Strategy,” released in August.
The strategy calls for expanded tracking and automated security vetting of federally funded research, including direct and indirect recipients. It also says the administration will seek to expand Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) jurisdiction over critical technologies and monitor some high-risk “greenfield” investments (in, for example, solar panels).
The founding story this pressure campaign is based draws from the work of a “non-partisan” 501c3 organization with extensive ties to Republican megadonor Leonard Leo called Americans for Public Trust, (APT).
So What?
You may recall APT from such hits as 2021’s House investigation into the CDC’s school re-opening guidance. Like the recent campaign against green groups, this investigation was also led by James Comer and Paul Gosar, chair of the Oversight Committee and Natural Resources Subcommittee, respectively, and was also based explicitly on intel from Americans for Public Trust.
If that doesn't ring a bell, you may also remember when APT demanded Missouri’s attorney general investigate the ACLU because, so APT alleged, the ACLU was a front for foreign influence.
Which is all to say, APT seems to have a campaign template, and this most recent effort follows it to the letter.
This summer, APT launched what it called the "Follow Foreign Money" website, which purports to track $5.3 billion in "foreign funding" to U.S. nonprofits, and follows the same formula as the ACLU and CDC smears
(Here’s an archive link to the site so you don’t have to give them any traffic)
The "Follow Foreign Money" database includes Swiss funders like the Oak and KR Foundations, as well as a wide range of recipients from Greenpeace to Trout Unlimited, the Associated Press to Planned Parenthood.
(Want a full list of their “research” without giving APT traffic? Here you go).
Again, as they did with the CDC “investigation,” the House committee chairs here are citing APT’s work as if it offered credible evidence of wrong-doing. Which it does not.
The House committee is then using the subsequent right wing media coverage of their investigations as further justification for their demands.
In this case, Comer et al are treating the “Follow Foreign Money” site as credible research, rather than a hastily thrown-together spreadsheet of copy lifted from the ProPublica Non-profit Explorer website.
But, maybe I'm being uncharitable. Maybe it's not just another weak product from the Nephew Detective Agency’s clubhouse. Maybe it IS the decoder ring that reveals a Chinese plot to make America into a bunch of subservient Prius driving soy boys.
Let's investigate.
The publicly available files from the FFM site (like these) suggest the site was put together in July by a company called Ryvall, which bills itself as “the #1 Conservative website builder.”
The files also show that Ryvall looks to have built the site on the back of their now defunct WordPress platform, Bio.GOP, that, in 2024, offered conservatives this pitch:
“Other website tools are built by liberal big tech giants to serve everyone from musicians to barbers. It can be hard to make them work for your needs.
”Worse? All it takes is one leftist activist campaign and you’ll be canceled. Don’t be deplatformed.
”Instead, Bio.GOP built with you in mind. With a simple interface, and purposeful tools like donation buttons and embedded videos, we can help raise your online profile.”
Ryvall’s materials identify Max Cowan as its principal, an “experienced campaign operative” who has worked for the Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee.
This info is funny, yes, and makes a person wonder what terrible experiences Cowan and other GOP operatives have had with barbers. But it also makes a person wonder:
How exactly did Americans for Public Trust pay Ryvall to build this website?
Was it direct, or did another nonprofit, political committee, or donor pay for any of the work?
Was any of the work coordinated with the House committee members now pushing the site’s info, or did any of their staff work with Ryvall or APT?
Because, if so, that could be a violation of House ethics rules.
I encourage you to ask your barber! Or congressperson!
Now What?
ANYWAYS, it’s clear that the fossil fuel industry, its government agents, and their IT nephews are coordinating to increase pressure on climate groups through five main levers:
1: Accusations of “foreign influence” and “domestic terrorism” meant to undermine operational ability at the state level.
Back in February, nineteen Republican state attorneys general sent a joint letter to the Justice Department demanding it investigate 150+ climate and environmental organizations for alleged FARA violations. And while this is only an inter-governmental request, not a formal legal demand, it’s part of the permission structure for other parts of the pressure campaign.
It may be what this all circles back to at some point, since the DOJ “domestic terror” tools unlock the big Project 2025 prizes (see below).
2: Allegations of “foreign influence” meant to undermine climate advocacy’s litigation strategy
See the September 4 House Natural Resources Committee letter, and note the framing criminalizes litigation strategy rather than challenging litigation outcomes, since the outcomes horse may have already left the outcomes barn.
3: Allegations of foreign Influence meant to put orgs’ non-profit tax status in jeopardy
September 9 House Science Committee letters cite an American Energy Instute report that shows $39 million in foreign donations to 12 organizations opposing data centers, an X.com report that shows roughly 200,000 suspected Chinese inauthentic accounts, some of which posted about data centers, an OpenAI report showing China-linked influence operations, and APT’s report of nearly $2 billion from five foreign charities to U.S. climate/energy groups.
None of these reports actually say climate groups are part of a CCP influence op. The science committee chairs are just laying the reports side by side and conflating Chinese disinformation and legitimate European private philanthropy to manufacture a single "foreign influence" narrative, which they hope to then use to mangle tax status, etc.
#4 Allegations of foreign influence meant to conflate climate advocacy with national security risk
The September 14 House Oversight Committee letter tries to make the case that Bloomberg Philanthropies and its affiliates are working to spread CCP doctrine through their funding of groups that prefer solar panels over fossil fuels and/or secret data center buildouts.
The “logic” is that environmental opposition to fossil fuels "advances the national interests of China," because China dominates 80%+ of the global solar supply chain and produces 70%+ of the world's electric vehicles.
A crucial bit of this nonsense is that this can be true when the groups are acting "knowingly or unknowingly" in coordination with foreign influence.
This potentially turns any sort of advocating for cheaper, more efficient, less destructive energy production in service of people rather than rogue swarms of alien intelligence into a national security threat.
You may be a Chinese agent and NOT EVEN KNOW IT!!!
#5 Allegations of “domestic terrorism” against climate and environmental groups meant to unlock federal anti-terrorism tools.
This is the big one. The Trump administration's 2025 National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (called NSPM-7, as we should all know by now), carried out by Joint Task Force Vanguard, creates a parallel enforcement mechanism targeting the wider network of anyone Trump sees as an enemy.
The executive order NSPM-7 instructs federal offices to investigate networks, funding mechanisms and organizations connected to political violence and lists suspected “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism” and “anti-technology” as triggers.
They’ve already used this bozo combo to claim stuff like posting emojis, wearing a naughty sweatshirt, or standing in front of the wrong building could be part of a national security threat or domestic terrorism plot, and then they’ve used that supposition as an excuse to target whoever they want, be they Don Lemon, John Brennan, or randos curious about why the reflecting pool looks like a fetid biological experiment.
The ‘permission structure’ here is less a ladder than an ouroboros slinking around an M.C. Escher staircase. Nephews produce allegations and datasets, lawmakers cite some of that research while opening investigations, administration policy conflates foreign influence, political advocacy and domestic-security concerns, and each part cites the other to Spiderman meme to infinity.
And all the while the data centers get built, the carbon gets pumped into the atmosphere, glaciers melt, rivers flood, people die, etc.
Only a few organizations have pushed back hard against congressional requests like these in the recent past, because litigation is expensive and distracting.
The best path is probably to just wait it out and hope for the best in November.
That said, organizations could invoke the First Amendment and argue compliance would chill protected advocacy.
According to the Googling I just did, NAACP v. Alabama (1958) established that organizations can protect privacy when disclosure would suppress advocacy, which seems good, but further Googling revealed Eastland v. United States Servicemen's Fund (1975) ruled congressional staffers are immune from judicial interference when a subpoena falls within the legitimate legislative sphere, even though the target alleged First Amendment harm.
That does not make every congressional demand constitutionally unreviewable, but it gives Congress substantial protection once it uses compulsory processeseses (sp?)
Would you trust the Roberts Court to rule on something like this?
Either way, the named organizations will likely suffer reputational harm, donor withdrawal, and operational disruption, at best. International foundations will face CFIUS pressure, media scrutiny, reputational concerns, and public “documentation,” such as it is, on the uncancellable Follow Foreign Money website, all of which will likely, at best, put a damper on the support climate groups need to fight for a livable future.
Which is, of course, the whole point.
A good reminder for when Giving Tuesday approaches.
NB: All typos are the result of foreign influence
