WASHINGTON, August 21, 2025 – I spent the first week of August in Santa Fe, New Mexico, surrounded by the people I love most in the world in a place that is really special to me. My parents had all three of their sons, all three of their daughters-in-law, and all six of their grandchildren under one roof. It was a joyous and rambunctious gathering, and I was able to unplug and recharge some, too, which is not the easiest thing for me. Still, signs of why we engage in the work we do were ever-present. After picking up my son and nephew from camp in Colorado, we drove down I-25 to Santa Fe through Mora County, where my grandparents’ ranch was located. The landscape looked different – grassy fields beginning to grow back from the worst wildfires in state history a little more than three years ago. My time spent hiking with family reminded me of the power of nature and special places, and our obligation to protect and preserve them. I also took in as much art as I could, and one exhibition was particularly resonant – the artist Richard Mosse’s photography and video showing the environmental degradation of the Amazon rainforest. It is worth a look here, even if the web version can’t measure up to the impact that seeing it in person can have.
I came home to Washington, D.C., on Sunday evening, and it is surreal to know that the police department here has been taken over by the federal government. I’ve been out and about in the city over the past four days, and even though I haven’t seen a single armed soldier out anywhere, knowing that President Trump’s Department of Justice has taken over our law enforcement is profoundly upsetting. Washington is both my hometown and the place where we live and are raising our family. This is personal to me, and I need to be unequivocal: there is no emergency that justifies this unprecedented and illegal power grab.
There is also no energy emergency. But that’s the Trump Administration’s stated justification for their assault on clean energy and environmental protections. Clean energy from wind, solar, and storage accounted for 93% of new generated power capacity last year, according to our friends at American Clean Power. So why on earth would they go out of their way to stifle it? This quote, used to justify a memo issuing new guidance that the Secretary of the Interior must personally review and sign off on any new solar or wind development, is telling: “This policy strengthens accountability, prevents misuse of taxpayer-funded subsidies and upholds our commitment to restoring balance in energy development.” [Emphasis mine].
“Restoring balance,” in other words, putting a thumb on the scale to make fossil fuels more cost-competitive than renewable sources, is an entirely different thing than solving a non-existent energy crisis. Especially when household electricity bills across the country are soaring. At a national lab in Iowa this week, the Secretary of Energy was forced to acknowledge that Iowans have among the lowest electric bills of any state in the country, and that is in large part because they draw so much of their energy from the Iowa wind. He also acknowledged that energy costs are rising and will continue to rise, but said that he hoped that Americans would blame President Trump’s predecessor. If we do our job appropriately, that will not happen.
Thank you for your support of our work at EDF Action. It’s an honor to be in a position to speak out and make a difference, but it’s also a responsibility, and one that we think about often, especially in these trying times.