From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By James V. F. Dickey and Ivan London

The Trump administration is suing Michigan and Hawaii over their stated plans to sue energy companies for alleged climate change harms. Minnesota attorney general Keith Ellison should watch out because he’s probably next.

Minnesota’s lawsuit against energy producers is a naked attempt to reshape national energy policy that will have global repercussions for costs. In other words, bad decisions by Minnesota courts will skyrocket prices for consumers everywhere, which is explicitly against the Trump administration’s energy policies.

Ellison’s lawsuit claims that energy production that results in burning gasoline and natural gas has caused global climate change. Yet Ellison’s beef with the companies isn’t about harm from climate change but what energy producers supposedly have said or not said to the public about the energy they produce for our nation. He also faults these companies for having funded research by organizations that disagreed with the State’s view of the climate science.

It’s part of a larger coordinated effort to use litigation to lay the groundwork for an economy-wide green energy transition and to secure additional income for state budgets. Democratic prosecutors in nine states, more than a dozen cities and counties, and Washington, D.C. have brought similar cases using the same playbook to try to keep the deliberations in state courts. In Puerto Rico, “similar” turned out to be identical, as Judge Aida Delgado-Colon discovered when large blocks of text in a complaint filed on behalf of San Juan matched word-for-word a different lawsuit by 16 Puerto Rican municipalities the year before.

Climate activists found Ellison a willing partner for persecuting energy companies when they sold him on the idea of getting millions of dollars a year for Minnesota by securing a settlement like the tobacco master settlement agreement but with energy companies as the target.

Attorney General Ellison has admitted that Minnesota’s special assistant attorneys general were paid for by the New York University School of Law’s climate-alarmist group, the State Energy & Environmental Impact Center. The purpose of that funding is to advance “progressive clean energy, climate change, and environmental legal positions,” said then-executive director David J. Hayes. If this troubles you, you’re on to something: just imagine the reaction if an immigration-hawk group paid staffers’ salaries at the Minnesota attorney general’s office to coordinate deportations with ICE.

Minnesota’s demand in the lawsuit is mind-boggling: a gag order on energy producers’ speech, a forced “public education campaign” about supposed climate change myths, and an order for the energy companies “to disgorge all profits” because of their speech. The last bit is the kicker: Minnesota’s case is really just a virtue-signaling cash grab dressed in legalese.

If the case continues, Minnesotans will reap the whirlwind sown by their attorney general in the form of unreliable sources of energy, a crippled economy and astronomically high prices for travel and home-heating. Every state in the union would reel from this economic disaster’s ripple effect, which is why 19 states asked the Supreme Court this year to halt these lawsuits by Minnesota and four other states.

Minnesota should not try to set the entire country’s climate policy. Only Congress—where Minnesota and other states have elected representatives representing their interests—can do that. Minnesota’s appellate courts should end this charade—though they have so far balked.

Lawsuits like this one have already been rejected by courts in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey and partially dismissed in Delaware. For the sake of every American, Minnesota judges must follow suit and let federal courts litigate the issues that affect the entire nation. If they don’t, they should expect the Trump administration to come knocking.

James V. F. Dickey is managing attorney for the Upper Midwest Law Center and Ivan London is a senior attorney at the Mountain States Legal Foundation.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Mariane Angela

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum warned on Fox Business Tuesday about America’s deepening energy shortfall and said that misguided climate policies could give China the upper hand in both the global energy race and artificial intelligence development.

House lawmakers voted 246-164, with support from 35 Democrats, to overturn a Biden-era EPA rule that lets California enforce a de facto national ban on gas-powered cars by 2035. During an appearance on “Kudlow,” Burgum said that U.S. energy shortfalls could allow China to outpace America in artificial intelligence and other power-hungry technologies.

“The real energy emergency that we have right now is that we don’t have enough energy in this country. We’re losing the AI arms race to China, and we’ve got to have more energy and more power right now in the country. And so that’s one of the things that we’re focused on right now,” Burgum told host Larry Kudlow.

Burgum blasted California’s aggressive emissions standards, which he said have effectively become national policy.

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“Let’s start with California, Larry. That would be a great idea, because there’s 14 other states that followed California. So basically we’re stuck right now. Automakers feel like they’ve got to build two kinds of cars in America, one for California standards and one for the rest of the country,” Burgum said. “Of course, we know that the California standards are based on a bunch of falsehoods around emissions, because if we want zero carbon fuels, it’s much cheaper.”

Burgum took particular aim at electric vehicle subsidies, calling them a boondoggle built on climate ideology. He also called electric vehicle subsidies economically reckless since the cost of avoiding a single ton of carbon dioxide exceeds $900.

“It’s 10 to 15 times cheaper to have zero carbon liquid fuels than it is to subsidize EVs. The EV subsidies, where the real bank was, the thing that was really breaking the bank, over $900 for an avoided tonus of CO2, and all of that built around climate ideology,” Burgum said.

Republican Pennsylvania Rep. John Joyce introduced a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to stop California’s zero-emission vehicle mandate, which several other states have adopted. If the Senate doesn’t act, the Environmental Protection Agency would face a lengthy rulemaking process to reverse the policy that will allow California’s stricter standards to remain in effect for years.

The states that have opted in to California’s auto rules include Colorado, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia.