2016 image provided by Misti Leon, left, sits with her mom, Juliana Leon. Misti Leon is suing several oil and gas companies in one of the first wrongful-death claims in the U.S. seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in the changing climate.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Jason Isaac

They twist yesterday’s weather into tomorrow’s crisis, peddle apocalyptic forecasts that fizzle, and swap “global warming” for “climate change” whenever the narrative demands. They sound the alarm on a so-called climate emergency — again and again.

Now, the Left has plunged to a new low: weaponizing the courts with a lawsuit in Washington State that marks a brazen, desperate escalation. This isn’t just legal maneuvering—it’s the exploitation of personal tragedy in service of an unpopular anti-energy climate crusade.

Consider the case at the center of a new legal circus: Juliana Leon, 65, tragically died of hyperthermia during a 100-mile drive in a car with broken air conditioning, as a brutal heat wave pushed temperatures to 108 degrees Fahrenheit.

The lawsuit leaps from this heartbreaking event to a sweeping claim: that a single hot day is the direct result of global warming.

The lawsuit preposterously links a very specific hot weather event to theorized global warming. Buckle up—their logic is about to take a wild ride.

Some activist scientists have further speculated that what may be a gradual long-term trend of slight warming thought to be both cyclical and natural, might be possibly exacerbated by the release of greenhouse gases. Some of these releases are the result of volcanic activity while some comes from human activities, including the burning of oil, natural gas and coal.

Grabbing onto that last, unproven thread, the plaintiffs have zeroed in on a handful of energy giants—BP, Chevron, Conoco, Exxon, Phillips 66, Shell, and the Olympic Pipe Company—accusing them of causing Leon’s death. Apparently, these few companies are to blame for the entire planet’s climate, while other oil giants, coal companies, and the billions of consumers who actually use these fuels get a free pass.

Meanwhile, “climate journalists” in the legacy media have ignored key details that will surely surface in court. Leon made her journey in a car with no air conditioning, despite forecasts warning of dangerous heat. She was returning from a doctor’s visit, having just been cleared to eat solid food after recent bariatric surgery.

But let’s be clear: this lawsuit isn’t about truth, justice, or even common sense. It’s lawfare, plain and simple.

Environmental extremists are using the courts to hijack national energy policy, aiming to force through a radical agenda they could never pass in Congress. A courtroom win would mean higher energy prices for everyone, the potential bankruptcy of energy companies, or their takeover by the so-called green industrial complex. For the trial lawyers, these cases are gold mines, with contingency fees that could reach hundreds of millions.

This particular lawsuit was reportedly pitched to Leon’s daughter by the left-leaning Center for Climate Integrity, a group bankrolled by billionaire British national Christopher Hohn through his Children’s Investment Fund Foundation and by the Rockefeller Foundation. It’s yet another meritless claim in the endless list of climate lawsuits that are increasingly being tossed out of courts across the country.

Earlier this year, a Pennsylvania judge threw out a climate nuisance suit against oil producers brought by Bucks County, citing lack of jurisdiction. In New York, Supreme Court Justice Anar Patel dismissed a massive climate lawsuit by New York City, pointing out the city couldn’t claim both public awareness and deception by oil companies in the same breath.

But the Washington State case goes even further, threatening to set a dangerous precedent: if it moves forward, energy companies could face limitless liability for any weather-related injury. Worse, it would give unwarranted credibility to the idea — floated by a leftwing activist before the U.S. Senate — that energy executives could be prosecuted for homicide, a notion that Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rightly called “moonbeam, wacky theory.”

The courts must keep rejecting these absurd lawfare stunts. More importantly, America’s energy policy should be set by Congress—elected and accountable—not by a single judge in a municipal courtroom.

Jason Isaac is the founder and CEO of the American Energy Institute. He previously served four terms in the Texas House of Representatives.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) shipped thousands of viral samples to a lab in Wuhan over the course of a 10-year program even though it had no formal agreement with the lab in place, according to previously unreported documents.

The documents show that USAID funded the exportation of 11,000 samples from Yunnan Province, where some of the closest relatives of the COVID-19 virus circulate, to Wuhan, the epicenter of the pandemic, with no apparent plan for ensuring the samples were not misdirected to bioweapons and remained accessible to the U.S. government.

A $210 million USAID public health program called PREDICT, steered by the University of California-Davis, collected viral samples in countries throughout the globe but lacked long-term storage when funding dried up, according to rudimentary plans in 2019.

USAID’s sample dispensation plan for China is sparse: “No need [sic] information from Yunnan. They were never an official lab partner for PREDICT. All samples they helped collected [sic] are sent to, tested, and stored in Wuhan.”

The “lab” refers to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV). WIV was a close partner of USAID contractor EcoHealth Alliance and a slated partner for a PREDICT-like program supported by the State Department. The lab has poor biosafety practices and ties to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). 

One of the closest known relatives of the COVID virus is among the viruses sampled with USAID funding.

“Investigations involving USAID’s former funding of global health awards remain active and ongoing,” a senior State Department official said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The American people can rest assured knowing that under the Trump Administration we will not be funding these controversial programs.”

The internal documents were obtained through a FOIA lawsuit brought by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit newsroom and public health research group.

The shuttering of USAID – which was officially completed Tuesday – has ignited a debate about its net impact on global health. A study in The Lancet projected an association between a dropoff in USAID funding and 14 million deaths based on an epidemiological model.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Tuesday that USAID spending has often undermined rather than strengthened American interests.

“Beyond creating a globe-spanning NGO industrial complex at taxpayer expense, USAID has little to show since the end of the Cold War,” Rubio said. “Development objectives have rarely been met, instability has often worsened, and anti-American sentiment has only grown.”

The now-defunct agency’s connection to the Wuhan lab complicates its global health legacy.

“The USAID $210 million contract for PREDICT should have included contractual terms that required all samples, or at least copies of all samples, be transferred to and stored by a US government facility,” said Rutgers University molecular biologist Richard Ebright told the DCNF. “The PREDICT grift did none of this.”

UC Davis did not respond to a request for comment. The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.

Today marks the first day of the State Department's America First foreign assistance rebranding initiative, led by @SecRubio.

Consistent branding will ensure contributions made by the the United States will be immediately recognized as American.

"The redesign is very simple,… pic.twitter.com/HZnbOxU0Sq

— Department of State (@StateDept) July 2, 2025

Did USAID Fund COVID’s Ancestor?

Many of the viruses stored at the lab in Wuhan may have been sampled with U.S. funding yet remain out of reach for U.S. government entities investigating the origins of COVID.

The samples were set to be preserved for testing – with human samples preserved for 10 years – the documents show. But the documents suggest that requirement was never incorporated into a formal contract with USAID.

The two scientists supervising the samples were: Ben Hu, a virologist at the WIV, who reportedly became sick with COVID-like symptoms in 2019; and Peter Daszak, a scientist who was debarred from federal funding after the U.S. government deemed him a threat to public safety for inadequate oversight of the research in Wuhan.

Hu and Daszak did not reply to requests for comment.

The documents show PREDICT contractors discussing viral samples taken from wildlife and stored in India, Liberia, Malaysia, the Republic of Congo and China. Some of the samples were stored in virus-transport media (VTM), which allows researchers to store live viruses for later use in the lab.

“It’s not rocket science to require a contract and supporting paperwork which establishes a relationship, testing protocol, and chain of custody, when one is sending out lab samples,” said Reuben Guttman, a partner at Guttman, Buschner & Brooks PLLC who specializes in ensuring the integrity of government programs, in an interview with the DCNF. “In any scientific endeavor, you need confidence in your results. That requires paperwork to prove your methodology is sound.”