From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Nick Pope

“The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright sharply criticized the Biden administration’s restrictive energy policies during a keynote speech to energy industry leaders Monday, explaining how the Trump administration’s approach is oriented around unlocking human flourishing.

Wright made the speech to kick off the 2025 CERAWeek conference, one of the premier annual summits for the energy industry. He characterized the Biden administration’s maniacal focus on climate change as counterproductive and impoverishing for ordinary people, pledging to take a radically different approach than his predecessor by unleashing U.S. energy and private sector innovations to make life better and more affordable for Americans, announcing that he is approving a liquefied natural gas (LNG) permit during the speech to prove his point.

“The previous administration’s ‘climate’ policies have been impoverishing to our citizens, economically destructive to our businesses, and politically polarizing. The ‘cure’ was far more destructive than the disease,” Wright said. “There are no winners in that world, except for politicians and rapidly growing interest groups. The only interest group that we are concerned with is the American people. Our focus will be steadfast on the American people and our allies abroad.”

Wright explained how much of the world’s population lives in poverty in large part because they do not have access to the cheap, efficient energy that powers modern life and its conveniences that only a fraction of humanity enjoys at present. The new energy secretary — who has worked with nuclear, oil, gas, solar and geothermal energy over the course of his private sector career — argued that the U.S. can and should play a leading role in proliferating prosperity with energy instead of regulating the sector too aggressively in the name of climate change.

“Recently I have been called a climate denier or climate skeptic. This is simply wrong. I am a climate realist. I have been studying and writing about climate change for over twenty years. The Trump administration will treat climate change for what it is: a global physical phenomenon that is a side-effect of building the modern world,” Wright said. “We have indeed raised atmospheric CO2 concentration by 50% in the process of more than doubling human life expectancy, lifting most of the world’s citizens out of grinding poverty, launching modern medicine, telecommunications, planes, trains and automobiles too. Everything in life involves trade offs. Everything.”

“The Trump administration will end the Biden administration’s irrational, quasi-religious policies on climate change that imposed endless sacrifices on our citizens. Running the math on what might have been the benefits from these policies yields perhaps only a few hundredths of a degree reduction in global temperatures in the year 2100,” Wright continued. “The Trump administration intends to be much more scientific and mathematically literate.”

While former President Joe Biden said that climate change poses a threat to humanity that exceeds that presented by nuclear war, Wright’s remarks make clear that the Trump administration will not be treating climate change as an existential threat that takes precedence over other priorities.

The vision Wright laid out in his speech represents a stark departure from the positions of the Biden administration on nearly all fronts, including on the issue of approvals for LNG export projects. The Biden administration unilaterally froze approvals in January 2024, keeping the pause in place for most of the year, in what critics characterized as an election year move to shore up support from the well-funded climate lobby.

To drive home his point that American energy is open for business with the Trump administration leading in Washington, Wright announced that he will be approving a LNG permit extension for the Delfin LNG project, a major development proposed for construction off the Louisiana coast and a victim of the Biden administration’s January 2024 freeze on approvals.

“I am honored to play a role in reversing what I believe has been a very poor direction in energy policy. The previous administration’s energy policy was focused myopically on climate change, with people as simply collateral damage. My predecessor was on this stage one year ago saying that LNG exports would soon be in the rear view mirror. Think about that for a moment,” Wright said during his speech. “Natural gas today supplies 25% of global primary energy and has been the fastest growing source of energy over the last 15 years. Wind and solar, the darlings of the last administration and so much of the world today, supply roughly 3% of global primary energy … Everywhere wind and solar penetration have increased significantly, prices on the grid went up and stability of the grid went down.”

Digging for DEI Dollars: Watchdog Report Identifies 460 Programs Across 24 Federal Agencies

The Functional Government Initiative and the Center for Renewing America identify at least a trillion dollars’ worth of divisive, identity-based programs and policies among the federal thicket and make suggestions that could ensure they don’t come back.

On his first day back in office, President Trump issued an executive order to eliminate “radical and wasteful” Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) “programs and preferences” from the federal government. The Biden administration embraced this “woke” agenda and embedded it across the executive branch. Ensuring these programs do not make a comeback will take a sustained effort.

To help the administration in this task, and to help educate the public on the scope of the problem, the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and the Center for Renewing America (CRA) have published DEI Spending in the Biden Administration. This report traces the Biden administration’s web of DEI programs and influence throughout the government, provides numbers on how much money these programs and initiatives wasted, and offers options for Congress to consider that could root out DEI ideology permanently.

A crucial guide to uncovering the myriad DEI expenditures, both small and large, were the “Equity Action Plans” (EAPs) that President Biden demanded across the government. The Biden administration claimed that these plans were designed to identify and remove barriers keeping federal resources from “marginalized” or “underserved” communities, particularly in areas like procurement, contracting, and grant opportunities. In reality, the systemic focus on DEI poisoned federal governance, contributing to the substantial increase in related spending and diverting resources toward controversial policies, away from agency missions. The Biden administration forcibly inserted the language of DEI into every corner of the executive branch.

The study identified 460 programs across 24 government agencies that diverted resources to DEI initiatives. At least $1 trillion was infused with DEI principles. Here are some examples taken from various EAPs:

• The Defense Department planned to “Integrate environmental/economic justice tools.”
• FEMA found the need to “Install equity as a foundation of emergency management.”
• The Department of Labor “must embed equity in a sustainable manner that recognizes the multiple and overlapping identities held by workers.”

President Trump’s swift actions and executive orders stopped these efforts. To ensure a future president can’t just reverse course upon taking office, Congressional action could banish DEI philosophies for good. Our report includes suggestions for lawmakers to consider for eliminating DEI and other radical ideologies—detailed legislative proposals that could prevent the resurrection of poisonous ideas and practices in our national government.

Wade Miller, Senior Advisor for CRA, issued the following statement:

“DEI is deeply rooted throughout all aspects of the federal government, and it needs to be eliminated completely. Thankfully, the Trump administration has already embarked on a vitally necessary complete audit of each and every government program. We offer, in this report, what we hope are additional resources and tools that the new administration and Congress can use to identify, destroy, and permanently remove DEI from the federal government.”

Roderick Law, spokesman for FGI, issued the following statement:

“The dual study could both expedite the elimination of DEI from the executive branch and show just how quickly pernicious ideologies can spread inside the government. The nature of DEI is both divisive and anti-American, so why force it onto the military, the Commerce Department, or the EPA? After President Biden lavishly funded and pushed these controversial principles into every possible area of government, our hope is that raising these questions and offering Congress and responsible executive branch officials tools and suggestions can keep it from happening again.”