Daily Caller
International Energy Agency should go on Trump’s Chopping Block

French President Macron has called the IEA the ‘armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By David Blackmon
Among the many promises and commitments that he has made during his ongoing transition period, President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to pull U.S. support for the World Health Organization and cancel its commitments related to the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. If a new report issued this week by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and incoming chairman Republican Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, is any guide, Trump perhaps should add U.S. support for the International Energy Agency to his growing list of cancellation opportunities.
“French President Macron’s observation that IEA has become the ‘armed wing for implementing the Paris Agreement’ is regrettably true,” said the report. “With the many serious energy security challenges facing the world, however, IEA should not be a partisan cheerleader. What the world needs from IEA—and what it is not receiving now—is sober and unbiased analyses and projections that educate and inform policymakers and investors. IEA needs to remember why it was established and return to its energy security mission.”
The IEA was established in 1974 in response to the first Arab Oil Embargo which resulted in dramatically higher prices for crude oil and gasoline at the pump. Originally supported by 31 member countries including the United States, the agency’s mission was to provide accurate information related to global oil supply and demand which subscribing countries could use to help form effective energy policies. That original mission held firm for decades, during which the IEA was widely considered a leading source of real, unbiased energy information.
But politics tends to corrupt everything it touches, and the IEA has unfortunately proved to be no exception to that rule. As the politics surrounding climate alarmism rose to new highs following the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, the agency came under increasing pressure to radically alter its mission from that of a provider of real information worthy of trust to more of an activist posture.
In 2020, the report notes, this led to a shift in the IEA’s mission statement and to a new design to its modeling processes that form the basis for its annual World Energy Outlook. As its modeling base case, the agency abandoned its longstanding Current Policies Scenario, which Barrasso’s report describes as “essentially a ‘business as usual’ reference case,” in favor of a more aggressive Stated Policies Scenario.
Barrasso’s report describes this new scenario as “a hypothetical outlook based on unimplemented policies and grounded in unrealistically optimistic assumptions about the pace and scale of the transformation, especially concerning the adoption of electric vehicles by consumers.” It is an approach intentionally designed to introduce bias into the modeling process, and thus into the IEA policy recommendations for which the modeling process serves as the foundation.
This inevitable bias had an immediate and very noticeable effect. In a report published by the IEA in May 2021 Executive Director Fatih Birol laughably stated that “there will not be a need for new investments in oil and gas fields” and urged oil and gas producers to halt investments in exploration and development of new oil reserves. But that was before oil prices exploded as global demand exceeded supply during the recovery from the COVID pandemic, and by August Birol had completely reversed himself, joining President Joe Biden in a desperate call for more oil drilling to help resolve the situation.
Obviously, this sort of flip-floppery does severe damage to the agency’s already crumbling credibility as well as to the justification for governments to continue pouring millions of dollars into its operations each year. Barrasso’s report correctly notes that the IEA’s “reputation has lost its luster.”
Barrasso’s report is blunt about the kinds of reforms he would like to see at the IEA, urging Birol to abandon its advocacy posturing against investments in oil, natural gas, and coal, and to “once again produce for its World Energy Outlook a real unbiased, policy-neutral ‘business as usual’ reference case of the kind the Energy Information Administration produces.”
The Wyoming senator stops short of calling for the U.S. defunding of the IEA, but the agency’s currency is information. If that currency has lost its value, then perhaps Trump should consider a more aggressive approach.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Business
Ted Cruz, Jim Jordan Ramp Up Pressure On Google Parent Company To Deal With ‘Censorship’

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Andi Shae Napier
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Republican Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan are turning their attention to Google over concerns that the tech giant is censoring users and infringing on Americans’ free speech rights.
Google’s parent company Alphabet, which also owns YouTube, appears to be the GOP’s next Big Tech target. Lawmakers seem to be turning their attention to Alphabet after Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta ended its controversial fact-checking program in favor of a Community Notes system similar to the one used by Elon Musk’s X.
Cruz recently informed reporters of his and fellow senators’ plans to protect free speech.
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“Stopping online censorship is a major priority for the Commerce Committee,” Cruz said, as reported by Politico. “And we are going to utilize every point of leverage we have to protect free speech online.”
Following his meeting with Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai last month, Cruz told the outlet, “Big Tech censorship was the single most important topic.”
Jordan, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent subpoenas to Alphabet and other tech giants such as Rumble, TikTok and Apple in February regarding “compliance with foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders, or other government-initiated efforts” with the intent to discover how foreign governments, or the Biden administration, have limited Americans’ access to free speech.
“Throughout the previous Congress, the Committee expressed concern over YouTube’s censorship of conservatives and political speech,” Jordan wrote in a letter to Pichai in March. “To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the executive branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and deplatform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the executive branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”
Jordan subpoenaed tech CEOs in 2023 as well, including Satya Nadella of Microsoft, Tim Cook of Apple and Pichai, among others.
Despite the recent action against the tech giant, the battle stretches back to President Donald Trump’s first administration. Cruz began his investigation of Google in 2019 when he questioned Karan Bhatia, the company’s Vice President for Government Affairs & Public Policy at the time, in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Cruz brought forth a presentation suggesting tech companies, including Google, were straying from free speech and leaning towards censorship.
Even during Congress’ recess, pressure on Google continues to mount as a federal court ruled Thursday that Google’s ad-tech unit violates U.S. antitrust laws and creates an illegal monopoly. This marks the second antitrust ruling against the tech giant as a different court ruled in 2024 that Google abused its dominance of the online search market.
Daily Caller
Daily Caller EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Broad Ban On Risky Gain-Of-Function Research Nears Completion

From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Emily Kopp
President Donald Trump could sign a sweeping executive order banning gain-of-function research — research that makes viruses more dangerous in the lab — as soon as May 6, according to a source who has worked with the National Security Council on the issue.
The executive order will take a broad strokes approach, banning research amplifying the infectivity or pathogenicity of any virulent and replicable pathogen, according to the source, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the anticipated executive action. But significant unresolved issues remain, according to the source, including whether violators will be subject to criminal penalties as bioweaponeers.
The executive order is being steered by Gerald Parker, head of the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, which has been incorporated into the NSC. Parker did not respond to requests for comment.
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In the process of drafting the executive order, Parker has frozen out the federal agencies that have for years championed gain-of-function research and staved off regulation — chiefly Anthony Fauci’s former institute, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
The latest policy guidance on gain-of-function research, unveiled under the Biden administration in 2024, was previously expected to go into effect May 6. According to a March 25 letter cosigned by the American Society for Microbiology, the Association for Biosafety and Biosecurity International, and Council on Governmental Relations, organizations that conduct pathogen research have not received direction from the NIH on that guidance — suggesting the executive order would supersede the May 6 deadline.
The 2024 guidance altered the scope of experiments subject to more rigorous review, but charged researchers, universities and funding agencies like NIH with its implementation, which critics say disincentivizes reporting. Many scientists say that researchers and NIH should not be the primary entities conducting cost–benefit analyses of pandemic virus studies.
Parker previously served as the head of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB), a group of outside experts that advises NIH on biosecurity matters, and in that role recommended that Congress stand up a new government agency to advise on gain-of-function research. Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield has also endorsed moving gain-of-function research decision making out of the NIH to an independent commission.
“Given the well documented lapses in the NIH review process, policymakers should … remove final approval of any gain-of function research grants from NIH,” Redfield said in a February op-ed.
It remains to be seen whether the executive order will articulate carveouts for gain-of-function research without risks of harm such as research on non-replicative pseudoviruses, which can be used to study viral evolution without generating pandemic viruses.
It also remains to be seen whether the executive order will define “gain-of-function research” tightly enough to stand up to legal scrutiny should a violator be charged with a crime.
Risky research on coronaviruses funded by the NIH at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through the U.S. nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance typifies the loopholes in NIH’s existing regulatory framework, some biosecurity experts say.
Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act in 2023 indicated that EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak submitted a proposal to the Pentagon in 2018 called “DEFUSE” describing gain-of-function experiments on viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2 but downplayed to his intended funder the fact that many of the tests would occur in Wuhan, China.
Daszak and EcoHealth were both debarred from federal funding in January 2025 but have faced no criminal charges.
“I don’t know that criminal penalties are necessary. But we do need more sticks in biosafety as well as carrots,” said a biosecurity expert who requested anonymity to avoid retribution from his employer for weighing in on the expected policy. “For instance, biosafety should be a part of tenure review and whether you get funding for future work.”
Some experts say that it is likely that the COVID-19 crisis was a lab-generated pandemic, and that without major policy changes it might not be the last one.
“Gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens caused the COVID-19 pandemic, killing 20 million and costing $25 trillion,” said Richard Ebright, a Rutgers University microbiologist and longtime critic of high-risk virology, to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “If not stopped, gain-of-function research on potential pandemic pathogens likely will cause future lab-generated pandemics.”
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