#Tim Huelskamp

[roma-sera-giornale]

Trump e i cattolici

Giovanni De Ficchy  Trump è arrivato alla presidenza nel 2016, in gran parte perché ha vinto in Pennsylvania, Michigan e Wisconsin, stati tradizionalmente democratici, in cui i cattolici superano numericamente gli evangelici con margini significativi. “È stato il voto cattolico a far vincere Donald Trump in quegli stati”, afferma Tim Huelskamp, ​​ex deputato repubblicano del Kansas, ora…

[contemplatingoutlander]

On the other hand, Higgans said, "There are some people that actually believe the crazy s--t that they say. And that is Tim Huelskamp, that is Paul Gosar. So they do have more integrity. However, they are very scary." As an example, Higgans pointed to Huelskamp, who was ousted in 2016 from his Kansas district by doctor and businessman Roger Marshall, who later went on to be elected to the Senate. "Huelskamp actually believed in cutting government spending, so he voted against the interests in his district, which is agriculture," said Higgans. "So time and time again, he voted against providing subsidies to agriculture companies, despite that being the overwhelming industry in his district.

Many of the most far-right House Republicans truly believe the propaganda and extremism that they promote – in stark contrast to others for whom it's just an act to get votes, a former RNC researcher said Thursday.

In an interview on the Aaron Rupar Show, Justin Higgans argued the true far-right believers — who have lately been causing fractures and divisions among GOP power caucuses — often end up tanking their own careers with their own inability to compromise.

"A lot of Tea Party members, a lot of House Freedom Caucus members — that includes Ron DeSantis, he was one of those folks — don't believe what they're saying," Higgans told Rupar.

"So they will use these issues and, specifically, the two examples that come to mind are Mick Mulvaney and Mark Meadows. They use these talking points, they use the grassroots energy to advance themselves. Jim Jordan being a third. They advance themselves up the ranks, up the cable news shows, sometimes they become Chief of Staff of the White House."

[buddylistsocial]

Leftist Group Fueling Democrat Senate Campaigns at Center of Attacks on Amy Coney Barrett’s Children

Leftist Group Fueling Democrat Senate Campaigns at Center of Attacks on Amy Coney Barrett’s Children

The leftist PAC NextGen America’s Managing Director, John Lee Brougher, is behind attacks on Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s adopted children, roping several Democrat U.S. Senators and Senate candidates into the smears on her family.

This weekend, as Breitbart News reported, before President Donald Trump even formally nominated Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left behind by the passing of…

[toastyslayingbutter]

Apparently “trickle-down economics” doesn’t actually work. 

Who would have known?

[votenet-blog]

Skeptics feel empowered to 'keep pushing' under Trump

Skeptics feel empowered to ‘keep pushing’ under Trump

Author: Zack Colman / Source: Climate Wire Former Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) is the president of the Heartland Institute, which rejects mainstream climate science. Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Associated Press Climate skeptics are gaining ground. There’s always been a vocal subset of conservatives who cast doubt on climate science, but what were once fringe views among broader Republicans — like…

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt:

The disconnect could not be greater. As wildfires raged across the U.S. last week, inflamed by climate change, Trump officials attended the America First Energy Conference, where delegates heard age-old fossil fuel arguments that, amongst others, carbon dioxide makes the planet greener and could not be creating a climate crisis.

The conference comes after an unprecedented heat wave in the Northern hemisphere. Scientists are warning that this summer's heatwave is caused by climate change, which in turn has caused unprecedented temperatures and wildfires in Canada, Greece, Sweden and the U.S. Indeed this summer's heatwave was made more than twice as likely by climate change, according to a rapid assessment by scientists.

Some scientists are even warning that we are descending into "hothouse earth," where a series of positive feedback mechanisms could trigger even more extreme warming.

The conference was organized by the leading climate denial think tank, Heartland Institute, which has been regurgitating the same climate denial old rubbish—what we now would now call "fake news"—for the last two decades. It has received significant funding from Exxon and the Koch brothers to do so.

But all their climate denial friends were there too, according to Reuters, including speakers from JunkScience, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and the Center for Industrial Progress and officials from the U.S. Department of Interior and the White House.

According to Reuters, the U.S. officials who attended included White House special assistant Brooke Rollins, Interior Department Assistant Secretary Joe Balash, and Jason Funes, an assistant in the office of external affairs at Interior. All "praised the administration's moves to clear the way for oil industry activity."

Tim Huelskamp, president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, closed the seminar by stating the person who had made the difference to the climate deniers was Donald Trump. "We have a president who has kept his promises," he said. "It proves that one man can make a difference." He called Trump "our last political chance at freedom."

[theliberaltony]

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

It’s hard not to compare the 2018 midterms to the 2010 midterms. A controversial president sits in the Oval Office. Resistance to his major policies spurs protests and grassroots activism. Special-election results portend a massive electoral wave that threatens to kneecap his ability to govern. So with the first primaries of 2018 taking place this month, will another 2010 phenomenon, the tea party, reappear? Quite possibly, only this time on the left.

A loosely defined mélange of grassroots conservative activists and hard-right political committees most prominent from 2009 to 2014, the tea party famously demanded ideological purity out of Republican candidates for elected office. In election after election during this period, tea party voters rejected moderate or establishment candidates in Republican primaries in favor of hardcore conservatives — costing the GOP more than one important race and pushing the party to the right in the process.

This Tuesday could mark the first time in 2018 that a moderate incumbent Democrat loses a primary bid to a more extreme challenger. Marie Newman, a progressive running for Illinois’s 3rd Congressional District, has argued there is no longer a place in the Democratic Party for Rep. Dan Lipinski’s anti-abortion, anti-same-sex-marriage views. Lipinski, however, has accused Newman of dismantling the party’s big tent and fomenting a “tea party of the left.”

But how accurate is that comparison really? One person’s “tea party rebellion” is another person’s justified excision of a Democrat or Republican “in name only.” To get a sense for whether Newman’s campaign against Lipinski looks more like part of a movement to pull the party leftward or simply an attempt to bring the district in line with the Democratic mainstream, we decided to look back at the original tea party — or, more accurately, since the term “tea party” is vague and sloppily applied, recent Republican primary challenges.

The following is a list of Republican incumbents in the U.S. Senate and House who have lost a primary election since 2010. To ensure that we’re capturing only Newman-style campaigns — that is, candidates who are challenging incumbents from the extreme wings of the party — we’re not including incumbents who lost to other incumbents as a result of redistricting throwing them together, nor are we counting two incumbents who were explicitly primaried from the center.1

Republican incumbents who were beaten from the right

DW-Nominate ideology scores of incumbent Republicans who lost primary challenges from the right and the scores that the challengers later earned in Congress (if they were elected), in races since 2010

District Defeated Member New Nominee year Name Partisan Lean Name Score Name Score ’10 AK-SEN R+27 Lisa Murkowski 0.208 Joe Miller — ’10 AL-05 R+27 Parker Griffith* 0.385 Mo Brooks 0.600 ’10 SC-04 R+29 Bob Inglis 0.518 Trey Gowdy 0.663 ’10 UT-SEN R+37 Bob Bennett 0.331 Mike Lee 0.919 ’12 FL-03 R+28 Cliff Stearns 0.554 Ted Yoho 0.703 ’12 IN-SEN R+12 Richard Lugar 0.304 Richard Mourdock — ’12 OH-02 R+15 Jean Schmidt 0.467 Brad Wenstrup 0.577 ’12 OK-01 R+36 John Sullivan 0.513 Jim Bridenstine 0.690 ’14 TX-04 R+52 Ralph Hall 0.424 John Ratcliffe 0.746 ’14 VA-07 R+19 Eric Cantor 0.518 David Brat 0.838 ’16 VA-02 R+6 Randy Forbes 0.407 Scott Taylor 0.474 ’17 AL-SEN R+29 Luther Strange 0.560 Roy Moore —

* During his time in the House, Parker Griffith switched parties from Democrat to Republican. The DW-Nominate score listed is for his time as a Republican.

Partisan lean is the average difference between how the constituency voted and how the country voted overall in the two most recent presidential elections, with the more recent election weighted 75 percent and the less recent one weighted 25 percent.

DW-Nominate scores are a measurement of how liberal or conservative members of Congress are on a scale from 1 (most conservative) to -1 (most liberal). Because DW-Nominate is based on congressional voting records, it is unavailable for politicians who never served in Congress.

Source: Greg Giroux, Ballotpedia, Daily Kos Elections, Swing State Project, Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, Voteview

This isn’t an exhaustive list of tea-party-style challengers — for example, it doesn’t include Republicans shooting for open seats, such as Christine O’Donnell in Delaware in 2010, or hard-liners who won GOP primaries to take on Democratic incumbents, such as Sharron Angle in Nevada (also) in 2010 — but it’s a good cross section. The reason it’s useful to look only at Republican incumbents who went down to defeat is that it allows us to use DW-Nominate, a data set that quantifies how liberal or conservative members of Congress are — on a scale from 1 (most conservative) to -1 (most liberal). Since the score is based on congressional voting records, our focus on races in which incumbents lost means that both the losing candidate and, in most cases, the winning candidate have a DW-Nominate score.2

When you use DW-Nominate to try to quantify this slice of the tea party movement, what you quickly see is that there’s barely a pattern to it at all. “Tea party” candidates primaried plenty of moderate Republicans, such as Sen. Lisa Murkowski (a DW-Nominate score of .208) and party-switching former Rep. Parker Griffith (.385 in his time as a Republican). But they also toppled plenty of solid conservatives, including former Reps. Eric Cantor and Bob Inglis (both .518). Insurgents found success in moderate jurisdictions like Indiana (12 percentage points more Republican than the nation as a whole at the time of the election in question3) as well as dark-red districts like Texas’s 4th (R+52).

If, as this data suggests, the only prerequisite for being called a tea partier is to attack your Republican opponent from the right, then, sure, Newman is waging the mirror image of a tea party challenge. But that’s a fairly lazy conclusion; it lumps together all the primary challenges listed above when the data shows there are clear differences between them. For example, now-Sen. Mike Lee’s 2010 primary challenge to then-Sen. Bob Bennett in Utah made a lot of sense because of Bennett’s moderate DW-Nominate score (.331), the high contrast with Lee’s positions (he went on to earn a score of .919) and the fact that Utah was a very conservative state (37 points more Republican than the nation as a whole). By contrast, now-Rep. Brad Wenstrup’s defeat of then-Rep. Jean Schmidt in Ohio’s 2nd District in 2012 produced only a slightly more conservative representative (.577 to .467), and in a relatively moderate district to boot (R+15).

Lipinski’s DW-Nominate score is -.234, making him the 17th-most-moderate Democrat in the House. Lipinski is also a relatively strong ally of President Trump, at least as far as Democrats go. His Trump score (FiveThirtyEight’s measure of how often each member of Congress votes with the president) is 35.3 percent, 11th-highest among House Democrats. In other words, he is indeed notably more centrist than most members of his party. Going by DW-Nominate, this would place Newman’s challenge of Lipinski in the same ballpark as Joe Miller’s challenge of Murkowski in the Republican primary for Alaska’s 2010 U.S. Senate race. That’s one of the tea party cases in which it’s easier to see the ideological origins.

But the Illinois 3rd District is also only 12 points more Democratic than the nation as a whole. Just 39 Democratic-held districts are more conservative. If you subscribe to the notion that districts toward the center should have more centrist representatives, then Lipinski is still on the moderate side, but he’s not that moderate. For instance, Lipinski’s predicted Trump score is 33.7 percent, meaning that he votes with Trump almost exactly as much as we would expect given the political lean back home. According to DW-Nominate, several other Democratic House members are more moderate than he is4 and represent more liberal districts, including fellow Illinois Reps. Bill Foster and Brad Schneider. Neither of them is facing a primary challenger on Tuesday.

If you consider the district’s partisanship, then maybe Newman’s campaign is more like Richard Mourdock’s Republican primary challenge to incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar in Indiana’s 2012 U.S. Senate race: According to our partisan lean calculations, Indiana was as Republican then as the Illinois 3rd is Democratic now. Lugar was indeed moderate enough (a .304 DW-Nominate score) that a primary challenge made some sense on its own, but Mourdock infamously ended up losing that general election.

All things considered, it’s debatable whether Newman’s challenge of Lipinski is within reason according to these ideological scores or out of line. Lipinski is indeed a Democratic nonconformist who can’t reliably be counted on to vote against the Trump agenda — but he’s not wildly out of sync with his district either. The voters will have to decide how much heterodoxy they can tolerate on Tuesday.

[imran16829]

Strongest Argument for President Trump: Gym Jordan Biography, Wiki, Age, Family, Net Worth, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Fast Facts You Need to Know

Gym Jordan Biography, Wiki

James Daniel Jordan is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Ohio's 4th congressional district since 2007. A member of the Republican Party, he has been the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee since 2019. Jordan is a founding member of the Freedom Caucus, which he chaired from its establishment in 2015 until 2017. His district stretches from Lake Erie to just below Urbana in the north-central and western portions of the state and includes Lima, Marion, Tiffin, Urbana, and Elyria. In 2019, Jordan's plan to run for house speaker, a position that would become vacant upon Paul Ryan's retirement, came to an end when Democrats took the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. After the election, Jordan campaigned for house minority leader but lost his bid to California Republican Kevin McCarthy in a 159–43 vote. Jordan is often identified as a particularly ardent supporter and close ally of President Donald Trump. Gym Jordan Age He is 55 years old. Gym Jordan Quick Bio Born James Daniel Jordan February 17, 1964 Urbana, Ohio, U.S. Political party Republican Spouse(s) Polly Jordan Children 4 Education University of Wisconsin–Madison (BS) Ohio State University (MA) Capital University (JD) Gym Jordan Personal life Jordan and his wife Polly live near Urbana in central Champaign County. He was introduced to his future wife by Polly’s brothers. Jim Jordan explained in an interview with the Washington Examiner in 2014 that he competed in wrestling with Polly’s brothers. He told the newspaper, “I decided it would be a lot more fun wrestling with Polly than her brothers.” They started dating when he was 13 and she was 14. They have four children and two grandchildren. Gym Jordan Early life Jordan was born and raised in Champaign County, Ohio and attended Graham High School. He obtained a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1986. Gym Jordan Early Career A two-time NCAA Division I wrestling champion, Jordan won the 1985 and 1986 NCAA championship matches in the 134-pound weight class. Gym Jordan Education Jordan earned a master's degree in education from Ohio State University in Columbus and obtained a J.D. degree from Ohio's Capital University Law School in 2001. He never took the bar examination. Gym Jordan Political career Gym Jordan Ohio General Assembly Jordan was elected to the Ohio House of Representatives in November 1994 and represented the 85th Ohio House district for three terms. In 2000, Jordan defeated independent candidate Jack Kaffenberger to win a seat in the Ohio Senate with 88% of the vote. In 2004, Jordan defeated Kaffenberger again, this time with 79% of the vote. Gym Jordan U.S. House of Representatives Jordan won the Republican primary for the 4th district in 2006 after 26-year incumbent Mike Oxley announced his retirement. Jordan defeated Democrat Rick Siferd in the general election with 60 percent of the votes. After his election, Ohio's 4th congressional boundaries were re-drawn to resemble a giant letter "J". Jordan was reelected in 2008, defeating Democrat Mike Carroll with 65 percent of the votes. Jordan chaired the Republican Study Committee during the 112th Congress while turning down a position on the Appropriations Committee. Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer wrote that during Obama's presidency, "Jordan proved to be a master of the technical side of public policy and understood how to play the legislative game." During the 114th Congress, Jordan helped found the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservatives working to "to advance an agenda of limited constitutional government" in Congress. He served as the group's first chairman. Jordan received a vote for speaker of the 113th Congress from a fellow conservative, Tea Party Caucus chairman Tim Huelskamp of Kansas. Jordan received two votes for the speaker during the 114th Congress. On July 26, 2018, Jordan announced his bid for house speaker following the resignation of Paul Ryan but lost to Kevin McCarthy. Gym Jordan Latest Updates GOP aide tells me one plan discussed is for Gym Jordan and others to repeatedly use the whistleblower's name as one of several strategies to blow up the hearings and make the media report on his identity. Be prepared for stunts. — Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 13, 2019 Jordan, a longtime Trump defender, was recently transferred to the House Intelligence Committee by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) because Republicans believe his signature technique of shouting rapid-fire partisan nonsense at congressional witnesses makes him a useful ally to throw off the impeachment hearings. Gym Jordan made the strongest argument for President Trump to come down to the House and testify at his own #ImpeachmentHearings. I think Republicans should keep going with that hearsay "defense" and compel Mulvaney & Trump to testify now.#TrumpBriberypic.twitter.com/uTuVRHzjpu — Grant Stern (@grantstern) November 13, 2019 Wilson’s moniker “Gym Jordan” is a reference to the Ohio State wrestling scandal, in which a school physician allegedly molested 177 athletes. Some of these students allege that Jordan, then a wrestling coach, was approached about the abuse and ignored it, an accusation he denies. Read the full article

[profoundpaul]

Tim Huelskamp: Freedom Works, Government Sucks

The post Tim Huelskamp: Freedom Works, Government Sucks appeared first on The Western Journal.

source https://www.westernjournal.com/tim-huelskamp-freedom-works-government-sucks/

[realsideradio]

We need to send people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez down to Venezuela for a while with a video crew and have a "Life of AOC" reality show. ~ Tim Huelskamp, PhD, President of #HeartlandInstitute #SocialismKills #LIVE from #CPAC2019 @CPAC https://www.instagram.com/p/BudUzOwBCI_/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=2nvkormte42m

[garancefranke-ruta]

Resistance Report: Cease-and-desist letter embraced by activists, but their claim gets rated false by PolitiFact

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis. questioned Secretary of State-designate Rex Tillerson on Capitol Hill in January. (Steve Helber/AP)

CEASE AND DESIST. When the staff of Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., sent a cease and desist letter to a Milwaukee man, Earl Good, Wisconsin Citizen Action used the letter to rally supporters. Good had reportedly called Johnson’s office hundreds of times, and the left-leaning Wisconsin group wanted its supporters to pledge to tell Johnson, “We will NOT Cease and Desist!”

Now WDJT-Milwaukee reports on what’s behind the viral story:

[Good] started calling Senator Johnson’s D.C. office to voice his opinion after President Trump’s inauguration. He says his goal was to influence how his U.S. Senator votes. Good admits he’s persistent; so persistent, on one occasion he called Senator Johnson’s office 83 times until someone picked up.

“The day before was 40 to get through. The day before that was 8. The day before that was 29, so they’re very aware of who I am by my cell phone number,” says Good.

Good says he’s been to Johnson’s Milwaukee office on two occasions. He calls the local office “accommodating,” but takes issue with the response in D.C. …

A spokesperson for Senator Johnson responded, saying, “Constituents are always welcome and encouraged to contact our office with their concerns, regardless of political viewpoint. Unfortunately, very infrequently a pattern of inappropriate behavior emerges that crosses the bounds of decency and requires action to ensure the well being of visitors to the office and staff.”

That same spokesperson says this is only the second time in two years a letter like this has been sent.

PolitiFact Wisconsin rated Citizen Action’s statements on the matter “false” as the group had indicated that Johnson’s office was broadly using cease and desist letters in order to silence critical constituents: “Despite the broadness of the claim, the group produced a cease-and-desist letter written to only one person who it says has been involved in Citizen Action initiatives such as preserving the Affordable Care Act.

“The letter demands that the man stop visiting or calling any of Johnson’s staff or offices, but says written communications will be received. And Johnson’s staff says it issued the letter, on the advice of the U.S. Capitol Police, because the man had been harassing and threatening to staff, not because he protested any of Johnson’s actions.”

A POTATO FOR YOUR THOUGHTS. Meanwhile, taking inspiration from the cease and desist letter, Cards Against Humanity launched a website to mail potatoes to Johnson demanding a town hall. “Legally, we’re not allowed to call Senator Johnson a cruel idiot who doesn’t understand how health insurance works. But we are allowed to mail thousands of potatoes to his office demanding that he listen to his constituents and hold a town hall meeting,” says JohnsonPotato.com. “For only $5, you can send a potato with your name on it to Senator Ron Johnson’s office demanding that he hold a town hall meeting.”

Cards Against Humanity describes itself as “a party game for horrible people.”

Screenshot from JohnsonPotato.com

WHEN THE GOP LOVED TOWN HALLS. “The 10 lawmakers who have held the most in-person town hall meetings over the last two years are all Republicans,” reports Chase Masters in The Hill. “Since the beginning of the 114th Congress in 2015, four Republicans — Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (Wis.), Sens. Mike Crapo (Idaho) and Jerry Moran (Kan.) and former Rep. Tim Huelskamp (Kan.) — held more than 100 in-person town hall meetings.” Recent activism by those seeking to preserve the Affordable Care Act, however, “led some lawmakers to pare back or cancel their in-person events” over the past two months.

SPEAKING BITTERNESS? Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., had an eyebrow-raising explanation — using an antiquated term for Asians — for why he didn’t hold town halls last week. “The amount of time that I have at home is minimal, I need to make sure that it’s productive,” Bost told the Southern Illinoisian. “You know the cleansing that the Orientals used to do where you’d put one person out in front and 900 people yell at them? That’s not what we need. We need to have meetings with people that are productive.”

It’s possible he was referring to the “Speak Bitterness” People’s Court trials in Communist China during the 1950s, where peasants were called upon to denounce their landlords. Millions of the former land owners were executed as part of these trials. ”

DEMOCRATS GET PRESSURE TO HOLD TOWN HALLS, TOO. Reports Yahoo News: “[T]he fired-up progressive base behind much of [the new progressive] activism is not restricting its activities to the Republican side of the aisle. In a world where the new president has the lowest level of support from members of the opposing party in Gallup polling history, and in which Democrats’ unfavorable views of Trump are of blindingly hot intensity, Democratic politicians like Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., are on the receiving end of one message over and over: Resist. Resist everything.”

CHANGES AT CAP. Ruby Cramer at BuzzFeed reports the group is expanding around plans to create problems for Trump’s remaining Senate-confirmable nominees: “Democrats at the Center for American Progress estimate that President Trump still has upwards of 900 second- and third-tier appointees to push through the Senate. And in the liberal think tank’s new ‘war room,’ the objective is to scrutinize each one, from assistant to more minor federal agency employees, raising questions about qualifications and conflicts of interest that promise to tie up floor time, bog down Republican efforts in Congress, and delay Trump’s legislative agenda.”

And as Yahoo News reported yesterday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund is heading in a new direction in the Trump era. “At the Center for American Progress, you know, we were founded on ideas — recognizing that there was a gap in proactive progressive ideas — and so we spent a lot of great years … working hand in hand with [the Obama] administration and members of Congress,” CAP Action Fund Vice President Michele Jawando told me after a rally outside the Department of Justice calling for Attorney General Jeff Session’s resignation. “But what we recognize is now we’re in a different world. We are in a time of resistance.

“We recognize that the fight is not just on ideas now. It’s one-on-one. It’s direct combat, and we’re ready to go.”

[richccrockett]

Mika Brzezinski: Our interview with Tim Huelskamp was ‘disturbing’ https://t.co/lAbldvLQWV

Mika Brzezinski: Our interview with Tim Huelskamp was ‘disturbing’ https://t.co/lAbldvLQWV

— Rich Crockett (@richcrockett44) January 21, 2018

from Twitter https://twitter.com/richcrockett44 January 22, 2018 at 07:24AM

[rjzimmerman]

Excerpt:

Trump was taught to say these things [climate denial] on climate by Heartland, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other think tanks. They maintained this denial space in public policy dialogue," said Kert Davies, director of the Climate Investigations Center, a watchdog group. "And you can definitely credit Exxon and Koch brothers' money for giving the think tanks the megaphone to keep climate science denial in the world."

But now, just like the Republican upstarts that threaten the party establishment, Heartland is taking climate denial farther than many fossil fuel companies can support. While ExxonMobil today publicly accepts the reality of human-caused climate change and the need to address the problem, Heartland argues for the benefits of a warming world. The group is pushing the EPA to overturn its official conclusion—known as the endangerment finding—that excessive carbon dioxide is a danger to human health and welfare. The finding, affirmed by the Supreme Court, is what empowers the agency to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

This rift was on display at a recent meeting of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group that influences state governments to adopt conservative priorities. Heartland wanted ALEC to approve a resolution calling on the EPA to withdraw the endangerment finding. But ExxonMobil, once at the forefront of climate denial, was among several corporations and utilities that convinced ALEC to shelve a vote on the resolution.

ExxonMobil had become just another member of "the discredited and anti-energy global warming movement," complained Heartland's president, Tim Huelskamp, a former Republican congressman from Kansas. "They've put their profits and 'green' virtue signaling above sound science."

ExxonMobil is among an early group of donors that slowed or ended its funding of climate denial. But the misinformation apparatus the corporations helped create is now so independent and robust, it no longer needs—or trusts—them.