Department of Energy

For decades, the picture of Earth’s future – as laid out by journalists and climate scientists alike – has been bleak. By 2070 we will see famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us, melted icecaps, flooding, extreme hurricanes and ever-present tropical storms. "Vast swathes" of the planet will be inhospitable for human life. And Greta Thunberg, in her late sixties, will wear a gas mask as she sits on the steps of Swedish Parliament with a cardboard sign declaring, "I told you so." Advocates have poured gasoline on the climate-alarmism fire earnestly, backed by reports declaring, "There really is no serious scientific debate remaining about climate change.

Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm has admitted to misleading Congress, in an apparent violation of the US Code that can carry a sentence of up to five years to prison. In a Friday news dump filled just hours after the news of former president Donald Trump’s indictment, Granholm confessed to making a false statement before the Senate Energy and National Resources Committee on April 20.  At issue is Granholm telling Senator Josh Hawley that she owns no individual stocks, “whereas I should have said that I did not own any conflicting stocks,” she wrote in a letter shared with E&E News.

The recent conclusion by the Department of Energy that Covid likely originated in a Wuhan lab is only the latest example of public officials and their media allies intentionally discrediting a legitimate news story, only for the initial reporting to be deemed correct. The list of similar attempts to repress honest journalism is disturbingly long and goes well beyond the pandemic. It includes the attacks on questions raised about the veracity of the Steele dossier (the pretext for the first impeachment of President Trump), the discrediting of the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation, and accusations of racism directed against journalists who documented the intentional opening of the southern border.

A high-ranking Biden administration official has left the Department of Energy following months of lawsuits and inquiries from Congress about her conflicts of interest. In December, Kelly Speakes-Backman quit her job as the principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, or EERE, to become a vice president of public affairs at Invenergy, a green energy company. One of Invenergy’s focus areas is energy storage and batteries. Electric batteries are a top priority of the Biden administration, specifically the Department of Energy. Intriguingly that was exactly what Speakes-Backman was working on both during and before she joined the administration, where she led the agency's office on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

“Everyone deserves to live their life as their full an authentic self.” So tweeted the Department of Energy on November 20. “Trans and gender non-conforming individuals are part of the DOE family,” the tweet insisted, “and with them we mourn the lives lost and reject the darkness that would erase their light.” One might think the Energy Department should be more concerned over out-of-control gas prices and predicted shortages of heating oil this winter. But its useless mandarins instead were devoting their efforts to observance of something called “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” an annual date chosen by an activist in 1999 to mourn “transgendered” people who have died violent deaths.

In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security raided the headquarters of the self-proclaimed “original and world’s largest male escort site,” Rentboy.com. The cause was a complaint of conspiracy to violate the Travel Act and on charges of promoting prostitution. The CEO of Rentboy, Jeffrey Hurant, pleaded guilty to these prostitution charges and was sentenced to six months in prison. Why is this background important? Cockburn notes that Sam Brinton is one of the Biden administration’s newest diversity hires at the Department of Energy and wrote an op-ed defending Rentboy.com when it was raided.