The purpose of this
hearing
is to examine the reliability and resiliency of electric service in the
United States in light of recent reliability assessments and alerts.
James B.
Robb,
President & Chief Executive Officer, North American Electric
Reliability Corporation
Manu
Asthana,
President & Chief Executive Officer, PJM
Interconnection, L.L.C.
Dr. Melissa C.
Lott,
Senior Research Scholar and Director of Research, Columbia Center on
Global Energy Policy, Columbia University, School of International and
Public Affairs
David J.
Tudor,
Chief Executive Officer & General Manager, Associated Electric
Cooperative Inc.
On Wednesday, May 31, 2023, at 2:30 pm ET, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla
(D-Calif.), Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW)
Subcommittee on Fisheries, Water, and Wildlife, will hold a
hearing
to examine the impact of aging drinking water and wastewater
infrastructure and rising water rates, as well as recently authorized
water affordability programs in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Witnesses:
Kyle Jones, Legal and Policy Director, Community Water Center
Rosemary Menard, Water Director, City of Santa Cruz
Mark Pepper, Executive Director, Wyoming Association of Rural Water
Systems
Jeffery Martin Baran to be a Member of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission
S.1111,
Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean
Energy Act of 2023
A bill to enhance United States civil nuclear leadership, support the
licensing of advanced nuclear technologies, strengthen the domestic
nuclear energy fuel cycle and supply chain, and improve the regulation
of nuclear energy, and for other purposes.
A lifeline for those suffering from climate anxiety, Facing the Climate
Emergency combines Salamon’s expertise in clinical psychology and
disruptive climate activism to help readers transform their fear and
grief into courage and heroism.
This beloved self-help book provides emphatic guidance for the
overwhelmed and concrete strategies for tackling anxiety and other
painful climate emotions. Facing the Climate Emergency offers inspiring
portraits of ordinary people who are striking school, throwing soup onto
paintings, and otherwise disrupting normalcy in order to raise the alarm
and create rapid policy change.
Facing the Climate Emergency helps people. That’s why writer and
director Adam McKay writes in the foreword to the 2nd edition, “I hope
this book becomes as ubiquitous as the Heimlich maneuver in
restaurants.”
About the Speakers —
Margaret Klein Salamon, Ph.D, is the executive director of the Climate
Emergency Fund, which raises and
grants millions of dollars to nonviolent disruptive climate activists. A
graduate of Harvard with a Ph.D. from Adelphi University, Margaret
brings her psychological expertise to all of her climate work. As
founder of the grassroots advocacy group Climate Mobilization, she
spearheaded the campaign for governments to acknowledge the climate
emergency through an official declaration. A climate emergency has now
been declared by over 2,270 global governments, comprising more than 1
billion of the world’s citizens. Her Climate Awakening project
facilitates hundreds of virtual and in-person small-group conversations,
helping people transform their fear, rage, and despair into effective
action.
Roberta Baskin spent more than 30 years as an awarding-winning
investigative reporter at CBS News,
ABC news, & PBS
exposing stories of injustices. Roberta’s storied career garnered more
than 75 journalism awards, including three duPont Columbia Awards, two
Peabody Awards, and multiple Emmys. Her investigations reformed
injustices and improved dozens of health and safety products and
practices. She now serves on five non-profit boards dedicated to climate
justice and solutions to socio-economic divides.
On Thursday, May 25, 2023, at 9:00 a.m., in room 1324 Longworth House
Office Building, Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs will hold an
oversight budget hearing titled “Examining the President’s
FY 2024 Budget Request for the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and Office of Insular Affairs.”
Bryan Newland, Assistant Secretary—Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of
the Interior
Carmen Cantor, Assistant Secretary for Insular and International
Affairs, Office of Insular Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior
The President’s budget request for Indian Affairs programs in
FY 2024 is $4.7
billion,
an increase of $690 million over FY 2023. This
includes $3 billion for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), $1.6 billion
for the Bureau of Indian Education (BIE), and $109.1 million for the
Bureau of Trust Funds Administration.
During Tribal consultations and listening sessions participants have
consistently pointed to the adverse impacts the changing climate is
having on Alaska Native subsistence practices and Alaska Native
communities, as well as the need to expand Tribal co-management
partnerships and the incorporation of Indigenous Knowledge into
subsistence management. In response to Tribal recommendations heard
through these engagements, the FY 2024 budget
proposes to transfer the functions of the Office of Subsistence
Management from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the Office of the
Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, along with a program increase of
$2.5 million for the program.
$12 million for the creation of a new Tribal Land and Water Conservation
Fund land acquisition program. During listening sessions held last year,
Tribes identified having direct access to Land and Water Conservation
Fund resources for conservation and recreation projects as one of their
top priorities.
The budget includes $385.9
million,
a $52.7 million increase over 2023 enacted, for critical trust natural
resources activities and investing in climate resilience and
environmental justice. Of that amount, $48.0 million is provided for the
Tribal Climate Resilience program. This program includes the Tribal
Climate Adaptation Grant program, which is funded at $24.8 million to
better assess and meet Tribal climate adaptation needs, and the Climate
Relocation Grant program, which is funded at $15.5 million, $6 million
more than the 2023 enacted amount. The Tribal Climate Resilience program
also includes $7.8 million for Tribal youth corps programs.
On Wednesday, May 24, 2023, at 10:00 a.m., in Room 1324 Longworth House
Office Building, the Committee on Natural Resources Subcommittee on
Oversight and Investigations will hold an oversight
hearing
titled “Examining the Biden Administration’s Efforts to Limit Access to
Public Lands.”
Todd Devlin, Prairie County Commissioner, Terry, MT
Dr. J.J. Goicoechea, DVM, Director, Nevada
Department of Agriculture, Sparks, NV
Travis Lingenfelter, Chairman, Mohave County Board of Supervisors,
Kingman, AZ
Stephanie Garcia Richard, New Mexico Commissioner of Public Lands
Santa Fe, NM
From the Republican committee memo:
On April 3, 2023, the BLM published in the
Federal Register a proposed rule, Conservation and Landscape Health
with a 75-day comment period. The proposed rule elevates conservation
as a “use” within FLPMA’s multiple-use
framework without Congressional authority. The
BLM intends to pursue this through so-called
conservation leases for both protection and restoration activities.
This proposed rule would fundamentally change the way the
BLM carries out its multiple use and
sustained yield mandates. Numerous stakeholders have expressed concern
that the Biden Administration will use this rulemaking to determine
currently permitted activities on BLM lands,
such as grazing, energy production, and recreation are incompatible
with a conservation lease or areas identified as “intact landscapes.”
Alejandro Moreno (Invited), Acting Assistant Secretary, Office of
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy
Dr. Carolyn Snyder (Invited), Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy
Efficiency, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, U.S.
Department of Energy
Matthew Agen, Assistant General Counsel, American Gas Association
Ben Lieberman, Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Kenny Stein, Vice President of Policy, Institute for Energy Research
The Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and
Related Agencies bill provides a non-defense discretionary total of
$25.313 billion for programs under the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee,
$532 million (2.1%) below the FY23 enacted
level and $3.622 billion (12.5%) below the
FY24 President’s Budget Request.
FY 2024 USDA
Budget
request: $32.6 billion, slightly more than 16.9 percent increase, or
$4.7 billion, above the 2023 enacted level
The Homeland Security bill includes $91.511
billion
in total discretionary appropriations for the Department of Homeland
Security, including $62.793 billion within the bill’s allocation, $5.837
billion in discretionary appropriations offset by fee collections, and
$20.261 billion as an allocation adjustment for major disaster response
and recovery activities. The total, within the allocation, is $2.090
billion above the Fiscal Year 2023 level. For
FEMA, the subcommittee mark provides $26.062
billion, which is $388.6 million above FY23
and $178.4 million above the request. It eliminates funding for the
Emergency Food and Shelter-Humanitarian Program and its successor, the
Shelter and Services
Program,
which administers funds to local governments and nongovernmental
organizations to provide assistance to migrants and people experiencing
homelessness.
The FY FEMA 2024 budget request is $30.2
billion,
including $20.3 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund and $4.8 billion
for the National Flood Insurance Program.
The FY 2024 Budget includes an increase to
create a full-time, dedicated policy and coordination office to lead
FEMA’s focus on climate adaptation, impacts,
and lead coordination with FEMA program
offices, the Federal Interagency, and SLTT
partners in support of FEMA’s programs.
Soren Dayton, Director of Governance, Niskanen Center
Satya Thallam, Policy Advisor, Arnold & Porter
Elizabeth Goitein, Senior Director, Liberty and National Security
Program, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of
Law
The NEA establishes a framework to provide
enhanced congressional oversight for measures taken in response to a
national emergency declared by the President. It establishes procedures
for declarations of national emergencies, requiring their publication
and congressional notification of the measures to be invoked. Enacted in
1976 to rein in presidential emergency powers, the
NEA provides a framework to apply whenever the
President wishes to employ any “power or authority” granted by statute
for use during a national emergency. The NEA
further provides that a national emergency will end (1) automatically
after one year unless the President publishes a notice of renewal in the
Federal Register, (2) upon a presidential declaration ending the
national emergency, or (3) if Congress enacts a joint resolution
terminating the emergency (which would likely require the votes of
two-thirds majorities in each house of Congress to override a
presidential veto). Although one purpose of the
NEA was to end perpetual states of emergency,
the law does grant the President authority to renew an emergency
declaration. There are currently dozens of national emergency
declarations in
effect, some
of which have been renewed for decades. Almost all deal with economic
sanctions with foreign countries.
House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee
Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management Subcommittee
