On May 20, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) strolled to the Senate floor with a resolution asking his colleagues to agree on a ‘simple truth:’ that climate change is real.It wasn’t the first time he’d done this. Whitehouse first introduced the resolution in December 2025 and tried to get it passed last January. Nearly every week since, the Senator has taken the resolution to the floor, asking, ‘Climate change is real. Can we agree on that simple truth?’Apparently not. After Whitehouse’s most recent attempt, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) objected ‘with a smile on my face,’ he said. Johnson proceeded to recite a popular playlist of fossil fuel talking points to counter the argument that climate change is a problem worth tackling.’I don’t deny climate change. Climate change is real. It has always changed; it always will,’ said Johnson. ‘I certainly am not going to subscribe to any resolution that would cause policy here to spend trillions — misspend, waste, trillions of dollars on a fool’s errand trying to hold back the tides.’Whitehouse did not sound surprised.’I would only advise my friend from Wisconsin that he just might want to consider running his argument by the University of Wisconsin before trotting it out on the Senate floor,’ he replied.HEATED is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.’Persist through frustration’Whitehouse keeps doing things like this. For years, he has been one of Congress’s most relentless climate voices, delivering more than 300 ‘Time to Wake Up’ speeches on the Senate floor about climate change and the fossil fuel industry’s political power.Lately, that persistence has taken a more targeted form: pressing the Trump administration over its extraordinary new favors to the oil and gas industry; investigating its decision to exempt Gulf drilling from endangered species protections; and pushing a windfall profits tax on oil companies at a time when Republicans control Congress and the White House.Whitehouse knows none of it is likely to move through Washington right now. But that’s not really the point. The point, he argued, is to make the obstruction visible: to show the public exactly how fossil fuel money shapes Republican politics, and how that corruption translates into higher costs, weaker laws, and a government willing to contort itself on behalf of Big Oil.’If I had a motto it would be, ‘persist through frustration,’’ he told HEATED in an interview last week.For Whitehouse, the issue is not as simple as Johnson’s apparent inability to understand science. ‘He doesn’t care because the fossil fuel industry has such a grip on his party,’ Whitehouse said.The reason Whitehouse puts himself through the weekly exercise is for something bigger. ‘The beast of the fossil fuel industry’s control of the Republican Party is something that is very much worth fighting against,’ he said. ‘That beast is really very, very bad for our democracy, really bad for Americans’ costs that they have to pay, and deeply, deeply corrupting.’Subscribe nowFrom God Squad to windfall profitsThere are few stronger political bonds than the one between oil companies and the Trump administration. In March, the administration offered a particularly stark example: A little-known federal committee known as the ‘God Squad’ granted oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico an exemption from the Endangered Species Act.The exemption was requested by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who argued that protecting oil companies from pending endangered species litigation was ‘a matter of urgent national security.’The committee agreed, even though the Gulf is home to 20 threatened and endangered species, including sea turtles, manta rays, sharks, and the Rice’s whale—a species with fewer than 100 individuals remaining.Whitehouse doesn’t buy the committee’s rationale that national security is harmed by protecting endangered species species. ‘The idea that ongoing oil and gas drilling in the Gulf meets that standard is pretty preposterous, but for the oil and gas industry, this administration does not hesitate to do preposterous things,’ said Whitehouse.That’s why Whitehouse is leading a group of 26 senators to investigate the Trump Administration’s decision to grant the exemption. On April 27, the group sent letters to Secretaries Burgum and Hegseth requesting documents and information related to their decision, to ensure it complied with the law. The group gave a response deadline of May 18th.Two weeks after that deadline, Whitehouse told HEATED, neither Burgum nor Hegseth has responded.’They have a free pass not to meet these deadlines because they control the House and the Senate,’ Whitehouse said. He said he would now consider using Freedom of Information Act requests and potentially litigation to obtain the documents. ‘But that’s a very long, slow, arduous process that takes us well beyond November.’Whitehouse anticipates that any FOIA requests will show that the so-called ‘God Squad’ treated Gulf oil and gas production as central to national security. But to him, that only raises a bigger question: If fossil fuel production is so essential to the country’s security, why are oil companies allowed to reap enormous profits while Americans pay higher prices?’If there were a national security problem here, you’d think that they’d call on the oil and gas industry to help solve it by not exporting so much and not creating, literally, the biggest profits in the history of humankind,’ says Whitehouse.Subscribe nowFossil fuel companies have seen profits surge since the U.S. and Israel engaged Iran in a war that has stalled traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. As of May 31, the average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline in the United States was $4.33; exactly a year ago it was $3.15, according to AAA. Prices will continue to fluctuate depending on whether ships can traverse the Strait, where 20% of the world’s petroleum passes.During the first month of the conflict, the world’s top 100 oil and gas companies were earning $30 million every hour in unearned profit, according to exclusive analysis by The Guardian.’We’re looking at a quarter trillion dollars this year under the current projections of where things go,’ says Whitehouse. ‘A quarter trillion dollars for a handful of big fossil fuel companies who can use a tiny percentage of that to buy the loyalty and fealty of Republicans in Congress and the Trump Administration.’That’s why Whitehouse reintroduced the Big Oil Windfall Profits Bill in May to ‘provide consumers guaranteed relief while maintaining American competitiveness and reducing inflation by combatting corporate profiteering.’The bill targets the largest companies that produce or import at least 300,000 barrels of oil a day, taxing them per barrel an amount equal to 50% of the difference between the current price of a barrel of oil and the average price per barrel the previous year.Essentially, companies keep their customary profit, but anything above that would be taxed and returned to certain Americans, including single filers who earn less than $75,000 in annual income and joint filers who earn less than $150,000 annually. If oil is roughly $100 per barrel, this could generate a tax of about $33 billion per year, providing a check of $216 to qualified single filers and $324 to qualified joint filers.’Elon Musk does not get a check, but lower-income people could expect one, because for them it really makes a big difference,’ says Whitehouse.If the idea sounds utterly ludicrous, it’s already happening in other countries. The United Kingdom passed a windfall tax on energy firms in 2022 to help address rising utility bills stemming from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The original tax was due to expire at the end of 2025, but was extended and increased by both Conservative and Labour governments through 2030.’Even moderate Democrats like President Biden ultimately supported this when the Ukraine invasion took place,’ says Whitehouse, referencing fall 2022, when Biden accused oil companies of ‘war profiteering’ after they posted record profits.If such a bill feels futile at a time when Republicans control all three branches of government, it doesn’t faze Whitehouse, who believes it’s his responsibility to make clear to the American people what is happening.’It matters, I think, for people to understand exactly how it is that they’re being gouged, so that they understand that these unbelievably huge profits are really not necessary — they’re an artifact of big oil,’ he says. ‘Because once you understand how something is being done to you, you feel a little bit more agency and mastery about being able to demand that it be stopped.’ShareSubscribe nowIn related news…Trump may have reportedly scrapped his plan to spend $1.8 billion in taxpayer money to protect his political allies, but he’s still using public money to prop up the dirtiest of his fossil fuel allies.On Wednesday, Bloomberg broke the news that Trump is planning to use wartime powers to give $700 million in taxpayer money to the coal industry. From CBS News: Mr. Trump will invoke the Defense Production Act, a Cold War-era law that gives the U.S. president emergency authority over domestic industries, to distribute $75 million for a new coal export terminal in Oakland, California, and $425 million to support 13 existing plants across 10 states: West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Indiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Arizona, Oklahoman, North Dakota and Wisconsin.The president is also expected to announce nearly $200 million in Department of Energy grants to build two new coal plants in Alaska and West Virginia and to restart a coal plant in Maryland. The facilities in Alaska and West Virginia would be the first new coal plants built in the U.S. since 2013.I thought this response from Ted Kelly, an attorney at the Environmental Defense Fund, was worth reading:This announcement is just the latest in a suite of sweetheart taxpayer-funded deals to the coal industry: Over the past year, the Trump administration has illegally ordered five aging coal plants to operate past their retirement dates, ordered the Department of Defense to procure electricity from coal plants, announced $625 million to prop up aging coal plants and opened up 13 million acres of federal lands to coal mining.At the same time, even as electricity costs and demand continue to skyrocket, the administration has been blocking the construction of hundreds of solar and wind projects that can provide clean, low-cost and fast-to-deploy power. It has even resorted to wastefully paying energy companies nearly $2 billion in taxpayer funds to abandon their offshore wind projects.The picture is clear: Expensive, polluting coal continues to get ‘concierge, white glove service,’ while affordable clean power gets blocked, delayed and canceled at every turn – no matter the cost to families.To sum it all up in a quote: Pouring taxpayer dollars into dirty, unreliable coal plants that bleed money is a surefire way to drive up families’ electricity bills even higher. Utilities are retiring coal plants for a reason – to save money. At a time when we need more power on the grid, doubling down on one of the most expensive, polluting energy sources is the worst possible answer.