Tipsheet

Cruz Calls Out Dems While Highlighting How Left's Attacks on Energy Agenda Are 'Identical' to CCP

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  June 25, 2025 9:00 PM

On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on Federal Courts, Oversight, Agency Action, and Federal Rights held a hearing on "Enter the Dragon—China and the Left’s Lawfare Against American Energy Dominance." It was a hearing led by Chairman Ted Cruz (R-TX), who aptly called out the American left and the China Communist Party (CCP).

During his opening remarks, Cruz issued key reminders about how the threats from the left and the CCP are related. 

"We're witnessing right now a systematic campaign against American energy, there is a coordinated assault by the radical left, backed and paid for by the Chinese Communist Party to seize control of our courts, to weaponize litigation against us energy producers, all in order to undermine American energy dominance at stake is a lot more than an industry," he reminded. "Our energy sector is the engine of American prosperity, the lifeblood of our industrial power, our national security and our geopolitical leverage. If American energy is under attack, so is American security and American independence," Cruz added.

The chairman also spoke to "a three pronged assault" in "the campaign against American energy." The first step, as Cruz explained it, involves how "foreign money from entities tied to the Chinese Communist Party flows into the United States to bankroll climate advocacy groups who litigate against American energy. Then, activist lawyers flood our courts with lawsuits designed not to win policy debates but to bankrupt energy producers and to dismantle energy infrastructure through sheer attrition." The third step involves the courts, as "the judiciary itself is being quietly captured and brainwashed as left wing nonprofits host closed door trainings that indoctrinate judges to adopt the ideological goals of the climate lawfare machine."

In speaking further about the issue of "lawfare." Cruz also issued a key reminder, and a warning. "What we're seeing is not the rule of law. It's lawfare. These lawsuits aren't meant to succeed on the merits, they're designed to exhaust, to intimidate, and to destroy America's energy sector — death by a thousand cuts," he pointed out. 

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Cruz regarded that "third prong" as "perhaps the most insidious, because it strikes at the very heart of the rule of law, judicial capture." He specifically called out the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and its Climate Judiciary Project (CP), which he warned is an organization "with near total control over climate related judicial training." Highlighting their reach, Cruz explained that "if a federal judge or a state judge is receiving 'climate science education' today, chances are overwhelming that it is coming from ELI." 

"The group has established a de facto monopoly on climate rating related in. Instruction for the judiciary. They've "trained over 2,000 judges," Cruz further explained. "They claim to be neutral, they claim to be science driven, but what they are doing is ex parte indoctrination, pressuring judges to set aside the rule of law and rule instead according to a predetermined political narrative. Left wing bankrollers, like the Hewlett Foundation and the Freedom Together Foundation fund CJP," the chairman stressed. 

"They fund CJP to train judges, so 'train' in climate science and make them agreeable to creative climate litigation tactics, then these left wing bankrollers turn around and fund the climate litigators who will bring these bogus cases before those same judges that they've just indoctrinated!" Cruz further illustrated, going with an example of how "this is like paying the players to play and paying the umpire to call the shots the way you want them."

This year, as chairman of the Commerce Committee, Cruz sent a letter to ELI about his "deep concerns" with such a program. He also "initiated oversight requests with federal agencies," he further explained. 

In what he warned is "propaganda," Cruz said he's learned that CJP tells judges that "the consequences of a business as usual scenario would be catastrophic." The CJP also "encourages the judiciary to view climate litigation as a 'unique opportunity for' accountability," Cruz further explained, and "even recommends embracing novel tort theories like public nuisance to assign liability for greenhouse gas emissions." Cruz wondered as to if that is "neutral or is that lobbying behind closed doors?"

When it comes to the funding for what he referred to as "these baseless CJP trainings," Cruz explained that it's "the same dark money donors who bankroll the lawsuits themselves, the same networks that support Sher Edling LLP, which he called out throughout the hearing as "driving" such lawsuits. 

"This is not how a a constitutional republic functions. Courts are not supposed to be laboratories for political activism, and judges are not supposed to be trained by the plaintiff's bar that is receiving their funding from the Chinese Communist Party!" Cruz further stressed. "What we are witnessing is judicial capture driven by ideology powered by money and tolerated by far too many. This three pronged strategy, foreign funding, mass litigation and judicial indoctrination is a full spectrum assault on American energy independence, and while China drills and digs, we sue and shut down."

As he called on Ranking Member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Cruz also went after his Democratic colleagues on the subcommittee for how they fail to see the severity of the situation by failing to mention "Communist China funneling millions of dollars to pay for these lawsuits," which he called "miraculous." Whitehouse actually made it worse on himself and his party, by reminding that he had referred to Cruz's concerns as "conspiracy theories."

Cruz pushed back against Whitehouse, though, by pointing out that "what is most certainly not a conspiracy theory is that the agenda of the Chinese Communist Party and the agenda of the Senate Democrats are identical." In stressing such a point, he also pointed out that "both China and the Democrats want to bankrupt the energy industry... want to destroy jobs in America... and increase the price you pay for electricity every month, and they want to increase the price you pay for putting gas in your car every week."

"That is the agenda of today's Democrat Party, that is the agenda of Communist China, and today's Democrats are not remotely embarrassed to have their left-wing groups funded by Communist China, the world's biggest polluter, because China's interest is weakening and hurting America!" Cruz said to drive the point home. It makes you ask why an American political party would have that interest as well."

As Whitehouse responded by claiming "saying it more loudly doesn't make it more true," Cruz quipped that "actually, in Washington, sometimes it does."

In some of the more amusing moments towards the end of the hearing, Cruz and Whitehouse got into it over one of the witnesses' answers, specifically those from David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen's Climate Program. As Whitehouse asked if Cruz would allow Arkush to speak, Cruz reminded Whitehouse that the ranking member could do whatever he wished with his own time. 

"It's your time," Cruz reminded him, as Whitehouse then went on to interrupt Cruz, the very behavior that he had just called out Cruz for supposedly doing. As Cruz corrected Whitehouse by pointing out that he and Arkush had been speaking at the end of his own time, he also offered that "you are welcome to sing, you can conduct poetry in iambic pentameter, you can blow a kazoo, you can do whatever you wish!"