The New Yorker:

The Day One executive orders call for more drilling—something that, really, nobody wants.

By Bill McKibben

The misuse of power under Donald Trump is to be taken for granted. Monday’s list of executive actions on behalf of the fossil-fuel industry was entirely expected—this time around, there is no hesitation about withdrawing from the Paris climate accord (a decision that took four months in his first term), nor about opening up new lands for drilling, nor about rolling back regulations that have encouraged the production of electric cars. In fact, consider them all promises kept—in April of 2024, in a closed-door meeting soon uncovered by the pre-traumatized Washington Post, Trump laid out the terms to industry leaders:

You all are wealthy enough, he said, that you should raise $1 billion to return me to the White House. At the dinner, he vowed to immediately reverse dozens of President Biden’s environmental rules and policies and stop new ones from being enacted, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private conversation.

Giving $1 billion would be a “deal,” Trump said, because of the taxation and regulation they would avoid thanks to him, according to the people.

The executives responded. A fracking king named Harold Hamm (who had originally supported Ron DeSantis in the primaries) took the lead, working the phones assiduously. “Harold can just stick his finger in the ground, and oil will come up,” an admiring Trump explained at one event. But in this case he stuck his finger in his phone and what came up was money. The Post again: “Hamm is working ‘incredibly hard to raise as much money as he can from the energy sector,’ said a Trump campaign aide. ‘We’ve gotten max-out checks from people we’ve never gotten a dollar from before.’ ”

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