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Flanked by Donald Trump in the Oval Office this week, Elon Musk claimed his much-vaunted, but ill-defined, “department of government efficiency” (Doge) was providing “maximum transparency” on its blitz through the federal government.
Its official website was empty, however – until Wednesday, when it added elements including data from a controversial rightwing thinktank recently sued by a climate scientist.
New elements include Doge’s feed from X, Musk’s social network, and a blank section for savings identified by the agency, promised to be updated “no later than” Valentine’s Day.
At the top of the website’s regulations page, Doge used data published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a libertarian thinktank that claims to fight “climate alarmism”.
The CEI’s “unconstitutionality index”, which it started in 2003, compares regulations or rules introduced by government agencies with laws enacted by Congress.
The CEI claims to fight “climate alarmism”, and has long worked to block climate-focused policies, successfully lobbying against the ratification of the international climate treaty the Kyoto protocol in 1997, as well as the enactment of the 2009 Waxman-Markey bill, which aimed to place a cap on greenhouse gas emissions.
The thinktank ran ads to counter Al Gore’s 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, claiming in one ad: “The Antarctic ice sheet is getting thicker, not thinner … Why are they trying to scare us?” In a second ad, the thinktank said carbon dioxide was “essential to life”, adding: “They call it pollution. We call it life.” The campaign incited pushback from a scientist who said their research was misrepresented in the ads.
During Trump’s first term, the organization also successfully pushed him to pull the US from the 2015 Paris climate treaty. Today, it regularly publishes arguments against the mandatory disclosure of climate-related financial risks and increased efficiency regulations on appliances.
Last January, the CEI lost a lawsuit filed against it by the climate scientist Dr Michael Mann for $1m in punitive damages.
The thinktank has extensive ties to the far-right network formed by the fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch and his late brother David. In 2020, the network provided some $900,000 to CEI, public records show – a number that is likely an underestimate, as it does not include “dark money” contributions which need not be disclosed. CEI also accepted more than $640,000 from the Koch network between 1997 and 2015.
Its other donors have included the nation’s top oil and gas lobbying group, American Petroleum Institute, and the fossil fuel giant Exxon. The thinktank is also an associate member of ultraconservative State Policy Network, which has also received funding from Koch-linked groups and whose members have fought to pass punitive anti-pipeline protest laws.
The White House and CEI were contacted for comment.
