News and social media, schools and universities, search engines, activists, foundations, Democrat-socialist legislators, and “renewable” energy companies have built a powerful, multi-trillion-dollar climate-industrial complex.
Civilization and planet, they claim, face an urgent climate crisis that only one thing can prevent: killing fossil fuels and replacing them with “clean” energy that is anything but clean, renewable or sustainable. Its real goal is more money and more control over our lives, living standards, and personal freedoms.
The Trump administration and the Republican Congress have slashed wind and solar subsidies and blocked the complex’s wholesale takeover of our energy, economic, and political system. But its proponents never rest. Too much money is on the line for them.
Now they have launched a clever, deceitful operation that most people probably don’t even know about. It is a real threat to our democratic system.
Their Invest in Tomorrow Coalition political action committee brags that it helped defeat Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) in his bid to become Texas attorney general and “avenge his relentless push for ending renewable energy tax incentives.”
That’s the whole game, right there. Without endless billions in subsidies, the wind, solar, and backup-battery industries collapse. They know it.
Coalition supporters have reportedly pledged at least $15 million ahead of the 2026 midterms. Their message to elected officials is blunt: Act against the industry, and a couple million dollars will enter your race to fund your next opponent.
It wasn’t just Roy. He and the House Freedom Caucus inserted sunsetting provisions for wind and solar tax credits into the Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025. According to Aligned Climate Capital CEO Peter Davidson, the whole “demonization of the industry,” and language about the “Green New Scam,” came straight from the caucus. PAC members aren’t letting that slide.
They intend to punish opponents and reward allies — not just on tax credits and subsidies, but also on their desired gutting of environmental standards for industrial-scale “renewable” installations that blanket millions of acres and shred wildlife.
They have launched billboards and ads warning lawmakers “Don’t Mess with Solar.” They may spend millions in Republican primaries to make an example of somebody.
Its biggest donor so far is billionaire cryptocurrency company co-founder Chris Larsen. However, wind, solar, “clean” power, and “sustainable” energy companies, trade associations, and investment firms are also involved. One potential supporter said, “We have to put our money where our mouth is,” in state as well as federal elections.
The RAIR Foundation USA pulled back the curtain on another Larsen operation: the $60-million Clean Break Fund, led by former Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. Clean Break also targeted Roy. A podcast recorded at an “elite climate gathering” caught Larsen and Brune bragging about their “coordinated” and “subversive” campaign of spending, deception, and infiltration — aimed at manipulating Republican voters and punishing conservatives who resist the climate and renewable agenda.
Larsen boasted that he employs “the same bare-knuckle playbook” as the AI industry’s super PAC. Clean Break identifies “enemies,” wages “political warfare,” and poses as grassroots MAGA supporters to deceive conservative voters into defeating their own representatives, especially Republicans who resist massive climate spending.
One devious ad attacked Roy for insufficient loyalty to President Trump, despite his solid conservative record and his authorship of the SAVE America Act. They’re following the playbook of a previous green campaign to lure Evangelical Christians into the climate cause using something called “creation care.” That one blew up after our organization and others exposed the ad’s sponsors as major abortion advocates. Every one of these campaigns tries to rebrand climate and renewable schemes as conservative and free market.
For now, the organizations are playing a waiting game — fighting Trump and Republicans on every front until his term ends, and betting that their climate industrial complex can go back to receiving subsidies and come roaring back afterward.
That is why they are already warning Big Tech and other firms backing coal, gas, or small nuclear plants — or even just remaining neutral on their subsidies — to step up and play ball, or else they will be next on the hit list.
Don’t underestimate this threat. As the Capital Research Center has revealed, these tax-exempt lobbying, lawfare and pressure groups have boatloads of money, courtesy of the Hewlett Foundation, Packard Foundation, various Rockefeller funds, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the MacArthur, Ford, Tides, and Charles Stewart Mott foundations, and many others. Their money may have come from capitalist enterprises but make no mistake: They are anti-free-enterprise and anti-fossil-fuel to their core.
Their ultimate intent is to turn America into the Europe we are watching crumble, the world leader in overregulation, with its high taxes, high energy prices, and diminishing freedoms, all sold as virtue. We cannot let that happen.
This article originally appeared in The Hill