State environmental regulators can require large livestock farms to obtain permits that seek to prevent manure spills and protect state waters, a state appeals court has ruled.
Last year, a Calumet County judge ruled in favor of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources in a case challenging the agency’s authority to require permits for concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs. Those farms have at least 1,000 animal units or the equivalent of 700 milking cows.
In 2023, the WMC Litigation Center sued the DNR on behalf of the Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and Venture Dairy Cooperative. They argued that agency rules that require CAFO permits and regulate stormwater runoff from farms can’t be legally enforced because they’re inconsistent with state and federal law.
In a decision Wednesday, a three-judge panel upheld the lower court’s decision.
“Because we conclude the two challenged rules do not conflict with state statutes and do not exceed the DNR’s statutory authority, we affirm the circuit court’s order granting summary judgment in favor of the DNR,” the panel wrote.
A DNR spokesperson said it’s reviewing the decision and unable to comment further at this time.
An attorney for farm groups had argued the DNR can’t go beyond federal requirements under state law, adding that state and federal laws exempt farms from regulation of their stormwater runoff.
Federal appeals court rulings in 2005 and 2011 found the Clean Water Act doesn’t allow the Environmental Protection Agency to require CAFOs to get wastewater discharge permits until they actually release waste into waterways. The three-judge panel noted state permitting programs may impose more stringent requirements than the EPA’s permitting program.
In a joint statement, Wisconsin Dairy Alliance and Venture Dairy Cooperative said the decision is disappointing for Wisconsin’s ag community.
“We believe that there is no place for bad actors and that polluters should face penalties, but this case had nothing to do with weakening environmental laws. Our sole mission in challenging the DNR’s authority was to ensure that Wisconsin farmers are held to standards consistent with federal law,” the groups wrote.
“We continue to believe that a ‘presumption of guilt’ runs contrary to the very fundamentals of the American justice system. We are disappointed with today’s outcome and will continue to fight for Wisconsin farmers regardless of the size of their farm,” the groups continued.
The ruling affects the state’s 344 CAFOs. Under permits, large farms must take steps to prevent manure spills and runoff that include developing response plans, nutrient management plans and restricting manure spreading when there’s high risk of runoff from storms.
Midwest Environmental Advocates is among environmental groups that intervened in the case. They said the legal challenge could have severely limited the DNR’s ability to protect state waters from manure pollution, noting CAFOs can house thousands of cows that produce more waste than small cities.
Adam Voskuil, an MEA attorney, said the ruling affirms environmental regulations.
“We’re continuing to protect water resources in the state, and (it’s) a prevention of rolling back really important, necessary regulations,” Voskuil said.
Without them, Voskuil said the DNR would be responsible for proving whether each individual CAFO has discharged pollutants to surface water or groundwater. He said it’s likely the agency wouldn’t have the resources to do that work, meaning many farms wouldn’t be permitted or taking required steps to prevent pollution.
Darin Von Ruden, president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, said there has to be oversight of any industry.
“There needs to be some kind of authority that can call out the bad actors and make sure our water supply is safe,” Von Ruden said.
The Wisconsin Department of Justice has been defending DNR in the case. Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has previously said the state should be strengthening protections for state waterways, not weakening them.
Manure has been linked to nitrate contamination of private wells. Nitrate contamination can lead to blue-baby syndrome, thyroid disease and colon cancer. Around 90 percent of nitrate in groundwater can be traced back to agriculture.
The lawsuit is not the first to challenge DNR’s authority to require permits for CAFOs. In 2017, the Dairy Business Association sued the agency in part over its permit requirements, dropping that claim as part of a settlement with the DNR. Large farms have also challenged the agency’s authority to impose permit conditions on their operations. In 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled the DNR had authority to impose permit requirements on large farms to protect water quality.
This story was originally published by WPR.
Wisconsin DNR can require CAFO permits to protect water, appeals court rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
In welcoming you behind the scenes of our reporting, we’ve shared plenty about how our newsroom operates — from how we’re covering Washington’s disruption to how your tips shape our coverage of everything from rural homelessness to the return of measles.
Today I want to discuss something more fundamental: Out of the infinite stories we could report at a given time, how do we decide which to pursue with our finite resources?
This requires us to evaluate whether a potential story would fit within our mission and deliver impact for residents. How we do that is something we’re constantly refining.
Our mission is to make the communities of Wisconsin strong, informed and connected through our journalism. Our intended impact: that people use our reporting to navigate their lives, be seen and heard, hold power to account and come together in community and civic life.
Before green-lighting a story, we consider its potential impact. If we can’t identify any, it’s likely not worth pursuing — at least not yet. We ask where the idea originated (bonus points for ideas directly from the public) or whether other newsrooms have covered this topic. Recognizing that we want to fill gaps rather than re-report the news, we consider whether the story will add knowledge and understanding to previous reporting — and whether our story would elevate different perspectives.
Another question: Why is it important to tell this story now, as opposed to other stories?
We’ve formalized this process, which begins with a pitch form that reporters fill out and discuss with their editor. The process has sparked productive conversations about how we can best serve the public. In some cases, we’ve decided an idea doesn’t fit. In other cases, the process has persuaded a skeptical editor that a story is worthwhile.
If you have questions about why we have — or have not — reported a particular story, feel free to reach out. I’m at jmalewitz@wisconsinwatch.org.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
What makes a Wisconsin Watch story? Mission and impact matter is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Editor’s note: This story was corrected to reflect that the 12 assistant district attorney positions are existing positions funded by expiring federal funding, not new positions.
A provision in the recently passed state budget that diverts $2.2 million annually from schools to fund 12 Milwaukee County prosecutors may violate the Wisconsin Constitution, that had been paid for with federal funding set to expire.
The budget act redirects all traffic fines and forfeiture revenues in Milwaukee County to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office to fund 12 new assistant district attorney positions.
But under Article 10, Section 2, of Wisconsin’s constitution, all “clear proceeds” from traffic fines are required to go to the Common School Fund.
A statute later established the “clear proceeds” at 50% of total revenue, while counties could retain the other 50% to reimburse the cost of prosecuting traffic violations or seizing and managing forfeitures.
In a 1973 Wisconsin Supreme Court case, the court granted limited power to the Legislature to define “clear proceeds.” In doing so, the decision said counties couldn’t keep so large a percentage of fine and forfeiture revenue that “the sum left for the school fund is merely nominal.” It also ruled that a county can only use these funds to reimburse for the prosecution of the fines and forfeitures.
By giving all revenue to the Milwaukee County DA, the new law, part of the biennial budget, contradicts the Supreme Court’s decision that all “clear proceeds” — or net profits — from forfeitures and fines be directed to the Common School Fund.
Established in 1848 under the state constitution, the Common School Fund is used by public schools to purchase school library books and instructional materials and may be the only source of library funding for some counties. The Office of the Board of Commissioners of Public Lands (BCPL) manages the fund.
In two recent BCPL meetings, board members discussed how the amendment appears to contradict the Supreme Court decision — raising the prospect of litigation, according to meeting minutes.
“This provision appears to directly violate the 1973 Wisconsin Supreme Court opinion regarding Article 10 of the Constitution,” Tom German, board executive secretary of BCPL, said during an Aug. 19 meeting. “That opinion expressly limited the Legislature’s authority to define clear proceeds in order to prevent only a nominal amount of fines and forfeitures going to the school fund. Zero is less than nominal.”
The provision is projected to reduce revenue directed to the fund by $2.2 million annually. Wisconsin’s remaining 71 counties are still required to direct 50% of revenue from fines and forfeitures to the Common School Fund. A report from April 2025 estimated the 2024-25 library aid to be $8.3 million for more than 130,000 pupils in Milwaukee County.
The Milwaukee County DA’s office has about 120 ADAs and 160 support staff. The provision allows the county to maintain 12 ADA positions, which German says also violates the Supreme Court opinion.
The Legislature’s budget committee added the provision during the last executive session of this budget cycle under a “miscellaneous items” section of the motion as part of a budget deal with Gov. Tony Evers.
Before the provision was proposed and passed by the committee late in the budget process, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau did not publish budget papers to explain the redirection of revenue from fines and forfeitures, as it often would for other budget proposals that come before the Joint Finance Committee during normal budget deliberations.
“The DPI will work with our partners in state government and professional organizations to ensure the Common School Funds — which are critical to student learning — continue,” a DPI spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch in response to the funding change.
In the last BCPL meeting, German said he informed the Wisconsin Legislative Council — the nonpartisan state agency in charge of providing legal and policy analysis — of this violation, and the council is currently investigating the provision.
The Legislative Council declined to comment. Evers’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
A Milwaukee County spokesperson said the funding for the 12 assistant district attorneys was a “bipartisan solution” to an “urgent need” to address court backlogs in the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office.
“Without this funding, Milwaukee County will lose a dozen assistant district attorney positions, which will significantly increase court backlogs that will impact public safety efforts now and in the future,” the county spokesperson said in an unsigned email.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
Wisconsin’s budget shifts money from schools to Milwaukee prosecutors. That may violate the state constitution. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
Ascension Wisconsin will not move forward with a controversial plan to outsource some of its intensive care unit doctors.
The post Ascension Wisconsin cancels controversial physician outsourcing plan appeared first on WPR.
Officials are monitoring the health of a nearby creek after millions of gallons of sewage spilled from a cracked pipe in south Madison.
The post Millions of gallons of raw sewage spilled from busted pipe in Madison appeared first on WPR.
UW police are actively investigating the source of the false report.
The post UW-Madison part of a wave of active shooter hoaxes across US appeared first on WPR.
Although the 988 “press 3” option has ended, the lifeline itself is still operational and available for LGBTQ+ youth to call.
The post Wisconsin LGBTQ+ mental health resources face funding challenges appeared first on WPR.
Gov. Tony Evers formally requested a presidential disaster declaration from President Donald Trump Wednesday, seeking federal help for flooding damage in six Wisconsin counties.
The post Gov. Tony Evers requests presidential disaster declaration for Wisconsin flooding appeared first on WPR.
A Wisconsin appeals court has ruled that state environmental regulators can require large livestock farms to obtain permits that seek to prevent manure spills and protect state waters.
The post DNR can require CAFO permits to protect water, appeals court rules appeared first on WPR.
This week I talk with Dan Stein, whose organization Giving Green seeks to align climate philanthropy with the principles of effective altruism. But what does "effective" mean in the face of fossil fuel autocracy? We discuss the difficulties of measuring systems change and debate the limits of technocratic solutions.
(PDF transcript)
(Active transcript)
David Roberts
All right, hello, everyone. This is Volts for August 27, 2025, "Climate philanthropy in a time of Trump." I'm your host, David Roberts. Over the last five years or so, there have been numerous articles about effective altruism and similar efforts to make philanthropic giving more impactful and empirically grounded. Many of those pieces mention a group called Giving Green, which seeks to apply effective altruism principles to climate philanthropy.
Each year, it issues a list of recommendations for climate philanthropic giving, boosting groups from the Clean Air Task Force to (Volts guest) Industrious Labs, garnering coverage in Vox, The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Heatmap. To date, the organization claims, its research has directly influenced $32 million in donations to its chosen nonprofits, from donors of every size.
It seems to me that Trump's election — and the ugly, bullying, lawless version of public life we have experienced in its wake — casts the cool rationalism of effective altruism in a rather different light. Or at least I have questions.
To get answers, I have with me today Dan Stein, the founder and executive director of Giving Green. Stein holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and is also chief economist at IDinsight, the global research and advisory firm that incubated Giving Green. I am excited to talk with him today about how to do good with your money in this topsy-turvy world we all live in.
With no further ado, Dan Stein, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Dan Stein
Thanks, Dave. I'm happy to be here.
David Roberts
So I have all kinds of questions and some things I kind of want to push you on or yell at you about, even though it's probably for things you're not responsible for. But before that, let's just rewind a bit and just tell us a little bit about what is Giving Green and what is the flaw or gap in climate philanthropy that you were intending to address by founding it? What was the need that you were addressing?
Dan Stein
Yeah, sure. So Giving Green is a climate research and advocacy organization that helps organizations and individuals make more informed, evidence-based decisions about donating to and supporting climate action to achieve the most marginal cost per dollar.
David Roberts
Have you memorized that entire tagline? You sound like you've said that 400 times.
Dan Stein
I do this every day, Dave.
David Roberts
So you help people give money to environmental causes?
Dan Stein
Exactly. Specifically climate mitigation. And you know, the thing that we saw when I was starting Giving Green — so I've been working in effective philanthropy for quite a while, doing research, trying to help donors figure out how to give money to places that are evidence-backed and cost-effective. And what I saw was I felt like there were more and more donors looking to move into the climate space. And by donors we mean big philanthropies, but also regular rich people or just mom and pop donors who were feeling more and more inspired by climate — and this is about five or six years ago when we were getting started — we heard more and more, "I want to do something about climate. I don't know where to start. I'm overwhelmed."
And a lot of people would look to donate and just kind of get paralyzed by indecision and bombarded with all kinds of weird stuff about offsetting your emissions and end up doing nothing or doing stuff that didn't seem that effective. So we felt that there was a kind of gap in the marketplace for well-researched, thought-out, systematic research and recommendations on what are really the big philanthropic levers that people can pull and some very actionable steps on how to do that.
David Roberts
So you are responding to a confusion you saw. And so what does Giving Green aspire to do? Tell us sort of the like two-minute elevator pitch for what you do for a donor. I mean, you help them donate to groups that are making a difference. But what does that look like in practice?
Dan Stein
We hope to provide a really clear, transparent, and well-researched guide and recommendations to donors looking to slow warming. So we have a step-by-step process that is laid out in detail, step by step, on our website. So starting at focusing on philanthropic strategies that we think are really impactful and then moving down to actual organizations that we think have really outsized impact. And we hope that somebody can come to our website or read some writing about us and just say like, "Hey, you know, I really want to make a difference. I want my donation to be high leverage. Here's some places I can give." Another thing that we do that's been really growing over the past couple years is a regranting fund, so people can give to us and then we can allocate it based on our research and our principles.
David Roberts
I see people who've looked into effective altruism are familiar with the sort of three criteria, sort of the three famous criteria: urgency, tractability, and neglectedness. Is that roughly your framework?
Dan Stein
We frame things a little bit differently, but it's really not far off. We call it scale, feasibility, and room for funding. So, you know, we're very focused on climate mitigation. So scale means if you're going to do something — like, I don't know, protect a certain piece of the rainforest or try to invent fusion technology — the question is "How much greenhouse gas emissions could be avoided or removed if this thing was successful?" So the scale of the problem — we want to work on big systems, changing world-changing problems. And feasibility is a question about whether we think it's something that philanthropy can really make progress with.
Is there a viable theory of change or is this something that is a) really practically impossible or b) private sector or government are going to be a lot better suited to work on? And then c) is there room for more funding? And we're looking for things that have potentially not caught the eye of the really big donors in the space, where we think there might be extra leverage from working on problems that are a little bit overlooked or a little bit more difficult. And where we can, we can find our niche as somewhat newer, medium-sized climate donors.
David Roberts
So this is a good frame, I think, for people to understand why you give to some groups and not others. Because there are groups that you might say, are addressing a very important problem that's been neglected but have no practical strategy, or they have a practical strategy and it's a problem that's been neglected, but the problem is not that important climate-wise. So these are sort of the — this all has to come together for you to feel like you can be more effective. Could you maybe walk us through, like, a group that you have sort of like selected and assessed and maybe just briefly talk about, like, why you picked that one, how you use these criteria to pick an individual group just to give us a little bit more concrete sense of what it looks like to walk through this?
Dan Stein
Yeah, totally. So how we get to the group is we start at a level that's called a strategy. So there's actually a spreadsheet on our website that anyone can look up that lists something like 50 strategies that we have considered. And a strategy could be like working on a certain technology like geothermal energy, or it could be funding activists to go throw paint at pictures in the Louvre. Kind of a wide variety of things that people might be interested in working on and kind of put them through the wringer of this scale, feasibility, and funding framework until some of them pop to the top.
And currently we have eight strategies that we're excited about, and then within those we go into six sub-strategies. So I'll walk you through one that I think is maybe a little interesting, a little bit different — well, maybe not for your readers. So food and agriculture is obviously this large contribution to emissions and is particularly neglected in the policy sphere. We see all kinds of incentives for clean energy, clean transportation, but there are very few laws on emissions for agriculture. It's a big political issue. Nobody wants to touch it. I'm sure you well know. So we think this is this big issue that just no one is really working on.
And specifically within agriculture, livestock is, you know, this big emission source that's not at all on track for emissions reductions. And then so we basically have a report like, how would you reduce livestock emissions? There's all kinds of things you can do. We can look at different sub-strategies. But for us, the thing that really floats to the surface is thinking about how to decrease demand for meat through better technologies, alternative proteins. Right? It seems to me the only way you're going to really bend the curve of having tons and tons of cows everywhere belching out methane and clearing the forest for cows is to decrease the demand for meat.
And the only way you're going to decrease the demand for meat that feels realistic in my mind is by replacing it with some new technology that's just as good, but doesn't need cows. So we kind of go down that funnel and say, like, "Okay, well, we need to support changes in our food system through alternative proteins." And then start looking at, well, what organizations are doing great work there. And one of our top recommendations is the Good Food Institute. That's kind of the marquee name in the nonprofit space promoting alternative proteins.
David Roberts
Well, let me ask you a little bit about effective altruism, because I think, as you know, effective altruism has become kind of a buzzword lately and has become extremely controversial lately, and it's gotten enmeshed in all kinds of discourses. And I'm sort of wondering, like, how, just as almost a branding question, I'm just sort of curious, like, how closely do you associate yourself with that term? Like, do you view Giving Green as effective altruism? Like, are you squarely in that camp or do you hold it at arm's length? Or like, sort of, how are you feeling about the larger effective altruism world right now?
Dan Stein
Yeah, I mean, we're not really squarely in that camp because climate is just not really a cause that is interesting to most people in that community.
David Roberts
Which is puzzling to me, let me just say.
Dan Stein
Yeah, it is puzzling to me as well. I mean, we consider ourselves an effective giving organization that's trying to use evidence to get people to give to impactful causes. And obviously, there's overlap with that and the principles of effective altruism. I mean, the problem is you have a word like this, and it's become a buzzword that means a lot of different things to different people. The things that I like about the effective altruism movement that I believe are the core values are that people should be using their time and money to make the world a better place, and they should be thinking systematically about how to use that time and money in ways that really have outsized impact.
And if that's effective altruism, then I'm on board.
David Roberts
Right. Well, this is kind of what I want to — I mean, I find this is true of many sort of, like, controversial ideas, is that if you poke and prod a little bit, you find a kind of obviously true version and then a sort of, like, extreme version that gets attention, but that is obviously false and a lot of conflation of the two. So, in a sense, like, you should give money to make the world a better place. Yes, obviously. And if you're going to do that, you should try to have the most effect you can have.
Yes, obviously.
Dan Stein
I'm into both those things, duh.
David Roberts
But the notion, I guess I think where a lot of people bump up against it is this idea that we're going to take, like, this godlike view of all eternity and create this giant mathematical formula which will yield a sort of objective ranking of things by impact. And I know that, like, surely you've been involved in climate long enough to know that, like, we don't know enough to — you know what I mean — we don't know enough to do that. Like, those rankings—I mean, that's what sort of bugs me a little bit is this notion that you can get a bunch of smart dudes in a room and just through the power of thinking, they can figure out what's going to work and what isn't.
Do you know what I mean?
Dan Stein
Yeah. Well, first of all, we're not just a bunch of dudes.
David Roberts
Another way you're different from the larger effective altruism world.
Dan Stein
I mean, I completely agree with you, Dave. Like, we're not omniscient. We don't have some sort of monopoly on the truth. But I do think that our core audience is people who are passionate about climate and maybe know a little bit about it, but have not spent their time getting into the weeds. And so you don't need a perfect mathematical formula and all-seeing into the future and having all of the probabilities lined up to make major progress on this problem of making recommendations and provide a lot of value to people who are not experts in the climate field.
So I don't think there is something ridiculously special about our approach that's, say, more mathematical and more logically true than the approach of many other climate philanthropists. I think one way that we have deviated from some of the more, let's say, core effective altruism approaches is really embracing a combination of quantitative and qualitative research. We have some numbers like "What is the scale of the problem?" And sometimes we'll build little models of "What is the chance we think that this bill will pass? And if this bill passes, what did Jesse Jenkins think the emissions reductions will be?"
And back out some math. But that's just one tool in the toolset, because even these models are filled with tons of uncertainty. And then we have to combine that with lots of qualitative data from just talking to people. What do people think will happen? What's the theory of change? Do we think the theory of change is viable?
David Roberts
That all makes sense to me. You're just sort of selling "We did some thinking about this. We looked into this a little bit." You're not selling it like "We figured out the right answer."
Dan Stein
I think we're too humble for that. I would say what we've done is really thought systematically about this problem, looked into it a lot, and come up with what we think are some very compelling and viable approaches that we think are high impact. I would never say, "We figured it out. We found the perfect things. Everything that's not on our list is crap." But I think we've made progress on the problem that can help a lot of people. Just as another analogy of what I would say is that I think that within professional foundations, you have people doing a lot of the same type of thinking.
They're coming up with frameworks, they're trying to figure out where their money can be best used. A combination of their comparative advantage and the highest leverage points are. The thing is, it's all behind closed doors and inaccessible to the public. And so I actually think that one thing that we do, like what's more valuable than having a super incredibly unique approach or having all the answers that no one else has, is just really extreme transparency and being able to open up those steps and that knowledge to a far wider audience.
David Roberts
Yeah. And one thing I will concede, and I think that anybody who's been in this space for a long time, who's being honest, should concede, is that the pre-2019 baseline is there's just a lot of sloppy thinking, a lot of big claims, a lot of money flying around without a ton of due diligence. Like, there was need for some rigor in this space. I'll just say that. So let's get more into the stuff that I have a beef with.
Dan Stein
Oh, gosh, that wasn't it already?
David Roberts
No, I mean, all of that makes perfect sense. And you know, I think a lot of people, when you say the words "effective altruism" these days, you get a lot of people who come with a lot of assumptions about what that means and the attitude of the people involved, et cetera, et cetera. I just wanted to sort of establish that you guys are just trying to work these things out, very transparent about what you're doing, not claiming to be the eye of God, just trying to be helpful. And the other thing is, and I don't know that people just coming to this new really get this.
It's not — to my mind anyway — your primary service is not someone who's going to donate money, donates here rather than there. It's, as you say, a lot of people sort of vaguely want to give money and just don't know where to give at all and just probably wouldn't have given at all without some sort of guide, you know what I mean? I think this does uncork donations that otherwise wouldn't have found their way here. So that's all to the good. So last year you were talking to Rob Meyer at Heatmap, and he made a point to you.
He said this list of Giving Green donees' choices has evolved over the years. He said when it first started, there was sort of an even mix of what you might call civic activism groups like, say, the Sunrise Movement and then your sort of technocratic expert data and analysis type of groups like the Clean Air Task Force. And he made the point that over the years the list has shifted a little bit and some of that civic activism has dropped off and the technocratic expertise has sort of taken over more. And your response was, "Well, our recommendations change as politics change. And back then we were in a big election, trying to get Dems elected, trying to get them to pass a bill, et cetera, needing civic activism. Now we're elected, we've got the bill done, now we need implementation, which is for the technocratic analysis crew." Which made sense at the time. Now, of course, fast forward half a year from then and politics has changed again, to say the very, very least. So my question to you is, just like you responded to political changes before, how do you anticipate responding to these, I would say, extreme political changes of recent times?
Dan Stein
Yes, certainly the landscape has changed dramatically over the past half a year, and we as philanthropists are needing to react to this change. In fact, we have a new strategy coming out in the next couple of months that's going to precisely talk about this. You know, like, what can philanthropists do specifically at the US federal level? Like, what options are available? But I think a little bit of a step back is that we and a lot of other philanthropists had to make this choice in the Trump era, where there's clearly a huge amount of headwinds of getting any climate policy done.
Climate advocates are on their heels. And so there's a question, "Is it a time to just kind of exit from US federal policy?" I think you see a lot of the groups that we work with moving to work at the state level or local level. Also, one option is to just do a lot of work outside of the US where there seems to be more avenues for progress. And what we've done is taken a multi-pronged approach. So first of all, even before the Trump election, Giving Green was moving to be much more international, looking at making grants in LMICs (Low- and Middle-Income Countries) and in Europe.
And we're going to be ramping up that work. Ultimately, this is a global problem, with emissions coming from all over the world. And I think it makes sense for people in philanthropy to be working on these problems in other places, especially at a time when progress seems kind of on hold in the US.
David Roberts
This is kind of one of the critiques of effective altruism: if you really take it seriously, like in the climate space, you would just be sending all your money to like Vietnam or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't mess with America at all if you're really doing the math.
Dan Stein
Well, I'm not sure about that actually. You know, besides being a large economy, America is also a trendsetter in the world and just a major innovator in technology. So I think that there are certain places where the US has comparative advantage to make progress for the global system. I think even regardless of US politics, an optimal climate strategy would probably have some work in the US because of the unique role it plays. But also, yeah, be looking at places, you know, at poorer countries where you might have more bang for your buck. I do think it's complicated though, because — for instance, you mentioned Vietnam.
But like, is there a way for a US-based philanthropist to activate civil society to change the government's mind in Vietnam? Like, we've looked into it, for instance.
David Roberts
It's almost like you need to give to a Giving Green in Vietnam. That could then give the money to the effective — you know, it's almost like you need a Giving Green for each country.
Dan Stein
Yeah, yeah, you could. And in fact, we've worked with local groups trying to do similar things, but just this question of like philanthropic giving to nonprofits, is that like a lever for change in all countries? You know, we've looked at China, for instance, and it just doesn't appear to be. And I think Vietnam goes in that. But anyway, I think your point is still made that there's — like your money can go further in certain countries. Like maybe India is a better example. We actually did make a bunch of grants last year where there is an active civil society, foreigners can make grants to at least pieces of it.
That's obviously a huge emitter.
David Roberts
To be clear, that's not what I'm advocating for. I'm just saying, like, if you're doing this sort of, like, pure, you know, left-brain carbon math, that's where it would lead you.
Dan Stein
Maybe.
David Roberts
So okay, you go outside the US some — outside the US, that's one response.
Dan Stein
Right. Our other response is to stick with US federal policy and both see where there are avenues for defense and maybe ease in some progress in bipartisan ways. So our upcoming strategy will have three pillars. One is clean firm power, which seems to be a place where — so we have previously funded in nuclear and geothermal, and both of those technologies seem to be at least relatively favored by the current administration. So there may be ways to push those forward in the next few years. The next one is reducing barriers to energy deployment. So things like permitting, interconnection queues, where hopefully reducing barriers would help clean energy in a disproportionate way.
And then the third is on innovation, which is a long-time bipartisan issue. Probably if you asked the modal Republican 20 years ago what their climate policy would be, it would be innovation. But these days, clean energy innovation is also a little bit under attack. And we think it could be supported.
David Roberts
Well, by innovation they meant "Something, something 20 years from now." And then, like, the innovation happened and they're like, "Hey, hey, whoa!"
Dan Stein
Yeah. Well, I mean, I would say that certain pieces of the US federal government have been successful engines of innovation, like ARPA-E and the Loans Program Office.
David Roberts
Yeah, the LPO is kicking ass.
Dan Stein
I know. And so it's a little frustrating that these things are under attack, but we think that there is support for these programs on both sides of the aisle that can be rallied.
David Roberts
Okay, well, all of those make some sense to me, but also there are some omissions that I would like to press on.
Dan Stein
Let's talk about it.
David Roberts
I'll save the big one for last. But the one is, what about state-level action? Like a lot of people are looking around where progress is still possible. And they're looking, and they're seeing, you know, PUCs, state legislators, city councils, a lot of places where change is still happening, still possible. Why not shift to a state and local based, or at least shift resources toward state and locals? Why continue to bash your head against the federal?
Dan Stein
I mean, that's fair. And a lot of the nonprofits that we have supported and will continue to support are going to do that, and we support those efforts. I think the reason that it hasn't been a super high priority is a couple reasons. I mean, first, we're resource constrained and trying to figure out, you know, the PUC in all 50 states and who are the best groups — you know, the best group in Idaho to come sit in the PUC meetings is maybe a little bit beyond the pale for us. But the second is that a big driver for us of supporting US-based work among anything you could do in the world, like I said, is these being a global leader, driving innovation, exporting technology, and so much of that happens from the federal level and can't really be created at the state level. It's not completely true. You do have some of the larger states doing innovation in both the technology side and the policy side, but largely these things have been federal efforts.
David Roberts
Well, and you could also argue that the only thing that ever gets through on a federal level is things that have been built up and leveraged from the state level. I mean, you could, you could say that a lot of state progress was a prerequisite for federal progress.
Dan Stein
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that's a great argument.
David Roberts
Another aspect, and this came up on social media too, is one effect of shifting from kind of civic and activism groups to more sort of analytical technocratic groups — one side effect of that is that — I guess to put it bluntly: more of your money is going to white people and less is going to climate justice groups. And, you know, groups doing that work tend to be more civic, tend to be more ground level, et cetera. How do you think about that larger subject?
Dan Stein
Yeah, I mean, I think for us really we do have this pretty targeted focus on mitigation and trying to figure out what are the groups that are going to be the most effective in the mitigation fight and looking at that wherever it leads. I do think that when you look at our portfolio, a lot of the groups that we support have diverse staff, work on equity issues, especially when you consider grants made outside of the US and India and Korea, et cetera. So I don't think that accusation is completely accurate. That being said, you know, I do think there is something here that you marked on before, which is like: is it a time now where the technocrats are making less progress to be thinking more about grassroots action that would set up the technocrats?
David Roberts
I'm nudging in that direction, Dan. You're seeing where I'm heading.
Dan Stein
Yeah, I think the thing that I would say is like, my eyes are wide open for this, and we don't have any type of position on whether insider technocrats are better or worse than outsider activists. In fact, when we did research on this a few years ago, we came to the conclusion that both were super important and we wanted to support both types of groups. And we still believe this. But you're right that our portfolio has shifted a little bit, I think partially because we've just gotten more excited about the progress potential of certain groups who are working in certain ways.
I don't think that's going to be true forever. We've got our eyes open for groups that we think can cause social and policy change, working on all kinds of different levers, and are totally open to supporting more grassroots efforts if exciting opportunities come our way.
David Roberts
On a similar theme, let me just put this to you. It seems to me, looking back at the last year, when I'm thinking about what is the most—just whether you measure in terms of literal tons of carbon, whether you're measuring in terms of policy, whether you're having even more sort of vaguer measures of political economy, however you choose to measure it, it seems to me like the highest leverage thing that anyone could have done in the past year for climate would have been to prevent Donald Trump from being elected. You can't argue that, right?
Dan Stein
It seems probably true.
David Roberts
Preventing Trump from being elected would have prevented virtually all the things that we're fighting against now that are spiraling out into millions of different fights. And, like, you know, we could have just contained that, not started it all in the first place. So then my question is, if effective altruists are serious about their math — I think that fact was clearly visible before the election. Like, even before the election, if you wanted to do the maximum good for the climate, by far the best thing you could have done was prevent Trump from being elected. So why doesn't the sort of logic and the math of effective altruism lead to that?
Why didn't you devote all your resources to preventing Trump from being elected?
Dan Stein
All right, a couple reasons, Dave. The first is we are legally prevented from doing so. We are a US 501(c)(3), and we cannot engage in political activities.
David Roberts
Oh, that. But doesn't that in itself, like — I mean, this gets at it. Like, isn't that itself putting the lie to the idea that this is some sort of objective measurement of results? Because if you want the big results, you do politics, right? I mean, isn't that — where am I wrong?
Dan Stein
I don't think you're wrong. Maybe I should kind of like reel back and say, like, within the realm of activities allowed by nonprofits, we're looking for the best. And the truth is, that's where, like, a lot of the money that we are trying to influence is sitting, right? A lot of this money sits in DAFs (Donor-Advised Funds) or philanthropies, and it's just constrained. And then the other problem with this argument is, like, was there a way to do anything? There was so much money deployed. I mean, how much money did Bill Gates give in the waning days of the election?
Like, 50 million. And we at that time were giving out a couple million. Like, could we have done anything even if we were unconstrained? Like, I don't disagree with you that that was such a big fork in the road and that, you know, if someone could have changed that outcome, it would have made more difference than anything else.
David Roberts
But I really think they should have, frankly, and I'm not afraid to say so.
Dan Stein
Like, even outside of the legal stuff, like, was there something feasible that, say, climate philanthropists could have done? Maybe, like, this is a good philosophical argument. It felt hard at the time. You know, it was like a war with a million people on each side. And you're thinking about adding, like, one extra infantryman.
David Roberts
Yes. I will just say, though, that I feel like a lot of the people on our side were not trying as hard as they might have. They had other points they wanted to make, other axes they wanted to grind. Everybody thought it was somebody else's job to get the actual — anyway, I won't belabor that point, but let me just broaden that out a little bit. So I wrote a post for Vox a few years ago, one of my favorite posts I ever wrote, one of my personal favorites. And it just was basically making the point: "I've been in this game now for, like, 15 years. I looked around. I want good clean energy and climate policy passed. So I look around. When does that happen? Where does that happen? And over the last 15 years, I've noticed a very, very, very clear pattern. In fact, I can offer you, reader, one simple trick to get great climate and clean energy policy passed. And it's called electing enough Democrats that they can act without Republican opposition."
It drives me mad that this is a plain, demonstrable, empirical fact. And I documented it at some length in this post. Like, you can almost not find exceptions. Basically, any time in the last 20 years, anything good has happened for climate and clean energy — I'm exaggerating a little bit.
I know there have been some congressional deals on nuclear power, whatever edge cases, but by and large, the Democrats want to move in the right direction on this, and Republicans want to move in the wrong direction. So again, like, maybe you couldn't have prevented Trump from getting elected, but just boosting the electoral fortunes of the Democratic Party would have the effect of getting more climate and clean energy policy passed in more places. That also seems inarguable to me. So again, like, you're not political, but does that not seem like the main axis of difference to me?
Do you know what I mean?
Dan Stein
Well, yeah, there's certainly a lot right about what you said. Like I said, we are constrained in doing politics. There's another way to look at it. And I guess I sort of feel like as people focused on climate, that the swings back and forth in electoral politics of the US almost seem like forces beyond much control.
David Roberts
They do seem like animal spirits, don't they?
Dan Stein
And so I totally understand what you're saying. Maybe this is the most important thing, and maybe we could influence, but maybe we couldn't. You know, the other way to try and think about it is to try to think about how to integrate climate more into the mainstream such that it is less of a majorly political swing issue.
David Roberts
Yeah, but that, I mean, that has been precisely what the climate movement has been trying and trying and trying to do for like 30 years now to no — I mean, to me that's demonstrably a failure. You can make a place for conservatives at the table, you can invite them, you can put out a little name card, but if they don't show up, they don't show up. You know what I mean? Like, and they haven't shown up. So like the bipartisan route, I mean, part of what triggered me is seeing that you're now like, as a response to the election, giving money to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
I'm just like, those guys, what have they ever — like, they don't offend anybody, but have they ever moved anybody? Have they ever gotten anything done? You know what I mean? Like this bipartisanship, where does it go? What does it produce?
Dan Stein
I think they have, I mean, it's small victories, right? It's not the wave of climate policy that we saw in the Democratic trifecta, but it's small backroom deals on ensuring that the Loans Program Office is funded, on the Office of Geothermal Demonstrations.
David Roberts
Yeah, I guess that just feels like such a rearguard, such a modest rearguard action to me, I guess. Let me just phrase what I've been dancing around here. I saw a quote from you, you know, you say there's like the swings in American politics. I saw a quote from you earlier. You said, you know, "These are long transitions. I'm more sanguine because there's a few four-year period, but it's a long game." And I guess this is kind of what triggers me. It's not just you. I'm sort of using you as a stand-in here for sort of like what I see is like animal spirits loosed on the nation, something like pre-rational, pre-Enlightenment, even like pre-Christendom, something very ugly and deep loosed on our nation, running, running wild.
And I see the sort of people like me, you know, my people, the sort of educated, urban, you know, liberals who like the facts and the numbers and the arguments, sort of sanguine that in the long run reason will win and the arc of history is bending toward justice. And this is just a distraction, you know, a flailing, and we'll get back on track. And I guess just like I no longer have faith that that is what's happening.
Dan Stein
But what's the alternative? The alternative is just to like —
David Roberts
I don't know.
Dan Stein
somehow change politics so that the left always wins? I mean, you know the problem.
David Roberts
Well, at least like win more! This is the thing: of all the responses I'm hearing to Trump getting elected, the thinking I'm hearing is, "Well, where does this still leave a little bit of room? And let's try to maneuver within that room." But what I'm not hearing is "Fascists are taking over. We need to fight the fascists!" You know, not like, figure out what can still be squeezed out of the system that fascists are in charge of or how to like, work with the fascists on marginal policy advances. But how to fight and beat fascism?
Like, I don't hear anybody going to that. Like, do you know what I'm saying? Like, everybody seems to have faith that the sort of arc of history thing is working in liberals. It seems to me an open possibility at least that we're off on a different branch of history. And then we're in crisis and it's emergency and it's just time to fight. Not like negotiate, but fight.
Dan Stein
I see that, but I guess I just don't really see — I mean, we're far off the path of like climate philanthropy. But I guess I'm just not really sure I see this like, path to long-term victory on the left. Like, you see what is happening right now with just some of the policies of the current administration seem just purely vindictive. It's like, "We hate the left. The left loves wind. So down with wind." Like stuff where it just scratches your head. It's just like a personal affront.
David Roberts
Well, "Superman being nice to people, libs like that. We have to hate it."
Dan Stein
But I would say that, like, there's this downside of the, like, burn it all down, let's fight strategy, which is that then if you lose, everything is gone.
David Roberts
Well, I mean, what, the fascists are going to take over, they're going to kidnap people off the streets, they're going to open, you know, concentration camps, they're going to take over colleges, they're going to invade US cities with federal troops. Like, what is the —? They're doing the thing. The thing is already happening, you know what I mean? It's already falling apart.
Dan Stein
The thing that I mean is just kind of like undoing all of the climate policies of the previous administration. So then the left fights, the left wins, they redo all the policies or whatever, and then we just get like this, yo-yo. And that doesn't feel, that just doesn't feel like a productive way forward.
David Roberts
But the alternative, trying to make it a bipartisan consensus, hasn't worked either. So let me get back to climate philanthropy. You're right, we're afield. But I, this does connect back. You mentioned systems change. So you know, one of the critiques of effective altruism is by doing these sort of calculations, there's a little bit of like — you miss the big picture. And like for systems to change, large systems like law and politics, social systems, takes a long time, a lot of effort and it's not always clear which of the efforts actually worked and which didn't. You know what I mean?
It's a lot of people banging their heads on walls for a long time before something happens and no one quite knows what of all those efforts worked. So you have to, and you, you write a whole post about this. If you're going to work toward systems change, you have to loosen up a little bit. This sort of like calculating of tons, do you know what I mean? You got to take a little bit of a broader, broader look. So this gets to something I've always thought about, right versus left philanthropy. And I know you've heard this critique and I would love to hear your response, which is as follows: Seems like what the right has done — has been doing for decades now — is investing in its nonprofit think tank advocacy world in a way that is patient.
They just offer these groups money. They don't say, "You have to achieve X, Y, and Z by X date." They just fund them and they say, "Go fight for our cause." You know, the Heritage Foundation, on and on and on there's all these groups. And so what the right has built is not so much individual groups working on individual goals as an infrastructure. They have a large infrastructure in place such that when new things come up, like for instance, I think about Waxman-Markey, when the Waxman-Markey bill came up, the left had to spin up like this whole new infrastructure to explain to people what the hell a trading system is.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. On the right, they just called it a tax, and all the machinery swung into action. Do you know what I mean? It was all there. It was all built already. It just needed to be aimed in a different direction. And that's the thing. When you have infrastructure in place, when each new — especially in these unpredictable times when it's so difficult to know what the issues are even going to be or who's going to do what or what's going to happen, it's good to have infrastructure in place that can be adapted and aimed toward each new issue as it arises.
The complaint on the left, and I know you've heard this from donees, from recipients of philanthropic money, is that on the left, there's a lot more nickel and diming. There's a lot more, "Here's a provisional grant for one year, and you have to fill out, you know, reports every three months, you know, quantifying your progress towards X goal, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera." It prevents these groups from sort of building over time and establishing themselves as infrastructure. So you get a lot of, like, poorly paid people on individual things, and then they get moved out of the movement.
So the movement never has any sort of institutional memory. It never builds up this kind of infrastructure. Basically, right philanthropy is patient and open, and left philanthropy is sort of like constantly doing these calculations and requiring reports and metrics, et cetera. So that it seems to me in an era where you have a completely unpredictable, flailing fascist on top of things and you don't even know what he might try to do, you almost by definition can't have a group in place for each individual issue. Do you know what I mean? Because you just don't know what he's going to make an issue. So you need infrastructure in place, is my point. Do you agree with that broader critique?
Dan Stein
Well, I guess I'm not really so familiar with this difference in left versus right philanthropy. I actually hadn't heard precisely that narrative before. So I don't think I'm that well qualified to talk about how things might be different on right philanthropy.
David Roberts
But you've seen — I mean you see the infrastructure they've built. You've seen all these groups, you've seen all these advocacy groups, they're just like, they're just out there, money flooding into them. Like if you're a young person on the right, you can go straight out of college into one of these groups and you will be taken care of, literally paid, fed, trained, moved through the infrastructure all the way. Do you know what I mean? And there's just — the left does not have anything like that.
Dan Stein
I certainly agree that the climate movement in particular should have strong, well-funded, long-term organizations that are constantly, you know, doing advocacy, putting out reports, reacting to policies, proposing new policies. Some of these things exist. You have the Sierra Club, you have WRI, you have Clean Air Task Force, sort of blue chips, climate orgs that are doing this, always involved. But I would agree that there does seem to be some difference between how the right has really stuck to certain messages and then jumped on opportunities when they've gotten them.
David Roberts
And when they started doing this like back in the 80s and 90s, they were completely in the wilderness, like they were completely on the outside. They had no prospect of anything concrete happening. But they didn't, you know, that didn't stop them from funding these groups in a long-term way. I guess that critique applies more to the really big money on the left. And I don't know that you are quite big money.
Dan Stein
We're medium money.
David Roberts
Medium money. You know what I mean? But I do feel like there's a little bit too much attachment on the left to project-based or mission-based or outcome-based — you know, everybody wants to be a quant, everybody wants outcome-based, but just too little, just like "Here's money, just go do things."
Dan Stein
Yeah, I mean I actually think we're more aligned with you than you maybe think about this, like, because we have this systems approach and by systems I generally mean, you know, in order to make change we need to change policy, we need to change markets, and we need to change technology. And we know these are really, really long-term difficult goals, whether it's going to be up or down. And so we're very comfortable funding organizations that have long-term goals, that have reasonable strategies to get there. And we know that there's going to be ups and downs.
That is a long-term battle. I mean, for instance, I talked about the Good Food Institute earlier. We first funded them during, let's say, the peak of the alternative protein euphoria.
David Roberts
The first hype wave.
Dan Stein
Since then there's been this terrible crash, and now everyone thinks it's worthless, and we're going to keep funding them because we still think it's important. And maybe it's a 10 or 20 year goal, but yeah, and there's going to be ups and downs. So I actually think that's kind of consistent with what you were saying. I mean, maybe that example is like too issue-focused.
David Roberts
Well, no, it's just like this is what I'm talking about. Just like have that group around for things that come up in the food space. You know what I mean? Just have lines of attack ready to go. You know, just have sort of have the advocacy and the politics ready to go rather than having to sort of spin them up on the moment over and over again. And the systems change thing, one other thing about that. So you, you talk about systems that you want to change. There's policy, of course, the rules of the road, there's technology systems which, as you say, take a long time to change.
But again, I'm reading these systems, and it seems to me like what's missing from the list is, like, you know, sociopolitical systems. Like, I come back to this again, like, if you want, it seems to me to solve climate change in the long term, biggest picture wise, the main system you need to change is you need to push people and systems in a broadly progressive direction. It seems to me that's unavoidable because you got to have global cooperation, you've got to have sacrificing today to benefit tomorrow. You've got to have, you know, all these things that are anathema to the right.
You see what the right is doing when they get in charge, they want to put up walls, they want to dig all the fossil fuels out. That is the reactionary approach. So changing public sentiment in a broadly progressive direction seems to me this is like, this is what I don't see anybody saying as a response to what's happened is like, that seems to me the most important fight, albeit the most fuzzy one, the most difficult to really measure progress on, the most difficult one to know how to engage with. I acknowledge all that. The big one. Do you not agree with that?
Dan Stein
Well, I guess I just think using this umbrella term as broadly progressive is just not quite the one I would use. I would agree with you that one important facet of system change is the broad belief of the populace and that we would like the broad populace to care about the future and coordinate with other countries and be able to work on really hard, long-term problems together, and for that matter believe that we have a problem with the climate. I just think there are multiple ways to get there. And I think that, like, working completely through progressive systems and progressive language and then just kind of building the power and having that take over the population might not be as realistic as trying to make some of these ideals a bit more widespread among people of slightly different political stripes.
I mean, it wasn't that long ago that the right was totally fine with international coordination and long-term thinking.
David Roberts
I don't know about that, Dan. They've been — I mean they rejected Kyoto, they've been rejecting international agreements as long as I've been alive. They signed on to one or two. But like this is the thing, people looking for actual examples of right-wing cooperation or right-wing progress on that are groping for these tendentious examples because it's very difficult to find concrete, obvious-in-front-of-you examples of this happening. I know we're not going to resolve this here, but this is like when I, what I see on the right is they're like, "We want to win."
That's the vibe I get from the right, "We want to win." Not "We want to come to a peaceful state of cooperation with our opponents. We want to win." And I just like, I can't get anyone on the left to say, "I want the left to win." And it just sort of baffles me why. Like why we refuse to take our own side. Like, you believe in the values of cooperation and pluralism and egalitarianism and like lifting up the weakest and breaking up concentrations of power. Like you believe in those values, don't you? Then why don't you want them to triumph? Why don't you want to drive your enemies before you and hear the lamentations of their women, etc.
Dan Stein
Like, I want the values to triumph. I don't want —
David Roberts
Why are there no fighting liberals?
Dan Stein
I don't want there to be a civil war to, like — you don't, you don't spread values through war.
David Roberts
No, but you have to fight for your values if you want them to triumph. I mean, what does it tell the average citizen about the depth of our conviction and our beliefs if we're just like constantly passive and constantly backing down. And like in the reaction to Trump getting elected, a bunch of climate philanthropists saying, "Oh well, I guess we better move out of the climate space." I mean, that's like case in point, their first instinct is not "Hand me my halberd, I want to go destroy and kill these people." Their first instinct is like, "Welp, better sneak off to another area where nobody will yell at me."
You know what? You know what I'm saying, Dan? I'm just ranting at this point, but.
Dan Stein
Yeah, I did not understand it either. I share your frustration on that one.
David Roberts
Yeah. I just want people to fight, I guess is the — I want people who believe in like decency and goodness and kindness and fairness to fight with the same passion that assholes fight. And I just don't see it. But anyway, I don't know, I'm making you the representative of this entire tendency, so I could yell at you, but that's the card you drew. So we're out of time here. Thank you for coming on. By way of concluding, maybe just tell people what they can do and what you're involved in right now. Like, what's next for Giving Green?
Dan Stein
Yeah. So Giving Green is in the midst of our deep yearly research cycle. We're going to be releasing a bunch of new reports on how we think donors can affect global emissions in the short and long term. Some new reports on shipping, aviation, and clean energy in the US are going to be coming out with a big release in October. And for people who are inspired by our work, you can feel free to give to our recommended organizations, to give through us, through our fund, or always to reach out to us to chat a little bit more about the research, about the recommendations, about where money might be best allocated, about why Dave is right about everything and I'm wrong and you want to fight me about it. I'm happy to have those conversations.
David Roberts
You say you start with strategies and work backward to groups. And I know that you've probably had the experience and are probably having it now of at least some places finding strategies which you think are important and not finding a group doing it.
Dan Stein
Yeah.
David Roberts
And so in a sense calling for the creation of a group. Have you sort of like called a group into existence yet with this strategy? Maybe you don't want to claim ownership of a group.
Dan Stein
We've been very early, early donors to groups. I don't know if we have incepted a group from zero, but I think you're right, Dave, that like we do see some strategies that we think are potentially really impactful and haven't seen maybe not any groups or groups that we think have really compelling strategies. And one of these things is really effective grassroots organizations that are building power, be it among youth or whatever constituencies, and then really having political power. You know, back when we recommended Sunrise a few years ago, we thought they really distinguished themselves in the field by building power and then using it, and we've struggled to find similar organizations.
David Roberts
Yeah, that's fair. Well, that's a good place to end on the call for more and better grassroots fighters. Fight and they will fund. There you go. All right. Well, Dan, thanks so much. Sorry for treating you as a representative of all of liberalism.
Dan Stein
That's fine. You know, we don't come on podcasts to have little softball conversations. It's fun to get into it.
David Roberts
Yes, it'll be amusing to my listeners that the one person I actually yell at is the person who's literally coordinating philanthropic donations to climate organizations. Okay, well, thank you for your work, Dan, and keep at it. And I'll be keeping track.
Dan Stein
Appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me on.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to Volts. It takes a village to make this podcast work. Shout out, especially, to my super producer, Kyle McDonald, who makes me and my guests sound smart every week. And it is all supported entirely by listeners like you. So, if you value conversations like this, please consider joining our community of paid subscribers at volts.wtf. Or, leaving a nice review, or telling a friend about Volts. Or all three. Thanks so much, and I'll see you next time.
Warren City Schools in Ohio kicked off the new academic year with a spirited community celebration at Courthouse Square. While the atmosphere was upbeat, school officials took the opportunity to address a pressing challenge facing the district; a shortage of school bus drivers, reported WKBN 27.
“Our goal is to have a lot of positive energy and to kick school off in a very positive light,” said Superintendent Steve Chiaro via the article, who praised the strong turnout and community support.
But behind the celebration lies a logistical concern. John Lacy, executive director of business operations for Warren City Schools, stated the district is “barely covering routes” and urgently needs more drivers to avoid double routes and delays.
To attract applicants, the district showcased a school bus during the event and shared details about the position. Bus drivers in Warren earn approximately $24 an hour, receive full benefits, and work year-round, not just during the school year. The district also fully covers the cost of CDL training for new drivers.
“We’re doing everything we can to recruit,” said Lacy via the article. “People are often surprised at how good the pay and benefits are.”
The district said it remains hopeful that community outreach and incentives will help ease the shortage. In the meantime, Superintendent Chiaro reportedly emphasized the importance of community involvement in supporting student success.
“Because we can’t do it alone,” Chiaro said. “We need every aspect of assistance in helping our kids along the way.”
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The post Ohio School District Celebrates New School Year, Highlights Urgent Need for Bus Drivers appeared first on School Transportation News.
TransAct Communications has officially rebranded to Pathwise, unveiling a new name, visual identity and website that the company said signals a renewed focus on simplifying K–12 school operations.
While the brand’s visual identity has changed, the company remains under the same leadership and ownership, as does its core mission to reduce the administrative burden on school staff so educators can stay focused on student success through transportation logistics, governance, compliance, and out-of-school time programs. Pathwise will continue to serve school districts, charter organizations and state departments of education across the country with no disruption to its services or leadership.
“This rebrand reflects who we’ve become a trusted partner with deep education roots and a clear focus on helping schools run more smoothly so educators can focus on students,” said Nate Brogan, CEO of Pathwise, via a press release.
The rebrand comes on the heels of significant growth. Since partnering with Polaris Growth Fund in 2020, the company said it has quadrupled its revenue and made major investments in leadership, product innovation and customer experience. Dan Lombard, managing partner at Polaris, noted in a statement that the rebranding was a natural step toward aligning the company’s public identity with its expanded impact and long-term goals.
The name Pathwise was chosen to convey more than just progress. The company said t represents guidance, purpose and partnership and positions the company not just as a vendor but as a trusted advisor to help schools manage the unseen but essential operations that keep learning on track.
Pathwise launched a redesigned website that it said refined its messaging to better communicate the value it brings to K–12 education.
The company serves over 3,000 school districts and charter organizations, as well as more than 25 state departments of education.
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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell administers the oath of office to Lisa Cook to serve as a member of the Board of Governors at the Federal Reserve System during a ceremony at the William McChesney Martin Jr. Building of the Federal Reserve May 23, 2022, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook will challenge her removal, her attorney said Tuesday, arguing President Donald Trump “has no authority” to fire her.
Trump announced late Monday that he would fire Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board, over allegations that she falsified documents to obtain a favorable mortgage rate. She has not been charged with a crime.
Cook has consistently voted not to lower interest rates, rejecting requests Trump has made of the independent central banking board.
Cook’s attorney, Abbe David Lowell of Lowell & Associates, said in a statement to States Newsroom that she would sue to block the firing. Former president Joe Biden appointed Cook in 2022. Her term ends in 2038.
“President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” Lowell said. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis.”
Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, referred Cook’s mortgage application to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution. Pulte has made similar accusations against political enemies of the president.
Pulte has accused New York Attorney General Letitia James, who investigated Trump’s business dealings and won a finding of fraud in state court, and California U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff, who led the investigation into Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, of mortgage fraud.
Trump posted a letter on social media, arguing that the allegations of Cook’s mortgage fraud had called “into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator.”
He said the Federal Reserve Act gave him the authority to dismiss a governor for gross misconduct.
The president defended his decision to dismiss Cook to reporters during a more-than-three-hour Cabinet meeting.
“We need people that are 100% on board,” Trump said, adding that he’s already considering someone else for the job.
Cook is not the only Federal Reserve Board member Trump has trained his criticism on. He has long gone after Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell for not lowering interest rates.
Trump has pushed for lower interest rates to boost the economy, but rates have remained lower amid concerns that the president’s tariffs will produce price hikes.
“I think we have to have lower interest rates,” Trump said Tuesday.
The dismissal has drawn outrage from economists and Democrats, including the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, Yvette D. Clarke of New York.
“President Trump is attempting to oust Dr. Lisa Cook — the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board — with no credible evidence of wrongdoing,” she said in a statement.
“Let’s be clear: this is a racist, misogynistic, and unlawful attack on the integrity and independence of the Federal Reserve,” Clarke said. “It is a dangerous attempt to politicize and exert control over the central bank — one that will only continue to damage the economy, harm hardworking Americans, and undermine our credibility on the world stage.”
Heather Boushey, a top economist under the Biden administration, said in a statement that Trump’s move to fire Cook undermines the independence of the Federal Reserve.
“It is clear from his actions that he does not believe he is bound by rule of law, but can — and will — intimidate experts to bend to his own ends,” Boushey said.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a late Monday statement that any attempt to fire Cook “shreds the independence of the Fed and puts every American’s savings and mortgage at risk.”
“This brazen power grab must be stopped by the courts before Trump does permanent damage to national, state, and local economies,” Schumer said. “And if the economy comes crashing down, if families lose their savings and Main Street pays the price, Donald Trump will own every ounce of the wreckage and devastation families feel.”
The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Richard Neal of Massachusetts, slammed the president, calling Cook’s firing unlawful.
“President Trump’s illegal removal of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook is (an) economic assault,” Neal said in a statement. “Instead of taking responsibility for his own economic failures, he’s manufacturing a villain to blame. As seen around the world, politicizing the central bank means rampant inflation, higher mortgage rates, unstable retirement accounts, and more uncertainty for the people. All of which will threaten the financial security of every American.”
A sign acknowledging Stewardship program support at Firemen's Park in Verona. (Henry Redman | Wisconsin Examiner)
Democrats in the Wisconsin state Legislature released their proposal for saving the broadly popular Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program from lapsing next year. The bill marks the latest step in a legislative effort to save the conservation program — a goal for which members of both political parties have expressed optimism.
The stewardship grant program through the Department of Natural Resources allows the state to fund the purchase and maintenance of public lands. Created 35 years ago, the program is supported by a large swathe of Wisconsin voters, but a subset of Republicans in the Legislature have grown increasingly hostile to its continuation.
Those Republicans argue the burden of land conservation falls largely on their rural districts in northern Wisconsin, which has the most land available for recreational purposes but the state purchasing that land takes it off the property tax rolls.
Republicans have also complained that the program lacks legislative oversight since the state Supreme Court ruled in a 6-1 decision last year that the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee doesn’t have the authority to hold up projects through the program.
Sen. Mary Felzkowski (R-Tomahawk), one of the program’s strongest critics, has suggested she’d support re-authorizing the program if it included provisions that capped the amount of government-owned land in a county or allowed counties to sell off existing conservation land.
Without action, the program will end next summer. In his initial budget proposal, Gov. Tony Evers had asked for the program to be provided $100 million per year for 10 years. The version of the budget signed into law in July did not include the program’s re-authorization.
Another bill authored by Republican Rep. Tony Kurtz (R-Wonewoc) and Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) would re-authorize the program for six years at $28 million per year. To gain the support of the Republicans who want more oversight of the program, the bill would require that any land acquisitions that cost more than $1 million be approved by the full Legislature.
Tuesday’s proposal from Democrats would re-authorize the program for six years at $72 million per year. The bill would also create an independent board with oversight authority over the program.
The 17-member board would include members of the majority and minority in both chambers of the Legislature; two representatives from environmental organizations; two representatives of hunting, fishing or trapping interests; two DNR representatives, including one member from the Natural Resources Board; one representative from the Department of Tourism; one representative of the outdoor recreation industry; one representative from the Ice Age Trail Alliance; a representative of a federally recognized Native American tribe in the state; one local government representative and two members of the public. Members of the board would serve staggered three-year terms.
Under the bill, the board would meet at least quarterly and have the authority to advise the DNR on all projects through the program. On projects involving grants of more than $2.5 million, the board would have full approval authority. If the board doesn’t meet to vote on a project within 120 days, it would be automatically approved.
The Democratic proposal has been co-sponsored by all 60 Democrats in the Assembly and Senate, signaling the broad support for the bill among the Democratic caucuses.
Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) tells the Wisconsin Examiner that the proposal involves a lot of thoughtful effort from Democrats trying to make a “good faith” effort to answer Republican concerns about oversight over the program while getting it re-authorized.
“Our intent in introducing these companion bills in the Senate and the Assembly was premised on a great deal of thought and seriousness,” she says. “That we have the expectation that Republican legislators will take it seriously, because, like us, they have been hearing from their constituents and constituents from across the state. This is an issue that people in Wisconsin 90% approve and they want action, and they want legislators to demonstrate that they can work together and lead with our shared values to get something done.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for Kurtz said his intention remains working to find a bipartisan solution to re-authorizing the program.
“It’s always been our intention to find a bipartisan path forward to ensuring the Stewardship Program’s future,” the spokesperson said. “We haven’t reviewed their proposal yet, but look forward to continued discussions on this important issue this fall.”
Charles Carlin, the director of strategic initiatives at the non-profit land trust organization Gathering Waters, says the fate of the program is now up to Republican leaders and their ability to compromise. Carlin points out that it’s clear there aren’t 17 Republican votes in the Senate to support reauthorization.
“As far as anybody can tell, there’s not 17 Republican senators that are going to vote to reauthorize Knowles-Nelson,” he says. “If they were to choose that strategy of trying to do this with only Republican votes, my fear and expectation is the bill would wind up becoming so weighed down with poison pills and anti-conservation measures, it would wind up not being a workable proposal. On the other hand if leaders in the Senate were willing to say ‘OK, this can be a bipartisan exercise, nobody’s going to get quite what they want,’ I think we’re going to see there are 15 Democratic senators eager to find a solution and we could get a decent bill passed with pretty overwhelming support from both parties.”
Carlin says he sees the Democrats’ oversight board idea as a good way to avoid the Joint Finance Committee “veto fiasco” that previously held up projects through the program while allowing the board to make “smart, educated and informed decisions” separate from the political games of the legislative process.
However in recent years under Wisconsin’s divided government, legislative proposals have been met with hopes for bipartisan compromise only to end in partisan bickering. Last session, a proposal to get $125 million out the door to clean up PFAS contamination across the state died after initial optimism after Democrats and Republicans couldn’t agree on the bill’s language.
“That’s a real concern. Where we had the most heartburn and worry coming out of the state budget, this Legislature does not have a good track record of getting things done,” Carlin says. “Even though there were promises made that legislators would come back to work and get Knowles-Nelson done, there’s not a lot of precedent for legislators working together. There are folks on the Republican Senate side who are simply not going to work in good faith to get this done.”
He says Felzkowski’s ideas on the subject are “not serious proposals” but that there are 10 or 12 Republicans in the Senate who value conservation and understand how important it is to the state’s voters.
“If they really engage with the Democrats’ proposal and find middle ground, we can find that success without too much heartache,” he says. “We do know that everybody’s constituents want to see this get done.”
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The Hubert H. Humphrey Building, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, D.C., as seen on Nov. 23, 2023. (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s administration demanded Tuesday that dozens of states remove from sex education materials any references to a person’s gender departing from their sex assigned at birth, or lose federal funding.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families warned in letters to 40 states, the District of Columbia and several territories that they could lose a total of $81.3 million in remaining federal funds for the Personal Responsibility Education Program, or PREP, if they do not get rid of these references within 60 days.
The policy appears to target any reference to transgender or nonbinary people. For example, in a letter to an adolescent health program specialist at Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services, the federal agency asked that a definition of transgender and related terms be deleted from school curricula.
In a statement shared with States Newsroom, Laurel Powell, a spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy organization, said the move was part of Trump’s “all-out fight to erase government recognition of transgender people.”
“Sexual education programs, at their best, are age-appropriate, fact-based and informative at a time when young people need this information to keep themselves healthy,” Powell said. “When they do not acknowledge the existence of trans people they fail in their goal to inform, and cutting this funding denies young people the information they need to make safe, healthy, and informed decisions about their own bodies.”
PREP focuses on preventing teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, and targets youth who are experiencing homelessness or in foster care, or reside in rural areas or places with high rates of teen birth, according to the agency.
The states that HHS sent letters to Tuesday are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
The demand marks the latest effort from the administration to do away with “gender ideology,” which the administration says includes “the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex.”
GLAAD, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, noted in a fact sheet that “gender ideology” is “an inaccurate term deployed by opponents to undermine and dehumanize transgender and nonbinary people.”
The letters came less than a week after the administration terminated California’s PREP grant after refusing to remove “radical gender ideology” from the education materials.
Failure to comply with this demand, the agency said, could result in the “withholding, suspension, or termination of federal PREP funding.”
“Accountability is coming,” Andrew Gradison, acting assistant secretary at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families, said in a statement.
Gradison added that the administration “will ensure that PREP reflects the intent of Congress, not the priorities of the left.”
The effort also comes as the administration continues to crack down on gender-affirming care.
Trump signed earlier executive orders that: restrict access to gender-affirming care for kids; make it the “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female;” bar openly transgender service members from the U.S. military; and ban trans women from competing on women’s sports teams.
Protesters gather outside of the Milwaukee FBI office to speak out against the arrest of Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A federal judge on Tuesday denied a motion to dismiss the criminal charges against Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan in the immigration enforcement-related case that has drawn national attention as an example of the Trump Administration’s effort to punish judges it sees as antagonistic to its increased deportation efforts.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman issued a 27-page order denying Dugan’s motion. Dugan’s attorneys had filed to dismiss the case earlier this summer, arguing that the prosecution violated judicial immunity and represented extreme federal overreach into the operations of the state court system.
Dugan was arrested in April after federal prosecutors alleged she had acted to conceal a man without legal authorization to be in the U.S. from federal agents. The man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was in Dugan’s courtroom to appear for a hearing on a misdemeanor battery charge against him when agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI came to the courtroom to arrest him. The agents were in possession of an administrative warrant signed by an ICE official, rather than a judicial warrant granted by a federal judge.
The administrative warrant did not give the agents the authority to enter private spaces in the courthouse.
Dugan directed Flores-Ruiz and his attorney out a side door of the courtroom, which led them to the same hallway where the agents were standing but not directly past them. An agent rode down in the elevator with Flores-Ruiz and he was later arrested on the street. Dugan has been charged with a felony and a misdemeanor for allegedly trying to help Flores-Ruiz evade arrest.
Adelman’s decision Tuesday is an important step toward Dugan’s case moving to a trial. In his order, he cited the report of U.S. Magistrate Judge Nancy Joseph several times. Joseph had recommended that the motion to dismiss not be granted.
“There is no basis for granting immunity simply because some of the allegations in the indictment describe conduct that could be considered ‘part of a judge’s job,’” Adelman wrote. “As the magistrate judge noted, the same is true in the bribery prosecutions, concededly valid, where the judges were prosecuted for performing official acts intertwined with bribery.”
Adelman gave Dugan’s attorneys until Sept. 3 to appeal his order. If the order is appealed, Dugan’s trial likely wouldn’t occur until 2026. However if there isn’t an appeal, a trial could take place much sooner.
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