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** Trump administration nixed funding for California offshore wind terminal after request from a climate denial group ([link removed])
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By Dave Anderson on September 4, 2025

The Committee for Constructive Tomorrow signed onto a letter ([link removed]) in June that urged President Trump’s Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to rescind nearly $427 million in federal funding for a Humboldt Bay marine terminal that would serve as a hub for offshore wind development in California.

A Department of Transportation
press release ([link removed]) touted Duffy’s cancellation of the Humboldt Bay funding last week as part of a broader cut of $679 million in funding for what it called “12 doomed offshore wind projects across America.”

Craig Rucker, the President of the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), signed onto the June letter to Duffy. He was joined by David Wojiick, a senior advisor to CFACT, who wrote a blog post ([link removed]) for CFACT promoting the letter.

CFACT said that the letter was also sent to the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and the Department of Energy in a press release ([link removed]) from June.


** CFACT’s long record of climate change denial
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A 2024 University of Michigan study ([link removed]) identified Climate Depot, a project of CFACT, as one source of climate change denial that’s been “heavily retweeted” by Trump. Marc Morano ([link removed]) , who has run Climate Depot since 2009, is CFACT’s highest-paid employee, according to tax records ([link removed]) .

Morano has “done more than perhaps any other person to manufacture doubt about global warming,” a
2024 article in the Sierra Club’s magazine ([link removed]) said. The article also described Morano’s and CFACT’s involvement in anti-offshore wind efforts on the East Coast.

Years before the launch of Climate Depot, CFACT’s now deceased co-founder David Rothbard was listed as a contributor to a 1998 American Petroleum Institute communications plan ([link removed]) that aimed to sow doubt about climate science.

“CO2 is the ultimate plant fertilizer,” CFACT’s Director of Environmental Projects Edward Krug told ([link removed]) the Illinois Mining Institute in 1990. “Science indicates that increases in temperature, moisture, and CO2 inherent to the global warming scenario will transform the Earth into a Garden of Eden and not a den of death as we are led to believe.”

The idea that carbon dioxide emitted from burning fossil fuels is beneficial plant food and not harmful is “a common refrain from those who deny the reality of climate change or who oppose reducing greenhouse emissions,” according to FactCheck.org ([link removed]) . It’s a misleading claim that CFACT has continued to perpetuate ([link removed]) in more recent years.

“Many of the changes expected with higher atmospheric CO2 levels are frequently harmful to plants and crops, including drought and higher temperatures,” FactCheck.org ([link removed]) notes.


** CFACT has denied that it’s received fossil fuel money in recent years
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Paul Driessen, a Senior Policy Advisor for CFACT, wrote in 2020 that the group “has received no fossil fuel money for over a decade, and got only small amounts before that,” according to Desmog. ([link removed])

CFACT has received millions of dollars from “the dark money ATM of the right ([link removed]) ,” Donors Trust, which means that the ultimate source of much of CFACT’s revenue remains a mystery to the public.

The Texas-based Ken W. Davis Foundation contributed just over $140,000 to CFACT between 2010 and 2022, according to annual tax reports ([link removed]) reviewed by the Energy and Policy Institute. During that time, the foundation was helmed by brothers Ken W. Davis and T. Cullen Davis, whose family owned the Great Western Drilling Company. Bruce Brady, the current President of the Great Western Drilling Company, is listed as a contact on the foundation’s grant application form ([link removed]) .

In 2021, the right-leaning National Review Institute listed ([link removed]) CFACT among the conservative organizations supported by Karen Buchwald Wright, the then-CEO of Ariel Corporation ([link removed]) , which makes compressors for the natural gas industry.

The pro-coal Energy Policy Network ([link removed]) (EPN) contributed a total of $20,000 to CFACT between 2017 ([link removed]) and 2018 ([link removed]) . EPN received $150,000 from coal producer Cloud Peak Energy in 2017, as well as additional funding from Peabody Energy and the National Mining Association, according to an unredacted schedule of donors included in a public copy of EPN’s annual tax report ([link removed]) .

Murray Energy contributed $5,000 to CFACT in 2018 ([link removed]) . Peabody Energy contributed $50,000 to CFACT ([link removed]) in 2014 and 2015. The payments from coal companies were secret until Murray Energy and Peabody Energy disclosed them during Chapter 11 bankruptcy restructurings.

CFACT took $582,000 from ExxonMobil between 1998 and 2007, according to Desmog ([link removed]) .


** CFACT’s coordination with anti-offshore wind activists on the East and West Coasts
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The letter to Duffy ([link removed]) was also signed by anti-offshore wind activists Mandy Davis and Sal Rizzo, who are leaders in the California-based REACT Alliance and National Offshore Wind Opposition Alliance ([link removed]) .

Davis took credit for Duffy’s withdrawal of funding for the Humboldt Bay offshore wind project in a September e-newsletter for the REACT Alliance that made no mention of CFACT’s involvement. The Energy and Policy Institute reviewed a copy of the REACT Alliance newsletter.

“Starting in June, we have been in contact with 4 federal agencies (the DOT, DOI, DOE and the EPA) and the White house [sic] apprising them of the misuse of funds and asking for them to rescind the INFRA grant that had been issued,” Davis said in the newsletter. “It took a couple of detailed letters and some sheer cheek on our part, but our efforts have paid off.”

The letter to Duffy pointed to two earlier CFACT blog posts to support the claim that the Humboldt Bay offshore wind project funding was a misappropriation of federal Infrastructure for Rebuilding America, or INFRA, funds.

Other signers of the letter to Duffy included C. Michael Hogan, who is a
policy advisor ([link removed]) for the Heartland Institute ([link removed]) , another anti-offshore wind and climate denial group that’s received funding from the fossil fuel industry.

Davis, Hogan, Rizzo, and Rucker are all members of the National Offshore Wind Opposition Alliance ([link removed]) (NOOA), which includes CFACT, the REACT Alliance, and East Coast anti-offshore wind groups like Green Oceans, Protect Our Coast Long Island New York, Project Our Coast New Jersey, Save the East Coast and Protect Our Westport Waters as organizational members.

The NOOA’s charter includes ([link removed]) the following clause:

“We maintain financial independence. The alliance will not accept funding from any energy-industry source, foundation, or fund which is associated with promoting a certain type of energy use. As individual entities, we maintain freedom of choice to engage with the public as we choose.”

The right-leaning
Just the News ([link removed]) had this to say about NOOA last October:

“The National Offshore-wind Opposition Alliance refuses to take money from oil companies. So far, none have offered, but Davis said one organization, which had received money from oil companies, offered support to NOOA. The board turned down the offer.

‘It ended up being a very uncomfortable conversation for the board of directors. We had to make some very clear decisions. We’re vetting everybody,’ Davis said.”

The Energy and Policy Institute asked Davis to comment on the REACT Alliance and NOOA’s alliance with CFACT, a group with a record of fossil fuel funding.

“CFACT is a member in good standing of NOOA after being vetted by all it’s [sic] members,” Davis said in an email response. “The relationship that REACT has with CFACT is one that can be classified as this…we are both associations dedicated to ending offshore wind in our country and mutually support all actions that are consistent with those goals. Both NOOA and REACT are single issue alliances with offshore wind as our singular focus.”

In January, the NOOA organized and sponsored a series of “END IT!” protests that called on President Trump to end offshore wind development in the U.S.

“Craig and i [sic] will handle some of the NOOA national media contacts, but each group is expected to send a local press release out on their own,” Davis
said ([link removed]) in an email to Rucker and other NOOA members that was obtained by the Energy and Policy Institute via a public records request.

CFACT organized ([link removed]) one “END IT!” protest in Virginia, where CFACT is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit ([link removed]) aimed at derailing a Dominion Energy offshore wind project.

In February, Wojiick of CFACT and David Stevenson of the Caesar Rodney Institute ([link removed]) (CRI) were listed as the lead signatories on letter ([link removed]) that called for Trump’s Secretary of Interior Doug Burgum to revoke earlier authorizations for offshore wind projects that had already been approved, including four projects that were already under construction.

Stevenson “is currently leading the national effort opposing offshore wind through the American Coalition for Ocean Protection,” according to his bio on CRI’s website ([link removed]) .

After Trump signed a memorandum targeting offshore wind on his first day back in the White House in January, the State Policy Network (SPN) credited ([link removed]) the “quick work” of CRI and SPN’s Offshore Wind Working Group. SPN ([link removed]) is a 50-state network of think tanks that are frequently at the forefront of political attacks on renewable energy and funded by right-leaning donors and fossil fuel interests. CRI is a SPN member group, and received funding from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers ([link removed]) in 2019 and 2020.

The February letter to Burgum was just one of the latest examples of CFACT’s long-time coordination with anti-wind activists. In 2012, Driessen was listed as a participant ([link removed]) in a coordination meeting between anti-wind activists and representatives of national right-wing groups like the then-coal industry-backed American Tradition Institute ([link removed]) (now known as the Energy & Environment Legal Institute).


** Recent EPI articles and press:
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* Power plant water use data is hard to come by in drought-stricken Arizona ([link removed])
* Canary Media: Trump admin’s new anti-renewables rule rooted in fossil fuel misinformation ([link removed])
* Inside Climate News: Utilities Want to Regain the Ability to Build Power Plants in PJM. Consumer Advocates Say That’s Probably a Bad Idea ([link removed])

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