Dear John,

Nothing about this year has been normal -- including our climate. From severe droughts up and down the West Coast that gave way to unprecedented wildfires, to a record-breaking hurricane season with more named storms than ever before in the Gulf Coast, climate chaos’ continued acceleration has cost lives, destroyed jobs, leveled towns, and made it even harder to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

The truth is that the American people, including Oregonians in every corner of our state, are demanding action. They’re worried about what more catastrophic wildfires will mean for their businesses and families. They’re concerned about the impacts of ocean acidification on our fisheries and coastal economies. And they’re nervous about how critical water supply challenges will be met in the coming years.

Oregonians deserve bold, decisive solutions to address each of those problems. But if we’re truly going to tackle this climate crisis, we need to understand the barriers to progress behind the scenes -- including a plot to remake our courts with hundreds of extremist judges -- that are working to block those urgently needed solutions.

That’s why last month, I teamed up with Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) to lead the release of an extensive report that details how our judicial system has been captured by a shady network of powerful megapolluters who have created a pipeline to place over 200 partisan extremist judges on our nation’s courts. These judges have been hand-picked because they’re young and inexperienced, and lots of them -- including the recently confirmed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett -- have outwardly expressed troubling views on science, climate change, and whether human activity is responsible for it.

In our We the People government, the people deserve a government that responds to their concerns -- and puts those concerns above the bottom lines of fossil fuel executives, the powerful, and the privileged. I’m going to keep doing all that I can to pull back the curtain to expose the special interests standing in the way, so we can put the power back in the hands of Americans and solve the climate crisis.

All my best,
Jeff