Oversight Hearing titled “The Profit Engine Driving Environmental Nonprofits.”

Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a recess of the subcommittee at any time. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear the testimony on the profit engine driving environmental nonprofits. Under Committee Rule 4F, any oral opening statements at the hearings are limited to the chairman and the ranking member. I therefore ask unanimous consent that all other members' statements be made in part of the hearing record if they are submitted in accordance with Committee Rule 3.0. Without objection, so ordered.

I ask unanimous consent that the following members be allowed to sit and participate in today's hearing: the gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Hageman; gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Crank; gentleman from Minnesota, Mr. Stauber; gentleman from North Carolina, Mr. McDowell; gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Bentz; gentlewoman from North Dakota, Ms. Fedorchek; gentlewoman from North Carolina, Ms. Ross; The gentleman from California, Mr. Min. Gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Tiffany. Gentleman from Arizona, Mr. Crane. Gentleman from Montana, Mr. Dowling. Gentlewoman from Minnesota, Ms. Fischbach.

Gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Rooley. And gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Beyer. Without objection, so ordered. I'll now recognize myself for our opening statement.

Good afternoon, everyone, and I want to thank our witnesses for testifying before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations this afternoon. We're here to talk about the profit engine driving environmental nonprofits, a seemingly endless pattern of litigation that results in taxpayer-funded attorney fees or settlement arguments— agreements and misleading fundraising campaigns. While many conservative-minded nonprofits valiantly work to steward America's natural resources by organizing tangible effects— efforts to improve forest health, restore habitat, increase access to the outdoors, and ensure essential multiple uses of America's public lands. Other nonprofits linked to some radical environmental groups have instead built powerful and profitable litigation machines. Although my colleagues on the other side of the aisle will likely attempt to downplay and distract from the purpose of today's hearing, We're here to shine a light on the abuses perpetrated by the extremist environmental organizations and root out taxpayer subsidies for sue-and-settle tactics.

Make no mistake about it, the evidence of radical environmentalism's abuse of taxpayers' dollars is startling. Some litigation-focused preservationist nonprofit groups claim to provide free legal services, yet more than 40% of their annual funding derives from from legal representation and advice. In other words, half their budgets are paid for by taxpayer-funded settlements and attorney fees awards. Between fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2024, federal agencies like the Department of the Interior and the Forest Service paid an estimated $24.8 million in Equal Access to Justice Act awards, with roughly 76% of that going to environmental nonprofits instead of forest management or energy development projects. Likewise, Endangered Species Act fee-shifting payments totaled more than $20.2 million over the last 5 years.

These large payouts are possible because there is little oversight of fee awards sought by nonprofit litigants. For example, some courts use the "Lodestar" method, allowing nonprofit lawyers to set their own reasonable hourly rates and billable hours. These figures are usually just rubber-stamped by the courts because they spend time Because time spent by the Department of Justice contesting fee awards is added to a nonprofit group's ultimate windfall. Worse yet, even EJ's $125-an-hour cap is frequently bypassed through a special factor exception that courts for attorneys claiming environmental expertise. Astonishingly, in some cases, courts have ruled that the expertise justifying higher payment was gained during the litigation itself.

Yet this expertise does little to protect the environment. A 2024 Breakthrough Institute study found that most NEPA-related litigation from 2013 to 2022 produced few meaningful changes to environmental reviews. Instead, these lawsuits often just served as delays and profit tools, leading to repetitive reviews that drain agency resources and enrich radical nonprofits. And parked away from our lawsuits and fundraising campaigns. To address these abuses, I introduced H.R.

2841, The Putting Trust in Transparency Act legislation, requiring any NGO receiving federal dollars to publicly disclose their major donors who help sustain the endless cycle of sue and settle.

I am heartened to know that other Republican members of Congress are also working to end fee-shifting abuse by extremist environmental groups.

And without congressional oversight and meaningful legislation reform, radical environmental nonprofit organizations will continue to use this litigation-driven model at taxpayers' expense. I look forward to today's testimony and to shining a light on these longstanding abuses. Thank you. And I'll now recognize Ranking Member Dexter for her opening statement. Thank you, Mr.

Chair, and thank you to the witnesses for being with us today. When the government breaks the law, it should be held accountable. I think we can all agree on that. Anyone should have the right to bring a lawsuit forward if they have been wronged. But the litigation is expensive, and without support, only the wealthy would have the means to fight back.

That is exactly why Congress created what are called fee-shifting laws. The principle is simp— simple. If you want to sue the government and you want— win because the government broke the law, the government pays your legal fees. This allows people from all walks of life— ranchers, veterans, tribal members, seniors, and environmental protectors— to have their day in court. The fee-shifting law we are here to talk about today, the Equal Access to Justice Act, is primarily utilized by seniors and veterans.

My Republican colleagues have called this hearing because they are concerned that individuals are abusing this law and misusing taxpayer dollars in the process. I hear that concern and agree that Congress should ensure taxpayer dollars are not wasted. But if that is the focus of this hearing, then, Mr. Chair, we cannot ignore what is happening right now, right under our noses with the Judgment Fund. The Judgment Fund was created for a specific, narrow purpose: to pay court judgments and legitimate legal settlements, settlements when the federal government loses a case brought against it.

It is permanently appropriated. It does not go through the annual congressional budget process. That means there is very little congressional oversight. These dollars were intended only to be paid out in very specific situations. This administration is exploiting this lack of oversight, and it is imperative that we speak out and put a stop to it.

The administration is stealing $2 billion from taxpayers to cancel 4 offshore wind leases. And more illegal payoffs are being negotiated right now as we speak. These are not settlements. Trump is using taxpayer dollars to kill good, renewable, clean energy projects. He is breaking the law and using brute force to get his way.

And now we know that that was just the beginning. Last week we found out that Trump, in cahoots with the DOJ, is using the judgment fund to create a new $1.8 billion slush fund to protect January 6th insurrectionists. Insurrectionists who stormed these halls, who threatened to kill our colleagues, who called for the vice president to be hung. Donald Trump has been clear that he does not care about the American people, that they can't afford their utility or gas bills, that they lack trust in the government. He is stealing taxpayer dollars to pay off his cronies and loyalists and is, is this committee's responsibility to stand up for the rule of law.

We've got to prioritize people over insider dirty politics. So while Republicans called a hearing to examine the abuse of the Equal Access to Justice Act, which again is primarily used by seniors and veterans, the Judgment Fund is openly being abused by our president. What sort of upside-down reality are my colleagues on this committee living in? Mr. Chair, I believe you to be a man of integrity and courage.

I believe my Republican colleagues must have some, some concern about the door of corruption, corruption they are holding open. This president's fraudulent use of the Judgment Fund is the most consequential and damaging abuse of taxpayer dollars happening in this country right now. And that's saying something. This committee has the obligation to demand answers. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. I yield back. Thank you, gentlewoman. The gentleman for the chairman of the full committee is now recognized, Mr. Westman, for his opening statements.

Well, thank you, Chairman Gosar, and thank you to the witnesses for being here today. You know, I would love to get to the bottom of the, the judgment fund has nothing to do with this committee because Uh, that would be maybe the, the Judiciary Committee or some other committee of jurisdiction. But I would love to know how many sue and settle lawsuits are out there that have been sealed. That, uh, I think the American taxpayers would be shocked to know how much of their hard-earned tax money has been paid to some of the litigants that have filed suits and gotten the suit settled and nobody knows how much money they've got. So I would— I think that should be a bipartisan effort to find out what all's in that judgment fund, how it's been abused.

But again, that's not this committee's jurisdiction. We're here today to talk about something that is in our jurisdiction. I know many of you have traveled from a long ways to be here. We appreciate you taking time out of your schedules to do so. Throughout the 119th Congress, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations has worked to highlight the outsized influence that some nonprofits wield over the federal government, over law and policy and public policy.

In December, the subcommittee held a hearing to discuss the Equal Access to Justice Act, or EAJA, and legislation that was originally enacted to support individuals like veterans and Social Security recipients. And small organizations facing government overreach or wrongdoing. EJA has since been usurped by environmental NGOs to reimburse their lawfare campaigns with taxpayer dollars. And though EJA reform is crucial to ending historic financial abuses, EJA is only one piece of the powerful profit engine driving some of these nonprofits. In fact, many, uh, major environmental laws today, including the Endangered Species Act, including fee shifting, or include fee shifting provisions that, as written, empower similar abuses by prominent groups already flush with cash by allowing them to recover attorneys' fees.

And I use the term recover loosely because in many cases the fees received by environmental nonprofits greatly exceed the value they place on their own attorneys doing the legal work for which they are paid. For example, in one case analyzed by Mr. Wood, who is testifying here today, An attorney who was paid less than $125,000, uh, approximately $62.50 per hour, asserted a reimbursement rate of $515 per hour, representing about 700% profit for the employing nonprofit. And because precedents in court like those in the Ninth Circuit significantly favor environmental nonprofits, exorbitant payouts like these are not rare. Given this reality, it's not surprising that many environmental nonprofits with mission statements disingenuously highlighting passions for wildlife and wild places actively steer clear of investing in on-the-ground habitat restoration projects in favor of continuing to capitalize on a lucrative business model. Sue to block federal actions in friendly courts, collect taxpayer-funded attorneys' fees and costs wherever prevailing or able to settle in court, and fundraise on the back of courtroom victories to keep this cycle going indefinitely and the coffers overflowing.

Here, sunlight is a wonderful disinfectant. During President Trump's first term, executive agencies including the Department of Interior were required to give the public notice of litigation and settlement agreements to ensure transparency. Under President Biden, those policies were revoked. Fortunately, just last week here in this hearing room, Secretary Bergam recognized the importance of ensuring transparency related to nonprofits currently funded by taxpayer dollars. Moreover, my colleagues and I here in the House of Representatives have been working tirelessly to craft legislative solutions to the abuses of taxpayer funds by extreme NGOs.

For example, in the ESA Amendments Act of 2025, we seek to reasonably rein in litigation costs to taxpayers while preserving the noble origin or original intent of ESA's fee shifting provision. Ultimately, we cannot continue to allow powerful nonprofits to unjustly profit from vexatious litigation. With every backdoor settlement agreement and disproportionate award of attorneys fees, our nation's natural resources and its taxpayer citizens are the ones that suffer. Again, I look forward to hearing the witnesses' testimony today And I yield back, Mr. Chairman. I thank the chairman for his comments.

I now recognize the ranking member for the full committee, Mr. Huffman, for his—. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I'm disappointed to hear Chair Westerman suggest that the billion-dollar buyout of TotalEnergies offshore wind lease is not a matter that this committee has jurisdiction over. He knows better. He knows that offshore wind leasing is squarely within the jurisdiction of this committee.

Everyone knows that. So, look, I understand my Republican colleagues want to continue looking away from all of this grift and corruption, from the waste of billions of dollars of taxpayer money. But they're going to have to come up with a better excuse than that that we just heard. So this, this subcommittee today is once again doing just about everything except real oversight and real investigation into the urgent issues facing the American people. They're airing a rerun, and a bad one at that.

Last December, they attacked the ability of environmental nonprofits or veterans or seniors to hold the government accountable for violating the law. And contrary to the conspiratorial spin on the other side of the aisle, statutes like the Equal Access to Justice Act work exactly as Congress designed them. When the government breaks the law and loses in court, It pays. That's the system working. But we're here once again with a slate of witnesses that includes at least one climate denier for another episode of Gilligan's Island.

Now, there's no shortage of real oversight and investigation we could be doing and should be doing. We should be talking about, uh, the fact that Secretary Burgum lit $1 billion of taxpayer money on fire by paying a French energy company, TotalEnergies, not to produce affordable clean energy. And then he routed the payment through a federal account illegally, and then finally tried to declare the deal immune from lawsuits. Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin and I opened an investigation into that arrangement, and here are the major problems that we have found so far. First, The national security justification appears to be totally fabricated and fabricated after the fact.

The Interior Department told a judge that it was first briefed about potential national security ish— uh, risks on November 26th last year. We have internal emails that we'll release today showing that the Interior Department and Total Energy were already circulating a draft agreement nearly 2 weeks before that date. D.O.I. Committed to paying Total nearly $1 billion before it had concocted its justification of a national security issue. Second, the amount paid has no basis in law.

Federal law sets a specific formula for the compensation a company can get when the government cancels an offshore lease. Secretary Burgum just ignored it. Instead, he paid out far more. Than they would likely have gotten under that formula, because he wanted a trophy for Donald Trump, who hates windmills, and the cost of that trophy simply didn't matter. Third, DOI paid Total Energy out of the Judgment Fund, a federal pot of money meant to pay Americans whose rights had been violated, not to write blank checks to fund backroom deals for Big Oil to please the president.

To unlock this payout, Secretary Bergum required Total to spend the money on fossil fuels, specifically the Rio Grande LNG export facility in Texas. That's a facility that will ship American energy abroad. It is good for countries like China, but it actually drives up our electricity bills. This is more of the America last policy. Then there's the legally laughable clause at the end of the settlement agreement.

Paragraph 18 declares no court can ever review this deal. Now, no cabinet secretary has the power to do that, to declare themselves above the law. It's just not a thing. An administration that believes it was acting lawfully would never include a clause like that in the first place. And that was just the start of the judgment fund abuse that we have seen recently.

Another billion-dollar clean energy, affordable energy crushing deal has already been inked, and now Donald Trump has apparently figured out that using this judgment fund as an unlimited line of credit for whatever the hell he wants is kind of useful. No annual cap, no congressional review, so he couldn't resist helping himself to more of it. He's now using it to pay $1.8 billion to the people who participated in the insurrection against our nation, who beat, gassed, and killed police officers and bragged about it on social media. My Republican colleagues today are upset that environmental groups sometimes win in court when the government has broken the law. But Secretary Bergum is the one breaking the law right now.

And frankly, it's time for my Republican colleagues to change the channel from this sad Gilligan's Island rerun. Let's do some real oversight for a change. I thank the gentleman. He's got his facts wrong. There was no police officers killed by the groups.

Tell that to Brian Sisnick. No, he actually died of natural causes. Oh, you've done the forensics on that? Well, what he was— we'll just leave it at that. This will be big news to his family and the whole world and anyone else who knows why Officer Sisnick died.

Shame on you for suggesting that, Mr. Chairman. No, no, no, no, no. And now I'm going to introduce our witnesses. First we have Mr. Jonathan Wood, Vice President of Law and Policy, Property and Environmental Research Center, Bozeman, Montana. Next we have Mr. Ken Braun, Managing Editor, Director of Content, Capital Resource Center, Saginaw, Michigan.

We then have Mr. Eddie Ahn, did I say that right? Executive Director, Brighttown Defense, San Francisco, California. And finally we have Mr. Lawson Feight, Natural Resources Attorney, Portland, Oregon.

Let me remind the witnesses that under committee rules, you must limit your oral statements to 5 minutes, but your entire statement will appear in the hearing record. To begin your testimony, you'll see the on button. Just make sure we can hear you. It'll turn on green. When it gets to yellow, you got to wrap it up, and then it's red, stop.

Just remember, the whole— your whole testimony will be printed. With that, I now recognize Mr. Wood for his 5 minutes. Thank you, Chairman Gosar, Ranking Member Dexter, members of the subcommittee, for the invitation to testify before for you this afternoon. I'm Jonathan Wood, an attorney and Vice President of Law and Policy for the Property Environment Research Center. PERC is a conservation group based in Bozeman, Montana, whose work is centered on the recognition that incentives matter for conservation.

Today I want to focus on how federal policy can unintentionally distort incentives and steer groups away from meaningful on-the-ground conservation toward picky, unprocedural litigation. But before I get to that, I should acknowledge that I share the ranking member's commitment. I've devoted the bulk of my career to suing the government. I firmly believe that challenging illegal government action is essential to a free society and the rule of law, and I support Congress's goal in passing the Congress— Civil Rights Act, Equal Access to Justice Act, and other fee-shifting laws that seek to remove legal costs as a barrier to citizens bringing righteous cases against the government. I'm concerned, however, that in practice, some of these laws can go beyond cost recovery to subsidize litigation, which distorts how some conservation groups, evaluate litigation versus other tools.

The subsidy can be so strong that environmental groups have chosen litigation even in the face of cheaper, more effective alternatives. In my remarks this afternoon, I'll focus on one recent example out of Oregon that exemplifies the problem. There, environmental groups declined an opportunity to permanently conserve an old-growth forest, only to spend more money litigating over an alleged permit requirement concerning that same land. The Elliott State Forest was established to fund public education, But as conflict over logging grew, the land changed from an asset for schools to a liability, losing millions per year. With few options to comply with its fiduciary obligations, Oregon put up a for sale sign.

But the state wanted the forest's old-growth trees, wildlife habitat, and recreational opportunities to be conserved for posterity. It specifically solicited bids from conservation buyers, but none came in. And a 355-acre tract of old-growth forest sold to a timber company for $787,000, or $2,000 an acre. Almost immediately, the company was sued, and litigation groups alleged that its plans to harvest timber on 50 of those acres required a federal permit under the Endangered Species Act due to the presence of marbled murrelet. To their credit, they won their lawsuit.

But the case didn't conserve the forest forever. It merely required the company to seek a permit for logging it, with no guarantee that this would produce comparable benefits for the forest or for the species. And the lawsuit came at great cost. At the conclusion of the trial phase, the group reported nearly $1.2 million in attorney's fees. From a conservation perspective, this is an outrageous result.

Who in their right mind would forgo paying $2,000 an acre to permanently conserve an old-growth forest to instead spend $24,000 an acre litigating over the plans to harvest that forest? The decision makes sense ultimately once you account for the incentives created by federal policy. If the groups had purchased the land, they would have achieved their best conservation outcome, but at significant expense. While suing led to an inferior conservation outcome, it could also generate a financial windfall. This is because the hypothetical hourly rates used to calculate attorneys' fees consistently and sometimes wildly exceed real-world litigation costs.

For instance, as Chairman Westerman mentioned, one of the attorneys on the case, according to public information, has a salary that translates to less than $70 an hour. In the organization's motion for attorney's fees, his employer reported $515 an hour as the reasonable rate for his time. For the organization, their investment in litigation translates into a 700% profit margin. You can't get that with on-the-ground conservation. This is no aberration.

It is common for the hypothetical rate used for law student interns and first-year attorneys to exceed what virtually all senior nonprofit attorneys actually make. To be clear, I'm not saying that any of these attorneys or their organizations did anything untoward. They are simply responding to the incentives created by federal policy. But I suspect Congress didn't intend this result when they authorized fee shifting. We face real conservation challenges, including a wildfire crisis fueled by an 80 million acre backlog in need of forest restoration, a huge shortfall in endangered and threatened species recovery, with the Fish and Wildlife Service reporting that it has recovered only 11 of the 300 species predicted to recover by the law's 50th anniversary.

Solving these challenges depends on having the right tools and prioritizing them. But a strong federal signal that litigation is a preferred tool, regardless of costs or conservation impact, distracts from this. Fortunately, we can fix this problem without restricting the right to sue or even taking away access to reasonable attorneys' fees. As the Benseton Ridge case shows, what we need are cost-effective market tools by which conservation groups can do conservation on the ground, and to better calibrate attorney's fees so we don't discourage groups from using them. Thanks again, and I look forward to your questions.

I thank Mr. Woods. I now recognize Mr. Braun for his 5 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. Capitol Research Center is a follow-the-money nonprofit, so today's subject is right up our alley. Some of the nonprofits I'm about to discuss have an honorable history of preserving the features and creatures that Americans love love. Examples include the creation of our greatest national parks, protection of the bald eagle, and much more. I would like to say that we need that conservation movement back.

Um, we don't have it today. In 1966, the board of the Sierra Club, one of those venerable, uh, conservation nonprofits, voted 9 to 1 to support the construction of California's Diablo Canyon nuclear power facility. This was a no-brainer. Nuclear power provides an unrivaled combination of energy safety, reliability, and abundance. It produces no greenhouse gases emissions, or any emissions really, except for water vapor.

It's easy on the earth in other ways as well. The Department of Energy reports that a typical nuclear reactor needs just a bit more than 1 square mile to operate, while getting the same energy from wind turbines requires 360 square miles. Square miles of what we should be calling the environment. But these so-called clean energy sources actually chew up far more of the environment than they need. Or than we need for energy production, anyway.

But now the Sierra Club is, quote, "unequivocally opposed," they say, "to nuclear and false claims it is uniquely dangerous." They are joined by hundreds of American NGOs with a known history of opposing the continued use of nuclear power oil, natural gas, and coal. That's 88% of all the energy that we use. In place of this, most, or not, if not all of them, support unreliable, weather-dependent, landscape-clogging wind turbines and solar panels. What this is, is an anti-energy movement that collectively rakes in an average of $9.3 million per day. Most of these, of that anti-energy money comes from philanthropists or the bureaucrats now spending their fortunes if they've passed on, but not all.

In their most recent publicly available annual IRS filings, the Environmental Defense— just 4 of them— the Environmental Defense Fund, the World Resources Institute, Grid Alternatives, and the Rocky Mountain Institute reported receiving a combined total of $31.7 million just in government grants in one year. Maybe the avowed enemies of American energy should not be receiving money from the American government that's supposed to be promoting the energy we need for prosperity. If those grants aim to answer legitimate public interests, you should probably find other grantees. Then there are those legal reimbursements, both from the government and other litigants that you were discussing. This one is trickier because, as has been said by, um, Mr. Wood and, and, uh, the ranking member, um, We need to protect the work of firms that represent plaintiffs who cannot afford to fight back against the limitless resources of the federal government.

Uh, the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Institute for Justice are public interest property rights litigators that represent homeowners and landowners in cases involving alleged government overreach. Over the most recent 5 years covered by the available IRS filings, Pacific Legal reported $2.7 million in litigation cost recoveries, equal to about 1.7% of their revenue. IJA, uh, similarly $7.2 million in legal cost recoveries over those 5 years, or 3.3% of their total revenue. Compare that to some of the anti-energy litigants. Roughly comparable in total budget to IJA and PLF, the Center for Biological Diversity hit $23.4 million in legal recoveries over those years, averaging 13.6% of their total revenue.

A smaller NGO, Advocates for the West, reported a whopping 40% of annual funding from what they call legal re— representation and advice. This does not prove, as has been said, that anyone is shopping for cases that can get them paid, but these are public interest firms. Perhaps the public deserves some additional transparency about what these settlements are. Back in 1966, when the Sierra Club was still a pro-eh— energy nonprofit, uh, philosopher Eric Hoffer wrote, "Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Have the climate NGOs become a business, become businesses that profit from opposing the energy that is built and will continue to fuel American prosperity?

A rich nation buys anything it desires. A poor nation accepts scraps. Energy abundance is the difference. We will lose those eagles, those national parks, and much else if we allow the anti-energy NGOs to become a racket. Government needs to do its part to stop subsidizing this.

We need those old pro-energy conservationists to return. Thank you again for the invitation. Thank you, Mr. Ahn. Now, Mr. Ahn, you're recognized for your 5 minutes. Chair Gosar, Ranking Member Dexter, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today and contribute to this discussion on federal settlement authority.

My name is Eddie Ahn, and I am the executive director of Brightline Defense, a nonprofit organization working on energy policy, as well as workforce and community development. I am also an attorney, and my testimony today focuses on one specific but profoundly important and integrated issue, which is the use of federal settlement authority and the Judgment Fund to enter into offshore wind lease termination agreements. This issue raises a fundamental constitutional question: whether executive settlement authority is being used in a manner consistent with Congress's Article I power over federal spending. Congress created the modern Judgment Fund in 1956 to streamline payment of legitimate legal liabilities owed by the United States. Before then, agencies often had to seek separate congressional appropriations whenever the government lost a lawsuit or entered a settlement.

The fund was intended to pay judgments and settlements efficiently while reducing delay and interest costs in the interest of the American taxpayer. Historically, the fund has then been used for recognizable legal liabilities— contract disputes, tort claims, employment cases, procurement disputes, and settlements tied to actual litigation exposure. One familiar example is the payment of attorney's fees under EJA, which we're discussing today. Those payments are typically modest and directly connected to judicial findings or active litigation. I had to double-check these numbers, but the double— Department of the Interior reported only 10 EJA payments in fiscal year 2025, totaling under $1.8 million.

That ordinary pattern of relatively modest litigation-related expenditures stands in contrast to total Judgment Fund payments attributed to Interior that same year, around 100 times larger at approximately $183 million. And then that historical pattern stands in sharp contrast to the offshore wind settlement that are being publicly reported. The offshore wind settlements to date are nearly 10 times that, with approximately $1.8 billion as payments associated, associated with the voluntary termination of the federal energy leases. Within the last few months, the administration has entered into agreements involving offshore wind developers TotalEnergies, Bluepoint Wind, and Golden State Wind, for which the companies received reimbursement of hundreds of millions of dollars in exchange for voluntarily relinquishing these leases and redirecting investment toward fossil fuel infrastructure projects. Which brings us to the central legal question: are these settlements of actual legal liability, or are they discretionary policy expenditures designed to reshape private sector investment behavior?

The judgment fund is available only when payment is legally authorized and not otherwise provided for by another appropriation. Congress did not establish a permanent indefinite appropriation just so that executive agencies could finance major industrial policy decisions outside the normal appropriations process. There are several aspects of these agreements which raise significant concerns. One, public reporting has not identified any final judgment, adjudicated damages award, or clearly imminent monetary liability requiring payments of this scale. Two, there's little, if any, publicly identified statutory authority allowing the Department of the Interior to reimburse companies simply for voluntarily relinquishing offshore wind leases acquired through competitive federal auctions.

Third, these agreements extend beyond ordinary litigation settlement into affirmative economic policymaking, and the economic and operational impacts are significant. Cancellation of one single gigabyte offshore wind project wipes billions of dollars in domestic economic activity tied to ports, shipbuilding, steel fabrication, transmission infrastructure, and manufacturing supply chains planned in multiple states. Offshore wind also supports thousands of jobs related to these investments. And for these reasons, Congress has an important oversight role here. At a minimum, Congress should seek clear answers regarding the legal basis for these settlements, whether actual monetary liability existed, whether the Judgment Fund was used or contemplated, and what statutory authority supported the payments.

The Judgment Fund serves an important and legitimate function, as noted by Ranking Member Dexter, but Congress imposed limits on its use precisely because the permanent appropriations requires heightened accountability and transparency. Ultimately, this issue is about preserving the constitutional distinction between resolving legal liabilities and financing policy objectives. It is also about protecting Congress's authority over federal expenditures and the long-term consequences of these decisions may have for domestic manufacturing, energy reliability, and local infrastructure planning. Thank you again for the opportunity to testify. I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, Mr. Ron. I now recognize Mr. Fite for his 5 minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Gosar, Dr. Dexter, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity Thank you for letting me participate in this hearing. My name is Lawson Feight. I'm a natural resources attorney who has practiced in the federal government, in trade groups, and in private practice over the last 20 years, including substantial experience under the Endangered Species Act and other related environmental statutes. I have handled many cases that ultimately led to a petition for attorney's fees.

I've gained familiarity with the intricacies and incentive structures of the fee-shifting statutes, and I've seen the real-world implications of these statutes, um, apart from the just plain words in the statute book. I want to emphasize today that incentives matter, and there are two types of fee-shifting statutes we're discussing today that have different incentives and just different setups. So EJA, and as many of our witnesses and members of the committee have noted, was originally established for the small business person, the homeowner who wants to bring a suit against the government and can't really afford counsel. And EJA has continued to be structured to support that vision in that There are guidelines on the assets of a petitioner that can seek a fee award under EJA. There are caps on the appropriate hourly rates under EJA.

And so, it has a different structure and a different incentive formula than some of these other environmental fee-shifting statutes with which the Ninth Circuit, for example, has indicated were enacted to encourage litigation. They have been successful in that goal. My written remarks note the number of judgment fund payments from another— from a number of these fee-shifting statutes. There's no limit on who can apply for an award under these statutes. There's no rate limit, and the courts generally have not looked too closely at the contents of a fee petition, and in fact, the courts are less likely to affirm a decision that is— or to put it another way, a district court is much more incentivized to just let a fee petition go rather than to really put it under the microscope.

These fee-shifting statutes also lead to payments to states and payments from states. A recent case, Montana— the state of Montana had to pay over $200,000 after being sued under the Endangered Species Act. One of the other statutes, the Energy Conservation Statute, resulted in a fee award to the Massachusetts Attorney General from the federal government. So what we have, we have is a very different incentive structure for these two types of statutes. Although we do have some common problems.

We have projects that are really, need to get accomplished that are blocked by these lawsuits, like the Walton Lake Campground in Central Oregon, where, you had trees rotting that were going to fall on campers and it was hung up in litigation for years. This was, I believe, in the Ochoco National Forest. You also have the problem of groups taking control of agency priorities and budgets. There was something called the BioBlitz where agency— environmental groups petitioned for listing of something on the order of 800 species and essentially took control of the Fish and Wildlife services budget and policy priorities. So there's some, there's some real questions about whether these statutes as being interpreted in the courts are serving congressional purposes, plus the fact that if they are serving congressional purposes, are they the right ones?

You know, the question is, do we need the incentives to bring environmental litigation that might have been needed or at least perceived to be needed in the 1970s. I would submit that that's worth looking into for consideration. I really appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today and look forward to your questions. I thank Mr. Feit for his 5 minutes. Now I'm going to recognize members on the dais.

I'm going to start by Mr. Stauber from Minnesota. You're recognized. Thank you very much, Chair Gosar. Mr. Braun, in your written testimony, you outlined the business model that environmental NGOs and so-called conservationist organizations have perfected to push their irresponsible agendas. One of these groups, the Center for Biological Diversity, has used this business model to help defeat important mining projects in northern Minnesota.

In fact, in May of 2021, the Center for Biological Diversity entered into a settlement agreement with the Biden administration, which blocked the responsible development of critical minerals in northern Minnesota. As part of this settlement agreement, the federal government awarded $25,000 in taxpayer funding to the Center for Biological Diversity to help cover their legal bills. Not only were the hardworking men and women of northern Minnesota stopped from responsibly developing these vast natural resources, but they also had to foot the legal bill with their own hard-earned earned tax dollars. Mr. Braun, is the business model that the Center for Biological Diversity and other groups are using serving the American people? Thank you for the question, Representative.

As I said in my remarks, I, I think, um, this whole movement has gone horribly astray over the last couple of decades. Um, used to be about protecting the things we wanted to protect. Land creatures. Now it is— seems to be— you can look at— and Center for Biological Diversity is an example— promotes these wind turbines and solar panels that take up lots of space to give, you know, unreliable energy sources. And, you know, if we got back to a conservation movement that was pro-energy, that would be a better business model.

Uh, you also discussed how EJIA is being applied unevenly, favoring certain repeat litigants or certain practice areas over others. What reforms should Congress consider to restore neutrality to EJIA and ensure equal treatment under the law? Uh, I would defer questions on that to any of the other three panelists who are, uh, who are all lawyers and litigate in this space. Um, I would, however, just as a general principle, be as transparent as possible and, and If you're collecting these funds, put them on your website prominently and explain where you got the money from and put them in your 990s. I mean, those are just ideas off the top of my head, but there has to be some ways for better transparency that may aim toward legislative remedies that you all would decide on.

That leads to my next question, Mr. Feit. In your written testimony, you note that the federal government stopped keeping track of IJA payments in 1995. As a cost-saving measure. Can you help me reason with that? How is that saving American taxpayers?

That's a, that's a great question. I would argue that it did not save American taxpayers money because if you know where the money is going, then you can keep oversight on it and keep control. And that, that was lost for a number of years. The Dingell Act, which passed in 2019, reestablish those reporting requirements. And there is some reporting on the Judgment Fund, but we also don't have reporting on other fee-shifting arrangements.

So where private parties are sued, or as I was talking about, you have a state that gets sued. But I think it's, it's really important to have that information out there. So would you agree that this lack of transparency has allowed not only for Egypt to grow over the past several decades, It's a really big concern. We don't know how much is being paid out, what the effects are on agency budgets, and, you know, again, it's the taxpayer's money at the end of the day. In recent cases, courts have awarded rates of roughly $470 per hour in environmental cases, sometimes nearly twice the EGIA cap of $258 per hour that you referenced in your testimony.

What safeguards exist to ensure taxpayers are not effectively subsidizing one category of repeat litigants at premium market rates based on judge-made carve-outs? At this point, sir, there are really no such safeguards in the statute. Certainly that could be a productive area to examine and look for when the EJCAP should be exceeded, because I think the EJA, when it was enacted, the idea was provide a fair recovery and not a windfall. And I, I would submit that the current cap comes pretty close to that in most markets. Thank you, Mr.

Chair. Before I yield back, I ask unanimous consent that the May 10th, 2021 settlement agreement between the Department of Justice under the Biden administration and the Center for Biological on Diversity, in which the Center for Biological Diversity was awarded $25,000 in taxpayer funding to stop the Twin Metals Project in northern Minnesota, be entered into the hearing record. Objection, sir. Thank you. I thank the gentleman.

The gentleman from California, Mr. Huffman, is recognized for his comments. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Right now, American families all over this country are opening their electrical bills and wondering how they're going to pay them. New wind and solar projects were on track to deliver relief in the form of affordable, clean power for millions of American households. Donald Trump and his energy czar, Doug Burgum, have done everything they can to kill that relief.

And then they did something that I think most Americans will really find quite hard to believe. They handed nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money to a French energy company to make sure those wind projects stayed dead. It was such a gift, such a windfall, that this French company almost didn't even know what to do with the money. And so the day after they got paid, they announced a $1.5 billion stock buyback for their shareholders. Now, Congress created the Judgment Fund to pay real court judgments.

Against the United States, as well as to settle actual or imminent litigation. It's not a political slush fund. It was never intended to support this administration's unpopular and radical anti-wind vendetta. So, uh, Mr. Ahn, uh, in your view, was Secretary Burgum's use of the Judgment Fund in this case legal? It increases litigation risk, Congressman, and that's the irony of all this, that settlement is often used to resolve litigation risk in amongst all the parties.

Yet there are a number of ways in which the scale of the Judgment Fund and how it's being used really ends up creating questions around what was the administrative record around this, was the action itself arbitrary and capricious. So the— it can be very much challenged in court. Yeah. I want to ask you about this national security excuse made up after the fact that we've heard to justify this boondoggle. Now, when it comes to actual national security, this administration is doing a lousy job.

We are less safe today because of the way they are shredding our alliances, because of this unhinged war of choice that is rocking the global economy, because they have dismantled our soft power and diplomatic capacity, and because they've waged trade wars, threatened to seize territory from allies, done things that have made most of the world Hate us. We're less safe because of all of that crazy stuff, but national security has become the excuse of choice to go after clean energy projects. And so, when the government got sued over some of these wind cancellations, a senior Interior Department official named Jacob Tiner submitted his sworn statement in federal court, and he told the judge he and his agency we first learned about this apparent classified national security concern on November 26, 2025, but we know from emails that 13 days before that date, uh, Interior officials were already circulating terms of a settlement with TotalEnergies. So, uh, Mr. Ahn, based on this new evidence, is it likely that DOI's national security concerns for canceling offshore wind projects were just made up to try to satisfy Trump's vendetta against wind energy. Potentially.

You know, there are two immediate answers. First of all, the national security justifications have been used in prior attempts to kill offshore wind, have been routinely found by the courts to be unpersuasive. Second, the APA actually requires a record to be established before, so if it was not, then yes, that is a litigation risk too. Right, and that is to prevent arbitrary and capricious things I can't imagine anything more arbitrary and capricious than this. Do you think that there is the possibility of a legal challenge under the Administrative Procedures Act?

Yes, in the sense that the administrative record is under-established. There's nothing clearly tying the settlement agreement to the actual record that we can see. So adding insult to energy— to injury, or energy— this deal also purports to direct Total Total to spend money on a fossil fuel plant regarding— called Rio Grande LNG. Now, that is an export terminal in Texas. Their entire business is sending American LNG to foreign countries, including China.

And so this administration has now actually paid Total nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money to kill clean energy projects that would have lowered electricity bills for American families. And instead purports to push that money into a fossil fuel export scheme that will increase the cost of energy for American consumers just to make big oil even more money. Mr. Ahn, does that sound like something that benefits the American consumer? No, it probably raises the— for ratepayers, the cost of their everyday utility bill because ultimately it serves international commodity monarchists, the retail electricity rate itself that offshore wind was meant to serve. Thank you.

Yield back. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Pence, is recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks for this opportunity.

I'm somewhat surprised by what the ranking member just said about wind power driving down costs when in Oregon we found that wind power is driving up costs. So I'd love to see the data that shows that had those units been added, suddenly ratepayers' power rates would have gone down. So if you would supply those, that would be great.

So, Mr. Fite, the caption of today's hearing is the profit engine driving environmental nonprofits. The question is focused, or the hearing thus far has been focused on attorney fees. And the offset that was originally intended to try to provide opportunity for, I guess, calling into question different activities by the federal government. I checked some time ago to see which of the— how much some of these environmental groups were worth that were filing these lawsuits. And it's astounding.

Some of them have net worths in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Do you think that if someone has the financial wherewithal to afford one of these lawsuits, that we should be subsidizing that activity through this thing that was put together so many years ago?

That's a great question, sir, and it does raise the prospect of not being consistent with how these statutes were set up. EJIA in particular was much more about the small business owner, the veteran, the homeowner who's affected by a project in their neighborhood. And for that reason, EJIA does have asset limits for petitioning for a fee award, but those are not found in these other environmental fee shifting statutes. Is—. Has there been some link or some attempt to study how much the organizations that are receiving these monies are worth?

And then, or is it simply that's ignored and we just look at whether or not they were successful in a portion of their lawsuit and then obtain the reimbursement? It certainly doesn't really come up in court. Basically, it's just a threshold. Are you eligible for a fee award or not? And certainly, could be, could be a fruitful area of inquiry because, you know, there's a lot of information that should be available.

One of the things that this hearing raises is the different types of ways that these environmental organizations profit from litigation. And one of the biggest problems we're faced with right now is we try to figure out how in the world to speed up things that we're trying to get done here in the United States is the delay that's occasioned by these lawsuits. And we are basically funding delay. And the question is, what is the return to these environmental organizations because of the delay? Can you share with us some of the reasons that it plays into the environmental organizations' hands, delay?

Certainly delay very much plays into an environmental plaintiff's hands because to get a project through, you have to win, you know, 6 or 7 times. It's almost, you know, if you go to a casino, the house only has to win once and wipe you out. And it certainly, when you have a project, you lose momentum over time. You also have an instance, I've encountered this forest health project in Northern California. It gets delayed by litigation.

They operate for one season, and then the whole thing burns up, and no more, no more spotted owl habitat because it's just carbon at that point, right? But it seems to me that I'm a lawyer, and I, I know how this game is played. And so I was a defense lawyer for, for many years, and, and the plaintiff knew that by utilizing different perverted means of discovery, for example, you can drag things out for literally years if you have a judge that is amenable to that type of thing. Hopefully you don't, but it seems to me that you make more money on the lawyer side of things if you can drag things out and bill more hours. Is that correct?

Yes, absolutely. I've seen cases where, um, you know, you have a hearing, it's quick, you brief it up, and you have kind of a, if you win or lose, you have a reasonable fee amount, but the Yuba River case I mentioned in my written testimony is one where I could see the plaintiffs, I don't know their motivations, but it would be consistent with really overworking a case, because at the end of the day, you're gonna get compensated for it. You're gonna get paid. Thank you so much. Yield back.

I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Puerto Rico, Mr. Hernandez. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This administration has a ridiculous energy policy.

How is it that we need more energy, we need to make energy more affordable, and we're using taxpayer money to pay companies to cancel renewable energy projects? I represent Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has been a victim of this ridiculous policy. A few years ago, Congress enacted the Puerto Rico Energy Resiliency Fund. It gave close to $1 billion for solar panels in rooftops of vulnerable communities.

There were close to $365 million left, and this administration decided to redirect that to the construction of a new gas pipeline, completely different to its original intention and not as helpful, or even potentially unhelpful, to the broader energy goals of the people of Puerto Rico. Mr. Ron, when the federal government cancels clean energy commitments that communities have already planned for, who bears the cost? The ratepayer, the American families involved. Absolutely. Has energy— have energy prices been going up recently?

Yes. So would having these projects continue their pace, grow and make more energy abundant, help ease the the cost of ratepayers? Absolutely. And maybe it bears worth repeating that it's about diversified energy markets, making sure we not just have solar by itself or offshore wind or onshore wind by itself, but having an integrated energy market that lowers costs. I completely agree.

And I think taking an ideological stance against clean energy is absurd. Has canceling clean energy projects lowered anyone's electric bill? No. Or canceling? No, it has not lowered anyone's.

Then it's a question of whose side are we on? Are we on the side of big fossil fuel companies, or are we on the side of the American people? And in my case, the people of Puerto Rico. Thank you. I yield back.

Thank you. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Crank, is recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to the witnesses for being here.

Um, EJA was originally designed to help sort of ordinary citizens who successfully challenge government overreach recover their legal costs. It recognizes that not every veteran or retiree has the resources to take on the federal government. Yet radical environmentalists have exploited EJA and environmental laws to turn litigation into a business model and a policy achiever. Mr. Wood, question for you: can litigation impose environmental, operational, or wildfire risk costs, uh, even when the fee award itself looks modest? Absolutely.

Um, in my written testimony, I talk about a case in my own backyard, Bozeman, Montana, where a needed forest restoration project, um, that was designed to protect our drinking water supply, um, from a wildfire that if it were to burn through that area would give us just 3 days of drinking water, was held up for over a decade due to NEPA objections and litigation. Um, ultimately that litigation, while it prevailed, produced no change to the project. It purely produced delay, which left us— the town vulnerable. The only real beneficiary from it was the nonprofit group that was paid several times its annual budget in attorney's fees. Yeah, uh, I know you're an experienced litigator.

Can you explain how a plaintiff can obtain attorney's fees even when the lawsuit doesn't produce any real substantive environmental improvement? Most of these cases are procedural cases. So you, you're arguing that an agency should have analyzed some question in more detail without having to show that that additional detail would, would change the result. So it, the, the Cottonwood case that I was just describing is actually not that unusual. We have a lot of cases that drag on for years, it require an agency to do some extra level analysis, but at the end of the day, the underlying action proceeds as planned, just, you know, years delayed.

So attorney's fees are most often discussed in the context of lawsuits against the federal government. Statutes like the ESA allow citizen suits to be brought against private parties and states. Mr. Wood, can you explain how ESA fee shifting can affect states, private landowners, businesses, uh, permittees, project proponents, even when the federal government is not the defendant? Thank you, and that is a really important question. It's been mostly overlooked to this point.

Some of these laws apply to private parties where one-way fee shifting, so the defendant may have to pay, but the laws, the plaintiff having to pay if the case fails, is not there, are incredib— can be incredibly coercive. We don't know the scale of that problem because many defendants understandably want to keep the amount they're paying confidential so as to not, attract more lawsuits, but it is a very serious problem that creates this, um, mismatch in power between the two sides. So attorneys' fees and fundraising off of lawsuits have turned litigation into a cash cow for some of these, uh, NGOs. Mr. Wood, your testimony highlights sort of this perverse incentive by NGOs to litigate rather than investing directly in on-the-ground conservation efforts, and you mentioned that. An example of that in your testimony.

What tools does Congress have to reform these incentives, and how can these reform incentives create better results for the environment? So I think the biggest thing is that the reasonable, as the attorneys' fee should be a more full analysis. Right now, it's the only— now the question is, is there some lawyer in the world, environmental lawyer in the world, that could make this right? And instead, courts should look at, is this reasonable in light of what was achieved in litigation? What are the alternatives that could produce similar environmental benefits?

Currently, none of that happens, but any realistic person that was making a litigation decision would obviously include that in their reasonableness analysis. Yeah, and Mr. Wood, give me, I mean, have you seen examples of groups that are, the group itself is essentially a lawyer, and maybe a legal aid or something, and that's the extent of the group itself? Yeah, the case I mentioned out of Bozeman, the Cottonwood Environmental Law Center brought that case against the forest restoration project. It's a very small nonprofit. Their annual budget is pretty small.

It's essentially a staff of 1 or 2. It varies over time. And through outside help and the fact that their staff is an attorney, they bring quite a few cases. They essentially exist to litigate. And there are other groups that are obviously larger than that, that that is what they do.

And so my biggest concern here is not just the risk of overpayment, but what are the on-the-ground conservation projects that aren't happening because federal policy is telling groups, sue, instead of prioritizing meaningful impact on the ground. Yeah, the ranking member of the full committee earlier said that Republicans, or our side of the aisle, gets upset because sometimes environmental groups win. I think we get upset because many times environmental groups are fleecing the American taxpayer. Thank you, Mr. Wood, and I yield back. I thank the gentleman for his comments.

We're now going to the gentleman from Alaska, Mr. Begich, for 5 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. My first question, Mr. Ahn, this hearing is titled The Profit Engine Driving Environmental Nonprofits and was convened specifically to examine how fee-shifting provisions are exploited to sustain litigation campaigns that block energy development and harm communities. Yet your written testimony is devoted almost entirely to the administration's offshore wind lease settlements, a topic with only a tangential connection to this hearing's stated focus.

Can you tell this committee what percentage of Brightline Defense's annual receipts over the past 3 years has come from government grants, attorney fee recoveries, or litigation settlements? And has Brightline Defense itself sought or received fee awards under EJA, the ESA, or any other fee-shifting statute that this committee is examining today? I'll try to answer what I perceive to be 3 questions embedded there, Congressman. So, uh, to maybe tackle the last one, EJA, no, Brightline does not receive anything from EJA itself. More broadly, we do receive funding, uh, from a number of individuals, small businesses, uh, local and state government contracts related to many of our programs that serve local communities, ranging from job training to youth education and and so on.

I would say more broadly around the judgment fee and its relation to EJA, at the start of my testimony, I did believe that it was explained fully how integrated the two concepts are. Ultimately, the scale of which the judge— the way the Judgment Fund is being used is what's the difference in and of itself. But yet, they are the same pot of money and warrants, as a result, congressional oversight and scrutiny. And, uh, and with respect to the, to the percentage of Brightline Defense's annual receipts, can you kind of directionally give us a number with respect to how, how much of your receipts comes from government grants, attorney fee recoveries, or litigation settlements? I wouldn't be able to give you that number off the top of my head.

Okay. Would that be a number that you could provide to the committee after your testimony? I do plan I believe generally the Form 990, as nonprofits are required to file, have a Schedule B that's actually considered confidential, respecting donor privacy, no. Okay, so you would not be willing to provide the committee with that information. Thank you for that.

My next question, Mr. Braun, Alaska is the nation's most energy-rich state. Vast oil and gas reserves, world-class mineral deposits, enormous hydropower and geothermal potential. And communities that depend on affordable, reliable energy in one of the harshest climates on Earth. And as the organization's Your Research documents, collectively taking in $9.3 million a day while opposing 88% of America's energy supply, have been among the most aggressive litigants against Alaska's resource development, using fee-shifting statutes as a weapon to fund a never-ending campaign to block the projects Alaskans depend on. Can you describe how the anti-energy business model you've documented, sustained by a combination of philanthropic money, taxpayer grants, and litigation fee recoveries, has specifically targeted resource-rich states like Alaska, and what the cumulative economic cost of that sustained litigation campaign has been for the communities whose livelihoods depend on responsible resource development?

Uh, thank you for the question, Representative. Uh, yeah, I mean, the The overall impact of their business model is to— Representative Huffman discussed affordable clean power. States that really double down hard on these sorts of policies of installing wind turbines and solar panels, like California, have— California has the highest energy prices, or electricity prices, in the nation, has had for years, outside of any state that isn't Alaska or Hawaii, which obviously have some logistical problems in getting electricity to them. So that's, you know, people purchasing electricity in California to run their homes, drive their electric cars, whatever they're doing, are paying an enormous amount more because of the upside of these, the upshot of these policies. You know, it's amazing.

We find ourselves being being told about an affordability crisis. And our friends on the other side of the aisle continue to talk about this in this Congress and outside of the halls of this Congress. And the reality is, it's their policies that are driving affordability challenges for everyday Americans. It's their organizations outside of the halls of this Congress that are driving that affordability challenge that so many Americans are feeling, particularly as it relates to energy. And when Congress sets up funds that incentivize organizations to sue and settle, it hurts the, the American people.

And, uh, I think it's very clear, uh, hearing from the minority witness that, uh, a large percentage of Brightline Defense and many other organizations like it, a large percentage of their revenue is coming from that sue and settle tactic. It's being funded by government. There's nothing non-governmental about it. And I think it's something that we need to put a stop to. And with that, I yield back.

I thank the gentleman from North Carolina. Ms. Ross is recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for allowing me to wave on this committee for this important discussion. So there are circumstances when a private company might decide that a project no longer makes business sense, or it might cost too much. Markets change, costs change.

Companies make decisions that are in the best interest of their business model. But, um, that's not what happened with offshore wind. TotalEnergies, which had offshore wind leases, did not stumble into those leases by accident. It competed for those leases, including in my home state of North Carolina. It paid hundreds of millions of dollars for them and believed in the business model.

It's also no secret that the Trump administration despises wind energy, and we're not going to get into the golf course in Scotland. In fact, they fought every— at every juncture to undermine this proven renewable energy resource. They withdrew new areas for offshore leasing, attempted to freeze wind permitting, and a federal court swiftly struck down this freeze as unlawful. So the administration then shifted its strategy toward blocking specific projects. The Department of Interior issued stop work orders to multiple companies, each of which was easily defeated in court.

So as their next move, they conjured up a specious national security narrative. Now, it is crystal clear to the American people that the administration has exhausted every possible avenue to halt offshore wind before settling on its dubious payment scheme. TotalEnergies would get its offshore wind lease payment refunded if that, if that company invested fees in oil, gas, and LNG production. The Department of Interior also added that TotalEnergies pledged not to develop any new offshore wind projects in the United States. This is not a neutral settlement.

The administration appears to be doing— using the Judgment Fund, which I guess folks don't like from what I've heard, so I don't like it either, for this, a fund meant to pay valid judgments and settlements where the United States is a defendant, even though there was no clear legal claim, no transparent analysis, no court finding that the taxpayers owed Total Energy anything. In the final TotalEnergies deal, DOJ didn't even sign the agreement. The administration tried to kill offshore wind through official channels, and when it failed, it turned to using permanent— a permanent taxpayer account to basically bribe companies to accept the result it couldn't lawfully force. The reallocation of funds from renewables to fossil fuels. It's not hard to connect the dots.

Mr. Ahn, just a few weeks after the deal with TotalEnergies, the Trump administration struck identical deals— reimbursement and a commitment to steer clear of wind and invest in fossil fuels— with two other companies. Why is this pattern suspect? And is it a dangerous precedent? So the two additional deals also indicate the extent to which the Judgment Fund is being stretched far beyond its— what it was set out to do and what Congress had authorized the Judgment Fund for. Relating to your own comments, Congresswoman, that North Carolina suffered economic harm, California, from the more recent deal with Golden State Wind, potentially suffers from a $100 million loss already.

From state investments in offshore wind infrastructure. This is related to transmission planning, port infrastructure. There's also an additional billion dollars of state money lined up in commitments to making this industry a reality and affordable. So much— from a much broader perspective, there is the notion of energy policy that we've talked about today, that diversified energy markets are important. But what we can't have is inconsistency in our energy policy too.

It can't swing back and forth based on the usage of this one fund. Judgment fund. And do you believe that DOI is abusing the judgment fund because it couldn't win in court on these offshore wind projects on the merits? It's far outside its normal scope of what it's used. Again, the scale of it all, that it's $1.8 billion already measured against essentially 1,000 times more than what's being claimed under EJIA, is of a concern itself and will be flagged as a litigation risk.

Okay. Thank you. And I yield back. I thank the gentleman for testimony. The gentlewoman from Wyoming, Ms. Hagerman, is recognized for 5 minutes.

Thank you. Perfect timing. Hello, gentlemen. I have personal experience dealing with the Equal Access to Justice Act, having been a water and natural resource attorney for many years, practicing in Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, and various places. I had a lot of cases against the federal government, won a lot of those cases.

But unfortunately, because I represented industry and things like that, then the judges most would refuse to give us the fees, although they've obviously funded for decades the environmental groups with that being their primary funding. The Equal Access to Justice Act actually created a situation where statutory fee shifting, which was intended to level the playing field, has instead been hijacked by radical environmental nonprofits into a self-funding environmental litigation cottage industry. I've experienced it firsthand. This cottage industry inflicts endless sue-and-settle lawsuits on agencies which impede their ability to do their basic obligations, such as construction of much-needed roads, forest thinning, fuels treatment, and even disaster recovery and reconstruction. This wastes an incredible amount of taxpayer dollars.

It hurts land management agencies to move projects and stays suppressed regardless of funding levels because of this situation. In many cases, nonprofit plaintiffs do not even need to fully win a case in order to recover. Under EAJA, prevailing plaintiffs can recover attorney's fees with even a partial victory or a procedural settlement, regardless of the lawsuit's broader merit or public benefit. Federal agencies often struggle to even quantify staff time lost to defending these lawsuits or in attempting to prevent them from happening. My question number 1, Mr. Wood, I'm going to come to you.

You indicated in your testimony that you described a case where attorneys asserted hourly rates ranging from $140 an hour for the work of a law student intern to $650 an hour for an attorney with 30 years of experience, which would be, I think, far above what is— what would be normal Accordingly, usually in these kinds of cases, the work of a law student intern would be compensated at a rate higher than virtually all senior nonprofit environmental attorneys are paid in other sectors. The Center for Biological Diversity and Earth Justice maintains public lawsuit trackers that double as donation solicitations. Over $20.3 million has been paid out in attorney's fees to various organizations since 2013. And the top 3 primary plaintiffs in lawsuits that paid out attorney's fees over that time are the Sierra Club for $4 million, Northwest Environmental Advocates for $1.8 million, and Center for Biological Diversity for $1.4 million. Don't you believe that this creates an incentive to file more lawsuits regardless of their merit?

And how has this affected the on-the-ground conservation situation, if you will? Yeah, I think federal policies effectively sent the signal to groups to prioritize procedural litigation over on-the-ground conservation. You can get a pretty large financial return from the former, and doing on-the-ground conservation is hard and it's expensive. Okay. How does this profit engine divert resources away from real conservation, wildlife mitigation, and multiple-use management that people in my state and really the whole of the American West rely upon?

We're channeling a tremendous amount of talent and energy into litigation. Litigation. It's become the foundation for modern environmentalism, and that's been a disservice to the environment as well as to our society. We need more people thinking creatively about new tools and new ways to do conservation on the ground that works for everyone. You know, it's— when I look at the discussion about the modernization of NEPA and the Endangered Species Act, the folks on the other side of the aisle kind of have this hair on fire screaming, "We're gonna burn it all down.

It's gonna be a terrible thing. We're not able to do this." my God, global warming, global warming, climate change, global warming, climate change, which by the way, everybody should be really happy. The UN has come out and actually admitted that so much of the projections that they've had for the last 30 years were inaccurate and that their concerns about global warming and climate change are not nearly as serious as they led everybody to believe. So I think that's a really good development that the UN is admitting that the science they've used for 30 years is entirely inaccurate. As were their models.

But that's the point that I make, is that we can have a data-driven environmental approach to constructing projects, but we're not allowed to do that because of NEPA and ESA and the way that the litigation process is abused. Would you agree with me, Mr.— Mr. Wood? Yeah. And the thing I would add is that the incidence of those regulations don't fall on the projects people think they do. The agency that has prepared the most environmental impact statements under NEPA is the Forest Service.

That the restrictions are really falling on common land management, land restoration activities, not the infrastructure and energy projects that get the attention. Okay. Well, I appreciate that testimony, and I yield back. I thank the gentleman from Wyoming. The gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Byers, is recognized for 5 minutes.

First of all, Mr. Chairman, Dr. and Chairman Gosar, thank you for allowing me to wave on. And Dr. and Ranking Member Dexter, thank you for inviting me to be part of this. I come to this as a Virginian, and we have watched Dominion Energy, which might soon be NextEra Energy, work hard over the last number of years to develop offshore wind, which if finished will power half of the homes in Virginia. It's very exciting, especially since we have— maybe an exaggeration— two-thirds or three-quarters of the data farms in the world. Are here in Northern Virginia, so it's very relevant.

Some of the witnesses today commented on what they see as unfairly high payouts to people who successfully take the government to court for breaking the law, and I'm sure this can be viewed from both perspectives, Democratic and Republican, but I think there's a bigger payout problem to deal with, and that's the, this current administration's offshore wind buyouts. According to the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the law, and that's what governs offshore wind leases. If the federal government cancels an offshore energy lease, then there's a process to follow and formulas to follow that would determine how much money the leaseholder can get back. And for an undeveloped lease, they can get back the fair market value of the canceled lease at the time of calculation. Typically, that present value would be based on the future returns, the future value of the land.

So Mr. Ahn, If the leases the administration is trying to cancel were offered for sale today, would you say they would sell for more or less than what the companies originally paid for them? Less. Potentially a lot less. Yeah, it certainly seemed that way. You know, especially when you figure one of them was at $1 billion a cell, way more than they paid for the lease in the first place.

And so that means that basically the $2 billion that the Trump administration has promised to kill to pay these offshore wind leases is far more than any company should legally claim, but per the law, and also just per economic common sense. I'd have to add too that my Republican friends, and most of them are friends, I've, I've listened for years that we should have an all-of-the-above energy policy, which I have always agreed with, but all of the above should include solar and wind and geothermal and some of the things that are developing energy for a much lower cost right now. But Mr. Ahn, if you could expand at all on the notion of why those offshore wind leases should be purchased back at a rate the law suggests.

For Brightline, we've always believed this is about long-term energy policymaking. So making sure that the fair market value is paid back seems to be a fair deal ultimately to the American taxpayer. Congressman Huffman earlier noted too that with the Total Energy deal, there was immediate buyback of stock options. That was announced the day after the deal was done. That itself should indicate a lot of suspicion, first of all, as to why the deal was made, and again, invites greater scrutiny of these deals and litigation risk for both the government and the private sector involved.

I do remember too that part of the notion was encouraging these companies to take that money and invest in oil and gas in America. Have there any any sign that either of those companies will be doing that? Not as of now. And again, the broader point that those deals then would serve international commodity markets, not necessarily the American family, but for their own utility bill costs, bears worth noting. So most of that money was actually going overseas?

Potentially, yes. Great. Well, thank you for answering the question, Mr. Chair. I yield back.

I thank the gentleman for his testimony. Now the gentleman from the— Chairman of the full committee, Mr. Westman, is recognized for 5 minutes. Thank you, Mr. Gosar, and thank you again to the witnesses. Mr. Braun, in your written testimony, you revealed that environmental nonprofit Advocates for the West reported that 44 or 40.5% of their average total annual funding came from attorney's fee awards over the past 5 years. Do you believe Congress intended to allow groups to fund almost 41% of their operations with attorney's fees when including fee-shifting provisions in legislation?

Thank you for the question, Representative. Just to be clear, that's the last 5 years that we have publicly available IRS forms for, so 2024 back to 2020 is where that number comes from. Whether Congress intended for this to happen or not, I think we have a saying where I work. A lot of these groups, they go by the name non-governmental organizations, but at some point, you start wondering whether they're basically governmental organizations, whether it be with the federal grants or even some of these payments. I find it hard to believe that that was the thought that was in mind of either side of the aisle when these policies were created.

And as I said earlier, I think more transparency in how these settlements are arrived at should be posted on, on the websites of these groups and on their, uh, you know, maybe in their 990 forms too. And I would say to do it also with government grants. It would be nice to know— they all report, we get this amount of government funding in their 990s. Perhaps when they're getting it, we should know exactly what that funding was for, um, in a very public place so that every citizen can find it and they don't need geeks like me to go looking for it for them. And I'm glad you pointed that out, that fact about what does NGO actually, actually mean.

And Mr. Fite, in your testimony, you noted that courts are, quote, issuing eejafee awards disproportionate to the market rate for services performed and incentivizing environmental litigation, end quote. In fact, you point out that a federal court in Oregon recently awarded over $180,000 for a case that involved a single motion for preliminary injunction. Injunction and only one hearing. An amount much higher than a private client would reasonably pay even a private law firm for that amount of work. But here it's the American taxpayer that's on the hook.

What can be done to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not abused and fee awards actually reflect the real cost of legal services? And do you, do you think that some of the courts are out of control on the way they determine these fees? Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. And I do think that the courts are not, they're not scrutinizing fee requests as closely as they might otherwise. I have, I've had the opportunity to be a fee expert in a couple of cases, and even with some scrutiny applying it, it's very difficult to get the court to look at it, and then it's much safer for a district court to let a fee application go than to scrutinize it closely.

And so it's an area where Congress has not really acted in quite some time, and some guidance from this body might be fruitful.

Sounds like a great suggestion.

Mr. Wood, I appreciate in your testimony how you, uh, highlight the fact that many of these environmental NGOs favor litigation over actual conservation efforts and are incentivized to sue by inflated attorney fees. What creates these backward incentives, and who determines the appropriateness of awards under statutes like the Endangered Species Act? Ultimately, it's the court, but they're depending on the adversarial system. They are depending on the other side to object to the fees that are being proposed and the amount. And there are built-in incentives that discourage that sort of conflict.

Under all of these laws, courts can award what's known as fees on fees. So you award attorney's fees for the fight over the attorney's fees, which creates a really strong economic signal that, you know, if a plaintiff's demand is truly outrageous and you think you can win, fight that. But if, you know, it's just too high by 50%, maybe it's not worth the cost of challenging something like that. So if you put the shoe on the other foot, why are prevailing defendants historically much less likely to recover fees and costs under statutes like the ESA, even when those awards are statutorily permissible? I think courts operate from the presumption that the goal of these laws was to encourage litigation, awarding fees against plaintiffs would discourage it.

I think that's wrong. That's not what the laws actually say. But there is a skepticism of awarding fees against plaintiffs. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm out of time. I thank the gentleman, the chair from the full committee. Now I recognize the ranking member for this subcommittee, Dr. Next. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Ahn, I want to ask you about one of the most egregious abuses of time taxpayer dollars right now. This administration repeatedly pulling billions of dollars from the Judgment Fund. First, it was Secretary Burgum's decision to pay nearly $2 billion from the Judgment Fund to cancel offshore wind projects. We've heard about that already, and that could have generated $56 billion in economic activity and powered millions of American homes. Now it's another $1.8 billion, again from the Judgment for a slush fund to make payments to Trump's political allies.

So Mr. Ahn, what is the judgment fund actually intended to be used for? Uh, answering the question directly, it's intended to be used for small settlements to begin with. Very good. And is it typical for the judgment fund to be used for settlements at the scale of these offshore wind buyouts? No, this is a totally novel question that now Congress has to consider.

And this administration has a track record on offshore wind cancellations in court. In fact, they keep losing in court. Is that right? That's correct. So the administration has consistently lost when it tried to cancel offshore wind leases through the courts.

And now we've suddenly seen $2 billion in payouts for offshore wind companies to walk away from their project. With that in mind, how are these offshore wind buyout agreements unusual compared to traditional litigation settlements involving the federal government? The scale, again, that it's at least several hundred times more, if not 1,000 times more, is what's astonishing about what's happening. It's also being used to shape, as I mentioned in my earlier statement, large economic policy decisions that would normally be the purview of congressional appropriations, not through, say, a settlement fund, which is, again, too— Essentially reduce litigation risk in the bigger scheme of things. Excellent.

And to your knowledge, has the Department of Interior identified the specific statutory authority, appropriation, or judgment fund based for these payouts? No, I have not seen any statutory authority or administrative record to that effect. Okay. And were these settlements tied to actual or imminent litigation, or were they effectively lease buybacks? The court cases that have been ongoing have been all resolved.

Prior. So the short answer is no. There was nothing imminent about the legal threat here. Are, are you aware that Trump recently announced a $1.8 billion IRS settlement? And if so, how is that different from typical litigation settlements that involve the judgment fund?

I'm broadly aware of it. Again, the parallels are striking in terms of the scale, the sum of money involved. One historical thing to note about the Judgment Fund was its creation by Congress in many ways was intended to take the politics out of settlement itself. In other words, back in the day, Congress would have to individually approve each settlement. And then that led to accusations of Congress somehow being manipulated over each settlement.

Now it seems like in many ways from the headlines, politics is being infused back into the settlements done by the federal government. And that itself is a lot loss. It should be noted. Thank you. And Mr. Onn, the Judgment Fund is permanently appropriated, has no congressional vote, and minimal public transparency.

Given what we've seen, would you say this administration has found a mechanism to move billions of taxpayer dollars with virtually no accountability? It should be very careful at this point because of the stretching of the Judgment Fund under various mechanisms does not bode well for the federal government and its exposure to litigation. Very good, thank you. So I'm going to call it what I think it is. The Trump administration has found a backdoor into the Treasury with very little oversight.

That is not what the Judgment Fund is for. That is not what taxpayer money is for, and this committee should be demanding answers. Mr. Fite, I've got 1 minute, so I'm gonna pivot to you. You and your firm have supported offshore wind developments in in the past, is that correct? To my knowledge, yes.

Okay, and do you have any idea why your firm has supported them?

Well, I think you work with a developer, and the permitting process, both in our state and our country, is very complex. And so it's very interesting legal work, and it's challenging to navigate particularly with offshore wind, you, you have kind of a really complex interaction of state, local, and federal permitting that I don't think you find anywhere else in, in the scheme. Okay, so thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate that your firm is also involved in these suits and/or legal activities.

I also want to ask to submit a few things for the record, Mr. Chair. So I ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the Washington Post article, quote, "UN climate panel says the worst-case climate scenario is implausible, and here's what it means." That's the full title. The panel did not say climate change is not real or dangerous, just that most disastrous projections are now unlikely because the rise of renewable energy and the flattening of emissions curves. I also ask unanimous— sorry.

Without objection, forward. Thank you. I also ask unanimous consent to enter into the record written responses by the CEO of Mr. Braun's organization, Capital Research Center, before the Senate Committee on Finance, which indicates the CRC opposes disclosure of donor information. Quote, as a defender of citizens' privacy, I do not wish to harm donors and groups' disagree with, end quote. Without objection, so ordered.

And then I also want to submit for the record a New York Times article from today, Trump administration live updates, January 6th, police officers sued to block $1.8 billion fund. Without objection, so ordered. And I've got one more, Mr. Chair. Thank you for your grace here.

Shoot, got it in the— It's the New York Times article documenting Brian Sinick's death as being related. Here it is. These are the people who died in connection with the Capitol riot, and it is dated October 13th, 2022. And in it, it reports that the medical examiner ruled that he, he had died of natural causes. But that all that transpired, all that transpired played a role in his condition.

As a critical care doctor, I can tell you for a fact that almost we always rule death natural causes as a result of natural causes, but the precipitating incident was his exposure to toxic fumes and gases and the stress of the day before. With that, I yield. Thank you. I'm going to start my questions now. So, Mr. Braun, You know, I'm one of these people that wants transparency.

I let the chips fall where they may. That's what I would like to see. So would you feel reasonable that if somebody takes money from the federal government or is awarded money from the federal government, they should disclose where they get the rest of their money?

Tricky question. I do think, like I said, we have what are turning into basically government organizations. And when a private donor is putting money in and getting it leveraged with taxpayer funds, which are not voluntarily being sent to these groups, um, some degree of transparency or a remedy might be in order. I would caution you, though, donor privacy is an important thing, as your ranking member just noted. And we've made a very strong statement on that for all sorts of groups.

Anonymous speech, which is what donor privacy really is, has a venerable history in America going all the way back to the Federalist Papers and up through the NAACP refusing to disclose its donors in the pre-civil rights era South. There's an important reason that people can say things anonymously, and we need to protect that. So I would caution you to to keep that in mind. But, but you are addressing, you know, your question addresses a real problem for sure. And, and I, I don't have a, a great remedy.

I, I put you in charge of figuring that out for me. Yeah, I'm going to come back to myself, but the gentleman from California is here and I want to address him. Thank you, Chair Gosar and Ranking Member Dexter, for convening this hearing. Really appreciate it. And over the past several months, we've seen the Trump administration illegally divert billions of dollars from the Justice Department's Judgment Fund, which Congress intended to be used only for active or imminent legal settlements involving federal government.

In March 2026, uh, Trump used the fund to pay $1 billion to TotalEnergies, a French oil company, to cancel its offshore wind leases. In other words, to take electrons and power off the grid. Just this week, Trump announced that he would hand out $1.8 billion from the fund to his allies, including criminals who stormed our Capitol on January 6th. Now, Mr. Ahn, your testimony walks through the history of the Judgment Fund and the limits that Congress placed on it. You explain in your testimony that Congress created the fund to pay legal claims efficiently, not to give the executive branch a slush fund it can use to buy its way out of policies it doesn't like or reward its allies.

Is that a fair summary of your testimony, Mr. Ahn? It is, Congressman. And does a company simply being unhappy with the direction of government policy, should they qualify for payment under this? No, they should not. In order for there to be a payout from the judgment fund without having a court-approved settlement in place, a lawsuit would have to be imminent, is that right?

Yes, that's correct. Now I want to read you a clause from the actual TotalEnergies Carolina Long Bay settlement agreement, which was signed by Secretary Bergum on March 2nd of this year. It states that TotalEnergies, quote, would have claimed breach of contract and filed suit if a suspension order had been issued. In other words, the agreement— this agreement claims that Total would have sued if Interior had ordered work to stop on the project, an order courts have repeatedly rejected, but no such order was even ever issued. In fact, the agreement itself acknowledges that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management would have issued, quote, "a suspension under," again, another hypothetical.

Mr. Ahn, if the government never took action specifically against Total Energy, Does it sound like Total had an imminent case to sue? No, it does not. Total Energy CEO Patrick Pouyanné stated publicly that his company sought reimbursement from the Department of the Interior because of, quote, policy constraints, and that this had happened before any national security assessment had occurred. If Total Energy had walked into the Interior Department wanting to get paid to walk away from a business deal, would that entitle them to taxpayer money from the Judgment Fund? No, it would not.

So to be precise, if there's no stop work order, no pending lawsuit, no adjudicated claim, and the company's own CEO says they initiated negotiations as a business manner, then Secretary Burgum would have no legal basis to pay them from the judgment fund. Is that correct? That's correct. Now, there are serious questions about the legality of these settlements and the accuracy of TotalEnergies' claims. These so-called settlements might seem like an easy business decision for Total and other offshore wind companies.

But if I were in their shoes, I'd be very cautious about presenting false claims to the federal government. Under the False Claims Act, anyone who knowingly lies or submits false claims for federal payouts can be liable for triple what they took from the taxpayers. Finally, Mr. Rahn, last question for you. In your written testimony, you note the downstream consequences for states like California that built long-term energy plans around offshore wind. If the federal government can use a hypothetical litigation threat to manufacture judgment fund eligibility, and pay companies to walk away from leases, what recourse does California or other similarly situated states have?

At the top, Congressman, I do believe you've effectively identified the weird blending of roles that's happening between plaintiff and defendant by the usage of judgment fund in its current way around offshore wind. Currently, State of California has issued an administrative subpoena itself through the California Energy Commission and the Office of the Attorney General. We believe more documents will be forthcoming on the deal, and that itself, again, exposes the federal government to increased litigation. Thank you, Mr. Ahn, and thank you everybody for your testimony. I just want to close by saying that we need more transparency around the TotalEnergies deal.

We need more transparency around this slush fund for the January 6th, quote unquote, allies of Donald Trump. The Judgment Reserve Fund was not meant for these purposes. It was not meant to give handouts for policy decisions that appropriations power is reserved to Congress, and trying to use this Judgment Fund as a slush fund to get around Congress's appropriation authorities, clearly illegal and something that we in this committee and other committees need to get to the bottom of. With that, I yield back. I thank the gentleman.

I'll resume my take here now. Mr. Brown, coming back to you. So don't you, don't you feel that the option that you can be disclosed or not disclosed, you can choose to have that aspect? Is part of the bigger part of that process? I mean, yeah, I see, because I would say that if you, if you took a settlement from the federal government, or you're part of that settlement, or you take money from the federal government, you have to disclose.

Yeah. Whereas if you don't, if you're not taking any money, you don't have to disclose this unless you're under criminal prosecution for something else. I, I think you're, you're leaning toward a reasonable standard there. Um, Capital Research Center, we don't take government funding of any kind, and as far as I know, have plan never to do so. So that would never, you know, impact us and thousands, tens of thousands probably other, um, NGOs, uh, similarly situated.

Uh, at some point when you're taking— I mean, maybe, maybe put a threshold up if you're getting X percentage of your revenue from, from government funding or something of that nature. As I said, if you're collecting millions hundreds of millions, whatever you're getting in government funding, and your private donors are effectively leveraging their First Amendment right to influence public policy with taxpayer money on top of what they're getting, so they're kind of getting a 2-to-1 match or whatever. Something of that needs, you know, we need to know who those people are, I guess, in some cases. So I think you're on the right track. I would just caution you to be careful careful about those First Amendment questions, um, and, and where to draw that line.

Oh, I got you. So, so don't you think some of this should be like, if there's a judgment, let's say that's for the Pacific Darter or whatever, little fish, don't you think some of that money should go back to where it belongs? Because you're utilizing the government, the government's oversight of that animal or critter. Doesn't that— should that be part of that revenue stream? I really enjoyed Mr. Wood's testimony on that point, that a lot of these legal settlements and the like are really diverting from what I said was used to be a very important conservation movement that focused on saving what we all as people want, you know, landscapes and creatures.

And, you know, if at this point if we're diverting that money into legal fees and not really— that aren't necessarily aimed— because the incentive structures are wrong— that aren't aimed at doing that important conservation movement, we're not just going back, you know, we're not just doing nothing, we're being destructive to what the stated purpose is. So that needs a remedy of some sort. Well, and it's going to also tie into Indian water settlements too, because then some of that money would go back towards the settlement in that regard. So, you know, I'm going to ask the panel, all of you, to answer this question. Given the notoriety of the problem that we see existing today, What would you use as a boundary or an idea to reform it?

You know, is there a threshold for dollars? How would you reform this to make this better and more applicable to today? Let's start with you, Mr. Woods. Yeah, so as I said in response to one of the other questions, I would make the reasonableness analysis a fuller analysis, look at what the alternatives are and what was actually achieved in the litigation. Mr. Rahn?

I guess I'd agree with that, and I gave you a, a general standard of maybe there should be a percentage threshold. The transparency is important because it allows more eyes on whatever a problem might be. Okay, Mr. Ahn. I'll return to the idea that the scale itself of what's being used in offshore wind is, is what's astonishing. There should be a ceiling, a cap based on settlements to begin with.

So I do think when you look at billions of dollars being deployed through the Judgment Fund, that should not be allowed. Okay. Yes, Mr. Feit. Thank you. I—.

One thing that I experienced when I was working at DOJ is that agencies want to implement conservation programs but don't have appropriations for them. And perhaps in lieu of fee payments, thinking about thinking about conservation payments, and that could be a way to look at these statutes and really achieve a win-win. Yeah, that's, that's pretty good for my, my two years. I'm pretty sure that there's going to be more questions for you, by the way. So I think the witnesses for their valuable testimony, the members for their questions.

The members of the committee may have some additional questions for the witnesses, and we will ask you to respond to those in writing. Under Committee Rule 3, members of the committee must submit questions to the subcommittee clerk by 5 PM on Monday, May 25th. Hearing records will be held open for 10 days for those responses. If there's no further business, we're adjourned.