Oil Majors And Billionaires Who Fund Climate Lies Also Donate To Anti-Trans Orgs - Creating Hate-Bait For Right Wing

EDIT

On May 20, the right-wing organization ADF sued Minnesota over its advocacy for trans rights. ADF argues that allowing trans girls and women in women’s sports discriminates against cis girls and women. ADF, a Project 2025 adviser, has been at the helm of several anti-trans initiatives, its lawyers authoring model bathroom bills that would force trans people into the bathrooms of their assigned sex at birth. In 2025, lawmakers have already passed more than 100 anti-trans bills across the U.S., including 13 bathroom bills.

But where is ADF getting money for its anti-trans advocacy? These days, it's almost impossible to tell due to regulations that allow nonprofits to hide their donors, but one verifiable source is the fossil fuel industry. Between 2013 and 2022, Shell USA Company Foundation donated $58,002 to ADF, per an investigation by the Guardian. Phil Anschutz, a billionaire who built his wealth on fossil fuels and now owns Anschutz Entertainment Group, Inc., which puts on live entertainment events like Coachella, also donated $110,000 to ADF between 2011 and 2013.

ADF isn’t the only anti-trans organization with financial ties to the fossil fuel sector. An independent analysis of 45 right-wing groups advocating against trans rights found that 80% have received donations from fossil fuel companies or billionaires. The analysis, conducted by two independent researchers in 2023 and not peer-reviewed, was shared exclusively with Atmos and HEATED. Through a qualitative search, the researchers identified 45 groups advancing anti-trans lobbying, events, and publications and checked reports about their donor disclosures for fossil fuel funding.

EDIT

“What trans and queer movements are doing is challenging a gender binary that that entire (Ed. American) dream rests upon,” said Dr. Cara Daggett, a senior fellow at the Research Institute for Sustainability in Germany, where she researches gender in American culture and its connection to energy. Why would fossil fuel billionaires want to end an “ecologically violent order,” as Daggett put it, where they can drill and pollute without consequence? Vanessa Raditz, a Ph.D. student studying queer climate justice movements at the University of Georgia, plans to continue Newell and Taylor’s independent research. They and their collaborators are looking for more academics and funders to join their efforts. They plan to expand the research to Canada, whose local anti-trans policies are headed in a similar direction as the U.S.

EDIT

https://heated.world/p/fossil-fuel-billionaires-are-bankrolling