More than 40 Trump administration picks tied directly to oil, gas and coal, analysis shows [View all]

Donald Trump has placed dozens of people with ties to the fossil fuel sector in his administration, including more than 40 who have directly worked for oil, gas or coal companies, according to a new analysis.

The report from Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy and ethics non-profit that has been critical of the Trump administration, alongside the Revolving Door Project, a corporate watchdog, analyzed the backgrounds of nominees and appointees within the White House and eight agencies dictating energy, environmental and climate policy. That includes the Environmental Protection Agency, the interior and energy departments and others.

The analysis comes as Trump wages broad attacks on climate and energy policies and on renewable energy. The president’s so-called one big beautiful act, for instance, opened swaths of federal land to drilling and mining and enshrined the rapid phaseout of incentives for renewable energy. The administration has also launched an unprecedented assault on climate science, for instance with an energy department report on climate change that experts derided as full of misinformation. The report was created to justify the planned overturning of a key legal finding that forms the basis of virtually all US climate regulations.

“With the firehose of terrible, bad things that have happened on the environment front … it’s important to remind the public that these aren’t just actions from the amorphous, ginormous thing that is the Trump administration writ large,” said Toni Aguilar Rosenthal, report author and senior researcher at the Revolving Door Project. “It is often specific actors coming from specific moneyed interests that are carrying out this disastrous deregulatory agenda.”

The authors identified 111 employees whom they deemed “fossil fuel insiders and renewable energy opponents”. That includes 43 people who were directly employed by coal, oil or gas companies. Among them are well-known senior officials such as energy secretary Chris Wright, the former CEO of the fracking company Liberty Energy.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/08/trump-administration-fossil-fuels-climate