Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm suggested in a recent interview that the United States’ green energy push will be the "greatest peace plan" in world history.
"If we want to be energy secure and energy independent, that means we've got to produce our own energy," Granholm said in an interview with VOA News on Friday. "My counterpart in Ireland, the energy minister there, has said that no one has ever weaponized access to the sun. No one has ever weaponized the wind. Perhaps a move to clean energy will be the greatest peace plan the world has ever known."
Granholm’s comment immediately received criticism from conservatives on Twitter and was highlighted in a post from an account operated by the Republican National Committee.
"The war in Ukraine and ensuing energy crisis were entirely brought about by 'clean energy' and climate idiocy," author and Fox News contributor Steve Milloy responded. "Lying. Airhead."
ENERGY SEC. GRANHOLM CLAIMS BAN ON RUSSIAN OIL PROVES ‘WE CAN’T RELY ON THE VOLATILITY OF FOSSIL FUELS’
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Granholm’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Granholm has referenced the conversation with her Irish counterpart in the past including an instance in April that prompted Republican Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers to call her out on Twitter for a "dangerous" line of thinking.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm speaks during a press briefing at the White House, Nov. 23, 2021, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
SPECIAL COUNSEL RULES BIDEN'S ENERGY SECRETARY VIOLATED HATCH ACT
In the interview, Granholm said that the increasing oil production is what the administration is calling for "right now" but "ultimately we've got to move to clean."
"That's what the bill that the president signed yesterday, for the United States, it is the largest commitment to combating climate change of any country in the world," Granholm said, referring to the recently signed spending bill passed through Congress by Democrats. "It's by 10 the largest bill that we've ever passed in the United States to combat climate change. So it is so important for our energy security. And I know our European allies are trying to do the same."
U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm attends the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 4, 2021.
(Reuters/Phil Noble/File Photo)
Granholm was asked if the upcoming winter months will be "difficult" for Europe given efforts to cut back on Russian energy dependence that many fear will cause an energy crisis as temperatures drop and more Europeans require heating.
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"I think it will be," Granholm said, adding that NATO allies are united in their opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and will not back down on the effort to "wean" off of Russian fuel.
"There's no doubt it's going to be an expensive winter," Granholm said. "I know that the European leaders are looking for how they can alleviate the pain for real people in these increases in prices. But I know ultimately, they are determined to move away from Russian fuels and toward clean energy."
Andrew Mark Miller is a writer at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks during the 2022 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the United Nations in New York City on August 1, 2022.
Ed Jones | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urged governments on Wednesday to tax excessive oil and gas profits as the world grapples with an energy crisis triggered in part, by Russia's war in Ukraine.
"It is immoral for oil and gas companies to be making record profits from this energy crisis on the backs of the poorest people and communities," Guterres said in a speech before the international forum.
He added that the funds, which equate to $100 billion in the first quarter of this year should instead be used to support vulnerable communities.
"This grotesque greed is punishing the poorest and most vulnerable people while destroying our only home," Guterres said, calling for governments to also address the mounting climate crisis.
He also urged governments to ramp up and diversify supply chains for raw materials and renewable energy technologies while eliminating bureaucratic red tape around the energy transition.
"Every country is part of this energy crisis," Guterres said.
He also said that the consequences of the Kremlin's war have extended beyond a budding energy crisis and have also exacerbated global food insecurity and crippling debt around the world, but specifically in developing nations.
"Many developing countries drowning in debt, without access to finance and struggling to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic could go over the brink, Guterres warned. "We are already seeing the warning signs of a wave of economic, social and political upheaval that would leave no country untouched," he added.
The U.N. chief announced the establishment of the Global Crisis Response Group aimed at coordinating global solutions to the triple crisis of food, energy and finance.
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Guterres' comments come as the first vessel carrying Ukrainian agricultural goods departs from the Black Sea, a significant step in addressing the mounting food crisis provoked by Russia's naval blockade of Ukrainian ports sprinkled along the Sea of Azov and the Black Sea.
Less than 24 hours after the deal was signed though, Russian missiles rained down on Odesa, Ukraine's largest port. World leaders swiftly condemned the Kremlin's missile strike on Odesa, another anxious turn in fruitless efforts to mitigate a mounting global food crisis.
Ukraine's infrastructure minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, told NBC News on Monday that the vessel is expected to reach Tripoli, Lebanon in two days.
Kubrakov also said that 16 ships are ready to go, but that only three vessels will leave the port each day for the next two weeks. He added that in the next two months, Ukraine hopes to export up to 3 million tons of grain and other agricultural goods by sea per month.
Before Russia's invasion, Ukraine exported 5 million to 7 million tons per month.
The Foreign Office (FO) on Friday confirmed that there has been contact between Chief of Army Staff General Qamar Javed Bajwa and US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
At a weekly briefing today, after confirming Gen Bajwa’s contact with the US official, Spokesperson Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said that the FO wasn’t aware if the two officials talked about the economy.
“Our understanding is that ISPR (Inter-Services Public Relations) will be able to comment on it,” he added.
The FO’s statement comes amid reports that the COAS reached out to Washington requesting help in securing an early loan dispersal from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
According to a report published in Nikkei, Gen Bajwa spoke on the phone with Sherman earlier today.
“The sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Bajwa made an appeal for the White House and Treasury Department to push the IMF to immediately supply nearly $1.2 billion that Pakistan is due to receive under a resumed loan program,” it stated.
Pakistan has been mired in economic turmoil with depreciating rupee, sky-rocketing inflation and a spiralling energy crisis, and officials hope the revival of the IMF programme will help bring stability to the country.
Last month, the Fund confirmed it had reached a staff-level agreement with Pakistan on the combined seventh and eighth reviews for a $6 billion loan facility, a development that paves the way for the release of the much-awaited $1.17bn.
However, the tranche will only be released after an executive-level agreement, which has been delayed till late-August.
Text messages for former President Donald Trump’s acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli are missing for a key period leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, according to four people briefed on the matter and internal emails.
This discovery of missing records for the senior-most homeland security officials, which has not been previously reported, increases the volume of potential evidence that has vanished regardingthe time around the Capitol attack.
It comes as both congressional and criminal investigators at the Department of Justice seek to piece together an effort by the president and his allies to overturn the results of the election, which culminated in a pro-Trump rally that became a violent riot in the halls of Congress.
The Department of Homeland Security notified the agency’s inspector general in late February that Wolf’'s and Cuccinelli’s texts were lost in a “reset” of their government phones when they left their jobs in January 2021 in preparation for the new Biden administration, according to an internal record obtained by the Project on Government Oversight and shared with The Washington Post.
The office of the department’s undersecretary of management also told the government watchdog that the text messages for its boss, undersecretary Randolph “Tex” Alles, the former Secret Service director, were also no longer available due to a previously planned phone reset.
The office of Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari did not press the department leadership at that time to explain why they did not preserve these records, nor seek ways to recover the lost data, according to the four people briefed on the watchdog’s actions. Cuffari also failed to alert Congress to the potential destruction of government records.
The revelation comes on the heels of the discovery that text messages of Secret Service agents — critical firsthand witnesses to the events leading up to Jan. 6 — were deleted more than a year ago and may never be recovered.
The news of their missing records set off a firestorm because the texts could have corroborated the account of a former White House aide describing the president’s state of mind on January 6. In one case, the aide, Cassidy Hutchinson said a top official told her that Trump had tried to attack a senior Secret Service agent who refused to take the president to the Capitol with his supporters marching there.
In a nearly identical scenario to that of the DHS leaders’ texts, the Secret Service alerted Cuffari’s office seven months ago, in December 2021, that the agency had deleted thousands of agents’ and employees’ text messages in an agency-wide reset of government phones. Cuffari’s office did not notify Congress until mid-July, despite multiple congressional committees’ pending requests for these records.
The telephone and text communications of Wolf and Cuccinelli in the days leading up to Jan. 6 could have shed considerable light on Trump’s actions and plans. In the weeks before the attack on the Capitol, Trump had been pressuring both men to help him claim the 2020 election results were rigged and even to seize voting machines in key swing states to try to “re-run” the election.
“It is extremely troubling that the issue of deleted text messages related to the January 6 attack on the Capitol is not limited to the Secret Service, but also includes Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, who were running DHS at the time,” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson said in a statement.
“It appears the DHS Inspector General has known about these deleted texts for months but failed to notify Congress,” Thompson said. “If the Inspector General had informed Congress, we may have been able to get better records from Senior administration officials regarding one of the most tragic days in our democracy’s history.”
Neither Cuccinelli nor Wolf responded to requests for comment. DHS’s Office of Inspector General did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The discovery of missing records for the top officials running the Department of Homeland Security during the final days of the Trump administration raises new questions about what could have been learned, and also about what other text messages and evidence the department and other agencies may have erased, in apparent violation of the Federal Records Act.
Wolf and Cuccinelli had remained at DHS as Trump openly challenged the 2020 election results, even though the agency led efforts to help state and local governments safeguard the integrity of the election results.
Starting in late December, numerous DHS intelligence units across the country were warning of extremely worrisome chatter in white nationalist and pro-Trump social media platforms that were promoting coming armed to Trump’s Jan. 6 rally and using violence to block Biden from becoming president.
In late December, Trump railed in a Cabinet meeting that his secretaries were failing to properly help him investigate fraud that had corruptly “given” the election to Joe Biden, but cited unsubstantiated claims. Trump firedChristopher Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, in a tweetafter Krebs countered Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud, and complained that Wolf should have moved faster to force Krebs out.
On New Year’s Eve of 2020, Trump also called Cuccinelli to pressure him to seize voting machines in swing states and help him block the peaceful transfer of power. Trump falsely told him that the acting attorney general had just said that it was Cuccinelli’s job to seize voting machines “and you’re not doing your job.”
Cuccinelli was in Washington on the day of the attack and toured the Capitol that night to survey the damage. Wolf was on an official trip to the Middle East.
After the Capitol attack, several lawmakers called for hearings into why DHS had failed to anticipate the threat Trump supporters posed to Congress on the day lawmakers and Vice President Mike Pence planned to certify the election results.
Wolf had resigned five days after the attack on the Capitol, and cited “recent events” as well as legal rulings questioning his legitimacy to continue leading the department as an acting secretary for 14 months.
“Effective 11:59 p.m. today, I am stepping down as your Acting Secretary,” Wolf wrote in a message to the department. “I am saddened to take this step, as it was my intention to serve the Department until the end of this Administration.”
In an interview days later with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, the departing acting secretary said Trump bore some responsibility for the events of Jan. 6.
“I was disappointed that the President didn’t speak out sooner on that. I think he had a role to do that. I think, unfortunately, the administration lost a little bit of the moral high ground on this issue by not coming out sooner on it,” he said of Trump not swiftly condemning the violence.
A Government Accountability Office report in 2020 found that Wolf and Cuccinelli were ineligible to serve in their positions because their appointments had not followed the proper order of succession, an issue the GAO referred to the DHS Office of Inspector General.
Unlike Trump, Wolf did not dispute the election results and said DHS was preparing for the “orderly and smooth transition to President-elect Biden’s DHS team.”
“Welcome them, educate them, and learn from them,” Wolf said then. “They are your leaders for the next four years — a time which undoubtedly will be full of challenges and opportunities to show the American public the value of DHS and why it is worth the investment.”
Wolf had emerged as Trump’s favorite DHS Secretary, the president’s fourth pick for the job in just four years in office. Trump had promoted his first secretary John Kelly to be his White House chief of staff, then pushed Kelly out of that job for not complying with his orders. He had fired Kelly’s successor Kirstjen Nielsen for balking at some of Trump’s demands for how to handle migrants crossing the border which Nielsen knew were illegal.
The third secretary, Nielsen’s successor Kevin McAleenan, grew frustrated by the way Trump tried to politicize the department during his reelection effort departed after just seven months. Then Trump named Wolf as his acting secretary, and found the fourth time was a charm. Wolf repeatedly touted Trump’s immigration record as stellar and also deployed department personnel to tamp down Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland, to help promote Trump’s law-and-order message to voters.
Trump had appointed Cuccinelli to key DHS roles after seeing him defend his immigration agenda on television.
Trump allies still believe Wolf served him well. Wolf is among those mentioned this month in an Axios article as someone whom Trump could ask to return to government service if Trump successfully runs for president in 2024.
“This is a situation that is being caused by a lack of resources at the border and that is what the French authorities need to address and that is what I am being very clear about,” said UK's top diplomat Truss.
Car queue at the check-in at Dover Port as many families embark on getaways at the start of summer holidays for many schools in England and Wales, in Kent, England, Friday July 22, 2022.
(AP)
The UK’s foreign secretary has blamed France for the travel chaos faced by many travelers and holidaymakers at the Port of Dover in southeast England.
Liz Truss, on Saturday, accused French authorities of not sending enough officials to man border posts and rejected French claims that Brexit was the cause of the chaos.
“The fact is that the French authorities have not put enough people on the border and I am in touch with the French authorities, I am very clear that we need to see action from them to resolve the terrible situation that people are facing,” Truss said in an interview with Sky News.
When asked if the chaos faced at the port is a result of post-Brexit border checks, the foreign secretary said the current situation is the result of a lack of resources.
“This is a situation that is being caused by a lack of resources at the border and that is what the French authorities need to address and that is what I am being very clear about,” Truss added.
UK blames France as British travellers face waits of up to six hours at the port of Dover for border checks pic.twitter.com/EKIuflFUZL
French authorities have rejected claims by the British government that it is at fault for the delays and logjams, arguing instead that Brexit and the erection of border checks are the cause for delays and obstruction.
The UK’s official union for borders, the ISU, said Brexit had resulted in stringent checks at the country’s borders.
“It’s certainly the case that the checks are more rigorous than they used to be. Prior to Brexit, there was a deemed right of entry. We weren’t in Schengen but there were still very minimal checks ... and frequently there were no French checks at all,” ISU official Lucy Morton said.
“We’re now, of course, outside the EU and they’re entitled to treat us as they treat any other European traveller. So they do the same level of checks we do, and have always done, on them,” Morton added.
On Friday, the Port of Dover, a major terminal for travelers seeking entry into France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, declared a "critical incident" after travelers faced queues that lasted up to six hours.
