Michael Barbaro

So in the summer of 2022, Gunasekara and Brightbill start seeking funding for a big new project.

They want to create a secret operation to kill the endangerment finding.

They pitched conservative organizations.

They asked for about $2 million for the ability to work on scientific studies and research from scientists who disagree with the mainstream science.

They would start laying out the legal case for repealing the endangerment finding.

All of these things were things that could be used by a next Republican president, they hoped, Donald Trump, on day one.

They did eventually receive funding from a conservative organization, the Heritage Foundation.

The Heritage Foundation would go on to lead Project 2025, the blueprint for the next Republican president.

And Mandy Gunasekara wrote the EPA chapter for Project 2025.

So these two lawyers, Gunasekara and Brightbill, they are ensuring that this cause of rolling back environmental regulations, of going after the endangerment finding, that it gets taken up by a major conservative think tank in Heritage with a ton of influence in Republican politics.

Exactly right.

Then in tandem, we have two other lawyers, much more high-profile figures, who are working in their own right to bring down the endangerment finding.

And who is that?

Russ Vogt and Jeff Clark.

Much better known.

Much better known figures.

Russell Vogt, as we know, during the Biden years, starts a think tank of his own, the Center for Renewing America, where they were keeping the MAGA movement alive.

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Clark has been in the fight against the endangerment finding for decades.

Before there ever was an endangerment finding, he went to court to argue that the EPA...