The Fulcrum introduces Congress Bill Spotlight, a weekly report by Jesse Rifkin, focusing on the noteworthy legislation of the thousands introduced in Congress. Rifkin has written about Congress for years, and now he's dissecting the most interesting bills you need to know about, but that often don't get the right news coverage.
Trump’s nomination of fossil fuel executive Chris Wright as Energy Secretary inspired this Democratic bill.
The bill
The BIG OIL from the Cabinet Act would bar fossil fuel industry executives or lobbyists from certain politically-appointed administration positions for 10 years after leaving that private sector job.
The legislation would bar them from serving in 19 specific positions that deal with energy or the environment in some form – including Secretaries of Energy, State, Interior, Agriculture, and Transportation, plus Administrators of NASA and the EPA.
It would also bar them from serving in any politically-appointed positions (including at levels below the actual department head) for nine entire departments or agencies.
The acronym BIG OIL in the title stands for Banning In Government Oil Industry Lobbyists.
The Senate bill was introduced on January 21 by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA).
Context
President Trump’s Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, was the founder and CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy. Wright seems poised to pursue energy policies favoring the oil, coal, and natural gas industries, which Democrats largely oppose on environmental grounds.
Wright was confirmed by the Senate in February by 59-38, with Republicans approving him unanimously and Democrats largely opposing him by 8-38. The eight Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents who crossed party lines: Michael Bennet (CO), Ruben Gallego (AZ), Maggie Hassan (NH), Martin Heinrich (NM), John Hickenlooper (CO), Angus King (ME), Ben Ray Luján (NM), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH).
Trump’s first term also featured fossil fuel executives serving in top positions, such as ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State in 2017-18.
What supporters say
The bill’s supporters argue that top federal policymakers should be free of undue financial or occupational influence, particularly given recent natural disasters.
“Especially in the wake of the Los Angeles wildfires and more frequent and dangerous disasters fueled by climate change, we can't afford to have a fossil fuel CEO like Chris Wright help the industry capture our federal agencies further for oil profits,” Sen. Markey said in a press release. “We must have government agencies helmed by responsible, qualified executives without blatant conflicts of interest.”
Or as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) put it during the confirmation hearing for Trump’s EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, after a phone audibly rang: “That was the fossil fuel industry.”
What opponents say
Opponents counter that that a fossil fuel executive may actually be the most qualified person, given how expensive and unpopular they contend that Democrats’ environmental policies are.
“If we really want an all-of-the-above energy policy for our nation, we need people like Chris Wright, who understand all aspects of energy and have the knowledge and capability needed to drive the latest, greatest technology and truly make the U.S. energy-dominant,” Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND) told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. “I can’t think of anyone better able to do just that, based on his training, education, accomplishments, and experience.”
Odds of passage
The bill has attracted one fellow Democratic cosponsor: Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). It now awaits an unlikely vote in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, controlled by Republicans.
Sen. Markey previously introduced the bill in 2019, but it never received a committee vote. Republicans also controlled the chamber at the time.
No House companion version appears to have been introduced yet.
Jesse Rifkin is a freelance journalist with the Fulcrum. Don’t miss his weekly report, Congress Bill Spotlight, every Friday on the Fulcrum. Rifkin’s writings about politics and Congress have been published in the Washington Post, Politico, Roll Call, Los Angeles Times, CNN Opinion, GovTrack, and USA Today.SUGGESTIONS:
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image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.