🚗 Prominent EV startup Rivian has retained Charlie Ellsworth, a former high-level Chuck Schumer aide, as an outside lobbyist via Pioneer Public Affairs.
- State of play: The firm will work on topics including IRA tax credits and efforts to overturn an EPA waiver for California tailpipe pollution rules, a filing shows.
- Catch up quick: Across the aisle, Rivian also recently retained former Trump campaign adviser David Urban via LGL Advisors (h/t Politico Influence).
- The bottom line: EV players need muscle on both sides of the aisle with so much policy in flux.
🛢️ New Interior Department rules aim to increase oil production in the Gulf of America (renamed by the U.S. from the Gulf of Mexico).
- Why it matters: The “downhole commingling” policy, which deals with allowable pressure differences between certain reservoir layers, could boost output by 10% over 10 years, Interior said.
⚠️ Via the FT, the LNG industry is warning Trump officials that it “cannot comply with new rules aimed at forcing them to use US transport vessels by imposing levies on Chinese-built ships docking at US ports.”
❌ Navy Secretary John Phelan said he’s scrapping the service’s climate action plan unveiled in 2022, which had goals including 65% cut in emissions from Navy operations and energy supplying them by 2030. Inside Defense has more.
