Senator Jon Tester has launched a portal on his web site to gather opinions from Montanans about President-elect Trump’s appointees.

It is important for you to speak up. Tester will be a minority voice in the Senate, and he needs to understand how Montanans feel about the need to block appointees who represent the interests of Big Oil, who deny climate change, and who seek alliances with our enemies.

Since we focus on energy and climate change on this site, these are the appointees we are most concerned about:

• Scott Pruitt, EPA: Pruitt is a climate denier who, as Attorney General of Oklahoma, frequently sued the EPA in an attempt to strip the agency of its regulatory powers. It is critical that Senator Tester take a leadership role to protect Montana’s environment by voting against this nomination.
• Rex Tillerson, State: Tillerson has been recognized as a hypocrite on this site for years. He is CEO of ExxonMobil, which has lied to the American public about climate change for a half century. It is the only major fossil fuel company whose future is inxtricably linked to Russia and Putin, and to ending sanctions on Russia, which would drive a wedge between the United States and its NATO allies. Tillerson is so wedded to Putin that he is the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the Bahamas.
• Rick Perry, Energy: As Governor of Texas, Perry expanded oil and gas drilling and received substantial contributions from the oil industry. As a candidate for president, he campaigned on getting rid of the Department. Perry is a climate change denier, and has no experience in dealing with nuclear weapons, which would be his primary concern as Secretary. The last three secretaries have been a PhD in chemical engineering, a Nobel Prize winner, and a nuclear scientist. Perry is most recently a contestant on “Dancing with the Stars“.

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