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A 2015 rally marked the 20th anniversary of the Million Man March. (Photo: Evan Vucci/AP)

WASHINGTON Republican attitudes toward African-Americans hardened significantly in 2016, according to an authoritative new study.

Only 32 percent of self-identified Republicans in 2016 said they believe that African-Americans face a lot of discrimination. That was a significant drop from just a year earlier, when the Public Religion Research Institute asked the same question. In that survey, 46 percent of Republicans respondedthat blacks experience significant discrimination.

In fact, more than half of Republicans told PRRI in 2016 that discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities. Among Democrats, 69 percent disagreed with this statement, and 59 percent of independents disagreed.

The 2016 study surveyed 40,509 people by phone in the second half of the year, starting in mid-May, just after Donald Trump had effectively clinched the GOP nomination.

About three-quarters of self-identifiedRepublicans are white Americans who identify as Christian, said PRRI CEO Robert P. Jones.

Attitudes among voters of other political persuasions stayed fairly steady on the question of discrimination against African-Americans during this period. Among independents, 58 percent said in 2016 that blacks are discriminated against, a drop of just 1 point. And 77 percent of Democrats answered affirmatively in 2016, down just 3points from a year earlier.

When PRRI first asked the question in its 2015 study, public awareness of the Black Lives Matter movement was still growing. Since then, there have been a number of other well-publicized cases of blacks killed by police under questionable circumstances.

Jones noted that Trumps campaign in 2016 included a very hard pushback to Black Lives Matter that began to be seen as the Republican response.

Trump called the group a threat and said thata lot of people feel that it is inherently racist.

Its a very divisive term, because all lives matter. Its a very, very divisive term, Trump said.

The phrase blue lives matter, intended to signal support for the police, became a rallying cry at the Republican Convention in Cleveland last year, after eight police officers were shot and killed in separate incidents in Dallas and Baton Rouge.

But in the weeks leading up to the convention, Trump also condemned the fatal shooting of two black men by police officers: Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., on July 5 and Philando Castile in St. Paul, Minn., the next day.

Related slideshow: Outrage over officer acquittal in Philando Castiles death >>>

Protesters carry a banner depicting Philando Castile on June 16 in St Paul, Minn. (Photo: Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

The officer who shot Castile during a traffic stop was acquitted of all charges earlier this month.

I thought they were horrible, horrible to witness, Trump said at the time. Whether thats a lack of training or whatever, but I thought they were two incidents that were absolutely horrible to witness. At the same time, our country is losing its spirit. African-Americans are absolutely losing their spirit.

Sterling and Castile are just two of the many black men and women who have died from police shootings or in custody, often in incidents that have been captured on video and released to the public. The list from 2014 to 2016 includes Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Joseph Mann, Paul ONeal, Terence Crutcher, Keith Lamont Scott and several others.

Jones said the different partisan and racial attitudes about discrimination mirror long-standing trends in American life. He also believes thatthe significant change in Republican attitudes between 2015 and 2016 indicated that the presidential campaign and the amount of attention and discussion it focused on the topic had a substantial impact.

Presidential campaigns are fairly influential in terms of what they signal to people what they highlight and dont highlight, Jones said. They send cues to people.

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In just a year, Republicans became far more skeptical of ...

Six months after seizing complete control of the federal government, the Republican Party stands divided as ever plunged into a messy war among its factions that has escalated in recent weeks to crisis levels.

Frustrated lawmakers are increasingly sounding off at a White House awash in turmoil and struggling to accomplish its legislative agenda. President Donald Trump is scolding Republican senators over health care and even threatening electoral retribution. Congressional leaders are losing the confidence of their rank-and-file. And some major GOP donors are considering using their wealth to try to force out recalcitrant incumbents.

"It's a lot of tribes within one party, with many agendas, trying to do what they want to do," Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-N.J., said in an interview.

The intensifying fights threaten to derail efforts to overhaul the nation's tax laws and other major initiatives that GOP leaders hope will put them back on track. The party is still bogged down by a monthslong health-care endeavor that still lacks the support to become law, even as Senate GOP leaders plan to vote on it this week.

With his agenda stalled and Trump consumed by staff changes and investigations into Russian interference to help win election, Republicans are adding fuel to a political fire that is showing no signs of burning out. The conflict also heralds a potentially messy 2018 midterm campaign with fierce intraparty clashes that could draw resources away from fending off Democrats.

Winning control of both chambers and the White House has done little to fill in the deep and politically damaging ideological fault lines that plagued the GOP during Barack Obama's presidency and ripped the party apart during the 2016 presidential primary. Now, Republicans have even more to lose.

"In the 50 years I've been involved, Republicans have yet to figure out how to support each other," said R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., the founder of the American Spectator, a conservative magazine.

On Capitol Hill, many Republicans are increasingly concerned that Trump has shown no signs of being able to calm the party. What Rep. Charlie Dent, R-Pa., called the "daily drama" at the White House flared again last week when Trump shook up his communications staff and told the New York Times that he regretted picking Jeff Sessions to be his attorney general.

"This week was supposed to be 'Made in America Week' and we were talking about Attorney General Jeff Sessions," Dent grumbled in a phone interview Thursday, citing White House messaging efforts that were overshadowed by the controversies.

As Trump dealt with continued conflicts among his staff which culminated Friday in press secretary Sean Spicer resigning in protest after wealthy financier Anthony Scaramucci was named communications director he set out to try to resolve the Senate Republican impasse over health care.

Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

The president had a small group of Republican senators over for dinner last Monday night to talk about the issue. But the discussion veered to other subjects, including Trump's trip to Paris and the Senate's 60-vote threshold for most legislation, which Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said he will not end. That didn't stop Trump from wondering aloud about its usefulness.

"He asked the question, 'why should we keep it?'" recalled Sen. James Lankford. R-Okla., who attended the dinner.

Two days later, some Republican senators left a White House lunch confused about what Trump was asking them to do on health care. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said the next day that while the president "made very clear" that "he wants to see a bill pass, I'm unclear, having heard the president and read his tweets, exactly which bill he wants to pass."

The White House says the president prefers to "repeal and replace" the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. McConnell has also raised the prospect of moving to only repeal the law. Neither option has enough votes. Nevertheless, McConnell plans to hold a vote early this week and bring the push to fulfill a seven-year campaign promise to its conclusion, one way or the other.

"One of the things that united our party has been the pledge to repeal Obamacare since the 2010 election cycle," said White House legislative affairs director Marc Short. "So when we complete that, I think that will help to unite" the party.

Trump's allies on Capitol Hill have described the dynamic between the White House and GOP lawmakers as a "disconnect" between Republicans who are still finding it difficult to accept that he is the leader of the party that they have long controlled.

"The disconnect is between a president who was elected from outside the Washington bubble and people in Congress who are of the Washington bubble," said Sen. David Perdue, R-Ga., who works closely with the White House. "I don't think some people in the Senate understand the mandate that Donald Trump's election represented."

Trump issued a threat at the Wednesday lunch against Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., who has not embraced McConnell's health-care bill. "Look, he wants to remain a senator, doesn't he?" Trump said in front of a pack of reporters as Heller, sitting directly to his right, grinned through the uncomfortable moment.

Heller is up for re-election in a state that Trump lost to Hillary Clinton and where Gov. Brian Sandovalwas the first Republican to expand Medicaid under the ACA. He later brushed the moment off as "President Trump being President Trump."

But some donors say they are weighing whether to financially back primary challengers against Republican lawmakers unwilling to support Trump's agenda.

"Absolutely we should be thinking about that," said Frank VanderSloot, a billionaire chief executive of an Idaho nutritional-supplement company. He bemoaned the "lack of courage" some lawmakers have shown and wished representatives would "have the guts" to vote the way they said they would on the campaign trail.

It's not just the gulf between Trump and Republican senators that has strained relations during the health-care debate. The way McConnell and his top deputies have handled the effort has drawn sharp criticism from some GOP senators.

"No," said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., when asked last week whether he was happy with the way leadership has navigated the talks.

As he stepped into a Senate office building elevator the same day, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would not respond to reporter questions about how good a job McConnell has done managing the health-care push. He flashed a smile as the door closed.

McConnell has defended his strategy, saying the process has been open to Republican senators, who have discussed it in many lunches and smaller meetings. Still, when it came time to write the bill, it was only McConnell and a small group of aides who did it. There was no outreach at all to Democrats, who have been united in their opposition.

In the House, the prospect of passing a 2018 budget this summer and a spending bill with funding for the Mexican border wall that Trump has called for remain uncertain, even though Republicans have a sizeable majority in the chamber. GOP disagreements have continued to flare during Speaker Paul D. Ryan's, R-Wis., tenure. There are also challenges in both chambers to achieving tax reform, which is expected to be among the next major GOP legislative undertakings.

Trump critics said the ongoing controversies over Russian interference in the 2016 election and probes into potential coordination with the president's associates would make any improvement in relations all but impossible in the coming months, with many Republicans unsure whether Trump's presidency will survive.

"The Russia stories never stop coming," said Rick Wilson, a vocal anti-Trump consultant and GOP operative. "For Republicans, the stories never get better, either. There is no moment of clarity or admission."

Wilson said Republicans are also starting to doubt whether "the bargain they made that they can endure Trump in order to pass X or Y" can hold. "After a while, nothing really works and it becomes a train wreck."

Roger Stone, a longtime Trump associate, said Trump's battles with Republicans are unlikely to end and are entirely predictable, based on what Trump's victory signified.

"His nomination and election were a hostile takeover of the vehicle of the Republican Party," Stone said. He added, "When you talk to some Republicans who oppose Trump, they say they will keep opposing him but can't openly say it."

Many Republican lawmakers have struggled to talk about the president publicly, fearful of aggressively challenging their party leader but also wary of aligning too closely with some of his controversial statements or policy positions. Instead, they often attempt to focus on areas where they agree.

"On foreign policy, I think he very much is involved in a direction that's far more in alignment since he's been elected with a bulk of the United States Senate than during the campaign," said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn.

Amid the discord, there are some signs of collaboration. The Republican National Committee has worked to build ties to Trump and his family. In recent weeks, Trump's son Eric, his wife, Lara, and RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel, among other RNC officials, met at the Trump International Hotel in Washington to discuss upcoming races and strategy.

That meeting followed a similar gathering weeks earlier at the RNC where Trump family members were welcomed to share their suggestions, according two people familiar with the sessions who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Nevertheless, the friction is building. Even among Trump's defenders, like VanderSloot, who said the president is "trying to move the ball forward," there are concerns he is picking too many fights with too many people. "I think he's trying to swat too many flies," VanderSloot said.

The broader challenge, some Republicans say, is to overcome a dynamic of disunity in the party that predates Trump and the current Congress. During the Obama years, it took the form of tea party-versus-establishment struggles, which in some cases cost Republicans seats or led them to wage risky political fights.

"There was a separation between Republicanism and conservatism long before he won the White House," said former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele. "The glue has been coming apart since Reagan."

Kelsey Snell contributed to this report.

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Republicans are in full control of government but losing control of their party - Chicago Tribune

The Senate returns to Washington on Monday with its GOP leaders determined to vote this week on their years-long quest to demolish the Affordable Care Act, even though the goal remains mired in political and substantive uncertainties.

Central questions include whether enough Senate Republicans will converge on any version of their leaders health-care plan and whether significant aspects of the legislation being considered can fit within arcane parliamentary rules.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) indicated on Sunday that the majority party may not have enough support to prevail on even a first step a routine vote to begin the floor debate.

Were continuing to work with all of the members. Were getting much closer to that, Barrasso, one of the chambers few physicians, said on CBSs Face the Nation.

Meanwhile, the two Republicans who have been the efforts most outspoken foes in the Senate relaunched complaints that their leaders are leaving them clueless as to what exactly will be put forward.

Late last week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) adopted a strategy uncharacteristic for a tactician who usually spares his caucus needless difficult votes.

Several days earlier, McConnell had lacked enough support to call for a vote on a bill that would rescind parts of the ACA and replace them with a variety of conservative health policies. He quickly switched, saying the chamber would vote anew on a repeal-only measure passed in late 2015 by both the Senate and House and vetoed by then-President Barack Obama. Less than 24 hours later, that idea faltered, too.

So McConnell has resorted to a plan C: bringing to the floor an anti-ACA bill passed by the House this spring and allowing senators a sort of free-for-all for substituting in either of the Senate measures or new iterations.

We are still on track ... to have a vote early this week, a McConnell spokesman said on Sunday. The Senate will consider all types of proposals, Republican and Democrat.

But Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a centrist who says the Senates Better Care Reconciliation Act would cut Medicaid in ways that would hurt rural and vulnerable Americans, derided that strategy during an appearance on Face the Nation.

Lawmakers dont know whether were going to be voting on the House bill, the first version of the Senate bill, the second version of the Senate bill, a new version of the Senate bill or a 2015 bill that would have repealed the Affordable Care Act now and then said that somehow well figure out a replacement over the next two years, Collins said.

I dont think thats a good approach to facing legislation that affects millions of people and one-sixth of our economy, she added.

Her sentiment was echoed by conservative Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who contends that the main GOP proposal the Senate has been considering does not go far enough to undermine the ACA. The real question is, what are we moving to? What are we opening debate to? Paul said on CNNs State of the Union. He reiterated that he only would support a bill that would remove large portions of the ACA and not legislation continuing federal subsidies that help millions of people afford their insurance premiums.

Such ideological crosscurrents within his own party are what McConnell has been trying to surmount. The GOP has a narrow majority of 52 senators, and Democrats are unified against the effort to dismantle Obamacare. Given this partisan terrain, Senate leaders are relying on a legislative process known as reconciliation, which allows a bill to be passed with a simple majority when it has budget implications, rather than the customary 60 votes needed to ward off a potential filibuster by opponents.

But the reconciliation strategy hit a roadblock late Friday as Senate Democrats released a set of guidance from the chambers parliamentarian, who concluded that aspects of a June26 version of the Better Care Reconciliation Act probably would not fit within the budget rules. The guidance says several parts of the proposal would require a full 60 votes for approval, including limits on funding for Planned Parenthood and health plans that provide coverage for abortion both restrictions conservatives have favored.

The parliamentarian also cautioned against a significant part of the GOP bill meant to encourage Americans to maintain health coverage: allowing health plans to freeze out for six months applicants who have allowed their coverage to lapse.

McConnells spokesman, Don Stewart, noted that the parliamentarian similarly cautioned against portions of the 2015 ACA repeal bill, but it still passed through the reconciliation process. Neither Stewart nor other Senate staffers said what changes could be contemplated to get around the parliamentary problem.

Continued here:
Senate Republicans plan to plow ahead with health-care vote this week - Washington Post

Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesnt explain why Republicans cant govern from Capitol Hill. At a time when the prospects for the middle class are in sharp decline, Republicans offer nothing but negativity.

There are many different flavors of freedom. For example, there is freedom as capacity and freedom as detachment.

Freedom as capacity means supporting people so they have the ability to take advantage of lifes opportunities. You encourage your friend to stick with piano practice so he will have the freedom to really play. You support your child during high school so she will have the liberty to pick her favorite college.

Freedom as detachment is giving people space to do their own thing. Its based on the belief that people flourish best when they are unimpeded as much as possible. Freedom as detachment is marked by absence the absence of coercion, interference and obstacles.

Back when the Republican Party functioned as a governing party it embraced both styles of freedom, but gave legislative priority to freedom of capacity. Look at the Republicans major legislative accomplishments of the past 30 years. They used government to give people more capacities.

In 1990, George H.W. Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act, which gave disabled people more freedom to move about society. In 1996, Republicans passed and Bill Clinton signed a welfare-reform law that tied benefits to work requirements so that recipients would develop the skills they need to succeed in the labor force. In 2003, Republicans passed a law giving Americans a new prescription-drug benefit, which used market mechanisms to give them more control over how to use it.

These legislative accomplishments were about using government in positive ways to widen peoples options. They aimed at many of the same goals as Democrats broader health coverage, lower poverty rates but relied on less top-down mechanisms to get there.

Over the past few decades Republicans cast off the freedom-as-capacity tendency. They became, exclusively, the party of freedom as detachment. They became the Get Government Off My Back Party, the Leave Us Alone Coalition, the Drain the Swamp Party, the Dont Tread on Me Party.

Philosophically you can embrace or detest this shift, but one thing is indisputable: It has been a legislative disaster. The Republican Party has not been able to pass a single important piece of domestic legislation under this philosophic rubric. Despite all the screaming and campaigns, all the government shutdown fiascos, the GOP hasnt been able to eliminate a single important program or reform a single important entitlement or agency.

Today, the GOP is flirting with its most humiliating failure, the failure to pass a health-reform bill, even though the party controls all the levers of power. Worse, Republicans have managed to destroy any semblance of a normal legislative process along the way.

There are many reasons Republicans have been failing as a governing party, but the primary one is intellectual. The freedom-as-detachment philosophy is a negative philosophy. It is about cutting back, not building.

A party operating under this philosophy is not going to spawn creative thinkers who come up with positive new ideas for how to help people. Its not going to nurture policy entrepreneurs. Its not going to respect ideas, period. This is not a party thats going to produce a lot of modern-day versions of Jack Kemp.

Second, Republican voters may respond to the freedom-as-detachment rhetoric during campaigns. It feels satisfying to say that everything would be fine if only those stuck-up elites in Washington got out of the way. But operationally, most Republicans support freedom-as-capacity legislation.

If youre a regular American, the main threat to your freedom is illness, family breakdown, social decay, technological disruption and globalization. If youre being buffeted by massive forces beyond your control, you dont want legislation that says: Guess what? Youre on your own!

The Republicans could have come up with a health bill that helps people cope with illness and nurtures their capacities, a bill that offers catastrophic care to the millions of American left out of Obamacare, or health savings accounts to encourage preventive care. Republicans could have been honest with the American people and said, Were proposing a bill that preserves Obamacare and tries to make it sustainable. They could have touted some of the small reforms that are in fact buried in the Senate bill.

But this is the Drain the Swamp Party. The Republican centerpiece is: Were going to cut your Medicaid.

So now we have a health-care bill that everybody hates. It has a 17 percent approval rating. It has no sponsors, no hearings, no champions and no advocates. As usual, Republican legislators have got themselves into a position where they have to vote for a bill they all despise. And if you think GOP dysfunction is bad now, wait until we get to the debt-ceiling wrangle, the budget fight and the tax-reform crackup.

Sure, Donald Trump is a boob, but that doesnt explain why Republicans cant govern from Capitol Hill. The answer is that were living at a time when the prospects for the middle class are in sharp decline. And Republicans offer nothing but negativity, detachment, absence and an ax.

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Why Republicans can't govern - The Seattle Times

Republicans are trying to conjure up a Russian scandal they can get behind.

GOP House members and at least one Trump Cabinet member are pushing years-old allegations from conservative activists that Russia has funneled money to U.S. environmental groups to oppose fracking. The story has reappeared in conservative circles in recent weeks a respite, perhaps, from the steady drip-drip of news reports about dealings between Russians and President Donald Trumps inner circle.

Story Continued Below

Allegations have circulated for years that Moscow has sought to discourage European countries from developing their own natural gas supplies as an alternative to Russian fuel. And conservatives have sought to extend those concerns to the U.S. though theres little but innuendo to base them on.

But the rumors gained new life in late June, when House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith and fellow Texas Republican Rep. Randy Weber asked Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to investigate whether the Kremlin is bankrolling green campaigns against the fracking technology that helped the U.S. overtake Russia in gas production.

Among other material, Smith and Weber cited articles in conservative news publications and an alleged Hillary Clinton speech published by WikiLeaks part of a trove of stolen Clinton campaign documents that U.S. intelligence agencies have linked to Russias election-meddling efforts.

The reports, the Republican lawmakers wrote in the letter to Mnuchin, suggest that Russia is also behind the radical statements and vitriol directed at the U.S. fossil fuel sector.

Green groups dismissed Smiths allegations as an attempt to divert attention from all the news surrounding Trump and Russia.

The source for energy and environment news weekday mornings, in your inbox.

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If congressional Republicans are so concerned about Russian influence, they should start seriously investigating that countrys interference in our election, not attacking long-standing environmental organizations, said Melinda Pierce, legislative director for the Sierra Club, one of the groups Smith and conservatives have accused of potentially taking Russian money.

The League of Conservation Voters, another group named in Smiths letter, also blasted the Science Committees allegations.

This is false, LCV spokesman David Willett said. We have no connections to Russia and have been an effective advocate for environmental protection for over 45 years. This seems like nothing more than an attempt at distraction away from the Trump campaigns well-publicized interactions with Russian interests to influence the election.

Still, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal op-ed page have both run items about the committees letter, and Energy Secretary Rick Perry lent his voice to the effort when a Fox Business anchor asked whether he supported an investigation.

Absolutely, Perry said in the July 11 broadcast. Steve is a very capable and very focused business individual who knows that this type of activity has to be investigated, has to be halted.

Spokespeople for the Energy Department and Treasury Department did not respond to questions. A White House spokesperson did not reply to questions about whether the allegations had made their way to Trump.

Anti-fracking sentiment in the U.S. started bubbling up among U.S. environmental groups as soon as the oil and gas production method started surging in the late 2000s, with the documentary Gasland appearing in theaters in 2010 after a year and a half in production. Much of that opposition was driven by local activists in new gas hot spots like Pennsylvania who complained about threats to their drinking water, while major national environmental groups like the Sierra Club were slower to take up the cry.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who oversees an economy almost totally dependent on oil and gas exports, has also slagged fracking technology. He once said that fracking makes black stuff come out of peoples water faucets, according to a New Yorker report.

Still, there is no evidence that Russian money has gone to U.S. green groups, at least on the national level, said Brenda Shaffer, an adjunct professor at Georgetown Universitys Center for Eurasian, Russian and Eastern European Studies. And there is even less evidence that any money would have been well spent, given how hard it would be to push widespread fracking bans through the myriad of local, state and federal governments involved in permitting, she added.

It would be almost impossible to prevent fracking in the United States, Shaffer told POLITICO.

The evidence the committee cites includes comments that former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen made at a London-based think tank in 2014, when he said he believed Russia was working with environmental groups in Europe to oppose shale gas development.

Other officials have indicated the same scheme is unfolding in the U.S., Smiths letter goes on to say though from there the trail becomes murkier.

The letter also cites a speech that Clinton allegedly delivered in Canada in 2014, according to Clinton campaign emails published by WikiLeaks, in which the former secretary of state supposedly said she had encountered phony environmental groups that opposed pipelines and fracking. The emails were part of a cache of Democratic documents that U.S. intelligence officials believe were originally pilfered by Kremlin-linked hackers.

Im a big environmentalist, but these were funded by Russians, Clinton says in the alleged transcript.

But the text does not indicate whether Clinton who promoted shale gas drilling in Europe was referring to environmental groups in Europe or the United States. A Clinton campaign aide did not answer questions about the veracity and the context of the speech. The campaign has refused to confirm or deny the content of any of the leaked materials.

Still, the alleged Clinton quotes have taken off in conservative news outlets, with The Daily Caller and Washington Times including them in articles published in the past year. Smith, in turn, cited those articles in the footnotes of his letter to Treasury.

Its a theory, but the reasoning behind it makes sense, said a committee aide, who requested anonymity. The chairman is saying theres data points pointing to this theory, and hes saying the Treasury secretary can shine some light on this. This isnt out of left field and crazy.

Science Committee aides also argued that last years national intelligence report on Russian meddling in the 2016 election supports the concerns raised in Smiths letter. However, the intelligence report doesnt allege any Kremlin outreach to U.S. environmental groups.

The intelligence reports non-classified, 14-page version makes reference to anti-fracking programming broadcast by Kremlin-controlled news channel RT. This is likely reflective of the Russian Governments concern about the impact of fracking and U.S. natural gas production on the global energy market and the potential challenges to Gazproms profitability, the report says. Gazprom is a Russian natural gas giant.

Much of the rest of the case that Russia funneled money to U.S. green groups comes from a 2014 report created by the Environmental Policy Alliance, which describes itself as devoted to uncovering the funding and hidden agendas behind environmental activist groups.

The group shares a Washington, D.C., address and a phone number with a public relations firm run by Richard Berman, a lawyer and former lobbyist who has also created issue groups such as the Center for Union Facts and Center for Consumer Freedom prompting liberal critics to nickname him the astroturf kingpin. CBS News once called him Dr. Evil in a 2011 piece focusing on his lobbying efforts on unpopular issues, including a campaign against Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

A representative of the Environmental Policy Alliance confirmed that Bermans firm manages the group.

The groups report and Smiths letter focus on $23 million that a Bermuda-based philanthropic firm, Klein Ltd., donated in 2010 and 2011 to the San Francisco-based Sea Change Foundation, according to information disclosed in Sea Changes IRS tax forms. Sea Change then awarded around $55 million in each of those years to the Sierra Club Foundation, U.S. Climate Action Network, Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups to promote energy efficiency and climate change-related operations, according to its IRS tax filings.

Although the source of Kleins capital has not been documented, the Science Committees letter says, the panel alleged that various corporate and personal connections strongly suggest that the money originated with the Russian government and energy sector.

But a lawyer representing Klein told POLITICO that none of the money came from sources connected to Russia. And a Sea Change spokesperson said none of its donations to environmental groups were earmarked for opposition to fracking.

The Klein Foundation grants were given as general support and no requirement was made that the funds be used for specific projects, programs, or activities of the Sea Change Foundation, the spokesperson said.

Bermans report draws on a court case filed in the British Virgin Islands in the mid-2000s that resulted in a money-laundering conviction against IPOC Group, an entity owned by Leonid Reiman, Russias former telecommunications minister and adviser to Putin, according to an outline of the case maintained by the World Bank. Roderick Forrest, a lawyer for Wakefield Quin, a law firm representing Klein Ltd., was one of IPOCs directors, according to case documents.

The House committee did not contact Klein as part of its fact-finding, a committee aide said. But Forrest railed against the accusations and said the company was considering legal action following the committees letter.

The allegations are completely false and irresponsible, Forrest told POLITICO. We can state categorically that at no point did this philanthropic organization receive or expend funds from Russian sources or Russian-connected sources, and Klein has no Russian connection whatsoever.

The Sierra Clubs Pierce also denied that any of the money it received from Sea Change ultimately came from Moscow.

We have confirmed that the origin of these funds is a private U.S. donor who cares about climate change and has invested in the work the Sierra Club does to tackle the climate crisis and advance the clean energy economy not from Russia, she said.

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Republicans brewing Russian scandal to target greens - Politico