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FIRST ON FOX: A controversial nonprofit watchdog group with a historical past of anti-Israel rhetoric and ties to susceptible Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown is working to shut one of many largest energy crops in the US in a transfer that would price a whole lot of jobs and lift vitality prices for Ohioans.
The Non-public Fairness Stakeholder Challenge (PESP) not too long ago despatched a joint letter, together with the Sierra Membership, to Blackstone urging the group to close down the Gavin Energy Plant in Ohio attributable to environmental considerations and arguing that the plant is the “largest and dirtiest” in the US.
The coal plant is the biggest coal-burning energy plant in Ohio and the ninth largest within the nation, using almost 300 individuals. The Institute for Power Analysis has estimated that closing the plant may “negatively affect the soundness of the electrical grid and energy markets” on condition that it produces 11% of the electrical energy within the state of Ohio.
Different consultants warn that residents of Gallia County, Ohio, the county the place the plant is situated, have already got larger common electrical payments than different areas in Ohio and 24% larger than the nationwide common suggesting that closing the plant would ship these prices up even larger.
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Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, walks by the U.S. Capitol in July. (Invoice Clark/CQ-Roll Name, Inc through Getty Pictures)
In latest weeks, the Sierra Membership has been working adverts concentrating on Blackstone’s management in an try to put strain on the group to retire the plant.
Brown, who benefitted from a digital cellphone financial institution occasion hosted by the Sierra Membership in late September and has been endorsed by their PAC, has a protracted historical past of working with PESP.
Brown participated in a PESP press convention in June and cited PESP in a letter to the Federal Nationwide Mortgage Affiliation in 2020.
“NPR studies that Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and City Affairs, is in search of solutions from a company landlord after a report by the Non-public Fairness Stakeholder Challenge discovered the agency has been submitting for evictions way more over in predominantly Black neighborhoods in the course of the pandemic,” The Nationwide Low Revenue Housing Coalition wrote about Brown and his promotion of PESP In 2021.
Brown additionally cited PESP’s work in a 2024 letter to the Division of Labor.
A earlier FOX Enterprise assessment discovered that a number of workers members at PESP, which has been funded by the Soros-backed Basis to Promote an Open Society, the Ford Basis, and Surdna Basis, amongst different left-leaning teams, took half in anti-Israel protests or promoted radical claims associated to the battle.
On the day of the Hamas assault on Israel, the place over 1,200 individuals had been murdered and a whole lot extra taken hostage, PESP senior analysis coordinator and self-proclaimed “Marxist” Abhilasha Bhola preferred a publish on X that included the phrase “from the river to the ocean” which is broadly understood as a name for the elimination of the state of Israel.
Neighborhood organizer Okay Agbebiyi, a senior housing marketing campaign coordinator with PESP, attended a November 2023 rally in Washington, D.C. “demanding an finish to the genocide in Palestine” and in December of that yr she posted a photograph of a mural titled “Liberation seems like terrorism within the eyes of the oppressor.”
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Polls present a neck and neck race between Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and GOP challenger Bernie Moreno (Getty Pictures)
Moreover, Agbebiyi signed a letter with different alumni of the College of Michigan slamming the college for “anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim animus” and demanding the college “discontinue alternate packages and strategic partnerships with Israeli universities.”
In 2022, Agbebiyi posted on X that she is “changing into extra principled of a Marxist” and described her political opinions as “communist.”
A spokesperson for the Brown marketing campaign advised Fox Information Digital that Brown “will at all times battle to guard Ohio jobs and can proceed to work with the corporate, staff, and group leaders to maintain the plant open, hold vitality prices reasonably priced, and ensure native residents keep wholesome and protected.” Nevertheless, the marketing campaign didn’t deal with Fox Information Digital’s query about PESP’s anti-Israel rhetoric.
Many consultants consider the Ohio Senate race will play a essential function in figuring out which social gathering controls the Senate subsequent yr and the Prepare dinner Political Report ranks the race between Brown and Republican businessman Bernie Moreno as a “toss up.”
Power has been a key problem in Ohio, a state the place coal vitality manufacturing and fracking are high points with voters.
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Sen. Sherrod Brown (Invoice Clark/CQ Roll Name/Bloomberg through Getty Pictures)
The Brown marketing campaign advised Fox Information Digital that Brown “believes in an the entire above method to American vitality independence” and pointed to examples of the place he “stood as much as his personal social gathering” to dam Biden vitality rules, together with voting towards Biden’s “clear” energy plant guidelines.
“Sherrod Brown is a Inexperienced New Deal radical who needs to close down Ohio vitality manufacturing,” Moreno marketing campaign spokesperson Reagan McCarthy advised Fox Information Digital. “Whereas Sherrod claims there may be ‘no struggle on coal,’ he’s actively campaigning with radical teams who wish to shut down Ohio coal crops. Not like Sherrod, Bernie will at all times stand with Ohio’s vitality business.”
Matt Parr, the communications director for PESP, defended the group’s push to shut the ability plant, calling it “one of many highest emitting, dirtiest, and deadliest coal-fired energy crops in the US.”
“The Gavin coal plant, owned by non-public fairness big Blackstone, is likely one of the highest emitting, dirtiest, and deadliest coal-fired energy crops in the US, emitting 14.7 million tons of CO2 final yr,” Parr advised Fox Information Digital. “The plume of poisons emitted by Blackstone’s 50-year-old Gavin plant have main public well being impacts for Ohio and different states as a result of it’s upwind of main metropolitan areas throughout the jap U.S. similar to Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Modeling has discovered Blackstone’s Gavin plant to be the nation’s deadliest coal plant, inflicting an estimated 244 untimely deaths every year from particulate emissions.”
Fox Information Digital reached out to the Sierra Membership for remark however didn’t obtain a response.
Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox Information. Discover him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and e-mail tricks to AndrewMark.Miller@Fox.com.
Susceptible Dem senator tied to ‘radical teams’ working to shut large energy plant in swing state
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