Robby Starbuck speaks in an interview in New York in March. Photograph: Bess Adler/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Critics condemn Robby Starbuck, appointed in lawsuit settlement, for ‘peddling lies and pushing extremism’
A prominent anti-DEI campaigner appointed by Meta in August as an adviser on AI bias has spent the weeks since his appointment spreading disinformation about shootings, transgender people, vaccines, crime, and protests.
Robby Starbuck, 36, of Nashville, was appointed in August as an adviser by Meta – owner of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other tech platforms – in an August lawsuit settlement.
Since his appointment, Starbuck has baselessly claimed that individual shooters in the US were motivated by leftist ideology, described faith-based protest groups as communists, and without evidence tied Democratic lawmakers to murders.
Starbuck’s online posts have not changed in tenor since the “anti-DEI agitator” was brought into the Meta fold, and his Trump administration connections raise broader questions about the extent to which corporate America has capitulated to the Maga movement.
The Guardian repeatedlycontacted Meta for comment on Starbuck’s role, and his rhetoric online, but received no response.
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Donald Fuhrump says that Amerikkka doesn’t bother with crimes or charges anymore, not being 100% Amerikkkan and opposing his real estate intentions is enough.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told an AI conference that data centers should be powered by coal, gas, and nuclear. Ruth Porat said his “comments were fantastic.”
This article is being co-published with The Lever, an investigative newsroom. Click here to get The Lever’s free newsletter.
At a recent artificial intelligence conference in Washington, D.C., Google’s president cheered on Trump’s interior secretary after he slammed Silicon Valley’s support of the so-called “climate extremist agenda” and pushed to expand the use of “incredibly clean” coal plants and other fossil fuels to power data centers, according to a previously unreported recording.
Following the speech by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, Ruth Porat, president and chief investment officer of Google and Alphabet, told conference attendees that “I thought Secretary Burgum’s comments were fantastic… [B]ecause I think it is very clear that to realize the potential of AI, you have to have the power to deliver it. And we have underinvested in this country, and to stay ahead, we need to actually address it head-on.”
Porat was speaking on a panel about how AI is “rewriting America’s future,” alongside Big Tech leaders including venture capitalist Delian Asparouhov and Kevin Weil, the chief product officer for OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT. During the panel, Porat also discussed a Google white paper advocating for U.S. investments in natural gas and nuclear to power the industry’s energy-hungry data centers.
Google and other major tech companies as recently as a few years ago led the corporate world in acknowledging the seriousness of the climate emergency and proposing concrete actions to limit Silicon Valley’s carbon emissions. Porat’s company has for years positioned itself as a climate leader in the tech industry. Among its many promises? An ambitious 2020 pledge to power all its operations with carbon-free energy by 2030.
Yet Porat’s comments at the Hill & Valley Forum, and her subsequent praise in July for the Trump administration’s “energy abundance” agenda — which supports oil, gas, and coal while severely penalizing renewables such as wind and solar — signal that, at a time when climate action is under serious threat from Republicans, the country’s largest tech companies are wavering in their support for the cheapest, cleanest, and lowest-carbon energy sources.
That’s reflected in Google’s carbon emissions, which soared nearly 50 percent between 2019 and 2024, according to a company environmental report. An independent study from the NewClimate Institute, a German nonprofit, warned in August of a “crisis” for the tech giant’s ability to meet its climate targets, stating that “data centre expansion and higher artificial intelligence (AI) usage have rapidly increased Google’s electricity demand and absolute [greenhouse gas] emissions.”
Google didn’t respond to a media request about Porat’s comments.
“Climate Extremist Agenda”
Founded in 2021, the Hill & Valley Forum is an organization that brings together prominent tech executives and venture capitalists with federal policymakers. This year’s event, which took place in late April, featured the likes of Palantir CEO Alex Carp and billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, alongside politicians including Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson.
The opening remarks were delivered by Burgum, a former North Dakota governor with close ties to the fossil fuel industry. As interior secretary, Burgum oversees management and conservation of federal land. Previous reporting showed that in 2024, months prior to being nominated by Trump for the position, Burgum hosted a private dinner for oil, gas, and coal executives.
Burgum, a Republican, used his speech to criticize Silicon Valley for having supported “the climate extremist agenda,” which he defined as the idea that “a degree of temperature change in the year 2100 is the thing that we should drive every policy in America.” Burgum added: “I’ve always been a little offended by that.”
Echoing common climate-denier talking points about the inability of climate models to predict future temperature rise, Burgum questioned “how a group could take a spreadsheet and extrapolate [climate] data for 90 years, 80 years, now 75 years and say ‘this is absolutely what’s going to happen.’”
He then positioned coal as an energy source that can power Big Tech’s data centers. “Any coal plant running in America today is incredibly clean,” he claimed without evidence.
Burgum concluded by stating that accelerating production of American oil, gas, coal, and potentially some nuclear would be key to realizing Silicon Valley’s AI agenda.
“That’s the Trump plan, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” he said.
Google Leader On Burgum’s Vision for AI: “Fantastic”
Porat, the Google president, expressed no qualms with Burgum’s speech when she was asked about it on a panel later that day, instead stating that his “comments were fantastic.” Porat then elaborated that Google and the Trump administration were in agreement about needing to scale up nuclear production and modernize the electrical grid.
Five years ago, Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned that “we have until 2030 to chart a sustainable cause for our planet or face the worst consequences of climate change.” He outlined a plan to power its data centers by doing “things like pairing wind and solar power sources together, and increasing our use of battery storage.”
But at the Hill & Valley Forum, Porat outlined an energy agenda much more favorable to fossil fuels. During the panel, she touted a recent Google white paper that didn’t once mention wind or solar, even though they generally remain the cheapest form of power generation worldwide. The document instead called for federal investment in “affordable, reliable, and secure energy technologies, including geothermal, advanced nuclear, and natural gas generation with carbon capture (among other sources).”
Others at the conference voiced direct skepticism of renewable energy, including David Friedberg, co-host of the popular pro-Trump tech podcast All-In. “To scale up energy, it’s not about solar, it’s not about wind, those might have been nice from a narrative perspective, but scalable energy production requires these next-gen systems and we have to unlock that,” he claimed during a panel about reindustrializing America.
In reality, last year, nearly 93 percent of new power additions worldwide came from renewable sources.
Trump’s AI Action Plan
When the Trump administration unveiled its AI Action Plan in Washington, D.C., in late July, the event was presented in the form of a live podcast hosted by Friedberg and his other All-In co-hosts, as well as the founders of Hill & Valley.
“We need to build and maintain vast AI infrastructure and the energy to power it,” the plan reads. “To do that, we will continue to reject radical climate dogma and bureaucratic red tape, as the Administration has done since Inauguration Day.”
The plan claims that it will ensure free speech in AI systems by eliminating “references to misinformation, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and climate change.” It further constricts federal spending to developers of the type of AI models, such as ChatGPT or Elon Musk’s Grok, “who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”
Some climate groups were quick to condemn the proposal. “This U.S. AI Action Plan doesn’t just open the door for Big Tech and Big Oil to team up, it unhinges and removes any and all doors,” KD Chavez, executive director of the national advocacy group Climate Justice Alliance, said in a statement.
But if Google has any concerns about the anti-climate AI policies being pursued by the White House, the company isn’t showing it. At a mid-July AI event in Pennsylvania, Porat heaped more praise on the Trump administration.
“Mr. President, thank you for your leadership and for your clear and urgent direction that our nation invest in AI infrastructure, technology and the energy to unlock its benefits so that America can continue to lead,” she said.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Trump boasted about withdrawing from the “one-sided” Paris Agreement, saying, “It was a disaster.” Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Conservative conference featured global right-wing speakers from Liz Truss to JD Vance calling for an end to climate protections.
Just a month into President Donald Trump’s chaotic administration, American and international conservatives swooped into the 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Washington, D.C., in mid-February, and took a knee to the president, non-elected billionaire Elon Musk, and their fossil fuel deregulation agenda.
After numerous speeches heralding the MAGA movement by major figures on the right, including Vice President JD Vance, DOGE chief Elon Musk, ex-Trump aide Steve Bannon, and Speaker of the House Republican Mike Johnson, on the last day of the four-day event, Trump himself spoke to the faithful. Basking in chants of “USA, USA,” Trump boasted about withdrawing from the “one-sided” Paris Agreement, saying, “It was a disaster, it was a disaster.”
“I terminated the Green New Scam,” he went on, referring to the Green New Deal, which was never enacted or proposed as an actual bill. “One of the greatest hoaxes ever played on this country is the Green New Scam. We spent trillions of dollars on this nonsense … It really set back our country.”
In a rambling speech bereft of solid policy or facts, Trump also said he “canceled Joe Biden’s insane electric vehicle mandate, where everybody has to have an electric,” again referring to non-existent legislation. Biden did not mandate people to switch to electric cars; he had progressively stricter pollution standards.
Trump’s final reference to the environment in his speech was that “people can buy any type of car they want, except for hydrogen. The only thing you can’t do is buy a hydrogen-powered car. You know why? They said it really works great, but when it doesn’t work, you never find a body. It’s a bet that’s a bad sign.” As of this publication date, no one has been disintegrated by a hydrogen car explosion. He then ended with his signature dance as the Village People’s “YMCA” blared over the loudspeakers.
Trump dances to the song, “YMCA” at CPAC 2025. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Trump’s references to fake climate policy was emblematic of this year’s CPAC discussions on the environment. In past years, the conference’s environmental speakers were more “scientific,” with conservative climate denialists showing graphs and data to prove their theories that climate change seemingly does not exist. But with no breakout sessions this year, the gathering was all anti-climate talk and pro-MAGA with zero attempts at science.
Take former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s talk on Thursday, Feb. 20, the second day of CPAC. Truss, who had previously served as the UK’s environment secretary, expressed her anger that her move to end the ban on fracking in Great Britain was brought back in 2022 by her predecessor, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Truss was famously only in office for 45 days. “Sadly, I wasn’t in office long enough to actually make [the fracking ban] happen,” she told the conference crowd.
“We have net-zero policies that have decimated our oil and gas industry,” she said. “The net result is we have the highest energy prices in the developed world. And in Britain, we’ve just seen the last steel plant close down last year. We cannot produce our own steel anymore.”
Former UK Prime Minister Liz Truss echoed Trump’s disdain for big government. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
The former Prime Minister, who spent much of her adult life in government, then repeated Trump’s disdain for the “deep state,” saying, “We want to dismantle the British deep state, which is older and more entrenched than the American one.”
“We need a great restoration bill to repeal all of the terrible laws, from the Equality Act to the Climate Change Act, the Human Rights Act to the Constitutional Reform Act,” she said. “We need to eradicate judicial activism in Britain and restore parliamentary sovereignty.”
CPAC has expanded its international influence and speakers over the last few years with annual South Korea and Hungary meetings. Leader of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage, who also attended, has spoken at the conference for many years, and is considered a bit of a celebrity here.
Wright Vows to Axe Regulations
On the first day of the conference, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s speech pushed Trump’s “drill baby drill and build baby build” philosophy. The former fracking CEO of Liberty Energy promised that his and Trump’s other cabinet departments would be “working feverishly” to remove regulations to pave the way for higher energy production. He also emphasized removing restrictions the Biden Administration put on fossil fuel appliances like gas stoves.
Last year, gas stoves were the new “plastic straws” in the world of right-wing media as conservative news outlets claimed the Democratic administration was looking to ban them fully, which it was not.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright talked about the amount of energy needed for AI data centers. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Economic competition with China has been a running theme through many of the speeches at CPAC for years. But now, with the massively successful launch of DeepSeek, finding energy for artificial intelligence operations is a priority. Wright’s speech emphasized the energy use that AI technology will demand and claimed that it will lead to “enormous benefits” in drug discovery and national security. “We want China to lead the way in AI? I would feel naked if their AI was better than ours,” he said.
AI and tech companies donated huge amounts to the Trump campaign, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. That investment has paid off as the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Trump’s changes at the FTC and FCC to reign in their powers will benefit the tech world immensely. Trump has even rescinded Biden’s executive order warning people about AI.
Dunleavy’s Political Ambitions
One of Trump’s first executive orders demanded the nation “unleash Alaska’s extraordinary resource potential.”Environmental rights organization, EarthJustice replied, “While the Trump administration’s plans were made clear in the orders, it’s important to note that the vast bulk of the actions cannot be made unilaterally by the President without cooperation from government agencies, Congress, or other authorities.”
Running throughout CPAC on the big screens in the main ballroom amounted to campaign ads for Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who wants to leave his job in the 49th state. Called the “worst-kept-secret,” Dunleavy had been auditioning for a gig in the Trump administration, but now that that doesn’t seem to be happening, he’s likely looking at running for Senator against one of his fellow Republicans, Dan Sullivan, who is up for reelection in 2026, or Lisa Murkowski, who is up in 2028. The ad, which features Trump prominently, has the President speaking about how he will work with Dunleavy to provide “energy to Alaska and allies around the world.”
A campaign ad screened at CPAC for Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s Senate campaign. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
From the CPAC stage, Gov. Dunleavy told the audience that Trump “sees us [Alaska] as a solution to many of America’s problems.” A $44 billion liquified natural gas pipeline project that both Trump and Dunleavy are pushing is oddly not planned to send energy to the lower 48, but to Asian customers. Japan has been trying to curry favor with Trump for access since that could help the nation diversify supplies away from riskier sources like Russia.
Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum
President Trump has commanded the new Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burgum, to find new ways to exploit public lands. The goal, Burgum explained in his CPAC speech, is to “sell to our friends and allies.” He claims that doing so will “end our trade deficits” and “the wars abroad.” Ultimately, Burgum claims this work will set up President Trump to “win the Nobel Prize.”
Burgam, a billionaire former two-term governor of North Dakota and a software developer, has extensive ties to the oil and gas industry, including hundreds of thousands in investments. After a brief run for President in 2024, Burgam endorsed Trump.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum aims to exploit public lands to “sell to our friends and allies.” Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Burgam will also chair the newly founded National Energy Dominance Council with Energy Secretary Chris Wright as vice chair. The council “will advise President Trump on strategies to achieve energy dominance by improving the processes for permitting, production, generation, distribution, regulation, and transportation across all forms of American energy.” It will also cut “red tape” through axing regulations.
CFACT Was the Lone Climate Group in Hall
Down in the exhibit hall, the tables that many years ago mainly saw small government groups were filled with culture warriors – groups opposed to abortion, trans rights, and other historically underrepresented communities. This year, the lone group in the hall focusing on climate was CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, a “conservative libertarian think tank.”
Nate Meyers, CFACT’s national field coordinator was clear on the group’s approach to the “science” of climate change –“It’s not settled at all,” he said. Meyers verbally added, “™”[trade mark]] as he said the words “climate change” when speaking to DeSmog.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/QKjLqdrm3N0?feature=oembedCFACT’s Nate Myers speaks with DeSmog. Credit: Zach D. Roberts
Collegians for a Constructive Tomorrow is CFACT’s college campus organization, which, according to Myers, has 32 campus groups. Like Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, CFACT aims to capture the minds of young people, according to Myers., “College campuses are so totally captured by the left. Statistically, you’re more likely to be instructed by a Marxist than you are a Republican,” he said.
“That demonstrates a huge need for alternative viewpoints on college campuses,” he added. “And it’s kind of a cliche thing to say, but the children and young people are our future.”
When asked who funds CFACT, Myers mentioned small donations and occasional larger direct donations, emphasizing the grassroots nature of the organization. When DeSmogasked if they received backing from Koch Inc., like many similar climate-denying groups, Myers demurred, saying he wasn’t a fan of Koch.) In the past, CFACT has received large sums from Koch’s Donors Trust, along with all the other usual suspects of right-wing climate denying donors.
Then-U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a briefing on wildfires with local and federal fire and emergency officials in Sacramento, California on September 14, 2020. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
One observer blasted MAGA’s “conflagration of lies and disinformation.”
Progressive critics were left shaking their heads this week as Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and his MAGA allies absurdly blamed the Los Angeles County wildfires on everything from an ichthyophile governor to diversity policies—while ignoring what experts say is the true cause of the deadly infernos.
On Wednesday, Trump took to his Truth social media platform to falsely accuse Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom—whom he repeatedly called “Newscum”—of refusing “to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water… to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.”
Newsom’s office responded to Trump’s accusation by correctly noting that “there is no such document as the water restoration declaration.”
Trump also accused Newsom of wanting “to protect an essentially worthless fish called a smelt, by giving it less water,” a red herring and false statement given that the state’s plan to protect the endangered delta smelt actually involved increasing the amount of fresh water flowing into its habitat.
Jeffrey Mount, a water policy expert at the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, toldMSNBC newsletter editor Ryan Teague Beckwith on Thursday that Trump got “nothing right” in his post.
Summarizing his interview with Mount, Teague Beckwith wrote:
Without getting into too much detail, here’s what did happen… During Trump’s first term, his administration sought to divert some of the water coming into a river delta near San Francisco to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, among others. They came up with a plan for the water, which Newsom challenged in court. The Biden administration later negotiated a new plan with California on how to divvy up the water.
This is basic stuff, so the fact that Trump describes this as Newsom refusing to sign some kind of document that never existed should give you a sense of how disengaged he is with his own policy.
Meanwhile, MAGA acolyte and soon-to-be Department of Government Efficiency co-leader Elon Musk used his X social media network—formerly Twitter—to amplify racist posts disparaging Democratic Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, an antisemitic diatribe by defamatory conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, implicitly sexist and homophobic attacks on Los Angeles’ fire chief, and his own frequent aspersions of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
Slate web editor Nitish Pahwa condemned MAGA’s “conflagration of lies and disinformation.”
“Just one day after Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook and Instagram would no longer be fact-checking informational posts, and mere months after nonstop online hoaxes obstructed federal efforts to assist North Carolinians in the recovery from Hurricane Helene, we’re getting an early-year preview of how the United States is going to experience and respond to these rampaging climate disasters throughout the near future,” Pahwa said.
“In the vacuum left by mainstream TV networks that did not at all mention climate change in their fire coverage, bad-faith digital actors swooped in with their own takes,” Pahwa added. “Climate change doesn’t just boost record weather events—it boosts the snake-oil salesmen, too.”
Climate experts and defenders weighed in with science-based explanations for the increase in extreme weather events like the Los Angeles County wildfires.
As Common Dreamsreported earlier Thursday, Aaron Regunberg, Public Citizen’s Climate Program senior policy counsel, noted that “a recent study found that nearly all of the observed increase in wildfire-burned area in California over the past half-century is attributable to anthropogenic climate change.”
“This devastation is the direct result of Big Oil’s conduct,” Regunberg asserted.
As Fossil Free Media director Jamie Henn said, “This is exactly the sort of disaster that Exxon’s own scientists predicted more than 50 years ago, but they spent billions to keep us hooked on fossil fuels.”
According to the U.S. National Park Service, the area burned annually by California wildfires has increased fivefold since the 1970s.
