The spouse of a top aide to President Biden and first lady Jill Biden is involved with a group that views climate change as a national security threat and pushes for the transition to electric vehicles as part of its efforts, Fox News Digital has found.
David Wade, former chief of staff to Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry and the husband of Elizabeth Alexander, a deputy assistant to President Biden and the spokesperson for Jill Biden, is entangled with the Washington, D.C.-based American Security Project (ASP), which views “climate security” as a critical component of its endeavors.
While Alexander advises President Biden, who has directed his administration to aggressively push electric vehicles as part of its broader climate change agenda, Wade aids the ASP in similar endeavors from a national security-focused standpoint as a member of its board of directors.
The ASP’s tax filings show the group also paid Wade’s clean energy consulting firm, Greenlight Strategies LLC, $11,000 last year. An ASP spokesperson told Fox News Digital his company received the payment to engage in a project aimed at “providing a forum for bipartisan discussion about climate change and its threats to national security under his LLC.”
President Biden has pushed for a transition to electric vehicles.
“We see climate as an accelerant to instability in vulnerable regions. We can see the impact it is having on farming and food supplies, even here in the United States,” the ASP spokesperson said. “Our military is concerned as they are often the first sent in to address instability. U.S. military bases around the world, including right here in the United States, are affected by climate change, as can be witnessed in sea level rise.”
Overall, ASP has supported an across-the-board transition to electric vehicles as part of its efforts to tackle climate change in the national security domain.
In a fact sheet ASP released last year, the group said the “widespread adoption” of such vehicles will “keep the U.S. more secure by reducing our dependence on foreign oil and gas, and reduce financial incentives of petro-state autocracies like Russia.”
The document further stated that transportation accounts for 29% of national greenhouse gas emissions, making it a “critical sector in achieving national net-zero climate goals, and enhancing both energy and national security” while referencing the Biden administration’s goal of “transitioning half of America’s vehicles to electric by 2030.”
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates told Fox News Digital, “President Biden has warned for decades that climate change is a national security threat — in agreement with experts across the political spectrum such as Trump Administration Secretary of Defense James Mattis. The president is proud to be delivering on his campaign promise to bring manufacturing jobs back to America and cut Americans’ energy costs by taking on the climate crisis, including by ensuring that the United States wins the global competition for EV manufacturing.”
Shortly after taking office in 2021, Biden issued the goal of ensuring 50% of total domestic vehicle purchases are electric by 2030, a first-of-its-kind goal cheered by green energy industry groups and climate advocates. Since then, the administration has pursued various regulations that, while not explicitly mandating electric vehicles, would create strong financial incentives for manufacturers to produce more zero-carbon options and for consumers to transition to those options.
In December 2022, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized rules that targeted heavy-duty trucks it said at the time were the “strongest-ever national clean air standards to cut smog- and soot-forming emissions” from such vehicles. The new standards went into effect March 27 and will be implemented for new trucks sold after 2027.
