A major environmental group said Friday that it is getting help from an anonymous donor with deep pockets to help fight the incoming Trump administration and its plans to unravel President Obama’s environmental legacy.
The Natural Resources Defense Council sent out an email to donors on Inauguration Day with the subject line, “His inauguration = our fight.”
Rhea Suh, the president of the prominent environmental group, told donors that the group has secured the backing of a special contributor who she would not name, but who will be matching each donation made up to $250,000 to counter Trump’s agenda.
“That’s right: Your support is so vital in these first weeks of the Trump presidency that a generous donor will match your gift dollar-for-dollar — up to $250,000 — so your contribution will have twice the impact in this fight,” she wrote in the email.
Who is the unnamed donor? The only thing that Suh said about the individual is that he or she is “fired up enough to match every donation up to $250,000” and is being considered an asset with the NRDC’s own “grit,” experience and “game plan” to counter Trump from day one.
Suh said the money will go toward defending the “climate-saving Clean Power Plan,” the centerpiece of former President Obama’s climate change agenda, in federal court. It also will seek to “block the resurrection of the disastrous Keystone XL tar sands pipeline … ensure that the people of Flint, Mich., have access to clean, safe water … protect our public lands and coastal waters from Trump’s plans to frack, drill and mine … and that’s just a start,” she said in the email.
The money also will be used to create a “rapid response media team” to “expose the administration’s anti-environment schemes and arm journalists with the damning facts about how they’ll impact all Americans,” the email said.
“We’ll mobilize our 2.4 million NRDC supporters to raise their voices to oppose any attempts by their lawmakers to roll back our fundamental environmental protections — or risk paying a steep price in public opinion,” Suh said.
