Kerry during a press conference said that while he went to China to "break new ground" on the communist nation's climate commitments, he was unable to do so. Kerry went as far as to admit that he made no demands of the Chinese, arguing that "nobody should be 'dictated to.'" He nonetheless argued that his trip was a success, as he held "very frank conversations."

"We did succeed in having long and very detailed meetings with a lot to catch up on," Kerry said. "We did have very frank conversations, but we came here to break new ground … and it is clear that we are going to need a little more work to complete that task."

Kerry's failure to return to the United States with any sort of climate agreement likely comes as an embarrassment to the Biden administration, which argued in the buildup to Kerry's trip that U.S.-China climate negotiations should not be derailed by political disagreements. During Kerry's time in Beijing, Xi poured cold water on the Biden administration's attempts at climate diplomacy—he did not meet with Kerry during the visit and on Tuesday said his nation's climate goals "will never be influenced by others."

In response to that statement, Kerry on Wednesday said he agrees that the United States should not make demands of the Chinese.

"We all agree that nobody should be 'dictated to,' and we're not doing that. That's why we had three days of intensive discussions," Kerry said. "And I think if you ask [Chinese officials] … they would tell you there was no dictation here, there was a clear exchange of ideas."

In addition to Xi's comments, the Chinese Communist Party used climate negotiations to threaten the United States during Kerry's trip. CCP-run propaganda rag Global Times on Monday warned that America must end its "crackdown" on China or risk losing "any kind of cooperation" on climate change.

"While Washington has long wanted to isolate climate change issues related to China, there is actually no way to separate bilateral cooperation on global warming from the broader context of China-U.S. relations," the state-run media outlet's editorial said.

Kerry worked to avoid angering Xi ahead of the trip. During a Thursday congressional hearing, he refused to call Xi a "dictator," saying that while Xi "wields enormous power as the leader of China," the Biden administration shouldn't get "tangled up in labels and names."

"Frankly, all of that is water off a duck's back," Kerry said.

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during her July trip to China "previewed" to Xi's government the administration's plans to limit investment into certain Chinese sectors, Bloomberg reported Monday evening. "The goal, in part, was to make sure it doesn't catch off guard America's biggest geopolitical rival," according to the outlet.

The revelation marks the latest example of Yellen's attempts to appease the Chinese while in Beijing. Beyond briefing Xi's government on the planned investment restrictions, Yellen declined to use tough-on-China language that has angered the Chinese Communist Party. The Treasury secretary refused during her trip to say that the Biden administration is working to "decouple" or "de-risk" from China's economy, instead arguing that the United States merely wants "diverse" supply chains. Yellen hoped that language would "allay China's concerns," according to the New York Times.

While China's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday condemned U.S. efforts to "place arbitrary curbs on normal technology cooperation and trade," the Biden administration's plans to restrict investment in China are more limited than expected. The restrictions, which should be unveiled by the end of August, only apply to new investments and include carveouts for China's biotechnology and energy sectors, according to Bloomberg. Yellen during a Monday interview touted the narrow scope of the restrictions, saying the administration's plans will not "affect U.S. investment broadly in China" or "have a fundamental impact on affecting the investment climate for China."

As a result, some China experts say the plans do not go far enough. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Derek Scissors said that Yellen's "constant attempts to reassure" China are "bizarre," while American Foreign Policy Council senior fellow Michael Sobolik accused the administration of "pulling punches."

"The Biden administration should just be honest and say what they want: improved relations with a genocidal regime," Sobolik told the Washington Free Beacon. "This is how America loses the Cold War with China. One concession at a time."

The Treasury Department did not return a request for comment. News of its watered-down investment restrictions comes as another top Biden administration official, climate czar John Kerry, meets with Chinese leaders in Beijing to hold climate change talks.

China has tied those negotiations to further U.S. concessions. The CCP's flagship newspaper, the Global Times, said on Monday that America must end its "crackdown on China" and "mend the past frictions" with the communist nation or lose "any kind of cooperation" on climate change. Kerry on the same day praised the Chinese government, which is by far the world's top carbon emitter, for "doing an incredible job of building out renewables." Kerry also urged the United States and China to put aside "political issue[s]" and "come together to take action."

Florida Republican congressman Mike Waltz subsequently hammered the Biden administration for its willingness to "overlook" Chinese threats in an attempt to maintain "helpless" climate negotiations.

"The Biden administration are climate appeasers willing to overlook all the threats posed by the CCP in a helpless attempt to get China on board with their environmental priorities," Waltz told the Free Beacon. "Not only are they weakening American energy independence, but further enabling China's pollution by building green energy projects with Russian coal."

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Government-run propaganda rag Global Times on Monday lamented the "continuing U.S. crackdown on China's technological development," adding that if America does not "mend the past frictions" with China, the communist nation will not cooperate on climate.

"If the U.S. continues its crackdown on China, escalating tensions and hostility between the two sides, it is unlikely to be conducive to any kind of cooperation, including on climate change," Global Times said in its editorial. "While Washington has long wanted to isolate climate change issues from its other political and trade policies related to China, there is actually no way to separate bilateral cooperation on global warming from the broader context of China-U.S. relations."

The CCP's threat comes as Kerry, who serves as President Joe Biden's climate czar, spends four days in China to "engage with [Beijing] on addressing the climate crisis." Kerry on Monday praised the Chinese government for "doing an incredible job of building out renewables" and urged the United States and China to put aside "political issue[s]" and "come together to take action." Those comments, GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley argued on Monday, show why Kerry "might be the worst member of Joe Biden's admin."

Kerry "wants America to ignore the fact that China is preparing for war, spying on us, hacking our govt, & infiltrating our institutions so he can make nice with [Chinese president] Xi Jinping on climate change," Haley tweeted.

Kerry, whose office did not return a request for comment, is not the only Biden administration official to travel to China in recent weeks. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen from July 6 to 9 held talks with China's top economic officials—talks that saw Yellen water down tough-on-China language that has angered the CCP. Yellen, for example, refused during her trip to say that the United States is working to "decouple" or "de-risk" from China's economy. Instead, Yellen argued that America merely wants "diverse" supply chains, language that the top Biden administration official hopes will "allay China's concerns," according to the New York Times.

Kerry has long expressed regret that the "climate issue has gotten mixed up into all the other tensions that exist between our countries." "They've kind of pulled back a little bit, expressing the feeling that all we're doing is bashing them and bashing them," Kerry said in March, nearly one year after then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan prompted China to suspend U.S. climate talks.

Kerry last week said he hopes that his trip to China will prompt the communist nation to cut back on coal, given that China burns more coal than the rest of the world combined and is by far the world's largest carbon emitter. But China has pledged to limit its coal consumption before, only to build record numbers of new coal plants.

In 2014, for example, China said it would work to lower emissions by capping its annual coal consumption at 4.2 billion tons by 2020, a move that then-U.S. president Barack Obama said "shows what's possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge." In 2021, China exceeded that figure by more than a billion, consuming a whopping 5.24 billion tons of coal. One year later, Xi approved the equivalent of two new coal power plants per week.

Still, Kerry has cited Xi's word as proof that China is making progress on climate change. The Biden climate official in 2021 lauded Xi for using the term "climate crisis" for the first time, arguing that the rhetoric showed the Chinese president was ready to "do something" to save the planet.

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Kerry, who was not in government at the time, held at least three secret meetings with former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, during which he attempted to undermine the Trump administration’s hardline policies towards Tehran. Kerry defended these powwows under questioning from Rep. Michael Waltz (R., Fla.) during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing Thursday.

"Shadow diplomacy," Kerry said, is permissible "depending on what it does. Shadow diplomacy has also saved us from a war," Kerry said, referring to back-channel discussions that helped diffuse the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

Kerry’s behavior, Waltz said, "undermined current administration diplomacy." At the time Kerry met with Zarif, then-president Donald Trump was working to kill the nuclear accord and reimpose tough sanctions on Tehran. Kerry’s meetings drew widespread scrutiny after Zarif claimed the former secretary of state passed him sensitive information about Israeli strikes in Syria.

Kerry denied disclosing that information, saying that conversation "never took place," but also claimed details about Israel’s attacks on Iranian positions were "in public circulation" at the time.

Waltz dismissed this rationale, saying, "I would posit that your shadow diplomacy now has us on the verge of Iran having a nuclear weapon."

Kerry also declined to elaborate on how he communicated with Zarif, and whether any conversations took place via encrypted messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal.

"I don’t recall how I communicated with him," Kerry said.

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Kerry's comments come ahead of his visit to Beijing next week to discuss climate change issues. The former secretary of state who now serves as the first ever special presidential envoy for climate also told Congress that China's human rights violations shouldn't be "showstoppers" that hinder climate negotiations.

When Kerry was asked by Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) if he agreed with Biden's recent statement that Xi was a dictator, Kerry declined to say but conceded that Xi "wields enormous power as the leader of China."

"Frankly, all of that is water off a duck's back, and I don't think we ought to get tangled up in labels and names," said Kerry during the hearing for the House Foreign Affairs Committee's oversight and responsibility subcommittee.

Biden has stood by his description of Xi as a "dictator," a comment that sent Beijing into a fury last month, with the Chinese embassy denouncing it as "political provocation against China’s top leader."

Kerry has advocated for soft treatment of China by overlooking its human rights violations. He supports increased imports of solar panels, an industry linked to China's Uyghur slave labor. He said the Biden administration plans to keep human rights issues separate from his climate meetings in Beijing. The climate envoy appeared to stand by his comments to Congress two years ago, when he said he didn't believe human rights issues should have a role in climate negotiations because life is "full of tough choices."

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Those are words President Joe Biden's climate czar, John Kerry, would do well to ponder as he prepares to board his fossil-fuel emitting jet to Beijing this weekend to resume in-person climate negotiations with his communist counterpart, Xie Zhenhua. If the trip yields commitments from China to "accelerate its phase-out of coal," Kerry said, it will be a success.

Low bar. China has long pledged to do as much, only to ramp up its coal consumption and carbon emissions. In 2014, one year after CCP head Xi Jinping became president, China unveiled a plan—to much fanfare from the American press—to cap its annual coal consumption at 4.2 billion tons by 2020. China's commitment to lower emissions, former president Barack Obama said at the time, "shows what's possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge." Today, the Chinese have blown past that number and burn more coal than the rest of the world combined.

Kerry has nonetheless argued that, in the case of the Chinese, words alone are proof of climate "progress." He has lauded the genocidal dictator for using the term "climate crisis" and for pledging to cut emissions as part of an "ecological strategy."

"I’d rather have those words than not," Kerry told lawmakers in 2021.

A wise man once said to "trust but verify." A year later, in 2022, Xi approved the equivalent of two new coal power plants per week.

That unfortunately is not the way the Biden administration conducts diplomacy. Kerry in March expressed regret that "other tensions" between China and the United States—you know, spy balloons, concentration camps, and the hacking of America’s commerce secretary—had "gotten mixed up" with climate cooperation.

It is revealing that Kerry and his allies in the Biden administration take the measure of a man by the extent to which he has adopted their own woke rhetoric. We can be sure that Xi understands perfectly who will come out ahead.

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Kerry, who serves on the council as President Joe Biden's special envoy for climate policy, told MSNBC on Monday that "bombs going off" in Ukraine are "exacerbating the problem" of climate change by causing "an enormous release of greenhouse gas, of methane." He went on to lament how "the loss of the gas that was coming into Europe from Russia" has caused countries to "reopen coal or keep some other form of dirty fuel available."

Kerry's comments come the week after Biden's decision to provide Ukraine with controversial cluster munitions, leading to pushback from other NATO countries and threats from Russia.

MSNBC host Ana Cabrera had asked Kerry, who was former president Barack Obama's secretary of state, to explain his assertion that the Ukraine war is worsening climate change. While Kerry said the fight in Ukraine is "enormously important," he emphasized the war's "ancillary impacts" on global warming.

The former secretary of state has made similar comments over the years. When Russia first invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kerry lamented how the war would mean "you're going to lose people's focus" on the climate, the Washington Free Beacon reported.

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• Themis Matsoukas, 64, was caught on tape—naked from the waist down except for shoes and socks—performing bestiality with his collie in Rothrock State Forest in Pennsylvania.

• "I do it to blow off steam," the chemical engineering professor reportedly told park rangers earlier this month during a search of his home.

• The alleged pervert was charged with "open lewdness, indecent exposure, and sexual intercourse with an animal, misdemeanors, and summary charges of cruelty to animals and disorderly conduct," according to the New York Post.

By the numbers: Matsoukas donated at least $331 to Warren's presidential campaign between 2019 and 2020. He also donated to Hillary Clinton's and John Kerry's presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2004, respectively. He has donated more than $1,000 to Democratic candidates and committees, and $0 to Republicans.

Context: Warren is sometimes referred to as "Pocahontas" because she lied for decades about having Native American ancestry. The results of a DNA test published in 2018 revealed that she is roughly 0.1 percent Native American.

• In April 2019, several months before Matsoukas started donating to her campaign, Warren unveiled a controversial "free college" proposal on Vladimir Lenin's birthday.

Why it matters: Um, what the f—?

Bottom line: This is the future liberals want.

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Kerry told Axios that he called the CEO of BP to express discontent with the energy giant's plan to increase its oil and gas investments by $8 billion in the next seven years. Kerry also noted his "concern" over a Chevron initiative to increase oil production in the southwestern United States to 300,000 barrels a day. The climate official went on to urge those companies to "take stock … of where the science is today" and recognize that increased fossil fuel production is at odds with global climate change goals.

Kerry's remarks reflect the conflict between the Biden administration's short- and long-term energy policy goals. Biden in 2020 promised to "end fossil fuel," and after taking office, the Democrat canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and slowed new oil leasing to its lowest level since World War II. But last summer, when the average price for a gallon of gas in the United States hit $5 for the first time ever, Biden changed his tune and urged the industry to ramp up production. 

Biden continued those calls through the 2022 midterm elections as the Democrat looked to avoid political blame for Americans' pain at the pump, and he even assailed the oil industry for what he called a failure to "increase domestic production and keep gas prices down" during his February State of the Union address. Many U.S. oil companies, however, say that the Biden administration's hostility toward fossil fuels made them hesitant to invest big money in new drilling operations. Kerry, for example, has acknowledged that the administration is working to reduce demand for oil and gas, most notably through the tens of billions of dollars it's invested in electric vehicle subsidies and manufacturing rebates.

Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, attacked the Biden administration for its "complete inconsistency when it comes to oil and gas policies." 

"The issue is they don't know what their energy policy is. Are they beholden to John Kerry and the environmentalists, or are they concerned with the economic stability and security of the American people?" Turner said. "And while the Biden administration is playing all of these political games with the oil and gas industry, the American people are the ones suffering."

The White House did not return a request for comment. Kerry's office declined to answer questions on how the climate official's comments square with Biden's calls to increase oil production.

While Kerry has pressed oil and gas companies to help the administration fight the "climate crisis," his role as Biden's climate czar has seen the former senator take gas-guzzling flights to luxury destinations around the world. From March 2021 to June 2022 alone, Kerry flew nearly 200,000 miles—the equivalent of traveling around the world more than seven times—to fight climate change, the Washington Free Beacon reported in September. Those flights produced 9.54 million pounds of carbon, roughly 300 times the average American's carbon footprint for an entire year.

Months later, in November, Kerry attended an international climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian resort town known for its long beaches and luxury resorts. In February, meanwhile, the Biden climate official jetted off to the Caribbean to "advance international cooperation among nations particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis," a mission that took Kerry to Atlantis Paradise Island, a lush five-star resort in the Bahamas that boasts 14 swimming pools, 14 lagoons, dozens of luxury restaurants, a yacht marina, a private golf course, a world-class casino with more than 700 slot machines, at least 3 nightclubs, and a movie theater. 

Still, Kerry has taken action to reduce his carbon footprint on at least one occasion. Last summer, his family sold their private jet—which flew for more than 60 hours during Kerry's time as climate czar—to a New York City hedge fund.

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Kerry, who has served as President Joe Biden's climate czar since January 2021, is on the Caribbean island for three days this week to "advance international cooperation among nations particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis," the State Department announced Monday. Included in his itinerary was an opulent opening ceremony held at Atlantis Paradise Island, a lush five-star resort that boasts 14 swimming pools, 14 lagoons, dozens of luxury restaurants, a yacht marina, a private golf course, a world-class casino with more than 700 slot machines, at least 3 nightclubs, and a movie theater. Bahamian prime minister Philip Davis during a Wednesday night speech thanked Kerry for attending the ceremony, a line that was met with muffled applause.

While Kerry routinely argues that Americans have an "obligation" to "confront" climate change, his Caribbean soirée is by no means environmentally friendly. A flight from Washington, D.C., to Nassau spans nearly 1,000 miles and emits on average more than 53,000 pounds of carbon. Atlantis Paradise Island also uses diesel power plants to fuel its energy grid and spends more than $85 million annually on electricity alone, according to consulting firm Filament Energy. The resort's marina accommodates 240-foot yachts, which burn through thousands of dollars of fuel per hour. Kerry, a former Massachusetts senator, for years owned a yacht of his own, which he docked in Rhode Island to avoid paying $500,000 in taxes. Kerry listed the yacht for sale for $3.9 million in 2016.

Kerry is no stranger to long flights and extravagant stays as Biden's climate czar. From March 2021 to June 2022 alone, he flew nearly 200,000 miles—the equivalent of traveling around the world more than seven times—to fight climate change, the Washington Free Beacon reported in September. Those flights produced 9.54 million pounds of carbon, roughly 300 times the average American's carbon footprint for an entire year. In November, meanwhile, Kerry attended an international climate conference in Sharm El Sheikh, an Egyptian resort town known for its long beaches, luxury resorts, and recreational watersports, including windsurfing, an activity Kerry has long enjoyed.

Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, lambasted Kerry for his lavish, taxpayer-funded globetrotting, calling it "remarkable that the battle for climate change always happens in five-star luxurious resorts."

"If you look at some of the biggest conferences that John Kerry has attended in the last year, they have been at the Atlantis in the Bahamas, they've been at the Four Seasons in Sharm El Sheikh, they've been at luxury mountainside resorts in Davos," Turner told the Free Beacon. "And these are the people who claim to care about the impoverished."

A State Department spokeswoman told the Free Beacon that Kerry traveled to the Bahamas commercially and that his "official business travel complies with all federal and State Department travel regulations and policies." The spokeswoman did not return questions on Kerry's accommodations while in the Caribbean. Prior to the opening ceremony, Kerry attended a function at the U.S. embassy in Nassau, which is located just steps from the beach and popular oceanside tourist attractions such as Margaritaville and Señor Frog's.

In addition to Kerry's government travel, the climate official in 2019 took a private jet to a climate conference in Iceland, a decision he defended in an infamous spat with a local reporter. "It's the only choice for somebody like me who is traveling the world to win this battle," Kerry said at the time. Kerry went on to quietly sell his family's private jet to a New York City hedge fund amid accusations of environmental hypocrisy, Fox News reported Wednesday.

Kerry was not the only American official spotted at Atlantis Wednesday evening. Bahamian leader Davis also recognized former Democratic senator Chris Dodd (Conn.), who is best known for his "waitress sandwich" incident, which allegedly saw Dodd and then-Democratic senator Ted Kennedy (Mass.) sexually assault a server at a Capitol Hill restaurant in 1985.

Kerry is set to leave the Bahamas Thursday to travel to Munich, Germany, where he will "engage in discussions on the nexus between the climate crisis and global security," according to the State Department. A nonstop flight from Nassau to Munich spans nearly 5,000 miles and emits on average roughly 260,000 pounds of carbon.

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House Oversight and Accountability Committee chairman James Comer (R., Ky.), who is leading the investigation, in a letter accused Kerry of making "secret agreements" with foreign governments such as China that harm U.S. national security.

"To date, you have failed to respond to any of our requests," Comer said. "Yet, you continue to engage in activities that could undermine our economic health, skirt congressional authority, and threaten foreign policy under the guise of climate advocacy."

The letter points to an interview Kerry gave in May 2022 in which he claimed to have worked with the Chinese to form a group to combat greenhouse gases. Kerry, who has flown more than 180,000 miles as climate czar, has until Feb. 16 to comply with the document requests.

Kerry ignored Republican questions when they were in the minority, Fox News reported.

The investigation announcement comes as a Chinese spy balloon was spotted this week floating over nuclear sites in Montana. Biden declined to shoot down the balloon, prompting backlash from Republicans who say Biden is jeopardizing national security.

Comer said he wants the documents related to Kerry's secret meetings with China in order to "understand" the climate envoy's "role and provide necessary transparency."

"As a member of the President’s cabinet, you should be representing the United States’ interests," the letter said. "Your statements, however, consistently show disregard for American national security and taxpayer dollars."

Kerry is the first person to hold the climate envoy position. It is within the State Department and has a budget of $13.9 million. Kerry has not responded to the letter.

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A Murray spokeswoman last week slammed GOP Senate candidate Tiffany Smiley for raising questions about the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. But in January 2005, Murray released a statement saying she agreed with Democrats "who have raised questions about voting irregularities" in the 2004 presidential election. Murray called for "election reform" as a "top priority" in response and said legislators should work to protect voters’ confidence in the electoral process.

Smiley campaign spokeswoman Elisa Carlson told the Washington Free Beacon Murray was "a hypocrite and has no business attacking anyone over protecting democracy."

"She questioned the integrity of a presidential election 18 years ago, supports Democrat efforts to boost election-denying candidates, and opposes common-sense laws like voter ID requirements," Carlson said.

The Murray campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Democrats have challenged the results of presidential elections following every Republican victory since 2000. In 2004, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) joined 31 House Democrats to vote against certifying Ohio’s electoral votes, alleging a "significant disenfranchisement of voters." Kerry lost the election by 34 electoral votes and the popular vote by around three million votes.

Boxer said her 2005 vote against certification was "the right thing to do" and had "cast the light of truth on a flawed system which must be fixed now."

Smiley’s campaign website had said that the "2020 elections raised serious questions about the integrity of our elections" and "courts have an obligation to give all evidence of voter fraud a fair hearing." Those comments have been removed since August, Axios reported.

Smiley told CNN in September that elections should be "hard to cheat and easy to vote."

Murray has also said she supports Democrats’ million-dollar efforts in 2022 to boost election-denying GOP candidates in primaries, even after referring to the candidates as a threat to democracy.

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The Free Beacon reviewed 75 of Kerry's official travel announcements from March 2021 to July 2022, which show Kerry has flown roughly 180,100 miles—the equivalent of traveling around the world more than seven times—to discuss climate change with various world leaders. Planes on average produce 53.3 pounds of carbon dioxide per mile traveled, according to carbon emissions modeling website BlueSkyModel, meaning Kerry's flights have produced 9.54 million pounds, or 4,772 tons, of carbon—roughly 300 times the average American's carbon footprint for an entire year. From May 13, 2021, to May 19, 2021, for example, Kerry traveled to Rome, London, and Berlin before returning stateside. Those flights total roughly 10,100 miles and 538,000 pounds of carbon.

It's unclear how many miles Kerry will have to fly to solve climate change, an issue he's called an "existential ... crisis." It's also unclear exactly how Kerry flies to each location to perform his official duties as climate czar. His office told Fox News that he flies "commercially or via military air in his role as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate," but Kerry's press releases do not reveal which option is utilized for each individual trip. The top Biden official's government Twitter account has posted photos of Kerry using electric buses and scooters but has not shared snapshots of his plane travel.

Kerry's office did not return a request for comment on additional travel details and whether Kerry could conduct any of his international meetings virtually.

Kerry's gas-guzzling trips have been sworn off by other prominent climate activists. Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg, for example, refuses to fly because of carbon emissions. In 2019, Thunberg traveled from Europe to a climate summit in New York City via sailboat to achieve carbon neutrality. Kerry, meanwhile, has argued that people won't have to "give up a quality of life" to defeat climate change because carbon reductions "are going to come from technologies that we don't have yet." Thunberg ridiculed the comment, tweeting, "Great news! I spoke to Harry Potter and he said he will team up with Gandalf, Sherlock Holmes & The Avengers and get started right away!"

Kerry has long been considered a frequent flier—and frequent emitter. His family owns a Gulfstream GIV-SP private jet, which is estimated to be worth $4.5 million. Since Biden took office, that jet has made at least 48 trips, emitting more than 715,000 pounds of carbon in the process. 

Still, Kerry has defended his private plane travel, saying, "If you offset your carbon, it's the only choice for somebody like me, who is traveling the world to win this battle." Offsetting carbon refers to a practice in which an individual or organization pays someone else to "remove" greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, such as funding solar panels to replace fossil fuel in a certain area. Doing so, of course, does not actually remove the original carbon from the air, and environmental groups have criticized the concept.

Despite Kerry's status as a mega-emitter, the former secretary of state has argued that the United States must "transition to electric vehicles about 20 times faster than we are now." He has also called to ban non-electric cars by 2035, a policy California announced in late August. The average sticker price for an electric vehicle last year was $66,000.

In addition to his European trip last spring, Kerry has flown to Mexico, Japan, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Qatar to fight climate change. In November 2021, both Kerry and Biden attended the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow, which most world leaders and delegates traveled to via private plane. As a result, the carbon emissions associated with the summit more than doubled from the previous time the conference was held.

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Generation Investment Management, which Gore formed in 2004, has stakes in Tencent, Anta, and Alibaba, according to its investment reports. Tencent, a tech conglomerate, routinely censors the internet at the behest of the Chinese Communist Party and has surveilled foreign users of its WeChat messaging app. Anta, a sports apparel company, has faced accusations of using cotton sourced from labor camps in Xinjiang. Alibaba, which operates China's equivalent to Google, has links to the People's Liberation Army.

Generation's investments are part of a growing trend of firms touting social justice causes while profiting off companies that aid the authoritarian regime in Beijing. Coca-Cola, Delta, and Major League Baseball came under fire last year for criticizing voting laws in Georgia while raking in billions of dollars from China. The baseball league pulled its All-Star Game from Atlanta over the voting laws, but days later signed a licensing agreement with Tencent. The league entered the deal even though Tencent had blocked NBA games from airing in China because a league executive defended pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong.

Gore has followed a similar playbook. He accused Republicans last year of passing "truly un-American" voting laws while he profited from investments in China, which is led by unelected Communist Party bureaucrats.

Generation defends its Chinese investments on the grounds that the companies have pledged to curtail carbon emissions. The firm also cites the companies' "significantly higher upside" than other investments in its portfolio.

Generation has worked closely with Tencent and Alibaba for years to develop its carbon emissions standards. The companies "have leapfrogged Western peers" by announcing plans to have net-zero carbon emissions by 2030, Generation said in a letter to shareholders last month. Generation voted to reelect Yang Siu Shun to the Tencent board of directors last year. Yang is a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory committee for the Chinese government and Chinese Communist Party.

Generation likes Anta because of its "successful brand platform, excellent management team, and long runway for growth." But Gore's firm is well aware of longstanding concerns about the apparel giant's link to slave labor.

"Sustainable investing can at times raise challenging issues, and we have recently been grappling with one at Anta Sports," Generation said in its investor letter, acknowledging allegations that the apparel maker uses cotton made from slave labor in China's Xinjiang province. Generation said it has discussed the issue with Anta management, and says the company is "well-intentioned" in its purported efforts to remove slave labor from its supply chain.

"In these situations, there can be a temptation to divest and move on," the letter reads. "We believe this is the wrong thing to do with a management team that is engaged and well-intentioned, and where we feel our ownership can help to deliver change."

Its claim notwithstanding, Anta has rebuffed calls from human rights groups to leave Xinjiang, where the Chinese government carries out genocide against Muslim Uyghurs. And in a particularly bold move, Anta said last year it uses cotton from Xinjiang and will continue to do so.

Gore's compromise on Chinese firms for the sake of environmental sustainability bears similarity to another failed Democratic presidential candidate. John Kerry, the Biden administration's climate czar, has refused to criticize China over human rights abuses out of concerns it would derail climate talks with Beijing. And like Gore, he has investments in controversial Chinese firms, including one linked to labor abuses against Uyghurs.

Both Gore and Kerry are in Davos, Switzerland, this week for the World Economic Forum. The annual conclave has long drawn criticism for attendees who fly on private jets halfway across the globe to lament the effect of climate change.

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As the Trump administration worked to increase economic pressure on Iran in 2018, a delegation of "U.S. former ambassadors held a secret, "off-the-record" meeting with former Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif at his residence in New York City, according to a State Department memo unearthed this week as part of a lawsuit brought to compel the release of this information. The meeting took place around the same time John Kerry was reported to be working behind-the-scenes with Iranian officials to salvage the 2015 nuclear accord.

The internal memo, which is marked unclassified, details how these former U.S. ambassadors conducted shadow diplomacy with Iran's top envoy surrounding "nuclear weapons, potential prisoner swaps, [the] Afghanistan withdrawal, and negotiations with the Taliban," according to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a legal advocacy group that sued the State Department to obtain the internal memo.

The document is the firmest proof to date that Obama-era officials were engaged in back-channel efforts to keep negotiations with Iran alive, even as former president Donald Trump and his administration worked to isolate the regime, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo told the Free Beacon in exclusive remarks. Pompeo, who was not aware of these meetings while leading the State Department, said the memo corroborates reports from the time about Kerry's efforts to salvage the 2015 nuclear deal through back-channel powwows with Iranian officials.

"This memo reflects even more than we already knew about former State Department officials continuing on as if they were still in office," said Pompeo, who is now senior counsel for global affairs at the ACLJ. "Trying, at every turn, to work with the foreign minister for a terrorist regime, Iran, to undermine the very sanctions put in place by America. It's worse than not knowing when to get off stage. Actively seeking to protect the terrible deal they struck, these former officials—two years after Obama left office—were signaling that Iran should stand firm against America."

Pompeo said it is startling to learn that members of a former U.S. administration attempted to handicap a sitting president's policies, describing the disclosure as "bad stuff, dangerous stuff, un-American stuff." These former officials, he said, "should be ashamed of themselves. Working against their own nation's policies alongside such a brutal regime."

The seven-page memo was assembled during the meeting with Zarif, which came just days after reports emerged that Kerry was seeking to salvage the Iran nuclear agreement after Trump nixed it earlier that year. The document was produced after the ACLJ sued the State Department for records about any secret meetings between Zarif, Kerry, current U.S. Iran-Envoy Robert Malley, and former Obama secretary of energy Ernest Moniz.

During the meeting, Zarif claimed that Trump's policies have fomented anti-U.S. fervor in Iran and pointed to the popularity of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) leader Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by Trump two years later in a drone strike.

"I was as popular as Soleimani, but now I am at 47 percent and his is up," Zarif said, according to the memo. "He is closer to 80 percent. People of Iran once preferred engagement, now opted for resistance as the only reality. That is what the polls are telling us now and it is the reality of the region."

Zarif also said his government would never give up its missile program or stop enriching uranium, the key component in a nuclear weapon and one of the conditions Trump placed on a potential new deal with Iran that never materialized.

"The U.S. says no peace deal and the U.S. will reimpose sanctions, but the condition is zero missiles, zero nuclear enrichment. This what [John] Bolton wants," Zarif said, referring to Trump's national security adviser. "I know Bolton and negotiated with him years ago. His views are so radical, that we could not reach an agreement. Absolute impossibility to reach an agreement with John Bolton unless you ask him to sit down and read at dictation speed what he wants and then you sign it. He is incapable of compromise."

Zarif also discussed his views on Iraq, potential prisoner swaps with the United States, and Iranian support for terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthi rebels in Yemen.

As part of the ACLJ's effort to force the release of further information on these back-channel talks with Iran, it received a series of internal State Department emails showing that after Kerry left office, he used State Department staffers to send correspondence to Zarif.

Ben Sisney, ACLJ's senior litigation counsel, said the organization's legal efforts prove that "there were even more secret meetings happening behind the Trump administration’s back than had been previously reported."

But Sisney said it also raises further questions: "How did this memo of 'former' U.S. officials meeting with Zarif get into the State Department's hands? Was someone at the State Department there? Did the State Department send an informal liaison?"

Update 7:35 p.m.: This piece has been updated to clarify Kerry's role in the diplomacy with Iran.

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Kerry, a former secretary of state and President Joe Biden's climate envoy, told BBC Arabic that a Russia-Ukraine war would mean that "you're going to lose people's focus, you're going to lose ... big country attention" on climate change.

Kerry said the northern part of Russia is thawing because of global warming and expressed hope that Russian president Vladimir Putin, who is behind the invasion, "will help us to stay on track with respect to what we need to do for the climate."

By the time BBC Arabic posted the video on YouTube, Russia had already invaded the secessionist Donbas region and launched a cyberattack on Ukraine. Mere hours later, Putin announced a "special military operation" in the country and started bombing the capital of Kyiv and other major cities.

The Russian Ministry of Defense said Thursday that it had disabled more than 70 military targets in Ukraine. Ukraine's interior ministry said the invasion has already resulted in hundreds of casualties.

Kerry is the first special climate envoy and a member of the National Security Council. He served as then-president Barack Obama's secretary of state in 2014, when Putin invaded and conquered the Ukrainian region of Crimea.

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Republican senator Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Democratic senator Jeff Merkley (Ore.) introduced a bill in January prohibiting the importation of goods made with forced labor from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, where a genocide perpetrated by the Chinese government is afoot. It passed the Senate in a voice vote in July.

It was more controversial at Foggy Bottom, where we now know that Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate, have been lobbying their fellow Democrats against including the measure in the annual defense bill.

The reasons are equally comical and demented. Kerry is lusting for a Nobel Peace Prize for his climate work, which requires the cooperation of the Chinese. To hell with the Uyghurs so long as Kerry gets the international accolades that his failed presidential run and bumbling tenure as secretary of state didn’t give him.

Xinjiang is home to roughly half of the world’s supply of polysilicon, a raw material used to produce solar panels. A ban on its importation would send a message to the Chinese communists that the United States won’t tolerate its barbarous behavior.

Merkley deserves credit for his unwavering support for the bill. The same can’t be said for his Democratic colleagues: House leadership won’t allow any deliberations on China-related legislation this week, despite empty assurances from the White House that it supports the bill’s swift passage.

This isn’t just a scandal. It’s a moral stain on the Biden administration, whose chief diplomat, Antony Blinken, routinely invokes his stepfather—a Holocaust survivor—when it’s politically convenient.

No word from him yet on the Uyghurs, but we assume his deputy speaks for him, and the president, in urging Democrats to toss human rights under the bus in service of a climate deal.

Who knew "restoring the soul of America" meant turning a blind eye to slavery overseas?

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Sasse sent a letter to Kerry demanding to know whether he had knowledge of the human rights issues and whether the investment was reviewed by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, according to Fox News.

Kerry disclosed a $1 million stake in Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., a Chinese investment group whose holdings include LONGi Green Energy, a solar panel manufacturer that reportedly sources its materials from companies engaged in slave labor of the Uyghur minority in China, the Washington Free Beacon first reported in October.

LONGi Green Energy had its imports seized by U.S. Customs and Border Protection this month due to suspicions that the products were derived from forced labor.

Although Kerry divested from many of his energy-related holdings in March, the list of divestments did not include Hillhouse, according to a disclosure Kerry filed in March with the Office of Government Ethics.

Sasse said the investment "raises serious moral and ethical issues and may present a conflict between your personal financial interests and our efforts to address serious human rights abuses in China."

"It is not unreasonable to ask whether this potential conflict of interest could inadvertently signal to Beijing that you may be willing to trade progress toward a climate deal for silence on key human rights issues, at a moment when the Chinese government continues to commit genocide against Uyghurs and other Muslims in Xinjiang," wrote Sasse.

Sasse is not the only lawmaker to raise concerns about Kerry’s China-linked investment. Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) called on the climate envoy to resign over the issue and has also raised concerns that Kerry is stealthily lobbying against anti-slave labor legislation in Congress in order to protect the Chinese government and solar panel industry.

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Last December, that private equity fund, Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., purchased a 6 percent stake in LONGi Green Energy, a Chinese solar panel manufacturer, making it the company’s second largest shareholder.

LONGi has come under fire from human rights groups and U.S. lawmakers for sourcing many of its raw materials from companies suspected of using forced labor in Xinjiang, a region in northwest China where the government has cracked down on the Uyghur population and other ethnic minorities.

Hillhouse is also a major funder of a tech company tied to the Chinese government’s surveillance of the Uyghurs, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon last week. News of that investment led Republican senators to call on Biden to fire Kerry over ethics concerns. Further insight into Hillhouse's holdings is likely to increase scrutiny of Kerry’s finances and raise questions about whether he is using his role as climate envoy to block regulations on Chinese solar panel imports. While Kerry has acknowledged that many solar panels are produced with forced labor in Xinjiang, he has also indicated resistance to additional financial restrictions or penalties on these goods.

"On the one hand, we’re saying to [China], ‘You have to do more to help deal with the climate,’" Kerry said last month. "And on the other hand, their solar panels are being sanctioned, which makes it harder for them to sell them."

Kerry holds "over $1,000,000" in Hillhouse, according to a financial disclosure report he filed at the beginning of the year.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) told the Free Beacon that Kerry’s investments are in conflict with his role as climate envoy. Rubio said Kerry has been actively lobbying against his bill that would bar Chinese imports made with slave labor, which passed the Senate with bipartisan support but has stalled in the House.

"John Kerry appears to have profited from a company tied to egregious human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Now it makes sense why he is actively working against my Uyghur Forced Labor Act," Rubio said. "But this is bigger than Kerry. A climate deal cannot make our nation complicit to the Chinese Communist Party’s slave labor practices."

Anders Corr, an intelligence analyst and publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, called Kerry’s China investments "an outrage" due to the human rights implications.

"Far too many investors have continued to pour billions into China even after abundant evidence that the country is executing an ongoing genocide and threatens war against our closest allies," Corr said. "That Kerry too had funds invested in China is an outrage, not least because he is a public official who claims to uphold the highest of ethics. Investing in China, given its shocking violation of human rights and totalitarian political system, should be cause for immediate removal from any positions of public trust."

Kerry's Hillhouse stake is through a trust in which his wife is the beneficiary. He stated in his disclosure that they are not involved in managing the investments. While Kerry sold off many of his energy-related holdings earlier this year, those divestments did not include Hillhouse, according to a disclosure filed in March with the Office of Government Ethics.

LONGi "is a customer of many of the polysilicon companies that are engaged in labor transfers in the Uyghur Region," according to a report by the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University. The company has ongoing purchasing agreements with polysilicon manufacturers GCL-Poly and Daqo, the report found.

GCL-Poly and Daqo were blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in June for allegedly "participating in the practice of, accepting, or utilizing forced labor involving Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups," according to the Biden administration.

A group called American Solar Manufacturers Against Chinese Circumvention (A-SMACC) has also been lobbying the Biden administration to investigate the supply chain of LONGi specifically, and other Chinese solar panel companies linked to forced labor, and to impose additional tariffs on those goods.

The group argued that China is monopolizing the solar panel supply chain through the use of forced labor, which allows them to manufacture the products at an extremely low cost, according to a submission filed with the Department of Commerce last week. The Biden administration now has 44 days to decide whether to launch an investigation, Timothy Brightbill, an attorney with Wiley Rein who is representing A-SMACC, told the Free Beacon.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. LONGi did not respond to a request for comment.

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The scrutiny of Kerry’s investment portfolio comes after he has spent months downplaying China’s persecution and forced labor of the Uyghur people and as Republican lawmakers have raised concerns that the climate envoy is privately lobbying House Democrats against an anti-slave labor bill.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), the sponsor of the bill in the Senate, said Kerry should lose his job over the investments.

"If John Kerry has more than $1 million invested in a Chinese fund linked to repression and mass detention of Uyghurs it explains why he is against my Uyghur Forced Labor Act and President Biden should fire him," Rubio said on Thursday.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.) said Kerry "should immediately resign and the Biden Admin should look into whether any other officials own a stake in Chinese companies that partake in human rights violations."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) called the report about Kerry’s investments "beyond disturbing."

"We need a full investigation into this administration and its ties to the Chinese Communist government," Blackburn said on Twitter.

Kerry disclosed "over $1,000,000" in investments in Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P., according to a financial disclosure report he filed at the beginning of the year. Hillhouse is a top shareholder in YITU Technology, which is involved in China's high-tech surveillance operation against the Uyghur people and helped develop a facial surveillance software for the Chinese government that sorts individuals by race and ethnicity, according to the New York Times.

Kerry has declined to bring up human-rights issues during his meetings with Chinese officials, saying he is focused on climate negotiations. "Life is always full of tough choices," said Kerry last month, when asked if it was necessary to trade human rights for climate concessions with China.

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