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The campaign for Greece’s election this Sunday has been mostly uninspiring, with little hope of an end to austerity. With Syriza’s capitulation in 2015 still weighing heavily, the radical left faces an uphill struggle to overcome the mood of despair.

Posters featuring images of Aléxis Tsípras, head of Syriza party, ahead of the general election in Thessaloniki, Greece, on May 16, 2023. (Konstantinos Tsakalidis / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

As Greece heads for a general election on Sunday, its citizens surely have plenty of reason for discontent. The country is, after all, still reeling from years of neoliberal policies, whose sheer savagery is without comparison in Western Europe. The effects of austerity were dramatically illustrated at the end of February, when fifty-seven people died in the Tempi train disaster, prompting angry protests. Yet ahead of the election, the political situation seems rather stagnant.

The incumbent ruling party is Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s right-wing New Democracy, which has held power since 2019. While a change in the electoral system leaves it unlikely to achieve an outright majority — with a high possibility of a second election to follow — it has maintained its lead in national polls. The main opposition party, Syriza, seems unable to capitalize on popular discontent, amidst the enduring trauma of its capitulation to austerity in July 2015.

To its left, a new coalition called MeRA25-Alliance for Rupture has formed for this election, seeking to overcome this baleful legacy. It brings together MeRA25, the movement created by former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, which entered parliament in the 2019 elections (on 3.4 percent support), and Popular Unity, formed in 2015 by the currents emerging from the left wing of Syriza and certain sectors of the far left, with the support of social-movement activists and intellectual figures. This coalition aims at rebuilding a united radical-left space, able to learn from past failures and respond to the challenges of the present.

Mariana Tsichli is co-secretary of Popular Unity and a candidate for the coalition in the Athens-Center constituency. She spoke to Stathis Kouvelakis about its prospects.

Stathis Kouvelakis

Everyone seems to agree that this election campaign is particularly sluggish and lacking in substance. There is widespread distrust toward political parties and expectations seem particularly low. Such a situation is unprecedented in Greece. How do you explain this?

Mariana Tsichli

Yes, this is probably the most opaque and unpredictable election I can remember. There is no debate and little, if any, involvement of the wider public in the campaign. At the moment, there doesn’t seem to be a strong polarization between Syriza and New Democracy.

The main explanation is the popular disillusionment with the main forces of the political system. This includes the Left, which is paying the price for Syriza’s capitulation in 2015 and its subsequent four-year term in government. A large part of society now believes that “all politicians are the same” and that there is no alternative.

A large part of society now believes that ‘all politicians are the same’ and that there is no alternative.

A second factor lies in the programs and the kind of policies offered by the mainstream parties. They are not absolutely identical, but on fundamental issues the positions of New Democracy, Syriza, and Pasok are very similar. These parties agree that the neoliberal framework imposed by the three memoranda signed between the previous Greek governments and the EU cannot be challenged. So, whoever wins the elections, it will make little difference to the policies that follow.

There is also a problem with the quality of public debate. The kind of issues promoted by the media have nothing to do with people’s real concerns. The press only talk about small nuances within this basic common ground. As polls do not predict any clear majority, the discussion centers on punditry about seat numbers and possible coalitions rather than the programmatic substance.

Stathis Kouvelakis

In the days following the Tempi railway disaster, we saw an upsurge in popular mobilization. People took to the streets by hundreds of thousands, with the youth in the front line. In recent years, we have also seen some remarkable social struggles and mobilizations. Today, however, these events do not seem to have left any imprint.

Mariana Tsichli

The Tempi train collision cannot be considered as an accident. It was the predictable result of austerity and privatizations, and there are criminal responsibilities for what happened. Last March, we saw the largest demonstrations since Syriza had first come to power, comparable only to the rallies before the July 2015 referendum. People, and particularly the young, took to the streets en masse — even in small villages. This was a real breakthrough.

Perhaps less well known is that there were mobilizations throughout Mitsotakis’s government. We could mention some major strikes against the anti-labor laws voted in parliament and the struggles against the university police and mounting state authoritarianism, culminating in the government’s attempt to severely restrict street demonstrations. Last winter, there were also protracted mobilizations by artists who saw their degrees downgraded following a government decision.

The weakness of opposition is an effect of the demoralization that followed the defeat in 2015. But it also owes to the fact that since then the radical left hasn’t been able to offer a political perspective credible enough to overturn this situation.

However, this vibrant social movements activity doesn’t enter mainstream debate, nor is it reflected in the political field. One reason is that media is dominated by the same oligarchs who support the Mitsotakis government. Their goal is to ensure a second term for New Democracy, if possible with a clear parliamentary majority.

The attitude of large sectors of the Left wasn’t particularly helpful either. These forces have not stood united in these struggles and therefore have undermined their ability to become cohesive and durable.

These mobilizations ended quickly and something similar has happened many times over the last four years. Surely this is an effect of the demoralization that followed the defeat in 2015. But it also owes to the fact that since then the radical left hasn’t been able to offer a political perspective credible enough to overturn this situation.

Stathis Kouvelakis

The dominant narrative both in Greece and abroad is that it successfully exited the bailout programs and has returned to normality. All three parties that managed the memoranda — New Democracy, Syriza, and Pasok — have the same version of this story. Does it hold water?

Mariana Tsichli

This narrative is a deliberate lie. The mainstream parties and the business interests they represent know very well that to formally exit these programs, Greece has made a series of commitments to its creditors. These commitments run until 2060, when a large proportion of the loans under the memoranda will theoretically have been repaid. Until then, Greece is under “post-program surveillance” by the EU, like all countries who haven’t repaid at least 75 percent of their loans, for instance Portugal and Spain.

The goal is for Greece to maintain primary surpluses [meaning that state revenue is higher than state spending, excluding interest payments on consolidated government liabilities] of at least 2.2 percent for the next decades while expected growth rates are very low, even according to official forecasts. Whoever is in power, this means endless harsh austerity, unless this framework is canceled.

All this is being done in the name of paying off an unsustainable public debt. It currently stands at €400 billion, to which we must add €300 billion in private debt, while Greece’s annual GDP is only €178 billion. These indicators are worse than those with which we entered the first memorandum in 2010 [€300 billion and a 130 percent debt ratio in late 2009].

A huge social disaster has taken place in Greece, and it has not been repaired, nor is it likely to be with the kind of policy shared by the main parties. The magnitude of the catastrophe is unprecedented in peacetime. Greek GDP is now 25 percent lower than in 2010, when the first memorandum was passed. Before the memoranda, GDP per capita was about 75 percent of Germany’s, now it’s 42 percent. Wages have fallen by 30 percent cumulatively. The process of deindustrialization and the dismantling of whatever productive base was left is intensifying. How far this remains manageable depends on the imposition of further harsh neoliberal policies.

Stathis Kouvelakis

The memoranda do not only mean endless austerity and the crushing of labor rights. They have established something even deeper, namely a series of structural regulations that mean a loss of national sovereignty and of the Greek state’s ability to follow a policy of its own.

Mariana Tsichli

Much of what is happening in Greece today is unprecedented. We no longer have our own tax authority because the supposedly “independent” AADE [Independent Authority for Public Revenue] is in fact controlled by the creditors. In essence, Greece doesn’t have the means to control and enact policy as a sovereign state.

All public property has been ceded for ninety-nine years to the so-called “Growthfund,” an institution also controlled by the creditors, and serves as a guarantee for servicing the Greek debt. This fund can decide the sale of any public asset without asking anyone in this country, to assure the payment on time of the tranches of the loans.

A huge social disaster has taken place in Greece, and it has not been repaired, nor is it likely to be with the kind of policy shared by the main parties.

To this we must add what is valid for the entire European Union. By definition, the framework of the Eurozone forbids any notion of an independent monetary policy and the EU rules put the budgetary policy of all member-states under heavy constraint.

The Greek Parliament has also voted that the next parliaments will not have the right to repeal or amend any measure or law prescribed by the memoranda unless they have the creditors’ permission. Clearly, there is no possibility of implementing any kind of alternative economic and social policy without challenging this loss of state sovereignty.

Stathis Kouvelakis

On issues of national sovereignty, we need to touch on Greece’s foreign policy. One of the saddest aspects of Syriza’s legacy in government is that it deepened the country’s integration to NATO and the US-led “Western camp.” This is unprecedented for a party that still nominally refers to the “radical left.” Of course, such a policy was already in place for decades, but Syriza has continued and intensified it. What are the consequences for Greece and the wider region?

Mariana Tsichli

Immediately after the 2015 capitulation, Syriza made it clear that it would align itself with its predecessors on that terrain as well. At a symbolic level, it even dared to invite a US president — [Barack] Obama — to Greece on the anniversary of the 1973 Athens Polytechnic uprising, which carries a very heavy meaning in Greek history. It is a moment that preserves the memory the anti-imperialist and anti-US sentiment of a people who suffered under a Washington-backed military dictatorship.

But beyond the symbols, there are also concrete moves. Syriza, among other similar initiatives, allowed the expansion of the US military installations in the strategic port of Alexandroupolis in the North and in Stefanovikio in central Greece, near the city of Volos. Now we see that Alexandroupolis serves as a NATO hub that will possibly be used in conflicts in the wider area, especially in the war now raging in Ukraine.

What is perhaps the most shocking is that after four years of New Democracy in government, [Syriza’s Aléxis] Tsípras and Mitsotakis now compete with each other to appear as the most ardent supporters of commissioning Rafale and F16 planes and increasing military spending in order to be recognized as the most obedient member of NATO. Greece already spends more on its military, as a share of its GDP, than the US does (3.9 versus 3.5 percent)!

As far as the war in Ukraine is concerned, the Mitsotakis government has shown particular zeal in implementing NATO decisions. It was one of the first to send weapons to Ukraine and willingly included the country in the network of sanctions imposed on Russia, which primarily affect our own people as well as the peoples of other countries that imposed them.

The only criticism Syriza made of all this was procedural. The essence of its political attitude was to give full support for NATO’s strategy for the wider region, as exemplified with the case of Ukraine. These paths are very dangerous and expose the country to disastrous adventures. Fortunately, large sectors of Greek public opinion still oppose a level of ideological and political resistance to this type of narrative.

Stathis Kouvelakis

Let’s turn to the process that led to the formation of MeRA25-Alliance for Rupture. You come from the extraparliamentary left, but you have been part of Popular Unity from the beginning. This front was created after Tsípras’s capitulation in the summer of 2015 by currents splitting from Syriza, joined by other organizations of the radical left.

These forces were then in strong disagreement with Yanis Varoufakis, who, as a minister in the Syriza government, opposed leaving the euro and breaking with the European Union. Varoufakis voted against the memoranda and opposed Syriza’s surrender, but in the previous general elections, in 2019, his movement, MeRA25, and Popular Unity ran separately. How did this coalition come about in these elections?

Mariana Tsichli

As Popular Unity, we always thought it necessary to build broader convergences between forces of the radical left. The current state of fragmentation doesn’t help anyone and, above all, it does not help the workers’ movement, the youth, and the popular classes in Greece. Such a convergence needs to have a clear content, which presupposes an agreement on basic points, even though compromises are unavoidable. In social movements, in mobilizations, there is much more scope for unity between a wide range of forces. But alliances at the political level depend on specific programmatic conditions.

We have to recognize the context, after four years of an authoritarian government combining the extreme neoliberal center with the far right. It is vital to avoid another term for such a government.

A key point for us has been the shift of Varoufakis and MeRA25 to the Left in some of their basic positions. At its last congress, MeRA25 concluded that there can be no left alternative within the framework of the Eurozone and that a break is necessary. This represents a significant change from its previous position, which supported negotiations within the Eurozone to reorient it in a different direction.

The same applies to Greece’s relations with NATO, where there is also a clear shift toward disengagement and in favor of a multidimensional and nonaligned foreign policy. This process has made it possible for us to have a programmatic discussion with MeRA25. Its efforts to intervene in social movements also had a positive effect, as well as its consistent oppositional stance in parliament, where its MPs gave voice to important demands of the movements.

We have to recognize the context after four years of an authoritarian government combining the extreme neoliberal center with the far right. We cannot be indifferent to the outcome of the elections: it is vital to avoid another term for such a government.

But it is equally important to have an alternative to the logic of “lesser-evilism” that leads to voting for Syriza. That is why a level of programmatic convergence within the radical left is crucial. This also applies to the debate currently taking place about a possible “progressive government” as proposed by Tsípras’s party, in substance a coalition between Syriza and Pasok. But Syriza is also asking the other left-wing forces to support — or at least not oppose in parliament — the implementation of neoliberal policies under a “progressive” disguise.

Such a move would be disastrous for the whole left. A Syriza-led government cannot even be seen as a “lesser evil,” because its policies on key issues would be similar to the current ones. We have no reason to tarnish once again the credibility of the Left, which we have been struggling for eight years to reconstruct. It would be foolish to accept a proposal that leads the political scene in a conservative direction and alienates people from participating in politics.

Syriza is also asking the other left-wing forces to support — or at least not oppose in parliament — the implementation of neoliberal policies under a ‘progressive’ disguise.

This doesn’t mean that Syriza and Mitsotakis are identical or that we shouldn’t fight to prevent New Democracy getting a majority. That is why we believe that radical-left forces such as MeRA25-Alliance for Rupture should have the strongest possible representation in parliament. Under the new electoral system, achieving a parliamentary majority does not depend on the difference between the first- and second-placed parties in the popular vote, but on how many parties cross the 3 percent threshold to enter parliament. So, the success of our coalition has a broader significance for the overall balance of forces. It is also crucial for the strengthening of a combative and nonsectarian pole on the Left, the most important thing in the long run.

Stathis Kouvelakis

The main slogan of the MeRA25-Alliance for Rupture is “For the first time, rupture.” It inevitably reminds us of Syriza’s slogan in the January 2015 elections: “For the first time the Left,” meaning the possibility of a government to the left of social democracy. Beyond this allusion, what is the content of this proposed rupture?

Mariana Tsichli

The main lines of our program challenge the core of capital’s strategy in Greece. Even the points that respond to immediate social demands require ruptures in order to be implemented. For example, we have the most expensive electricity in Europe. To stop this scandal, we must abolish the so-called “energy exchange group” implemented by Syriza, which is simply an oligarchic cartel. But this is contrary to the “European energy market” set by the EU. We must also fight for the nationalization of the energy sector and the reconstitution of the former unified public company, which is also contrary to EU guidelines.

We will have to offer clear solutions for the nonperforming household loans, which is a huge problem for hundreds of thousands of households. During the period of the memoranda, the share of these loans has jumped from 3 to 50 percent. Now, following recommendations coming from Brussels, the “Hercules” plan allows funds to buy these loans at ridiculous prices and speculate on people’s homes under the shadow of foreclosures at a mass scale.

Our program also touches on crucial issues that may not currently be at the forefront of popular concerns. Indeed, it has to, given that the level of political debate has declined considerably since 2015. First comes the question of public debt. There cannot be a sustainable path for Greece without canceling most of its public debt, which is unsustainable in the long run. Key programmatic points also include a public banking system and public ownership of strategic enterprises and infrastructure, privatized over the last twelve years.

In our view, there can be no such change without a break with the Eurozone. It is a tough challenge, for which we have to prepare ourselves and the people; all these years there has been a relentless campaign spreading fear around this question. However, leaving the Eurozone is key. If you want to implement a program in favor of the people’s interests, it cannot be done any other way.

More generally, for us, there can be no “economy for the many” if we continue to rely on a model based exclusively on low value-adding services and tourism. This is capital’s plan for Greece. We, conversely, have a project for productive reconstruction based on ecological and democratic planning, with an emphasis on the primary sector, on specific sectors of manufacturing, and on high value-adding services. Otherwise, the course of desertification and plundering of the country will continue.

Stathis Kouvelakis

My last question is about the future prospects of the MeRA25-Alliance for Rupture. Some critical parts of the radical left say it is a purely electoral partnership between two contrasting bodies. Popular Unity is an organization with deep roots in the history of the radical left, while MeRA25 is a strongly leader-centered party, with a weak organizational base and a low presence in social movements. How would you respond to these criticisms?

Mariana Tsichli

I believe that the coalition between MeRA25 and Popular Unity and other forces and comrades that make up the Alliance for Rupture is a clear and sincere agreement respectful of the autonomy of each component. Its relations are based on equity, which lets each put forward its own programmatic orientations. This is also reflected in the composite name of the slate.

In essence, Greece doesn’t have the means to control and enact policy as a sovereign state.

The common program corresponds, in our opinion, to the needs of this period. All the points we discussed earlier point to the direction of breaking with capitalist and imperialist integration. The current conjuncture in Greece isn’t one of impending revolution, not even a fluid situation of mass contestation comparable to 2010–15. In such a context, the success of this coalition can reopen the possibility of a mass political intervention for the radical left.

However, this convergence needs to acquire greater depth to be able to thrive. Within the framework of the Alliance for Rupture, we are constantly calling the other forces of the radical and extraparliamentary left to build a broader convergence. These forces are significant in Greece and they have deep roots in social movements, in local councils, in workplaces, and in the student youth.

Stathis Kouvelakis

Are you planning to take initiatives in that direction after the elections?

Mariana Tsichli

I believe that if this electoral slate goes well in the polls and keeps on working together, it will offer a great opportunity for reconstructing the radical left, including forces that are not currently part of it. It can offer political visibility to a sociopolitical current that has not yet found a proper parliamentary representation.

To achieve this, we have a job to do that is more difficult than the one we did during the electoral campaign. We have to build counter-hegemonic practices at a grassroots level, strengthen our intervention in the youth, and build spaces of intervention in the labor movement and in local government. The latter is a serious issue: the recently changed legal framework further hampers the radical left’s presence in these institutions, by raising the threshold for representation.

In any case, the greatest possible unity is indispensable to change the balance of forces. National politics are obviously of great importance, but the spaces where struggles and movements are built from below are at least equally important.

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The Biden administration has laid the groundwork for a financial firm to use the fragile Colorado River as a route for oil trains — amid heightened concerns about derailments that could cause untold environmental damage in a drought-prone area.

Oil well in the Uinta Basin, Utah. (Staplegunther / Wikimedia Commons)

In the parched Southwest, one in eight Americans rely on a single drought-stressed river that carries snowmelt from Rocky Mountain peaks down to desert communities. But instead of strengthening protections for that crucial water supply, the Biden administration has quietly laid the groundwork for a financial firm full of former government officials to use it as a route for oil trains — amid heightened concerns about derailments.

This spring, the project’s backers took the initial steps to apply for special Transportation Department bonds subsidized by tens of millions of dollars in annual tax breaks. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg — a former McKinsey consultant who has previously touted such bonds — is under pressure from Democratic lawmakers, local communities, and environmental groups to deny the bonds, but has remained silent.

Meanwhile, the firm at the center of the project has never successfully developed a major infrastructure project, though it says it is “leveraging a proprietary set of relationships” its executives built during their time in government, according to corporate documents reviewed by us.

As climate change jeopardizes the American West’s tenuous water supplies, the Utah project — which already received federal permitting approval — is audacious. It aims to run trains full of petroleum from Northeast Utah’s Uinta Basin along the banks of the Colorado River as it winds through treacherous canyons prone to rockslides and mudslides.

Critics say those hazards could easily trigger derailments, spilling crude oil into the water that millions of Americans living downstream need to survive. Indeed, even the federal agency that approved permits for the project admitted that such rail lines are susceptible to derailments, and that accidents involving oil trains often involve the release of toxins.

“If issued, this would not only constitute the largest [private activity bond] the [Department of Transportation] has ever issued; it would also irretrievably sink taxpayer dollars into a project that has proven unable to contain its own costs,” wrote Senator Michael Bennet, Senator John Hickenlooper, and Representative Joe Neguse, all Colorado Democrats, in a March 9 letter to Buttigieg, demanding he reject the developers’ request for tax breaks. “The project could result in as many as five, two-mile-long crude-oil trains running over 100 miles directly alongside the headwaters of the Colorado River each day.”

In an earlier letter to a top Biden environmental adviser, Bennet and Neguse declared: “We urge you not to allow this project to move forward. . . . We simply cannot afford the risk of an oil train derailment in these sensitive areas.”

The new railroad would give Uinta Basin oil producers access to refineries and export infrastructure on the Gulf Coast — which they claim would allow them to sell their oil at a higher price and increase production by up to 350,000 barrels per day, according to the project’s environmental impact statement. If the project is completed, and spurs increased oil production as developers promise, environmental groups say it would create a “carbon bomb,” increasing US carbon emissions by an estimated 1 percent annually.

The largest oil producer in the Uinta Basin, Finley Resources (which operates in Utah through its subsidiary Uinta Wax), has been promoting the project while claiming it cannot afford to contribute to construction costs. Finley received government handouts from nearly every corporate subsidy program in the 2020 COVID-19 relief legislation, the CARES Act.

The project’s developers are planning to ask Buttigieg to approve “private activity bonds” subsidized by $80 million per year in federal tax breaks to finance the railroad’s construction. The use of these federally-subsidized bonds — which have historically been allocated for highways, bridges, and passenger trains — for an oil train would be unprecedented.

The use of these federally-subsidized bonds — which have historically been allocated for highways, bridges, and passenger trains — for an oil train would be unprecedented.

Even as the United States subsidizes fossil fuels by tens of billions of dollars annually, the Uinta Basin project stands out as a “fleece job,” said Tyson Slocum, director of watchdog group Public Citizen’s energy program.

“Asking for public financing for this type of infrastructure project is outrageous,” said Slocum. “It is particularly problematic when you have an opaque investor, where we don’t know anything about the limited financial partners. It’s very common for these private equity firms to do a bunch of the up-front work and then sell it. Clearly, obtaining a massive public subsidy to cover your capital investment costs for this rail infrastructure project will automatically make this investment extremely lucrative.”

A Department of Transportation spokesperson told us that no formal application has been submitted for the private activity bonds for the railroad.

The Biden administration, which has been green-lighting new oil and gas development at a faster rate than the Trump administration and rapidly approving export projects along the Gulf Coast, has already granted the project its necessary permits. Environmental groups are appealing the approval, and Democrats from Colorado’s congressional delegation have asked the administration to reconsider.

“It’s a Treacherous Place to Transport Anything”

Northeast Utah’s Uinta Basin is an arid depression in the earth, wedged between the towering Uinta Mountains and the Colorado Plateaus. Just beneath the surface are massive conventional oil and gas reserves and shale oil patches — and the basin is now covered with thousands of wells that are producing more than 135,000 barrels of oil each day.

The area has some of the worst air quality in the country as a result. Persistently high ozone levels in the basin frequently exceed the Environmental Protection Agency’s safe standard in the winter.

Still, Utah has been on a crusade to increase fossil fuel production in the state’s most oil-rich region. One priority for state officials and their fossil fuel donors has been figuring out a way to connect the basin to international markets.

The Uinta Basin’s waxy crude oil is highly lucrative because its low sulfur levels mean little processing is required to refine it into a usable product. But its viscous nature poses a problem: it is nearly impossible to transport by pipeline — and is instead heated to a liquid and loaded onto tankers to be shipped by truck. Right now, most of the basin’s oil is trucked two hundred miles to a handful of refineries in Salt Lake City.

The finite refinery capacity limits production, and the high cost of transporting the oil by truck means producers have to sell to the refiners at a discounted rate. Shipment by rail would be cheaper, and give Uinta Basin crude oil access to more refineries.

The proposed railway would connect the basin to a Union Pacific–owned line that runs through the Rocky Mountains immediately alongside the Colorado River all the way to the Gulf Coast.

“For about 100 miles of the railroad, it is close enough to the river that if you’re sitting in a raft in the middle of it, you could throw a rock and hit the railroad,” said Ted Zukoski, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that has been fighting the project.

In addition to the general dangers of siting an oil train right next to the river, the specific route would run through Glenwood Canyon, a narrow twelve-mile gorge where steep, unstable walls loom hundreds of feet over the river.

The specific route would run through Glenwood Canyon, a narrow twelve-mile gorge where steep, unstable walls loom hundreds of feet over the river.

“Glenwood Canyon is a difficult and fragile canyon,” said Jonathan Godes, former mayor of nearby Glenwood Springs, which was threatened by a wildfire in the canyon in 2020. “In the winter, highway I-70 will be shut down for 20 to 30 days for semi-truck accidents,” referring to the highway that runs along the railroad. “It’s a treacherous place to transport anything.”

Despite these concerns, in 2021, the federal independent agency that regulates railroads, the Surface Transportation Board, approved the Uinta Basin rail project. Two Biden agencies — the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife — signed off on the project, too, rejecting concerns raised by environmental groups.

When the Surface Transportation Board approved the project in 2021, it did not conduct an official environmental analysis along the existing Union Pacific route. Using national train-derailment data, the agency predicted that increased rail traffic thanks to the new line would lead to one train accident every other year on the existing segment that runs through the Rocky Mountains, a significant portion of which abuts the Colorado River.

The Center for Biological Diversity and Eagle County, Colorado are suing the Surface Transportation Board and the Fish and Wildlife Service over the project’s approval, in part because of the lack of an environmental analysis and evaluation of derailment risks on the existing route, which runs through treacherous terrain.

“The board’s analysis of environmental impacts from the traffic on the Union Pacific Line was limited to compiling data on a few effects including grade-crossing safety and delays and noise and vibrations, impacts that the board described as low,” Eagle County noted in a brief. “The board arbitrarily assumed . . . that the likelihood of derailment for long trains carrying oil through the Mountain West would be the same as any other train in any other locale in America.”

Project developers claim that even if oil spills along the route, it will be easy to clean up because of its waxy nature.

“The likelihood of it spilling in a derailment is very minimal because it is a solid,” Keith Heaton, a local economic development official working on the project, told Deseret News. “It would just sit on the ground like a candlestick.”

But unlike candles, waxy crude is toxic. “It’s just like picking up candles, if your candles may cause cancer, organ failure, genetic defects, are very toxic to aquatic life, and may persist in the environment for years,” said Zukoski.

Moreover, the oil is heated to a liquid for transport, and the extent to which it solidifies when spilled depends on the outdoor temperature. The Surface Transportation Board noted in the project’s environmental impact analysis that waxy crude, “if spilled in water, tends to form globules of semisolid material that lock it in place,” but also that “waxy crude oil may persist in the environment for a longer time relative to other non-waxy crude oil.”

Waxy crude is also highly flammable — and according to the Surface Transportation Board, in an oil-train derailment involving at least five cars, “the likelihood of an accident having sufficient energy to yield an ignition [is] 50 percent or more.”

Utah’s Crusade to Build the Railroad

Behind the push for the project are fossil fuel–producing counties in Utah, which have been fixated on developing the rail line for years.

In 2013, the Utah Department of Transportation concluded in a study that the state could miss out on $24 billion in economic activity from oil and gas production in the Uinta Basin “unless transportation limitations are resolved with new infrastructure investment.”

Fossil fuel–producing counties in Utah have been fixated on developing the rail line for years.

The following year, a coalition of Utah counties in fossil fuel–producing regions formed the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition to “promote cooperative regional planning.” The new entity took up the railroad proposal and began commissioning reports on the possibility of constructing a railroad to carry oil out of the basin.

“A significantly larger volume of oil is available and could be produced quickly if additional markets were available in which to sell Uinta Basin oil,” a 2018 study commissioned by the coalition concluded.

From the outset, project proponents have admitted that the railroad will not be viable without public financing. Yet, contradictorily, they’ve also argued that it will produce massive economic value for the state of Utah — and that taxpayers won’t be taking on any risk.

“Uinta crude is stranded in the Basin, resulting in a loss (due to discounts created by limited access to outside markets) to oil producers of more than $3 billion over the last decade,” the county coalition wrote in an application to the Utah Permanent Community Impact Fund Board in 2018, requesting a $28 million grant for the project. “It is believed access to alternate markets will raise the price paid for the Uinta Basin waxy crude and allow significant increases in oil production.” However, the project is dependent on public subsidies for it to be financially viable.

The state Permanent Community Impact Fund Board allocates tens of millions of dollars of royalties from resource extraction to localities — “mineral leasing” revenue — with the intended goal of mitigating the impacts of such extraction. But in 2020, a state audit found that some projects financed with the royalties — including the Uinta Basin Rail project — were improperly aimed at economic development by private interests, rather than the fund’s intended purpose.

In response to the audit, legislators amended the statute that governs how the mineral leasing revenue is spent, removing the stipulation that it be used for “mitigating impacts from extractive mineral industries.”

Heaton, the executive director of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition, declined to answer any questions for this story, citing “ongoing litigation.”

In 2021, a report from a coalition of environmental groups found that the Community Impact Fund Board had funneled $109 million in grants and cheap loans toward fossil fuel projects over the past decade.

One such project is the Uinta Basin Railway, which received the $28 million grant it requested in 2018. Both the state’s attorney general’s office and treasurer’s office opposed the grant, questioning the legality of using mineral leasing revenue for an oil-train project.

Private Equity Developers

To move the project ahead, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition put out a request for qualifications in 2019 for a firm to finance, construct, and operate the rail project.

The Seven County Infrastructure Coalition selected Drexel Hamilton Infrastructure Partners, or DHIP Group, to lead financing for the project, and Rio Grande Pacific Corporation, a railroad holding company, to operate it. The two entities set up a new company, Uinta Basin Railway LLC, to develop the project. DHIP Group owns a 90 percent stake and Rio Grande Pacific Corporation owns the rest.

Very little information is available about the Florida-based DHIP Group, which advertises itself as “a diversified asset manager” that “directs private equity infrastructure investments.” The firm does not appear to have successfully financed a major infrastructure project before. Its other major infrastructure project, a $2.5 billion oil export facility in Louisiana, was canceled in 2021 due to concerns about emissions and revelations that the proposed site for the project sat atop a slave cemetery. The only completed project in its public portfolio is a self-storage facility in New York.

“Every potential opportunity to exploit oil and gas reserves in this country has been looked at in detail by experienced professionals,” said Justin Mikulka, a research fellow at the energy-transition think tank New Consensus. “We now have some people with no experience who are looking for a lot of public money to do this project, which raises a red flag. They will get paid handsomely if they are able to pull it off — that doesn’t mean it’s a good financial investment.”

It’s not clear how the group ended up developing a major infrastructure project in Utah. One clue comes from DHIP Group’s financial filings, which advertises their close relationships with public officials and their managers’ military experience.

“DHIP believes it can create superior value for stakeholders by leveraging a proprietary set of relationships developed not only during its team’s time in the private sector, but also while serving in the United States military and government,” according to a filing from a special-purpose acquisition company formed by some of the developers behind the Uinta Basin rail project. “Its dedicated and seasoned professionals have completed a variety of greenfield and brownfield projects for the United States military and certain United States government allies.”

DHIP’s cofounder Mark Michel is a former Navy officer who served as “the Navy’s representative to the National Security Council in the White House Situation Room and was a member of the National Security Council staff” during the Obama years, according to the DHIP Group website. “He crafted and conducted daily intelligence briefings with the president, and senior West Wing principals and liaised with global heads of state.”

On the same site, cofounder Timothy Fisher touts army credentials: “During his second tour [in Iraq] he oversaw and coordinated with a governing district in eastern Baghdad to plan, implement, build and pay for all its U.S. funded public works projects.”

The biggest beneficiaries of the railway project might be the four oil companies that control more than 80 percent of production in the Uinta Basin.

Mark Hemphill of Rio Grande Pacific Corporation, who is leading development of the rail project, is described as having directed “the U.S. government’s reconstruction of the Iraqi Republic Railways following the Iraq War” as part of the State Department.

The biggest beneficiaries of the railway project might be the four oil companies that control more than 80 percent of production in the Uinta Basin.

The largest among them is Finley Resources, a Texas-based oil conglomerate owned by Jim Finley. In 2021, Finley presented to the coalition of counties on the virtues of the Uinta Basin waxy crude and the need for a railroad.

“At some point the basin is going to hit a brick wall from a truck-traffic standpoint,” he said, “and to grow the basin to 200,000 or 300,000 barrels a day, which it is fully capable of doing, we have to have the railroad.”

But Finley said in the same presentation that his firm couldn’t help finance the railroad’s construction.

“It is the classic chicken and the egg,” he said. “We can’t commit volumes so that Mark [Michel] and his folks can get funding until we actually have the volume. In order to get the volume, we have to have the truck traffic and rail facilities to get us there.”

Turning to Federal Funds

While the project has been portrayed as a financially viable private sector business investment, the planning, permitting, and litigation costs for the project have so far been paid for by the state — and DHIP Group is now preparing to request federal subsidies for construction.

The main permitting hurdle was at the Surface Transportation Board, the independent federal agency that regulates railroads. In 2021, the agency approved the project by a four-one vote — with one Democratic member and three Republican members supporting the project.

While the project has been portrayed as a financially viable private sector business investment, the planning, permitting, and litigation costs for the project have so far been paid for by the state.

The lone dissenter was Democrat Martin Oberman, who raised concerns about how the project would raise financing, especially as the future of the oil market was in question. “While private/public partnerships (‘3Ps’’) are not unprecedented in the freight rail industry, there has never been such a partnership approaching the size and scope of the [project],” Oberman wrote in a dissent to the agency’s preliminary approval.

He repeated these concerns in his final dissenting opinion, writing: “It confirms the significant concerns I raised previously about the extent to which the project will both require the backing of, and put at risk, public funds.”

Now, the project is seeking an additional, massive influx of federal taxpayer cash for construction using private activity bonds.

Private activity bonds are issued by private entities — or through public conduits to benefit private entities — to raise funds for projects in the public interest, typically highways or passenger rail projects. The interest on the bonds is exempt from federal taxes, allowing the issuers to offer them at a lower interest rate, making it easier to attract buyers.

The particular private activity bonds that the Uinta Basin Railway developers are seeking would come from the Department of Transportation’s $30 billion pool. Most of the bond issuances since 2005 have gone to highway and passenger rail projects, and none have gone to oil trains. In February, the coalition of counties in Utah passed an inducement resolution sponsoring the developers’ request for this kind of government funding. In May, the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition retained counsel to handle the formal bond application and legal compliance.

The Center for Biological Diversity has calculated that the bonds, which would be offered at a six percent interest rate, compared to the typical corporate bond rate of 10 percent, would cost US taxpayers $80 million annually for the forty-year term of the bond.

Finley — the oil conglomerate that stands to profit from the project — is already a major beneficiary of federal subsidies.

“Since the coronavirus pandemic, Finley has taken advantage of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars through myriad CARES Act provisions, including multiple million-dollar PPP loans, federal royalty relief of hundreds of thousands of acres, and the largest [Main Street Lending Program] loan to an [oil and gas] operator,” Chris Kuveke, a researcher at Bailout Watch who is working on a forthcoming report on Finley, told us. “Now the largest crude producer in the Uinta, (through Finley Resources and Uinta Wax Operating), Finley and co. will reap millions in benefits from the state taxpayer-funded Uinta Basin Railway.”

Finley Resources did not respond to a request for comment.

Michel of DHIP Group told Bond Buyer that even if his firm doesn’t receive the subsidy for the new rail line, it will move forward with issuing taxable bonds to finance the project. According to the report, Michel added that “the current spotlight on derailments shouldn’t deter investor interest in the debt.” Wells Fargo has entered an agreement with DHIP Group to underwrite the bonds.

Michel said in a February meeting of the Seven County Infrastructure Coalition that the developers intended to use bonds to raise 65 to 75 percent of the capital for the $3 billion project, and then finance the remainder with equity.

Michel of DHIP Group told Bond Buyer that even if his firm doesn’t receive the subsidy for the new rail line, it will move forward with issuing taxable bonds to finance the project.

DHIP Group has not indicated how it will raise the remaining equity and did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

While the environmental impact of the rail line is clear to residents, state officials have also criticized the project’s finances.

“Projects funded through [private activity bonds] provide significant value to the traveling public,” Colorado attorney general Philip Weiser, a Democrat, wrote in an April 21 letter to Buttigieg. “Yet, the Uinta Basin Railway offers no such mobility value to the public, but only to private sector interests. Federal Private Activity Bonds should benefit the public and prioritize moving people, not goods for a private industry actor.”

Three congressional Democrats in Colorado have also denounced the project, while Republican representative Lauren Boebert has declined to weigh in — even though she is a fossil fuel booster, and the Union Pacific line runs through her district.

Now, it’s up to Buttigieg’s agency to decide whether to approve the bonds.

Two Biden agencies — the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife — have signed off on the Uinta Basin rail project. But Biden doesn’t seem willing to take a position on drilling in the area: last fall, his administration rescinded a Trump-era approval of oil and gas permits on public lands in the Uinta Basin, citing the potential emissions. Project proponents claim that the new rail line will increase the region’s oil production by relieving transportation bottlenecks, and that more than 80 percent of those shipments will be taken to the Gulf Coast for export.

Those projections might hold sway with the administration, which has been aggressively boosting fossil fuel exports.

Biden has approved major fossil fuel export projects on the Gulf Coast in recent months, where oil exports have hit record highs. Last month, he approved the largest-ever oil drilling project on public lands, the Willow Project in Alaska (after calling drilling in the Arctic a “big disaster” on the campaign trail), and then approved liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports from Alaska weeks later.

The Uinta Basin rail project could become part of Biden’s legacy of providing public financial support to ramping up fossil fuel exports — even as the administration claims it is committed to fighting climate change and protecting the Colorado River.

“The purpose and intent of the railway is to induce a huge increase in oil production in the Uinta Basin, which will result in an increase in production by almost twice as much as the Willow Project, which has been dubbed a huge carbon bomb,” said Zukoski, the Center for Biological Diversity attorney. “Now the proponents are seeking a handout, a huge subsidy, to build what is essentially a for-profit oil railway to do all of this damage.”

You can subscribe to David Sirota’s investigative journalism project, the Lever, here.

Democrats want you to believe their commander-in-chief is an ultraprogressive master negotiator. The GOP wants you to believe they’re a newly reborn party of the working class. The never-ending debt ceiling standoff reveals just how absurd both tales are.

President Joe Biden shakes hands with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy before delivering his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress, on February 7, 2023 in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. (Jacquelyn Martin-Pool / Getty Images)

The political narratives fed to the US public by the two major parties and mainstream media often have so little to do with reality that political coverage can amount to little more than a boxing match between phantoms. But every now and then, you get a flash point that makes clear just how much of a careful pretense the whole thing is. This is the case with the interminable debt ceiling negotiations on Capitol Hill that are right now reaching their dreary climax.

Up to now, the public has been told that US politics in the 2020s is an existential contest between two forces. On one side, there’s President Joe Biden, who’s a cross between Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, newly converted to progressive, even radical politics, with the legislative and dealmaking skills honed over decades in the Senate to make them actually happen. On the other, there’s a Republican Party that, like Biden, has realized the error of its Reaganite ways and has now become the party of the working class, renouncing its years of ruthless neoliberalism to now take on corporate power and the military-industrial complex for the benefit of the average working American.

Neither of these narratives ever matched reality, but the debt ceiling standoff has made them completely untenable. Take the Republicans. Led by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the GOP is, as per usual, using the debt ceiling deadline to extract painful concessions from Biden and the Democrats, threatening to dent US government credit and plunge its economy into crisis if they don’t get their way.

And what demands are this newly populist, working-class Republican Party holding the US economy to ransom over? Perhaps the GOP wants to institute the fifteen-dollar minimum wage Biden promised but never signed into law? Or the public health insurance option Biden simply dropped, to end the gross injustices of the United States’ corporate-controlled health care sector?

No, McCarthy and the GOP want to make it harder for the poor to get financial assistance from the government, specifically by putting onerous work requirements on a number of government programs, including Medicaid, that in practice fail at their ostensible goals and end up simply denying benefits to people. They also want major spending cuts that would negatively impact just about every agency and program — that is, everything but the astronomical and wasteful military budget, much of which ends up in the pockets of military-contractor executives. Mind you, this is a climbdown from their initial plan to make deep cuts to Medicare, Social Security, and almost every part of the US social safety net.

Nevertheless, you can bet that even though the GOP is very publicly using this monumental bit of leverage for an attack on the working class, this won’t remotely deter it from continuing to shamelessly parade around as the party fighting for that same working class.

Meanwhile, Biden, the supposed master negotiator, has proven incapable of breathing the spirit of compromise into the GOP as he’d once promised his mere presence in the White House would do. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone who’s observed Washington politics since at least the Barack Obama years — when, incidentally, Biden had been the vice president negotiating with those same Republicans.

After pledging not to budge on their demands and playing chicken for months, in the end, Biden blinked, and he’s now haggling with Republicans over just how deep the cuts he’ll be forced to make will be and which programs will have extra work requirements added on. As it stands, Biden — the president we’ve been incessantly told is going to transform the American economy in the manner of the New Deal and Great Society programs — is looking instead like he’ll preside over cuts to the already-lacerated US welfare state, at the same time that he’s already chosen to preside over a major shrinkage of government support that had first been widened under Donald Trump during the pandemic.

So much for those Rooseveltian ambitions. Luckily, the president very carefully chose his words last year when he promised that he would “not yield” to Republican demands, but mentioned only Medicare and Social Security — leaving the door open for other cuts. Three cheers for technicalities.

Just like with the Republicans, you can bet none of this will stop a phalanx of media personalities from continuing to tell us about how fantastic and full of progressive accomplishments Biden’s tenure has been, even as polls show that a majority of people fully understand they’re being told that hot is cold and up is down.

There Is an Alternative

However this all ends up, it’s important to understand that none of this had to happen. We shouldn’t let party loyalists rewrite history, like how they retconned the willful failures of Obama’s presidency as unavoidable inevitabilities that the president was simply forced to accept.

For one, this entire thing could have been avoided months ago, when even a centrist Democrat like Representative Jim Clyburn suggested simply abolishing the debt ceiling entirely while the party still controlled the House. It was a sound idea: the debt ceiling is a historical and technical quirk that makes the United States fairly unique on the world stage. But Biden personally nixed the idea of abolishing it, calling it “irresponsible.” (By contrast, letting plutocratic radicals constantly threaten to tank the US economy is, presumably, the height of responsibility).

But even now, Biden has options. He could use a provision in a little-known 1997 law to authorize the Treasury to simply mint a $1 trillion coin (or of any denomination, for that matter) and deposit it with the Federal Reserve. Though it sounds wacky, it’s an idea that’s gained considerable purchase in recent years, drawing the backing of serious, non-radical economists, legal scholars, a former director of the US Mint, and even Bloomberg Businessweek. Biden has even gotten an unlikely assist from likely 2024 opponent Trump, who said in 2016 that the United States could never default on its debt since it can simply “print the money.”

There are some reasonable concerns about the idea, like that it could spook financial markets or that it’s only a temporary work-around, since the inevitable next debt ceiling standoff would bring us back to the exact same place, requiring another minting of a trillion-dollar-or-more coin. Less valid are the objections based on reputational damage to the United States from such a silly solution or that it would be politically unpopular, since a US debt default — or, at least in the eyes of ordinary voters, painful spending cuts — would be magnitudes worse on both counts.

But okay, let’s say this solution isn’t ideal. Biden could also invoke the Fourteenth Amendment, with its clause that “the validity of the public debt of the United States . . . shall not be questioned,” potentially letting the president simply ignore the debt ceiling and continue borrowing. It’s another idea that’s been written off as too cute for its own good, but has the backing of serious legal scholars, including one who had previously written the idea off, since a US default would severely harm US creditworthiness. Maybe more importantly, in a repeat of last year’s calls to abolish the debt ceiling, it’s now being urged by a rising chorus of elected Democratic officials and allies: not just big-name progressives like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Ed Markey, but even the centrist Dick Durbin.

The potential downside is that it would, in the end, hinge on the decision of the most radical right-wing collection of judges in generations, shifting the standoff from one between the White House and Congress, to one between the White House and the Supreme Court. But as Senator John Fetterman said yesterday, “if our unelected Supreme Court Justices try to block the use of the 14th amendment and blow up our economy, that’s on them.”

It’s not a bad battle to pick: the Supreme Court’s public standing is already in the toilet, and the court is already in crisis thanks to a worsening corruption scandal that’s now embroiled the highly public image-conscious chief justice. Why not dare it to take the blame for sinking the US economy?

If Biden does this or any of the other recently proposed solutions, it would make up for his failure to simply nip this in the bud last year when Democrats still controlled Congress, and might even help rescue his presidency. But if, out of an antiquated obsession with institutionalism and decorum, he succumbs to the demands of the “party of the working class” to eviscerate the poor, don’t let them tell you he couldn’t have done anything different.

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