Awwwwwwwww!!!! Heartland Institute Lays Off More Than Half Of Its Staff, Citing "Financial Troubles"
An influential climate-denial think tank bankrolled by President Donald Trump’s far-right billionaire donors has laid off nearly a dozen staffers amid financial troubles, according to three former employees.
The Illinois-based Heartland Institute ― which captured headlines last month for promoting a German teenager with ties to neo-Nazis as the climate denier’s alternative to acclaimed youth activist Greta Thunberg ― pink-slipped at least 10 staffers Friday, shedding what one former employee described as “more than half” the organization’s staff. “Heartland is broke,” Nikki Comerford, the nonprofit’s events coordinator on staff for nearly 21 years, told a former colleague in a text message, a screenshot of which HuffPost reviewed.
Comerford blamed Frank Lasée, the former Wisconsin Republican state lawmaker who took over as Heartland’s president last July, for squandering the organization’s budget during his nascent tenure and leaving the group in dire financial straits. Another former employee accused Lasée of mismanaging the budget, and private Facebook posts from other current staffers expressed dismay over the state of the organization, but HuffPost could not independently verify the state of Heartland’s finances because the nonprofit’s tax filings for 2019 are not yet due.
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When, in late 2017, then-Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt began planning a sort of mock trial on climate science, pitting credible researchers against industry-backed rogues, Heartland submitted a list of 145 names of contrarian scientists to consider. A HuffPost investigation found that the list included a child sex offender: Oliver Manuel, a nuclear chemist whose crank theories about the sun alienated even the most ardent climate deniers, and who was convicted of attempted sodomy of an 11-year-old girl. In a response to the exposé, EPA distanced itself from Heartland. Five days after the story was published, Heartland, which is known to attempt to publicly discredit journalists and critics, disputed the nature of the list in a statement calling HuffPost “shameful and even disgusting.”
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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/heartland-institute-staff-layoffs-climate-change-denial_n_5e6302a6c5b6670e72f85fa5?h6m&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZGFpbHljbGltYXRlLm9yZy8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANNTuYZLK_dH-L9CO4fNZlcNtQ_mrptaYLsthwWM_EKDSZ9QGpee79xCTn-J5hyGiT2KX_TqP26_qVkjTmL-OyHxVPtRnfjJetTM1iXPmQnnaQ6A_VD20jyIVkEEl-mj8lP2tae9MgiACKFZpjP0l_Hdiw-BJDzMu2lEff3C_jal
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