May 31, 2016; Washington Post

For the first time in its history, the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Fund (NRDCAF) has joined the fight and endorsed a candidate for the presidency: Hillary Clinton.

In a statement reported in the Washington Post, the NRDCAF, which is the political arm of the NRDC, said that “the unprecedented endorsement reflects a need for left-leaning groups to unite against Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee.”

“Hillary Clinton is an environmental champion with the passion, experience, and savvy to build on President Obama’s environmental legacy,” Rhea Suh, president of the NRDCAF, said, citing specifically Trump’s recent energy speech in North Dakota as one of the main rationales for the announcement.

In that speech, Trump suggested that he would tear up the Paris Climate Accord, denied anthropogenic climate change, vowed to increase the production of fossil fuels, and said he doubted that California was in the midst of its worst drought in generations.

“His plan for his first 100 days would take us back 100 years, and America cannot afford to indulge his climate conspiracy theories,” Suh told the Post.

The Post views the endorsement as a “blow to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who hopes to upset Clinton next week in the Democratic primary in California, a state where environmental issues loom large.”

The article calls the endorsement “the latest sign that Democrats and their allies are urging their supporters to unite behind Clinton.” Sanders and Clinton agree on most environmental issues, with minor disagreements on scope and implementation of environmental policy.—Larry Kaplan