A Woman Baked to Death in Her Car, and Ted Cruz Wants to Give the Oil Companies Immunity

Juliana Leon was 65 years old. She was driving home from a doctor’s appointment in Seattle on June 28, 2021, when the temperature hit 108 degrees. Her car’s air conditioner was broken. She rolled the windows down. A passerby found her unresponsive on a residential street. The medical examiner called it hyperthermia. She cooked to death in her own car.

Now her daughter Misti is doing what any person with a pulse and a functioning sense of outrage would do. She’s suing the companies that spent decades pumping carbon into the sky while their own scientists told them it would kill people. ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, Shell, ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66. Seven defendants, one wrongful death lawsuit filed in King County Superior Court. First of its kind in America.

And funny how the same people who lecture you about “personal responsibility” every time a working person needs a handout are suddenly falling over themselves to shield the most profitable corporations in human history from being held responsible for anything at all.

Tim Simpson (BY) via wikimedia

Here’s what we know, because the documents are public. A 1996 Exxon presentation explicitly projected “suffering and death due to thermal extremes” from climate change. Their own scientists told them. They knew. And what did they do with that information? They buried it. They spent decades sowing doubt, funding front groups, and making sure every politician who could hold them accountable got a nice campaign contribution. Michigan’s attorney general is now suing these same companies for acting “as a cartel to forestall meaningful competition from renewable energy.” A cartel. That’s not my word. That’s the state of Michigan’s word.

Scientists have concluded the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome was “virtually impossible” without human-caused climate change. Not unlikely. Not probably a little worse. Virtually impossible. Juliana Leon was one of an estimated 1,200 people who died across the region. Twelve hundred dead in one weather event. And that’s just one heat dome in one corner of the country.

So ask yourself who benefits when Ted Cruz and Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman introduce the “Stop Climate Shakedowns Act of 2026,” a bill that would hand the entire fossil fuel industry a legal shield against exactly this kind of lawsuit. Who benefits when the same Congress that can’t pass a budget to save its life suddenly finds the time to write a get-out-of-jail-free card for Chevron? Not Juliana Leon. Not Misti Leon. Not the next 65-year-old woman whose car AC breaks on a 108-degree day.

Then there’s Trump. His Justice Department is going after oil companies, sure, but not for killing people. For raising gas prices. He’s not angry they lied about climate change for forty years. He’s angry they made it harder for people to buy their product. His administration is actively suing states for trying to enforce their own environmental regulations. The federal government is not on your side here. It’s on theirs.

Michael Vadon (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons

Misti Leon told The New York Times she never would have guessed climate change would be what killed her mother. That’s the thing about a con this big. You don’t see it coming because the people running it made sure you wouldn’t. They knew the consequences. They hid the evidence. They bought the politicians. And now they want immunity.

A Washington judge has already cleared this case for discovery and trial. That means Misti Leon gets her day in court and Big Oil has to sit down and answer questions under oath. Mike Meno from the Center for Climate Integrity says the companies are “in absolute panic mode.” Good. They should be.

Twelve hundred people died in one heat dome. One woman is holding the door open for all of them. The only question is whether the system lets her through or slams it shut on her fingers like it does to every little guy who dares to ask who’s really in charge.