A federal judge ruled late Tuesday evening that the Environmental Protection Agency must immediately restart a $20 billion Biden-era green energy program that the Trump administration terminated last month, restarting the flow of taxpayer funds to eight environmentalist groups, including one linked to Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams. [emphasis, links added]
Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, whom former president Barack Obama appointed in 2013, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump EPA’s actions, but did not immediately explain the ruling.
Plaintiffs—a coalition of eight environmental groups that the Biden administration awarded massive grants to under the program—had asked for the injunction, arguing that terminating the program would cause them irreparable damage.
The ruling is the latest blow courts have dealt to the Trump administration, which has been on the losing end of several court-ordered injunctions since January. It also gives a lifeline to a slew of taxpayer-funded environmentalist groups.
The EPA appealed Chutkan’s ruling on Wednesday morning.
The case relates to the Biden administration’s handling of the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created under the Democrats’ 2022 Inflation Reduction Act.
In April 2024, the EPA announced it had selected eight recipients to receive $20 billion under the program and use that money to bolster green energy efforts nationwide.
The program, as designed by the Biden EPA, functions as a “green bank,” using a pass-through mechanism to support local climate projects.
Shortly after taking office, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin’s team discovered that Biden officials parked the $20 billion at an outside financial institution—Citibank.
The first-of-its-kind arrangement limits oversight of the funds and creates barriers for the Trump administration’s efforts to claw the funding back.
The Washington Free Beacon then reported that one of the eight recipients of Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants was a brand-new nonprofit linked to Abrams, who was a vocal proponent of former president Joe Biden’s green agenda and campaigned for former vice president Kamala Harris.
The Biden EPA granted that group, Power Forward Communities, $2 billion to replace gas appliances with electric alternatives in low-income communities nationwide despite reporting just $100 in revenue in 2023.
“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” Zeldin told the Free Beacon at the time.
“It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”
Read rest at Free Beacon
