By Ben Jealous, TriceEdney Wire
“Panic, confusion, and anger.”
That’s how BlueGreen Alliance president Jason Walsh described to CNN the state that Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grant awardees were left in after having their funding frozen (then unfrozen, then frozen again) by the Trump administration.
“Contracts are going to get broken if this doesn’t stop, and workers are going to get laid off,” said Walsh. “I didn’t anticipate how fully brazen they’d be in ignoring the courts.”
It is brazen – for its lawlessness and cruelty, as well as its stupidity.
There’s a lot of lawbreaking going on, from usurping Congress’s constitutional “power of the purse” to defying court orders. But administration efforts to freeze funding appropriated by Congress and claw back money already obligated under contracts threatens our national credibility. And now, with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s attempts to pull back $20 billion in money that has already been awarded under the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF), we are seeing how the administration’s tactics could potentially cost taxpayers more in lawsuit damages than the money they are trying to freeze and claw back!
And, of course, in that scenario, Americans would lose out on the purpose of the appropriated funds: to lower energy costs, revitalize local economies, and address the climate crisis. The targeted $20 billion in GGRF money is specifically meant to mobilize financing and private capital into clean energy projects to create jobs. And this comes on the heels of Zeldin’s EPA already having illegally frozen funds under contract through the EPA’s Solar for All program.
Federal judges are saying the money needs to keep flowing. One in Rhode Island last week reaffirmed his temporary restraining order to block Trump’s funding freeze and noted the administration was in violation of the order.
As a former congressman and litigator, Administrator Zeldin should have at least a basic understanding of the law. And anyone with common sense should realize attempting to claw back already-disbursed funds to help us avoid the very worst of the climate crisis is as illogical as it is illegal. These investments are lowering costs for families, providing more reliable and resilient energy options in communities across the country, and helping create good jobs.
If you were to do a quick scan of this administration’s actions and statements over its first four weeks in office, you would see a clear list of national priorities it is willing to sacrifice for tax cuts for billionaires: public health, national parks, cancer research, food for starving people (both at home and abroad), the security of our nuclear arsenal, and good jobs for working families – just to name a few.
What would also stand out are the lengths to which this administration is willing to go – and the straws at which they are willing to grasp – in their efforts to skirt the law and inflict harm on American communities.
One of the administration’s favorite talking points a few weeks ago was that the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) had, according to President Trump, “identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.” The claim was meant to justify DOGE’s government-wide slash-and-burn campaign that had just gotten started with USAID, as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion offices and Environmental Justice programs.
DOGE head and Trump’s co-president Elon Musk fed the claim into the Far Right’s manufactured outrage machine on his X platform, where it snowballed (reminiscent of the racist lie during the presidential campaign that members of the Haitian immigrant community in Springfield, Ohio were eating local pets). Trump himself repeated the claim multiple times and even inflated – baselessly – the cost of the supposed condom shipments to $100 million.
Of course, there was not a shred of truth to those claims. A former Biden administration official who worked on Gaza aid called the claim “imaginary” and said, “It’s a lie, they are making s*** up.” It turns out the Gaza mentioned in the records found by DOGE was probably in reference to HIV and Tuberculosis aid to Gaza Province in Mozambique, and there were no massive condom deliveries to there nor anywhere in the Middle East.
Now, in trying to defend his reckless and ideological war on clean energy funding, EPA Administrator Zeldin and others in the Trump administration are playing the same game. Zeldin and the administration have suggested the contracts with EPA grantees and the process by which funds are administered by Citibank through the GGRF were rushed, not properly vetted, and done in some novel and inappropriate way.
But Zealan Hoover, who directed IRA program implementation at the EPA under President Biden, attests the process and institutions involved were thoroughly vetted and pointed out the government has been using similar arrangements with private banks since the 1800s. And Zeldin’s ‘evidence?’ A supposed sting video by the group Project Veritas, infamous for dishonest smear attacks using highly edited recordings of its targets. Zeldin cited a recording by the group in a bizarre rant he posted to X last week.
Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin should quit skirting the law and defending their actions with outrageous lies. And we should all recognize their actions as the latest evidence they are willing to sink to any low to do the bidding of their fossil fuels cronies.
Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
