Thomas Catenacci writes for the Washington Free Beacon about a new investigation on Capitol Hill.
The Environmental Protection Agency is facing congressional scrutiny for awarding a $50 million grant to the Climate Justice Alliance, a California nonprofit that has accused Israel of committing genocide and encouraged “solidarity protest actions” in opposition to the Jewish state.
Senate Environment and Public Works Committee ranking member Shelley Moore Capito (R., W.Va.) during a press conference Tuesday highlighted the EPA’s grant to the Climate Justice Alliance and the group’s anti-Israel activism. The top Republican lawmaker also blasted the agency for its ongoing pursuit of its big-money environmental programs and promised to lead oversight of such programs.
“You could ask yourself, is this group really going to be funding climate—again, cleaning up the water and cleaning up the soil and cleaning up the air? Or are they going to be funding things like the protests they had … weeks ago where several of them were arrested?” Capito asked Tuesday.
“Follow the money. We’re going to be doing that in the Environment and Public Works Committee,” she continued. “And I find it rather startling to me that the EPA and this administration are not doing any better research as to where American taxpayers’ dollars are going.”
EPA administrator Michael Regan unveiled his agency’s grant for the Climate Justice Alliance in December, saying the funding was made possible by the “Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grantmaking” program established by the behemoth Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The funding, Regan said, would help “address our country’s most pressing environmental justice concerns.”
According to the agency, the Climate Justice Alliance will work with several local partners to use the federal grant for various environmental justice programs. The EPA awarded the grant, however, even as the Climate Justice Alliance in early October continued to loudly prioritize its anti-Israel agenda in the aftermath of Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel.