Thomas Catenacci of the Washington Free Beacon reports on a federal judge’s impact on Trump administration efforts to battle climate alarmism.
A federal district court judge blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to claw back $20 billion the Biden administration awarded to eight climate nonprofit organizations.
In her opinion Tuesday evening, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was appointed by former president Barack Obama, wrote that the Trump EPA failed to submit evidence to support its termination of the billion-dollar grants. Chutkan’s ruling, however, does not force federal disbursements to continue to grant recipients, allowing the funds to remain frozen.
The ruling is a temporary block on EPA’s termination of the grants and may be reversed pending further court proceedings.
“EPA Defendants vaguely reference ‘multiple ongoing investigations’ into ‘programmatic waste, fraud, and abuse and conflicts of interest’ but offer no specific information about such investigations, factual support for the decision, or an individualized explanation for each plaintiff. This is insufficient,” Chutkan wrote. “At this stage, EPA Defendants have not provided the ‘credible evidence’ required.”
The ruling represents the latest setback to President Donald Trump’s agenda—cutting large Biden-era spending programs and curbing climate programs have both been at the forefront of Trump’s agenda. Federal judges have handed the Trump administration a number of setbacks in recent weeks, sparking Trump and top White House adviser Elon Musk to call for the impeachment of certain judges.
The case relates to the Biden administration’s handling of the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. 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.
