On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — no stranger to court cases involving Donald Trump — blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to withhold $20 billion in funds for clean energy programs for nonprofit groups. The money is part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created to finance projects to promote energy independence and lower energy costs.
The EPA and FBI had ordered Citibank, which is holding the funds, to freeze the grants and claimed various recipient organizations were under active criminal investigation — but offered Chutkan no evidence that any of those organizations had engaged in anything untoward. Those unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing, for the record, stem from a video released by far-right content platform Project Veritas.
Chutkan blocked the Trump administration from using Citibank to deny, obstruct, delay or otherwise limit access to that money. Her order also requires the funds to be unfrozen by Thursday at 2 p.m. and distributed to the various organizations, according to CNN.
The Hill reported that the EPA has already appealed the ruling.
While Trump and his administration have sought to portray green energy projects as scandalous boondoggles — a “scam,” as Trump has called them — the reality is that these projects stand to create jobs in addition to aiding the U.S. in stemming climate change. And of political significance, Trump’s attacks on green energy projects stand to harm red states greatly, halting funding on “everything from battery factories to electric school buses,” according to a February report in The New York Times.
In other words, if the Trump administration were as serious as it has claimed to be about bringing back (purportedly manly) factory jobs to the U.S., it wouldn’t be targeting the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in a way that undercuts that goal.
For now, the groups that sued to unfreeze their grants seem to be celebrating the momentary victory. The decision “gives us a chance to breathe after the EPA unlawfully — and without due process — terminated our awards and blocked access to funds that were appropriated by Congress and legally obligated,” Beth Bafford, the CEO of Climate United, said in a statement.