Trump EPA immediately appealed the ruling Wednesday morning
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.
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 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.”
The Free Beacon also reported that Jahi Wise, the former director of the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund office, oversaw a $5 billion grant to the Coalition for Green Capital, where he served as policy director before joining the Biden administration.
Both Power Forward Communities and the Coalition for Green Capital are among the lead plaintiffs in the ongoing case.
The Department of Justice opened an investigation into how the program funding was disbursed in late February and the EPA requested its inspector general’s office to conduct its own audit of the program, citing the Free Beacon’s reporting. On March 11, Zeldin informed all eight recipients that it had terminated the grants.
But the groups sued and asked Chutkan to intervene, arguing that they relied on the funding to sustain their operations and that the EPA had violated the terms of the grants. Four Democratic-led states—California, Illinois, Maine, and Minnesota—intervened as co-plaintiffs.
Prior to the ruling Tuesday, the EPA filed an emergency motion asking the court not to force the agency to disburse Biden-era funds until an appeals court weighs in. Government lawyers shared evidence that, if the court rules in their favor, the groups intend to immediately withdraw funds from their federal accounts to fund green projects, rendering that money unrecoverable.
“Any preliminary injunction that alters the status quo and directs disbursement of funds from the accounts maintained by the federal financial agent, defendant Citibank, would cause immediate irreparable injury to the United States, specifically, the potentially permanent loss of up to $14 billion in taxpayer funds,” the motion stated.
Chutkan denied the motion.
