Obama-Appointed Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Terminating EPA ‘Gold Bars’ Grants

A federal judge appointed by former President Barack Obama ruled Tuesday evening to block the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from terminating $20 billion in grants doled out through a Biden-era program.

Federal D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that the EPA could not currently revoke money that the agency parked in accounts at Citibank in the final days of the Biden administration. The judge wrote that the Trump EPA “gave no legal justification for the termination” of the agreements with the recipients while the administration “vaguely” outlined its initial concerns with the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF).

While Chutkan did temporarily block EPA from moving forward with its push to claw back the funds, she noted in her filing that the ruling does not permanently prevent the EPA from recovering the money.

“By preserving the status quo, the court is not ‘forcing the government to undo its termination’ or allowing ‘grantees to access billions of dollars in grant funds,’ as EPA Defendants argue,” wrote Chutkan. “Preserving the status quo does not make these funds unrecoverable.”

Chutkan GGRF Ruling 3-18 by Nick Pope on Scribd

The ruling represents a legal victory to three politically-connected nonprofit groups that the Biden EPA picked to receive billions of dollars through the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) GGRF.

Three of the organizations picked by the Biden EPA to receive multi-billion dollar payouts — Climate United Fund, the Coalition for Green Capital and Power Forward Communities — are heavily linked to Democrat insiders and donors, as the Daily Caller News Foundation has reported since November 2023.

In a statement responding to Chutkan’s ruling, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said he will do all he can to regain control over the funds in question despite Tuesday’s developments.

“While the Biden EPA touted ‘tossing Gold Bars off the Titanic,’ these terminated grants, riddled with self-dealing and wasteful spending, are now frozen by court order. The Biden EPA handed politically connected and inexperienced nongovernmental organizations tens of billions in taxpayer funding in a manner that deliberately reduced the ability of EPA to conduct proper oversight,” said Zeldin. “I will not rest until these hard-earned taxpayer dollars are returned to the U.S. Treasury. Every penny EPA spends will go towards our core mission of protecting human health and the environment, and Powering the Great American Comeback.”