Tag: epa

Trump EPA Cancels Funding for Nancy Pelosi’s and Ilhan Omar’s Pet Climate Projects

The EPA canceled two multimillion-dollar environmental justice grants that Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.) helped to secure just weeks before President Donald Trump took office, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Pelosi helped secure a $20 million grant awarded to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority to help develop six green transportation projects—including the purchase of an electric bus, installation of electric ferry charging ports, and creation of a bike-share program. “This project will create a cleaner, greener city where reliable public transportation promotes equity and opportunity for all San Franciscans,” Pelosi said in a statement announcing the grant in December.

Omar, meanwhile, was involved in securing a $10 million grant to build solar panels and energy efficiency upgrades at the Minneapolis American Indian Center and develop a geothermal energy system at the Sabathani Community Center. The partnership between the two Minneapolis-based community centers would strengthen the resilience of an area that is “home to low-income communities disproportionately impacted by climate change,” Omar wrote to the EPA months before the agency awarded the grant.

“Recent examples of the importance of these two legacy organizations includes [sic] their response to the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd and how they served as critical resources throughout the pandemic,” she wrote in the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.

The Minneapolis partnership and San Francisco development projects, a source familiar told the Free Beacon, are among the more than 400 environmental justice and DEI-related grants that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, in collaboration with the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency, has canceled in recent weeks.

The EPA’s actions to revoke the grants highlight the EPA’s and, more broadly, the Trump administration’s efforts to curb spending. Zeldin ordered EPA officials to conduct a line-by-line review of grants disbursed by the Biden administration. Overall, the Trump EPA has clawed back more than $1.7 billion awarded under the previous administration and terminated eight grants worth $20 billion for a “green bank” program.

“It is our commitment at EPA to be exceptional stewards of tax dollars,” Zeldin said this month.

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As Trump moves to scrap key climate finding, emails show Obama EPA used it to push ‘progressive’ fix

As the Trump administration nears a decision on whether to reverse the landmark regulatory declaration that launched the “Green New Deal” movement, the legality and political motivations of the Obama-era environmental regulators are getting a fresh, hard look.

Emails reviewed by Just the News show that Environmental Protection Agency regulators who helped craft the 2009 “endangerment finding” — which declared greenhouse gases could be regulated because they risked public health — were preparing to impose the regulatory powers of the endangerment finding even before the science was wrapped up.

The emails also show there was an open discussion inside the Obama EPA about trying to score a win for liberals in what was supposed to be a scientific process. “You are at the forefront of progressive national policy on one of the critical issues of our time. Do you realize that?” Georgetown law professor Lisa Heinzerling wrote then-EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson on Feb. 27, 2009. “You’re a good boss. I do realize that. I pinch myself all the time.”

A day earlier, Heinzerling estimated that the finding would be finalized in August or September 2009, but that imposing regulations like new car emission standards could occur ahead of the science being wrapped up.

Experts told Just the News such communications — which mostly have been relegated to insiders and trade publications — could provide a powerful messaging tool if Trump EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin decides to reverse the endangerment finding.

And there’s also a trove of emails yet to be released but itemized on a log of documents the Obama administration insisted on hiding from the public by declaring them “privileged.” “I believe the privilege logs support that the [Obama] administration came in determined to do what they then went through the public motions of producing,” Chris Horner, an environment and energy policy attorney, told Just the News.  

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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin Launches Largest Deregulatory Effort in U.S. History to ‘Save Coal, Bring Down Cost of Living’

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin said it is “not a binary choice” to either protect the environment or grow the economy.

“We don’t have to just choose one,” he explained.

Joining Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matt Boyle on the Breitbart News Saturday radio show, Zeldin went over his recent historic launch of the largest deregulatory effort in U.S. history and talked about the EPA’s sweeping deregulations to “save the coal industry” and “bring down the cost of living.” 

After announcing 31 deregulations on Wednesday, including the termination of the Biden administration’s “Environmental Justice and DEI arms of the agency (EJ/DEI),” Zeldin told Boyle, “Undoubtedly, we’re going to be able to create jobs, including inside the American auto sector.”

“We will bring down the cost of living. It’s going to be easier to heat your home, to purchase a vehicle, to operate a business,” the former New York congressman said, touting President Donald Trump’s economic plan. 

“A lot of Americans struggling to make ends meet want common sense back into the federal government, and we’re going to do our part at the EPA,” Zeldin continued. “So that’s why we made this announcement. It’s a lot of regulatory actions impacting the energy space. We want to make it easier for people to be able to access choice.”

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A New Beltway Mystery: Follow the Biden EPA Money

When the Biden administration announced $27 billion in environmental grants last April, it set the clock ticking on a predicament: how to get the unprecedented sums for the President’s envisioned NetZero future out the door before the fiscal year ended on Sept. 30?

The task was complicated by the fact most of the money – $20 billion – would go to just eight nonprofits that, like the Environmental Protection Agency itself, had never handled such gargantuan grants.

In hindsight, it’s easy to suspect that corners were cut, or laws were broken, or, at the very least, extraordinary measures were taken.

Those possibilities are clearly on the mind of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin as he tries to unravel what happened to Inflation Reduction Act spending that the Biden White House’s Office of Management and Budget and the EPA decided to expedite before the November election – an effort that included moving the roughly $20 billion to a private institution, Citibank, away from oversight of the Treasury Department.

On Wednesday, Zeldin moved to terminate the arrangements as the enriched nonprofits have filed lawsuits looking to protect their grants. The battle has thrust into the spotlight what had been a rather quiet attempt by the Biden administration to spend the $27 billion.

The money was put into the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a new entity born in 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, which Democrats pushed through Congress without any Republican support.

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Trump’s EPA Head Lee Zeldin Needs to Undo the ‘Endangerment Finding’

At the direction of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin was charged with reconsidering whether the EPA’s finding that emissions of carbon dioxide endanger human health, welfare, or the environment (the Endangerment Finding) is valid and merits continued support.

Zeldin reported his determination and recommendations to Trump last week, but they have not been publicly released.

Critics of the federal effort to limit fossil fuel use and restrict greenhouse gas emissions in the vain effort to prevent climate change — which humans don’t control by the way — have long decried the Endangerment Finding, recognizing it serves as the foundation for nearly all federal climate rules since 2009.

The Endangerment Finding was based on a gross and unjustified expansion of the reach of the Clean Air Act as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA.

Massachusetts sued the EPA for not regulating greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide, from mobile sources as a pollutant causing climate change, which the state argued threatened it and its people via higher seas and worsening weather. The EPA argued that under the Clean Air Act it had no authority to regulate CO2 emissions because they weren’t considered pollution under the law.

The Court took the occasion to expand the law beyond its wording and intention, rewriting the Clean Air Act to essentially define anything emitted into the air as a pollutant and thus subject to EPA regulation if the agency finds it endangers human health. Under this interpretation of the law, when a person exhales or belches, they are polluting.

Because fossil fuels are the lifeblood of the economy, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the CAA, the EPA has become an authoritarian czar, with the levers of the entire economy in its hands. The U.S. Constitution countenanced no single branch of government, much less a single unaccountable agency under one branch of the government, to wield such unchecked power.

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Vote-Buying Scheme Exposed: Stacey Abrams Admits on MSNBC Biden EPA Handed Her $2 Billion to Buy New Home Appliances to Reduce Electric Bills Just Months Before the Election

In a jaw-dropping admission on MSNBC, failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams proudly revealed that the Biden administration’s EPA funneled nearly $2 billion into a program she spearheaded to replace home appliances—just in time for an election year.

During an interview with left-wing host Chris Hayes, Abrams proudly recounted how the Biden administration greenlit her project, Vitalizing DeSoto, a so-called “climate justice” initiative that handed out free home appliances to a select group of residents in a small Georgia town.

But the real bombshell? This taxpayer-funded windfall was part of a larger effort to implement the Democrats’ radical climate agenda under the guise of “helping” Americans with their electric bills.

President Donald Trump, in a fiery rebuke, called out the scheme for what it is—a politically motivated slush fund designed to curry favor with voters using taxpayer dollars.

“Take a $1.9 billion to recently created Decarbonization of Homes Committee headed up—and we know she’s involved. Just at the last moment, the money was passed over by a woman named Stacey Abrams. Have you ever heard of her?” Trump said during his joint address to Congress.

Rather than deny her involvement, Abrams openly confirmed it, boasting that her pilot program successfully provided government-funded appliances to 75% of DeSoto’s residents.

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If Trump nixes this one government rule it could unravel the entire climate-change hoax

The Trump administration may soon throw out a major piece of junk science that has served as the philosophical underpinning for the government wasting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the climate-change hoax. In essence, they’ve robbed us blind while claiming to save us from ourselves, and they based it all on a lie.

The Daily Mail reports that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin is lobbying for the White House to discard the so-called “endangerment finding.” This is a 2009 bureaucratic rule theorizing that greenhouse gases, created by burning “fossil fuels,” lead to global warming and allegedly pose a threat to public health.

This allegedly scientific finding has served as the justification for government regulations limiting the emission of greenhouse gases since the Obama presidency.

Globalist billionaires like like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, and Larry Fink have all cashed in on what amounts to a public-private partnership between the governments of the world, scientists for hire, and the private-sector corporations that benefit from the new rules and regulations. Meanwhile, the Chinese, unburdened by all these new rules and regs, become the dominant industrial force in the world. And the media controllers also play their role. Type “climate change hoax” into your Google or DuckDuckGo search engine, and see what comes up. It’s quite revealing.

But now three anonymous sources who spoke with the Washington Post are saying that new EPA honcho Lee Zeldin wants to end this charade. He has reportedly recommended that President Trump repeal the endangerment finding, clearing the way for the complete undoing of countless climate regulations now in place throughout America.

Both the Obama and Biden Administrations used this 2009 ruling to impose new limits on the emissions produced by cars, factories, and power plants.

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Unearthing the EPA’s buried treasure: $2 BILLION to shady green group tied to Stacey Abrams

In a shocking revelation that has sent ripples through the political landscape, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin has uncovered a scheme that diverted $2 billion in tax payer dollars to a nonprofit organization with ties to Democratic activist Stacey Abrams. The discovery, part of a larger 20 billion pot of funds, has raised serious questions about the Biden-Harris administration’s commitment to transparency and ethical governance.

The unlikely recipient: Power Forward Communities

Power Forward Communities (PFC), the nonprofit in question, was founded in late 2023 with a reported revenue of just 100 for its first three months. Despite this, the Biden administration awarded it a $2 billion grant from the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) in April 2024. This astronomical sum—20 million times the organization’s reported revenue—raises red flags about the selection criteria and the potential for misuse of taxpayer funds.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, known for his commitment to fiscal responsibility, expressed grave concerns. “I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars, and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin told the Free Beacon. “When we learned about the Biden Administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this. 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.”

Historical context: The green new deal and political favoritism

The Green New Deal, a cornerstone of the Democratic agenda, was designed to combat climate change through sweeping environmental policies and massive federal investments. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, which allocated billions for green initiatives, set the stage for the GGRF. Critics have long accused the Biden administration of using these funds to prop up partisan interests rather than addressing environmental concerns effectively.

The selection of PFC, a fledgling organization with strong ties to Abrams, a vocal supporter of the Biden agenda, and her involvement in Rewiring America, a left-wing climate group, provides a clear example of potential favoritism. Abrams, who serves as senior counsel at Rewiring America, was instrumental in the creation of PFC. “This is how we expand access to clean energy—by prioritizing housing, equity, and resilience,” Abrams wrote in an X post, touting the organization’s mission.

However, the rapid awarding of such a massive grant to an organization with minimal operational history and minimal revenue is highly unusual. “For an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had 100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant—it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud,” Daniel Turner, the executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Free Beacon.

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EPA officials prepare to ditch fiction justifying Green New Deal

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to bury the unscientific idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Dropping this “endangerment finding” represents the beginning of the end for the great global warming hoax.

Under President Barack Obama, the agency in 2009 declared the molecule that enables plants to grow and humans to breathe an enemy of the planetary thermostat. This decree vested the EPA with authority to regulate CO2 as if it were a nasty substance equivalent to black soot, lead, radon or asbestos.

But the public never embraced any of the austerity measures peddled as a remedy for this supposed ailment. Consumers didn’t want to pay extra taxes on cars, nor did they endorse the abolition of affordable sources of electricity. Even Senate Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the Green New Deal.

The package of socialist measures designed to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” flopped 57-0 in 2019 before being crushed 99-0 in the Senate two years later. Undeterred, President Joe Biden implemented the deal’s main provisions administratively. His Inflation Reduction Act allocated billions to the EPA for distribution to any organization claiming to have a “climate solution.”

Nonprofits signed up for cash rewards for spreading the global-warming gospel. A vast array of public subsidies was lavished on economically unsustainable energy projects. These endeavors had a remarkable tendency to be staffed by the friends and political allies of progressives.

Newly sworn-in EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pulled the plug on the scheme. “We will review every penny that has gone out the door. The days of irresponsibly shoveling boat loads of cash to far-left, activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” he said earlier this month.

In one instance, an individual who left a company to take a position at the EPA “tossed his former employer $5 billion of your tax dollars,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on X, referring to a large EPA grant the firm received.

Mr. Zeldin’s review discovered a $20 billion EPA slush fund the prior administration had moved into private financial institutions as officials sought to empty the agency piggy bank before President Trump’s team arrived. This dubious use of public resources has been referred to the agency’s inspector general.

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Biden Soros-Linked EPA Official Tossed $5 Billion to Former Employer in Last-Minute Biden Heist – Lee Zeldin Responds

The Biden EPA’s “gold bar” scandal is growing by the day.

A Soros-linked Joe Biden EPA official awarded $5 billion to his former employer, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

Jahi Wise, a Soros-linked senior EPA official, was tasked with overseeing Joe Biden’s $27 billion climate slush fund program.

Wise was the director of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF). The GGRF awarded grants totaling $20 billion to 8 entities. Wise awarded his former employer, Washington-based Coalition for Green Capital, $5 billion.

The Washington Free Beacon reported:

The senior Biden administration official tasked with directing former President Joe Biden’s $27 billion climate grant program oversaw a $5 billion grant from the program to his former employer, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.

Jahi Wise joined the Environmental Protection Agency in December 2022 as the founding director of the newly created Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, or GGRF, according to his LinkedIn profile. In April 2024, while Wise served in that role, the EPA announced that it would award GGRF grants totaling $20 billion to just eight nonprofits, including the Coalition for Green Capital, a Washington, D.C.-based group that received $5 billion as part of the announcement and where Wise previously worked as the director of policy. There is no indication that Wise recused himself from that process.

Wise departed the Coalition for Green Capital in January 2021 to join the White House Climate Policy Office as a special assistant to the president, a position he held until he joined the EPA less than two years later.

EPA chief Lee Zeldin called this a conflict of interest in a statement to the Free Beacon.

“The story of the Biden EPA’s gold bars never stops,” EPA Chief Lee Zeldin told the Washington Free Beacon in a statement. “The waste and abuse was so deeply interwoven in the last administration that not only did the leaders who oversaw this not bat an eye at billions of your taxpayer dollars going towards partisan pet projects, but serious conflicts of interest were ignored. That should have raised red flags.”

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