Judge slams EPA's climate grant cancellations: 'You have to have some kind of evidence'
Source: Politico
03/12/2025 06:57 PM EDT
A federal judge Wednesday lambasted the Environmental Protection Agency’s cancellation of $20 billion in climate grants after the Trump administration was unable to offer any evidence of wrongdoing. But it was unclear whether the judge would take immediate action to offer relief to the grant recipients who warn they will have to start laying off workers and defaulting on financial agreements by the end of the week.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Tuesday night terminated the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants, including a $7 billion award to Climate United Fund. That group had sued to access those funds, a request that became more complicated after EPA terminated the grant less than 24 hours before a hearing.
“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal, or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery — that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr. Zeldin doesn’t like it?” asked Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Marc Sacks, a Justice Department attorney representing EPA, repeatedly pointed to the reasoning the agency used when notifying Climate United and other groups, stating that “the determination is based on the information contained in the termination letter.” “That’s pretty circular,” replied the skeptical Chutkan, an Obama appointee.
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/12/judge-epa-climate-grant-cancellations-00227643
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Just thinkin' out loud here...if a grant is a kind of contract (is it?) and the financial agreements are under contract law, the grants were issued for reasons the parties might or might not now share; perhaps the plaintiffs wanted to protect the environment, and the payor govt wanted to invest in that as part of Biden's green infrastructure policy. But now we've got a destroyed DOJ serving the destruction of the purposes of govt.
If the termination letter is "pretty circular," then Chutkan must see that it's self evident that layoffs would break the contract and harm the plaintiffs' livelihood, usefulness of their expertise.
Those who see climate catastrophes coming have thought it's the height of political ignorance to end the EPA by denying that the environment needs protecting. And that it's a legal error that the environment itself has no legal standing (I'm reminded of Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future, in which future generations of unborn get legal standing in international courts).
... and this sounds like the thinking behind the felon's and his corrupted DOJ's efforts
Fixed that.
