{"id":2528,"date":"2025-09-02T20:40:34","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T20:40:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/us-appeals-court-allows-trump-to-peel-back-20bn-in-clean-energy-grants\/"},"modified":"2025-09-02T20:40:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T20:40:34","slug":"us-appeals-court-allows-trump-to-peel-back-20bn-in-clean-energy-grants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/09\/02\/us-appeals-court-allows-trump-to-peel-back-20bn-in-clean-energy-grants\/","title":{"rendered":"US appeals court allows Trump to peel back $20bn in clean energy grants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A United States appeals court has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can move forward with terminating more than $16bn in federal grants awarded to climate change nonprofits.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia voted, two to one, to overturn a lower court\u2019s decision preventing the grants from being revoked.<\/p>\n

Writing for the majority, Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee, argued that the lower court did not have the power to offer a ruling in the case.<\/p>\n

Instead, she wrote that the case should have gone to the Court of Federal Claims, dedicated to weighing contract and monetary disputes.<\/p>\n

\u201cDistrict courts have no jurisdiction to hear claims that the federal government terminated a grant agreement arbitrarily or with impunity,\u201d Rao wrote. \u201cClaims of arbitrary grant termination are essentially contractual.\u201d<\/p>\n

District courts, she added, should be primarily focused on deciding constitutional matters or legal disputes.<\/p>\n

Rao was joined in her decision by a fellow Trump appointee on the bench, Judge Gregory Katsas.<\/p>\n

The one dissenting judge on the appeals court, Cornelia Pillard, was appointed by former President Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

She argued that the rollback of the federal grants was a political action taken to reflect the Trump administration\u2019s opposition<\/a> to green-energy initiatives.<\/p>\n

Pillard also pointed out that the federal funding was part of the Inflation Reduction Act<\/a>, a law Congress passed in 2022 that included the single biggest investment in climate change initiatives in US history.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration\u2019s decision to nix the federal grants, Pillard wrote, was done \u201cwithout presenting to any court any credible evidence or coherent reason that could justify its interference with plaintiffs\u2019 money and its sabotage of Congress\u2019s law\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s lawsuit was the continuation of a lawsuit brought by five of the eight nonprofits that had been collectively awarded $20bn under the Inflation Reduction Act, a signature piece of legislation passed under former President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n

That money had been earmarked for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a programme to finance \u201cgreen bank\u201d projects designed to lessen air pollution, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and build clean-energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n

In anticipation of their disbursement, the funding was kept at Citibank, a prominent US financial institution.<\/p>\n

But in February, Lee Zeldin, Trump\u2019s pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), posted<\/a> a video on social media denouncing the funds as an example of government waste.<\/p>\n

\u201cShockingly, roughly $20bn of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution by the Biden EPA,\u201d Zeldin said. \u201cThis pot of $20bn was awarded to just eight entities that were then responsible for doling out your money to NGOs and others at their discretion.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe days of irresponsibly shovelling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

By March, Zeldin had called on<\/a> the EPA\u2019s inspector general to review the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, and the disbursement of its funds was frozen.<\/p>\n

The Climate United Fund has been among the five groups fighting for access to their portion of the funds, worth approximately $16m.<\/p>\n

Other plaintiffs include the Coalition for Green Capital, Power Forward Communities, Inclusiv and the Justice Climate Fund.<\/p>\n

In a statement<\/a> after Tuesday\u2019s ruling, the Climate United Fund reaffirmed its perspective that the Trump administration \u201cbroke the law\u201d by clawing back the funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile we are disappointed by the panel\u2019s decision, we stand firm on the merits of our case: EPA unlawfully froze and terminated funds that were legally obligated and disbursed,\u201d its CEO, Beth Bafford, said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not the end of our road,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s appeals court ruling overturned a lower-court decision from Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee.<\/p>\n

On April 15, she granted a preliminary injunction against Zeldin\u2019s decision, barring Trump\u2019s EPA from clawing back the $20bn and calling on Citibank to release the funds.<\/p>\n

She pointed out that the EPA \u201cgave no legal justification for the termination\u201d and that the decision to axe the funds threatened Congress\u2019s authority over spending decisions.<\/p>\n

But Rao, the appeals court judge, said in Tuesday\u2019s decision that no law limited Zeldin\u2019s decision to nix the grants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Source: <\/p>\n

Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A United States appeals court has ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump can move forward with terminating more than $16bn in federal grants awarded to climate change nonprofits. On Tuesday, the US Appeals Court for the District of Columbia voted, two to one, to overturn a lower court\u2019s decision preventing the grants from … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}