A federal appeals court Tuesday hounded the Trump administration over its bid to cancel $20 billion in Biden-era climate grants, with judges sharply questioning the intent and veracity of EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s accusation that the entire program was “criminal.”
The heavy-dollar courtroom clash is one of the highest-profile fights between recipients of the Biden administration’s grants and the Trump administration, which essentially pulled the financial rug out from under them by freezing the payments. The battle has become fierce given the nature of the grants and EPA’s effort to end most climate work.
An unusual en banc panel of the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit indicated a majority of judges may rule in favor of the environmental nonprofits seeking to spend the money on climate change projects. For more than an hour and a half, the judges pressed the Trump administration to justify Zeldin’s public allegations about the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created by Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act.
“There’s a real mismatch between the stated ground, insofar as it’s a concern that there aren’t enough guardrails, and the action that EPA took here,” Judge Nina Pillard, an Obama appointee, said during the proceeding.
