The Delaware Center for Horticulture has often relied on its allies in Congress. The state’s senior senator, Democrat Chris Coons, secured a $500,000 grant last year to help the center plant trees in urban areas. The recently retired Democratic Sen. Tom Carper is featured in a photo on the nonprofit organization’s website.
But those past alliances may be no match for the administration’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and President Donald Trump’s order to at least pause spending he may not like.
The grant, an earmark Coons landed in the annual appropriations bill for fiscal 2024, is caught up in the confusion. No project — even one a specific lawmaker inserted into a bill — appears to be immune.
“We’re still figuring out the impact of the freeze on CDS requests,” said a Coons spokesperson, Will Baskin-Gerwitz, using the shorthand for congressionally directed spending, the term lawmakers started using when they returned earmarks to spending bills a few years ago.
“We still haven’t gotten clarity here,” he said.
In fiscal 2023, Congress designated $15.3 billion for about 7,200 earmarks. That was an increase from $9.1 billion for about 5,000 projects the prior year, according to the Government Accountability Office.
In fiscal 2024, Republicans were big winners in securing earmarks. Lawmakers have yet to settle on final fiscal 2025 legislation, which would unlock billions more for transportation, water infrastructure and other efforts.
In agriculture-related line items alone, funded projects have covered a broad range of local wants and needs — from trees to sewers to agricultural research. The Delaware tree-planting comes through the Forest Service’s urban and community forestry program.
The question now swirling is whether those projects will receive the same kind of scrutiny from the White House that grants and contracts awarded competitively by the agencies meet.
If they do, projects related to climate change, or targeted at underserved communities or promoting equity and diversity — which contradict the administration’s priorities — could have a target on them.
“Some may. I’m not sure exactly the number,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), ranking member on the House Appropriations Committee.
DeLauro told reporters last week that the earmarks’ vulnerability may depend on whether contracts have been finalized, with items from fiscal 2022 to fiscal 2024 bearing the most watching.
DeLauro said she considers the holdup “the stealing of congressionally appropriated funds for families and businesses,” whether it’s in projects a lawmaker put in a bill or that an agency awarded.
“All of that is illegal, it is all illegal,” DeLauro said.
Earmarks aren’t like other contracts that have generated anxiety in the early days of the new Trump administration, such as those funded through the Inflation Reduction Act or the bipartisan infrastructure law. Those were awarded by agencies through a competitive process, such as in rural energy or farm conservation programs.
Trump has long signaled that items in those two bills should be targeted.
In contrast, the lawmaker-directed items are funded through regular appropriations bills, and are written into the explanatory statement accompanying the bill.
But the administration has made clear that it views the executive branch as having more power over spending than many members of Congress are accustomed to.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) recently took the president’s side, suggesting he’s not uncomfortable with Trump making cuts without congressional approval, an action known as impoundment.
“There’s a presupposition in America that the commander in chief is going to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars,” Johnson told reporters Feb. 11.
Senate Appropriations Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) has expressed concern about the administration’s cuts and freezes, but supported Office of Management and Budget nominee Russ Vought who part of making them happen.
Asked about Trump not spending funds appropriated by Congress, Collins told POLITICO, “I think it’s pretty clear that this violates Article One of the Constitution.”
Long and winding road
Earmarks have a storied history. In earlier years, they fattened spending bills and provided material for horse-trading among lawmakers. But they weren’t tightly controlled, and lawmakers didn’t always identify which projects they’d secured.
Among the criticisms: Projects hadn’t gone through the expert vetting of federal agencies.
Government watchdog groups and conservatives pushed to have earmarks banned, and they were for a number of years. Lawmakers eventually resurrected them in a more limited way, and each bill identifies the member who sponsored it.
Some lawmakers, such as Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), don’t request earmarks. Grassley told agriculture reporters Tuesday that he expects such projects to become embroiled in the legal debate about how binding government contracts are, just as other grants appear to be.
In Delaware, the grant to the horticulture organization helps in restoring urban tree canopies around the state. That’s much of the mission of the Forest Service program nationally, although it’s facing dual threats from the new administration.
The Delaware Center for Horticulture plants trees and other vegetation and sponsors a variety of youth education programs. It planted 326 trees around Delaware in 2023, aiming much of its efforts at underserved areas that have historically been overlooked by public agencies.
The group had $1.5 million in revenue in fiscal 2023, with grants and program services the largest single source, according to its annual report. Executive Director Joanne McGeoch declined to comment Tuesday.
Universities receive earmarks, too, including Texas A&M University, which landed $3 million in 2024 for a “Livestock Sustainability Monitoring Network” to measure losses of carbon and nitrogen from cattle feeding, pastures and rangeland, as well as resulting emissions and waste, according to a letter Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) wrote in support to top appropriators.
The school is also the alma mater of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who studied agricultural development there.
Sessions wrote to appropriators in March 2023, “This project is an appropriate use of taxpayer funds because the resulting research will promote resource-use efficiency and sustainability in the nation’s leading livestock-producing state.”
