Posted on Friday, May 9, 2025

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by Outside Contributor

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Democratic politicians and their allies have been in a lather for months over President Trump and his administration, especially Elon Musk and his “DOGE” operation. The reason? They are exposing their bureaucratic slush funds to the public, including a big one at the Environmental Protection Agency.

The discovery in February of billions of dollars of payments to enrich favored climate groups and causes reveals a sordid taxpayer-funded scheme. The administration’s efforts to stop this gravy train threaten the climate house of cards built up for decades.

EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, a former Republican congressman from New York, revealed that $20 billion of the $27 billion climate slush fund known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was paid by the Biden administration to eight organizations. The purpose was for them to distribute to numerous other organizations for climate projects such as electric vehicle loans, solar panels, and much else in search of a climate crisis.

“This scheme was the first of its kind in EPA history, and it was purposefully designed to obligate all of the money in a rush job with reduced oversight,” Zeldin said. In so doing, Zeldin described the scheme as “self-dealing and conflicts of interest, (and) unqualified recipients.”

Designated recipients of this massive taxpayer largess promptly sued in federal District Court. Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled in April that the EPA cannot freeze or claw back the funds under contract.

The administration immediately appealed the ruling by claiming the court has no jurisdiction and cannot overrule the executive branch’s authority to cancel a contract, which other courts have permitted involving other issues and agencies.

The following day, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals halted Chutkan’s order to disburse the funds to the climate groups to allow time for the case to be heard in full.]

Government handouts to favored organizations, which distribute to other organizations, are like taxpayer cash flowing downstream as these ostensibly private entities act as bureaucracies to further a political agenda.

Great gig, if you can get it.

Just ask Stacey Abrams, a two-time losing gubernatorial candidate in Georgia. She is an adviser to Power Forward Communities, which had $100 in the bank until it was awarded a $2 billion grant under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. What does $2 billion buy? A limitless combination of thousands of climate advocates, overpaid executives, media buys, lawsuits, corporate solar panel and other giveaways (which dutifully donate to climate politicians), EV subsidies, you name it. 

In the non-profit, non-governmental organization world, $2 billion is an extraordinary largess and is only a sample of government efforts to perpetuate the scam.

Two programs within the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, a.k.a. the “Green Bank,” are the National Clean Investment Fund and the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, which doled out $20 billion in funding for eight recipients. One of these recipients is the Climate United Fund, a coalition of non-profit climate entities that “invest” in green projects to lower the planet’s temperature and stop hurricanes, and all that.

Regarding government handouts, however, “investing” is a complete misnomer since spending taxpayer money on connected organizations and favored projects carries no risk to the “investors.” Instead, the taxpayers are on the hook.

Then-President Biden and his EPA head, Michael Regan, were determined to spend every last dollar appropriated by the Inflation Reduction Act, a massive climate change bill that disbursed taxpayer cash for a range of “green” energy projects and climate groups.

After Trump won the election, the rush to spend the money accelerated recklessly, which an EPA adviser revealed in December to Project Veritas. “Get the money out as fast as possible before they (the Trump administration) come in … it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge,” the EPA official said. “It was an insurance policy against Trump winning.”

“Insurance policy” — meaning if Trump won the election, the climate movement could feed off the billions in taxpayer cash to keep payroll, “invest” in projects, run ads, litigate, and pay their hotel and other expenses at conferences and talkathons worldwide to sound the alarm about how climate change is an existential threat to mankind and the planet.

Slush funds of this magnitude doled out to climate interests are about financing their ability to wield power and influence, including against a new presidential administration that is onto the fraud of this climate industrial complex.

Zeldin and the Justice Department are determined to terminate this mass climate grifting scheme. “The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” Zeldin declared.

We can only hope, but it remains to be seen. The cacophony of this mass industry feeding at this climate trough means it won’t give up so easily.

Reprinted with permission from DC Journal by Peter Murphy.

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.