Environmental and government ethics watchdog groups say the Environmental Protection Agency and Trump administration are still withholding billions of dollars in funding approved by Congress for a range of clean energy and energy efficiency programs, despite court orders to release the funds.
"The Trump administration and Elon Musk's DOGE team have made unfounded allegations of fraud as a smokescreen to freeze and dismantle programs and projects they do not like," former EPA Senior Adviser Zealan Hoover said in a press call Friday.
Hoover managed programs authorized by the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, many of which he said have been thrown into uncertainty due to the funding freeze ordered by President Donald Trump.
"These communities are paying out of pocket for work that the federal government has a legal obligation to pay [for] in advance but is not paying despite multiple court orders to do so," Hoover said.
The projects supported by IRA grants include community solar installations, energy efficiency upgrades for homeowners and the clean school bus program that helps school systems switch to low-emissions vehicles.
Hoover said the disruption to the projects has already forced furloughs and cutbacks and could have ripple effects on local businesses and economies.
"Local contractors have received stop-work orders and halted projects like building insulation upgrades [and] solar panel installation," he said. "Upstream orders to factories are drying up, forcing companies to pause hiring and prepare to furlough factory workers."
Two federal courts in Rhode Island and the District of Columbia have issued rulings that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from imposing a freeze on federal grants and loans.
"The courts have agreed that these federal fund freezes are unconstitutional," Jillian Blanchard with the nonprofit watchdog group Lawyers for Good Government said in the press call. Blanchard is the group's vice president of climate change and environmental justice, and she argued that the freeze on funding violated the Constitution's separation of powers.
"The executive [branch] does not have the authority to unilaterally break binding contracts with the American people and make policy by holding back billions of dollars in programs that were approved by both houses of Congress," she said.
On Thursday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro filed a lawsuit claiming that state agencies were still unable to get access to $1.2 billion in federal funding for projects in the state.
"While multiple federal judges have ordered the Trump Administration to unfreeze this funding, access has not been restored, leaving my Administration with no choice but to pursue legal action to protect the interests of the Commonwealth and its residents," Shapiro said in a statement.
The affected projects in Pennsylvania include work to cut emissions from heavy industry, weatherization projects for low-income homeowners and reclamation efforts to repair damaged coal mine lands and cap old gas wells that had been abandoned over the years.
A regional think tank, the Ohio River Valley Institute, said its economic modeling showed that the programs affected by the funding freeze could generate an estimated 8,000 jobs in Pennsylvania.
"These programs also ensure that people in every corner of our state, from small towns to big cities, can live and work without being exposed to disease-causing pollution and economic hardship," the Institute's Executive Director Joanne Kilgour told Newsweek via email.
An EPA spokesperson did not respond to requests for comments.
In a social media post on Wednesday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called for the termination of financial agreements supporting an additional tranche of funding approved under a section of the IRA called the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund.
"We will review every penny that has gone out the door," Zeldin said in a video posted to X, formerly Twitter. "The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left, activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over."
The $20 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, the single largest part of the IRA, created a first-of-its-kind national financing network for lower-carbon energy, transportation and building projects at the community level.
Hoover, the former EPA adviser, rejected Zeldin's charge that the funding was made irresponsibly and said there had been a "rigorous, robust" process to vet recipients and ensure proper oversight.
"Any implication that this was done with anything but [the] highest integrity is patently untrue," Hoover said.
Last April, the EPA awarded funding via the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator with the goal of spurring private investment in disadvantaged communities.
Reginald Parker is a trustee and board chairman for the Freedmen Green Bank and Trust, one of the entities using the funding for projects such as rooftop solar installations and energy efficiency improvements to community buildings in Georgia.
He said the funding is designed to stimulate additional private investment to grow jobs and economic activity at the community level, and millions of dollars and hundreds of jobs would be at risk if funding were to be clawed back.
"I don't think the administration means to stop jobs and investments in the private sector," Parker told Newsweek. "That's what this would mean, seizing these funds."
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About the writer
Jeff Young is Newsweek's Environment and Sustainability Editor based in Louisville, Kentucky. His focus is climate change and sustainability with an ... Read more