Remember when Joe Biden promised to Build Back Better? He rode that slogan into the Oval Office, building an expensive and vast regulatory agenda that mismanaged taxpayers’ money and handed out subsidies and tax credits like a drug dealer giving free samples to hook new customers. Yet perhaps one of the president’s biggest boondoggles is the system his administration built to funnel billions of dollars to “radical activist groups” – under the guise of environmental justice (EJ) – with scant oversight and little accountability.
This could go on for years unless Donald Trump and his Department of Government Efficiency can finagle a way to rescind the money earmarked for these climate-related programs. But should Trump shut it down? What would the country lose?
The Injustice of Environmental Justice
The White House’s website says environmental justice is supposed to “address the disproportionate health, environmental, and economic impacts that have been borne primarily by communities of color.” That sounds righteous but is hard to swallow when Americans’ tax dollars are being dispersed to “special interest groups committed to a radical energy agenda to ‘educate’ others and drive public outreach,” according to a recent report by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, “the oldest standing legislative committee in the U.S. House of Representatives.” The report goes on to suggest the operation is “akin to taxpayer-funded lobbying.”
Much of the cash comes from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the climate bill Biden signed in 2022 and has gushed publicly about when trying to bolster his legacy. The IRA quadrupled the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget, bringing it to $41 billion, including $3 billion designated for environmental justice (EJ) grants. These are frequently awarded to far-left organizations that strive to exert political influence and “engage in progressive election activities.” One program uses a “pass-through” model to give $600 million to 11 “grant makers” for distribution to other recipients. Many of these groups display anti-Republican views, support “radical progressive ideologies,” and have billionaire donors already backing them, claimed the Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Biden laid the groundwork for all this when, a week after he was inaugurated, he signed Executive Order 14008, which included the Justice40 Initiative, a measure that requires 40% of federal climate investments go to “disadvantaged communities.” Federal agencies were then wrapped in red tape, directed “to ‘secure environmental justice and spur economic opportunity’ for ‘marginalized’ communities,” explained the City Journal, a public policy magazine. “Instead of focusing on their core missions … federal officials are now tasked with ‘stakeholder consultation,’ collecting data on how programs benefit disadvantaged communities, and filing lengthy reports to the White House Office of Environmental Justice.”
As a recent press release from the Committee on Energy and Commerce put it:
“The Biden-Harris administration rewards its environmental special interests at the expense of the American people. As part of its radical rush-to-green agenda, the administration gave hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to activists who also engage in political activities. It was empowered to do so by congressional Democrats who jammed through legislation that was designed to rush money out the door as quickly as possible with no guards against waste, fraud, and abuse. Equally as alarming is how these policies benefit the Chinese Communist Party — the world’s worst polluter.”
This isn’t a revelation. Some House representatives have been trying to set guardrails on this operation for at least a year. Rep. James Comer (R-KY), chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability, and Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX), chairman of the Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Energy Policy, and Regulatory Affairs, sent a letter in 2023 to EPA administrator Michael Reagan, stating, “Oversight mechanisms in these programs are lacking, and adequate metrics for applicants must be imposed to avoid funneling money into vague projects that will enable a $100 million slush fund for far-left organizations.”
Yet it doesn’t appear additional oversight and restrictions have been established. Otherwise, the Energy and Commerce Committee probably wouldn’t have recently released a lengthy report rebuking the EJ grants and other climate initiatives installed by the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump will likely put an end to what many – inside and outside government — believe is a racket. He has already expressed interest in “terminating” the Green New Deal. “The greatest scam in history, probably,” he said in September, speaking before the Economic Club of New York. He might dismantle some of Biden’s climate law, too: “We will rescind all unspent funds under the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act.”
Shutting down the environmental justice programs and grants may elicit some backlash from critics. Still, it’s difficult to see how a taxpayer-funded operation paying ultra-progressive activists to further their outreach and political influence is doing anything to improve the environment.
