Judge demands ‘some kind of evidence’ from Trump’s EPA to halt climate grants

Federal judge Tanya Chutkan issues restraining order pending new filings over billions in axed research grants

A federal judge considering the Trump administration’s abrupt cancellation of climate research grants worth billions of dollars
told government lawyers they had to produce
“some kind of evidence” of wrongdoing to back up such drastic actions.

Climate United, which coordinates investment in clean energy projects,
sued to seek access to $7bn that was frozen before it was cancelled on Tuesday night by #Lee #Zeldin,
the New York Republican congressman turned administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

In US district court in Washington on Wednesday, Judge #Tanya #Chutkan asked lawyers for the EPA:
“Can you proffer any evidence that [the grant] was illegal,
or evidence of abuse or fraud or bribery
– that any of that was improperly or unlawfully done, other than the fact that Mr Zeldin doesn’t like it?”

#Marc #Sacks, a government lawyer, said:
“The determination is based on the information contained in the termination letter.”
Chutkan said:
“That’s pretty circular,”
then asked if Climate United had violated federal regulations.

Sacks said:
“I think the agency cited both of those regulations within their termination letter.”
Chutkan said:
“I can cite cases all day long, but you have to have some kind of evidence or proffer to back it up.”
She also said:
“You can’t even tell me what the evidence of malfeasance is.”

There is plentiful evidence that Zeldin is implementing an assault on attempts to tackle the climate crisis.
The EPA issued a slew of rollbacks of rules to combat pollution on Wednesday.

Zeldin said he was “driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age”.
Climate groups reacted with horror.
#Jason #Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, told the Guardian:
“Come hell or high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives.
This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”

Climate United is not the only group to have sued over access to grants.
In New York, the Coalition for Green Capital has sued over the cancellation of a $5bn grant,
an act it called “patently and plainly unlawful on its face”
and “arbitrary and pretextual”.
In Washington, lawyers for Climate United argued that the EPA had not followed the law,
meaning Chutkan could rule on the matter.
Lawyers for the government said it was a contract dispute, so she could not.
Chutkan said:
“The government didn’t decide who it wanted to contract with.
A new administration came in, didn’t like the contract any more.
That’s what new administrations do.
But there are procedures that have to be followed.
And it doesn’t appear, at least on the record before me, that those procedures have been followed.”

The hearing ended without Chutkan issuing a ruling or temporary restraining order,
but asking both sides to make
new filings by Monday evening:
Climate United to amend its lawsuit
and the government to provide information about alleged wrongdoing.
“I don’t have the credible evidence that’s required,” Chutkan said.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/13/epa-grants-trump-judge-tanya-chutkan?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Lee Zeldin is an ambitious man.

The former congressman, who left office in 2022 to get routed by Kathy Hochul in the New York governor’s race, has only been head of the the Environmental Protection Agency for three weeks.
But he’s already looking to make a name for himself.

Luckily his former House colleague #Kristi #Noem,
currently the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, has provided a template.

After a grossly misinformed tweet by #Elon #Musk accusing New York of misappropriating disaster relief funds to house illegal migrants in luxury hotels, Noem snatched $80 million from the city of New York’s bank account.

The money had been congressionally allocated and was being used exactly as intended.

But Noem took a victory lap, blustering on X,
“Mark my words: there will not be a single penny spent that goes against the interest and safety of the American people.”

And #Lee #Zeldin said, CAN DO!

The babyfaced politician warned of “an extremely disturbing video circulated two months ago featuring a Biden EPA political appointee talking about how they were ‘tossing gold bars off the Titanic,’ rushing to get billions of your dollars out the door before Inauguration Day.”

“The gold bars were your tax dollars!” he intoned indignantly, adding that “tossing them off the Titanic meant the Biden administration knew they were wasting it.”

This leap of logic is sadly the least ridiculous part of this episode.

Because the “disturbing video” was made by #Project #Veritas, the rightwing smear factory that specializes in deceptively edited videos of Democrats.

In this case, the outfit appears to have secretly filmed a former EPA advisor in a bar talking about the rush to disburse clean energy funds before Trump took over and gutted the place.

The advisor’s fears were well-founded: Just hours after his inauguration,
Trump demanded that the government halt distribution of congressionally-allocated funds,
purporting to unilaterally cancel the grants and contracts that he didn’t like.
And he continues to do it despite multiple court orders instructing him to knock it off.

Zeldin was unbothered by the video’s sordid provenance.

He gleefully seized on the “gold bars” turn of phrase to raise his own profile,
while attempting to ingratiate himself with #Musk by crediting the #DOGE bros with the discovery.

In interviews with conservative outlets like #Newsmax and the Washington Free Beacon, he hyped the story, even concocting a stringboard theory to connect it to Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams.

“ICYMI: Administrator Lee Zeldin Finds Gold Bars from EPA at Stacey Abrams’ Connected Group, Biden-Harris Ethical Red Flags,” an EPA press release trumpeted,
attaching Zeldin’s press clippings like a campaign webpage.

Unsurprisingly, Zeldin was also repeatedly given free rein to lie to his heart’s content on #Fox.

On Maria Bartiromo’s show, he went as far as to allege that the lawful distribution of congressionally appropriated funds is tantamount to a “criminal scheme.”

https://www.publicnotice.co/p/lee-zeldin-stacey-abrams-gold-bars?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web