By Kennedy Maize
Congress and the courts are weighing in on the Trump administration’s actions dating to early in his arrival in D.C. for a second go-round, cancelling legal energy and environmental grants for purely partisan reasons.
In a matter of two days early this month, prominent Congressional Democrats called on the Justice Department to examine whether Energy Secretary Chris Wright is criminally liable for lying to Congress over cancellation of some $7 billion in Biden administration DOE grants.
At the same time, a federal appeals court in Washington ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to release some $20 billion of climate control grants approved in the Biden administration and delayed since early in the second Trump administration.
On Aug. 5, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a 16-term Democrat from California, the ranking minority member on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee and Rhode Island Democrat Gabe Amo, ranking member of the environment subcommittee, wrote a letter to Justice charging Wright with “lying to the Committee during a hearing on June 10th, 2026.
“Secretary Wright repeatedly denied that $7.5 billion dollars of DOE awards cancelled by the Trump administration in October 2025 were in retaliation against states that leaned Democratic in the 2024 presidential election (Blue States). Three weeks prior to Secretary Wright’s testimony, DOE attorneys admitted to doing exactly that in court.”
Wright has vehemently denied lying. He personally labeled the Justice Department referral “bullshit” and his agency put out a statement, “None of the termination decisions were based on political considerations.”
Wright’s denials may not carry water in the face of what his agency lawyers told a federal court in a case from California challenging the agency’s widespread cancellation of grants.
In the court filing, DOE states that it “accepts that the inclusion of grants in the October notice tranche was based solely on the political identity of the grant recipient’s state, i.e., whether the recipient’s location and/or place of performance was in a Blue State or a non-Blue State.”
DOE’s lawyers also stipulated “that the differential treatment resulting in the October 2025 termination of Blue State grants and the non-termination of non-Blue State grants was not based on a rational connection between the recipient’s location and/or place of performance and DOE’s past or current agency priorities.”
A day before the House fireworks, on Aug. 4, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ordered EPA to release some $27 billion in Biden administration awards under his Inflation Reduction Act to several groups working on climate-change programs. The case — Climate United Fund v. Citibank, N.A. — goes back to the earliest days of the second Trump administration. The money deposited in Citibank was to be used for programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, hence the nickname “green bank fund.”
In a December 2024 right wing Project Veritas video a former EPA employee said the Biden EPA deposited the funds at Citibank to protect them against a move by the incoming Trump administration to claw them back. The former employee called it akin to “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”
On Feb. 13, 2025 Zeldin issued a press release headlined “Administrator Zeldin Announces that Billions of Dollars Worth of ‘Gold Bars’ Have Been Located at Outside Financial Institution.” Zeldin then ordered Citibank to freeze the funds. On March 11, Zeldin announced he was cancelling the program.
A major recipient, Climate United, in April sought access to the funds and then sued EPA when the bank declined. Climate United argued that the grants were legally made under a law passed by Congress. That month, a federal district court judge in Washington reversed EPA’s order to freeze $27 billion and at the same time, a U.S. District Court in Rhode Island overturned the administration’s order stopping all funding under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the companion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).
The district courts then agreed to continue the halt on disbursements during the administration’s appeals of the orders.
In a decision split several ways, the D.C. appeals court this week essentially affirmed the lower court ruling and said the green groups could access the funds still held in the bank. The court ruled: “Plaintiffs allege that Defendants’ actions violate several statutes and regulations, the U.S. Constitution, and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), and they seek to extend this court’s TRO order into a preliminary injunction pending a final decision on the merits. For the reasons discussed below, Plaintiffs’ motion for a preliminary injunction will be GRANTED.”
Whether the charges that Wright lied to Congress or that EPA erred in withholding funds will eventually stand is unclear. Acting (?) Attorney General Todd Blanch is unlikely to move against Wright. EPA is pondering asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the D.C. Circuit.
What is clear is that the administration — and particularly the White House Office of Management and Budget, which has orchestrated the grant cancellations — has damaged itself through clumsy, politically overt, and possibly criminal mismanagement of ordinary governmental management responsibilities.
The Quad Report, covering energy policy and politics
