Biden’s $20 Billion Dash and the Judges Fighting Zeldin’s Cuts

0 CommentsCommentary, Efficiency, Environment, Government

It’s fall 2024, the election’s heating up, and the Biden administration’s staring down the barrel of a Trump comeback. Polls are grim—Harris is floundering, swing states are slipping, and the White House knows a red wave could sink their green dreams. So, they grab a $20 billion climate piggy bank—the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF)—and start shoveling cash out the door, “just in case” they lose. Turns out, they weren’t wrong to worry.

The GGRF, born from 2022’s Inflation Reduction Act, was Biden’s big bet on clean energy—think solar panels, heat pumps, and EV chargers for poorer communities. By April 2024, eight nonprofits—like Climate United and Power Forward Communities—were tapped to handle the $20 billion. Awards were set in August, but as Trump surged in October, the real hustle kicked in.

An EPA memo pushed these groups to “expedite deployment,” and Citibank, holding the funds, started payouts—$1.5 billion trickled out before Election Day. Why the rush? Trump’s EPA pick, Lee Zeldin, was already itching to torch climate policies. Moving the money early was like locking the safe before the new guy got the keys.

Then Trump won—312 electoral votes to Harris’s 226, sealed November 6. Game over, right? Not quite. In the lame-duck sprint, Biden’s team went full throttle: $5 billion more flowed to those same nonprofits by mid-December. An ex-EPA staffer caught on a Project Veritas video nailed it: “We knew Trump would kill it, so we moved fast—like tossing gold bars off the Titanic.” By inauguration on January 20, 2025, $6.5 billion was gone, parked beyond easy reach. The rest? Frozen by Citibank after Zeldin’s pressure, but the damage was done.

Now, enter the activist judges. As Zeldin, now EPA head, and Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) claw back these funds—calling them wasteful handouts to Biden cronies—courts are stepping in. In February 2025, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury systems tied to the GGRF, siding with 19 Democratic state attorneys general who argued it violated privacy laws.

By March, Judge Tanya Chutkan in D.C. ordered Musk (overseeing DOGE) and Zeldin to cough up records, hinting their cuts might be unconstitutional without Congressional OK. These rulings, cheered by liberals as checks on Trump’s “chaos agents,” have frozen $13.5 billion mid-fight, with NGOs suing Citibank to release it. Critics—like Sen. Chris Murphy—say these judges are overreaching, shielding a partisan cash grab under legal cover.

Critics scream “slush fund” and “shell NGOs,” but that’s half-baked—these groups weren’t newbies spun up overnight; they’d been picked months earlier. The “just in case” part isn’t conspiracy—it’s strategy. Biden’s crew saw the loss coming and scrambled to cement their legacy. As of March 20, 2025, Zeldin’s still battling to undo it—$2 billion yanked from Power Forward alone—but those activist judges? They’re slowing him down, keeping the climate cash in limbo. Smart move or shady exit? You decide.

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