CV NEWS FEED // After President Donald Trump was elected but before he was inaugurated, $20 billion of the Biden administration’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund was rapidly doled out to eight environmental nonprofits, many of which are run by former Democrat officials.
An analysis published March 4 by The Free Press reported that Lee Zeldin, the Trump administration’s new EPA administrator, is trying to recover the money.
“The Biden administration used so-called ‘climate equity’ to justify handouts of billions of dollars to their far-left friends,” Zeldin told the Free Press. “It is my utmost priority to get a handle on every dollar that went out the door in this scheme and once again restore oversight and accountability over these funds. This rush job operation is riddled with conflicts of interest and corruption.”
Former President Joe Biden founded the $27 billion fund, overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in the spring of 2023. Two of the eight nonprofits that received the money right before Trump’s inauguration were formed shortly after Biden announced the fund.
The Climate United Fund, which received $6.9 billion just before Trump took office, formed from three smaller nonprofits in June 2023, “to make a play for this money,” the Free Press stated.
CEO Beth Bafford was the special assistant in the Office of Management and Budget for the Affordable Care Act under former President Barack Obama, and the chief strategy officer, Phil Aroneanu, was a strategic advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy under Biden from 2022 to 2024.
Power Forward Communities, which received $2 billion, comprises five smaller nonprofits and registered as a nonprofit in August 2023. CEO Tim Mayopoulos, who was the former CEO of the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) during the Obama administration, makes $810,000 a year, the Free Press reported, and 22 employees at the nonprofit make more than $150,000 a year.
The Free Press also explained that the EPA allowed the grant beneficiaries to use the funds to provide loans to smaller climate change nonprofits.
“This clearly was intended from its beginning to be a slush fund,” Judge Glock, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the Free Press. “The goal was to give them money with minimal strings and allow them to lend it to people they favored. It is an absolutely wild program. I haven’t seen the likes of in previous government-lending history.”
He added that there are few safeguards that ensure a responsible use of the funds or that the smaller nonprofits pay back their loans to the nonprofits funded by the grant. He said the groups can do essentially whatever they want with the money.
“The money is certainly down the drain,” Glock continued. “The plans are focused on lending to very small and low-return projects. But that’s precisely the sort of project that is less likely to pay off and is less likely to make a full return to the lender, and is less likely to make any significant impacts on the client. And they’re going to require an obscene amount of overhead while making a negligible impact on natural emissions.”
He concluded that if the nonprofits do end up retaining the funds, scandals will result.
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