Appeals Court Dunks On Tanya Chutkan For Thwarting Trump Admin Attempt To Claw Back Biden’s ‘Gold Bars’
- September 2, 2025
Audrey Streb, Daily Caller
A federal appeals court rebuked an Obama-appointed Judge on Tuesday and ruled that the Trump administration can move forward with terminating $16 billion in Biden-era climate grants doled out under a program that is currently under investigation.
The court determined that it does not have the authority to rule on the matter and that Tanya Chutkan, an Obama-appointed district court judge, abused her power in blockingthe administration from clawing back the funds. The grantees could appeal the ruling, which would continue the months-long legal battle between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the grantees of former President Joe Biden’s multi-billion and highly scrutinized signature climate law.
“This is certainly a welcome development in this saga. This program was ill-conceived, poorly thought out, and horribly executed. This ruling reveals merely another example of those flaws, with the plaintiffs attempting to forum shop their way out of the myriad procedural and administrative defects over the program’s lifespan,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the government watchdog group Protect the Public’s trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We applaud the EPA and Administrator Zeldin for aggressively seeking to rein in this program, likely saving the taxpayers billions of dollars that otherwise would have been the subject of waste, abuse, and cronyism.”
The panel of judges concluded 2-1 that “the district court abused its discretion in issuing the injunction. The grantees are not likely to succeed on the merits because their claims are essentially contractual, and therefore jurisdiction lies exclusively in the Court of Federal Claims.”
“For the foregoing reasons, we vacate the district court’s injunction and remand the case to the district court for further proceedings consistent with this opinion,” the Tuesday ruling reads. “Moreover, the equities strongly favor the government, which on behalf of the public must ensure the proper oversight and management of this multi-billion-dollar fund. Accordingly, we vacate the injunction.”
The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) awarded billions to green groups linked to Democrat donors and insiders, which EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has flagged for conflict-of-interest concerns. The program continues to be investigated by the EPA’s inspector general, the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.