Gold bars and an FBI probe: Inside Trump’s effort to pry back $20B from Biden’s climate spending
- April 14, 2025
Jean Chemnick, E&E News
Former President Joe Biden’s appointees crafted an unusual strategy for funneling hundreds of billions in government and private dollars to climate projects in lower-income communities — and for doing it fast enough that an incoming Trump administration would be unable to stop it.
Now, the program is fighting for its life.
A federal judge has given herself until Tuesday to rule on whether EPA can continue freezing the $20 billion in federal dollars at the heart of the climate effort, while the courts sort out whether the administration can cancel the grants entirely.
That money has been sitting for months in accounts at Citibank, where EPA’s Biden-era leaders had placed it for the use of eight affordable housing and community-lending nonprofits. If they remain cut off from the cash, at least two of the groups have said they will go under.
The nonprofits have already committed over $2.6 billion of the money to projects across the U.S., according to a POLITICO analysis of investments by five of the eight groups. But most of that is now halted.
The fight over the $20 billion has mushroomed into one of the messiest disputes in President Donald Trump’s attempt to throttle Biden’s climate and energy agenda, leading to court battles and investigations, including an FBI criminal probe. At its heart, it’s a battle over Trump’s power to pull back federal dollars that have gone out the door — and over Biden’s attempt to use EPA to reshape low-income communities.