Epa's Zeldin Terminates $20 Billion In Biden Climate Grants

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said on Tuesday evening he had terminated $20 billion in grants issued by the Biden administration for climate programs under the Inflation Reduction Act, escalating a legal conflict over whether the Trump administration was encroaching on the authority of Congress.

Zeldin has spent the past month criticizing the spending and contending without evidence the program was rife with fraud. The move also comes just one day before a federal judge will hold a hearing in a lawsuit brought by one of the grant recipients seeking access to the funds held in a Citibank account that the Trump administration had frozen while it probed the program.

“This termination is based on substantial concerns regarding program integrity, objections to the award process, programmatic fraud, waste and abuse and misalignment with the agency's priorities, which collectively undermine the fundamental goals and statutory objectives of the awards,” Zeldin said in a video posted online. “The only way we can reduce waste, increase oversight and meet the intent of the law as it was written is by terminating these grants.”

It was not immediately clear whether EPA had taken the necessary steps to order Citibank to return the money to the federal treasury.