En Banc DC Circuit Reinstates Funding Of The Most Corrupt Program Ever Enacted

Francis Menton, Manhattan Contrarian:

I recognize that there could be many contenders for the title of the “Most Corrupt Program Ever Enacted.” However, I challenge any reader, or anyone else for that matter, to name any program in the vast federal handout universe more corrupt that the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund that was created by the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, § 60103, and codified at 42 U.S.C. § 7434.
If you have somehow forgotten about this program, it is the one that was the subject of a famous Project Veritas recording, made during the interim between President Trump’s second election in November 2024 and his inauguration in January 2025. In the December 2024 video, an EPA “special advisor” named Brent Efron described a rush in the Biden EPA’s last days to commit huge amounts of funds to friendly non-profits in a way to completely avoid oversight and to make them difficult for the incoming Trump people to claw back. Efron characterized what was going on as “throwing gold bars off the Titanic.”
Upon entering office, the Trump people set out to and then did identify the funds in question — about $20 billion — and promptly rescinded the grants. Plaintiffs went to the D.C. District Court, and got an injunction mandating disbursement of the funds. Congress then repealed the grants in the One Big Beautiful Bill of July 2025. In September 2025 a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit upheld the rescission of the grants, and held that the only remedy of the grant recipients would be to seek contractual damages in the Court of Claims. A rare victory for the taxpayers? Not so fast. The plaintiff grant recipients asked for en banc review from the entire D.C. Circuit, and on August 4 the full D.C. Circuit mostly re-instated the original District Court injunction mandating distribution of the funds.
The vote of the judges in the D.C. Circuit is almost completely along party lines, and illustrates the extent to which the Democratic-appointed judges will uphold anything, no matter how corrupt, to support their team.
From the beginning, the label of “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund” in this statute was the thinnest of cover stories to justify vast handouts to Democratic Party insiders with little to no knowledge, ability, or experience in actually reducing “greenhouse gases.” An EPA page on this subject reveals the extent to which the program was no more than an excuse to hand out billions to party insiders in the waning days of the lame duck administration. The three biggest grant recipients in question, and the amounts of their grants, were: Climate United Fund ($6.97 billion), Coalition for Green Capital ($5.0 billion), and Power Forward Communities ($2.0 billion). Here is some background (from the EPA page) on these three entities:

“The Coalition for Green Capital had only expended $1.42 million in 2023 before receiving a $5 billion award from EPA.”
“Power Forward Communities [that would be Democrat darling, Stacey Abrams —FWIW] had reported a total of $100 for both “total revenue” and “net assets” in its 2023 tax return – the year before receiving a $2 billion grant from EPA.”
Climate United Fund’s CEO, Chief Strategy Officer, and multiple board members were high ranking administration officials during the Obama and/or Biden administrations.
Coalition for Green Capital’s CEO had been a senior advisor at the Department of Energy during the Obama administration, before becoming New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s “Energy Czar.” A senior Biden administration energy advisor left to join the Coalition for Green Energy’s Board as it was applying for its grant.
Power Forward Communities’ CEO had served as CEO of Fannie Mae during the Obama administration. Multiple other senior executives had also been high ranking officials in the Obama administration.

And there’s plenty more where that comes from.

The initial D.C. Circuit panel decision, written by Judge Naomi Rao, outlines the machinations that the Biden people went through to try to make it as difficult as possible for the incoming Trump administration to claw back the money from the Democrat insiders. Remember as you are reading this that this takes place in December 2024 and January 2025, after Trump has been elected:

The grant agreements have an unusual structure. Typically, grant funds are held by the U.S. Treasury and disbursed incrementally as grantees use the funds for program purposes. EPA structured these grants with a middleman that would hold the funds as a “financial agent” of the United States. According to EPA, this was the first time the federal government used a financial agent, as opposed to Treasury, to carry out this kind of grant program. Treasury entered a Financial Agency Agreement (“FAA”) with Citibank. . . .
The month before President Trump’s inauguration, EPA modified the grant agreements—with no apparent consideration from the grantees—to make it more difficult for the government to terminate the grants. The week before the inauguration, EPA amended the ACAs to require Citibank to “continue to disburse funds” to the grantees, even if the government exercised its right of exclusive control, if the funds are “associated with financial obligations ‘properly incurred’” before the government exercised its right.

The Biden people had tried to make it so that the money would be gone and unrecoverable — like gold bars at the bottom of the ocean — by the time the Trump people figured out what was going on. But new EPA Administrator Zeldin very promptly told Citibank to freeze the money, and then Congress repealed the grants in the OBBB in July 2025.

So what is even the argument that the money must be disbursed at this point? The D.C. Circuit’s en banc ruling is a one-page summary order that does not provide any reasoning.

A commenter on Menton’s article, an E Olson, offers this, which I think sums it up nicely:

I've wondered for years how all these NGOs and activist groups (aka "peaceful" protesters) got so much money for activities that were generally not popular with anyone except the most radical Left 20%. Yes, there were a few George Soros types providing some money, but not nearly enough for all the endless lawfare; brick and camping equipment deliveries, and bus charters for "peaceful" protesters; endless luxury travel to various climate/transgender/open-border conferences and workshops; and huge overhead from bloated/over-paid administrators and office rent. The only parties with enough cash to keep those operations going was the US Government run by a bureaucracy that is 99% Democrat whether Republicans control Congress and/or the White House or not, and the Chinese and Russian governments who are always happy to sow dissent and chaos against the only country powerful enough to curb their aggression.
The Biden Administration's last minute money tossing was to keep the whole Democrat activist funding going long enough to provide nice employment and walking around money for Democrat operatives until another Democrat resides in the White House and/or Democrats take control of Congress and can keep the gravy train going - and Democrat judges are the last line of defense against Trump's serious efforts to take away the only source of Democrat financial support and activism. And what should gall ever faithful Democrats the most, is that none of this climate/trans/Gaza/open-border/defund the police activism is actually about "solving" those "problems", but is instead nothing but a corrupt mechanism for keeping Democrat activists well fed and housed when they are out of power.

Fortunately, there’s video: