Trump is freezing the funding of environmental groups—and threatening them with criminal prosecution

Some grassroots environmental organizations have regained access to the millions of dollars they were promised through the Inflation Reduction Act. But now some see an even more menacing threat: prosecution. 

The unease has grown as President Donald Trump’s attacks on them and their mission to help disadvantaged communities and curb climate change continues to escalate. 

Leaders of these groups say they expect federal agents to start breathing down their necks any day now as Trump seeks to shred the climate initiatives of his predecessor, Joe Biden. 

“It’s not a matter of if you will be audited, it’s a matter of when,” said Ashley Shelton, executive director of the Louisiana-based nonprofit The Power Coalition for Equity and Justice. 

The first signs of that happened earlier this month when media reports surfaced that the Trump administration had ordered certain nonprofits receiving funding through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to hand over all their correspondence with EPA staff. 

According to Politico, they were also ordered to turn over to the FBI documents including transactions related to their programs and their organizations’ articles of incorporation and policies. On March 11, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced he had cancelled the program. The groups are suing to regain access to the $20 billion in greenhouse gas reduction funding. The federal government alleges the recipients defrauded the government.

Zeldin has called Biden’s climate program a “green slush fund” and characterized the Trump administration’s actions as an effort to curtail “wasteful” government spending. 

Zeldin has charged that the EPA fast-tracked the greenhouse gas funds to avoid oversight during the final days of Biden’s term. He has repeatedly referred to a surreptitiously taken video in which an EPA representative in December likened the effort to award those funds before Trump took office as “throwing gold bars” off the Titanic.

Lawsuits pile up; funding in limbo

Lawsuits continue to mount against Trump’s actions as other pots of IRA funding and federal grants remain on lock down despite court orders barring any freeze on funds that have already been approved by Congress. 

“We know that this current administration has signaled that they may not comply with what the courts or Congress orders them to do, and so that’s going to be a real problem,” said Erin Rogers, co-director for the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice. 

The Hive Fund specializes in raising funds and awarding grants to nonprofits led by minority women in communities hardest hit by pollution and climate change. Rogers said her group is already working with their recipients to better shield them from the federal audits that could be weaponized against them. 

“We’re absolutely committed to helping groups do what they need to do to stay in compliance with their contracts, and then be in the legal system to make sure that these contracts are complied with by the federal government,” she said.

The Power Coalition is part of a group that secured a $20 million grant from the EPA to address energy efficiency in a low-income, predominantly Black Baton Rouge neighborhood located in the heavily-industrialized corridor in southwest Louisiana known as “Cancer Alley.” That project had been in limbo when Trump announced his freeze, but is back on track now that the EPA has freed up some of the IRA money. 

“We’re proceeding with caution because I don’t want to be in a position to get the community excited about an opportunity that we then can’t actually materialize,” Shelton said. 

DEI efforts targeted

Shelton knows Trump’s war on diversity, equity and inclusion is yet another thing that makes them vulnerable. 

“I mean, the words equity and justice are in our name as an organization,” she said. “Does it feel like at some point it will make us a target? Sure.”

Environmental advocacy is only a small portion of what the coalition does. Her organization also advocates and implements outreach services related to health care, criminal justice reform, housing, early education and child care and voting rights. 

“We’re not doing anything wrong,” she said. “There’s certainly apprehension and some fear (but) we’re gonna move forward and we’re gonna do this work because it is good and necessary work.”

Shelton’s sentiments are shared by Cynthia Robertson, who in 2018 started with a food box in front of her home in Sulphur, Louisiana that grew into a six-employee nonprofit, Micah 6:8 Mission, whose name stems from a biblical exhortation to practice justice, mercy and humility. The group focuses on disaster recovery and environmental justice in the southwest corner of the state. 

“We have 17 permitted [industrial] facilities in that area. We have a very high cancer rate,” Robertson said. “So we’ve been working at providing food, and at the same time we educate and give [the community] the tools to understand what’s going on and advocate for themselves.”

Robertson was worried that work might come to a halt when she, like so many others, was locked out of the federal government’s online portal to access approximately $200,000 in grants from the EPA for community air monitoring and educational outreach on environmental justice issues. 

With that funding now available again, Robertson said there’s still no word on whether a more than $100,000 grant she secured through the Department of Energy to help draft a community benefits plan for their service area will still come through. 

Some of the requirements for community benefit plans are to advance “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,” according to a fact sheet from the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. 

“I just know that there’s been delays and that we have been instructed by the DOE to postpone or suspend our work,” she said. “[But] we’re still continuing to do the work, because we have this contract we signed, and so the government has broken their side of the contract.”

The agency did not respond to multiple requests from Floodlight seeking a response to Robertson’s claims. 

“I’m not going to hold out any hope that it’s coming through because, along with DEI, the Trump administration has said they’re not going to support anything that deals with community benefits plans,” she added. “That doesn’t mean we’re not going to do the work. We’re just going to have to scale back the work.”

Some foundations step in

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation recently announced it would increase its funding to nonprofits by an estimated $150 million over the next two years to help supplant the funding frozen by Trump. 

In January, billionaire and former Democratic New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg—who is also a special envoy to the United Nations on climate change—vowed to help cover the U.S. contribution to the UN climate body after Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement. The president’s move came at a time when other members of the country’s billionaire class were cutting their contributions to environmental issues to fall in line with Trump’s agenda. 

“I think people are really looking to see who can we trust, who’s still here with us,” said Heather McTeer Toney, executive director of the Bloomberg-funded Beyond Petrochemicals campaign. “This idea of being a target, it feels different. It is scary. We are really blessed to work with an organization that has not pulled out, and I think puts us in a position to encourage others to stay and be part of the climate movement.”

Toney added that most environmental justice groups were fighting and advocating for years without any financial help from the government and would likely revert back to that if need be. 

But Rogers stressed the need to push against Trump’s attempts to claw back IRA funding. Philanthropy likely cannot backfill the gaps in federal funding, she said.

“The bottom line is this transition to clean, affordable, reliable and resilient energy, especially across the U.S. South where rates are high, energy burden is high, disaster strikes are high—that transition can deliver so many benefits,” Rogers said. “Not only for historically disinvested communities, but for our economy and our democracy as a whole.”

— Terry L. Jones, Floodlight

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action. Beyond Petrochemicals, which is quoted in this story and provided images, is a funder of Floodlight. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is mentioned in the story, is also a Floodlight funder.