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Environmental groups and researchers who receive support from the U.S. government have been thrown into disarray by President Donald Trump's funding freeze. Even as some of the money starts flowing again, the administration's promise to cut funding for the Green New Deal and environmental justice seems daunting.
An Ice Age of Climate Finance
When President Donald Trump's administration shut down federal grants last week, likely in violation of U.S. law, it caused confusion and panic among groups and researchers working on clean energy, climate change and environmental justice. Nonprofits, small businesses, and city and state agencies suddenly lost access to millions of dollars that were already under contract and in use. After the National Science Foundation (NSF) suspended all its grants, researchers scrambled to find out if their projects would be affected, and some saw their salaries frozen.
A federal judge temporarily blocked the spending freeze days later. But uncertainty remains, and the full impact of the unprecedented disruption is still being felt.
The headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, D.C. Photo: Eric Lee/Bloomberg
"It's very confusing," said Alex Bomstein, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Air Council, which is based in Philadelphia with offices in Wilmington and Pittsburgh. The organization has received three grants from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and says its access to those funds has been cut, then restored, then cut again this week. "We've gotten mixed messages and it's obviously affecting our employees and the communities we serve," Bomstein said.
Ridgeland, Mississippi, nonprofit 2C is unable to use project funds from an EPA grant awarded last August, said Dominika Parry, the organization's president and CEO.
"It's surreal." "None of this makes sense," he said. "I'm overwhelmed by the need to make decisions based on the information we have, and that information is constantly changing." On Monday night, Parry learned from his colleagues that his funding was available again, even though he still didn't qualify for his grant.
Parry doesn't know if his group will have to lay off employees. An energy consulting firm in Spokane, Wash., called Zero Emissions Northwest, has already taken that step, says its president David Funk, because of its inability to access money from the Department of Agriculture. Not only had it not regained access to the grant by Monday night, it received an email from the agency that day reiterating the funding suspension, he said. At Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, at least one postdoctoral researcher whose work is funded by the NSF has been unable to "collect his salary," according to Laurence Smith, a professor of environmental studies.
The saga began on January 20 when Trump, who has denied and downplayed climate change, signed an executive order suspending climate funding related to two major pieces of legislation passed under former President Joe Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Jobs Act. A week later, Trump's Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum announcing a broader, government-wide suspension of all agency grants, loans and other financial assistance.
Although an initial legal challenge led a federal judge in Washington to issue a temporary stay on the freeze — leading the administration to withdraw the controversial OMB memo days later — climate subsidies have largely stopped. A second legal challenge led another judge in Rhode Island to temporarily block the freeze last Friday. Despite all of that, a judge in Washington on Monday expressed new concerns that the administration has yet to fully implement the repeal.
Bomstein's group, like many others, has had to delay work because of the freeze. But the negative consequences go beyond that, he notes.
If the group continues to struggle to access federal funding, he said, it's public health that will ultimately suffer. The Clean Air Council has created programs to expand local air monitoring in Delaware and Pennsylvania. Eliminating them, he says, would mean "people won't get the data they need to assess health impacts, which means more people will get sick and die in those communities." On Monday afternoon, the group was informed that its grant access had been restored.
2C Mississippi received a nearly $20 million grant from the EPA just a few weeks ago, but it has yet to receive an official award letter. The money is to be invested in a new resiliency center in central Mississippi, Parry says, where many people need a place to evacuate or access services like clean water and electricity during storms, heat waves and other disasters.
The government's measures have already had a chilling effect, particularly in academia, and there is widespread concern about what's to come.
President Donald Trump signs the executive order in the Oval Office of the White House on January 1. 20. Photo: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA
Trump's order to end spending on the IRA and the bipartisan infrastructure bill, along with another agenda to cut jobs, programs, and grants related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental justice, are weighing on organizations and scientists, as well as organizations. The possibility of future efforts to address climate-focused work.
Smith, of Brown University, says she has three new federally funded projects that she would normally recruit graduate students for, "but I don't know if I'll hire them or not."
Liza Roger, a marine biologist and geochemist at Arizona State University, is fortunate to have secure funding for now. But she's starting to wonder whether she should look abroad in the future: "We have no idea what they're thinking next."
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