Vice President Kamala Harris tours a solar array prior to making remarks promoting the Inflation Reduction Act at the University of Buffalo in New York. Malik Rainey/CNP/ZUMA
There’s one line in the sprawling, 900-hundred page document known as Project 2025 that sketches out a plan to eliminate hundreds of millions dollars of federal money meant to help protect some of the most disadvantaged people in the country from pollution and the effects of global warming.
Project 2025, crafted by the conservative-think tank the Heritage Foundation, is widely-acknowledged to be a blueprint for a potential Trump presidency—despite his efforts to distance himself from it. The line proposes halting “all grants to advocacy groups” and reviewing “which potential federal investments will lead to tangible environmental improvements.” This almost certainly targets initiatives passed under President Joe Biden that seek to serve communities disproportionately affected by climate change or legacy pollution, also known as environmental justice communities.
Project 2025 proposes halting “all grants to advocacy groups.”
The Inflation Reduction Act appropriated an estimated 1.2 trillion in federal dollars to fund a variety of programs, most of of which were focused on climate change. It represents the biggest investment in climate action taken by the United States to date. On top of this, Biden’s Justice 40 initiative aims to ensure that 40 percent of federal climate-related funding goes towards marginalized communities.
A portion of existing funds from the IRA are administered through the Environmental Protection Agency and are meant for advocacy groups, which often partner with state and local governments to help get money to the country’s neediest people. A subset of advocacy groups that receive federal funding are environmental justice groups, which advocate for climate change mitigation and increased access to a pollution-free environment for residents in low-income and BIPOC communities, which are often disproportionately located near sources of pollution.
If it followed Project 2025’s proposal, a Trump EPA would almost certainly put an end to such programs. The Heritage Foundation has previously targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in public and private institutions, as my colleague Isabela Dias wrote earlier this year. (Though it’s worth noting that race is not a factor that the Justice 40 initiative considers when deciding what constitutes a disadvantaged community.)
Mandy Gunasekara, a former EPA chief of staff under the Trump administration who worked for the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee under the late Republican Senator James Inhofe, penned the chapter on environmental policy for Project 2025. She says that targeting grant programs to advocacy groups was part of a plan to reassess how the agency spends its dollars. “It’s part of a recommendation to review any pending grants to ensure they go to tangible environmental improvements and not political purposes,” she says. When I asked how would they make the distinction between grants that go to political purposes and grants that support environmental purposes, she didn’t answer.
She’s previously accused environmental grantees of being secret Democratic party supporters. In 2023, she told RealClear Investigations, “These groups are political front groups that are simply created to funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to Democrat campaigns under the guise of doing something good.”
An EPA spokesperson says that, on the contrary, the agency reviews applicants based on their ability to tackle climate change, environmental justice issues, and bring benefits to disadvantaged and low-income communities. “We’re meeting the needs of all Americans,” says Zealan Hoover, senior advisor to the EPA administrator and director of implementation. “Regardless of political, socio-economic, or geographical boundaries.”
Access to solar power can be a matter of life or death. Alexia Leclercq, policy director for PODER, an environmental justice organization based in East Austin, TX, saw that with her own eyes a few years ago. “During the winter storm,” she says, referring to 2021’s Winter Storm Uri, which killed 246 people, “the lack of not having power led to people dying.”
Residents across the state were surprised by the cold snap, which plunged the normally balmy temperatures down into the single digits in Austin. The surprise storm overwhelmed the state’s utility companies, who hadn’t planned for this eventuality. As a result, 69 percent of Texans lost power at some point during the week of the storm. People with solar power wouldn’t have needed to rely on the grid to warm their homes.
“The lack of not having power led to people dying.”
Unfortunately, solar is still really expensive and inaccessible,” says Leclercq. Her organization was the beneficiary of the IRA’s Solar for All Program to try and help community members in the predominantly Latino East Austin install and use solar power.
Like other smaller environmental justice organizations, PODER didn’t always apply for federal grants because they didn’t have the capacity to deal with federal reporting requirements, says Leclercq. But a new stream of hired contractors from the EPA meant to assist community groups and increase applicants’ knowledge of the granting process was a huge help. “Last year was actually the first time we ever were part of applying for federal funding,” she says.
Leclerq says that while the Biden Administration has tried to rectify past oversight of environmental justice communities by ensuring that they get the funding and grant-assistance they need, the IRA’s grants have been an imperfect fix. She thinks the administration could be doing more to make the details of the program clearer.
“It’s really confusing, to be honest,” Leclercq says. “A lot of people, they’re like, ‘Where do I find the grant? How do I know it’s aligned with my program? How do I know the deadlines?’” She also notes that there’s often “insider info” not widely available about real-life deadlines compared to the publicly listed ones.
Mijin Cha, a professor of environmental studies at University of California, Santa Cruz, also says that the current grant structure is too onerous and inefficient, often routing money through different groups to provide those benefits to underserved people. “The federal government gives money to a third party, and then that third party distributes the money,” says Cha. “Is it not more efficient to just have that be a direct investment?”
Despite its flaws, many grantees feel that the Biden administration’s attempt to account for the historic discrimination that saddled communities of color with legacy pollution or made them more vulnerable to climate change is a step in the right direction. The EPA has already funneled $234 million to environmental justice groups to help remedy these issues. Many other groups like PODER are benefiting from the $27 billion dollars allocated to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which is the umbrella program for Solar for All.
As for the allegation that grantees might be political front groups? “It’s unethical and harmful that people are outwardly spreading misinformation and lies regarding Justice40,” Leclercq says. “If they don’t want to fund climate solutions they should just own it.”
Even if Trump were to win the election and carry out Project 2025’s plan to eliminate these federal grants, the funding stream wouldn’t stop any time soon. There are many safeguards in the federal granting system, says Hoover. “Our grant agreements are legally binding agreements between the federal government and a grantee with robust legal protections,” he says.
Hoover told me that most of the IRA’s funding has already been committed, meaning the federal government is legally obligated to pay it out. But awarded money doesn’t last forever; in the case of most of these programs, it lasts from 3 to 5 years. A Trump president could possibly cut those programs as soon as funding runs out.
For the time being, Hoover says that the EPA is focused on making sure to document the IRA’s environmental justice benefits. “We’re confident that the strongest defense for these programs is going to be the tangible impact in these communities and the people who are healthier and safer today than they were four years ago,” he says.