Climate group that called for Gaza ceasefire risks losing federal funding

An alliance of grassroots environmental groups could lose $60 million in federal funding after calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) was called one of the Environmental Protection Agency’s “grantmakers” more than a year ago, putting him in charge of distributing subgrants for locally driven environmental projects. But out of 11 of the EPA’s donors, the CJA is the only one that has not yet received any funding. The group faced a flurry of attacks to be publicly opposed to the Israel-Hamas war, and some EPA staff say that the group was singled out as the result.

“We were deeply disappointed to witness the current EPA $60 million withholding to the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA)the only one of the eleven concessionaires who courageously spoke out against the environmental degradation and human rights violations in Palestine,” wrote a group of anonymous EPA and Department of Energy employees. open letter in December.

The money could disappear if it isn’t dispersed before President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump has he said he would announce unspent funds from the Inflation Reduction Act that set aside money for grants. And if his second term is anything like his first, it likely is delete the EPA and take over environmental protection.

With a deregulatory agenda at the national level, local efforts become even more crucial to safeguard Americans’ air, water and climate. It is these types of basic initiatives that the donors of the EPA are supposed to support and what is at risk if the agency does not release the funds before it is too late.

“What this would do is further drain the funds that our communities have been counting on,” says CJA Executive Director KD Chavez. “We need people to be resourceful so that at least at the local level they can do cleaning projects, they can have air quality monitoring,” says Chavez, citing examples of how the money could be used.

Money for the EPA’s Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Grant Program came from the Inflation Reduction Act, which included $369 billion for clean energy and climate action. The 11 donors include universities and non-profit organizations tasked with disbursing a total of $600 million to locally driven environmental projects.

What should I do? easier for smaller grassroots groups to access fundingespecially those who live with the most pollution, which are often communities of color in the United States. The CJA includes about 100 organizations in the United States, many of them rooted in communities of color such as the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program and the Indigenous Environmental Network.

The CJA, in particular, was selected to distribute subgrants to EPA regions 8-10, which include most of the western United States. It is also the national grantmaker responsible for outreach to tribal communities. The CJA says it has already spent $1.6 million from its own operating budget to put the organizational infrastructure in place to allow community groups to apply for subgrants. It is supposed to receive $50 million for these subgrants, plus an additional $10 million for technical capacity.

As of January 3, only $461 million of funding from the grant program has been awarded, according to data on the The EPA websiteleaving the rest of the funds vulnerable to the incoming Trump administration.

“There are questions that we have about the singularity of us as an organization. Why have we been identified as anti-American? It is because we are led by working class people, black indigenous people and people of the community of color?” Chavez says.

Last year, conservative media and some Republican lawmakers accused the CJA of being “radicals,” antisemiticand “Anti-American” for his position on the Israel-Hamas war. Even before the EPA announced its selection of 11 donors, the CJA had released a statement in October 2023 calling on President Joe Biden and Congress to demand a ceasefire from Israel and Hamas.

“I was surprised to learn that $50 million has been designated for the Climate Justice Alliance, a group that explicitly publishes a ‘free Palestine’ section on its website. On the website, there are dozens of anti-Semitic images and alarming,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) told former EPA Administrator Michael Regan when he testimony before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee in July last year. (Regan he left from his place in December.)

The CJA published its cease fire declaration on their website. “We call on Biden and the US Congress to support an immediate end to the violence by publicly demanding a ceasefire in the region. We are firmly on the side of peace and support the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, decolonization and life,” the statement said.

“At our heart CJA has always been anti-war and pro community,” says Chavez. “We are just collateral damage in a war against regulations,” they added.

The group is also known for its environmental protection. A letter from Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Buddy Carter (R-GA) to Regan last May accuses the CJA of supporting “partisan, and in some cases extreme, environmental activism,” including “organizing mass protests of climate alarmism” and “Litigation of fossil fuel projects”. The letter similarly castigates other donors chosen by the EPA, but the CJA has faced more heat as protests in the United States against the war in Gaza have gained momentum.

U letter published by EPA and DOE staff last month (previously reported from The Intercept) urges the agencies to “finish their collaboration with Israel until there is a permanent ceasefire” and “release all federal funds designated to the Climate Justice Alliance”. He says the funding is needed for indigenous communities and other groups that have historically been “abandoned” by the environmental protection.

According to Chavez, the EPA told the CJA at a meeting in September that it was under investigation by the agency’s office of general counsel (OGC) without any explanation as to why. The group says the agency’s Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights told the group to expect funding by Jan. 6 — even though grantees were initially expected to be able to begin distribution. of subsidies. in the summer of 2024.

The EPA did not verify the CJA’s claims or respond to specific questions The Virgin on an investigation into the CJA. “EPA continues to review the grant for the Climate Justice Alliance,” EPA spokesman Nick Conger said in an email to The Virgin. “EPA continues to work through its rigorous process to obligate funds under the Inflation Reduction Act, including the Thriving Communities Grantmakers program.” The agency is “on track” to grant more than 90 percent of the funding by the end of the Biden administration, Conger added.

By the time The Virgin asked the EPA last year how it selected donors for the program, Regan said in a call with reporters that each “demonstrated a very strong governance structure that creates accountability” and that the agency chose the 11 “knowing that they could be operational of these resources in a way that the communities that need these resources the most absolutely get them.”