April Showers Bring...

APRIL SHOWERS BRING....: The legal battle over EPA’s efforts to rescind $20 billion under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund will heat up again next month. Three nonprofit groups seeking access to their federal climate grants have agreed with EPA on a briefing schedule that will get the matter before a judge in early April, teeing up a decision potentially later in the month.

Preliminary injunctions are due on Friday, with additional briefs in the coming weeks. Judge Tanya Chutkan scheduled a hearing for noon on April 2.

Chutkan on Tuesday issued a temporary restraining order after finding EPA hadn’t provided any concrete evidence of wrongdoing to justify terminating the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund grants. Unless the agency can do so in the coming weeks, it seems there’s a good chance Chutkan may order the funds released. But even if she does, that's unlikely to end the fight.

"I will not rest until these hard-earned taxpayer dollars are returned to the U.S. Treasury," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement posted Tuesday night to X.

Meanwhile, Democrats on Capitol Hill heightened calls for the agency to release the funding amid the escalating legal battle. A group of 82 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on Wednesday denouncing the agency’s "persistent and shocking attempts to undermine” the fund and demanded the agency immediately release the obligated dollars.

Continuing to withhold the funds deprives communities across the country of economic investment in solar, affordable housing, clean transportation and more -- and threatens to bankrupt the nonprofits that were promised the money, they wrote.

“We find it extremely troubling that GGRF funds continue to be the target of a political witch hunt without any justification or evidence of wrongdoing,” the letter read. “The EPA’s actions have unnecessarily spurred great economic uncertainty, and now, the eight nonprofit recipients of NCIF and CCIA funding are at risk of going bankrupt and some have already begun to furlough their workers.”