Pirate's Cove

Why don’t these Warmists just spend their own money? There are lots of rich Hollywood and tech folks who say they care, right?

Climate movement strikes back with first-of-its-kind class action lawsuit against EPA

When Donald Trump won reelection, Jennifer Hadayia knew she’d need a good lawyer. As the executive director of Air Alliance Houston, an environmental nonprofit advocacy organization that works to reduce the risks of air pollution on public health, she had fought the first Trump administration in court already on a variety of issues.

But when Lee Zeldin, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, began terminating environmental justice grants awarded by the Biden-era EPA in January and announced “the greatest day of deregulation” in mid-March to dismantle dozens of environmental policies, Hadaiya was gobsmacked: “We are in the very worst possible situation to couple regulatory rollbacks with funding decimation.”

Hadayia isn’t the only one in this position. Zeldin’s immediate termination of some $3 billion from the Environmental and Climate Justice block program impacted 350 environmental organizations, cities and tribes that all saw their grants evaporate without warning.

The law didn’t say WHO would get the money, and the Trump admin is under no obligation to dole it out to these groups that Biden and his people loved. Maybe Trump’s EPA will give the money to companies that won’t palm a boatload of the money before doling it out to other groups who take their cut before giving it to other NGOs who can actually do the work.

Rather than sue the agency on its own, as many others are currently doing, Air Alliance Houston will be trying a new legal tactic: joining a first-of-its-kind proposed class action lawsuit against the EPA and Zeldin to restore funding.

“We’re not in it just for us,” Hadayia told CBS News, “Communities across the country that were  selected for these funds all have needs. The class action benefits the greater good.”

Projects get cancelled. They are not entitled to the money. The money does need to be spent, how about picking a company which can actually do the work and use the vast majority for the intended recipients. Actually help some, instead of using taxpayer money as a slush fund.

Air Alliance Houston was awarded a $3.1-million “community change grant” by the Biden EPA in 2024 to expand a program it created to bring more transparency to the Texas state environmental permitting process. The program, called Air Mail, tracks permits for pollution and alerts communities in Harris County, Texas, when a company requests a permit, so people know what may be emitted into the air and water near their home. Hadayia planned to expand the program to 10 other counties in Texas.

Now, seriously, that is a complete bullshit waste of taxpayer funds. This really does nothing. It really helps no one. Looks like a shell game. And I really wish the EPA would audit those who already got their funds.

Jillian Blanchard, a vice president at the Climate Change and Environmental Justice program at Lawyers for Good Government, called the termination of the EPA grants “unconstitutional” and said in a statement it was “not only destabilizing local projects addressing pollution, public health, and climate resilience,” but also violates “core principles of administrative law and the separation of powers.”

There’s nothing in the Constitution that says general appropriations have to go to specific companies. Again, the law says it has to be spent, but, not whom.