Earthjustice Vigorously Opposes Proposal to Politicize Federal Funding

Earthjustice, along with hundreds of co-signers and partners, filed four sets of comments strongly opposing a Trump administration proposal that would give the president’s political appointees veto power over federal financial assistance programs.

The proposed rule from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Energy (DOE), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and more than 30 other federal agencies would “centralize political control over individual grant decisions, increase bias and unfairness in the federal grantmaking system and create new barriers, uncertainty, delay and disruption” for essential programs that protect public health and the environment, according to the comments.

“This extreme proposal puts funding across the country for public health and safety, environmental protection, life-saving scientific research, disaster and emergency response, and much more at risk,” said Hana Vizcarra, attorney at Earthjustice. “Playing favorites with federal funding and ignoring statutory mandates doesn’t benefit anyone. This is yet another example of the Trump administration putting politics above the families and workers facing the most serious harms from pollution, toxic chemical exposure, and worsening extreme weather.”

“Our farmers, our food, and our rural communities depend on federal support from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In the past, this has been bipartisan, objective, and directed by Congress. The proposed rules callously and illegally reject that approach in favor of weaponizing important federal agricultural and nutrition funding to serve this administration’s political agenda,” said Carrie Apfel, Deputy Managing Attorney for the Sustainable Food and Farming program at Earthjustice. “Among other things, the proposal allows termination of grants at any time virtually on the administration’s whim, ignoring the reality that agriculture grants by their nature often require several years to bear fruit.”

Earthjustice signed-on to comments to OMB and specific agencies, including:

• Directed at EPA, DOE and NOAA for unlawfully limiting the “implementation and effectiveness of existing, Congressionally mandated research programs and federal financial assistance for clean air, clean water, hazardous-waste cleanup, toxic-chemical protection, emergency response, coastal resilience, fisheries management, climate science, and clean-energy innovation.”
• Directed at the Department of Agriculture, with more than 55 co-signers, for imposing “huge compliance burdens on the farmers, farmer-serving organizations, food banks, conservation districts, state and local governments, and rural communities who until now have benefited from USDA financial assistance.”
• Directed at the Department of Transportation for preventing the “buildout of safe and accessible transportation infrastructure, including electric vehicle charging and alternative fueling infrastructure that would also reduce harmful air pollution.”
• Directed at OMB for exceeding its authority with its proposal trying to codify the “Trump administration’s weaponization of grantmaking [which] has disproportionately harmed Black, Latino, and other communities of color.”

Background on public grants and the proposal:

Public grants are a core way that Congress directs federal agencies to deliver benefits to the American people, and they help make medical and scientific breakthroughs possible. For example, grants administered through the EPA, DOE, and NOAA support programs that lower energy costs for American families, protect public health, and track weather patterns to help manage and predict extreme weather.

The proposal from the White House budget office would allow federal agencies to terminate awards that no longer advance administration priorities. It would also relegate the peer review process to the sidelines, giving more weight to the judgment of a federal agency’s political leaders.