Rewiring America, the climate group where Democratic activist Stacey Abrams served as senior counsel, quietly banked more than $5 million in federal climate funding shortly before the Trump administration axed the Biden-era grant earlier this year, according to tax documents reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. They suggest that Abrams played a larger role in obtaining the grant than she claimed.
The $5 million marked the initial tranche of a $2 billion grant the Environmental Protection Agency awarded in April 2024 to a different group, Power Forward Communities, that oversees a Rewiring America-led coalition. When a February Free Beacon report revealed Power Forward Communities's ties to Abrams—prompting EPA administrator Lee Zeldin to cancel the grant—Abrams argued that she had no affiliation with the group and played a negligible role in obtaining the grant.
The tax documents contradict Abrams's claims. They show that, of the $9.5 million Power Forward Communities received from the EPA by the end of 2024, more than half went to Abrams's Rewiring America. Power Forward Communities reported that the grant funding was its sole source of revenue last year, indicating that it acted as a pass-through established to distribute taxpayer funds primarily to Rewiring America but under a different name. It disbursed the funding to Rewiring America as Abrams served as its senior counsel and senior adviser, a role she held between March 2023 and early 2025.
At the time, the group's director of partnerships, Ian Magruder, said Abrams "played a pivotal role" in securing the EPA grant. But Power Forward Communities described its relationship with Rewiring America—and Abrams—differently when it sued the EPA over Zeldin's grant cancellation.
"Power Forward Communities has no relationship with Ms. Abrams, other than the fact that she's one of the people who have advised one of our coalition members in the past," Power Forward Communities CEO Timothy Mayopoulos told Politico.
In a lawsuit challenging the EPA's cancellation of the grant, Power Forward Communities said its relationship with Abrams was "alleged."
Zeldin said the newly filed tax forms show that the Biden administration's decision to award billions of dollars to Power Forward Communities was indeed political.
"This revelation is the latest egregious example (on top of so many we've found) of how, in rushing $20 billion out the door before President Trump took office, the Biden EPA doled out hard-earned tax dollars to unqualified recipients riddled with self-dealing and conflicts of interest, while intentionally reducing agency oversight," Zeldin told the Free Beacon in a statement.
The dollar amount given to Rewiring America dwarfs how much Power Forward Communities disbursed to other coalition members: Local Initiatives Support received $244,756, United Way Worldwide received $145,013, Enterprise Green Accelerator received $73,866, and Habitat for Humanity International received $0.
In addition to the payments to coalition members, Power Forward Communities reported spending $2.2 million of the EPA grant to cover unspecified expenses, $726,818 of the grant on salaries for executives and other staff, and $310,500 of the grant on recruiting, among other expenses. Its salaries include $206,250 for Mayopoulos, who worked 20 hours per week, according to the filings.
Mayopoulos received an additional $181,121 from Rewiring America for consulting services, another sign of the close relationship between the two entities.
"Every single penny given to this Stacey Abrams-connected NGO last year was either sent to another pass-through entity or used to pay the salaries of its well-connected top officials," Zeldin said.
"This is the same organization that earned only $100 in 2023 but was handed $2 BILLION in 2024 by the Biden EPA," he continued. "I proudly terminated this grant and all others in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund in March, and since then Congress repealed the program entirely. At the Trump EPA, we will always be exceptional stewards of tax dollars, with a zero tolerance policy towards any waste or abuse."
Power Forward Communities, Rewiring America, and a spokesman for Abrams did not respond to requests for comment.
The news comes as Abrams reemerges in the public eye. In October, she participated in a No Kings rally in Atlanta and, in November, she participated in a talk about defending democracy at Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law, where she characterized the Trump administration as an "authoritarian regime."
