The EPA canceled two multimillion-dollar environmental justice grants that Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Ilhan Omar (Minn.) helped to secure just weeks before President Donald Trump took office, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Pelosi helped secure a $20 million grant awarded to the San Francisco County Transportation Authority to help develop six green transportation projects—including the purchase of an electric bus, installation of electric ferry charging ports, and creation of a bike-share program. "This project will create a cleaner, greener city where reliable public transportation promotes equity and opportunity for all San Franciscans," Pelosi said in a statement announcing the grant in December.
Omar, meanwhile, was involved in securing a $10 million grant to build solar panels and energy efficiency upgrades at the Minneapolis American Indian Center and develop a geothermal energy system at the Sabathani Community Center. The partnership between the two Minneapolis-based community centers would strengthen the resilience of an area that is "home to low-income communities disproportionately impacted by climate change," Omar wrote to the EPA months before the agency awarded the grant.
"Recent examples of the importance of these two legacy organizations includes [sic] their response to the civil unrest following the murder of George Floyd and how they served as critical resources throughout the pandemic," she wrote in the letter obtained by the Free Beacon.
The Minneapolis partnership and San Francisco development projects, a source familiar told the Free Beacon, are among the more than 400 environmental justice and DEI-related grants that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, in collaboration with the White House's Department of Government Efficiency, has canceled in recent weeks.
The EPA's actions to revoke the grants highlight the EPA's and, more broadly, the Trump administration's efforts to curb spending. Zeldin ordered EPA officials to conduct a line-by-line review of grants disbursed by the Biden administration. Overall, the Trump EPA has clawed back more than $1.7 billion awarded under the previous administration and terminated eight grants worth $20 billion for a "green bank" program.
"It is our commitment at EPA to be exceptional stewards of tax dollars," Zeldin said this month.
A spokesman for Pelosi declined to comment. Omar's office, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, the Minneapolis American Indian Center, and the Sabathani Community Center did not respond to requests for comment.
The Biden EPA announced it had selected the San Francisco and Minneapolis projects—known as Treasure Islands Connects and the Minneapolis Climate Resilience Partnership, respectively—to receive federal funding on Dec. 12, 2024, about a month before the administration left office and two weeks before then-EPA administrator Michael Regan departed the agency.
The projects were two of the 105 that the EPA selected to receive money under the $2 billion Climate Justice Community Change Program, which was established by the Democrats' Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. The agency received a total of 2,801 applications requesting tens of billions of dollars in funding for the program throughout 2024.
Zeldin's actions to cut Biden-era spending affect several other Climate Justice Community Change Program grants and grants awarded under eight other programs. Those programs include the EPA's Environmental Justice Small Grants Program and Collaborative Problem-Solving Cooperative Agreement Program.
The Free Beacon previously reported that the Trump EPA also axed grants awarded under the Climate Justice Community Change Program to two groups led by individuals who served on Biden administration environmental advisory councils.