News of the World

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$375B EPA slush fund handled by John Podesta gave billions to charities
founded only months earlier

Article by Isabel Vincent, NY Post

The Biden administration funneled at least $20 billion dollars into environmental groups, most of which had only recently been founded, The Post has discovered.

In one case, former Vice President Kamala Harris handed over a check for nearly $7 billion to Bethesda, Maryland, based group Climate United Fund, which does not appear in the IRS’s charities database, and has no federal filings.

The non-profit fund had only been incorporated in Delaware on November 30, 2023, according to public records, five months before Harris handed over the cash in April 2024.

The Climate United Fund then announced “the historic investment” in a press release, noting the group’s work “delivers benefits like cleaner air…and increased energy security.”’

However, because the company is so new, there is no publicly published accounting of how it plans to spend the $7 billion.

Projects have been announced including a $10.8 million “pre-development loan” solar project on Tribal lands in eastern Oregon and Idaho and a $32m solar energy project at the University of Arkansas, but they represent only a drop in the bucket of the grant’s amount.

“Ethically speaking, it’s concerning,” said Laurie Styron, CEO of Charity Watch, an independent charity watchdog group.

“What was the purpose of creating middlemen entities when there are so many established groups in the climate space with good track records? What was the value-added in [by] doing it this way, especially with such large sums of taxpayer funds?”

The cash for the charity came from a huge $370 billion climate slush fund of taxpayer money overseen by John Podesta, a political consultant who was chair of Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 bid for president and White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton.

In 2022, President Joe Biden named Podesta to helm the climate fund, which resulted from the Inflation Reduction Act, a 2022 law that was aimed at combatting climate change and creating clean energy.

Last year, EPA advisor Brent Efron was caught on video describing how the agency hastily parceled out a related $20 billion climate fund that was held by Citibank before the end of the Biden administration.

“Get the money out as fast as possible before they [Trump Administration] come in … it’s like we’re on the Titanic and we’re throwing gold bars off the edge,” he said in video posted online by activist group Project Veritas.

Efron “was acting in his private capacity,” when he made the comments, which “expressed [his] personal views,” an attorney representing him, Mark S. Zaid, told The Post. He also claimed the comments “had nothing to do with” the funds which had been administered.

Now Lee Zeldin, the new EPA chief said he wants to claw back the cash doled out by the climate fund. On Monday, he called on the agency’s inspector general to investigate.

“The Biden EPA ‘gold bar’ scheme was designed to limit government oversight while doling out funds to far-left organizations pushing DEI and Environmental Justice,” Zeldin told The Post in a statement.

“Of the eight pass-through entities that received funding from the pot of $20 billion in tax dollars, various recipients have shown very little qualification to handle a single dollar, let alone several billions of dollars. I have zero tolerance for waste and abuse at the EPA.”

A spokeswoman for the Climate United Fund told The Post the Biden-controlled EPA “encouraged groups to work with coalitions” to receive the cash.

She said that the EPA cash sent to Climate United Fund is parked with Calvert Impact, a related non-profit.

The Post found three entities called Calvert Impact, all of them based in Bethesda — making it more difficult to track the flow of money. 

In another example, the similarly named Justice Climate Fund is a Washington DC-based non-profit which was set up in 2023, has yet to submit a tax filing to the IRS and has no information about its principals on its web site.

The group received $940 million from the EPA. It lists its aims as working with “community partners” to “drive transformative investments, focused on reducing pollution,” among other goals.

Another third group — Power Forward Communities Inc. — was registered in 2023 and shows a total of just $100 in revenue in its tax filing for that year, according to public filings.

Yet the Columbia, Maryland, based nonprofit somehow received $2 billion from the EPA fund, according to public records.

.  .  .

Judge blocks EPA's plan to claw back billions in climate grants

Article by Mitch Kokai, John Locke Foundation

A federal district court judge blocked the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to claw back $20 billion the Biden administration awarded to eight climate nonprofit organizations.

In her opinion Tuesday evening, Judge Tanya Chutkan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who was appointed by former president Barack Obama, wrote that the Trump EPA failed to submit evidence to support its termination of the billion-dollar grants. Chutkan’s ruling, however, does not force federal disbursements to continue to grant recipients, allowing the funds to remain frozen.

The ruling is a temporary block on EPA’s termination of the grants and may be reversed pending further court proceedings.

“EPA Defendants vaguely reference ‘multiple ongoing investigations’ into ‘programmatic waste, fraud, and abuse and conflicts of interest’ but offer no specific information about such investigations, factual support for the decision, or an individualized explanation for each plaintiff. This is insufficient,” Chutkan wrote. “At this stage, EPA Defendants have not provided the ‘credible evidence’ required.”

The ruling represents the latest setback to President Donald Trump’s agenda—cutting large Biden-era spending programs and curbing climate programs have both been at the forefront of Trump’s agenda. Federal judges have handed the Trump administration a number of setbacks in recent weeks, sparking Trump and top White House adviser Elon Musk to call for the impeachment of certain judges.

The case relates to the Biden administration’s handling of the so-called Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. In April 2024, the EPA announced it had selected eight recipients to receive $20 billion under the program and use that money to bolster green energy efforts nationwide. The program, as designed by the Biden EPA, functions as a “green bank,” using a pass-through mechanism to support local climate projects.

Philippines defends ex-President Duterte's transfer to ICC in Senate inquiry

Article by Mikhail Flores, Reuters

Philippine officials on Thursday defended before the country's Senate the arrest and transfer to the International Criminal Court of former President Rodrigo Duterte, as they faced allegations he was illegally abducted at the behest of a foreign institution.

Duterte is set to be the first Asian former head of state to go on trial at the ICC after he was arrested last week and sent to The Hague, where he faces accusations of murder as a crime against humanity over a "war on drugs" that killed thousands of people and defined his 2016-2022 presidency.

The government's decision to hand Duterte over triggered a backlash among his supporters, family and allies, who have petitioned the Supreme Court arguing the arrest was illegal and the ICC no longer has jurisdiction in the Philippines.

Duterte appeared before the ICC's pre-trial chamber on March 14 and remains in ICC custody, with his next appearance scheduled for September.

"Justice rendered by a foreign country is not justice. It's slavery," said Senator Imee Marcos, who presided over Thursday's televised hearing.

Marcos is the sister of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr but has close ties with the Duterte family. She said his transfer was tantamount to an admission that the Philippines was incapable of putting him on trial.
Duterte's arrest followed years of him taunting the ICC in profanity-laden speeches since he unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from the court's founding treaty as it started looking into allegations of systematic extrajudicial killings of drug dealers and users on his watch.

Duterte has assumed full responsibility for the killings but denies he led a campaign of systematic murder and says he instructed police to kill only in self-defence.

Philippine officials on Thursday told the inquiry the handover of Duterte was above board as it was at the request of Interpol and not in cooperation with the ICC.

"The ICC tries people for individual crimes, not states. So the Philippines as a state cannot be called upon by the ICC to do something for them," said Justice Secretary Juanito Remulla.

He cited "international humanitarian law" as the basis of the arrest, adding the ICC has no authority over the Philippines.

Duterte's arrest came after an acrimonious breakdown in an an alliance between President Marcos and the Duterte family, who joined forces to sweep a 2022 election that saw Sara Duterte, the former president's daughter, become vice president. She has since been impeached by the lower house.

Sara Duterte joined Thursday's Senate hearing virtually and said the apprehension of her father was "patently an illegal arrest" that was orchestrated by the administration to "demolish political opponents".

"This is all about politics," she said.

The ICC, a court of last resort, says it has jurisdiction to prosecute alleged crimes that took place prior to a member's withdrawal.