Bloomberg News: ‘It’s Surreal’: Trump’s Freeze on Climate Money Sows Fear & Confusion – Trump ‘shut off the spigot of federal grant money’ – ‘It’s really troubling. It’s chilling’

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/-it-s-surreal-trump-s-freeze-on-climate-money-sows-fear-and-confusion?embedded-checkout=true

(Bloomberg) — When President Donald Trump’s administration last week shut off the spigot of federal grant money, which a federal judge said is likely in violation of US law, it caused confusion and panic among groups and researchers that work on clean energy, climate change and environmental justice.

Nonprofits, small businesses and state and city agencies abruptly lost access to millions of dollars that were already under contract and being used. After the National Science Foundation (NSF) paused all its grants, researchers rushed to find out if their projects were affected, and some had their salaries frozen.

A federal judge temporarily blocked the spending pause days later. But uncertainty persists, and the full impact of the disruption, which was unprecedented, is still coming into view.

“It’s been very confusing,” says Alex Bomstein, executive director of the nonprofit Clean Air Council, which is headquartered in Philadelphia and has offices in Wilmington and Pittsburgh. The group has three Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) grants and says its access to this money was turned off, then back on, then again switched off over the course of the week. “We’ve gotten mixed messaging, and obviously it concerns our employees as well as the communities that we serve,” Bomstein says.

The Ridgeland, Mississippi-based nonprofit 2C Mississippi can’t access project funds from an EPA grant awarded last August, says Dominika Parry, the group’s founding president and CEO.

“It’s surreal. None of this makes sense,” she says. “I am overwhelmed trying to make decisions based on the information we have, and the information keeps changing.” By Monday night, Parry was hearing from peers that their funding was available again, although she was still locked out of her grant.

The saga started Jan. 20 when Trump, who has denied and minimized climate change, signed an executive order directing a pause on climate funds in connection with two major laws passed under former President Joe Biden, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. One week later, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo announcing a more sweeping, government-wide pause of all agency grants, loans and other financial assistance.

“This is all a very deliberate agenda, and chaos is the strategy,” says Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the climate and energy program at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. While her organization doesn’t get any federal funding, she spoke with many groups who rely on such funds. “It’s really troubling. It’s chilling, actually,” she says.

The government’s actions have already had a chilling effect, especially in academia, and there’s widespread worry about what’s yet to come.

Trump’s order to end IRA and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law expenditures, and another Day One order to terminate jobs, programs and grants relating to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and environmental justice, loom over organizations and scientists, as does the possibility of future efforts to target climate-directed work.

Smith, of Brown University, says he has three new federally funded projects he would normally recruit graduate students to work on, “but I don’t know whether I should recruit them or not.”

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