Judge orders Trump to restart climate, green energy funding

A federal judge ordered the administration Tuesday to reopen the “spigots” for climate and clean energy funding programs, ruling against President Trump’s funding pause.

Judge Mary S. McElroy, a Trump appointee to the court in Rhode Island, said Mr. Trump’s team cut too many corners in pursuing the funding freeze, failing to justify the decision to hit the brakes on billions of dollars in spending to carry out programs that Congress had approved.

The judge said the agencies have some wiggle room to do smaller-scale funding pauses, but in cases with “vast economic and political significance” like this one, the Supreme Court has “urged lower courts to be skeptical” of the agencies’ claims.

“Agencies do not have unlimited authority to further a president’s agenda, nor do they have unfettered power to hamstring in perpetuity two statutes passed by Congress during the previous administration,” the judge wrote.

She said the case triggers what’s known as the “major questions doctrine.” That’s a legal theory that big issues must be decided by Congress, not the administration, even in cases where the law seems to allow some leeway for the president to act.

That’s the same doctrine the Supreme Court used in 2023 to strike down President Biden’s attempt to forgive $400 billion in student loans.

The judge’s decision, a preliminary injunction, keeps the money flowing while the case develops further.

The two laws at issue were the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was approved in 2021 with some bipartisan support, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which was driven entirely by Democrats. Both were signed by Mr. Biden.

They included hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for energy and environmental programs, such as the Childhood Lead Action Project or the Green Infrastructure Center.

Programs have doled out tens of billions of dollars in money already.

Mr. Trump’s executive orders changed all that, urging agencies to suspend spending from the two laws.

Groups that had been receiving funding sued, saying they’d lost access to money that was rightfully theirs.

Judge McElroy’s preliminary injunction applies not only to the plaintiffs but to all of the money in the programs.