The Common Thread Between Abrego Garcia and the EPA’s “Gold Bars”
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could not withhold $14 billion worth of climate spending it froze in mid-February, prompting several of the organizations affected to file lawsuits against the administration. The Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund—allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act—provided $20 billion to eight groups to pursue clean energy projects benefiting low-income communities. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has argued with little evidence that the program is “riddled with self-dealing and wasteful spending,” and attempted to claw back funds that were dispersed by the Treasury Department last fall as legal battles over the program proceed. Chutkan stipulated that groups should be able to access the funds, which are currently being frozen by Citibank, starting on Thursday afternoon. That means the U.S. will soon find out whether the White House has decided—once again—to defy the courts.
The fight mirrors another, over the fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration wrongfully deported to a hellish prison camp in El Salvador based on negligible evidence of involvement in a gang the State Department has placed on its list of foreign terrorist organizations. The Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration last week to follow a lower court ruling and “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. The administration in response claims it is unable to do that and that the responsibility for getting him out of prison lies with El Salvador; the country’s president, Nayib Bukele—a staunch Trump ally—says he’ll do no such thing. Federal District Court Judge Paula Xinis has ordered the administration to answer questions about its apparent failure to comply with SCOTUS’s instructions within two weeks, and has indicated that she’s weighing contempt proceedings against the White House.
The main connection between the Garcia case and the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund case would seem to be the Trump administration’s disregard for the rule of law. But they have a more substantive connection, as well. Consider the “evidence” Zeldin’s EPA has mustered against the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The EPA cited a video from Project Veritas—known for hidden-camera sting operations against liberals—that showed an EPA employee in the weeks after Trump’s election saying the agency was “trying to get the money out as fast as possible before they come in and stop it all.… It truly feels like we’re on the Titanic, and we’re throwing, like, gold bars off the edge.” The employee wasn’t referring to the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, as funds from that program had been allocated more than a month before Trump was elected, in accordance with federal statute. Nevertheless, Zeldin and Trump-aligned media used the clip as an opportunity to spread the idea that the Biden administration was distributing “gold bars” to a handful of shady nonprofits.
Zeldin demanded that Citibank “must immediately return all of the gold bars,” and official EPA communications have similarly raised the specter of some physical cache of actual gold bars. No such thing exists, of course. “Here we are, weeks in, and you’re still unable to proffer me any evidence with regard to malfeasance,” Chutkan told Justice Department lawyers during one hearing.
It isn’t just the funds that the administration is targeting, though. The FBI is currently pursuing a criminal investigation into the grant program after two separate U.S. attorneys were unable to obtain warrants to freeze the funds. The Bureau instructed Citibank to freeze Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund recipients’ accounts, alleging they were involved in “possible criminal violations,” including “conspiracy to defraud the United States.”
The Trump administration has put working-class immigrants and well-heeled environmental nonprofit executives in unusually similar situations: on the losing end of the GOP’s lawless crusade against its political enemies. These two groups face materially different threats, and stark differences in the resources they have on hand to respond to and weather White House attacks. The administration is thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court as a means to continue pushing the boundaries of its ability to punish adversaries and strip them of legal protections. Having already deported hundreds of Salvadoran and Venezuelan migrants, Trump has talked openly in recent days about wanting to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s gulags.
The point here isn’t to suggest that green nonprofit employees who are U.S. citizens are in imminent danger of being deported. But there’s no reason for anyone embracing a cause the administration deplores not to consider themselves on notice. As major law firms and Ivy League universities continue to capitulate to the administration’s bullying, less exalted groups have a shared, vested interest in continuing to put up as much of a fight as possible. It isn’t unreasonable, that is, to expect that the weapons being sharpened on undocumented immigrants and pro-Palestine green card holders might at some point be turned on climate activists too.