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States filed yet another motion on Monday asking the court to release urgently needed disaster relief.
In case you missed it: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has continued to withhold millions of dollars from states for disaster recovery, relief, and preparedness despite a district court’s order from March 6 calling on the administration to release the funds.
Among the more than 200 FEMA grants to states that remain frozen are a case management program for survivors of the 2023 Maui wildfires, emergency readiness projects in Oregon, and flood hazard mitigation in Colorado, according to a motion filed on Monday in the lawsuit State of New York v. Trump.
The motion was filed the day after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said her department would move to “eliminate” FEMA during a cabinet meeting.
Twenty-two states plus the District of Columbia filed the suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island in late January, after President Trump’s Office of Management and Budget issued a directive to federal agency heads to conduct a review of funding related to “foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal,” and to pause disbursement of any related funds in the meantime. The states argued that the memo and the executive orders it cites were unconstitutional.
The states sought an injunction on the pause, which Chief Judge John McConnell Jr., a Biden appointee, granted in early March. “The Executive’s categorical freeze of appropriated and obligated funds fundamentally undermines the distinct constitutional roles of each branch of our government,” he wrote in the ruling. “Here, the Executive put itself above Congress. It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending.”
The Trump administration filed notice with the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston that it is appealing the injunction a few days after it was issued.
Prior to the injunction order, the states had identified the disruptions from the pause on FEMA funds as being “particularly acute and widespread.” So as part of the injunction, the Judge directed FEMA to file a status report by March 14 detailing its compliance. But rather than detailing the release of grants previously held hostage, the status report federal lawyers filed on March 14 argued that the agency had “inherent authority” to conduct a “manual review” of the grants, and therefore it is not violating the court’s injunction by continuing to review — and therefore withhold — previously obligated funds.
“This manual review process is not a ‘pause’ or ‘freeze’ on funding,” the status report says, “nor does it mean that the grant is being frozen, held, or not being distributed.”
On Monday, states filed a motion calling BS on this argument and requesting that the court use its authority to enforce the injunction. This was urgent, they argued, because as the end of the first quarter nears, the lack of access to funding is going to start disrupting crucial programs.
If Hawaii doesn’t start receiving reimbursements for its federally-funded case management program by March 31, for example, it will be forced to immediately discontinue its work helping more than 4,000 wildfire survivors create tailored disaster recovery plans and navigate recovery resources. The state used to have to wait approximately a week for FEMA to review reimbursement requests and transfer the funds. Now it’s been waiting nearly 30 days. “This abrupt change in practice is near fatal because a key requirement of FEMA regarding these grant funds is that Hawaiʻi is precluded from maintaining more than three business days’ worth of cash on hand,” the states’ filing says.
FEMA is still issuing funds for some activities. The agency approved Fire Management Assistance Grants for North and South Carolina this week, where several major wildfires have been burning for weeks.
While the Trump administration fights the injunction in court, its supporters in Congress are fighting it on the floor. House Representative Andrew Clyde of Georgia introduced articles of impeachment against Judge McConnell on Tuesday, the latest in a series of such moves to impeach federal judges that have ruled against Trump’s actions. This is despite a warning from the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice, John Roberts, last week in a rare public statement, that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
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A judge has lifted the administration’s stop-work order against Revolution Wind.
A federal court has lifted the Trump administration’s order to halt construction on the Revolution Wind farm off the coast of New England. The decision marks the renewables industry’s first major legal victory against a federal war on offshore wind.
The Interior Department ordered Orsted — the Danish company developing Revolution Wind — to halt construction of Revolution Wind on August 22, asserting in a one-page letter that it was “seeking to address concerns related to the protection of national security interests of the United States and prevention of interference with reasonable uses of the exclusive economic zone, the high seas, and the territorial seas.”
In a two-page ruling issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found that Orsted would presumably win its legal challenge against the stop work order, and that the company is “likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of an injunction,” which led him to lift the dictate from the Trump administration.
Orsted previously claimed in legal filings that delays from the stop work order could put the entire project in jeopardy by pushing its timeline beyond the terms of existing power purchase agreements, and that the company installing cable for the project only had a few months left to work on Revolution Wind before it had to move onto other client obligations through mid-2028. The company has also argued that the Trump administration is deliberately mischaracterizing discussions between the federal government and the company that took place before the project was fully approved.
It’s still unclear at this moment whether the Trump administration will appeal the decision. We’re still waiting on the outcome of a separate legal challenge brought by Democrat-controlled states against Trump’s anti-wind Day One executive order.
A new letter sent Friday asks for reams of documentation on developers’ compliance with the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act.
The Fish and Wildlife Service is sending letters to wind developers across the U.S. asking for volumes of records about eagle deaths, indicating an imminent crackdown on wind farms in the name of bird protection laws.
The Service on Friday sent developers a request for records related to their permits under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, which compels companies to obtain permission for “incidental take,” i.e. the documented disturbance of eagle species protected under the statute, whether said disturbance happens by accident or by happenstance due to the migration of the species. Developers who received the letter — a copy of which was reviewed by Heatmap — must provide a laundry list of documents to the Service within 30 days, including “information collected on each dead or injured eagle discovered.” The Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
These letters represent the rapid execution of an announcement made just a week ago by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who released a memo directing department staff to increase enforcement of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act “to ensure that our national bird is not sacrificed for unreliable wind facilities.” The memo stated that all permitted wind facilities would receive records requests related to the eagle law by August 11 — so, based on what we’ve now seen and confirmed, they’re definitely doing that.
There’s cause for wind developers, renewables advocates, and climate activists to be alarmed here given the expanding horizon of enforcement of wildlife statutes, which have become a weapon for the administration against zero-carbon energy generation.
The August 4 memo directed the Service to refer “violations” of the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act to the agency solicitor’s office, with potential further referral to the Justice Department for criminal or civil charges. Violating this particular law can result in a fine of at least $100,000 per infraction, a year in prison, or both, and penalties increase if a company, organization, or individual breaks the law more than once. It’s worth noting at this point that according to FWS’s data, oil pits historically kill far more birds per year than wind turbines.
In a statement to Heatmap News, the American Clean Power Association defended the existing federal framework around protecting eagles from wind turbines, noted the nation’s bald eagle population has risen significantly overall in the past two decades, and claimed golden eagle populations are “stable, at the same time wind energy has been growing.”
“This is clear evidence that strong protections and reasonable permitting rules work. Wind and eagles are successfully co-existing,” ACP spokesperson Jason Ryan said.
The $7 billion program had been the only part of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund not targeted for elimination by the Trump administration.
The Environmental Protection Agency plans to cancel grants awarded from the $7 billion Solar for All program, the final surviving grants from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, by the end of this week, The New York Times is reporting. Two sources also told the same to Heatmap.
Solar for All awarded funds to 60 nonprofits, tribes, state energy offices, and municipalities to deliver the benefits of solar energy — namely, utility bill savings — to low-income communities. Some of the programs are focused on rooftop solar, while others are building community solar, which enable residents that don’t own their homes to access cheaper power.
The EPA is drafting termination letters to all 60 grantees, the Times reported. An EPA spokesperson equivocated in response to emailed questions from Heatmap about the fate of the program. “With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill, EPA is working to ensure Congressional intent is fully implemented in accordance with the law,” the person said.
Although Solar for All was one of the programs affected by the Trump administration’s initial freeze on Inflation Reduction Act funding, EPA had resumed processing payments for recipients after a federal judge placed an injunction on the pause. But in mid-March, the EPA Office of the Inspector General announced its intent to audit Solar for All. The results of that audit have not yet been published.
The Solar for All grants are a subset of the $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, most of which had been designated to set up a series of green lending programs. In March, Administrator Lee Zeldin accused the program of fraud, waste, and abuse — the so-called “gold bar” scandal — and attempted to claw back all $20 billion. Recipients of that funding are fighting the termination in an ongoing court case.
State attorneys generals are likely to challenge the Solar for All terminations in court, should they go through, a source familiar with the state programs told me.
All $7 billion under the program has been obligated to grantees, but the money is not yet fully out the door, as recipients must request reimbursements from the EPA as they spend down their grants. Very little has been spent so far, as many grantees opted to use the first year of the five-year program as a planning period.