Environmental groups represented on President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris's own environmental justice council are among the largest beneficiaries of the president's environmental programs, collectively receiving hundreds of millions of dollars, according to a database of federal grants reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
In total, four leading environmental justice organizations—WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the Bullard Center for Environmental & Climate Justice at Texas Southern University, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, and Kean University's Center for the Urban Environment—have been awarded a staggering $229 million in Environmental Protection Agency grants and have been named as partners to grantees awarded another $200 million.
Leaders of those groups serve on the White House's so-called Environmental Justice Advisory Council, which is formally housed at EPA, the same agency doling out the grants. The council provides the administration with "independent advice and recommendations on how to address current and historic environmental injustice," the White House description notes.
WE ACT for Environmental Justice executive director Peggy Shepard chairs the council, while Bullard Center director Robert Bullard, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice executive director Beverly Wright, and Center for the Urban Environment director Nicky Sheats, are listed as members on the council.
All of the groups besides the Center for the Urban Environment are affiliated with Mike Bloomberg’s Beyond Petrochemicals initiative, an $85 million campaign the Democratic former presidential candidate and billionaire philanthropist established in 2022. They have also received millions of dollars in funding from billionaire Jeff Bezos's Earth Fund and other left-wing pass-through entities.
The revelations call into question the oversight of the Biden-Harris administration's distribution of behemoth environmental grants. They also reveal the apparently incestuous nature of the EPA's efforts to push environmental justice initiatives, which are designed to reduce the supposed outsized impact of global warming and pollution on minorities.
Biden and Harris have sought to expand environmental justice programs since taking office—their 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and 2022 Inflation Reduction Act give the EPA authority over billions of dollars in grants for a variety of new climate, environmental, pollution, and environmental justice programs. And in a speech on Monday, Harris touted her work on "environmental justice" dating back to her days as a prosecutor.
"There’s never been any factual basis for the notion of environmental justice. Minorities are not more at risk from anything in the environment than anyone else," Steve Milloy, a senior legal fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, told the Free Beacon. "The EPA grants data show what environmental justice is all about—massive financial self-dealing and political corruption."
The main avenue through which the four groups have received EPA funding is through the agency's "thriving communities" grantmaking programs. Those initiatives were created, in essence, to outsource key environmental justice funding decisions to community-based organizations. As such, the EPA earmarked $177 million to 17 "assistance centers" in early 2023, and another $600 million to 11 grantmakers later that year to oversee the final destinations of the funding.
In April 2023, WE ACT for Environmental Justice was named as one of the regional technical assistance centers and given $10 million to disburse to local environmental justice efforts. The group was also named as an assistance center helping to coordinate $50 million given to grantmaker Fordham University for environmental justice programs months later.
Shepard, WE ACT's executive director and chair of the White House environmental justice council, said the funding would be used to "address the legacy of environmental racism."
In addition, the EPA selected Texas Southern University's Bullard Center for Environmental & Climate Justice as another of the 11 grantmakers, awarding it $50 million under the program. And two months ago the center was awarded a whopping $156 million to develop solar projects for low-income communities under the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund’s "Solar For All" program.
"This funding will change the course of solar energy and equity across Texas and the South," Bullard, the center's director and a member of Biden's environmental justice council, said in a statement in May.
The Deep South Center for Environmental Justice was, like WE ACT, named as one of EPA's regional technical assistance centers and given $13 million for the initiative in August 2023. The group was separately listed as an assistance center helping to coordinate $100 million awarded to grantmaker Research Triangle Institute for environmental justice efforts.
And Kean University's Center for the Urban Environment was identified in January as a partner to grantmaker Climate Justice Alliance to administer $50 million for environmental justice efforts.
The EPA's funding for environmental justice also spotlights the fact that EPA's Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights remains without a leader. That role is listed as vacant on the agency's website and the EPA is currently accepting applications for the position, according to a federal job postings portal.
The office was created in 2022 and is tasked with overseeing environmental justice grants. After it was created, the EPA featured comments from WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the Bullard Center for Environmental & Climate Justice at Texas Southern University, and the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, cheering the program.
"Through this new effort, funding and resources will finally make it to the communities that need it most," Wright, the executive director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and a member of Biden's environmental justice council, said at the time.
WE ACT for Environmental Justice, the Bullard Center for Environmental & Climate Justice at Texas Southern University, the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, and Kean University's Center for the Urban Environment didn't respond to requests for comment.
"All recipients of EPA funding are required to adhere strictly to federal laws and requirements, and EPA grants are awarded according to EPA’s rigorous grant competition policy," EPA spokesman Remmington Belford told the Free Beacon. "EPA is confident in the agency’s strong oversight of all programs with robust controls in place to ensure all recipients manage grants consistent with the law and other federal requirements."
Belford emphasized that the White House environmental justice council operates independently of the EPA and federal government broadly.
WE ACT's Shepard, however, joined EPA administrator Michael Regan when he announced the $177 million for regional technical assistance centers while Shepard, Bullard from the Bullard Center, and Wright from the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice endorsed the EPA's creation of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights.
Less than a week after taking office in 2021, Biden issued an executive order establishing his environmental justice advisory council. In addition to being based at the EPA, the council has four designated federal officers from the EPA, and is empowered to advise both the White House Council on Environmental Quality and an interagency council comprised of a wide range of Cabinet secretaries.
And it has been heralded as a key part of the administration's environmental justice efforts as a whole.
"We are confident that the work you do as members of this Council will help our administration help Americans across our country," Vice President Harris remarked at the inaugural meeting of the White House environmental justice council in March 2021.
"We need your insight, your expertise, your lived experience. We need your ideas and your recommendations," she added. "Basically, we need you, period."
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