DOGE cuts $67M in EPA grants for ‘environmental justice’ groups

The Department of Government Efficiency is putting the kibosh on more than $67 million in Environmental Protection Agency grant money once earmarked to push ex-President Joe Biden’s “environmental justice” mandate, The Post has learned.

The Elon Musk-led agency this week notified the EPA it flagged 21 grants totaling $77.1 million previously awarded to 20 lefty nonprofits and universities, and it’s withholding $67.4 million in payments yet to be made, officials said.

The biggest loser is Vermont-based Institute of Sustainable Communities, which has yet to receive $12.4 million of the $16 million it was promised under two separate Biden-era grants to serve as a “National Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center.”

The Biden administration created three such national centers as part of its Justice40 Initiative requiring 40% of the “overall benefits” of most environmental and infrastructure programs to “flow to disadvantaged communities,” including Native American tribes. Another 18 regional centers were also created.

It’s unclear what will happen to the centers without the funding.

Another group losing funding was the San Diego State University Foundation, which was tapped to help bring “environmental justice” to “underserved” “tribal, indigenous and Pacific Island communities” and had yet to receive nearly $4.2 million of its $5.1 million in grants, according to a spreadsheet of the cuts reviewed by The Post. Part of its funding was to support a regional center at the university.

Others losing grant money they’ve been banking on include the New Orleans-based Deep South Center for Environmental Justice ($8 million), the Minneapolis Foundation ($7.6 million) and Baltimore-based Green & Healthy Homes Initiative ($7.2 million).

The affected organizations did not return messages.

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hailed DOGE’s actions, proclaiming “this wasteful spending ends with the Trump Administration.”

“We will make sure every penny spent by EPA goes towards protecting human health and the environment, and Powering the Great American Comeback,” said Zeldin, who earlier month announced his team separately rooted out $20 billion the Biden administration squirreled away at an unnamed outside financial institution to prevent environmental grants to “far-left activist groups” from being cut. 

“I am proud to partner with DOGE to restore fiscal responsibility and accountability in our government,” added the ex-Long Island Republican congressman.

DOGE’s cuts extend far beyond the EPA.

DOGE honchos say they have saved taxpayers $55 billion through a series of budget-slashing measures since President Trump took office last month, with the top cuts coming from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, compared DOGE’s cuts at the EPA and other federal agencies to “pulling off the scab of how the left has been funding itself” for years and forcing a long-needed national discussion about government spending.

“How come all of a sudden everything is about trans [people] or nobody is allowed to have plastic straws?” he said.

“I’ll tell you why. It’s because they give these grants to all these groups and say ‘we are now all hating on plastic straws. We are all now announcing kids should have their private parts chopped off.’”

“It seems like it’s organized because it is — and it’s funded,” he said. “What DOGE has done is go in, opened it up, and let people look at it.”

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn) said DOGE’s scrutiny of federal spending is long overdue.

“For four years, the Biden Administration irresponsibly spent taxpayer dollars like drunken sailors,” Malliotakis said. “The days of wasteful bureaucratic spending on woke pet projects are over. Tax dollars must serve hardworking Americans and protect our nation’s future.”