The Biden administration is withholding federal funding from a climate justice group that supports a ceasefire in Gaza. 

The Climate Justice Alliance said it met all administrative deadlines and expected to get notice of funds by September, the end of the standard 90-day waiting period for grant applicants. Grantees under the program have to have their funds obligated by December 6 in order to get the funds disbursed before the start of the Trump administration. 

The grant would support communities experiencing disproportionately heavy impacts of climate change by funding air- and water-quality sampling, cleanup projects, air quality monitoring, and building green infrastructure. 

If the EPA decided not to issue the grant, the effects would fall disproportionately on working people, Chavez said.

“This would be a political divestment from working class and marginalized communities,” Chavez said. “In its place, we would see the polluting of our public lands and neighborhoods by the fossil fuel industry.”

In a statement last year following the October 7 attacks, the Climate Justice Alliance called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and condemned “genocidal attacks by Israel on the civilian Palestinian population.” The alliance has also called on Congress to stop funding Israel’s military and denounced apartheid in Palestine as a climate justice issue resulting from the effects of war contaminating Palestine’s air, water, and soil. 

“This is about the GOP’s obsession with shutting down the EPA.”

“This is about the GOP’s obsession with shutting down the EPA,” Chavez said. “The attacks that we’re seeing on us are collateral damage in a war against regulations that protect everybody.” 

Republican lawmakers and right-wing media have targeted the Climate Justice Alliance in recent attacks. On Saturday, the Daily Caller published a story on the pending EPA grant that claimed that the Climate Justice Alliance shared protest material celebrating Hamas. 

The Daily Caller also said the Biden administration was weighing “awarding taxpayer dollars to [a] nonprofit that wants to defund the police.” Earlier this month, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a report criticizing the EPA program and claiming that the Climate Justice Alliance had exhibited “anti-Republican sentiment.” 

President-elect Donald Trump and his administration are preparing to gut groups working on environmental and economic issues affecting working-class people, Chavez said. 

“We’re going to be facing a lot of rollbacks in these next two to four years,” they said. “And we want to make sure that our communities are at least resourced in being able to mitigate the harm.”

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